Coronavirus: Changing faces after six weeks of lockdown

Summary: People have been sharing pictures of how their appearance has changed after six weeks of the coronavirus lockdown. Some say they have been embracing their "new norm" and may keep their new look - while others said they were "desperate" for the restrictions to be eased so they could get a haircut.

By Angie BrownBBC Scotland, Edinburgh and East reporter James Spooner, 48, from Glasgow, said he initially thought his new look was funny. "I've never had long hair before but I'm starting to wonder how long it's going to get if this lockdown lasts much longer. "My wife says my hair is growing upwards instead of downwards, which is quite funny. "My daily exercise is to cycle, so I had been managing to keep it hidden under my helmet - but then I got caught out in the garden the other day by the neighbours." He added that he loved his new bushier beard because it covered "a multitude of chins". Alan Simpson, 63, from Edinburgh, said he normally had his hair cut every four weeks. "I'm desperate to get to a hairdressers," he said. "My hair is so long now it is taking ages to dry in the mornings, so I need to get it cut as soon as possible." Eila Rodnight, 66, from Aberdeenshire, said she was "desperate" to have her hair cut. "I like keeping my hair short and in a nice style where I can put some gel in it and give it a bit of a spike," she said. "Now it's so overgrown I can't do that any more. "It doesn't look right and is unkempt, so I'm going to have to ask my husband to cut it for the first time in the 43 years that we have been married." Alistair Davidson, 60, from St Andrews in Fife, said he "quite liked" his new "groovy look". He said: "When you get older you have to be careful not to look shabby and try to be well presented, but at the same time you need to innovate and have a new look from time to time. "This lockdown gives us that opportunity to experiment. We can see what we look like with longer hair. "I like it. I might ask the hairdresser to keep mine a bit longer when I next get my hair cut." Khi Leonard, 45, from Glasgow, said he loved his new look. He said: "You can't turn up at work with messy hair, so this is an excuse not to have to worry about our hair. "I love it. Hair is pretence and now I don't have to preen any more, it's brilliant." Jan First, 51, from London, said his fiancee was more bothered about his bushy new hair than he was. He said: "She wants it cut. The trouble with my hair is it doesn't grow down the way, it grows out. "I don't mind at the moment, I'm fine, I'm not banging on the hairdresser's door quite yet." Leo Pankowiak, 76, from Edinburgh, said: "No hair grows on my head now, I'm as bald as a coot. "But my beard has been growing. I haven't been shaving it because I'm not going anywhere so there is nobody to see what it looks like. "I can't decide what I will do with it once the lockdown is over. I do quite like how it covers my cheeks that are hanging down these days."

लोग तस्वीरें साझा कर रहे हैं कि कोरोनावायरस लॉकडाउन के छह सप्ताह के बाद उनका रूप कैसे बदल गया है। कुछ का कहना है कि वे अपने "नए मानदंड" को अपना रहे हैं और अपना नया रूप बनाए रख सकते हैं-जबकि अन्य ने कहा कि वे प्रतिबंधों में ढील देने के लिए "बेताब" थे ताकि वे बाल कटवा सकें।


How Emeli Sande rediscovered the joy of melody (and lost her quiff)

Summary: Listen to Emeli Sande's new single Sparrow and you'll hear dozens of influences: the spirituality of Aretha Franklin, the sophisticated phrasing of Anita Baker, the lyrical positivity of Alicia Keys.

By Mark SavageBBC Music reporter But there's another, unexpected, inspiration: Disney's The Little Mermaid. "When I was three or four, I would just play that movie and rewind it and play it and rewind it and play it," the singer laughs. "I think I learned how to sing from Ariel!" Last summer, Sande dusted down her old Disney videos, using them as a sort of instruction manual for her third album. "When you see the way children gravitate towards Frozen or The Little Mermaid or even The Greatest Showman, it's clear there's a real longing for melody," she explains. "I have to check myself sometimes because hip-hop has become the new pop, and melodies can get very 'one note'. "Don't get me wrong, it's fun to write like that sometimes - but I had to go back and listen to Disney films and musicals and even classical music to remind myself of all the other things you can do. "I really believe the more melody we have, the better." We're speaking in the book-lined living room of Sande's flat, the day after her 32nd birthday. She's spent the morning curled up on the sofa, binge-watching Netflix comedy Bojack Horseman as she recovers from a party that culminated with a midnight jam session. That's essentially how she recorded the new album, too, working up ideas with a bunch of musicians in her newly-built recording studio. "Basically last summer was like a big writing camp," she says. "We'd start every day around two and talk rubbish for a few hours. Then people would cook - my speciality was vegan 'fake chicken nuggets' - and it all started to come together in the evening. "The freedom and the camaraderie made it so special. It kind of had this wildness. And in the end we got 200 songs or something crazy like that." 'Emotion in the mistakes' To keep the music focused, she laid down two hard rules. She would write all the lyrics herself, and she would ban any digital instruments. The idea was to replicate the warmth and humanity of her favourite albums. "When I listen to Amy Winehouse, there's so much emotion in the mistakes," she says. "I think we've missed some of that because we have so many tools now to perfect everything. But then you listen to Bob Marley and Janis Joplin's live performances and it feels like it's breathing." The organic approach is even reflected in her image - the trademark whipped-cream quiff is gone as Sande opts for a more natural look. "With the quiff... when I first moved to London I just wanted to be badass and shave my hair and dye it for the first time. "It was wonderful for a year or two but after a while there was a lot of damage to my hair. So seven months ago I decided, 'I'm not going to touch it any more'. I let it grow out. It just feels really lovely. "So yeah, this whole thing, everything's very natural from the music to imagery." Sande's fresh approach follows a bumpy entry to the music business. The Scottish singer was thrust into the spotlight in 2012 when her debut album, Our Version of Events, spent 10 weeks at number one and broke a chart record set by The Beatles. The speed of her success and the burdens of promotion took a toll and, after winning two Brit Awards in 2013, she took a self-imposed career break, split from her manager of 12 years and went through a painful divorce. When she returned to music, it was with an album inspired by a "life-changing" trip to her father's homeland, Zambia, which reinforced the importance of family, community and spirituality. The songs tracked her journey from trauma (Hurts) to solitude (Lonely) and recovery (Highs and Lows) and the album was sizeable hit, earning Sande another Brit Award, with none of the attendant madness of her debut. "It was nice to discover a comfortable pace," she says. "I'm always grateful if there's work to be done - but sometimes I just need six months to go and be in touch with who I am artistically." Sparrow, which premiered on Zoe Ball's BBC Radio 2 breakfast show on Friday, is a rousing gospel anthem that reflects the star's renewed confidence. "I've been on a journey of real self-discovery and I just got to a point where I felt this kind of innate hope. "My hope is that, whatever mood you're in, the song can flip it and give you strength." Indicating a photograph that hangs above her television, Sande says her lyrics were inspired by the intoxicating positivity of Afrobeat king Fela Kuti. "He just reminded me of the power that music has and that people have," she says. "When I look back to the 60s and 70s there was a belief that we could change the world and that love was an option. "Now there's such a lack of confidence in what we can achieve - but I just want to celebrate humanity for the goodness we can have." Sande's faith in mankind was shaken when she visited the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz during a tour stop in Poland last year. "It's a harrowing reminder of what we are capable of," she says. "The darker side of humanity is a real thing." The experience fed into another song on the album, Free As A Bird, after Sande's tour guide told her the story of Kazimierz Piechowski - a Polish prisoner who, along with three other captives, escaped in June 1942. 'Escape from horror' "They managed to get hold of the soldiers' uniforms, steal a car and drive out of the camp," she recalls. "Imagine that sense of freedom, that sense of release... almost to a point where you'd feel sick. "I can never imagine that feeling, but that idea of escape from horror really inspired the second verse of the song. "So that was the first demo where I was like, 'This has to go on the album.'" As we speak on Monday, the album is days away from being finished ("we have to hand it in next week") but despite the looming deadline, Sande is excited and energised by the prospect of releasing new music. "I just want to speak to people and uplift them in some way," she smiles. "Music helped me through so much in my life, and I just want to give back what I took." Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

एमेली सांडे के नए एकल स्पैरो को सुनें और आप दर्जनों प्रभावों को सुनेंगेः अरेथा फ्रैंकलिन की आध्यात्मिकता, अनीता बेकर की परिष्कृत वाक्यांश, एलिसिया कीज़ की गीतात्मक सकारात्मकता।


Murder charge after Keswick head injury woman dies

Summary: A man has been charged with the murder of a woman found with serious head injuries at her home in Cumbria.

Katrina Fletcher, 64, known as Trina, of St Kentigern Close in Keswick, was found by emergency services on 11 September and died two weeks later. Patrick Webster was originally charged with grievous bodily harm with intent, but has now been charged with murder. The 62-year-old, from St Kentigern Close, will appear before magistrates on Friday.

कुंब्रिया में सिर पर गंभीर चोटों के साथ एक महिला की हत्या का आरोप एक व्यक्ति पर लगाया गया है।


'Why you pay for other people's drinking'

Summary: As preparations for New Year's Eve celebrations near their climax, economist Professor Anne Ludbrook argues in this week's Scrubbing Up that it is unfair that we all pay for the price for the damage caused by alcohol.

