Brexit: Dual nationality on the table for Britons?

Summary: It is more than a week since Britain voted to leave the European Union, and there is still little certainty regarding the future status of EU citizens currently living in the UK, or of British people living elsewhere in the EU.

By Claudia AllenBBC News While many British citizens are happy to potentially wave goodbye to freedom of movement within the EU, some Britons would like to hold on to the opportunity to live and work in the other 27 countries that make up the union. At the weekend, German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said the remaining members should not "pull up the drawbridge" for young Britons, who largely voted to remain, and so should consider offering dual nationality to young British citizens "who live in Germany, Italy or France, so that they can remain EU citizens in this country". Mr Gabriel's comments follow a statement by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi last Tuesday suggesting that EU nations were considering whether British students at universities on the continent could be offered citizenship. Mr Renzi said he was "sad" for the younger generation of Britons. In the absence of any concrete information on either plan, what other options are already open to British citizens, of any age, keen to access an EU citizenship after Brexit? Move to the EU now and later apply for citizenship The UK remains part of the EU, for now, so freedom of movement still applies. This means a British citizen currently still has full rights to move to any other EU country to work or study, as many have already done. While it is not clear what will happen to those residents once the UK "brexits", they may well be able to stay, and, in time, apply for citizenship. For example, residents of Germany can apply for citizenship after eight years - less in some circumstances - as long as they pass an assessment of their German language skills and a naturalisation test, among other criteria. A spokesman for the German interior ministry told the BBC that, while up-to-date figures were not available, he would not rule out an increase in applications for German nationality from Britons in light of the Brexit vote. This is because German law requires non-EU citizens to give up their existing nationality when applying for German citizenship - so British citizens are currently able to hold on to their UK passport and get a shiny new German one. The ministry confirmed that a Briton in this situation would not be deprived of their newly acquired German nationality even if/when the UK subsequently leaves the EU. Mr Gabriel's SPD - the junior coalition partner in the German government - told the BBC that the vice-chancellor's comments about dual nationality for young Britons referred specifically to Britons living in Germany, so that they would be able to retain their UK citizenship even if applying for German naturalisation in a post-Brexit world. France and Sweden are among several EU countries which set a shorter period for residents to gain citizenship. Adults must have lived in Sweden for at least five years, children as little as two years, before they can apply for naturalisation (again, other conditions apply). Dig out the family tree Grandpa from Galway? Nonna from Napoli? Then you may be entitled to claim a second nationality by descent. If you have a parent born in another EU country, your route to citizenship may be reasonably clear, but if the link is more distant you need to look in detail at the relevant country's nationality laws. Ireland in particular allows people with just one Irish grandparent to claim Irish citizenship - and if each generation registers before the birth of the next, it is possible to keep passing the Irishness down the generations, even if you do not live there. Post Office in NI reports 'unusually high number of people' seeking Irish passports And Italian roots can go back even further, with citizenship being passed from parent to child and no limit on the number of generations. So a single great-grandparent might entitle you to an Italian passport - as long as no-one in the chain has renounced their Italian citizenship, and with the important proviso that citizenship could only be passed on by women after 1948. Lithuania is another country that potentially allows citizenship for great-grandchildren of its former citizens. The laws of other countries, including Spain, Poland and Hungary, allow descendants of citizens to claim nationality, though the rules are often complex, and you would have to track down a lot of documents. If you are descended from Jews or other groups who had to flee persecution, including the Holocaust, you may be eligible under special rules, sometimes called restored citizenship or restitution. The German constitution provides for German citizenship for the descendants of former German citizens "who were persecuted on political, racial or religious grounds between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945". This mainly applies to German Jews and social democrats and Communists who had to flee the country. Descendants of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain and Portugal five centuries ago may be able to apply for a Spanish or Portuguese passport more easily under recent legislation - although there are language requirements. Spain naturalises expelled Sephardic Jews' descendants Portugal to naturalise descendants of Jews expelled centuries ago Find love Some countries will grant citizenship to the spouse of a passport holder - even if the couple do not live in the country concerned. Italian law states that "the spouse of an Italian citizen living outside of Italy can apply for Italian citizenship three years after the date of the marriage, or after 18 months if the couple has children". Portuguese citizenship can also be acquired by declaration after three years of marriage or de facto partnership with a Portuguese citizen. Most other EU countries do require the non-national spouse to live in the country for a set period - but this period is often less than it would be if they were not married to a citizen of that country. Note that for Irish citizenship, the spouse or civil partner needs to have lived on the island of Ireland (so Northern Ireland counts) for at least three of the past five years, and to have been married for at least three years. Invest Malta and Cyprus are both in the EU, and both offer a fast-track to citizenship for people who are able to invest a significant amount of money. Maltese citizenship is available to those who invest €1.15m (£965,000; $1.3m) there; the country added a one-year residency requirement after EU pressure. The scheme is aimed at "ultra-high net worth individuals and families worldwide". The Cypriot government offers citizenship to those who put €5m (£4.2m; $5.6m) into approved investments - this is reduced to just €2.5m for those taking part in a collective investment. Applicants need to have a property in Cyprus but do not need to live there all of the time. Family members are included in the application, which can take as little as three months. Malta tightens passport sale terms under EU pressure Where is the cheapest place to buy citizenship? None of the above apply? Already married, lacking a spare £1m, most exotic ancestor from Sunderland and not able to move abroad anytime soon? Do not worry - a British passport remains one of the most useful you can have, giving visa-free access to 175 countries, according to a firm which ranks these things.

ब्रिटेन को यूरोपीय संघ छोड़ने के लिए मतदान किए हुए एक सप्ताह से अधिक समय हो गया है, और वर्तमान में ब्रिटेन में रहने वाले यूरोपीय संघ के नागरिकों या यूरोपीय संघ में कहीं और रहने वाले ब्रिटिश लोगों की भविष्य की स्थिति के बारे में अभी भी बहुत कम निश्चितता है।


Hurricane Irma: Visual guide

Summary: The most powerful Atlantic storm in a decade has caused widespread destruction across the Caribbean and the southern US, leaving 55 people dead. Irma, at times a category five hurricane, packed winds of up to 295km/h (185mph).

The storm cut a devastating trail across Caribbean countries and territories before moving up through the US states of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, weakening into a tropical depression. An estimated 1.2 million people have been affected. Irma broke weather records At its peak, Irma was a category five storm with winds topping 295km/h (185mph). According to Phil Klotzbach, research scientist at Colorado State University's Department of Atmospheric Science, Irma's top wind speeds were tied with the second-strongest maximum winds of all time for an Atlantic hurricane. Irma matches a 1935 storm in the Florida Keys, Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 and Wilma in 2005. Only one hurricane, Allen in 1980, has recorded stronger winds, at 190 mph, he said. However, Irma broke Allen's record for sustained winds. It maintained maximum wind speeds of 295km/h for longer than any other Atlantic Hurricane. Irma grew in strength over a few days The remnants of Hurricane Harvey, which hit in late August, could still be seen by satellite when Irma made its way across the Atlantic towards the Caribbean. Irma and remnants of Hurricane Harvey, 2 September Irma was just a category two storm on 2 September, but soon became category three. Irma grew stronger quickly because of a combination of very warm water, high levels of mid-level relative humidity, and vertical wind conditions, meteorologists say. Between 2 and 5 September, Irma strengthened from a category three to a category five storm, the highest possible level. By 7 September, Irma was being followed by storm Jose, which was also upgraded to hurricane status. Also present was Storm Katia in the Gulf of Mexico, which became a hurricane before it hit the Mexican state of Veracruz. Two people died in a mudslide caused by the extreme weather. Katia, Irma and Jose, 7 September Irma's clouds were very, very cold Infrared data from the Nasa-National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Suomi NPP satellite on 7 September revealed very cold, very high, powerful thunderstorms stretching around Irma's northern, eastern and southern sides. Storms with cloud tops reaching very low temperatures have the capability to generate "very heavy rainfall", according to Nasa. Infrared image of Irma, 7 September Cloud-top temperatures at the centre of the storm were as cold as 190 Kelvin (minus 83.1C/117.7F), Nasa said. Irma generated vast amounts of rain The eye of the storm measured about 35 miles across and generated "extreme rainfall". Nasa rainfall analysis of Irma's eye, 5 September . Nasa's rainfall analysis showed rain falling at a rate of more than 274mm (10.8in) per hour on 5 September in the solid ring of storms within Irma's eye. The powerful storms rotating around the eye were really tall, reaching altitudes greater than 12.5km (7.75 miles). But the tallest thunderstorms were found south west of Irma's eye, reaching heights of more than 16.2km (10 miles), Nasa said. Sea temperatures contributed to Irma's power Warm oceans, along with wind speed and direction, are the two key ingredients that fuel and sustain hurricanes. As Irma approached Florida, it passed over waters that are warmer than 30C (86F) - hot enough to sustain a category five storm, according to Nasa scientists. Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico temperatures The green line on the map tracks Irma's path between 3 and 6 September. Understanding the impact Hurricane Irma has hit many of the Caribbean's islands, and made landfall in Florida on Sunday. Places hit: Storm surges Huge volumes of water are pushed by hurricane-force winds. When they meet land, the water surges inshore at levels far exceeding normal tides. Storm surges were caused across the south of Florida. Hurricanes A guide to the world's deadliest storms Hurricanes are violent storms that can bring devastation to coastal areas, threatening lives, homes and businesses. Hurricanes develop from thunderstorms, fuelled by warm, moist air as they cross sub-tropical waters. Warm air rises into the storm. Air swirls in to fill the low pressure in the storm, sucking air in and upwards, reinforcing the low pressure. The storm rotates due to the spin of the earth and energy from the warm ocean increases wind speeds as it builds. When winds reach 119km/h (74mph), it is known as a hurricane - in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific - or a typhoon in the Western Pacific. "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. Well, we're about to get punched in the face." Florida Mayor Bob Buckhorn, ahead of Hurricane Irma (2017) The central eye of calmer weather is surrounded by a wall of rainstorms.This eyewall has the fastest winds below it and violent currents of air rising through it. A mound of water piles up below the eye which is unleashed as the storm reaches land. These storm surges can cause more damage from flooding than the winds. "Urgent warning about the rapid rise of water on the SW FL coast with the passage of #Irma's eye. MOVE AWAY FROM THE WATER!"Tweet from the National Hurricane Center The size of hurricanes is mainly measured by the Saffir-Simpson scale - other scales are used in Asia Pacific and Australia. Winds 119-153km/hSome minor flooding, little structural damage. Storm surge +1.2m-1.5m Winds 154-177km/hRoofs and trees could be damaged. Storm surge +1.8m-2.4m Winds 178-208km/hHouses suffer damage, severe flooding Storm surge +2.7m-3.7m Hurricane Sandy (2012) caused $71bn damage in the Caribbean and New York Winds 209-251km/hSome roofs destroyed and major structural damage to houses. Storm surge +4m-5.5m Hurricane Ike (2008) hit Caribbean islands and Louisiana and was blamed for at least 195 deaths Winds 252km/h+Serious damage to buildings, severe flooding further inland. Storm surge +5.5m Hurricane Irma (2017) caused devastation in Caribbean islands, leaving thousands homeless "For everyone thinking they can ride this storm out, I have news for you: that will be one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your life." Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin ahead of Hurricane Gustav, 2008 Click arrow to proceed Loading ... Swipe to progress

