Vladimir Putin's formative German years

Summary: Anyone who wants to understand Vladimir Putin today needs to know the story of what happened to him on a dramatic night in East Germany a quarter of a century ago.

By Chris BowlbyBBC News, Dresden It is 5 December 1989 in Dresden, a few weeks after the Berlin Wall has fallen. East German communism is dying on its feet, people power seems irresistible. Crowds storm the Dresden headquarters of the Stasi, the East German secret police, who suddenly seem helpless. Then a small group of demonstrators decides to head across the road, to a large house that is the local headquarters of the Soviet secret service, the KGB. "The guard on the gate immediately rushed back into the house," recalls one of the group, Siegfried Dannath. But shortly afterwards "an officer emerged - quite small, agitated". "He said to our group, 'Don't try to force your way into this property. My comrades are armed, and they're authorised to use their weapons in an emergency.'" That persuaded the group to withdraw. But the KGB officer knew how dangerous the situation remained. He described later how he rang the headquarters of a Red Army tank unit to ask for protection. The answer he received was a devastating, life-changing shock. "We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow," the voice at the other end replied. "And Moscow is silent." That phrase, "Moscow is silent" has haunted this man ever since. Defiant yet helpless as the 1989 revolution swept over him, he has now himself become "Moscow" - the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. "I think it's the key to understanding Putin," says his German biographer, Boris Reitschuster. "We would have another Putin and another Russia without his time in East Germany." The experience taught him lessons he has never forgotten, gave him ideas for a model society, and shaped his ambitions for a powerful network and personal wealth. Above all, it left him with a huge anxiety about the frailty of political elites, and how easily they can be overthrown by the people. Putin had arrived in Dresden in the mid-1980s for his first foreign posting as a KGB agent. The German Democratic Republic or GDR - a communist state created out of the Soviet-occupied zone of post-Nazi Germany - was a highly significant outpost of Moscow's power, up close to Western Europe, full of Soviet military and spies. Putin had wanted to join the KGB since he was a teenager, inspired by popular Soviet stories of secret service bravado in which, he recalled later, "One man's effort could achieve what whole armies could not. One spy could decide the fate of thousands of people." Initially, though, much of his work in Dresden was humdrum. Among documents in the Stasi archives in Dresden is a letter from Putin asking for help from the Stasi boss with the installation of an informer's phone. And there are details too of endless Soviet-East German social gatherings Putin attended, to celebrate ties between the two countries. But if the spy work wasn't that exciting, Putin and his young family could at least enjoy the East German good life. Putin's then wife, Ludmila, later recalled that life in the GDR was very different from life in the USSR. "The streets were clean. They would wash their windows once a week," she said in an interview published in 2000, as part of First Person, a book of interviews with Russia's new and then little-known acting president. The Putins lived in a special block of flats with KGB and Stasi families for neighbours, though Ludmila envied the fact that: "The GDR state security people got higher salaries than our guys, judging from how our German neighbours lived. Of course we tried to economise and save up enough to buy a car." East Germany enjoyed higher living standards than the Soviet Union and a former KGB colleague, Vladimir Usoltsev, describes Putin spending hours leafing through Western mail-order catalogues, to keep up with fashions and trends. He also enjoyed the beer - securing a special weekly supply of the local brew, Radeberger - which left him looking rather less trim than he does in the bare-chested sporty images issued by Russian presidential PR today. East Germany differed from the USSR in another way too - it had a number of separate political parties, even though it was still firmly under communist rule, or appeared to be. "He enjoyed very much this little paradise for him," says Boris Reitschuster. East Germany, he says, "is his model of politics especially. He rebuilt some kind of East Germany in Russia now." But in autumn 1989 this paradise became a kind of KGB hell. On the streets of Dresden, Putin observed people power emerging in extraordinary ways. In early October hundreds of East Germans who had claimed political asylum at the West German embassy in Prague were allowed to travel to the West in sealed trains. As they passed through Dresden, huge crowds tried to break through a security cordon to try to board the trains, and make their own escape. Wolfgang Berghofer, Dresden's communist mayor at the time, says there was chaos as security forces began taking on almost the entire local population. Many assumed violence was inevitable. "A Soviet tank army was stationed in our city," he says. "And its generals said to me clearly: 'If we get the order from Moscow, the tanks will roll.'" After the Berlin Wall opened, on 9 November, the crowds became bolder everywhere - approaching the citadels of Stasi and KGB power in Dresden. Vladimir Putin had doubtless assumed too that those senior Soviet officers - men he'd socialised with regularly - would indeed send in the tanks. But no, Moscow under Mikhail Gorbachev "was silent". The Red Army tanks would not be used. "Nobody lifted a finger to protect us." He and his KGB colleagues frantically burned evidence of their intelligence work. "I personally burned a huge amount of material," Putin recalled in First Person. "We burned so much stuff that the furnace burst." Two weeks later there was more trauma for Putin as West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl arrived in the city. He made a speech that left German reunification looking inevitable, and East Germany doomed. Kohl praised Gorbachev, the man in Moscow who'd refused to send in the tanks, and he used patriotic language - words like Vaterland, or fatherland - that had been largely taboo in Germany since the war. Now they prompted an ecstatic response. It's not known whether Putin was in that crowd - but as a KGB agent in Dresden he'd certainly have known all about it. The implosion of East Germany in the following months marked a huge rupture in his and his family's life. "We had the horrible feeling that the country that had almost become our home would no longer exist," said his wife Ludmila. "My neighbour, who was my friend, cried for a week. It was the collapse of everything - their lives, their careers." One of Putin's key Stasi contacts, Maj Gen Horst Boehm - the man who had helped him install that precious telephone line for an informer - was humiliated by the demonstrating crowds, and committed suicide early in 1990. This warning about what can happen when people power becomes dominant was one Putin could now ponder on the long journey home. "Their German friends give them a 20-year-old washing machine and with this they drive back to Leningrad," says Putin biographer and critic Masha Gessen. "There's a strong sense that he was serving his country and had nothing to show for it." He also arrived back to a country that had been transformed under Mikhail Gorbachev and was itself on the verge of collapse. "He found himself in a country that had changed in ways that he didn't understand and didn't want to accept," as Gessen puts it. His home city, Leningrad, was now becoming St Petersburg again. What would Putin do there? There was talk, briefly, of taxi-driving. But soon Putin realised he had acquired a much more valuable asset than a second-hand washing machine. In Dresden he'd been part of a network of individuals who might have lost their Soviet roles, but were well placed to prosper personally and politically in the new Russia. In the Stasi archives in Dresden a picture survives of Putin during his Dresden years. He's in a group of senior Soviet and East German military and security figures - a relatively junior figure, off to one side, but already networking among the elite. Prof Karen Dawisha of Miami University, author of Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?, says there are people he met in Dresden "who have then gone on… to be part of his inner core". They include Sergey Chemezov, who for years headed Russia's arms export agency and now runs a state programme supporting technology, and Nikolai Tokarev head of the state pipeline company, Transneft. And it's not only former Russian colleagues who've stayed close to Putin. Take Matthias Warnig - a former Stasi officer, believed to have spent time in Dresden when Putin was there - who is now managing director of Nordstream, the pipeline taking gas directly from Russia to Germany across the Baltic Sea. That pipeline symbolised what was seen, until recently, as Germany's new special relationship with Russia - though the Ukraine crisis has at the very least put that relationship on hold. Putin-watchers believe events such as the uprising on Kiev's Maidan Square, have revived bad memories - above all, of that night in Dresden in December 1989. "Now when you have crowds in Kiev in 2004, in Moscow in 2011 or in Kiev in 2013 and 2014, I think he remembers this time in Dresden," says Boris Reitschuster. "And all these old fears come up inside him." Inside him too may be a memory of how change can be shaped not only by force, or by weakness - but also by emotion. In 1989 he saw in Dresden how patriotic feeling, combined with a yearning for democracy, proved so much more powerful than communist ideology. So when wondering what Vladimir Putin will do next, it's well worth remembering what he's lived through already. One thing seems sure. While Vladimir Putin holds power in the Kremlin, Moscow is unlikely to be silent. Listen to Chris Bowlby's documentary The Moment that Made Putin on BBC Radio 4 this Sunday at 13:30 and afterwards on the BBC iPlayer Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

जो कोई भी आज व्लादिमीर पुतिन को समझना चाहता है, उसे एक चौथाई सदी पहले पूर्वी जर्मनी में एक नाटकीय रात में उनके साथ क्या हुआ था, इसकी कहानी जानने की जरूरत है।


Kizzy Crawford: Why feminism is so important to singer

Summary: As the suffragettes are remembered 100 years on from the Representation of the People Act 1918 - which gave women the vote for the very first time - singer Kizzy Crawford, 21, from Merthyr Tydfil, who has written about gender equality in her songs, reflects on what still needs to change.

I was raised by a single mother who is a feminist, she worked full time whilst also bringing up me, my three sisters and our brother. We were definitely raised as feminists, my brother too. She used to point things out when we were watching TV, reading books or watching the news and make us aware of the inequalities and how women are represented. It's only recently that I've realised that in doing this, she was teaching us about inequality and pointing out the importance of resisting this. I was brought up to be conscious of how women are portrayed and treated and to fight against this when it was a stereotype. I think it is important for young girls to understand how our ancestors have paved the way for us to be where we are today. The actions of the suffragettes are unbelievable to women like myself, the way they fought for what they believed in and the lengths they went to are amazing. But even after they led the way by campaigning for the vote, there is still so much that needs to be done. My grandmother gave up her job when she was married and didn't have her own bank account or mortgage. But I have been brought up to believe women and mothers can achieve anything, my life is so different to how my grandmother's was. I'm fortunate because my music career is my full-time job, which allows me to earn enough money to support myself and my home - 100 years ago I would never have been able to get where I am now. My mum often reminds me of how lucky I am to be independent and it is thanks to the Suffragettes that we are in a more equal world, and although we have still got quite a lot of work to do to achieve equality in the media, politics and day-to-day life, we are moving forward. It is really important that we remember those women who changed things for us and the suffering they went through. There are many forgotten names, but we need to celebrate them. I'm also pleased to see that voting rights in some Welsh elections will be opened up to those who are 16 and over - I think it's important that young people have a say, especially when it comes to politics, because they are the future. There have been times in my career when I feel I've been treated differently because I'm a woman, I have been told to wear a particular sort of clothing because they say it is better for my shape, or having to wear make-up for certain things when I wouldn't always wear it. It should be up to the individual to decide what they want to wear and not hinge on what gender they are. I can't imagine a man being told to do these things to the same extent as women often are. It saddens me that in our society, women are still being treated differently and it is something I want to see change and help change through my music. There is still discrimination against women, there is still sexual harassment and assault but I feel encouraged by the 'Me Too' campaign and the fact that it has drawn attention to this issue, it has given women a voice and the confidence to speak up and social media has given a platform for them to speak out in a way they haven't been able to before. Although we've come a long way thanks to the work of the wonderful, strong and inspiring Suffragettes, we do still have a long way to go. We need to speak to our brothers, husbands and male friends to raise more awareness and work with them in order to bring greater change to our society as a whole.

