Bangladesh textile workers' deaths 'avoidable'

Summary: Bangladesh's workers who sew clothes for Western consumers are amongst the lowest paid in the industry anywhere in the world. This week, hundreds died as a result of an accident that campaigners say could have been avoided.

By Emily YoungBBC News A building that housed suppliers of clothes to European and American retailers collapsed on Wednesday. According to one union leader, garment industry workers had been told to ignore the cracks in the walls and continue with work as normal. "The deaths as a result of the collapsed building in Bangladesh were a tragedy but not an accident," says Murray Worthy from the charity War on Want. He argues that the level of neglect and lack of regulation in the industry led to the disaster at the factory. It happened just five months after a fire at the Bangladeshi firm Tazreen Fashions in which more than 100 people were killed. Campaigners say that the rapid expansion of the industry over the past few years played a large role in this incident. It is a common occurrence for buildings to see illegal floors added, according to Sam Mahers from Labour Behind the Label. In this case, one minister alleged that the whole building was illegally constructed. "Many of these buildings are a death trap, often with no proper escape routes. So while this incident is shocking it is not surprising," Ms Mahers says. Labour Behind the Label is part of a campaign pushing for retailers to sign up to the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement. It argues for action that includes independent building inspections, training in workers' rights and "a long-overdue review of safety standards". So far, Germany's Tchibo and America's PVH Corp (owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger) have signed it. Employees in Bangladeshi factories are mainly women and conditions can be harsh, unions say. Although they are contracted to work eight hours a day, if an important order comes in workers are often forced to work up to 18 hours in a day, or on their day off, to finish the job. Supervisors monitor them closely, even down to the length of their toilet breaks, the BBC's Bangladesh correspondent Anbarasan Ethirajan explains. Competing on price The textile industry is an important one for the country, accounting for 17% of its gross domestic product (GDP) and more than three-quarters of total exports - most of which head to Europe and the US. The amount of exports has increased dramatically over the past 30 years. In 1985 they were worth less than $1bn, but by 2012 the figure was nearly $20bn. That is mainly thanks to the country's cheap labour. Bangladeshi textile employees are among the lowest-paid of their kind in the world. Sourcing Journal, a trade magazine for the textile manufacturing industry, points out that being cheap is the country's main way of remaining competitive against countries like China and Vietnam. Companies are increasingly looking for cheaper alternatives and that is Bangladesh's only advantage as wages rise in China, says its editor Edward Hertzmann. "It doesn't have a shorter lead-time nor does it produce any of the raw materials. The only way it can compete is on price. In some cases you get fabrics made in China and sent to Bangladesh to be stitched." So far it is not clear which Western retailers the factory in question supplies. The British retailer Primark has acknowledged that it had a contract, as well as Canada's Loblaw and Denmark's PWT Group. In a statement, Primark expressed concern for the families involved and said it "has been engaged for several years with NGOs and other retailers to review the Bangladeshi industry's approach to factory standards. Primark will push for this review to also include building integrity". US supermarket giant Wal-Mart says it is "investigating across our global supply chain to see if a factory in this building was currently producing for Wal-Mart". After the fire in Tazreen Fashions, which made clothes for the American company, the retailer terminated the contract with the supplier. Wal-Mart says it had subcontracted the work to the Tazreen factory without authorisation. Buying power Mr Hertzmann says that companies are starting to look more closely at their suppliers thanks to the number of campaigns on the issue and attention from the media. "It won't change overnight, but more and more companies are sending people to factories to inspect them first-hand. But subcontracting out the work is often the problem and makes policing very difficult." But what about the Western consumers who buy T-shirts for a few pounds or dollars? Improving protection for workers in Bangladesh could lead to a small increase in prices, says Mr Worthy from War on Want. "Our work suggests that most people in the UK would rather pay that [additional] cost than see this sort of human cost of cheap clothes," he argues. But, he adds that while consumers should make their voices heard, the burden is on companies to change the way they operate, not on consumers to shop around.