एक दशक में सबसे शक्तिशाली अटलांटिक तूफान ने कैरिबियन और दक्षिणी अमेरिका में व्यापक विनाश किया है, जिसमें 55 लोगों की मौत हो गई है। इरमा, कभी-कभी श्रेणी पांच का तूफान, 295 किमी/घंटा (185 मील/घंटा) तक की हवाओं से भरा हुआ है।


‘Exonerated’: The verdict on Mueller from Trump's heartland

Summary: People in Arkansas thought that the Mueller report was a "witch hunt" and feel vindicated by its findings. Their affection for President Donald Trump is deep - and so is their scepticism towards the special counsel and Washington.

By Tara McKelveyBBC News, Russellville, Arkansas Joyce Smith, a retired nurse, heard about the findings on Sunday while she was driving across Oklahoma. A friend texted her the news, and she told her husband, Walter, who was in the driver's seat. They were both delighted by Mueller's conclusion. Congressional Democrats, liberals and others in Washington may be clamouring for more investigations. Yet she and her husband reflect the views of many if not most of those who live in Arkansas, "flyover people", she describes them, "the people in the middle who get skipped", or as Trump says: "the forgotten people". They make up the bedrock of support for the president and on Sunday they celebrated since, as Mr Smith says: "Trump was exonerated." On that day she and her husband drove through a landscape that is familiar to those who know flyover country. Signs of the economic hardship, resilience and patriotism that mark small-town and rural America are easy to spot in west-central Arkansas. Here in Russellville (population of 29,000), the place where the Smiths stopped before leaving on their trip, one can see vacant buildings in the downtown area and a gigantic American flag that whips back and forth in the wind. The Smiths and others who live here were gratified by the results of Mueller's investigation, which uncovered no evidence that the president colluded in the Russian government's alleged attempt to interfere in the democratic process. For the Smiths, Mr Trump is not a criminal or a Russian spy. Instead he is a leader who has ushered in economic growth to the country and hope to Arkansas. Russellville is one of the many towns across the nation that has supported Mr Trump and his drain-the-swamp campaign despite the chorus of critics in Washington and demands for his impeachment. In 2016 Trump won more than 70% of the vote in Pope County, where Russellville is located, and people here remain firmly behind him (and proud that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who lived in nearby Pulaski County, is working at the White House). For many in Russellville, their enthusiasm for the president has not dimmed despite the fact that their own economic prospects may not be any better than before he was elected. The median household income in town, $35,000 (£26,500), remains significantly below the national average of $56,000. Some people have high-paying jobs in manufacturing (Grace, which makes kitchen products, is based here) or at a nearby chicken-processing plant. But a lot of people work at Burger King or in other fast-food restaurants, and some - like the Smiths' son - end up moving to Oklahoma or other states to find a decent job. Mr Trump has not fixed the problems faced by many people in Russellville, but at least he has stood up for them and fought back against their common enemy, Washington. This scepticism towards the federal government has been brought into sharp relief because of the Russia investigation, but the sentiment has a long history. These anti-Washington views are so entrenched it seems likely that they will continue to shield the president from whatever mishaps - or investigations - could dog him in the future. Some academics trace the anti-Washington mindset in Arkansas and in other southern states - and the dislike that people express towards special counsels and federal investigations - back to the reconstruction era after the US Civil War. Back then, says Kelly Jones, an assistant professor of history at a local university, Arkansas Tech, white people in Arkansas and in other parts of the south complained about the new political order and had "mistrust" of what they saw as a corrupt government. This is a charge that people in Arkansas continue to make today when they talk about Washington and the Mueller report. There are other historical reasons, too, for hating the federal government: here people see themselves as independent and resourceful. Standing outside a Burger King in Russellville, Mr Smith says that more than four decades ago he and his wife were driving through Arkansas and liked the hilly, rustic landscape. Mrs Smith points out trees for me: "Oak, cedar, pine." They decided to move here, and over the years he has built a house, driven a school bus and raised milk goats - and expressed deep scepticism towards Washington and those who take "handouts". Years ago, conservatives in Arkansas rejected another independent counsel, Ken Starr, echoing a similar anti-Washington sentiment. Starr led an investigation into a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, a former Arkansas governor, in the 1990s. Both Republicans and Democrats felt angry at Mr Starr, who became a symbol of Washington politics. As Doug Thompson, a political reporter for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, says: "There were people in the state who despised the Clintons and still hated the special counsel." She and others in town express similar disdain for the Mueller report: "A made-up thing to discredit Trump", she says. Or as Sam Eastman, an attorney in town, puts it, the investigation was "a way to root out people", especially those who support the president. "I don't really care about the Republicans or the Democrats, and I don't think either of them cares about us either," he says of Capitol Hill. Timothy Schroeter, a college student who is studying business, says he is glad the report is done so people can move on. He spent Sunday evening at the house of his relative, Toni Crites, who lives near a chicken hatchery on the east side of town. "I feel like they have their own agendas," he says of members of Congress. "I would hope that they want to better our country and not just try and stuff their pockets with money." Now that the report's findings are public, he says he hopes that the president can go back to doing his job. But not everyone wants this chapter in US history to be over. Ms Crites says she hopes that investigators will continue to search for evidence. "They need to dig and find out for sure," she says. "Trump didn't drain the swamp. He made a bigger swamp." "There's still something in that report," says her sister Phyllis Hammond, who was sitting across the living room from her. "I think everybody needs to see the full report - we need to find out for sure." Still most people in town are like the Smiths, the so-called "forgotten people" who support the president and believe that the special counsel, members of Congress and others in Washington just get in his way. "They have forgotten who their bosses are," says Mrs Smith, "we, the people, are the ones that put them there."

अरकंसास के लोगों ने सोचा कि म्यूलर की रिपोर्ट एक "विच हंट" थी और वे इसके निष्कर्षों से पुष्टि महसूस करते हैं। राष्ट्रपति डोनाल्ड ट्रम्प के लिए उनका स्नेह गहरा है-और विशेष सलाहकार और वाशिंगटन के प्रति भी उनका संदेह है।


Three reasons for optimism over the Eurozone economy

Summary: It is easy to be gloomy about the Eurozone's economic prospects. While GDP in the UK and US is now above its pre-crisis level, in the Eurozone it is still languishing below. But is there room for greater optimism?

Duncan WeldonNewsnight economics correspondent@Duncanweldonon Twitter A major economy being smaller than it was seven years ago is not something that happens often. Unemployment remains stubbornly high and the latest flaring up of tension over a possible Greek bailout extension is yet another reminder that some of the structural issues in how the Euro was designed will continue to be a source of friction. And now, new Eurostat figures show that consumer prices in the Eurozone fell by 0.6% in the last year: a possible sign of the early stages of a damaging deflationary slide. But is the gloom overdone? There are three reasons to think it might be - three reasons why Eurozone growth in 2015 may well surprise to the upside for the first time in years. Reduced oil prices The first reason is the reduction in oil prices. Since June 2014 world oil prices have more than halved, which - all things being equal - should be good news for an energy importer like the Eurozone. In effect, this functions as a large tax cut for consumers and firms financed by overseas producers. And although declining oil prices add further pressure to falling consumer prices in the Eurozone, this doesn't mean they should not be welcomed in Europe - even if Eurostat's figures suggest that the pace of decline in consumer prices is accelerating. The fear has always been of a "debt-deflationary" cycle - a situation in which falling prices lead to reduced profits for businesses and subsequent wage cuts. In the event of a generalised fall in prices and wages, then the real burden of debt increases. But for falling oil prices to be a cause of "bad deflation" rather than "benign disinflation", consumers and firms would have to save rather than spend their windfall from lower energy costs. In that situation there would be no boost to demand, but there would be an additional downward pressure on prices. The early signs, however, are that this is not happening. European retail sales grew strongly in the fourth quarter of last year, suggesting lower prices at the pumps are providing a stimulus to growth, rather than a drag. Weaker currency The second reason for cautious optimism is the fall in value of the Euro, which has lost almost 10% of its value against other currencies over the past year. This makes European exports more competitive on world markets and should provide a boost to the single currency area's trade. And thirdly, the European Central Bank last month - not soon enough - began a programme of quantitative easing (QE), electronically creating money to buy assets - usually government bonds - to consequently push down the value of interest rates. One the biggest factors holding back Eurozone growth over the last few years has been a weak banking system. But even before the introduction of QE, there were indications that bank lending was starting to pick up. Lower risk So overall, healthier bank lending, a weaker currency and the additional kicker of an effective large tax cut for firms may well be enough to push growth higher. A Greek bailout extension may be a case of "kicking the can down the road" rather than dealing with the fundamental problems, but it is also another reason for optimism about the Eurozone as a whole. It further decreases the risk of a nasty financial accident. The Eurozone is often compared to the pre-World War Two gold standard - a commitment by participating countries to fix the prices of their domestic currencies in relation to a specified amount of gold. In effect, the countries in the Eurozone no longer have an independent monetary policy, interest rates cannot be set in the pure national interest and exchange rates between countries are fixed - so fixed they have actually ceased to exist. This means that if a country loses competiveness relative to its peers then it cannot regain it by devaluing its currency, and instead is forced to try and drive down prices and wages domestically to increase productivity, in a process known as internal devaluation. In the 1920s and 30s that proved to be a recipe for disaster. A disaster that many think has been replayed decades later in the so-called periphery of the Eurozone - Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal. 'Something to celebrate' Until recently the gold standard analogy has worked fairly well in explaining the dynamics of the Eurozone. One big difference being that leaving the gold standard, as opposed to the Euro, was at least relatively straightforward. But that might now finally be changing. One big reason for that is the ECB's decision to increase the amount of Euros, through the use of QE. In terms of the gold standard, that is as if the central banks in the 1930s had suddenly discovered a lot of gold mines. This removes some of what economists believe is an in-built bias towards disinflation in the Euro's design. The Eurozone economy may be unlikely to reach the kind of growth rates on display in the UK and US this year, but 2015 looks set to be the best year for its economy since 2007. That is something to celebrate.