जैसा कि मताधिकारियों को लोगों के प्रतिनिधित्व अधिनियम 1918 से 100 साल बाद याद किया जाता है-जिसने महिलाओं को पहली बार वोट दिया-मेरथिर टायडफिल की 21 वर्षीय गायिका किज़ी क्रॉफर्ड, जिन्होंने अपने गीतों में लैंगिक समानता के बारे में लिखा है, इस बात पर प्रतिबिंबित करती है कि अभी भी क्या बदलने की आवश्यकता है।


Would it be wrong to eradicate mosquitoes?

Summary: The mosquito is the most dangerous animal in the world, carrying diseases that kill one million people a year. Now the Zika virus, which is carried by mosquitoes, has been linked with thousands of babies born with brain defects in South America. Should the insects be wiped out?

By Claire BatesBBC News Magazine There are 3,500 known species of mosquito but most of those don't bother humans at all, living off plant and fruit nectar. It's only the females from just 6% of species that draw blood from humans - to help them develop their eggs. Of these just half carry parasites that cause human diseases. But the impact of these 100 species is devastating. "Half of the global population is at risk of a mosquito-borne disease," says Frances Hawkes from the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich. "They have had an untold impact on human misery." Deadly mosquitoes More than a million people, mostly from poorer nations, die each year from mosquito-borne diseases including malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever. Some mosquitoes also carry the Zika virus, which was first thought to cause only mild fever and rashes. However, scientists are now worried it can damage babies in the womb. The Zika virus has been linked with a spike in microcephaly - where babies are born with smaller heads - in Brazil. There's a constant effort to educate people to use treated nets and other tactics to avoid being bitten. But would it just be simpler to make an entire species of disease-carrying mosquito extinct? Biologist Olivia Judson has supported "specicide" of 30 types of mosquito. She said doing this would save one million lives and only decrease the genetic diversity of the mosquito family by 1%. "We should consider the ultimate swatting," she told the New York Times. In Britain, scientists at Oxford University and the biotech firm Oxitec have genetically modified (GM) the males of Aedes aegypti - a mosquito species that carries both the Zika virus and dengue fever. These GM males carry a gene that stops their offspring developing properly. This second generation of mosquitoes then die before they can reproduce and become carriers of disease themselves. About three million of these modified mosquitoes were released on to a site on the Cayman Islands between 2009 and 2010. Oxitec reported a 96% reduction in mosquitoes compared with nearby areas. A trial currently taking place on a site in Brazil has reduced the numbers by 92%. So are there any downsides to removing mosquitoes? According to Phil Lounibos, an entomologist at Florida University, mosquito eradication "is fraught with undesirable side effects". He says mosquitoes, which mostly feed on plant nectar, are important pollinators. They are also a food source for birds and bats while their young - as larvae - are consumed by fish and frogs. This could have an effect further up and down the food chain. However, some say that the role of mosquito species as food and pollinators would quickly be filled by other insects. "We're not left with a wasteland every time a species vanishes," Judson said. But for Lounibos, the fact this niche would be filled by another insect is part of the problem. He warns that mosquitoes could be replaced by an insect "equally, or more, undesirable from a public health viewpoint". Its replacement could even conceivably spread diseases further and faster than mosquitoes today. Science writer David Quammen has argued that mosquitoes have limited the destructive impact of humanity on nature. "Mosquitoes make tropical rainforests, for humans, virtually uninhabitable," he said. Rainforests, home to a large share of our total plant and animal species, are under serious threat from man-made destruction. "Nothing has done more to delay this catastrophe over the past 10,000 years, than the mosquito," Quammen said. But destroying a species isn't just a scientific issue, it's also a philosophical one. There would be some who would say it is utterly unacceptable to deliberately wipe out a species that is a danger to humans when it is humans that are a danger to so many species. "One argument against is that it would be morally wrong to remove an entire species," says Jonathan Pugh, from Oxford University's Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. And yet that's not an argument we apply to all species, says Pugh. "When we eradicated the Variola virus, which caused smallpox, we rightly celebrated. "We need to ask ourselves, does it have any valuable capacities? For instance, is it sentient and therefore has the capacity to suffer pain? Scientists say mosquitoes don't have an emotional response to pain like we do. "Also do we have a good reason for getting rid of them? With mosquitoes, they are the main carriers for many diseases." The question is likely to remain hypothetical, whatever the level of concern over Zika, malaria and dengue. Despite the success of reducing mosquito numbers in smaller areas, many scientists say knocking out an entire species would be impossible. "There's no silver bullet," says Hawkes. "Field trials using GM mosquitoes have been a moderate success but involved releasing millions of modified insects to cover just a small area. "Getting every female mosquito to breed with sterile males in a large area would be very difficult. Instead we should be looking to combine this with other techniques." Innovative ways of tackling mosquitoes are being developed across the world. Scientists at Kew Gardens in London are developing a sensor that can detect each different species of mosquito from its distinctive wing beat. They plan to equip villagers in rural Indonesia with wearable acoustic detectors to track disease-bearing mosquitoes. This would help them manage future outbreaks. Meanwhile, scientists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have worked out how female mosquitoes are attracted to certain body odours, raising hope for more effective repellents. Another promising avenue is to make mosquitoes resistant to the parasites that cause the diseases. In Australia, the Eliminate Dengue programme is using naturally occurring bacteria to reduce the ability of mosquitoes to pass dengue between people. "This is a more realistic approach for mitigating mosquito-borne disease," says Lounibos. Meanwhile, scientists in the US have bred a GM mosquito with a new gene in the laboratory that makes it resistant to the malaria parasite. "We are playing an evolutionary game with mosquitoes," says Hawkes. "Hopefully it's one we can get on top of over the next 10 to 15 years." Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

मच्छर दुनिया का सबसे खतरनाक जानवर है, जो एक साल में दस लाख लोगों को मारने वाली बीमारियों को जन्म देता है। अब मच्छरों द्वारा ले जाने वाले जीका वायरस को दक्षिण अमेरिका में मस्तिष्क दोषों के साथ पैदा होने वाले हजारों बच्चों से जोड़ा गया है। क्या कीटों का सफाया किया जाना चाहिए?


A 'fishing' trip to East China Sea disputed islands

Summary: As Japan and China continue to exchange angry words over their competing claims to an uninhabited group of islands in the East China Sea, it's not that easy to get a close look - and sometimes a little deception is required.

By Rupert Wingfield-HayesBBC News, Tokyo When you arrive in a new country as a foreign correspondent, the first thing you try to do is figure out how that country works. Japan, where I arrived three months ago, has a reputation for being particularly complex for foreigners to understand. And so it is proving. Take for example the little trip I recently took out in to the East China Sea. The objective was the Senkaku Islands, as they are known here in Japan. If you live in China they are the Diaoyu. I'm just going to call them The Islands. As you may have heard The Islands are currently the subject of a very acrimonious dispute between Japan and China over who owns them. The Japanese government has banned everyone - including Japanese citizens - from landing on them. You are, however, allowed to go fishing in the waters nearby. But before we could set off we had to undergo an inspection by the Japanese coastguard, and this is where things started to get interesting. The coastguard officers were extremely polite and friendly. They were also surprisingly thorough. They wanted to see our fishing equipment, rods, reels and bait. They even wanted to see whether there really was ice in the boat's fish lockers. Then came a question I was not expecting. "What is the purpose of your trip?" the senior officer asked me. I hesitated, wondering whether I was really expected to lie. "We're… um… going… fishing!" I said. The officers looked pleased and nodded sagely. "Fishing, yes, good, good." All of this was being filmed by my colleague, Jiro San, with a large television camera. We had made no attempt to hide our equipment or who we were. But the charade appeared to be important. And it didn't end once we were at sea. After eight hours of sailing we approached the islands under cover of darkness. On the radio the Japanese coastguard was calling our captain. "We are preparing to come aboard," they announced. Through the darkness a pair of speedboats were sweeping towards us. Our captain and his two crew now immediately sprang in to action, pulling out fishing-rods and reels and setting them up on the back of the boat. "We need to look like we're fishing," they giggled. Then as dawn broke over the islands and we began our filming, our shipmates really DID begin fishing. They pulled aboard at least a dozen beautiful big red snapper which slapped around on the deck at my feet. "They'll want to see these when we get back," our captain smirked. For the next few hours everyone lost interest in fishing. The Chinese had arrived in the shape of four maritime surveillance ships. The Japanese coastguard was now much more interested in keeping the Chinese ships away from us, than us away from the islands. It was all quite exciting as a slow-motion game of chase around the islands ensued. But when we finally did get back to the small Japanese island of Ishigaki after 24 hours at sea there were our friendly coastguard officers waiting for us. "How was the fishing?" they asked. I thought, "Are you serious?" Apparently they were. So what does this tell us about Japan? Well, I think it shows the tension in Japan between the need to apply rules, and the deep desire to avoid conflict. Rules are very important here. Japan is a highly structured and hierarchical society. There is a rule and regulation for everything - but there is also a huge fear of conflict. And so Japanese people have learned to negotiate the web or rules, to interpret them, while still making sure they have covered their behinds. Something very similar happened when I went to get my Japanese driving licence. British people are, in theory, allowed to swap their British licence. But there is an obscure regulation that was nearly my undoing. I had to be able to prove that I'd lived in the UK for one year after obtaining my most recent licence. "How am I supposed to do that?" I fulminated. "I haven't lived in the UK for 20 years!" The gentleman at the licence office looked pained, and then suddenly his face brightened, he had an idea. "When did you take your driving test?" he asked. "1984," I said. When did you go to university? "1985," I said. "So you have a degree certificate from a UK university?" he asked. Brilliant. He had his piece of paper, I had my Japanese driving licence, and conflict had been avoided. It was the same with our friendly coastguard. If challenged by a superior he had done his job. Our captain had made sure we had fish to show him. And we had our precious filming. Of course no-one was REALLY ever in any doubt about what we were up to.