By Professor Anne LudbrookHealth Economics Research Unit, University of Aberdeen Ask yourself how you would feel if you contributed to a kitty for drinks but you didn't get a drink. Or if another customer at the supermarket asked you to pay for part of the alcohol they were buying. Sounds a bit far-fetched? But this is the reality of the peculiar market for alcohol. Everyone pays the price for alcohol, whether they drink themselves or not. Alcohol related harms cost the country over £25bn (or around £500 per adult) in costs to the NHS, police and fire services, industry, the lost value of reduced health and so forth. Supermarkets run "loss leaders" on alcohol to attract customers and make money from other items in the shopping basket - so you and I may be paying more for our grocery shopping to subsidise cheap alcohol. Social cost As an economist, I naturally think that markets could provide the best outcomes but only if they work properly. That means that people who buy and consume alcohol should pay the true cost - the price of the drink and cost of future harms. Isn't that what alcohol duty is supposed to do? Well, duty does raise revenue but at current levels, only about a third of the amount needed. There is also the problem that duty rates in the UK are not related to alcohol content, ranging from less than 5p per unit of alcohol for cider to over 20p per unit for spirits. Even the duty on spirits is less than half the social cost per unit of alcohol. Minimum pricing establishes a floor price for alcohol and could be used to make sure that no drinks are sold below the average social cost. It would also be effective in reducing alcohol consumption and related harms. 'No silver bullet' Research from Sweden shows that price increases targeted at the lowest cost brands would produce almost 2.5 times the reduction in alcohol consumption that an across the board price rise would. Also, the heaviest drinkers reduce their drinking most because they tend to drink the cheaper products. Research by the University of Sheffield for the Department of Health and the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) shows that a minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol would reduce alcohol consumption by 6.7% percent on average but the heaviest drinkers would reduce consumption by 10.1%. The value of the reduced harm from alcohol would be nearly £1bn in the first year: 80% would come from the reduction in consumption by harmful drinkers. Minimum pricing has recently failed to gain sufficient support in the Scottish Parliament to see it pass into legislation. However, it has been recommended for consideration by NICE and by the House of Commons Health Select Committee. The UK government's alternative proposal is to ban below-cost selling but this can be hard to define. If it is interpreted as duty plus VAT, then the impact on average consumption may be negligible unless duty rates are both reformed and increased. Successive governments have said they want to tackle alcohol-related harms but have pursued policies that have been ineffective. Minimum pricing of alcohol is effective and well targeted but it is not a silver bullet. A range of policies needs to be put in place - but trying to tackle the harms that alcohol causes without making alcohol less affordable is a bit like trying to empty a bath while the taps are still on.

जैसे ही नए साल की पूर्व संध्या समारोह की तैयारी अपने चरमोत्कर्ष के करीब है, अर्थशास्त्री प्रोफेसर ऐनी लुडब्रुक ने इस सप्ताह के स्क्रबिंग अप में तर्क दिया है कि यह अनुचित है कि हम सभी शराब से होने वाले नुकसान की कीमत चुकाते हैं।


Amazon fight with workers: 'You're a cog in the system'

Summary: Joseph Jones doesn't find the gruelling physical demands of his job at Amazon particularly troubling - he can walk as many as 17 miles per shift. The firm's attitude towards his work, however, is something else.

By Natalie ShermanBusiness reporter, New York "It's a very adversarial relationship with the supervisors and the staff," says the 35-year-old, who started working part-time at the company's warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama in October. "You're a cog in the system... and it's very obvious." During the busy season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, for example, he says Amazon required staff to extend their shifts - typically with little notice. Once, he says he didn't even know he had been asked to put in extra time until he arrived for work and the company app informed him he was an hour late. Last year, the treatment prompted him to join a petition that sought an official vote on creating a union at the warehouse. In December, state labour officials ruled the request had garnered enough support to warrant an election - the first such vote Amazon has faced in the US since 2014. Ballots were mailed this week. If the campaign succeeds, the Bessemer facility, which opened in March, would become the only unionised Amazon location in the US. RWDSU campaign "This election takes on enormous importance because Amazon is not just another company," says Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which is leading the effort. "This election transcends Bessemer. It's really about how workers are going to be treated in the future." Organisers have spent months making their case to the nearly 6,000 people who work at the facility. They have lined the side of the road with signs, posted representatives at the plant's gates, hosted meetings and rallies, and spent hours "talking, talking, talking". For its part, Amazon has responded with mandatory weekly meetings discouraging the proposal, plastered the warehouse with anti-union flyers, blasted text messages to staff, and launched a website "Do it without Dues", which promotes the firm's "high wages" - hourly pay starts at $15.30 (£11.15) - health benefits, and safety committee. It also sought, unsuccessfully, to force the election to be held in person, rather than by mail, as officials required due to the pandemic. Amazon spokeswoman Heather Knox says the company is "providing education" on the impact of a potential union - which it estimates would cost full-time staff $500 in dues - and does not believe the RWDSU "represents the majority of our employees' views". "Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire, and we encourage anyone to compare our total compensation package, health benefits, and workplace environment to any other company with similar jobs," she says, adding that the company has improved its safety measures since the start of the pandemic. At the plant, Joseph says the pressure has been intense, with rumours flying about the firm's efforts to infiltrate workers. "They're terrified of what precedent this could set," he says of the company. Pandemic effect For years, Amazon has been able to brush past complaints about its business practices and working conditions. But the pandemic - which brought health risks alongside a surge in the firm's business and profit - has galvanised workers around the world. This is despite the firm's notoriously aggressive efforts to squelch labour activism, says Christy Hoffman, secretary general of UNI Global Union, which works with unions globally, including the RWDSU. "Amazon's dynamics did not shift but the workers became much more active during the pandemic when the danger to them in connection with social distancing, the pace of work, the volume of work became so dangerous," she says. Last year, the company was hit by strikes in Italy and Germany and protests at warehouses and grocery stores in the US. In France and Spain, unions lodged complaints with the state, leading to government intervention. In Bessemer, a majority black suburb of Birmingham, Alabama where a quarter of families live below the poverty line, tensions emerged amid last summer's Black Lives Matter protests. Staff sought out the RWDSU. Mr Appelbaum says they wanted more information about co-workers falling ill and were upset by the "dehumanising" way they were managed - receiving unpredictable assignments from robots and getting disciplined via an app. Other affronts came into play. In June, the firm abruptly ended hazard pay, an extra $2 per hour that it had offered at the start of the pandemic, even as virus cases continued to rage. "Amazon's business is thriving and they do something as picky as taking away hazard pay from their employees," Joseph says. "I think it put a bad taste in everybody's mouth." Will the campaign succeed? The Birmingham area has a rich history of civil rights activism and unionisation, tied to its past as a coal mining and steel centre. But unionisation rates have plunged in the US and in southern states, like Alabama, suspicion of organised labour runs deep. In Bessemer, a city of 27,000 hit hard by the departure of major manufacturers in the 1980s, Amazon's arrival was welcomed as a source of employment. "The educated folks will tell you money's not a motivator. Well I guarantee you… money is a motivator and the biggest difference with Amazon is they pay," says labour leader Bren Riley, president of the Alabama AFL-CIO, of which the RWDSU is an affiliate. "They don't have problems getting people to come to work." Alan Draper, the Ranger professor of government at St Lawrence University, says unions lose votes like the one facing Amazon much more than they did in the past. "The sense of fear that employers are able to create is tremendous. That the union has been successful enough to get workers past that fear in order to get to an election is remarkable today," he says. "Unfortunately it's very episodic." If the union wins, Amazon would be forced to negotiate over a contract, which could address anything from pay and holidays, to discipline and production expectations. With ballots due on 29 March, the fight has attracted national attention. Liberal political stars in the US such as former presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as the NFL Players Association, which represents American football players, have chimed in with support. In Alabama, however, many politicians have steered clear of the fight. "Whatever the differences are, I hope that they can be rectified to the satisfaction of the employees as well as to Amazon," says Bessemer Mayor Ken Gulley, a Democrat, who was part of a team that helped lure Amazon to town in 2018 with millions of dollars worth of state and local tax breaks. He says he wants to see everyone "treated fairly" but worries that the high-profile union drive could hurt the city's efforts to attract other big employers like Amazon, whose economic impact he describes as "significant". "Obviously it's a great company and we're looking to a strong partnership with them for many years to come." Joseph says he's not sure how the vote will go, but is hopeful the Bessemer effort will inspire Amazon workers elsewhere to take a stand. "If this is successful - knock on wood - then I hope everybody follows suit."

जोसेफ जोन्स को अमेज़ॅन में अपनी नौकरी की कठिन शारीरिक माँगें विशेष रूप से परेशान करने वाली नहीं लगती हैं-वह प्रति पारी 17 मील तक चल सकते हैं। हालाँकि, अपने काम के प्रति फर्म का रवैया कुछ और है।


Woman dies as car hits tree between Ripon and Risplith

Summary: A driver has been arrested after a 20-year-old woman was killed when the car she was travelling in hit a tree.

The crash happened at around 02:15 GMT on Friday near to Grantley Hall on the B6265 between Ripon and Risplith in North Yorkshire. The woman died at the scene and the other occupants of the car were all taken to hospital. North Yorkshire Police said no other vehicles were involved and the driver, a 21-year-old man, remained in custody. Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to yorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk.

एक 20 वर्षीय महिला की मौत के बाद एक चालक को गिरफ्तार किया गया है, जब वह जिस कार में यात्रा कर रही थी, वह एक पेड़ से टकरा गई थी।


Profile: Guto Harri goes from Boris Johnson to News International PR chief

Summary: Guto Harri has never been one to duck a difficult challenge.

By Neil PriorBBC Wales News The former BBC journalist has begun work as director of communications for Rupert Murdoch's embattled News International. But if anyone is surprised that the man who masterminded London Mayor Boris Johnson's successful re-election campaign this month relishes the heat of battle, they need only take a closer look at his CV. During his 18 years with the BBC, the Cardiff-born Welsh-speaker's assignments included covering the collapse of communism in East Germany, the bloody coup which overthrew Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, and reporting from inside Iraq during the first Gulf War. His time at the BBC also included stints as the the News Channel's chief political correspondent, North America business correspondent, and Rome correspondent After leaving the corporation in 2007, he joined a public relations firm, and spent a brief stint - four days in fact - as adviser to Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the run-up to the controversial 2008 presidential election. 'Very decent people' Not content there, he took on another tough assignment: selling the maverick former Conservative MP Boris Johnson to London. Now, after many months of allegations surrounding phone hacking at some of Mr Murdoch's newspapers - which led to the closure of Britain's biggest seller, the News of the World - Mr Harri's new role with News International may appear to be his most difficult to date. He told the Guardian newspaper: "I hope to combat some of the hysteria that is rife in British public life. "Not every politician is corrupt, not every banker gets an enormous bonus and doesn't think they give a monkey's for anything, and not everyone who works at News International was involved in phone hacking," he said. He added: "I know very good people who write for the Times and for The Sun and they are first class journalists and they are very decent people. "One of the reasons why I am more than happy, I'm delighted to take the job, is that those people cannot be tarred with the same soggy brush as just a few people who were either involved in criminal activity, which is a matter for the courts, or you know, were seemingly out of control." The 45-year-old Cardiff-born father-of-three is the son of Dr Harri Pritchard Jones, an author and retired psychiatrist, and Lenna, a former BBC Wales producer. He studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford, where he was a contemporary of Boris Johnson's. Outside the pressure of work, he enjoys rowing, sailing, fishing and cooking. He was thought at one time to have been in the running for the job of Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications, when the post eventually went to Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World. Mr Coulson eventually resigned from his Downing Street role as the phone hacking row escalated. Mr Harri told the Guardian that he accepted that moving directly from London's City Hall to News International could be seen in some quarters as further proof of the close ties between Mr Murdoch and senior Conservatives. He added: "I'm totally reconciled that the move will be seen in the media as part of an irresistible geometrical pattern between the Conservatives and News International." But he said he had never been a member of the Conservatives or any other political party.