यूरोज़ोन की आर्थिक संभावनाओं के बारे में उदास होना आसान है। जबकि यूके और यूएस में जीडीपी अब अपने पूर्व-संकट स्तर से ऊपर है, यूरोज़ोन में यह अभी भी नीचे है। लेकिन क्या अधिक आशावाद के लिए जगह है?


Viewpoint: V for Vendetta and the rise of Anonymous

Summary: On Saturday protests are planned across the world against Acta - the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The treaty has become the focus of activists associated with the Anonymous hacking network because of concerns that it could undermine internet privacy and aid censorship.

By Alan MooreAuthor First published in 1982, the comic series V for Vendetta charted a masked vigilante's attempt to bring down a fascist British government and its complicit media. Many of the demonstrators are expected to wear masks based on the book's central character. Ahead of the protests, the BBC asked V for Vendetta's writer, Alan Moore, for his thoughts on how his creation had become an inspiration and identity to Anonymous. PREOCCUPATIONS Without wishing to overstate my case, everything in the observable universe definitely has its origins in Northamptonshire, and the adoption of the V for Vendetta mask as a multipurpose icon by the emerging global protest movements is no exception. Back at the crack of the 17th century, Rushton Triangular Lodge was a strange architectural folly constructed to represent the Holy Trinity by an increasingly eccentric Sir Thomas Tresham while he endured decades of house-arrest for his outspoken Catholicism. It was also one of the two locations, both owned by Tresham and both in Northamptonshire, at which the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was formulated by a group of dissident Catholics that included Tresham's son Francis. It would seem likely that the treatment afforded to the elder Tresham played some part in the general mix of grievances from which the reckless scheme ignited. Mastermind By the early sixteen-hundreds, the bonfires traditionally lit around the start of November had been co-opted as trappings for a sort of national anti-Catholic day at which effigies of the Pope would be incinerated. As mastermind behind the terrorist outrage du jour, however, the plot's nominal leader Guido Fawkes rapidly replaced the pontiff as hate-mascot of choice on these occasions. Jump forward 300 years, though, to the battered post-war England of the 1950s, and the saturnine insurrectionary had taken on more ambiguous connotations. When parents explained to their offspring about Guy Fawkes and his attempt to blow up Parliament, there always seemed to be an undertone of admiration in their voices, or at least there did in Northampton. While that era's children perhaps didn't see Fawkes as a hero, they certainly didn't see him as the villainous scapegoat he'd originally been intended as. Revolutionary At the start of the 1980s when the ideas that would coalesce into V for Vendetta were springing up from a summer of anti-Thatcher riots across the UK coupled with a worrying surge from the far-right National Front, Guy Fawkes' status as a potential revolutionary hero seemed to be oddly confirmed by circumstances surrounding the comic strip's creation: it was the strip's artist, David Lloyd, who had initially suggested using the Guy Fawkes mask as an emblem for our one-man-against-a-fascist-state lead character. When this notion was enthusiastically received, he decided to buy one of the commonplace cardboard Guy Fawkes masks that were always readily available from mid-autumn, just to use as convenient reference. To our great surprise, it turned out that this was the year (perhaps understandably after such an incendiary summer) when the Guy Fawkes mask was to be phased out in favour of green plastic Frankenstein monsters geared to the incoming celebration of an American Halloween. It was also the year in which the term "Guy Fawkes Night" seemingly disappeared from common usage, to be replaced by the less provocative 'bonfire night'. At the time, we both remarked upon how interesting it was that we should have taken up the image right at the point where it was apparently being purged from the annals of English iconography. It seemed that you couldn't keep a good symbol down. If there truly was government unease about the mask and its associations back in the 1980s, these concerns had evidently evaporated by the first decade of the 21st century, when the movie industry apparently decided to re-imagine the original narrative as some sort of parable about the post-9/11 rise of American neo-conservatives, in which the words "fascism" or "anarchy" were nowhere mentioned. Anarchy and romance When the film was made during the peak period of anti-terrorist legislation the golden touch of Hollywood was, it seemed, sufficiently persuasive for the authorities to permit a massed horde of extras dressed as the nation's most famous terrorist to cavort riotously in Parliament Square. I don't think one need subscribe to any quasi-mystical theories about how the conceptual world of ideas can affect the substantial world of everyday existence in order to agree that, in retrospect, this could be seen as practically begging for it. After that, it wasn't long before the character's enigmatic Time-Warner trademarked leer appeared masking the faces of Anonymous protesters barracking Scientologists halfway down Tottenham Court Road. Shortly thereafter it began manifesting at anti-globalisation demonstrations, anti-capitalist protests, concerted hacker-attacks upon those perceived as enabling state oppression, and finally on the front steps of St Paul's. It would seem that the various tectonic collapses deep in the structure of our economic and political systems have triggered waves of kinetic energy which are rolling through human populations rather than through their usual medium of seawater. It also seems that our character's charismatic grin has provided a ready-made identity for these highly motivated protesters, one embodying resonances of anarchy, romance, and theatre that are clearly well-suited to contemporary activism, from Madrid's Indignados to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Neglect Our present financial ethos no longer even resembles conventional capitalism, which at least implies a brutal Darwinian free-for-all, however one-sided and unfair. Instead, we have a situation where the banks seem to be an untouchable monarchy beyond the reach of governmental restraint, much like the profligate court of Charles I. Then, a depraved neglect of the poor and the "squeezed middle" led inexorably to an unanticipated reaction in the horrific form of Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War which, as it happens, was bloodily concluded in Northamptonshire. Today's response to similar oppressions seems to be one that is intelligent, constantly evolving and considerably more humane, and yet our character's borrowed Catholic revolutionary visage and his incongruously Puritan apparel are perhaps a reminder that unjust institutions may always be haunted by volatile 17th century spectres, even if today's uprisings are fuelled more by social networks than by gunpowder. Some ghosts never go away. As for the ideas tentatively proposed in that dystopian fantasy thirty years ago, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that whatever usefulness they afford modern radicalism is very satisfying. In terms of a wildly uninformed guess at our political future, it feels something like V for validation.

शनिवार को ऐक्टा-नकली-विरोधी व्यापार समझौते के खिलाफ दुनिया भर में विरोध प्रदर्शन की योजना बनाई गई है। यह संधि अनाम हैकिंग नेटवर्क से जुड़े कार्यकर्ताओं का ध्यान इस चिंता के कारण बन गई है कि यह इंटरनेट गोपनीयता को कमजोर कर सकती है और सेंसरशिप में सहायता कर सकती है।


Summary: The Great Barrier Reef is one of more than 1,000 places on Unesco's World Heritage List of precious environmental and cultural sites. In June, Unesco will decide if the Reef should be added to its "in danger" list. On Friday, a draft recommendation will be made about the reef's status.

Who created the list and why? The World Heritage Convention links the concepts of nature conservation and the preservation of cultural properties. It recognises the way in which people interact with nature, and the need to preserve the balance between the two. The convention defines the kinds of natural or cultural sites that can be included on the World Heritage List. The 191 nations that have signed the convention have pledged to conserve their World Heritage Sites. What kinds of places are on the list? There are 1,007 sites on the list, ranging from a 65m-tall minaret in the ancient Afghan city of Jam and Britain's city of Bath, to Canada's Dinosaur Provincial Park and Argentina's Los Glaciares National Park. More than two-thirds of the listed sites are man-made, and include everything from monasteries, cathedrals and opera houses, to entire cities such as Graz in Austria. What is the World Heritage In Danger List? The committee compiles another list of sites it considers to be "in danger" of losing their heritage status. This time last year, Unesco threatened to list the Great Barrier Reef as in danger, amid controversy over a plan to dump dredged sediment from a port expansion near the reef. Declining water quality, climate change and coastal development were also cited as threats to the reef's health. The "in danger" list is designed to tell the international community about the conditions that threaten the very characteristics for which a property was added to the World Heritage List in the first place, and to encourage governments to take action to protect the sites. A country can ask for one of its sites to be listed in order to receive help to address the threats. For example, listing would enable the World Heritage Committee to allocate funds to help protect a site. It would also alert the international community who might contribute funds or technical expertise to save an endangered site. If a site loses the characteristics which determined its inscription on the World Heritage List, it could be deleted from both the List of World Heritage in Danger and the main World Heritage List. To date, that has only happened twice. How do you get off the 'in danger' list? Ecuador's Galapagos Islands Archipelago was the first World Heritage site. It was listed in 1978 for its unusual and globally unique biodiversity. But over the years, invasive species, illegal fishing and pressure from increased tourism and urban growth have put the islands and their animals at serious risk. In 2007, the Galapagos were added to the "in danger" list. Alarmed by that decision, Ecuador devised plans to manage invasive species, curtail illegal fishing and control the number of tourists and types of tourist vessels visiting the islands. By 2010, its efforts were enough to turn the tide on the destruction and get the islands removed from the "in danger" list.

ग्रेट बैरियर रीफ यूनेस्को की बहुमूल्य पर्यावरण और सांस्कृतिक स्थलों की विश्व धरोहर सूची में 1,000 से अधिक स्थानों में से एक है। जून में, यूनेस्को यह तय करेगा कि क्या रीफ को इसकी "खतरे में" सूची में जोड़ा जाना चाहिए। शुक्रवार को, रीफ की स्थिति के बारे में एक मसौदा सिफारिश की जाएगी।


Twin DNA test: Why identical criminals may no longer be safe

Summary: It's well known that identical twins are not totally identical - they can, usually, be told apart, after all. But up to now it has been almost impossible to distinguish their DNA. It's claimed that a new test can do it quickly and affordably, however - and this could help police solve a number of crimes.