जैसा कि जापान और चीन पूर्वी चीन सागर में द्वीपों के एक निर्जन समूह पर अपने प्रतिस्पर्धी दावों पर गुस्से में शब्दों का आदान-प्रदान करना जारी रखते हैं, इसे करीब से देखना इतना आसान नहीं है-और कभी-कभी थोड़े धोखे की आवश्यकता होती है।


Ward at Guernsey's Princess Elizabeth Hospital closed

Summary: The outbreak of a virus has closed a ward to new patients at Guernsey's Princess Elizabeth Hospital.

Five patients on Victoria Wing, the private ward, and one member of staff have contracted gastroenteritis, which causes diarrhoea and vomiting. A hospital spokesman said samples had been sent to the UK to try to discover the cause of the sickness. He said visitors were advised to consider the risk of contracting it before visiting those in the ward.

एक वायरस के प्रकोप ने ग्वेर्नसे के प्रिंसेस एलिजाबेथ अस्पताल में नए रोगियों के लिए एक वार्ड को बंद कर दिया है।


Sir Patrick Stewart discusses his first ever pizza slice

Summary: Sir Patrick Stewart has garnered much attention in social circles for tweeting a photograph in which he says that, at the age of 72, he has had his first slice of pizza. He spoke to Eddie Mair on Radio 4's PM. This item contains singing.

Magazine MonitorA collection of cultural artefacts EDDIE MAIR: You took a photograph of yourself eating a pizza. You announced to the world it was your first ever slice and you've gone viral. How does it feel? PATRICK STEWART: Eddie, I look on this as maybe being the high point of my career, if not my life. To have something like this happen is like a dream come true and I'm so excited I can barely think or speak or move. EM: Do you know, I think we're both getting emotional. PS: Yes, I know. I'm sorry about that, I'll get a hold of myself. OK I'm fine now. What can I tell you about this experience? You know there's a little history to this pizza slice. And it is true - although the world is amazed - that was my first slice. Of course I've eaten pizza before. But I've never gone into a slice. The fact is yesterday morning my fiancee and I were a little hung-over. I know that's something you wouldn't understand having never had that experience but my fiancée said what we need is a slice of pizza and a fizzy drink. So here in Brooklyn we went to this little neighbourhood place and innocently somebody took a photograph of me and the rest, as you know, is history. But here's the thing about pizza. This is a little bit of history. I didn't eat or even see a pizza until I was in my twenties. I grew up in a small little town in the Calder Valley and I went to Bristol. There were no pizza parlours in Bristol where I was doing my training. So it came as an exciting new part of my life. That's the thing, my brother and I, when we were small we would listen to a BBC Home Service programme called Children's Favourites or Children's Choice and they played on a Saturday morning Songs for Kids. My brother and I listened to it every Saturday, we learnt all the words and we sang along to it. One of the hit songs at the time was a song called Volare and the opening line of this song Volare was "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie". Well, my brother and I, we didn't know what pizza was so we decided that line must be "when the moon hits your eye like a big piece of pie". And for years, whenever I sang this Dean Martin song I sang, "piece of pie" until, one day of course, someone corrected me. EM: I'm a little disappointed you didn't sing for me. PS: Do you want me to do it? EM: Why not. PS: 'When the moon hits your eye like a big piece of pie, that's amore.' The song wasn't Volare, of course it's Amore. But it's an Italian word, they all sound the same to me. EM: And your singing's very good. PS: I know, it's so much trouble in so many different directions. I think it's probably just a good idea that I get in the car and go to the airport. EM: It's fine, it's fine. Well I need to know a couple of things first. First of all, what was on the pizza slice, what did you choose? PS: It was a plain cheese pizza, no meat - which I don't eat much of. And I kind of think it was a trick, this one, she was right. A fizzy drink and a pizza. I think you need grease when you have a hangover. This was new information to me. But this is why I'm in love with this woman - she has information for me like that. EM: I read in the New York Magazine online that maybe you may have met your fiancée in a pizza restaurant. PS: Oh really. Well she likes to say that when we met she was a pizza waitress. That's not strictly true. They did serve pizza in the restaurant she was working in. But this was - and only Brooklyners know this - gourmet pizza. Not just a regular everyday Dominoes you know. Pizza has linked our lives for the last five years and now, as the world knows, continues to do the same. EM: I'm filling up again, so just before we end this, is there anything - obviously you say you have had pizza before, this was your first pizza slice -is there any food stuff that you can think of that you still simply have never had. PS: Thousand year old eggs. EM: Thank you Patrick. PS: Never had one. Or four hundred year old eggs. You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook

सर पैट्रिक स्टीवर्ट ने एक तस्वीर ट्वीट करने के लिए सामाजिक हलकों में बहुत ध्यान आकर्षित किया है जिसमें वे कहते हैं कि, 72 साल की उम्र में, उन्होंने पिज्जा का अपना पहला टुकड़ा खाया है। उन्होंने रेडियो 4 के पीएम पर एडी मायर से बात की। इस आइटम में गायन शामिल है।


Guernsey airline launches new island route to London City

Summary: Guernsey's government-owned airline, Aurigny, is to fly between the island and London City Airport.

Aurigny CEO Mark Darby said he would make sure the service was "slick and on time". The airline is the only that offers flights to London, currently into Gatwick airport only. The London City flights will start in September and Mr Darby said the route would be designed around business commuters. He said they would be leasing a Focker 50 aircraft for a month while they make alterations to their existing planes to deal with the new route.

ग्वेर्नसे की सरकारी स्वामित्व वाली एयरलाइन, ऑरिग्नी, द्वीप और लंदन सिटी हवाई अड्डे के बीच उड़ान भरने वाली है।


Indonesia executions: Joko Widodo stands firm

Summary: The road leading up to the Tanjung Intan port in Cilacap, near to the prison where several people were due to be executed, was packed with spectators, local people fascinated by the media frenzy on their doorstep.

By Karishma VaswaniBBC Indonesia editor "I know that there are people who will be executed tonight," said Rahsia, a young woman who came out after seeing the commotion on local television. "I know they sold drugs and that's wrong. There are lots of our young generation and our citizens who die because of drugs. The government must be firm." It is a sentiment that echoes across Indonesia. Survey after survey shows that the majority of Indonesians support the death penalty for drug traffickers. And the government was firm - eight convicted drug smugglers were executed by firing squad here on Tuesday night after exhausting the last of their appeals. Man of action Joko Widodo, Indonesia's president, denied them clemency. He insists that Indonesia is facing a national drugs crisis and the punishment for traffickers must be severe. "Eighteen thousand young people die in Indonesia every year because of drugs overdoses," Mr Widodo said in a recent interview. "We are serious about our war on drugs." Some experts have called that figure into question, and have data suggesting that drug deaths have actually declined in Indonesia in recent years. Critics have also questioned whether all of those executed on Tuesday received due process, as some among them still had legal procedures under way. But President Jokowi, as he is known here, is under pressure to show that he is a man of action. His first few months in office have been marked by inaction and indecision and his domestic approval ratings have dropped, making his heady victory last July look like a distant dream. Analysts say he must show that he is in control and that the death penalty is an easy win for him. Backing down now, especially in the face of foreign pressure, would look like a sign of weakness. 'Please don't kill our sons' Mr Widodo has publicly declared a war on drugs and said he will refuse all clemency applications from convicted drug traffickers - a stance that could prove legally problematic given that the very point of a presidential clemency is to evaluate each individual on a case-by-case basis, to see whether or not they've changed in prison. But that will be little comfort to the families of the eight people who were executed, or to the scores of other convicted drug traffickers yet to meet their fate. "Our boys have changed in prison," said Myuran Sukumaran's mother in an interview earlier this year. "They have become different men and deserve a second chance. Please don't kill our sons." Indonesia risks souring relations with other nations over its hardline approach, as it has already with Australia, home of two of the smugglers. But Indonesia's new president appears willing to take the risk, even if it means tarnishing his own reputation as a liberal, reform-minded leader.

सिलाकैप में तंजुंग इंतान बंदरगाह तक जाने वाली सड़क, जेल के पास, जहां कई लोगों को फांसी दी जानी थी, दर्शकों से भरी हुई थी, स्थानीय लोग अपने दरवाजे पर मीडिया के उन्माद से मोहित थे।


Is there really a crisis among GPs?

Summary: GPs should have it all, shouldn't they?