बांग्लादेश के मजदूर जो पश्चिमी उपभोक्ताओं के लिए कपड़े सिलते हैं, वे दुनिया में कहीं भी उद्योग में सबसे कम वेतन पाने वालों में से हैं। इस सप्ताह, सैकड़ों लोग एक दुर्घटना के परिणामस्वरूप मारे गए, जिसे अभियानकर्ताओं का कहना है कि टाला जा सकता था।


Jarl Squad heading for New York's Tartan Day parade

Summary: The Jarl Squad from Shetland's famous annual Up Helly Aa fire festival this year is to head to America next month to take part in the Tartan Day parade.

Up Helly Aa is a spectacular event that celebrates Shetland's Viking heritage and culminates with the dramatic burning of a replica Viking galley. It features a band of latter-day Viking warriors known as the Jarl Squad. They will march down 6th Avenue in New York, in full Viking regalia, on 6 April.

इस साल शेटलैंड के प्रसिद्ध वार्षिक अप हेली आ फायर फेस्टिवल के जार्ल दस्ते को टार्टन डे परेड में भाग लेने के लिए अगले महीने अमेरिका जाना है।


She pretends to have a baby for adoption - can she get help to stop?

Summary: Gabby has a nasty habit. She offers babies to couples who want to adopt… but it's a hoax, and the couples' hopes are suddenly dashed. Now people are putting pressure on her to stop and she is hoping, perhaps in vain, to get medical help.