गुटो हैरी कभी भी एक कठिन चुनौती को टालने वाले नहीं रहे हैं।


How mutton flaps are killing Tonga

Summary: The Pacific island of Tonga is the most obese country in the world. Up to 40% of the population is thought to have type 2 diabetes and life expectancy is falling. One of the main causes is a cheap, fatty kind of meat - mutton flaps - imported from New Zealand.

By Katy Watson and Sarah TreanorBBC News, Tonga With a stern expression crossing her face, 82-year-old Papiloa Bloomfield Foliaki almost leaps from her seat to show us something she says will help us understand. She comes back into the sitting room of her small hotel in Nuku A'Lofa, Tonga's capital, brandishing a large model of an ancient wooden boat. "We Tongans rowed here, across thousands and thousands of miles of sea, in boats like these. Then we flipped them over and used the old boats as houses." She frowns. "But, nobody wants Tongan houses any more, because something Western, something modern, people think is better, people associated Tongan style of homes with poverty. "Just like with our food." The traditional Tongan diet is fish, root vegetables and coconuts, as you might expect for a palm-fringed island in the middle of the Pacific. But at some point in the middle of the 20th Century, offcuts of meat began arriving in the Pacific islands - including turkey tails from the US and mutton flaps from New Zealand. They were cheap and became hugely popular. "People think something imported is superior," says Foliaki, a former nurse, activist and politician, who now works in the hotel business, despite being one of few Tongans over the age of 80. "And you have a situation where fishermen spear their fish - sell it - and go and buy mutton flaps. People don't have the education to know what is bad for their health." What are mutton flaps? Source: Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington, authors of Flap Food Nations in the Pacific Islands In 1973, 7% of the population were suffering from non-communicable disease - a phrase that has come to be used as synonymous with diabetes in Tonga. By 2004 the figure was 18%. It is now 34% according to the Tongan Health Ministry, though some think the figure could be as high as 40%. "There's this whole generation in Tonga that was brought up on mutton flaps," says Sunia Soakai, a health planning officer for the Secretariat of the Pacific Community. "Mutton flaps are the discarded parts of the lamb that are not fit for consumption in New Zealand. They were able to dump this stuff on the Pacific countries." Tongan fishermen still catch fish by spear, mostly at night, returning well before dawn. Customers who want the best of the catch come down to meet them off the boat. Others can turn up at the little fish market in the port's car park later in the morning. But when we visited, there were few customers. Hand-speared fish is not cheap, and it's only foreign boats that trawl with nets, for a catch that is immediately exported. Some of the hand-caught fish is also sent abroad - there is demand in Hawaii for Tongan speared snapper. But even here at the fish market the smell of barbecued meat wafts across the car park. About 50m away, dozens of spits are rotating half-chickens and mutton flaps - from a distance the flaps looks like slabs of unsliced bacon, more fat than meat. The singeing fat gives off a powerful, pungent odour. According to Soakai, it's not unusual for a Tongan to eat 1kg of mutton flaps in one sitting. He did so himself in days gone by. "Over the years, I got quite big, I probably tipped the scales at 170kg (375lb, 26st 11lb)," he says. But Soakai eventually changed his ways and shed about 70kg - for three reasons. "I have a five-year-old son," he explains. "If I continued my lifestyle I would orphan my son. The second trigger was that I work in the health sector; it became an issue of credibility. And the third - I was diagnosed with diabetes." Some scientists believe Tonga's problem is partly down to genetics - that Pacific islanders in the past had to survive long periods without food so their bodies are programmed to cling on to fats. Find out more But there's no question the role that society plays here. "The bigger you are, that's beauty," says Drew Havea, chair of the civil Society Forum of Tonga. Size and status in Tonga have often gone together. The Tongan King Tupou IV, who died in 2006, holds the Guinness record for being the heaviest-ever monarch - 200kg (33 stone, or 440lbs). Being thin would traditionally have indicated a position lower in the social pecking order. "We need to learn that if you are skinny you are not hungry," says Havea. In his later years, the king lost some weight, and was photographed exercising, in an attempt to show Tongans how to improve their health. There is also a tradition of feasting, which to an outsider almost resembles competitive eating. "Good food, in a Tongan sense, is lots of food," says the Rev Dr Ma'afu Palu, a minister who is making it his mission to preach healthier eating. He's among many who criticise church leaders for failing to set a good example to their parishioners. Ministers are authority figures in this deeply religious society and according to Palu, 85% of them are obese, thanks partly to the regular feasts they take part in. The obesity epidemic is not solely down to mutton flaps and turkey tails. Lots of fatty canned meat is consumed - sometimes from giant 2.7kg (96oz) tins. And then there are fizzy drinks. "You have to understand that in Tonga we are catching up," says Lepaola Vaea, deputy Chief Executive at the Ministry of Revenue and Customs. "We used to watch American movies and TV shows and everyone was drinking soda. We sat there and thought, 'Wow, I would love to drink soda and we're poor because we're drinking water.' But now everyone's drinking water and we are drinking soda!" In 2008, Vaea tried to raise duty on mutton flaps, as Fiji has successfully done. The result: "There was a large public outcry," she says. "People are addicted." It says a lot about Tongan eating habits that a healthfood restaurant here serves fish and chips. But this really is healthier than a lot of Tongan dinners. The country of 100,000 struggles to cope with the consequences of this diet. Life expectancy, which was once in the mid-70s, has fallen to 64. One doctor at the National Diabetes Centre looked at the queues outside her clinic and told us, "I always feel like I'm drowning." From the hospital we went to visit a family where the whole family - husband and wife, three daughters and the husband's mother - all have type 2 diabetes. One of the girls got sick at 14 and for nearly four years a wound on her leg failed to heal. Eventually she had the leg amputated, and this year received a prosthetic leg from the Mormon church. Despite government efforts to make people more aware of the risks of diabetes and obesity, there is still a long way to go. Many of the islanders still do not yet appear to be changing their lifestyle or diet. Curbing diabetes will take generations, one doctor assured us, and things will get worse before they get better. Watch Katy Watson's TV report from Tonga Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

प्रशांत द्वीप टोंगा दुनिया का सबसे अधिक मोटा देश है। माना जाता है कि 40 प्रतिशत तक आबादी को टाइप 2 मधुमेह है और जीवन प्रत्याशा गिर रही है। मुख्य कारणों में से एक न्यूजीलैंड से आयातित एक सस्ता, वसायुक्त प्रकार का मांस-मटन फ्लैप है।


A27 Lancing repairs cause long queues

Summary: Motorists have faced lengthy queues on the A27 in West Sussex as a 14-week scheme to upgrade drainage began.

The work to tackle the risk of flooding affects a two-mile section between Lancing College junction and Dankton Lane, Sompting. On Monday a lane was closed eastbound from Manor Road roundabout to beyond Coombes Road, and westbound from Old Shoreham Road to the same roundabout. Flooding has deteriorated the road surface. Work will be carried out seven days a week during the day and night, but avoiding peak hours. The Highways Agency said access to all residential properties would be managed locally on site.

वेस्ट ससेक्स में ए27 पर वाहन चालकों को लंबी कतारों का सामना करना पड़ा है क्योंकि जल निकासी को उन्नत करने के लिए 14 सप्ताह की योजना शुरू की गई है।


Man detained over assault on woman in Dundee woods

Summary: A 31-year-old man has been detained following an assault on a woman at Templeton Woods in Dundee.

The woman was taken to Ninewells Hospital with a head injury during the incident, which took place at about 13:10. Her injuries are not life-threatening. Ch Insp Nicky Russell said there would be a high-visibility police presence in the area while inquiries continued.

डंडी के टेम्पलटन वुड्स में एक महिला पर हमले के बाद एक 31 वर्षीय व्यक्ति को हिरासत में लिया गया है।


Tonyrefail murder: Police issue new appeal for information

Summary: Police have issued a renewed appeal for information over the murder of a man from Rhondda Cynon Taff.

Jamie Perkins, 41, from Tonyrefail, was last seen on 12 October and his body was found three weeks later in Bog Lane. A reward of up to £10,000 is being offered for any information regarding his death. Det Insp David Butt has now urged people in the community to help track down those responsible for the killing. South Wales Police said no-one has been charged with Mr Perkins' murder. Anyone with information has been urged to contact Crimestoppers anonymously.

पुलिस ने रोंडा साइनन टाफ के एक व्यक्ति की हत्या की जानकारी के लिए एक नए सिरे से अपील जारी की है।


EDF: Hinkley Point C bypass 'could be built earlier'

Summary: The company that wants to build a new nuclear power station in Somerset has said it will build a bypass six months earlier than originally planned.

EDF Energy said it would build the road around Cannington if planning consent was granted for the Hinkley Point C plant. It said the work would reduce the amount of works traffic having to drive through the village. If the government grants permission, the plant could open by 2020. EDF Energy said work to build a storage area at Combwich would also be held back until the bypass is finished.

समरसेट में एक नया परमाणु ऊर्जा केंद्र बनाने की इच्छा रखने वाली कंपनी ने कहा है कि वह मूल योजना से छह महीने पहले एक बाईपास का निर्माण करेगी।


Warehouses could collapse after Wednesfield fire

Summary: Warehouses are in danger of collapse after a severe fire at factory premises in the West Midlands.