Nick TriggleHealth correspondent A decade ago they got a new contract that allowed them to give up night and weekend cover, while seeing their pay shoot through the £100,000 a year barrier. More recently, this government's reforms in England have put them at the heart of decision-making in the NHS by giving them responsibility for two thirds of the NHS budget. And yet the profession, it seems, is at its wits end. A recent survey of 1,000 doctors by the British Medical Association found GPs had lower levels of morale and work-life balance than their medical colleagues elsewhere in the health service. This negativity has started to filter through to young medics joining the profession. The government in England is in the process of expanding the number of training places, but at last count one in eight of the posts remained unfilled. What has gone wrong? If you ask GPs, the answer is simple. They are being asked to do too much. The BMA survey found three quarters thought their workloads were "unsustainable". There is plenty of evidence to back up these claims. A report produced by the Nuffield Trust think-tank - and given exclusively to the BBC - suggests that GPs have been caught between a rock and a hard place. While numbers are rising slowly - up by 4% since 2006 to over 32,000 - this has been outstripped by rises in demand. According to estimates (unlike hospital visits their are no accurate figures) the number of patient consultations has risen by 13% to 340m in the last four years alone. What is more, funding has been squeezed. In the past year spending fell by 3.8% in real terms to £7.55bn. And this is not just an English phenomenon. Similar complaints are being made elsewhere in the UK. Just this week the Royal College of GPs was warning the GP system in Scotland was under-funded. Dr Richard Vautrey, of the British Medical Association, says these factors are the "fundamental part of the problem". "GPs are being asked to do more and more for less. The government is now talking about seven-day services, but at the moment doctors are struggling to provide good quality care during core hours. Without better funding the fear is patients will suffer." Case study: The GP who gave it all up Dr Mark Sandford-Wood had been a partner in practice in north Devon for 20 years when he decided enough was enough last year. He now works as a "freelancer" doing locum shifts, out-of-hours work, providing care in prisons and sitting on local committees. "I still love being a GP, but the financial risk was just too much. Funding is being squeezed and demands are going up. We have to do more and more paper work to chase little slithers of money. My take-home pay started falling and I began to question what the future held. "It's not a matter of not wanting to work hard - I'm now working longer hours - but its a question of financial security. GP partners are running businesses and the numbers just don't tack up." There are signs this is already beginning to happen. Data from the official GP patient survey, carried out by Ipsos Mori for NHS England, shows that patients are waiting longer for appointments and finding if more difficult to get through on the phone than two years ago. The Royal College of GPs has called this worsening a "national disgrace" - and wants to see the workforce expanded by 8,000. But is there more to the problem that just simple money? Perhaps. What is noticeable about the Nuffield Trust review is how radically the sector has changed. At one time, general practice was dominated by small practices where the GPs all had a stake in the surgery. It is why the profession has been called a network of small businesses. But that is no longer true. A fifth of GPs are now salaried - effectively employees of the business - while the organisations they are working for are getting bigger and bigger. 'Tough job' The number of single doctor practices has almost halved between 2006 and 2013 to under 900. Meanwhile the number of practices with 10 or more GPs has increased by three quarters to 510 in 2013 over the same period. Talk to GPs and they will tell you that this is a consequences of the extra services they are being asked to take on and the extra management responsibilities they have been asked to take on. Just last month the five-year plan set out by NHS England called on them to extend into other areas of care - such as minor surgery, diagnostics and specialist clinics - that have traditionally been the remit of hospitals. Nuffield Trust chief executive Nigel Edwards has some sympathy for the profession. "Being a GP is a tough job. You can be faced with a patient who has a cold or lung cancer - the opportunity to get things wrong actually is quite high. "As time has gone by, we keep asking more and more of them and if they are going to be able to cope things are going to have change." Mr Edwards cites technology as a key area that needs embracing, pointing out that many GP practices are still communicating with fax machines to make his point. He believes much more could be done on the telephone or by using modern digital technologies and a continued move towards larger practices or - at the very least - practices working together in networks so they benefit from economies of scale. But as this shift towards bigger, better, faster happens is there a danger that the special relationship GPs have with their patients is lost? Not necessarily, says Mr Edwards. "If the profession does embrace change, GPs may actually find some of the pressure is eased and that continuity of care becomes easier. Some in the profession realise that, but some don't." The conclusion could not be starker: innovate to survive.

जीपी के पास यह सब होना चाहिए, है ना?


Profile of Redrow boss Steve Morgan: Timing is key to success

Summary: Earlier this week Steve Morgan, the chairman of Wales' biggest housebuilder Redrow, claimed parts of the country would become "no-go areas" if tougher building regulations are introduced. He argued that plans by the Welsh government to make new homes more energy efficient - aimed at delivering lower fuel bills and greater safety standards - will increase costs. This, he argued, could lead to affordable housing not being viable in areas such as Wrexham and the south Wales Valleys. Sarah Dickins takes a look at the man behind Redrow.

By Sarah DickinsBBC Wales economics correspondent Steve Morgan may be a multi-millionaire now running one of Wales' few companies quoted on the stock market but he often refers back to his roots - laying sewer pipes in north Wales. That was before he set up Redrow in Flintshire 1974 and built his first house in Denbigh in 1982. Throughout his business career Mr Morgan, who this week said parts of Wales would become "no-go areas" if tougher building regulations were introduced, seems to have had a finely tuned sense of timing. In the late 1980s when house prices in the south-east of England soared he decided they'd risen too far and left the scene, selling land for around £7m. Just weeks later property prices crashed. I first met and interviewed Steve Morgan in the early 90s when Redrow was growing quickly. The company prided itself in developments with a wide range of housing styles, creating street scenes. Financial crisis By 1994 Redrow was a UK-wide business worth around £300m and Mr Morgan floated it on the stock exchange. I remember asking then what would happen to Redrow if its founder ever left. It was just six years later in 2000 that he decided he wanted a change, left Redrow and moved away. What became pertinent years later was that he kept an 8% stake in the company. Because he was a a major shareholder, Redrow's new management team made regular presentations to him about how the business was faring. The financial crisis of 2008 hit the housing sector hard. Many house builders suffered and some medium-sized companies went to the wall. Redrow posted losses of just under £200m. Mr Morgan says that moment was a terrible blow and he could see the writing on the wall for the company if it wasn't turned round quickly. I met up with him again to find out what made him return to Redrow plc. Hardly changed in the 12 years or so since I last interviewed him, he told me: "It was like seeing my baby in real trouble and I decided I had to come back. "I just couldn't see what had taken me 25 years to build up destroyed. "I'd been through recessions before and I knew what to do and what not to do." Mr Morgan says his return to Redrow's headquarters at Ewloe in Flintshire in 2009 was very emotional. He couldn't believe how it looked - weeds through the concrete, dirty offices and a closed staff canteen. He says he was mobbed by the receptionists as he walked through the doors and he set about getting the place clean, painted and, most importantly, got people busy again. "We addressed everything. There was far too much borrowings when I came back so we had to address that," he said. "We got rid of stock. We've had to take some big hits on some of the land deals we've done because land prices have dropped dramatically, and went out and bought some new land. "[We got] the cash back in first of all to give us the capital, we did a rights issue which really put a lot of cash injection into the company and set up and bought new land. "It's the benefit of the new land coming through which has now turned the business around but we've attacked the market really hard." By 2010 Redrow had turned a £140m loss into a £700,000 pre-tax profit, which rose to £25.3m in 2011 and £43m in 2012. Mr Morgan, now chairman, had worked his magic once again.

इस सप्ताह की शुरुआत में वेल्स के सबसे बड़े हाउसबिल्डर रेडरो के अध्यक्ष स्टीव मॉर्गन ने दावा किया कि अगर सख्त निर्माण नियम लागू किए जाते हैं तो देश के कुछ हिस्से "नो-गो एरिया" बन जाएंगे। उन्होंने तर्क दिया कि वेल्श सरकार द्वारा नए घरों को अधिक ऊर्जा कुशल बनाने की योजना-जिसका उद्देश्य कम ईंधन बिल और अधिक सुरक्षा मानक प्रदान करना है-लागत में वृद्धि करेगी। उन्होंने तर्क दिया कि इससे रेक्सम और साउथ वेल्स घाटियों जैसे क्षेत्रों में किफायती आवास व्यवहार्य नहीं हो सकते हैं। सारा डिकिन्स रेडरो के पीछे के व्यक्ति पर एक नज़र डालती हैं।


A rescue in the rubble of Oklahoma City

Summary: Twenty years ago a truck carrying a homemade bomb ripped apart the Alfred P Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, in what remains the worst act of home-grown terror on American soil. A paediatric surgeon tells the story of a rushed operation among the ruins, to save a woman's life.

By Sara LentatiBBC World Service Wednesday 19 April 1995 was, like every Wednesday, David Tuggle's main operating day and he was helping a junior registrar through a hernia operation on a small child. During the procedure a nurse came in with the news that a bomb had gone off in downtown Oklahoma City. At first Tuggle wasn't sure how to respond. Disaster training drills were not uncommon in the city - because of the frequency of tornados they were held twice a year, usually on a Wednesday, in April and October. "So I assumed that this was our normal April Wednesday disaster drill and I continued leisurely instructing the student doctor," he says. But then the nurse came in again. "A bomb went off in downtown Oklahoma City, really," she said. "Do you know what you're supposed to do?" The bomb exploded at 09:02 and by 09:30 the first children were being brought in. "The first three children that came in needed surgery. One had exposed brain, one had an open leg fracture and one had an injury to a blood vessel in the leg," he says. But Tuggle and the rest of the medical team had no idea of the number of victims to expect. They were hearing reports of injured children at the day care centre in the Murrah Building but no more had arrived at the hospital. At this point Tuggle, along with his friend and colleague Dr Andy Sullivan, asked one of the police officers to take them to the site, to find out what was happening. Tuggle still remembers the scene. "It was really a surreal experience. All of the ceilings were hanging down, we could see bodies that had not been evacuated and they were still bringing bodies out. There was a lot of smoke rising from the building and there were parts of the building that were falling down." Being the middle of Oklahoma City there were plenty of volunteers who were willing to help with the rescue operation. "I saw my dermatologist in scrubs and a gastroenterologist I knew in a three-piece suit walking inside the building without any protection at all," Tuggle says. Tuggle and Sullivan arrived at the Murrah building about 90 minutes after the bombing and by this time most of the survivors had been evacuated. But they were told three people were still trapped inside. On the first floor they found a woman with her right arm and leg under a pile of rubble but there was already a rescue team working through the debris. So they were taken downstairs to the basement where another woman was trapped. Daina Bradley was in a small hole, pinned by a cement support column that had landed on her right leg between the knee and the ankle. "Daina was conscious but she was cold, in a little pool of water, and there were a number of firefighters, rescue workers and paramedics who were down there with us, trying to figure out if there was a way we could lift the cement pillar," says Tuggle. The problem they faced was that the pillar crushing her leg was supporting what remained of the building. A fire fighter was touching the column with his bare hands and if he felt any vibrations had instructions to clear the building. While Tuggle and Sullivan were still discussing how they could free her they were told to clear the building - one of the bomb dogs had got a sniff of explosives on the sixth floor in one of the federal offices. The firefighters almost had to drag them out of the building as they could hear Bradley asking them not to leave. "I told her, 'We have to go, but I'll be back,'" Tuggle says. Oklahoma bomber: Timothy McVeigh Sullivan went back to the hospital to get medical instruments and sedatives and after about an hour Tuggle was allowed back into the building. He went down to check on Bradley and then called his colleague. "I had an early version of a cell phone - that big brick made by Motorola," he says. During that discussion they came to the realisation that the only way to save Bradley's life was to amputate her leg. She gave verbal consent so Tuggle administered pain relief through a vein in her neck and applied a tourniquet above her knee, to keep blood loss to a minimum. "Dr Sullivan basically had to crawl in head first and started doing the amputation. He would work for a while and then he'd have to take a break and I'd have to pull him out because he couldn't get out on his own," says Tuggle. "He'd come out and take a sip of water, pant a little bit, and then go back in." The cramped, dark hole, Sullivan had to work in wasn't the only difficulty he faced. The 46cm (18-inch) amputation knife he had brought from the hospital was too long to use in the hole and the disposable scalpels didn't stay sharp for very long and eventually ran out. "So he pulled out his pocket knife and cut the last tendon with that," says Tuggle. The amputation itself took about 10 minutes, but to Tuggle it seemed like forever. With the help of 20 firefighters he managed to pull her out of the hole and clamp the blood vessels to make sure the bleeding had stopped before removing the tourniquet. Getting their patient to the hospital quickly was now the chief concern. Tuggle had asked for an ambulance to be ready and waiting for them at their nearest exit, but when they got to the door it wasn't there. "We were standing there with our cold patient, with no ambulance. I was not happy." So another ambulance had to be found and Tuggle rode with Bradley to the hospital. Daina Bradley had been in the Murrah Building to get a Social Security card for her three-month-old son Gabreon Bruce. She had taken her daughter, Peachlyn Bradley who was three, her sister Felicity Bradley and grandmother Cheryl Hammons. Her two young children and grandmother were all killed in the attack. Her sister was injured but survived. Looking back on that day 20 years later Tuggle is not sure if the city will ever recover. "I think it will have a lasting memory for Oklahoma City," he says, "probably for as long as there's as Oklahoma City." Dr David Tuggle spoke to Witness on the BBC World Service. Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