By Naomi PallasBBC Stories In the US it's increasingly common for couples who want to adopt a baby to advertise themselves on social media, in the hope of connecting with a pregnant woman preparing to place a child for adoption. Last summer I spoke to several couples who had done this successfully - or so it seemed. All had received Instagram messages from a young woman in Georgia, offering them exactly what they wanted. Unfortunately, the images on the woman's Instagram accounts were stolen and behind each avatar lay Gabby, now 24, who was promising a child that didn't exist. Each of the accounts contained a followers' list full of distressed families. I wrote a story about what I had discovered, and hoped that it might prompt Gabby to stop deceiving people. I pictured her at home, reading the stories of grief-stricken couples who were already fragile from their infertility struggles. She'd realise the harm she'd done. She would feel ashamed. Perhaps she'd even apologise. After the article was published, Good Morning America invited one of Gabby's victims, Samantha Stewart, to repeat on their morning news show the story she'd told me. But four days after Samantha had blinked back tears in front of four million viewers, Gabby struck again. The Larter family in Iowa received her messages - and replied by sending her the article, which had been widely circulated among the adoption community. It seemed that nothing would stop her. But people are now trying. They range from total strangers, to close family and a television psychologist. Four years ago Gabby's brother, Paul, received some worrying Facebook messages about his youngest sister. A woman wrote that she had met Gabby a number of times over the summer, believing she was going to adopt Gabby's unborn child - she had even halted her fertility treatment to concentrate on this adoption. She claimed to have brought a crib and taken Gabby, then a high school student, shopping for baby clothes. But eventually she realised she had been tricked. Find out more Read the original article: The fake baby Instagram adoption scam Since then the same scenario has been repeated many times. In fact, Gabby says she started when she was 16, and by one estimate she has deceived hundreds of couples. Paul hasn't seen Gabby for about two years, but he and his other sister still get Facebook messages from her victims. So in October last year, they decided to take action, in the only way they could think of. Three days before Halloween, as other families across the US were stockpiling sweets and planning their costumes, they started a blog and made a single post: Beware of the Adoption Scam. "We, Gabby's family, don't know why she's doing these things. We've talked to her, begged her to stop, tried to tell her how much she is hurting people (including her own family). But she simply won't listen," reads the blog post. "We don't think there's any financial gain. She simply enjoys hurting people." Amy Senior and Kylie Zavadil know Gabby's avatars well, through their work with adoptive parents. They run an adoption website, and began collecting the names of clients she had tricked, with the initial aim of bringing a lawsuit against her. They were among the many people who searched for Gabby's family on social media. But instead of contacting her siblings, Kylie came across Gabby's father, Gene. What Gene told them made them wonder whether a lawsuit was the best solution to the problem. He explained that Gabby had problems with her physical and mental health. She had had surgery on her heart, he said, which made him reluctant to take her phone away in case she needed help, and he didn't earn enough, working at Walmart, to pay for the psychotherapy she clearly needed. When I speak to Gene he tells me that Gabby's heart problems mean that she cannot get pregnant, and that she may die young. "She has continually fooled me," he sighs. "Or maybe she did really believe she was going to stop every time she told me that she did. There've been periods when she hasn't done it, but something in her brain tells her that she needs to be pregnant, and she can't be.... That overwhelms her." He also says that he has now taken Gabby's data away, meaning she should be unable to get on the internet to contact people looking to adopt. As they talked to Gene, Amy and Kylie reasoned that it couldn't hurt to call Gabby, and ask her to stop. She wasn't the usual adoption scammer: she wasn't asking for money. Attention seemed to be what she was after. The women took turns to call her. Slowly, she began to open up and they began to speak regularly. Amy then put Gabby in touch with a producer from the Dr Phil TV show, who offered Gabby therapy if she took part. Dr Phil McGraw is a household name in America for his long-running talk show which gets people to face up to their problems in front of a live audience. Amy spoke to me in December, the weekend before she flew to California with Gabby and her father to film the episode. She saw it as a last resort for the family - the only way to get the healthcare Gabby needs. "I think she needs some substantial help, some real help," Gene agrees. "I'm not asking for handouts, I'm willing to do anything, work any hours, or relocate to get her the help she needs. I think she probably has a limited lifespan, and I want her to blossom as a person within that lifespan. I think she deserves that." The two-part show, titled The Adoption Imposter, aired this week. "I've done a lot of shows about lies, scams and deception over the years," Dr Phil opens. "But I've never done one quite like this." Gabby is reluctant to walk on to the set. She is uncommunicative and the show's producer says he cannot remember the last time he had such a volatile guest. Gene seems exhausted. The people promised fake babies, and the woman whose photos were stolen to enable this, wait for Gabby on-stage. She comes out, but she doesn't stay in her seat for long. She provides few answers. Despite this, Gabby is treated with sympathy by one deceived woman, Lauren, who was promised non-existent twins. "I have a huge heart for mental health and for special needs, and it breaks my heart that she is in this invisible prison," she tells the audience . "I don't want her to feel in prison in her own mind. It's sad." Gabby found the experience of being on Dr Phil exhausting. "It was worth it because I don't have to see him again, thank God, and I'm going to get the help I want," she says. In a series of phone calls, she tells me about her life, her attitude varying from petulant to reserved. But she always seems less mature than her 24 years. I ask the question many of those targeted by her schemes want to know. Why did she do it - why did she pretend to be pregnant? "I was in a dark spot and I wanted attention and someone to talk to," she says. She is unable to have children because of her heart condition, she continues, and she wanted to speak to women in a similar position. "It just gives me someone to talk to. I just sit at home all day. I don't have friends, so… I wouldn't say it's something to do - it's someone to talk to." I thought of Samantha Stewart, Gabby's victim who struggled to speak about their conversations without breaking down in tears. But despite telling me she can feel the pain of childless women, Gabby struggles to find any sympathy for those she tricked. When I ask if she would like to apologise, she immediately shuts the conversation down. Clips of Gabby's Dr Phil episodes uploaded to YouTube have also generated little sympathy for her. The comments posted underneath are overwhelmingly vicious, perhaps unfairly so given the problems she has faced in her life. I ask Gabby if she has pretended to be pregnant since filming the show last December. Eventually, she admits that she has. Sustained, long-term mental health care is what Gabby and her father both believe she needs, not the brief period of residential care she is set to receive from her appearance on Dr Phil. It seems she has little prospect of getting it. Follow Naomi Pallas on Twitter @naomi_pallas You may also be interested in: Last year Rose Kalemba wrote a blog post explaining how hard it had been - when she was raped as a 14-year-old girl - to get a video of the attack removed from a popular porn website. Dozens of people then contacted her to say that they were facing the same problem today. 'I was raped at 14 - the video ended up on a porn site'

गैबी की एक बुरी आदत है। वह उन जोड़ों को बच्चे देती है जो गोद लेना चाहते हैं... लेकिन यह एक धोखा है, और जोड़ों की उम्मीदें अचानक धराशायी हो जाती हैं। अब लोग उस पर रुकने का दबाव डाल रहे हैं और वह उम्मीद कर रही है, शायद व्यर्थ, चिकित्सा सहायता प्राप्त करने के लिए।


Discovering 'Sugar Man' Rodriguez

Summary: Sixto Rodriguez has been called "the greatest 1970's music icon that never was". Now with the release of an award-winning documentary about his incredible story, could it finally be time for the 70-year-old singer-songwriter to make it big?