The fire broke out during the early hours at EDM in Planetary Road, Wednesfield. Seventy-five firefighters, plus specialist teams, fought the blaze at its height. The company provides storage for data and paper documents. A fire service spokesman described the fire as "severe" and "significant" but said crews had stopped it spreading. The damage is still being surveyed but it is thought four adjoining warehouses at the site are in danger of collapsing.

वेस्ट मिडलैंड्स में कारखाने के परिसर में भीषण आग लगने के बाद गोदामों के ढहने का खतरा है।


Man arrested on suspicion of making explosive in Manchester

Summary: A 52-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of making an explosive device in Manchester, police have said.

Officers were called following the "discovery of suspicious items" at a property in Wilmslow Road, Fallowfield at 20:30 GMT on Friday. Army bomb disposal officers were called to the scene and the items were deemed to be safe. Greater Manchester Police said it was an isolated incident and there was no wider threat to the community. The arrested man remains in custody for questioning. Related Internet Links Greater Manchester Police

पुलिस ने कहा है कि मैनचेस्टर में एक विस्फोटक उपकरण बनाने के संदेह में एक 52 वर्षीय व्यक्ति को गिरफ्तार किया गया है।


Cyclist seriously injured in Livingston by bus

Summary: A cyclist has been seriously injured after he was in collision with a bus in West Lothian.

The accident took place on Almondvale Avenue in the centre of Livingston at about 19:45 on Friday. The 21-year-old man was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Sgt Stephen Quinn of Police Scotland said: "We are appealing for anyone who witnessed the collision and who has not spoken to officers to come forward." Related Internet Links Contact Police Scotland

वेस्ट लोथियन में बस से टक्कर लगने से एक साइकिल सवार गंभीर रूप से घायल हो गया है।


Tintagel Castle bridge designs revealed by English Heritage

Summary: Designs for a new 285ft (87m) high footbridge at "one of the most spectacular historic sites in Britain" have been unveiled.

English Heritage plans to build the £4m structure to reconnect two sites at Tintagel Castle in north Cornwall. The settlement's divided landscapes were once united by a narrow strip of land. A total of 137 concept designs from 27 different countries were submitted to a competition launched earlier this year. Six have now been shortlisted and are going on display to the public in the Tourist Information Centre in Tintagel village until 11 December. The final bridge will be subject to a number of consents and regulatory approvals, including planning permission and Scheduled Ancient Monument Consent, English Heritage said. It is planned for completion in 2019.

"ब्रिटेन के सबसे शानदार ऐतिहासिक स्थलों में से एक" में एक नए 285 फीट (87 मीटर) ऊंचे पैदल पुल के लिए डिजाइन का अनावरण किया गया है।


Isle of Man chief secretary announces retirement

Summary: Recruitment is about to get under way for a new chief secretary for the Isle of Man government after the current one announced her retirement.

Mary Williams has revealed that she will step down from the post that she has held since November 2002 at the end of the year. She will have worked in government for more than 40 years. Mrs Williams has also served as chief financial officer, chief executive officer and chief internal auditor. A government spokesman said advertising for her successor will begin in the next few weeks.

वर्तमान सरकार द्वारा अपनी सेवानिवृत्ति की घोषणा के बाद आइल ऑफ मैन सरकार के लिए एक नए मुख्य सचिव के लिए भर्ती शुरू होने वाली है।


Dumfries and Galloway Council agrees redundancy scheme

Summary: Dumfries and Galloway Council has approved a voluntary redundancy scheme to try to meet a savings goal of £50m over the next three years.

The authority estimates it will need to cut its budget by £20m in the next financial year alone. Staff will now be asked if they are interested in early retirement or voluntary severance. The authority stressed there would be no "right" to leave and decisions would be based on business need. Council leader Ivor Hyslop said that "tough times" required "tough choices". "Our council cares for people from birth to death and provides critical services that mean our children are better educated and fewer people suffer poverty and deprivation," he said. "We must do all we can to protect these frontline services, but we must be realistic. "The scale of the financial situation facing all councils means change is inevitable."

डमफ्रीज एंड गैलोवे काउंसिल ने अगले तीन वर्षों में 50 मिलियन पाउंड के बचत लक्ष्य को पूरा करने का प्रयास करने के लिए एक स्वैच्छिक अतिरेक योजना को मंजूरी दी है।


Cumbria PCC 2021: The candidates standing for election

Summary: People living in Cumbria will vote on 6 May to elect a police and crime commissioner (PCC) as well as voting in local authority elections.

The elections were due to take place in May 2020 but were delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. The first Cumbria PCC was elected in November 2012. PCCs are elected as representatives who work to ensure police forces in England and Wales are running effectively. These are the candidates who have so far said they intend to stand for PCC this year (listed alphabetically): Loraine Birchall, Liberal Democrat Loraine Birchall, pictured with Tim Farron, is a web developer and management consultant. Barbara Cannon, Labour Works in economic development and previously in the council's careers service and voluntary sector. Peter McCall, Conservative The current Cumbria police and crime commissioner. Related Internet Links Cumbria PCC Elections 2021

कुम्ब्रिया में रहने वाले लोग 6 मई को एक पुलिस और अपराध आयुक्त (पीसीसी) का चुनाव करने के साथ-साथ स्थानीय प्राधिकरण चुनावों में मतदान करेंगे।


Elgin gas leak: Weather delays gas leak operation at Total platform in North Sea

Summary: The operation to stop gas leaking from the Elgin platform in the North Sea is being delayed by weather.

Total's platform was evacuated when the gas began leaking on 25 March. Total said preparations were now complete and the main drilling support vessel, West Phoenix, was in position alongside the platform. Total said it was now waiting for "an appropriate weather window" to start pumping heavy mud into the well to plug the release.

उत्तरी सागर में एल्गिन प्लेटफॉर्म से गैस रिसाव को रोकने के अभियान में मौसम के कारण देरी हो रही है।


Theatre's star-studded class of '74

Summary: Pete Postlethwaite, who died last week, was part of a remarkable group of young actors and writers who started their careers at the Liverpool Everyman theatre in the 1970s, alongside Julie Walters, Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce and Willy Russell.

By Ian YoungsArts reporter, BBC News In summer 1974, the UK got its first sense that something interesting was happening at a scruffy theatre on Hope Street in Liverpool. A Beatles musical called John, Paul, George, Ringo... and Bert, written by a 26-year-old playwright called Willy Russell and starring unknown actors Trevor Eve, Bernard Hill, Anthony Sher and Barbara Dickson, had become a big hit. It was seen by 15,000 people in six weeks before transferring to the West End, where it ran for a year and won a string of awards. That would have been fairly impressive. But when the show moved to London, most of the Everyman's company moved with it, leaving a big gap back in Liverpool. A young Jonathan Pryce was charged with assembling a new acting company, and signed up Julie Walters, Bill Nighy, Matthew Kelly and Nicholas le Provost to appear in The Taming of the Shrew that October. That play would also have featured Pete Postlethwaite as Petruchio. But he had just accepted another job at the Playhouse, the Everyman's city rival. He came on board for the next production, however, for a period that saw the Everyman act as a springboard for the careers of some of Britain's most popular and acclaimed actors. The story of the Everyman's class of '74 has come to the fore again, but is tinged with sadness following Postlethwaite's death. His conviction and charisma made a big impression on his fellow cast members. "Peter was at the centre of that amazing ensemble in Liverpool in the early 70s," recalls Walters. "I was in a production of Brecht's Coriolanus with him and I have never ever seen anybody act like that. "It was just absolutely extraordinary. Talk about being enthralled - the audience were completely terrified part of the time. "I've never seen anything like that before or since. When he came off stage, his mother said to him: 'Oh Peter, you'll go round the bend if you carry on like that.'" Pryce recalls Postlethwaite as an "enormously likeable, hugely talented, compassionate, political man". "You couldn't help but like him, and audiences loved him. And he had a great sense of fun about him," he says. Pryce puts the theatre's golden spell down to its former artistic director Alan Dossor, who was determined to reflect real life in the region and to draw the city's population in. That included a highly political agenda, with Dossor commissioning plays about local issues and scandals. "The idea was to tackle the political establishment," Pryce recalls. "There were lots of targets at the time, and it was felt that it was possible to do things at a local level." Dossor's determination to put real voices on stage was coupled with an attempt to nurture the talent of his performers. "People were taken care of," says Pryce, who went on to win two Laurence Olivier Awards in the West End as an actor and a pair of Tony Awards on Broadway. "It was a family. You look back on it and think, yes, it was an extraordinary time. For a lot of us, it formed the way we approached our work." There was an emphasis on the whole cast working together to tell the story of a play, rather than a play being a vehicle for star performers, and the methods helped the actors become "fearless" on stage, Pryce adds. "You were being judged by a tough audience, but you weren't being judged by the people you were working with." Dossor, speaking to some of his former proteges in BBC Radio 4's documentary The Reunion, broadcast in 2004, said: "The one thing I wanted all of you to have when you left was the ability to not be wobbled by bad decisions, so that you could survive." The gang stayed together for productions including children's show The Pig and the Junkle, the bawdy comedy Funny Peculiar and Willy Russell's Breezeblock Park. The close-knit group spent hours upon hours in each other's company - if not on stage at the theatre, then putting on shows in local pubs and clubs, drinking in the theatre bar or in the houses they shared. It was inevitable that relationships formed off stage - Walters got together with Postlethwaite, and Pryce's future wife, Kate Fahy, was also a member of the company. "The focal point of the theatre was the bar," Pryce recalls. "You were in the building more or less all day. It was a lot of fun. We lived in the same boarding houses. You'd have a room or a flat in one of the houses and we all lived together and socialised. "Those relationships have lasted 30-odd years."

पीट पोस्टलेथवेट, जिनका पिछले सप्ताह निधन हो गया, युवा अभिनेताओं और लेखकों के एक उल्लेखनीय समूह का हिस्सा थे, जिन्होंने 1970 के दशक में जूली वाल्टर्स, बिल निघी, जोनाथन प्राइस और विली रसेल के साथ लिवरपूल एवरीमैन थिएटर में अपने करियर की शुरुआत की थी।


North Korea: Are Trump's assumptions about the nuclear threat right?