बीस साल पहले घर में बने बम को ले जा रहे एक ट्रक ने ओक्लाहोमा शहर में अल्फ्रेड पी. मुर्रा संघीय इमारत को तोड़ दिया था, जो अमेरिकी धरती पर घर में पैदा हुए आतंक का सबसे बुरा कार्य है। एक बाल चिकित्सा सर्जन एक महिला की जान बचाने के लिए खंडहरों के बीच एक त्वरित ऑपरेशन की कहानी बताता है।


Iyad Ag Ghaly - Mali's Islamist leader

Summary: The leader of Malian Islamist group Ansar Dine, Iyad Ag Ghaly, has a complex and colourful past. He has led Tuareg uprisings against the Malian government, acted as go-between in securing the release of hostages kidnapped by al-Qaeda, and spent time as a Malian diplomat in Saudi Arabia.

By Steve MetcalfBBC Monitoring A little-known figure who rarely speaks to the press, Mr Ghaly's motivation for founding Ansar Dine remains the subject of some debate. He comes from the Ifoghas tribe and the Kidal region of north-eastern Mali. Believed to be now in his mid-fifties, he first came to public attention in the early 1990s as the leader of a Tuareg revolt seeking independence or greater autonomy for the northern region of Mali that they call Azawad. Malian state radio referred to him in 1991 as the secretary-general of the Popular Movement of Azawad and head of the delegation negotiating an end to the rebellion with the government. In 1995 Radio France International called him the "undisputed leader" of the Tuareg rebels. After another, short-lived revolt in 2006, Mr Ghaly became head of a movement called the 23 May Democratic Alliance for Change. The following year he was reported to be a member of the Malian High Council of Territorial Collectivities. Hostage mediator In August 2003 he played the key role in securing the release of 14 mostly German tourists kidnapped by the Algerian Salafi Group for Call and Combat, GSPC, which later became Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). He negotiated further hostage releases in 2008, 2010 and 2011. Although European governments denied paying ransoms, these kidnappings are believed to have earned GSPC/AQIM tens of millions of dollars. A US diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks referred to Mr Ghaly as turning up "like the proverbial bad penny" whenever there was the prospect of "a cash transaction" between the Tuareg and a foreign government. Between late 2007 and early 2010 he held a post at the Malian consulate in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, although at times during this period he was reported as being in Mali and elsewhere negotiating hostage releases. Several Malian press reports say he left this post after Saudi Arabia declared him persona non grata for having contact with terrorist elements. After the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya in mid-2011, Mr Ghaly reportedly sought the leadership of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), newly-formed by returning Tuareg who had served in the Libyan army, but he was rebuffed. An MNLA official told Le Monde in April 2012 that this was because of links with AQIM, but that it was unclear whether this association was "out of conviction or out of opportunism". Other sources say Mr Ghaly was rejected because of his "close ties" with the Malian government, a suspicion which dates back to the rebellion of 1990, when he was seen as having compromised in the course of negotiations. Mr Ghaly has also faced problems within the Ifoghas tribe. After reportedly being overlooked during a takeover of leadership of the tribe in 2011, he was then condemned by the tribal chief and religious leaders for his "personal project", Ansar Dine. The pro-MNLA website Toumastpress reported that the tribal chief asked Ansar Dine to lay down their arms or leave the region. Religious influence Mr Ghaly's establishment of Ansar Dine could be seen as a response to setbacks he experienced in the internal Tuareg power struggle, but alongside this Tuareg nationalism one can also trace the development of strong religious beliefs. He is said to have been attracted to the teachings of a Muslim missionary group, Tablighi Jama'at, which is non-political and condemns violence. He also spent some time in 2002 studying at a mosque in Saint Denis in France. His subsequent interactions with GSPC/AQIM and his time in Saudi Arabia may have moved his religious orientation in a more hard-line direction. In 2011 he reportedly told the Ifoghas tribal meeting that he wanted to impose Islamic law on the Tuareg. After Ansar Dine's seizure of Timbuktu in April 2012, Mr Ghaly made a statement on the local radio in which he announced "jihad against the opponents of the Sharia" and "enmity to the unbelievers and polytheists". He also called on the local inhabitants to assist Ansar Dine in "establishing the religion, spreading justice, security and ruling between people with justice, and promoting virtue and preventing of vice". Potential deal-maker It is difficult to ascertain his motivation for founding Ansar Dine because reliable, first-hand information about him is scarce, and conspiracy theories abound. One of these theories sees Mr Ghaly and AQIM as tools of the Algerian (and even US) security services. Another considers him a long-term collaborator with the Malian government. The depth of his adherence to the Islamist cause remains to be seen. As the recent experience in Yemen of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has shown, when a jihadist group seeks to hold populated areas it leaves itself open to a concerted military counteroffensive with international support. By adding the Islamist banner to his status among the Tuareg, Mr Ghaly may just be manoeuvring himself into a position from which he can emerge, as in the past, as the deal-maker. BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad. For more reports from BBC Monitoring, click here

माली के इस्लामी समूह अंसार दीन के नेता, अयाद अग घाली का एक जटिल और रंगीन अतीत रहा है। उन्होंने माली सरकार के खिलाफ तुआरेग विद्रोह का नेतृत्व किया है, अल-कायदा द्वारा अपहृत बंधकों की रिहाई सुनिश्चित करने के लिए मध्यस्थ के रूप में काम किया है, और सऊदी अरब में माली के राजनयिक के रूप में समय बिताया है।


BBC Sound of 2021: What the class of 2020 did next

Summary: "I'm really, really happy," said Celeste, as she won the BBC's Sound of 2020 last January.