By Sarah Jane GriffithsEntertainment reporter, BBC News When producers stumbled upon Rodriguez performing in a Detroit bar in the late 1960s, they thought they had found the next Bob Dylan. Sadly, the US public didn't agree. The Mexican-American singer's widely-praised debut album Cold Fact, and its follow-up Coming to Reality, were commercial flops. So, Rodriguez disappeared amid rumours he had dramatically killed himself on stage. However, a bootleg copy of Cold Fact made its way to South Africa where it became not only a must-have record, but the unofficial soundtrack to youth protests against apartheid. But it was not until two Rodriguez super-fans, Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman and Craig Bartholemew, turned detective in the mid-1990s that they discovered their musical hero was alive and well and living in Detroit, having returned to a life of obscurity and construction work. Just a few years later Rodriguez was performing sold-out shows in South Africa's biggest arenas, to thousands of fans he did not know he had. "In South Africa he is as famous as the Rolling Stones - or Bob Dylan. He's on that level," says Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul, who has turned the unique story into the documentary Searching for Sugar Man. "There, he is in the pantheon of rock gods," adds Bendjelloul. "And I think that's where he belongs." Emotional audiences It seems perhaps the rest of the world might finally be starting to agree. Sugar Man has already won two prizes at Sundance Film Festival, including the Audience award, and opens in cinemas across the UK on 26 July. "It's so beautiful to see the reactions," says Bendjelloul. "People stand up screaming and crying and it's so, so overwhelming. It's hard to find words actually." Rodriguez himself was initially sceptical his story was interesting enough for a film, but finds the reaction "amazing". At 70 he still looks every inch the rock star, with black shoulder-length hair, requisite dark shades and a black suit jacket - although he does admit to being "dressed up" by one of his three daughters. He is also philosophical about why he failed to make it first time round. "I was ready for the world but I don't think the world was ready for me," he suggests. "My lyrics are a little bit less boy and girl theme, and more socially conscious expressions." With tracks such as The Establishment Blues he describes himself as "musical political", citing Dylan as a big influence, although he is keen to play down comparisons. "Well I've only written 30 songs," explained Rodriguez. "Bob Dylan has written over 500. So he's the Shakespeare of rock and roll and certainly deserves that title." But his own lyrics have received their fair share of praise, especially signature track Sugar Man, which DJ and producer David Holmes remixed for his 2003 album Come Get It I Got It: "Sugar Man, won't you hurry/'Cos I'm tired of these scenes/For a blue coin won't you bring back/All those colours to my dreams". Drug references in the lyrics saw it banned by the South African government in the 1970s, with records scratched so they could not be given radio airplay. However that only served to fuel Rodriguez's cult status. 'Cinderella story' Bendjelloul says he sometimes doubted the film would ever get made, remembering a "really dark moment" about a year ago when a lack of funding meant he "should have given up". But after the intervention of British producers Simon Chinn (Man on Wire) and John Battsek (Project Nim), "now everything's changed". The film has recently been championed by the likes of Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore and 30 Rock actor Alec Baldwin. Scottish singer Paolo Nutini is also a big Rodriguez fan, and the pair became friends after meeting at a festival in Byron Bay, Australia. When Rodriguez played an intimate show in a London basement bar earlier this month, Nutini joined him on a tiny stage for an impromptu duet of I Wonder, calling him "his hero". Rodriguez says he would like to keep performing, with a US tour planned and a London show to follow in November. "I'm very conscious that I'm ancient!" he laughs. "But the people I work with make it very comfortable. My entry level has always been pretty high in the music business." That covers starting out with renowned producers such as Steve Rowland and achieving Elvis-level fame in South Africa. But Rodriguez has maintained a simple life in Detroit throughout, staying true to his values and construction work. "There's nothing to be ashamed about hard work," he said. "You know I enjoy that and I get just as much satisfaction as anything I'm involved with from A to Z." However he does admit to recently enjoying such "trappings" as a fancy hotel and his first ride in a Jaguar. For director Bendjelloul, who has worked with Prince, Madonna and Kraftwerk, the film's release also marks the end of years of hard graft. "It is the best story I have ever heard in my life, and I think I ever will hear," he said, explaining why he spent around five years on the project, instead of his usual four weeks. "I realised this is never going to happen again in the history of the world," he continued. "It's a true Cinderella story. It's better than Cinderella because Cinderella didn't have as good a soundtrack."