By Alison GeeBBC World Service At the end of 2012, six women were raped in Marseille, in the south of France. Evidence, including DNA, led police to not one, but two suspects - identical twins Elwin and Yohan. Their surname was not revealed. When asked to identify the attacker, victims recognised the twins but couldn't say which one had assaulted them. Police are struggling to work out which one to prosecute. They have been holding the brothers in custody since February - each twin says he didn't carry out the attacks, but neither is blaming the other. When the twins were arrested, media reports said tests to determine who to charge with the crimes would be prohibitively expensive, but that looks set to change. Scientists specialising in genomic research at the Eurofins laboratory in Ebersberg, Germany, say they can now help in cases like this. "The human genome consists of a three-billion-letter code," says Georg Gradl, their next-generation sequencing expert. "If the body is growing, or an embryo is developing, then all the three billion letters have to be copied. "During this copying process in the body there are 'typos' happening," says Gradl, referring to slight mutations. In standard DNA tests only a tiny fraction of the code is analysed - enough to differentiate between two average people, but not identical twins. Gradl and his team took samples from a pair of male twins and looked at the entire three-billion-letter sequence, and they found a few dozen differences in their DNA. The scientists also tested the son of one of the men, and found he had inherited five of the mutations from his father. Having analysed the results, they are confident that they can now tell any twin from another, and from their children. And the speed of the test is important - it can be carried out in about a month. Forensic institutes and police from Europe, Latin America and the US have already asked Eurofins if it can help them solve some 10 different cases. Gradl says cases of rape or sexual violence involving a twin are "more frequent than we expected". Often there are traces of sperm "and in these cases we can really differentiate," he says. The company can't reveal which cases it is working on, but Gradl admits Marseille is "certainly one of the cases that we would like to help… and we are very convinced that we would get [a result]". A number of other cases present similar difficulties. A court in Argentina recently suspended a trial so further investigations could be carried out, after a man charged with rape blamed his twin. There have also been a handful of cases in the US. Sometimes a tattoo or an alibi has enabled investigators to work out which twin to prosecute, but there have been times when both suspects have walked free. One of these cases occurred in 1999 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when a female student was hit over the head and raped. Five years later, police matched DNA from the attack to Jerome Cooper - but he has an identical twin, Tyrone. Both brothers already had records for sexual assault. "Both gave us statements, both denied it," says Captain Jeffrey Hertel of Grand Rapids Police Department. "We were naively hopeful that one of them would come forward and say, 'I don't want my brother falsely accused of something - it was me,' but that never happened." "At one time we put them in the same room together to see if they would come to some type of conclusion between the two of them. That didn't occur - they just talked small talk," he says. "We're all hoping that science is going to catch up to this case… we've taken deep breaths, we know it's going to happen, it's just a matter of time." More than a decade after the assault, he says the victim is "still waiting for her day in court". Another case occurred in 2009, in Malaysia, when police in Kuala Lumpur stopped a car containing 166kg (366lbs) of cannabis and 1.7kg (3.7lbs) of raw opium, and arrested the driver. A little later another man arrived at the house to which the car had been heading. They arrested him too. It turned out they had picked up identical twins, Sathis and Sabarish Raj. Only the first one had a key to the house and would have known for sure what was in the bags in the car. But when the case came to court, there was reasonable doubt which twin was which. A DNA test that might usually have been able to link a suspect to the car was of no use. "I can't be sending the wrong person to the gallows," said the judge, according to the New Straits Times. So both walked free, escaping the death penalty that is mandatory for convicted drugs traffickers in Malaysia. It's not just crimes that could be solved by the new test - doubts about paternity could also be laid to rest. In 2007, a court in Missouri heard a case concerning Holly Marie Adams, who had sex with identical twin brothers and subsequently gave birth to a child. A DNA test gave a nonsensical result - there was a 99.9% probability that Raymon Miller was the father, and also a 99.9% probability that his twin, Richard Miller, was the father. In the end, the judge had to rely on Adams' testimony to find out the exact dates she had slept with each man, how this corresponded with her menstrual cycle and whether either had used a condom. In the end he ruled that Raymon was the legal father. The standard of proof was lower than in a criminal trial. For all of these scenarios, Eurofins' test offers "a very exciting development… a significant step forward in forensic DNA analysis," says Laura Walton-Williams of the Forensic and Crime Science Department at Staffordshire University in the UK. She says she could also imagine a situation where police would use the test to determine whether a twin had been involved in the murder of an identical sibling - as for the first time they could differentiate between the DNA of the victim and the suspect. Walton-Williams cautions, however, that courts will want to know how rigorously the method has been tested before they allow it to be used as evidence. The cost of the test will also influence how widely it will be used, she says - and it will therefore probably be used more often in criminal trials than paternity cases, she predicts. Eurofins won't say publicly how much their test costs Other companies have said they can do something similar in the past, but for one reason or another it has never proved to be the breakthrough that police and prosecutors need. And there will always be some cases where no DNA test would be sufficient. In 2009, jewellery with a retail value of six million euros ($8.2m) was stolen from Berlin's KaDeWe department store. Traces of DNA were found in a glove found at the crime scene, and once again the DNA led police to twin brothers, who walked free. But even if police had been able to tell which one the DNA belonged to, they still might not have been able to get a conviction. The defence could have argued that even though the suspect had once worn the glove, someone else might have left it at the crime scene, and that neither of the twins was ever at the department store. Georg Gradl spoke to Newshour on the BBC World Service. Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook

यह सर्वविदित है कि एक जैसे जुड़वाँ बच्चे पूरी तरह से एक जैसे नहीं होते हैं-उन्हें आम तौर पर अलग-अलग बताया जा सकता है। लेकिन अब तक उनके डीएनए में अंतर करना लगभग असंभव रहा है। यह दावा किया जाता है कि एक नया परीक्षण इसे जल्दी और किफायती तरीके से कर सकता है, हालांकि-और इससे पुलिस को कई अपराधों को हल करने में मदद मिल सकती है।


Q&A: White Paper on the BBC's future

Summary: The government has published its White Paper, outlining its proposals for the renewal of the BBC's Royal Charter . Culture Secretary John Whittingdale has set out a new regime for the broadcaster in his plans for the next 11 years.

What is the Royal Charter? The Royal Charter is an agreement with the government over what the BBC intends to do over the next 11 years. It is a general document outlining how the corporation is funded, how it is run, who holds it to account and what its broad objectives are. The process ends with a meeting of the Privy Council at Buckingham Palace. What is the BBC White Paper? The White Paper is the government's proposals for the Royal Charter. It will probably be debated in Parliament but there is no vote by MPs or peers. The final shape of the Royal Charter is determined by the culture secretary. What's at stake? There are three main issues: What might it mean for the BBC? The BBC is anxious to have a clear majority of its board appointed by the BBC in order to fend off accusations that it is a government or state broadcaster. Under the existing system, members of the BBC Trust - which oversees the corporation - are appointed by the Queen on advice from the government. The BBC Trust then appoints members of the BBC Executive, which manages the BBC. The BBC Trust and the BBC Executive are to be replaced by a new "unitary board". Mr Whittingdale's plan says the BBC will appoint "most of these board members", with others "selected through an open public appointments process led by government". Is there a knock-on effect for Channel 4? The question of whether Channel 4 is privatised is a separate topic, but the BBC and Channel 4 are part of a wider ecology of public service broadcasting. How will it affect the audience? The question of how "distinctiveness" is enforced may affect the balance of what sort of programmes appear. The government previously expressed concern about shows chasing ratings, but in his speech on the White Paper Mr Whittingdale said he was "emphatically not saying that the BBC should not be popular". The White Paper says all employees and freelancers - including star names - who earn more than £450,000 will be named, although salaries will only be revealed in "broad bands". Managers on more than £150,000 already have salary details published. Within the BBC, there is a concern that publishing stars' earnings could put some off working for the BBC, as well as making it easier for rival broadcasters to poach stars. What happens next? A debate in the autumn, then the drafting and signing of the new charter for the next 11 years. Why 11? The BBC was anxious to remove the negotiations from coinciding with elections - now fixed to take place every five years. Anything else we know? See our guide to the key points in the White Paper.

सरकार ने अपना श्वेत पत्र प्रकाशित किया है, जिसमें बीबीसी के शाही चार्टर के नवीनीकरण के लिए अपने प्रस्तावों को रेखांकित किया गया है। संस्कृति सचिव जॉन व्हिटिंगडेल ने अगले 11 वर्षों के लिए अपनी योजनाओं में प्रसारक के लिए एक नया शासन निर्धारित किया है।


Will Vodafone hang up on its business in India?

Summary: India's Supreme Court has refused to grant telecoms companies further time to pay billions of dollars in additional revenues to the government. The BBC's business reporter Arunoday Mukharji explains why this is a body blow to the entire industry.