By Mark SavageBBC music reporter "I can't wait now to see what the rest of the year will look like. I'm so thrilled and so excited. I can't wait." Celeste went on to win the Brits' Rising Star award and soundtrack the John Lewis Christmas advert. But, as we all know, 2020 didn't quite go as planned. So how did the top five acts on the BBC's Sound Of list spend their first year in the spotlight? There were number one albums, missed flights, phone calls with fans and adventures inside arcade machines. Here's what happened... 5) Inhaler Irish rock band Inhaler sold 10,000 tickets for their last tour, squeezing in 21 gigs before lockdown struck in March. After clocking up air miles on trips to America, Japan and Europe, "we were all secretly looking forward to having some down time at home," admits singer Elijah Hewson, "but our desire for that faded quickly". "We've sort of reverted back to when we were still in secondary school, rehearsing in the shed together and just enjoying playing music and being mates. It's really important to us that we stick together during this time and keep being a gang." Quarantine gave the quartet time to write new material for their debut album - including the politically-driven When It Breaks, which was written as a response to the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. "We felt that people were angry, lonely, upset and scared," says Hewson. "The world feels broken, or like it's about to be broken at any minute, and we wanted to write a song that we could dance to in a field somewhere next summer... or the summer after that. "We're not a very political band. We don't wear our views on our sleeve but we really felt like this was a big moment and as artists how could you not want to say something about it?" According to the band's Instagram page, the quartet have been out and about in Dublin recently, searching for locations to shoot their album cover. So, does that mean a release is imminent? "Sworn to secrecy!" says Hewson. "We're very excited to talk more about the album when we can - but for now we're still tinkering on it and making it the best it can be. "We're in no rush, it's not like we've got a show to get to!" 4) Joy Crookes Joy Crookes' conversational soul songs earned her fourth place in the BBC's Sound of 2020. At the time, the 21-year-old said she'd set a "self-imposed deadline of May" to complete her debut album. Needless to say, that didn't happen. Some people in her team caught Covid-19, while Crookes, who already suffered from anxiety, developed "serious body image issues". "It was just a mess." she says. Drawing on her Bangladeshi-Irish heritage, she chose to prioritise the "collective as opposed to individual", insisting that her team travel home to spend time with their families, instead of "going ahead with this [career] and being a powerhouse for no reason". She stayed productive though, releasing two singles (including the sublime, Nina Simone-referencing, Anyone But Me) and showcasing new, work-in-progress material on Instagram. "It's definitely been productive," she says. "Creating a body of work always takes a lot of isolation but that's often overlooked, because people want us for concerts and they want us for interviews. "I think maybe, potentially, life should be more like this." 3) Yungblud His album went to number one. He won MTV's best breakthrough award. Dave Grohl called him the saviour of rock and roll. It's safe to say Yungblud had a pretty good year. "I can't believe it," he beams. "We're just a team of young people working out of my flat, and we got a number one album! It's so funny." A punk-pop icon in the making, Yungblud has built his career on an intense and symbiotic relationship with his fans. Lockdown may have meant cancelling tour dates, but the bond only got stronger, thanks to fortnightly fan phone calls, livestreamed gigs and his hugely charismatic TikTok videos. "I think when we have something to kick against, we thrive," he says. "I wasn't going to abandon my fanbase. When gigs started getting cancelled, I was like, 'Nah, this is not going to fly with me. No matter what, I'm going to be connected to them.' "When all is said and done, what Yungblud is is a group of people coming together for one common reason. And that's what I believe will make us be around for a long time. The connection is more than just a song, or that we look cool. It's deep-rooted. It's a wire from one heart to another, that pulsates." That connection is brought to life on Mars, a song that was inspired by a young transgender fan in Maryland, whose parents couldn't accept or understand their daughter's transition. "She said that all she could do, in her head, was to plan to get her parents to a Yungblud show. Not to see me, not to hear the music, but to see everyone there - and the sense of community and the sense of liberation. "And the parents came, and they saw kids like her, and they took her out for a burger and said they accepted her as their baby girl. "That makes my head explode. I'm so proud to be a part of something that can do that for someone." Restless at the best of times, Yungblud is itching to get back out on the road again - with gigs planned for May, lockdown permitting. And he has his sights set even higher in 2022. "It's not been announced yet, but my plan is to do a massive show like Knebworth or Spike Island. And I want people to come from all over the world. And I want it to become a worldwide movement." 2) Easy Life Earlier this year, Easy Life's Murray Matravers found himself locked inside an amusement arcade "claw grab" machine. It was a novel approach to self-isolation... but he had an ulterior motive: shooting a promo photo for the band's breezy, escapist single Daydreams. "That was definitely my highlight of the year," laughs the singer. The song itself was a "sign of the times", he adds. Built around a sample of Aretha Franklin's soul classic Daydreaming, it's about, "wishing you were elsewhere, doing anything other than sat in the flat drinking in the daytime". It was one of several tracks to emerge from lockdown, as the indie/hip-hop group worked obsessively on their debut album. Finished and mastered last month, Matravers says it's a very different record to the one he'd originally imagined. "If it had been business as usual, I probably would have had to create the same amount of music in two months instead of 12 - so it really allowed us to finesse the writing, and the production and really obsess about it. "I could spend a week making techno, just to see what that was like. That's a luxury that we've never afforded ourselves before. "And I feel really lucky to have had that - because if there hadn't been the pressure and desire to create an album, I would have had a very different year indeed. I would have really struggled." 1) Celeste Celeste had just arrived from Los Angeles when she delivered a spell-binding performance at February's Brit Awards. She planned to spend a couple of days at home, finding the perfect spot to display her Rising Star award before flying back to the US to finish her debut album. "And at seven o'clock on Saturday, they announced a travel ban," she recalls. "I thought, 'Maybe this will last a couple of weeks or a month,' and all of a sudden it's December." The album release was subsequently pushed back - it now comes out in January - but Celeste says she "hasn't been too disappointed" by 2020. "I've been able to adapt to the situation," says the singer, whose partnerships with brands like Converse, Sky Sports and Stella Artois "have actually carried me through the year". But it was soundtracking the John Lewis Christmas advert with her song A Little Love that brought her into millions of homes. The 26-year-old was the first artist to be commissioned to write an original song for the campaign - and found herself inspired by the concept of strangers helping strangers. "It wasn't only meant to be fantastical and Christmassy. There was this element of realism to it, which is where I always find my inspiration. I wrote it quite quickly". A Little Love wasn't Celeste's only single of 2020. I Can See The Change was produced by Billie Eilish's brother, Finneas, after they met at the Brits, and the jazzy, piano-thumping Stop This Flame became a top 10 hit in Belgium ("I didn't know that!", she laughs). But 2020 also gave the singer the opportunity to pause and reassess her songwriting. "In the last year, I'd only really brought out singles - and singles tend to magnify a very specific part of your personality. It's not always your truest voice. "Being in solitude helped me to get back in touch with my thoughts and feelings - finding inspiration without it being polluted too much by other people's experiences." That epiphany inspired the title - and the sound - of her album, Not Your Muse, which was largely written and recorded with her touring band. "Not Your Muse as an idea, to me, meant that I'm taking charge of who I am and not allowing anybody to taint me too much with their ideas of what they think I should be. "And I found that true for all sorts of situations," she adds. "Not just work, but personal relationships too." 2021, watch out: Celeste is a force to be reckoned with. Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

सेलेस्टे ने कहा, "मैं वास्तव में, वास्तव में खुश हूं", जब उन्होंने पिछले जनवरी में बी. बी. सी. का साउंड ऑफ 2020 जीता था।


Hambledon murder: Teen charged over Joanna Thompson death

Summary: A teenager faces a murder charge over the death of a 50-year-old mother of two.

The body of Joanna Thompson was discovered by police officers at a house in Vicarage Lane, Hambledon, Hampshire, on 1 July 2019. Police previously said she died from "injuries to the neck". A police spokesman said the teenager has been issued with a postal requisition to appear before Salisbury Crown Court on Tuesday.

एक किशोर पर दो बच्चों की 50 वर्षीय मां की हत्या का आरोप है।


Proposed committees just ploy - Mano

Summary: Government’s proposals to establish a parliamentary select committee on Human Rights and a new IIGEP with eminent persons drawn from SAARC countries is a ploy to buy time, says Western Peoples Front Leader and Civil Monitoring Commission Convener MP Mano Ganesan.

Sri Lanka has seen many committees and commissions and many state agencies established by this government in the name of combating human rights violations but to no avail, he says. “The long list begins with the formal National Human Rights Commission, the Mahanama Tilakaratne Commission, the Special Presidential Commission, the IIGEP and a government Ministerial committee. In addition there are the special police units and the Ministry for human rights. None of these have helped to improve the human rights conditions in this country.” he said. MP Mano Ganean made these observations when he met with visiting officials of the European Commission's office of the external relations Director-General, Ms.Helen Campbell and Andrea Nicolaj at the EU premises in Colombo. Ganesan said that they discussed the prevailing political and human rights conditions in the country.

वेस्टर्न पीपुल्स फ्रंट के नेता और नागरिक निगरानी आयोग के संयोजक सांसद मनो गणेशन कहते हैं कि मानवाधिकारों पर एक संसदीय चयन समिति और सार्क देशों के प्रतिष्ठित व्यक्तियों के साथ एक नया आई. आई. जी. ई. पी. स्थापित करने का सरकार का प्रस्ताव समय निकालने की एक चाल है।


Putin's nuclear slideshow echoes Cold War

Summary: Fact or fantasy? Real world weapons or simply technologies that are under development? A message to the US or largely to his own domestic constituency? President Putin's presentation of Russia's new nuclear arsenal was all these things and more.

Jonathan MarcusDiplomatic correspondent@Diplo1on Twitter Above all it was a signal that there is going to be no thaw in US-Russia relations any time soon. Mr Putin appears largely to have given up on any hopes of a close understanding with the mercurial Donald Trump. With both Russia and the US talking much more now about modernising their nuclear arsenals, there are alarming echoes of the Cold War years. And the fact that many of these new technologies are being developed at a time when existing arms control regimes are crumbling again gives added cause for concern. At the outset it should be stated clearly that even with their current arsenals, contained by the terms of the New START, the nuclear arms reduction treaty signed in 2010, both Russia and the US have more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other many times over. Russia is obsessed by Washington's deployment of anti-missile defences - which may or may not work as advertised - but no serious western strategic experts believe that Russia's nuclear forces are in any way compromised by current missile defences. The US insists it has only deployed limited defensive systems to counter the specific threat of long-range missiles from Iran or North Korea. But countering missile defence seems to be at the heart of Russia's thinking. The Russian view has always been that missile defence may start in a limited way but if the technology is proven, it will inevitably expand. It remembers the grandiose, though never fulfilled, vision of a missile-proof shield advanced by President Ronald Reagan. And it clearly still smarts from the US decision in 2002 to withdraw unilaterally from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which strictly limited such defences. President Putin's new arsenal of nuclear systems was orientated then around one principle - defeating US anti-missile defences. Some systems - including most likely a very long range nuclear-tipped torpedo - avoid missile defences altogether by operating in a totally different environment - the sea - rather than travelling through space. Others, like the new intercontinental ballistic missile, the nuclear-armed cruise missile or a variety of "hypersonic" systems might simply fly too fast or on trajectories which would make their interception impossible. Russia is by no means alone in pursuing some of these technologies. Both China and the US are actively exploring the possibilities of hypersonic weapons - described to me by one arms control expert as "a hang-glider on steroids". They would be launched into space and then glide at extraordinary speeds along the edge of the atmosphere before dipping down to strike their targets. But the real question about President Putin's speech is: how close are these weapons to becoming a reality? It was instructive that he used video representations to demonstrate their capabilities rather than pictures of real operational systems. Many of the technologies presented by Mr Putin have been known about for some time. The nuclear-tipped torpedo for instance - what today we would call an unmanned underwater vehicle - is a project that dates back in one form or another to Soviet days. In the past the US has also looked at the idea of nuclear-powered cruise missiles but they were abandoned in the 1960s because the then available technology simply couldn't handle the task. What has changed today is that technology has advanced in leaps and bounds. The weapons championed by Mr Putin are no longer technically unfeasible, even if significant practical hurdles still remain. Russia has made particular progress in the field of cruise missiles and it is Russia's ongoing modernisation plans - and the development of a variety of new technologies - that have in large part driven Washington's own Nuclear Posture Review that was published just a few weeks ago. So, there is a reality here behind the rhetoric - even if many of the weapons systems outlined by Mr Putin are still very much in the developmental stage. This modernisation is not new. Russia has been developing these weapons for a very long time. And in the US, it was President Obama who set in motion a major modernisation of the nuclear triad - its air, land and sea-based nuclear systems. This will take years to complete and has largely been adopted by President Trump. What is new here is the combative and threatening rhetoric - very much a throw-back to the worst of the Cold War years. Mr Trump has boasted about having a bigger nuclear arsenal than anyone else. Now Mr Putin is doing his own chest-thumping exercise, insisting that Russia has weapons that nobody else can deploy. For many arms control experts, one clear message emerges from all of this. The two sides should get around the table and begin to talk seriously again about strategic nuclear disarmament. The existing strategic arms reduction treaty (New START) expires in some three years time. In a conversation early in Mr Trump's presidency, Mr Putin reportedly spoke of Russia's willingness to extend this agreement. Mr Trump, it is said, turned to his advisers and asked them what this New START thing was all about. When he heard it had been negotiated by Barack Obama, he determined that it must be "a bad deal" and told Mr Putin: "No." Veteran arms control expert Mark Fitzpatrick says: "New START should be extended beyond its 2021 cut-off date and new measures should be added to head off the dangerous systems that Putin portrayed." Arms control matters most at times of rising tensions. And in the wake of Mr Putin's presentation, Washington and Moscow clearly have a lot that they could talk about.