Summary: With the rhetoric reaching fever pitch over North Korea's nuclear missile programme, BBC Beijing correspondent John Sudworth turns to Twitter - where else? - to put US President Donald Trump's key messages to the test.

Among the avalanche of tweets that have so far defined Mr Trump's presidency, one foreign policy issue stands out - North Korea. When ranking the number of mentions by country, North Korea (31) comes second only to Russia (90, although most Russia tweets relate to the US domestic political debate) and it beats China (27) into a close third place. With the president now warning of "fire and fury", we thought it was time for a Reality Check on this constant and evolving insight into his thinking. What does his Twitter feed @realDonaldTrump tell us about the assumptions and beliefs behind his approach to one of the most pressing security issues of our time? So we're training our reality radar on four of his key North Korea messages since being elected. On 5 August 2017, President Trump declared the UN had agreed a sanctions package that would cost North Korea $1bn. This latest set of sanctions, agreed unanimously by the UN Security Council, was heralded by Mr Trump as a diplomatic victory - the culmination of months of work to try to get China on side. There is no doubt that the measures are considerably tougher. They include, for example, the removal of the civilian "livelihood" exemption in the previous sanctions package that allowed North Korea and China to continue trading coal and iron ore in large volumes. But $1bn of difference? Although the figure was supported by at least two other Security Council members (France and Japan), as always the extent of the economic pain inflicted will depend entirely on the willingness of China, North Korea's biggest trading partner, to enforce the new sanctions. Reality Check Verdict: Close enough. The $1bn figure is a best-case scenario, for President Trump, but the sanctions do represent a significant shift, on paper at least. Since his inauguration, President Trump's tweets on China's performance regarding North Korea have veered from high optimism to angry pessimism, and back again. In July 2017, his frustration was front and centre as he tweeted: "Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter. So much for China working with us - but we had to give it a try!" This goes right to the nub of the issue of China's enforcement of sanctions. There are some signs that China is beginning to bow to pressure when it comes to general trade, such as commodities. Earlier this year, it did finally stop buying North Korean coal, a major source of foreign currency for Pyongyang, and for the first half of this year, China said its total imports of all goods fell by 13.2%, as reported in the Chinese state newspaper the Global Times. But North Korea is still a long way from being squeezed until its pips squeak. Mr Trump was (almost) right about the 40% increase in total two-way trade with China in the first quarter. The actual figure, according to the Global Times, was 37.4%, although it added that this figure bucked an overall downward trend since 2014, and by May the increase for 2017 so far had dropped to 13.7%. But the same state media editorial makes it clear that pushing Pyongyang to the limit is "not what the UN resolutions are intended to do, nor what the Chinese public wants". President Trump's statements that China could do more are backed up by the views of many other observers. A 2017 UN report linked North Korean rocket components to Chinese companies. There are other credible claims, including one by C4ADS, about the continuing transfer of technology via China. Reality Check Verdict: Spot on. China's stated priority is stability in North Korea, not regime collapse. It is never going to push its old ally too hard. Mr Trump's suspicious barbs are justified. President Trump's tweet in April that if China "want to solve the North Korean problem, they will" is another aspect of his thinking/tweeting that needs testing - his basic premise that, if properly applied, economic pressure might persuade North Korea to give up its weapons programme. Going by North Korea's own words, this seems unlikely. Pyongyang makes it clear via its state news agency KCNA that it sees nuclear weapons as an issue of regime survival. It has learned lessons from the toppling of Saddam Hussein in the non-nuclear armed Iraq, and of Col Muammar Gaddafi after he had given up his weapons programmes in Libya. And it has shown it is nothing if not resilient, enduring a devastating famine during the 1990s throughout which it continued developing its missiles and rockets. The more that sanctions can be made to push North Korea to the brink, and the more alarming and believable the hints of regime change from Washington, the more compelling becomes the logic of a credible nuclear deterrent by which to gain strategic leverage. Reality Check Verdict: Wide of the mark. While sanctions may delay and frustrate North Korea's attempts to gain nuclear-tipped missiles, they are unlikely on their own to stop them. Mr Trump's first tweet about North Korea after his election in November last year set it out as his key foreign policy priority. After North Korea said, in January, that it had successfully miniaturised nuclear warheads that could reach the US, he said "it won't happen". It goes hand in hand with his claim that, in the mission to disarm North Korea, his administration will succeed where his predecessors have failed. What is certainly the case is that North Korea's decades-old nuclear weapons programme has been significantly ramped up under Kim Jong-un and is now at a critical phase. It has startled experts with the speed of its progress, with many now saying it has recently proved it has long-range missiles capable of reaching major US cities. According to information leaked to the Washington Post, US intelligence officials now believe North Korea's claim that it has the technology to fit its missiles with nuclear warheads. Japan's defence ministry has also recently stated this is a possibility. And the varied geographical spread of its test firings has also led to concerns. The Nuclear Threat Initiative has analysed the locations of the tests, and says they could indicate that North Korea is now working in earnest towards rolling out its weapons to missile units around the country in preparation to deploy them. The stakes couldn't be higher, and yet the messages coming from the Trump administration are confusingly mixed. Just a week before Mr Trump spoke of "fire and fury" his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, told a press conference: "We're trying to convey to the North Koreans, 'We are not your enemy, we are not your threat.'" Mr Tillerson has also been suggesting that the door to dialogue with North Korea might have been left open a crack. That latter road, of course, would lead to the same set of imperfect choices that has bedevilled every US president since the first George Bush. In the end, all administrations have had to deal with the realities as they find them - a reluctant China, a determined and resilient North Korea and the incalculable cost in human life of any kind of military solution. Many seasoned North Korean observers are hoping that Mr Trump too comes to realise that the reason his predecessors have failed is precisely because there are no easy solutions. Reality Check Verdict: Failed. As for not allowing a nuclear North Korea on his watch, our radar detects that for this particular Trump tweet, it is already too late. Read more from Reality Check Follow us on Twitter

उत्तर कोरिया के परमाणु मिसाइल कार्यक्रम पर बयानबाजी के तेज होने के साथ, बीबीसी बीजिंग के संवाददाता जॉन सुडवर्थ ने अमेरिकी राष्ट्रपति डोनाल्ड ट्रम्प के प्रमुख संदेशों का परीक्षण करने के लिए ट्विटर की ओर रुख किया।


Manchester Victoria stabbings: Man in court

Summary: A man has appeared in court accused of attempting to murder three people in Manchester on New Year's Eve.

A couple in their fifties, and a police officer, were stabbed at Victoria railway station at 21:00 BST. Mahdi Mohamud, 25, faces three counts of attempted murder and a terror charge after a manual entitled "the seven most lethal ways to strike with a knife" was allegedly found in his possession. The defendant, of Cheetham Hill, was remanded at Oxford Crown Court. He is due to stand trial from 25 November.

मैनचेस्टर में नववर्ष की पूर्व संध्या पर तीन लोगों की हत्या का प्रयास करने के आरोप में एक व्यक्ति अदालत में पेश हुआ है।


Nato looks east (and south)

Summary: There's a certain irony that this latest Nato summit is being held in Warsaw. Now the capital of one of the alliance's newer, more dynamic members, it was also the city that gave its name to the Warsaw Pact - the Soviet Union's alliance of communist states, formed in 1955, that was ranged against Nato during the Cold War.

By Jonathan MarcusDefence and diplomatic correspondent Tensions between the Atlantic alliance and Moscow are growing again. Russia's seizure of the Crimea and the involvement of its troops in the fighting in eastern Ukraine has in Nato's view "torn up the rule-book" for the way security matters are dealt with in the post-Cold War world. Poland - now an active Nato member - finds itself very much on the front line. And it is the perceived threat from Russia to the east that is going to dominate much of this summit. Just what kind of threat is it? The answer is complex. It is not so much that Russian tanks are suddenly going to start rolling westwards. The fear is of a so-called "hybrid crisis"; something less than full-scale war. A typical scenario "war gamed" is of infiltration by Russian special forces into one of Nato's Baltic members - Estonia, for example, where there is a significant Russian-speaking minority. Unrest leads to violence; Russian-speakers are killed; and one morning Nato wakes up to find that over-night a Russian "peace-keeping" force has seized a town like Narva, near the Russian border, to "protect" the local population. So what does the alliance do then? Military experts believe that the Baltic States are almost impossible to defend against a rapidly-mobilised Russian attack. So the aim at this summit is to try to convince the Russians that Nato means business; that after years of being more focussed on "out of area" operations - Afghanistan and so on - Nato nations are now serious about their collective defence. That means money and presence. Nato's Wales Summit two years ago decided the initial response to Russia's actions in Ukraine. Exercises were stepped up. Nato's rapidly-deployable reaction forces were expanded and given the capacity to move at even shorter notice. The US is deploying additional troops and equipment to Europe. And many Nato countries are slowly beginning to spend a little more on their defence budgets. The Warsaw Summit will consolidate and expand upon these steps. Details will be announced for the deployment of four multi-national battalions to the three Baltic states and Poland. These units, led by the UK, the US, Germany, and Canada, are to be in place during early 2017. This will only involve a little over 3,000 troops. But they represent a trip-wire on the ground; a signal that if Russia moves west then Nato, collectively, will be involved. Steps will also be taken to bolster Nato defences in south-eastern Europe. Romania is to establish a multi-national training brigade involving US and other forces. There is also growing concern at Russia's air and naval activities in the Black Sea, though more work needs to be done here post-Warsaw before the alliance has a consolidated plan for the region. The Russians of course insist that the danger of conflict is coming the other way. It is Nato's expansion eastwards - and now its almost perpetual pattern of exercises in the Baltic States and eastern Europe - that is stoking up tension. But Nato insists that the fault is Russia's. It seized and annexed the territory of a sovereign state. Everything Nato is doing, it insists, is to reassure its worried eastern members and the only way to do that is to bolster deterrence. That's not to say that there are not differences within the alliance. Parts of the German government are uneasy about what even the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called Nato "sabre-rattling". In the wake of this summit, there will be another Nato-Russia meeting and Berlin and Paris in particular want to see a strong diplomatic effort made to try to reduce tensions and re-build bridges with Russia. The message for Moscow from Warsaw will be a dual one; determination but also a genuine desire for dialogue. Another potential fault line in Nato is that between the "north" and the "south" - ie those countries fearful of a direct Russian threat, and those more concerned by the chaos and instability just across the Mediterranean. Here the emphasis is less upon hard military defence and more on projecting stability and enhancing security partnerships with countries in North Africa like Tunisia and Jordan. Nato looks set to begin some training of the Iraqi military inside Iraq itself - it's already doing this in Jordan - and Nato Awacs radar-and-command aircraft are to join the air campaign against so-called Islamic State - though only flying over Turkish or international airspace. In recognition of the mounting concerns about cyber attack, Nato will designate cyber a separate domain of operations, alongside land, air and maritime. Cyber defence is going to figure much more prominently in Nato thinking in the future. This could be an important component of any Russian hybrid-attack against the Baltics, for example. But the Warsaw Summit will only take some initial steps; there is still much about cyber warfare that is vague and ill-defined. How far is this to be a responsibility of national governments, for example, and how much a responsibility for the alliance as a whole? EU-Nato cooperation will also figure significantly at this summit. As one Nato insider commented, "This is hardly heroic stuff". It's the bureaucracy of defence cooperation, if you like. But such cooperation is politically important and will grow in the future. Indeed, this could take on an even greater importance if the UK does leave the EU. Britain is by far and away the European Union's most capable military actor. It will remain a major player in Nato. But there are worries that the Brexit decision could send a signal of disarray at a time when the West is seeking to present a united front. So the hope is that anything that strengthens Nato-EU ties should strengthen European defence as a whole.