India is one of the world's largest telecoms markets, but its main players have been facing a torrid time in recent years. And now their woes have been added to, after the country's top court directed telecoms companies to pay $13bn (£9.9bn) by 17 March - further asking why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against them for not coughing up the money earlier. For Vodafone-Idea - one of the country's biggest telecoms firms - the order comes during an especially difficult period. The company announced a sixth straight quarterly loss of $903m (£693m) this week, compared to a loss of $70m during the same period last year. The situation is so bad, the company's chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla has gone on record to say the company will shut shop if they are not granted any relief from the government or courts. Vodafone-Idea, along with competitor Airtel, had been seeking more time to pay their dues at a juncture when they are already burdened with dipping tariffs and mounting debt. The question now is with a payment deadline of 17 March and no intervention from the government looking forthcoming, is this the end of the road for the company's India operation? The UK-based telecoms company has been one of the oldest and largest players in the Indian market, and the impact of a shutdown is not insignificant. After all, it has more than 300m subscribers, and provides jobs for hundreds of thousands. But its closure would likely have an adverse impact on the telecoms sector as a whole. If Vodafone Idea does decide to exit the Indian market, the industry will effectively be turned into a duopoly, with the only players being India's Reliance Jio Infocomm and Bharti Airtel. And Airtel is not in a very good place either, posting losses of nearly $3bn at the end of the last quarter and owing the government nearly $5bn in dues. Jio, the newest entrant to the country's telecoms sector, is in a much happier place and is acknowledged to be responsible for completely changing the nature of the telecoms sector. When it entered the market three years ago, the company slashed data prices and, in the process, managed to change what was essentially a voice market into a data market. This resulted in India ending up with the cheapest mobile data in the world and severely disrupting the business models of both Vodafone Idea and Airtel. Since then, both companies have shed millions of subscribers. They have joint losses of more than $10bn and they are now haunted by the prospects of a massive pay-out in dues to the government within the next month. With more than 350m subscribers as of 2019, Jio looks most likely to benefit from a Vodafone exit. Experts have estimated that it could well double its earnings by 2022, potentially signing up more than 500m subscribers by then. But what will this mean for India's price-sensitive consumers? Possibly, not very good news. Massive losses from both Vodafone and Airtel last quarter prompted all three firms to raise prices. "Prices going up is not necessarily a bad thing - it would in fact be a good thing, because that is the only way to have some competition in this market," economist Vivek Kaul told the BBC earlier. "This needs to happen for telecoms to survive and thrive in India." But, whether that would result in a slowdown of India's massive telecoms growth rate, remains to be seen. What exactly are telecoms companies and the government battling over? The battle over Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR), has been a long and drawn out one. In layman's terms this means that a certain proportion of revenues earned by telecoms companies needs to be shared with the government's department of telecoms. Telecoms companies and the government had disagreed on the definition of adjusted gross revenue since 2005. The companies only wanted revenue from telecoms to be calculated in this figure, but the government wanted a much wider definition, including non-telecoms revenue like sale of assets and interest earned on deposits. But recently, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the government, which meant that telecoms companies needed to pay authorities a further $12.5bn.

भारत के सर्वोच्च न्यायालय ने दूरसंचार कंपनियों को सरकार को अरबों डॉलर के अतिरिक्त राजस्व का भुगतान करने के लिए और समय देने से इनकार कर दिया है। बीबीसी के व्यापार रिपोर्टर अरुणोदय मुखर्जी बताते हैं कि यह पूरे उद्योग के लिए एक बड़ा झटका क्यों है।


Army unit blows up 'bomb' on Cefn Sidan Beach

Summary: An army unit has carried out a controlled explosion after a suspected explosive device washed up on a Carmarthenshire beach.

Police closed Pembrey Country Park on Friday following the discovery, with a bomb disposal team called to make it safe. Dyfed-Powys Police lifted restrictions to the park on Saturday morning. Cefn Sidan beach remained closed while the operation was carried out.

कार्मार्थेनशायर समुद्र तट पर एक संदिग्ध विस्फोटक उपकरण के बह जाने के बाद सेना की एक इकाई ने एक नियंत्रित विस्फोट किया है।


X Factor: Finalists cover David Bowie for charity

Summary: The 16 X Factor finalists are going to record a charity single in aid of Help for Heroes.

They will be covering David Bowie's track Heroes, to raise money for injured servicemen and women. Acts like Cher, Aiden, Mary Byrne and Diva Fever will record the track and video in the next week. In 2008, X Factor finalists including Alexandra Burke, JLS and Diana Vickers recorded a cover of the track Hero for the charity. It broke sales records and raised £1.3m for a rehabilitation complex at Headley Court in Surrey.

16 एक्स फैक्टर के फाइनलिस्ट हेल्प फॉर हीरोज की सहायता के लिए एक चैरिटी सिंगल रिकॉर्ड करने जा रहे हैं।


Newbold Coleorton man in court over explosives charge

Summary: A man has appeared in court charged with making or possessing explosives under suspicious circumstances after part of a village was cordoned off.

Homes were evacuated and roads shut as bomb disposal experts were called on Thursday afternoon. Matthew Montanow, 29, from Vicarage Close, in Newbold Coleorton, Leicestershire, was remanded in custody at Leicester Magistrates' Court. Police said they were not treating it as a terrorist incident. Mr Montanow has also been charged with possessing firearm ammunition during a five-year period following a suspended sentence of three months or more and possessing ammunition for a firearm without a certificate. He is next due to appear at the same court on 20 September. Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk.

गाँव के एक हिस्से की घेराबंदी के बाद संदिग्ध परिस्थितियों में विस्फोटक बनाने या रखने के आरोप में एक व्यक्ति अदालत में पेश हुआ है।


Where are England's pongiest places?

Summary: The sweet smell of home can mean many things to many people - but if, to you, it conjures the intoxicating aroma of warm dog food, rotten eggs or cannabis, you could be an inhabitant of one of the places mentioned below. We hold our noses and get set to explore England's pongiest places.

By Jennifer HarbyBBC News Does your neighbourhood - to put it bluntly - niff a bit? Does your hometown - particularly during the summer - have a certain hum? Then, you are not alone. When the wind changes direction, residents of several towns and cities get a waft of something very specific - be it biscuits or breweries. "Many of these smells are associated with industry," explains Will Rossiter, associate professor at Nottingham Business School, who points out that places like Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Burton upon Trent were once home to a "lovely, hoppy, malty smell" associated with their breweries. But in some places, the whiff was far more noxious. "It used to be the case that if you drove up the M1 through north Nottinghamshire, you really could almost taste the sulphurous smell of the old coking works," Mr Rossiter said. "You could see a yellow haze." As Britain's manufacturing sector has shrunk and environmental regulations have improved, Mr Rossiter says the smells associated with industrial processes have also disappeared - but there are a few places where industries - and their odours - continue to linger. So what do residents think of these heady aromas? Are they regarded with affection - do they smell like town spirit? Or are some townsfolk right to kick up a bit of a stink? Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire Melton is famous for styling itself as the capital of rural food; both pork pies and Stilton cheese are made in the area. But it's another kind of food that infiltrates the nostrils of its residents. "During the summer there's a nice smell of warm dog food," said Sarah Haines, who lives in the town. The pet food smell that permeates the streets on sunny days stems from the Mars Petcare factory, on Mill Street, which manufactures rural fare of a different kind, namely Pedigree Chum and Whiskas. "It's just part and parcel of living here," added Georgie Kemp, Sarah's friend. "You certainly don't smell pie and cheese anyway, as you'd expect." According to social media, Melton also basks in the very distinctive odours of rural life - one of the drawbacks of being surrounded by rolling countryside. "Yes, you get the muck-spreading in the summer," added Ms Haines. "Basically, there are no nice smells." A local joke is that the town marks the point where the River Eye becomes the River Wreake - "Eye Wreake" being the result. But many residents say the odour does not offend them as much as you might expect. "Can't really say it bothers me," said one woman who was shopping at the town's market. "We stayed in France near a pet food factory and that one smelled much worse than ours," added another. Mars Petcare said it was aware its production processes occasionally produced "a distinctive smell" and it worked to minimise this as much as possible. Carlisle and Wigton, Cumbria Biscuits versus rotten eggs. Biscuits versus rotten eggs... In the battle of the Cumbrian pongs, the proud city of Carlisle definitely takes the biscuit. "One of the first conversations I had when I came here was with someone who said: 'It smells a lot better than Wigton'," said comedian Mark Steel, who visited Carlisle for his BBC radio series Mark Steel's In Town. He claimed Carlisle residents were so used to the "constant biscuit cloud" they could actually pick out the individual biscuits being baked at the time. "When I first came here I mentioned the smell to three people and every one of them went, "Yeah and it's ginger nuts today". It's a nice smell. It's just a bit unusual when it covers 15 square miles." "It's quite a comforting smell," said creative designer Lydia Leith, who lives in the city. "If they're making Nice biscuits, you get a smell of coconuts. Other days, it's a gingery kind of smell. "Although it's not very helpful if you're on a diet." Down the road in Wigton, however, townsfolk did not get quite so lucky with the whiff of their local industry. "It can only be described as sulphur," said Sandra Hodson, a town councillor who has lived here for 40 years. The so-called Wigton pong emanates from a nearby factory that makes food packaging film. The process involves a range of chemical processes which have been known to give off a rotten egg smell. You might also like: "It's only on certain days and generally you smell it when you're going to get wet weather, for some reason," added Mrs Hodson. "It's like our weather station." However, she added the town was proud of the factory, which is owned by Japanese company Futamura. "It's the glue that holds us all together," she said. "If we ever lost it, it would devastate us." Futamura did not respond to the BBC's request for a comment. Derby While some odours linger like - well, a bad smell - other whiffs disappear in a jiff. Such was the case for the people of Derby during the long, hot summer of 2018 when a mystery "sick" stench was reported in the city. The smell was described by residents as "like sick", "like sewage" and "like poo" and one shop said it was "running dangerously low on air freshener". "It smells just like liquid manure," Tom Clarke, from Chellaston, told the Derby Telegraph. "It was just nasty," recalls Mycah Gatt, who lives in the city. "It smelled like pure sewage. It was so intense it made us feel dizzy. It was like shoving your head down a toilet. We stayed inside as much as possible." Derby Council and Severn Trent both said they did not know what caused the pong. Derby councillor Martin Repton speculated the stench stemmed from fertiliser from a farm in the Kedleston area. "We are a small city, quite low-lying, and, unlike other cities, we are surrounded by farms," he said. "I can remember smells like that as a boy at muck-spreading time but not quite as bad. "Perhaps it was the way the wind was blowing, perhaps it was a different type of fertiliser. "It was dreadful, it was obnoxious and the way it enveloped the streets was quite worrying." Luckily, the smell quickly wafted over Derby and, so far, has yet to return. Nailsea, Somerset In July 2017 the residents of the Somerset town of Nailsea began complaining that their town smelled of cannabis. "Left my bedroom window open last night, woke up about three-ish with the room absolutely reeking of it," complained one resident on the town's Nailsea People Facebook page. "Is it just me or does Nailsea stink of weed?" asked another on Twitter. "Yes I noticed it the other day," somebody replied. "I did wonder if someone had been composting their cannabis plants!" Heather Pickstock was the Bristol Post journalist who sniffed out the source of the smell. "I first noticed it when I went into Nailsea one lunchtime and smelled it, initially thinking someone was smoking," she said. "It was quite pungent. But then I realised it was covering the whole town and started to investigate and saw other people talking about it on Facebook." What she found was quite surprising. "It was caused by the blackcurrant harvest by Thatchers Cider in Sandford for Ribena," she said. "They do harvest every year but it was the first time I'd ever smelled it." Thatchers said it pressed about 13,000 tonnes of blackcurrants at its mill in July and August each year. These are then sent to Ribena's plant in Coleford, in the Forest of Dean. The cider-maker added that the smell was a "perfectly natural" result of the pressing process. Police at the time confirmed the odour was "due to the annual blackcurrant harvest" and "not due to a large cannabis operation". "People do not need to be concerned," they added. Ribena, though, has declined to comment on the stink. London In Victorian times, the English city with the biggest odour issues was London. Notoriously the city's "Great Stink", in 1858, saw the hot weather exacerbate the smell of untreated human waste and effluent around the Thames. The city cleaned up its act thanks to civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette's famous sewer system that still operates today. So has England's capital, in the words of a famous carpet reviver, managed to "put the freshness back"? Not quite, according to some. "I think it's improved since Victorian times but some areas still smell a bit," said law student Hodan Shire, who lives in the north west of the city. "It smells mainly of cigarettes and traffic fumes," added her friend Zanaira Siddique, from Cambridge. "When you come here, it kind of hits you. When the weather gets hotter, it's even worse." Indeed, in October 2018 there were reports of an "acrid, noxious and strange chemical smell" across parts of the capital, although the authorities could not confirm the cause. "It smells of rubbish because of all the bins on the streets and the dirt and pollution," said Gemma Dilworth, who commutes to the city from Oxfordshire. "You have black bogeys when you blow your nose." "It's not really bad but there is still a smell," agreed her friend Annika Murfitt. "It smells of urine and drains," said Arsenal fan Mark Jones, from Devon, who was visiting the capital with his wife Lynn. "You can smell pee around every corner but, in fairness, that's just a city smell." However, to Danish national Lars Friis, who lives in Chiswick, the odour of London is a pleasant one. "Hmm... the main thing I can smell is lots of food." Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk.