तथ्य या कल्पना? वास्तविक दुनिया के हथियार या बस ऐसी तकनीकें जो विकास के चरण में हैं? अमेरिका के लिए या बड़े पैमाने पर अपने घरेलू निर्वाचन क्षेत्र के लिए एक संदेश? राष्ट्रपति पुतिन द्वारा रूस के नए परमाणु शस्त्रागार की प्रस्तुति ये सभी चीजें और भी बहुत कुछ थीं।


Lightning strike sets house on fire in Gowerton, Swansea

Summary: A house has been set on fire after being hit by lighting.

Emergency crews were called to the property on Porth Y Waun, Gowerton, Swansea, just after 18:00 BST. Firefighters from Gorseinon, Sketty and Swansea have been fighting the blaze. Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service said the roof of the house was "well alight", but everyone in the building had been accounted for and there were no causalities. Neighbour Stuart Roberts said: "My little girl went to the window and said there was smoke coming from a house down the road. "It was horrific - it looked like it hit the TV aerial - one in a million that happening, it was a terrible shame."

बत्ती लगने के बाद एक घर में आग लगा दी गई है।


New custody suite set for Wrexham Magistrates' Court

Summary: The Ministry of Justice has drawn up plans for a two-storey custody suite at Wrexham Magistrates' Court.

Cells used at neighbouring Wrexham Police Station are due to be decommissioned in the summer. North Wales Police is due to demolish its tower block police station site and relocate to new premises. Wrexham MP Ian Lucas has long been pushing for a commitment from the UK government to invest in the court buildings in the town centre. A planning application submitted to Wrexham council said a custody suite was "essential to the operation" of the law courts.

न्याय मंत्रालय ने रेक्सम मजिस्ट्रेट अदालत में दो मंजिला हिरासत कक्ष की योजना तैयार की है।


Greece #Metoo: Women ending silence of sport abuse shake Greece

Summary: When former Olympic champion Sofia Bekatorou revealed she had been sexually assaulted by an unnamed Hellenic Sailing Federation (HSF) executive, few realised her powerful testimony would prompt a #Metoo movement in Greek sport.

By Kostas KallergisBBC News She was addressing a little-advertised online conference after all. But when the sailing federation hit back at her allegations the following day, the whole story exploded. It said it had never received any complaint from Bekatorou and essentially asked her to name the man, since she had "taken the initiative to speak about this unpleasant incident after so many years". Inspired by Sofia Bekatorou's courage and angered by the federation's cynicism, more athletes began going public with experiences of sexual harassment and abuse using the hashtag #metisofia (on Sofia's side). Now the Greek president has praised the former champion for ending a "conspiracy of silence" and the government says her story has shaken not just sport but society as a whole. What happened to the former Olympic champion? Bekatorou was 21 when she went abroad with the rest of the Greek sailing team in 1998 to compete in qualifying trials for the Sydney Olympics. The team was joined by a sailing federation executive who celebrated their qualification with them. Now 43 and a mother of two children, she told the online conference she had been subjected to "sexual harassment and abuse" in the official's hotel room. The transcript of her speech circulated online. Bekatorou went on to win two Olympic medals and several world championship golds and was given the honour of carrying the Greek flag at the Rio Olympics in 2016. But she also maintains that the official became an obstacle to her career. Her decision to stay silent so she could keep on sailing took its toll. It took "years with a lot of work and therapy", she said, before she could take responsibility for not speaking out and seeking the man's removal. Aristeidis Adamopoulos has now stepped down as vice president of the Hellenic Sailing Federation. He has denied any wrongdoing and says he resigned to protect the federation and the Greek Olympic Committee from negative publicity. Lefteris Avgenakis, the deputy culture and sports minister, praised the broad spectrum of support for Sofia Bekatorou and said the government had since put an end to the "sickness" of having lifetime executives in charge of Greek sport. Stories you may also be interested in Who else has spoken out? Marina Psychogyiou, another sailing champion, has also spoken out, posting on Facebook that she too was sexually harassed by a federation executive. She was 20 when the man offered her a ride home as she was leaving her club, she explained. "He touched my leg, he was coming very close to me and was telling me not to be afraid. That it was all for my benefit." When he tried to kiss her, she escaped, she added. Psychogyiou, now in her forties, says such incidents still go on but no-one files a complaint for fear of disfavour or reprisals. "And if the girl doesn't say yes, or stops saying yes, they go to another one," she said. Mania Bikof, a former member of the Greek water polo team, has revealed how she and some fellow athletes were harassed by a doctor. "The doctor always asked me to remove my swimming suit simply to administer an injection. When I left his office, I asked the others and they confirmed he had asked them to do a similar thing." Rabea Iatridou, a former World Champion swimmer has said when a doctor examined her for a knee injury he asked her to remove all her clothes. "He kept touching me all over my body, in parts that had nothing to do with the examination... that sick guy stood right behind me and groped me, pretending he was examining my thighs." Since that initial wave of revelations and expressions of support, more cases of sexual abuse have begun to emerge, including from students alleging harassment at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in northern Greece. The dean has asked the prosecutor to investigate the allegations. President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, the first woman to be appointed as Greek head of state, met Bekatorou on Monday in "recognition of the bravery and dignity with which she shared her traumatic experience". And the former Olympian whose revelations have prompted soul-searching in Greek sport will now meet an Athens prosecutor on Wednesday to give evidence. The prosecutor will then decide whether the allegations should be investigated further or whether to drop them because of a statute of limitations. The government has promised further action to protect women in Greek sport: "We have to put a framework in place... so these phenomena can be registered and the victims are not stigmatised but supported," says Minister Lefteris Avgenakis.

जब पूर्व ओलंपिक चैंपियन सोफिया बेकटोरो ने खुलासा किया कि एक अनाम हेलेनिक सेलिंग फेडरेशन (एचएसएफ) के कार्यकारी द्वारा उनका यौन उत्पीड़न किया गया था, तो कुछ लोगों को एहसास हुआ कि उनकी शक्तिशाली गवाही ग्रीक खेल में एक #Metoo आंदोलन को प्रेरित करेगी।


Through teenagers' eyes - unique snapshots of Syrian refugee life

Summary: Their homes are dusty refugee tents - and life is hard. Using cameras on smartphones - and with the support of Save the Children and professional photographer Michael Christopher Brown - Syrian teenagers have created unique portraits of conditions inside the Zaatari camp in neighbouring Jordan.

Over the course of a week, the girls and boys aged 14 to 18 were taught photographic techniques, and then asked to capture images of their daily reality. The iPhone files were then converted into distinctive square Instagram images. Take a look at some of their results here - and hear from three of the teenagers - Khaled, Samar and Omar - plus photographer Michael Christopher Brown: The teenagers' names have been changed to protect their identities. All images copyright Save the Children. Audio interviews provided by Save the Children. Music by KPM Music. Photo film production by Paul Kerley. Related: Inside Zaatari on Tumblr Save the Children UK Instagram page

उनके घर धूल भरे शरणार्थी तंबू हैं-और जीवन कठिन है। स्मार्टफोन पर कैमरों का उपयोग करना-और सेव द चिल्ड्रन और पेशेवर फोटोग्राफर माइकल क्रिस्टोफर ब्राउन के समर्थन से-सीरियाई किशोरों ने पड़ोसी जॉर्डन में जातारी शिविर के अंदर की स्थितियों के अनूठे चित्र बनाए हैं।


Coronavirus in South Africa: Smokers fume at cigarette ban

Summary: The illicit trade in cigarettes in South Africa is now in full swing after the sale of tobacco was banned at the end of March as part of strict measures imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus, as the BBC's Pumza Fihlani reports.