एक निश्चित विडंबना यह है कि यह नवीनतम नाटो शिखर सम्मेलन वारसॉ में आयोजित किया जा रहा है। अब गठबंधन के नए, अधिक गतिशील सदस्यों में से एक की राजधानी, यह वह शहर भी था जिसने 1955 में गठित सोवियत संघ के साम्यवादी राज्यों के गठबंधन, वारसॉ समझौते को अपना नाम दिया, जो शीत युद्ध के दौरान नाटो के खिलाफ था।


Whatever happened to local TV?

Summary: A decade ago, a plan for new local TV channels to provide "a new voice for local communities" was set out by the government. Since they launched, the local identities and ambitions of many have eroded, but their operators insist they have fulfilled the original aim.

By Ian YoungsEntertainment & arts reporter TV channels for towns and cities around the UK would "transform lots of communities", broadcast leadership debates for councils and police commissioners, and provide "probably the biggest shake-up in our broadcasting landscape for two decades". That was the idea behind local TV - Jeremy Hunt's big idea as culture secretary 10 years ago. Since then, 34 stations have launched from Manchester to Maidstone, Bristol to Belfast, each given a prime slot on the Freeview TV guide. However, many soon struggled financially and have been hit further by the pandemic, meaning local programming has been pared back. Now, many viewers probably don't realise they are watching a local channel at all. The biggest operator has removed the locations from its channel names - so That's Manchester, That's Swansea Bay, That's Hampshire and the company's other 17 stations are all now simply known as That's TV, while the company bills itself on its website as "the home of classic TV". That's TV's only local programming is now a 10-minute news bulletin every weekday, with the rest of the schedule being a diet of nostalgic music videos and teleshopping. That's TV chief executive Daniel Cass says he cut local programming to the single 6pm bulletin for each channel because of Covid. "We're working really hard to deliver the best possible news service we can during the pandemic," he says. His channels are "maintaining the absolute minimum staffing to get a news programme out within very limited office space", he explains. But it was proving impossible to keep their previous schedule, which relied heavily on repeats, up-to-date when news about the pandemic changed so fast. Regulator Ofcom has relaxed broadcasters' commitments during the pandemic. The BBC also cut back on some regional programming for a spell and is separately making permanent cuts to its regional programming. And London's local TV service, London Live, has cut its news entirely during the pandemic, and was censured by Ofcom for a "potentially harmful" interview with conspiracy theorist David Icke. Once the pandemic is over, however, Mr Cass says his channels will go back to broadcasting the number of local hours that are required by Ofcom. But the challenges and concerns about the local-ness of local stations existed before Covid. That's TV snapped up most of its 20 Ofcom local licences after the original broadcasters found it wasn't commercially viable to run a small, truly local operation. In 2019, That's TV and other channels asked Ofcom for permission to cut their local programming, and That's TV lost some of its studios. 'Forgotten' towns and cities By February 2020, That's Manchester was airing half an hour of local news a day - which was repeated, with occasional small adjustments, over several hours. Syndicated generic documentaries and teleshopping filled the rest of the schedule. While some might have hoped for more fulsome local news, discussion and lifestyle programming, Mr Hunt actually originally said channels could broadcast local shows for as little as an hour a day, with the rest coming from a syndicated national schedule. Also at the outset, Ofcom said the content of the single hour didn't all even have to be new. The regulator said a 15-minute bulletin repeated four times could count as each day's hour of original local programming, as long as it was updated if necessary. So local TV channels could make as little as a quarter of an hour of local TV a day. Even the current 10-minute bulletin - including adverts - is more dedicated local TV news than viewers in areas like Scarborough or Salisbury get from the BBC or ITV, Mr Cass adds. "We are delivering a voice for 'forgotten' towns and cities that is entirely consistent with the government and Ofcom's vision for local TV," he says. Elsewhere, channels in another eight areas including Liverpool, Leeds and Bristol are run by Local Television Ltd, which is chaired by former Daily Mirror chief executive David Montgomery. They each make a half-hour bulletin mixing local and national stories, which is repeated for six hours every weekday over breakfast, lunchtime and early evening. "The local stories lead and the national stories support, and there are more local stories than national," says chief executive Lesley Mackenzie. She says features during the pandemic have included State of the Streets, showing viewers how busy their town centres and parks are; vox pops to gather local views; and exercise videos for the elderly in the north-east. Rather than sitting in studios, Local TV Ltd's presenters film their reports on the streets on iPhones, edit them on iPads, and will upload them to websites and social media as well as putting them on air. "The old-fashioned model was not sustainable but we're moving to a much more lean, mean and efficient [model]," Ms Mackenzie says. 'On a shoestring' Meanwhile, most of the rest of the day's schedules are filled by Judge Judy repeats and generic documentaries. "Our ambition is constrained through funding, and I do believe we do offer a voice for local communities," she adds. The company is so confident in the appeal of local TV that it even launched a new channel in Manchester on Freeview channel 99 last week to rival That's TV, which fills the city's official local slot on channel seven. In Sheffield, Belfast, Nottingham, Brighton and Maidstone, independent local channels have managed to keep going, often working with volunteers or students to make more local programming then their larger counterparts. Maidstone's KMTV has a partnership with the University of Kent, and screens programmes covering local news, sport, business and politics, as well as one-offs like an overnight 2019 general election results show. "We did that on an absolute shoestring," says KMTV's David Powell, who also chairs the Local TV Network, the sector's trade association. "It was hard work, but we did it. We covered all of our local MPs' counts and got interviews with them so our loyal audience - which by 5am probably wasn't that great - got local perspectives and they gained something from that. "Our local MPs and local councillors who appear [on KMTV] value it immensely. It's a chance to get their voice out and we can interrogate them and ask them difficult questions." But the channel can only survive thanks to journalism students and a contract with the university to carry out other filming and run virtual open days. "We would love to do more local content but we've got no money for it," Mr Powell says. "We've got a lot of people saying, we want local democracy, we want local broadcasting. But actually there is never the resource to go with it." The government asked the BBC to subsidise the local network at first, but the last of the corporation's £37.7m funding was paid last summer. And many who were sceptical about the success of local TV a decade ago have not changed their minds. 'A silly idea' Ed Vaizey, who was a culture minister when Mr Hunt came up with the idea, thinks the government has "completely forgotten about it". Lord Vaizey now sits on the House of Lords communications committee, and admits he has too. "I thought local TV was a silly idea from the get-go," he says. "We don't have the right ecosystem in the UK to support local television and it never really took off in any shape or form. "Local TV might have made some difference in that it might have given media opportunities to young people who might not have otherwise got those experiences, and might have occasionally produced new content. But I've long ago lost touch with local TV." The channels are "taking up an important space" on the Freeview guide, he adds. "I think the government should grab this by the scruff of the neck and make a decision, either to rejuvenate it or to let it go, and I suspect the answer is to let it go and look at much better opportunities to support local journalism." Steven Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster, agrees that local TV hasn't lived up to expectations. "It was a nonsense plan from the beginning, frankly," he says. Hits and misses "One by one all the stations have gone to Ofcom cap in hand and said, 'Please will you relax the various requirements [for] local content and local journalism?' "The other thing that happened is consolidation. It's become one organisation running the show centrally with tiny local opt-outs now and then. "The idea of a genuine commitment to serving the local community, providing information or getting local entertainment was great, but he [Mr Hunt] just never trusted ordinary local people with the money and the organisational ability to do it." Kerry Traynor from the University of Liverpool's Department of Communication and Media says she was "one of the optimists", but that the economics of local TV were "always going to be a challenge". "I would have liked to have seen it survive with more public subsidy," she says, citing government support that has allowed greater grassroots local involvement in countries like Germany, Spain and Canada. "There are some with strong local roots that are still going, still pushing through, like Brighton, Sheffield and Belfast," she says. "There have been many others that have just been bought up and applications have been made to Ofcom to reduce the local programming and local content. There have been some hits and some... not-so-hits." A decade ago, the promise to "transform lots of communities" may have raised expectations to an unrealistic level - but local TV operators insist they are following the core of Jeremy Hunt's original idea. "We're trying to run it as a commercially viable business consistent with the vision for local TV that Jeremy Hunt set out, which is some local news within a network channel," Mr Cass says. "His vision was very clear and precise and we're following it to the letter."

एक दशक पहले, सरकार द्वारा नए स्थानीय टीवी चैनलों के लिए "स्थानीय समुदायों के लिए एक नई आवाज" प्रदान करने की योजना बनाई गई थी। जब से उन्होंने शुरुआत की है, कई लोगों की स्थानीय पहचान और महत्वाकांक्षाएं कम हो गई हैं, लेकिन उनके संचालकों का कहना है कि उन्होंने मूल उद्देश्य को पूरा किया है।


The Changing Face of Wales: How Welsh do you feel?