घर की मीठी महक कई लोगों के लिए कई चीजों का मतलब हो सकती है-लेकिन अगर, आपके लिए, यह गर्म कुत्ते के भोजन, सड़े हुए अंडे या भांग की मादक सुगंध को दर्शाता है, तो आप नीचे उल्लिखित स्थानों में से किसी एक के निवासी हो सकते हैं। हम अपनी नाक पकड़ते हैं और इंग्लैंड के सबसे उग्र स्थानों का पता लगाने के लिए तैयार हो जाते हैं।


A13 crash: Driver seriously hurt as car crushed under lorry

Summary: A driver suffered serious injuries after his car was crushed between two lorries leaving his vehicle wedged beneath one.

The crash happened on the A13 westbound at Thurrock near the M25 junction at 06:25 BST on Monday. A spokesman for Essex Police said:" The driver of the car was taken to hospital but his injuries are not considered to be life-threatening or life-changing." The road was closed for more than six hours while police investigated. Any witnesses have been asked to contact Essex Police.

एक चालक को गंभीर चोटें आईं जब उसकी कार दो ट्रकों के बीच कुचल गई, जिससे उसका वाहन एक के नीचे फंस गया।


The vicious euro circle keeps turning

Summary: It's no good bailing out the banks if you can't bail out the economy. That, in a nutshell, is the judgement that financial markets seem to have been making about Spain in the past few days.

Stephanie FlandersFormer economics editor For weeks, all we heard from financial analysts was that Spain's banks needed rescuing, and the Spanish government didn't have enough money to do it. Finally, this weekend, the prime minister swallowed his pride and asked for that support. But the market relief has been short-lived, even by the standards of past eurozone "bailouts". At one point today the interest rate on a 10-year Spanish government bond had risen to 6.8% - the highest since the euro began. The gap between Spanish and German long-term borrowing rates also reached a record high, as did the cost of insuring against a Spanish sovereign default. Why are investors still so gloomy about Spain? One part of the explanation is probably our old friend, political uncertainty. The Greek election looms large on the horizon, and the agenda for the European summit at the end of next month looks painfully ambitious. No-one knows, yet, what Chancellor Merkel will be willing to sign up to at that meeting - if, indeed, she is ready to sign up to anything at all. As Robert Peston has succinctly reminded us, she has good reason to be wary of the talk of a European "banking union" now coming out of Brussels. And so has the Bundesbank. But the core of the problem for Spain - reflected very clearly in the market movements of the past few days - is economic growth. In Italy, too - worries about the state of the economy helped push up the Italian government's cost of borrowing at the start of the week. It's largely the grim prospects for the Spanish economy that has led Fitch and other ratings agencies to downgrade so many Spanish banks in recent days. Emergency lending is helpful. But it can't make the recession go away, and it can't take away the need for many more years of fiscal austerity. An extended period of economic depression and fiscal austerity can trash the balance sheet of the healthiest bank. As the IMF pointed out so helpfully in their recent assessment of Spain's financial sector, Spain does not have the healthiest banks. And, by raising Spain's national debt by up to 10 percentage points, the new 100bn-euro ($125bn; £80bn) European loan could actually make the clean-up job for the public finances last even longer. We've seen, throughout this crisis, how different countries have been hit by the close, mutually destructive relationship between banks and their sovereign governments. In Spain, as in Ireland, it is the debts of the banks that have fundamentally weakened the government's balance sheet. In Greece, Portugal and to some extent Italy, the debt problems have largely spread in the other direction - from the government to the banks. Either way, it's been a toxic mix. Now Spain's enfeebled banks are being made even weaker, by the broader economic consequences of tackling the government's debt problem - a problem created, in no small part, by the banks themselves. In that sense, the vicious circle is complete. And not just in Spain.

यदि आप अर्थव्यवस्था को राहत नहीं दे सकते हैं तो बैंकों को राहत देना अच्छा नहीं है। संक्षेप में, ऐसा लगता है कि वित्तीय बाजार पिछले कुछ दिनों से स्पेन के बारे में निर्णय ले रहे हैं।


Crossing Divides: What happens when pen pals reunite

Summary: Duaa Bhat is a 17-year-old girl in Indian-administered Kashmir, one of the most heavily militarised zones in the world. Two years ago, she became pen pals with Saumya Sagarika, 18, from the country's capital, Delhi, in a bid to understand the different worlds they were growing up in.

By Divya AryaBBC News The army has been deployed in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority region, since the rise of an armed rebellion in 1989. As Saumya discovered through her letters, Duaa's studies were interrupted by strikes and school shutdowns. The problem was often compounded by the Indian government who would deliberately shut down or "snap" internet and social media. Then, in August last year, the government removed Kashmir's special status - which provided a degree of autonomy under article 370 of the country's constitution - and imposed a communication clampdown. Schools were closed, thousands including politicians were placed under detention, and phone lines and internet were blocked. Five months later, as the government began to ease communication restrictions, Saumya began writing to Duaa again. Here are edited excerpts from their letters. Dear Duaa A warm hello from Delhi. How are you? How is everyone in your family? We didn't really continue our promise of staying "pen pals" after our last round of letters, but I am very happy to restart our conversation. A lot must have changed in your life and the circumstances around you in the past two years too. I got to know that Section 370 was removed from Kashmir a few months back and for some time telecommunications were snapped there, and internet is probably still not working. I am sure the situation must have changed. I hope everyone is safe there? Dear Saumya A chilling salaam from Kashmir. Chilling because it is really, really cold here these days. I am good and, Allhamdullilah, everyone in my family is doing good. We didn't continue being pen pals because the internet here is down most of the time and staying in touch with anyone outside the valley is a task in itself. I was really happy to know that you've started college and your studies are going well. People like me have suffered the most in the past few months. We used to study ourselves with some help from the magic of the internet. Only the Almighty knows how we've completed our syllabus in time for exams. People here are not happy with the removal of our special status. Personally, I feel depriving people of even talking to their near and dear ones is a violation of human rights. Saumya, most people, including myself, do not understand the protests in the rest of the country. News channels here do not give us enough information to understand what the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) really is. Can you brief me about them? In December, India's parliament passed the CAA, which offers amnesty to non-Muslim illegal immigrants from the three nearby Muslim-majority countries - Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. It sparked massive protests as many considered it discriminatory against Muslims, something the government denies. Saumya, a Hindu, joined the hundreds of mostly Muslim women in a Delhi street protest against the new citizenship laws. Dear Duaa It is quite cold in Delhi too but the mood is really hot. A few days back, I went to the protest at Delhi's Shaheen Bagh. Women have been protesting against this act there for the past 26 days. These women are not university professors or activists but homemakers, women who remain in purdah, who have stepped out on to the streets to protest. They are fighting this battle so their children are able to lead their lives in peace. After witnessing the enthusiasm among people at Shaheen Bagh, I'll say people are prepared to fight this battle for our rights. In your last letter, you wrote that you'd heard slogans like, "They wanted Kashmir to become like India but have made India into Kashmir", were being chanted in Delhi. You are 100% right. Since this protest movement started, all of Delhi is feeling like Kashmir. Like internet/phone shutdowns, section 144 (curfew) being imposed, stone-throwing and police lathi-charge (using long batons) during protests. So I can say that today I understand Kashmir and the situation facing people living there quite well. Dear Saumya From what you said about CAA, I feel we are going back in time instead of moving forward. I still can't believe that even in the 21st Century some people discriminate against others on the basis of caste, religion and, in some parts of society, even gender. These protests are a proof that people still believe in taking a stand for each other and that humanity is still alive. Unlike other places in India, Kashmir has been really calm about this act. In our hearts we know this act is wrong but these days we Kashmiris couldn't care less about what's happening outside the valley. Our voices, our rights have been neglected in the past and are being neglected right now. A couple of days ago, a Niti Aayog (a government think tank) member VK Saraswat defended the communication ban and he went as far as saying that Kashmiris do nothing but watch "dirty films" online. Even though he apologized later, these remarks cannot be just thrown out of our minds. Do people there really think that way about us? No one is talking about the problems we are facing right now due to the internet ban. Are we really invisible to the rest of the country? Religious identities come up repeatedly in Saumya and Duaa's letters. In 1989-90, at the start of the rebellion, hundreds of thousands of Hindus - referred to as Pandits - were terrorised into leaving by Muslim militants. It tore apart the centuries-old harmony that existed between the two communities. Dear Duaa I feel that people here consider Kashmir a precious property of the country and don't give any importance to its people. Just last week, there was a discussion on the film Shikara on TV. The film is based on Kashmiri Pandits. There has been no discussion of their plight for the past 30 years here. And I don't think that people will go to watch this film or talk about it even now. Through our letters I have been able to understand a lot about Kashmir and Muslims, which is different from common perceptions. We have lots of family friends who are Muslim but are unable to discuss such issues with them openly, lest we offend them. This CAA issue motivated me to protest, even though I am a Hindu. As I have understood Kashmir through your letters, it has removed my apprehensions and made me even more curious about Kashmir and Kashmiris. Earlier I was afraid because of the image created by society and the media. But after our conversations, I am excited to go to Kashmir to understand and experience it myself. Is the Kashmir valley open for people from outside now? Dear Saumya I am writing this letter not from Kashmir, but from one of the most holy cities of the world - Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It's an amazing feeling to watch Muslims from all around the world come to pray here. I feel glad that you know the truth about Kashmir. The valley is open for tourists now (officially) but for us Kashmiris it was and will always be open for the people outside. You know there is a place in the Khanyar area of Kashmir, where worshipping places of different religions are located on one hill. At the bottom is a Gurdwara (Sikh temple), in the middle a shrine and at the top a temple. My mother's maiden home was near that area and they had Pandits as neighbours. In my childhood, my mother used to tell me various stories about the brotherhood between different communities. Kashmir is a really beautiful place to live and I pray to the Almighty in this holy city of Mecca to make Kashmir a peaceful place again and to restore the brotherhood that was lost. I'm closing this letter with the hope that my dua (wish) comes true and you will come to Kashmir to meet me. With lots of love Duaa Illustrations by Neelima P Aryan Crossing divides A season of stories about bringing people together in a fragmented world.