Whereas once Michelle could go to her local shop in South Africa's commercial hub, Johannesburg, to buy cigarettes she is now having to do a secret deal. The 29-year-old economist finds sellers through contacts in WhatsApp groups and arranges a covert meeting in order to get her nicotine fix. "Once you've found a seller you can trust, a meeting point or pick-up point is arranged," she said. 'No chance to stock up' Michelle, which is not her real name, is not the only one. What was perfectly legal two months ago has turned thousands of people into potential criminals. "No warning was given for the ban, so I personally wasn't sufficiently prepared - either to get a stockpile or prepare to go without," Michelle, who has been smoking for four years, told the BBC. 37% of menaged 15 or over smoke 8% of womenaged 15 or over smoke Most smokebetween one and nine cigarettes a day Smoking decreasedsince 1998 $790m was raisedin government revenue from smoking last financial year South Africa's lockdown regulations are among the toughest in the world and also include a ban on the sale of alcohol. This will be relaxed from 1 June, with people allowed to buy alcohol to drink at home and "only under strict conditions on specified days and for limited hours", according to President Cyril Ramaphosa. However, he said the ban on the sale of cigarettes will remain "due to the health risks associated with smoking". Cigarette dealers could spread coronavirus The government justified the tobacco ban on health grounds based on advice from its own medical experts as well as from the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO said that although research is still being carried out, there was reason to believe that smokers would be more adversely affected than non-smokers if they contracted Covid-19. According to a 2016 government survey, more than nine million South Africans aged 15 and older smoke, burning through billions of cigarettes a year. "While I understand the health reasons that have now been brought forward, I would like the opportunity to decide for myself when and how to handle my smoking, especially as someone who also smokes as a way to deal with anxiety outside of medical treatment. I believe the ban is excessive," Michelle said. She also thinks that driving the trade underground poses additional health risks at this time. The black-market seller is "someone who has potentially touched scores of other people trying to sell their cigarettes", the young professional said. More than half a million people have added their names to an online petition calling for the government to change its mind. "We have been provided no scientific evidence to support a tobacco ban," Bev Maclean, who started the petition, wrote. "With legal tobacco product sales being banned, consumers are turning to the illegal market and paying high prices for mostly illicit cigarettes that don't pay taxes to government." In the last financial year, South Africa's tax collecting agency raised about $790m (£650m) from tobacco sales. A two-month ban could therefore cost the government about $132m in lost revenue. There is also the claim that the ban is unconstitutional. The Fair Trade Independent Tobacco Association (Fita), which represents business and smokers' interests, has gone to court and argued that the decision on the ban was made without the correct legal framework. Why did the government change its mind? Fita was particularly frustrated by what it describes as an "inexplicable about-turn" by the government. On 23 April, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a national address that tobacco sales would be allowed as the country eased lockdown restrictions for the first time. Six days later the minister in charge of the coronavirus response, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, announced that the ban would remain, which upset a lot of smokers. "There must clearly have been a basis for the president… to clearly and unequivocally state: 'The sale of cigarettes will be permitted,'" Fita head Sinenlanhla Mnguni wrote in court papers. "It is doubtful the president would have given that undertaking without proper consultation and a mandate." Fita is demanding to see the papers that informed the government's change of heart. Quitters 'benefit in hours' But the government is not budging. Explaining the U-turn, President Ramaphosa said that "government is making every effort to act in a way that advances the rights to life and dignity of all our people". The authorities believe that by either reducing smoking, or even quitting, the chances of recovering from coronavirus are increased. There are also general health benefits. Coronavirus in Africa: "The science says smokers begin to benefit from quitting a few hours after they quit," explained Dr Catherine Egbe, who works in the alcohol, tobacco and drug unit of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC). "A smoker's heart rate improves, the carbon monoxide in the blood drops to normal and within two weeks to three months, the risk of a heart attack drops and the lung function begins to improve," she told the BBC. Dr Egbe is one of the scientists who has publicly supported tobacco ban. "While we know the worst is not yet over, current statistics point to the fact that the country could be doing something right. "The pressure faced by the government is coming from those who want to prioritise profits over human lives," said Dr Egbe. Smoking less in lockdown Along with the SAMRC, the Cancer Association of South Africa and the Heart and Stroke Foundation South Africa, as well as a host of other health bodies, support the ban. And it seems that some people have been using this time to try and give up smoking. "We have seen a doubling in the number of calls that we normally receive on our Quitline," said Savera Kalideen, executive director at the National Council Against Smoking. There has also been an increase in "requests for support to join our WhatsApp group, which provides 30 days of support, tips and messages to smokers who want to stop smoking". Michelle is not giving up, but has cut down. "I'm oddly smoking a lot less than I did before the lockdown. "I average two cigarettes a day now, whereas before the average was six or seven. It wasn't a conscious health choice," she said. "I think it's mainly because I'm working from home so some of my usual routine, smoking on the drive to and back from work and at work has been disrupted."

बीबीसी के पमज़ा फिहलानी की रिपोर्ट के अनुसार, कोरोनावायरस के प्रसार को धीमा करने के लिए लगाए गए सख्त उपायों के हिस्से के रूप में मार्च के अंत में तंबाकू की बिक्री पर प्रतिबंध लगाने के बाद दक्षिण अफ्रीका में सिगरेट का अवैध व्यापार अब जोरों पर है।


The road to uncovering a wartime Colossus

Summary: The story of how the Colossus computer at Bletchley Park aided the allied code-cracking effort during World War II is becoming well known. Its claim to be a forerunner of modern-day computers is also well established.

By Mark WardTechnology correspondent, BBC News What is much less well known is the tale of how Colossus's story came to be told in the first place. It is a tale of how one man's dogged efforts overcame official secrets and official indifference to rewrite computer history. Computer scientist Brian Randell was the man who started uncovering the history of Colossus. That history had to be prised out of the archives because official efforts to cover up its success worked so well. Thousands of people worked in the huts at Bletchley Park during WWII on code-cracking but only a handful were involved with Colossus and fewer still knew everything about it. All those codebreakers signed the Official Secrets Act which demanded that they kept quiet about their wartime career. Almost all the machines were broken up once they ceased to be useful and design documents were burnt or destroyed at the same time. "I got to know more about it than they did," Prof Randell told the BBC. "They were so compartmentalised that those who worked in one hut would not dream of talking to people in another hut." Prof Randell detailed his experiences of uncovering Colossus' history during a talk at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. Sensitive operation Prof Randell tripped over the story of Colossus in 1970 while preparing an academic paper on a little-known Irish computer pioneer Percy Ludgate who, in 1908, completed the design for a nascent computer. Because he had a lot of material left over after writing about Ludgate, Mr Randell decided to use it as the basis of a series of papers dealing with early computers. While putting those papers together, he was asked why he had written so little about Alan Turing. Prof Randell started to look into Turing's war work and got tantalising glimpses of the electronic code-cracking machines that had been in use at Bletchley. One paper written by Jack Good, one of the engineers who helped create Colossus, and published in 1970 mentioned a "classified, electronic" machine that used 1,000 valves to calculate "complicated Boolean functions involving up to about 100 symbols" to crack codes. The link with Turing, said Prof Randell, was that Colossus drew on Turing's seminal 1936 paper that laid down the basic specifications for a machine that could carry out complicated calculations step by step. Finding a little out about this machine prompted Prof Randell to seek out and correspond with those named as being involved with Colossus even though he now knew that their work was covered by the Official Secrets Act. "A number of the people I wrote to wrote back in very guarded terms," said Prof Randell. "We were very much more conscious about those things at that time." The result of Prof Randell's work was a paper in 1972 exploring Turing's influence on early computers and making mention of the wartime machines. In a bid to pierce the official veil of secrecy, Prof Randell wrote to the prime minister of the day, Ted Heath, asking for more information to be released. He was turned down flat. Information could not be released, said Mr Heath, because that "sensitive wartime operation... still has important current implications". Modest men Prof Randell continued to badger civil servants and his efforts were helped by the appearance of several books about Bletchley and code-cracking that mentioned the machines used to read messages sent by the Wermacht, Luftwaffe and Hitler's generals. Then, in 1975, a change of government brought a change in policy and Prof Randell was invited to the Cabinet Office to discuss the first official release of information about the Allies' main codebreaking machine. The official release was a handful of pictures and a short statement which mentioned Colossus' key designers: Max Newman and Tommy Flowers. More importantly, Prof Randell was asked by the government to interview the Colossus creators and publish what they said. Prof Randell gathered the information into a paper that he presented in 1976 at a conference on the history of computing. Attending was John Mauchly who, before Prof Randell took to the stage, thought that the machine he built, Eniac, was one of the first electronic computers. Jaws literally dropped as Prof Randell delivered his lecture, he told the BBC. They dropped again in the evening as Prof Randell had arranged for one of Colossus's creators, Allen "Doc" Coombs, to attend and answer questions about the machine and what it did. Prof Randell's lecture and Coombs's comments meant the computer history books would have to be rewritten. "Eniac was not the first computer, it was the 11th," he said. The door that Prof Randell first pushed at is now wide open, he said. "I'm sure that all of the technical details of Colossus are now well known," said Prof Randell. "With the publication of the official history of the intelligence services we have a very full account of what was discovered by codebreaking and the significance it had." It has also put the spotlight on the people who built Colossus and their achievements. "They were so modest and so bloody brilliant," he said. "It was one of the best experiences of my life."

ब्लेचली पार्क में कोलोसस कंप्यूटर ने द्वितीय विश्व युद्ध के दौरान संबद्ध कोड-क्रैकिंग प्रयास में कैसे सहायता की, इसकी कहानी सर्वविदित हो रही है। इसका आधुनिक समय के कंप्यूटरों का अग्रदूत होने का दावा भी अच्छी तरह से स्थापित है।


Injured seal found in Conwy to be released by RSPCA Cymru

Summary: A seal pup that was rescued in Conwy county is recovering well and could be released into the wild in the new year, RSPCA Cymru has said.

The pup was found on the opposite shore from Conwy town with an eye injury and with no sign of its mother earlier this month. It was taken to the Welsh Mountain Zoo where its wounds have since healed. RSPCA inspector Mike Pugh said: "It's fantastic news that this seal pup is on the mend, after such a tough ordeal." But he urged the public not to approach all lone seals, as they have not necessarily been abandoned by their mothers. The pup's release has been planned for the first three months of 2017.

आर. एस. पी. सी. ए. साइमरू ने कहा है कि कॉनवी काउंटी में बचाया गया एक सील पिल्ला अच्छी तरह से ठीक हो रहा है और नए साल में उसे जंगल में छोड़ा जा सकता है।


Putin warns Europe over 'aggression' century after WW1

Summary: Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Europe against aggressive and arrogant leaders, a century after the continent went to war.

Unveiling a monument in Moscow to Russian soldiers killed in World War One, he said it would be "good to remember" its lessons today. The war resulted from "the aggression and egotism and overweening ambition" of leaders and elites, he said. Mr Putin has been accused of aggression himself towards Ukraine. World War One eventually brought down imperial Russia when Bolsheviks seized power in the 1917 communist revolution.

रूस के राष्ट्रपति व्लादिमीर पुतिन ने यूरोप को युद्ध में जाने के एक सदी बाद आक्रामक और अहंकारी नेताओं के खिलाफ चेतावनी दी है।