Summary: How Welsh are you? And what does it feel like?

By Felicity EvansPolitical editor, Wales In BBC Cymru Wales' annual St David's Day poll, almost half of those born in Wales told us they saw themselves as either entirely Welsh or more Welsh than British. So as part of our Changing Face of Wales season of stories, we thought we'd ask people to describe what their nationality means to them. And guess what? It's hard to describe "Welshness". That's why we often end up relying on cliches. But the brave souls we spoke to were willing to give it a try. Once we got past daffodils and Welshcakes, it emerged that feeling Welsh is complicated. Like all national identities, it's about a sense of belonging to a community. But, at the same time, each of us experiences it differently because it's also part of our personal identity. Welsh-language music artist Eadyth, 21, was born in England, with Bajan heritage, before moving to west Wales as a child. She now lives in Merthyr Vale . "I think it's been quite difficult for me growing up and trying to identify myself as Welsh or English," she said. "I found myself through Welsh language singing and I think I'm really proud to be able to call myself Welsh now and I think I've been adopted by Wales. "I'm really happy to be able to project all my emotions and feelings through the Welsh language." She said being Welsh had given her "something to really look up to" and had given her that "special something in my life". Within the 1,000 people questioned for the annual BBC Poll, 676 were from Wales. Of those asked, 21% said they felt Welsh not British, 27% said they felt more Welsh than British and 44% felt equally British and Welsh. The remaining 7% felt more British or exclusively British. Opinions were just as split when we spoke to students at Cardiff and Vale College. Shanice Williams, of Newport, said she felt more British, saying: "I don't sound Welsh, I don't speak Welsh I really don't know anything about Wales." Whereas Cameron Ware, who is studying his A-levels, said: "I definitely do feel Welsh. I'm from this country, I'm very proud of where I'm from. Usually you do get labelled 'British'. "It doesn't bother me entirely, but when people say 'British', I do mix that in with 'English'." Changing Face of Wales: Is racial prejudice alive and kicking? Meanwhile, several students told us they feel both Welsh and British. And there was an equally mixed picture when we spoke to people in Rhyl, Denbighshire. Benjamin Jones said: "I can honestly say, I feel more British than I feel Welsh," while Emma-Louise Luff, who was born in Abergavenny but who now lives in Rhyl, said she feels "more Welsh". Author Jon Gower, who has written books about Wales, said it was one of the nation's "darker secrets" that "we're actually pretty British". "Cardiff, when it comes to royal occasions, is second on the list in the UK in terms of cities that apply for licences to celebrate royal events. "If you couple that with the Brexit vote, the alignment there was very clearly with England, then there is very much a 'Britishness' in play in Wales." Mr Gower said defining our own sense of Welshness could be challenging in a nation that gets so much news and culture from London. He said the traditional signifiers only take us so far: "A little bit of rugby, we used to go to chapel, we used to mine coal. Trying to work out who we are now is a complex thing." But for him, it is worth the effort: "My response to being Welsh is an emotional one... for a small place it's packed with history and culture and richness." And that history is important to Sion Llewellyn from Pontycymer, Bridgend county. He makes traditional love spoons and he's proud to preserve one of the best-known badges of Welsh identity, "like daffodils and dragons". He takes his work around the world and gets an equally enthusiastic reception whether he is at the national Eisteddfod or in Japan. "I'm an ambassador for Wales," he said. "It's a centuries-old tradition… it is part of our identity, really."

आप कैसे वेल्श हैं? और यह कैसा लगता है?


Coronavirus: How India's lockdown sparked a debate over maids

Summary: At the weekend, India extended the nationwide coronavirus lockdown by another fortnight, but said that domestic helpers can now return to work. The decision has had millions of middle-class homes debating a key question - to let the workers in or not? The BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi explains the dilemma.

A friend once said that if she had to choose between her husband and her maid, she would pick the latter. The comment was made as a joke, but it's an example of how much Indians depend on their domestic helpers. According to official estimates, more than four million people are employed as domestic helpers, often for very little money, in middle-class and affluent Indian homes. Unofficial estimates put that number at a whopping 50 million. Two-thirds of these workers are women. The relationship between the maid and the "mistress/master" is one of interdependence - extreme poverty compels unskilled slum-dwellers and rural poor to seek employment as domestic help as a way of earning a living and for the middle-class, it provides cheap labour that keeps their homes running smoothly. But for the past six weeks, millions of middle-class homes have had to manage without their maids, cooks, nannies, nurses, drivers and gardeners as India imposed a strict nationwide lockdown to arrest the spread of the coronavirus. To begin with most accepted the restrictions, thinking it was just for three weeks. Some Bollywood stars even posted Instagram videos of themselves, cooking and cleaning and doing the dishes. But with the lockdown extended twice already, and the idea sinking in that this is going to be a long haul, middle-class India has begun to miss the maids. Conversation has also veered towards how elderly people living alone are coping. And how those in poor health are managing without help. Then, there is the distress that domestic helpers are facing, leaving them with little choice but to get back to work. "Many have lost their jobs and many others say they are not being paid salaries for the lockdown period," Meenakshi Gupta Jain, chief of Helper4U, an online platform that links domestic workers with employers, told the BBC. For the past month, their Covid Helpline WhatsApp number has been receiving 10 to 15 messages daily from maids, drivers and cooks seeking help. "They say they have run out of money. What do we do? How do we feed our children? We guide them to local charities in their area who can help them get some free ration or cooking gas," Ms Gupta Jain says. Sonika Verma, a domestic helper in Delhi who resumed work on Monday, says she counts herself as lucky since her employers have paid her salary for the lockdown period. "I was very tense all these weeks. My husband drives an auto-rickshaw, but he's been sitting at home because autos are not allowed to ply. I also couldn't go to work and I was afraid what would we do if I lost my job too," she told me. Her sisters, she says, have not been paid for the lockdown period. "Their employers paid them for the number of days they had worked in March and didn't pay anything for April. They also said they would pay only once they resume work, but they haven't called them back to work yet," she said. The reason her sisters have not been called back to work yet is because there is a raging debate taking place in many residential societies over whether it's prudent to allow domestic helpers to come into people's homes or not? Some have pointed out that "restrictions may be gone, but the coronavirus hasn't" and letting people in from the outside of their gated middle-class colonies could bring in the deadly Covid-19 virus to an area which has so far managed to remain infection-free. But, some residential groups say the needs of the old and infirm cannot be ignored. Most Indian middle-class homes are not equipped with gadgets like dishwashers and washing machines and housework can be tough for them. Anil Tiwari, president of the posh ATS Greens building society in Noida on the outskirts of the Indian capital, Delhi, says they are "positively thinking about allowing the maids to come in". "We have 735 apartments and there are many senior citizens who live here alone. Many of them are facing a lot of hardships so we have to take that into account." Among them is Brigadier (retired) Kuldeep Singh Chokkar who describes his situation as "extremely challenging". He's 80, a cancer survivor with a pacemaker, and lives with his wife who's "75 and has her own health issues". "If we were younger, we'd manage fine, but we are facing a lot of problems maintaining our home," he told me over the phone. Until the lockdown, Brig Chokkar had a part-time maid, a gardener and a car cleaner coming in daily. "Absolutely," he says when I ask him if he is looking forward to their return. "It will make my life a lot easier." My neighbour, retired school teacher Pinki Bhatia, is a little worried, though, about opening her doors to outside help just yet. She has a bad back and has been struggling to manage without any help, she told me. "But we have no choice. We've been doing everything on our own - cooking, sweeping, swabbing, dishes and laundry." Mrs Bhatia is in her mid-60s and her husband is over 70, hypertensive and has heart problems. The government advisory on coronavirus says those above 60 are more at risk of infection and should not go out, so the couple have been confined to their home for the past six weeks. "A neighbour's driver helps us by bringing milk and groceries from the local market," Mrs Bhatia said. She is in two minds about whether to let her maid return to work or not. "My children live in Mumbai and Switzerland. I called them and asked them, 'what should we do'? They said, 'let's wait for another week and see how things unfold'. So we are going to wait another week," she said. Ms Gupta Jain says when refuse collectors and vegetable vendors are allowed to come in, why are maids and drivers being penalised? "You give them masks and hand sanitisers and a set of clothing that they can wear when in your home. You take all the precautions. But it's time to let them back in."

सप्ताहांत में, भारत ने राष्ट्रव्यापी कोरोनावायरस लॉकडाउन को एक और पखवाड़े के लिए बढ़ा दिया, लेकिन कहा कि घरेलू सहायक अब काम पर लौट सकते हैं। इस निर्णय से लाखों मध्यम वर्ग के घरों में एक महत्वपूर्ण सवाल पर बहस हो रही है-श्रमिकों को अंदर जाने देना या नहीं? दिल्ली में बीबीसी की गीता पांडे दुविधा की व्याख्या करती हैं।


Viewpoint: India must stop denying caste and gender violence

Summary: When I think of Badaun, the small village in India's Uttar Pradesh state near the spot where two young girls were raped and then hanged from a mango tree , one detail out of all of the horror is inescapable: their deaths were by no means inevitable.