दुआ भट भारत प्रशासित कश्मीर की एक 17 वर्षीय लड़की है, जो दुनिया के सबसे अधिक सैन्यीकृत क्षेत्रों में से एक है। दो साल पहले, वह देश की राजधानी दिल्ली की 18 वर्षीय सौम्या सागरिका के साथ कलम मित्र बन गई, ताकि वे उन विभिन्न दुनियाओं को समझ सकें जिनमें वे बड़े हो रहे थे।


Cinderford Asda planning permission reviewed by judge

Summary: Plans for an Asda store in Gloucestershire are being reviewed by a judge at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Co-op, which already has a store in Cinderford, applied for the judicial review into Forest of Dean District Council's decision to give the go-ahead for the new supermarket. The council gave permission for the new 4,645 sq m store on Steam Mills Road in Cinderford last January. The Co-op was not happy with the way it reached its decision. Related Internet Links Asda The Co-operative Forest of Dean District Council

ग्लूस्टरशायर में असदा स्टोर की योजनाओं की समीक्षा रॉयल कोर्ट ऑफ जस्टिस के एक न्यायाधीश द्वारा की जा रही है।


Cartoons by Islamic State: A new propaganda tool

Summary: The sophisticated propaganda efforts of self-styled Islamic State group include a radio station, magazines, videos and photos - often depicting violent imagery. But earlier this year, there appeared to be a shift in the tone of the messaging from some supporters. Among the new methods of communication: cartoons.

By BBC TrendingGoing in-depth on social media Earlier this year, a channel on the messaging app Telegram - and a now-deactivated channel on YouTube - began releasing narrative animated stories which veered away from the brutal and shocking images that so-called Islamic State (IS) had previously been pushing. One, specifically aimed at children, was titled The Ruler and the Brave and told the story of a country that had become disillusioned with its tyrant leader. The leader, the video explained, would lie to his subjects about "brave men" who dared to stand up to him. These "brave men" turn out to be IS militants. Telegram Over the past two years, Islamic State group militants and their supporters have increasingly been facing restrictions imposed by social media platforms. Telegram, a messaging app which offers encryption, ensuring the privacy of users, has attempted to shut down suspected Islamic State channels in the past. Telegram has 100 million active monthly users, and many of its groups are private. Because of the network's security features, extremist material can be hard to identify. Violent photos and videos on bigger platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are generally removed within days. Earlier this year cartoons which glorified Islamic State ideology began appearing on a pro-IS Telegram channel which remains active. The cartoons were also shared on YouTube in March, and remained on the platform until early this month - only being shut down after the BBC alerted YouTube. Cartoons While cartoons are less likely to be flagged up than violent photographs, Brendan Koerner, a contributing editor at Wired magazine, says that the use of cartoons may also be due to fewer videos and pictures being produced inside regions controlled by IS forces. "(Their) ability to produce media content has been degraded due to their military setbacks," he told BBC Trending, "They are now depending on supporters abroad (outside IS-held territory) to make their content." Hear more You can hear more on this story on BBC Trending on the BBC World Service And for more Trending stories, download our podcast Aside from the cartoons, the members of the channel use the hashtag #SupportEtiquette, advising their supporters to adopt a softer tone when discussing IS ideology with potential new members. They urge followers to "softly preach to the ignorant and undecided." This approach is markedly different to IS's usual imposition of its views and strict religious interpretations, and its ruthless punishment of those who disagree. "They have to find new ways to recruit sympathisers and people willing to move," Koerner says. "One part of that is that they have to set up this image that it is a functioning government, that it provides basic services and justice and that it is a utopia." Who is behind this channel? The channel's posts and the way its administrator is addressed by members of the group suggest the admin is female, and possibly Egyptian. One post explains that one of the channel's aims is to prove that "pious" women (presumably implying the administrator) enjoy high status in the eyes of the group. The channel's material also has an impact outside of Telegram. It has been promoted and praised by high-profile IS supporters online and has been used in publications produced by other prolific pro-IS online media groups. Suspension YouTube suspended the channel spreading the pro-IS cartoons after the BBC flagged it up and sent Trending the following statement: "We take our role in combating the spread of extremist material very seriously. We act quickly to remove flagged content that incites violence and terminate accounts run by terrorist organisations" Telegram has not responded to requests for comment. In a blog posted in March, a Telegram spokesman insisted the network was taking action against extremist content and blamed media outlets for exaggerating the impact of terrorism. Reporting by Dina Aboughazala from BBC Monitoring Blog by Dina Aboughazala and Megha Mohan NEXT STORY: Macron Leaks: the anatomy of a hack The US alt-right, WikiLeaks and bots helped to amplify the leaked emails from the Emmanuel Macron campaign. READ MORE You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending.

स्वयंभू इस्लामिक स्टेट समूह के परिष्कृत प्रचार प्रयासों में एक रेडियो स्टेशन, पत्रिकाएं, वीडियो और तस्वीरें शामिल हैं-जो अक्सर हिंसक छवियों को दर्शाती हैं। लेकिन इस साल की शुरुआत में, कुछ समर्थकों से संदेश के स्वर में बदलाव दिखाई दिया। संचार के नए तरीकों में सेः कार्टून।


Child abuse: Documenting Australia's shame

Summary: In Australia, a boy of 10 is raped by an Anglican clergyman, who cuts his victim with a small knife and smears blood over his back in a twisted ritual to symbolise the suffering of Christ.

By Phil MercerBBC News, Sydney This happened in the 1960s in Cessnock, a former mining town in the New South Wales Hunter Valley, but only now has this and other decades-old stories of sexual violence and degradation been heard, catalogued and, crucially for many victims, believed. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is an unprecedented investigation into an epidemic of depravity across Australia. The far-reaching inquiry began in 2013 and has heard from thousands of survivors of paedophiles who worked, or volunteered, in sporting clubs, schools, churches, charities, childcare centres and the military. It has the power to look at any private, public or non-government body that is, or was, involved with children. The Commission's task is to make recommendations on how to improve laws, policies and practices to protect the young. To date, it has held more than 6,000 private sessions, along with several high-profile public hearings. Paul Gray told investigators that between the ages of 10 and 14, he was sexually assaulted by Father Peter Rushton in Cessnock every one or two weeks. Sometimes, his attacker had an accomplice. "I was chased by two men to the edge of the cliff and I hid in the bushes. "After a while they dragged me from the bushes and I was raped by the two men, and while I was being raped I could hear another boy screaming," said Mr Gray, fighting back tears as he recounted memories that have burned inside him for half a century. Too ill to travel from the Vatican to Sydney to give evidence, Australia's most prominent churchman, Cardinal George Pell, was questioned via video link by the Royal Commission over what he knew about alleged abuse and cover-ups within the Catholic Church. For four days earlier this year, the senior Vatican official was quizzed, denying any personal wrongdoing but conceding the organisation had made grave errors. "I am not here to defend the indefensible," said Cardinal Pell. "The Church has made enormous mistakes, is working to remedy those, but the Church has in many places - certainly in Australia - mucked things up." When he was 13, John Ellis, a former altar boy, was molested by an Australian monk who was also implicated in a suspected paedophile ring at a former Catholic boarding school in the Scottish Highlands. Now a solicitor, Mr Ellis works with other victims, and we meet at a public hearing held by the commission on the 17th floor of Governor Macquarie Tower that stands over central Sydney. Presiding over the session is the chief royal commissioner, Justice Peter McClellan, a judge of appeal in New South Wales. He is one of six commissioners; two women and four men, and they include a former Queensland police chief, a consultant child psychiatrist and a retired federal politician. They have fanned out across Australia to document a nation's shame. "The most important thing for people in being invited to give their own stories and having their stories valued is that somebody cares," Mr Ellis told the BBC news website. "For many, many years people have been silenced, people have been fearful of what reaction they will get if they were to tell their truth. The overwhelming emotion people have when they have had that opportunity is empowerment." When it hands down its final report at the end of 2017, this painstaking inquiry will have lasted for almost five years. Already, more than 1,700 cases have been referred to the authorities, including the police. More prosecutions will almost certainly follow, but many victims will never savour justice. Dr Wayne Chamley, from Broken Rites, a group that gives a voice to the abused, said decades of brutality had left a terrible legacy. "When you look at the rate of suicide for men who had these experiences and compared it with age-matched data from the coroners' courts, their risk factor is 20 to 40 times higher for suicide," he explained to the BBC. "There are townships where there have been waves of suicide with hundreds of men. [In] Ballarat [in Victoria state], at least 50 or 60 suicides across just three classes in the primary school - just three classes of boys who became men. Bang. Devastating." Gerard McDonald, 52, is a survivor of abuse, and one of thousands of people who have told their stories to the commission. His attacker, a Catholic priest, has spent 14 years in prison for attacking 35 boys. "After every other altar boy practice in 1975, before dropping me home Father (Vincent) Ryan would sexually abuse me. All I could do was think about running to my mate's place and getting the biggest two knives he had and killing him," he said. While this harrowing process is undoubtedly cathartic for Australia - and it's inevitable that legislation and procedures will eventually change to make children safer - campaigners insist many youngsters today still remain at risk from predators in institutions, while paedophiles stalking the internet continue to groom the vulnerable.