By Nilanjana S Roy Writer The cousins were members of a caste grouping known as Other Backward Classes (OBC), low on the caste totem pole, which made them fatally vulnerable to the men from the far more privileged Yadav caste, accused of their rapes and lynchings. The girls had gone out to the fields late at night as is the practice in places where there are no indoor toilets. The simple act of going somewhere - to see a film in a city mall, to buy soap at a small-town shop - can be weighted with risk for women. Many girls and women wait until night before going to the open fields to relieve themselves, in order to avoid predators. It does not always work. According to a Reuters report, when the girls did not come back, the father of one went to report the missing children to the police. The constable on duty slapped him and sent him away. This is the detail that cannot be forgotten. Not isolated If the father had not been from a less privileged caste, if the police had searched for the girls, they might have been found before their assailants hanged them from the tree on the village common. The media frenzy around the deaths in Badaun, and the outpouring of public anger, marks a return to the reporting of gender and caste violence in India. As terrible as the lynchings in Badaun are, this incident was not an isolated one. Nor had the killings and caste atrocities inflicted by high-caste perpetrators against lower-caste or tribal men, women and children miraculously ceased over the last four months. The preceding months had seen their full freight of witch-burnings, caste rapes and other caste-driven acts of terror against men, women and children, domestic violence cases and dowry deaths. But the media's attention had been fixed on the elections. There was a pause in the otherwise constant, disturbing flow of news stories on gender violence (chiefly rape). Just as dowry deaths had been the crime that haunted India across the 1980s, rape - especially gang rape in rural or urban India - has become the crime that defines this decade. And the lynchings in Badaun, which happened at the intersection of caste, poverty and rape, might reverberate longer than many equally tragic crimes. But the Badaun crimes highlighted two factors common to many similar atrocities: the refusal of the chiefly privileged caste police officers to intervene in time to save the lives of victims from less powerful castes, and the determination of the local community, however underprivileged, to force a response from an indifferent state and civil society. In Badaun, the villagers had sat in a tight closed circle around the mango tree, refusing to let the bodies of their girls be taken down, until the authorities and the media had to pay attention. Today, the families of the girls face threats, and rumours trying - cynically - to pin the killings on them. The assertions follow the same pattern in big-city cases of rape: the intent is to exonerate the accused men and to blame the girls' own families for their killings. The price communities perceived as powerless pay for demanding justice is high: they are often exposed to threats and violence. In Delhi, after the gang rape of four young Dalit (formerly "untouchable") women from the village of Bhagana, about 80 families fled the village and camped in the heart of the capital along with the rape survivors, determined to tell their story. Entrenched indifference Almost every major caste atrocity of the last four or five years that has been covered by the media has followed a similar pattern: locals going on strike, or blocking the roads, often leaving jobs and wages they could ill afford to abandon, in order to fight for some sort of redress. The Bhagana families face entrenched indifference. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav, sparked outrage when he asked a woman reporter why she cared about the Badaun lynchings: "It's not as if you faced any danger?" His remarks were as revealing as they were reprehensible. Indians who are not directly at risk of harm - protected by the privilege of caste, affluence or power - are not expected to care about those who lack these protections. India has a long history of overlooking or dismissing the deliberate sexual violence inflicted on women in religious riots, and an equally long history of ignoring the torture, lynchings and murders of men, women and children from less privileged castes across the country. One of the most horrifying aspects of the Badaun crimes is how normal they are, fitting the general pattern of caste crimes. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) records crimes against scheduled castes and scheduled tribes - the most disadvantaged groups - in a separate category. These crimes are grievously under-reported, but even so the figures for 2012 are revealing: 651 cases of murder, 3,855 cases where people were hurt, 1,576 cases of rape, 490 cases of kidnapping and abduction, and 214 cases of arson. The need to end the collective denial is urgent if the country is to acknowledge just how widespread the epidemic of violence is, and how savage the caste and gender wars have become. Those at the receiving end of the ropes and the flames are so often the poorest, the most marginalised, the most profoundly silenced. In Delhi last week, the families from Bhagana were briefly evicted from their place of protest. The police had been casually violent; a complaint alleges that the protesters, many of them women, were beaten and sexually assaulted by police officers. After some negotiation, they were allowed to continue with the protest. "We can't go back to our village," Mr Ved Pal Tanwar, one of the Bhagana villagers, said. "It isn't possible. It isn't safe. But we have to keep telling our story until something changes for our community." Nilanjana S Roy

जब मैं बदायूं के बारे में सोचता हूं, जो भारत के उत्तर प्रदेश राज्य का वह छोटा सा गाँव है जहाँ दो युवा लड़कियों के साथ बलात्कार किया गया था और फिर उन्हें आम के पेड़ से लटका दिया गया था, तो सभी भयावहताओं में से एक विवरण अपरिहार्य हैः उनकी मौत किसी भी तरह से अपरिहार्य नहीं थी।


China's secret aid empire uncovered

Summary: China has a long list of state secrets - how many people it puts to death every year, and even the birthdays of its top leaders. But now, overseas researchers have uncovered another Chinese state secret: how much money Beijing gives in aid to other countries.

By Celia HattonBBC News Not very long ago, China was a foreign aid recipient. Now, it rivals the United States as one of the world's largest donors, through traditional development aid or through financial loans. For the first time, a large group of researchers outside China have compiled a major database detailing virtually all of China's financial money flow to recipient countries. Citing more than 5,000 projects found across 140 countries, it reveals that China and the US rival each other in terms of how much they offer to other countries. However, "they spend those budgets in radically different ways. And the different compositions of those portfolios have far-reaching consequences", explains Brad Parks, the project's chief researcher. He heads the AidData research lab at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, which teamed up with other researchers at Harvard University and the University of Heidelberg in Germany to complete the research. How did they uncover the secret? The AidData team had to develop its own methodology to answer the questions that weren't provided by the Chinese government. They tracked money flows from China to recipient countries using news reports, official embassy documents and aid and debt information from China's counterparts. Piece by painstaking piece, the information came together to draw a relatively complete picture of where Chinese aid is going and what impact it's having. "We think the methodology has revealed the known knowable universe," Brad Parks says. "If the Chinese government really wants to conceal something, we won't necessarily pick it up." But if there are sizeable money transfers going from China to a recipient country, "word is going to get out", he adds. How does China hand out money? One major finding from the study: China and the US, the world's biggest donor, have handed out similar amounts of money in the years covered in the database, but the countries distribute that money in radically different ways. The vast majority (93%) of US financial aid fits under the traditional definition of aid that's agreed upon by all Western industrialised countries. That aid is given with the main goal of developing the economic development and welfare of recipient countries. At least a quarter of that money represents a direct grant, not a loan that needs to be repaid. In contrast, only a small portion (21%) of the money that China gives to other countries can be considered as traditional aid. And the rest of that money? The "lion's share" of that money is given in commercial loans that have to be repaid to Beijing with interest. "China wants to get attractive economic returns on its capital," Brad Parks explains. And what does that money achieve? The team's other major finding: when China gives out traditional aid, the recipient countries reap impressive economic rewards. For a long period, there were suspicions that Chinese aid projects were only set up to benefit China; infrastructure projects built by imported Chinese workers, for instance, that did little to improve the lives of people on the ground. However, this research shows that China is just as capable of managing development aid projects as Western donors. Which countries are getting China's money? Since 2000, African countries have captured a large slice of the aid and loans given by China. However, China's wealth is distributed to points across the globe, from hospitals in Senegal to ports in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In 2014, the most recent year covered by AidData, Russia topped the recipient list, followed by Pakistan and Nigeria. In contrast, the US list in 2014 was topped by Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by Pakistan. Politics plays a big part in how both China and the US decide to spend their money. Earlier studies by the researchers behind AidData show that both Beijing and Washington tend to offer money to countries which support them at the United Nations. But for China, economics play a key role: the AidData researchers found Beijing is often focused on promoting Chinese exports or market rate loans where China wants to get the loan repaid with interest. The North Korea factor China is often cited as the main source of aid propping up the fragile North Korean economy. But the AidData researchers tracked down just 17 Chinese projects in North Korea over the 14-year period, totalling a measly $210m. Brad Parks calls North Korea "an informational black hole", admitting that it's the only recipient country that truly evaded the researchers. To a large extent, the vast amounts of money and other kinds of aid that China is believed to give North Korea fall outside the global financial system. Why is China's money so attractive? In the 1960s to the 1990s, Western countries offered high-interest market-rate loans to developing countries. However, that strategy misfired when recipient countries could not begin to repay the interest on the debts they had acquired. Outrage ensued and the Western aid model was overhauled. "There was a shared principle that we should not be offering market-rate loans to developing countries," Brad Parks says. "And now, here comes China, enter stage left. They're not part of that coalition. They haven't been socialised to that principle and they're very willing and able to provide loans near or at market rate. "Increasingly, countries that don't want to go the IMF for a bailout when they're in trouble, they will go to China instead." Will China continue to loan out money? So far, the data shows that the countries that receive China's market-rate loans are not suffering economically, but they aren't experiencing economic growth either. Researchers fear that could change in 10 or 15 years, when countries build up debts because they can't repay the money they will owe to Beijing. At that point, China might have to rethink things. "They may very well 10 years from now, or 15 years from now, encounter the same problems that Western donors and creditors encountered when loans are not getting repaid," Brad Parks explains. "If and when that point of reckoning occurs, then perhaps Beijing will revisit how it structures these loans." Already, researchers have uncovered signs that China's starting to shift its approach to lending, researcher Xiaojun Li from the University of British Columbia says. Increasingly, Beijing is lending through multilateral institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China's answer to the World Bank. Why does it matter if China becomes a big global lender? There is evidence that China's no-strings loans have had an effect on the entire global lending system, forcing traditional donors to stop placing so many requirements on receiving countries. Using AidData's database, economist Diego Hernandez revealed that China's role as a major lender has boosted competition between traditional donors. "When an African country is also assisted by China," he writes, "the World Bank provides fewer conditions attached to its loans". For every 1% increase in Chinese aid, Hernandez found the World Bank lessened its typical demands for things like market liberalisation or economic transparency by 15%. Critics have long charged that "rogue aid" from China allows some countries to avoid democratic reforms because they can simply turn to China for aid, dodging the scrutiny of traditional Western donors. Cambodia is a recent example; independent newspapers and western NGOs have been shuttered, as Cambodian leaders' strengthening ties with China embolden them to turn away from Washington's demands to hold fair elections. Xiaojun Li studied how Chinese aid has changed countries in Africa, arguing that democratic reforms have slowed as the developing countries concluded they could bypass the political demands of Western donors by turning to Chinese aid. "Traditional donors have criticised China's approach to aid," he says, but "many African countries embrace the assistance from Beijing, or at least are glad to have more options".

चीन के पास राज्य रहस्यों की एक लंबी सूची है-वह हर साल कितने लोगों की हत्या करता है, और यहां तक कि अपने शीर्ष नेताओं के जन्मदिन पर भी। लेकिन अब, विदेशी शोधकर्ताओं ने एक और चीनी राज्य रहस्य का खुलासा किया हैः बीजिंग अन्य देशों की सहायता के लिए कितना पैसा देता है।