ऑस्ट्रेलिया में, 10 साल के एक लड़के के साथ एक एंग्लिकन पादरी द्वारा बलात्कार किया जाता है, जो अपनी पीड़िता को एक छोटे से चाकू से काटता है और मसीह की पीड़ा का प्रतीक के रूप में एक विकृत अनुष्ठान में उसकी पीठ पर खून छिड़कता है।


Mozambique: Is Cabo Delgado the latest Islamic State outpost?

Summary: A simmering Islamist rebellion in a remote corner of Mozambique has erupted into open warfare in recent weeks, with reports of massacres, beheadings and the brief seizure of two towns in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, writes BBC Africa correspondent Andrew Harding.

The armed men walked calmly through the long grass, skirting past a large white building, seemingly untroubled by the sound of gunfire. Most carried automatic rifles and wore variations of what appeared to be Mozambican army uniforms. A few more shots rang out in the distance and someone shouted "Allahu Akbar" - God is the greatest - as if in reply. The video footage, shot last month on a mobile phone in Muidumbe was powerful new evidence that a murky conflict in the northern-most region of Mozambique has now moved out into the open, in spectacular and alarming fashion. A second video, shot a few weeks earlier, showed a dead man - apparently a policeman - lying in a pool of blood. The camera then moved over to reveal another corpse, then a third lying under a black police vehicle, then a fourth body out in the open, and finally a large pile of automatic weapons in some sort of police or military store. How close are the links to Islamic State? That footage was filmed in the strategic port of Mocimboa da Praia, which was briefly - and dramatically - seized by the militants on 24 March. Two days later, they seized another important town, Quissanga. "Now they have guns and vehicles, so they move easily and can attack widely. And they are using soldiers' uniforms. So, people are very confused, and very afraid," said the Catholic Bishop of Pemba, Luiz Fernando Lisboa. Those two large-scale, sophisticated military assaults are proof of a radical change in strategy for the group known locally as al-Shabab, although it has no known links to the Somali jihadi group of the same name, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda. It has spent the past two years operating in the shadows, attacking remote villages across the province, ambushing army patrols on isolated roads, instilling terror in many rural communities, forcing perhaps 200,000 people to flee from their homes, but rarely giving any indication about its motives, its leadership, or its demands. The video footage from both Mocimboa da Praia and Muidumbe district was quickly incorporated into the so-called Islamic State (IS) group's propaganda films, aired by the Amaq News Agency. IS has claimed responsibility for a string of recent attacks in Mozambique, which has a Muslim population of about 18%, and appears to be promoting its involvement there as part of a "franchise" operation that has seen it expanding its footprint in several parts of Africa. The idea that the rebellion in Cabo Delgado is, at its core, part of a global jihadist movement, has been given credibility by the militants themselves, who publicly swore allegiance to IS last year. The relationship offers advantages to both sides. But in a separate video, filmed this year and circulated widely on WhatsApp in Mozambique, a militant leader offered a much more nuanced explanation for the group's actions. Locals complain about discrimination "We occupy [the towns] to show that the government of the day is unfair. It humiliates the poor and gives the profit to the bosses," said the tall, unmasked man, in khaki uniform, surrounded by other fighters. The man spoke frequently about Islam, and his desire for an "Islamic government, not a government of unbelievers", but he also cited alleged abuses by Mozambique's military, and repeatedly complained that the government was "unfair". Observers say the evolution of the insurgency in Mozambique is remarkably similar to Boko Haram's emergence in northern Nigeria, with a marginalised group exploiting local grievances, terrorising many communities, but also offering an alternative path for unemployed youths frustrated by a corrupt, neglectful and heavy-handed state. "It's very significant," said Eric Morier-Genoud, a Belfast-based academic and expert on Mozambique, of the militant leader's statement. "He explains that he's a local, from Mozambique. He responds to the argument that they're all foreigners and denies it, and he denounces the present state as unfair and illegitimate," said Mr Morier-Genoud, arguing that the fact that most of the faces in the video are unmasked reveals "a clear gain of confidence". Find out more: "For the first time, they spoke to the public," said Mozambican historian Professor Yussuf Adam, who said that the video gave further weight to the argument that the conflict in Cabo Delgado is, at heart, fuelled by local issues. "The army, from the beginning… beat people up, took them to jail, tortured them. There's a lot of Islamophobia [in the majority Muslim province of Cabo Delgado]. They're discriminated against because they're northerners - people think they're dumb. "The problem is that we have a youth bulge - and the young don't have jobs. If we solve… the abuse of force, corruption, and if we have a serious system of justice I'm sure we'll solve this very rapidly," said Professor Adam. Government hiring foreign mercenaries Mozambique's government initially sought to downplay the rebellion, dismissing the militants as criminals, and blocking journalists from accessing the region. But that is changing. "We've seen a shift from the politics of denial. Most of society and politicians now accept we have an Islamist insurgency," said Mr Morier-Genoud. Later, the government began to hire foreign security contractors - allegedly from Russia, the US and South Africa - to help the army crush the rebellion, but without any significant success. There are concerns that the conflict, if mishandled, could spread into neighbouring Tanzania, and perhaps even to South Africa. International gas companies - poised to invest billions in the off-shore gas fields discovered along the coast of Cabo Delgado - are now getting cold feet, partly because of the rising insecurity, but also because of falling gas prices. Many observers and analysts believe that, fundamentally, the solution to the conflict lies in good governance, and a transparent attempt to address deep-seated economic and social grievances, including fair access to land, jobs, and a share of any future gas revenues. "Multi-nationals want to know they can take their share, but they have to consider local people," said the Bishop of Pemba. "And the government has to know that it is very necessary that Mozambique's natural resources must be used for the betterment of its people, not to cause corruption," he added.

बीबीसी अफ्रीका के संवाददाता एंड्रयू हार्डिंग लिखते हैं कि मोजाम्बिक के एक दूरदराज के कोने में एक इस्लामवादी विद्रोह हाल के हफ्तों में खुले युद्ध में भड़क गया है, जिसमें नरसंहार, सिर कलम करने और उत्तरी प्रांत काबो डेलगाडो के दो शहरों पर संक्षिप्त कब्जा करने की खबरें हैं।


Fitzwilliam Museum Chinese art theft: Man remanded

Summary: A man has appeared in court in connection with the theft of Chinese art valued at up to £40m from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

The 25-year-old man, from London, appeared before Cambridge magistrates accused of conspiracy to commit burglary and theft. He is the third person to be charged after the art from several dynasties was taken on 13 April. He was remanded in custody to appear at Cambridge Crown Court on 28 May. A 28-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy already face the same charges.

कैम्ब्रिज के फिट्ज़विलियम संग्रहालय से 40 मिलियन पाउंड तक की चीनी कला की चोरी के मामले में एक व्यक्ति अदालत में पेश हुआ है।


Jersey could introduce 'MOT' checks for some vehicles

Summary: A system for checking and testing the condition of commercial vehicles could be introduced in Jersey according to the Transport Minister.

Constable Mike Jackson told States members his department was thinking about some kind of system similar to the UK's MOT. But he said they would not consider increasing taxes in any way. He said: "We are looking into how the offending vehicles can be better controlled." Constable Jackson said: "We may be looking towards some sort of examination vehicles for commercial vehicles." Jersey currently relies on spot checks by Driver Vehicle Standards and the Police to identify dangerous vehicles.

परिवहन मंत्री के अनुसार जर्सी में वाणिज्यिक वाहनों की स्थिति की जांच और परीक्षण के लिए एक प्रणाली शुरू की जा सकती है।


Tendering for planes for Barra, Tiree and Campbeltown starts

Summary: Government plans to buy two new planes to serve the lifeline air service linking Barra, Tiree and Campbeltown with Glasgow have taken a step forward.

Transport Minister Keith Brown has confirmed the start of a six-week tendering process for supply of the aircraft. The route is officially designated as a public service obligation and would not be commercially viable without support. The new planes were expected to have been operating by April last year. However, the process of purchasing them has taken longer than was expected. The Scottish government announced two years ago that it planned to buy two new replacements for the existing Twin Otter aircraft - owned and operated by Loganair and whose contract to serve the lifeline route ends next year. The tendering process for the aircraft - which must be twin engine and able to land on Barra's beach runway - will run until 22 August.

ग्लासगो के साथ बार्रा, टायरी और कैम्पबेलटाउन को जोड़ने वाली जीवन रेखा हवाई सेवा की सेवा के लिए दो नए विमान खरीदने की सरकार की योजना ने एक कदम आगे बढ़ाया है।


P&O's Ventura cruise ship undergoes crack repair work

Summary: Repairs to a cruise ship are being made in Southampton after a crack appeared in its top deck while it was at sea.

Passengers described the crack on board P&O's Ventura cruise ship as three inches (60mm) wide, stretching the entire width of the aluminium deck. The company said an inspector from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is on board and the crack raised no structural strength or safety concerns. The ship is expected to resume sailing later on a short cruise to Belgium.

साउथेम्प्टन में एक क्रूज जहाज की मरम्मत की जा रही है, जब समुद्र में उसके शीर्ष डेक में एक दरार दिखाई दी थी।