सिक्सटो रोड्रिगेज को "1970 के दशक का सबसे महान संगीत आइकन कहा जाता है जो कभी नहीं था।" अब उनकी अविश्वसनीय कहानी के बारे में एक पुरस्कार विजेता वृत्तचित्र के विमोचन के साथ, क्या यह आखिरकार 70 वर्षीय गायक-गीतकार के लिए इसे बड़ा बनाने का समय हो सकता है?


Signing up the e-sports stars

Summary: I've been spending time this week off my usual beat with one of West Ham United's summer signings. Even diehard fans of the Premier League club may however be unfamiliar with Sean Allen. That's because Sean - also known as Dragonn - has made his name not as the new striker the Hammers need but as a champion player of the Fifa video game.

Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter In May, West Ham became the first Premier League club to sign an e-sports player, followed in July by Manchester City who signed up Kieran "Kez" Brown. Both clubs believe that e-sports are about to take off in a big way and this kind of move will show their fans and the gaming community that they are serious about getting involved. I met Sean Allen at West Ham's training ground where he watched the first team train, sat in on a press conference given by manager Slaven Bilic, then played a game of Fifa with a star player Cheikhou Kouyate. He won 5-0 by the way… 24-year-old Sean's career path on the way to becoming an e-sports star has not been smooth. He started playing in tournaments when he was 16 and won £500 in the first event he entered. But two years ago, he was on the verge of giving it up: "I decided I was too old at 22, I sold my Xbox," he tells me. But he kept on plugging away and then this year got a big break, qualifying for the Fifa Interactive World Cup, an event he'd been trying to get into for years. He went to New York for the tournament and ended up in the final, losing narrowly to the Danish champion and coming away with $5000. That's when West Ham came calling, Having signed for the club, Sean can now devote himself to playing the game full time. I'd assumed he spent all his waking hours in front of his console at his home in Taunton - but he says that isn't always the case. When a new version comes out each September he does immerse himself in it - "at the start you've got to put in a lot of hours and learn the game inside out, Then I play an unhealthy amount - maybe 10 hours a day." But once he's learnt all the tricks of the new version he says he only plays on tournament days, three or four days a week. Now he's gearing up for Fifa 17, which arrives in September. West Ham now expects him to represent the club when he plays competitively, and to engage with their own fans who play Fifa. The club has just moved into the Olympic Stadium - now renamed the London Stadium - and its head of digital marketing Karim Virani says it was on the lookout for ways of boosting the West Ham brand: "We are looking at options to engage and interact with our fanbase in new and inventive ways. E-sports is growing crazily - over 250 million people follow it globally." Looking around the magnificent stadium he tells me he can foresee a day when it is filled with spectators for a video game. In fact that already happens in South Korea, where the final of a League of Legends tournament packed out a stadium in Seoul. But I'm not quite convinced that football teams looking to cash in on e-sports are backing the right game with Fifa because the real money is being made elsewhere. Even star players like Sean Allen are only making a relatively modest living from tournament prizes. The winner of the Fifa World Cup, the biggest contest in that game, earned $20,000 but the prize pool for the Dota 2 tournament this year amounted to $20m (£15m). And while star players of games like Dota 2 and League of Legends attract subscribers in their millions on Twitch, the streaming video service, only a few hundred sign up to follow star Fifa players. Still, both West Ham and Manchester City have seen a future where e-sports could pack out the Etihad or the London Stadium. Don't be surprised if transfer news in the future includes players whose skills are centred on their thumbs, not their feet. You can listen to Tech Tent on the BBC World Service at 16:00 BST - or catch the podcast.

मैं इस सप्ताह वेस्ट हैम यूनाइटेड के ग्रीष्मकालीन हस्ताक्षरों में से एक के साथ अपनी सामान्य बीट से समय बिता रहा हूं। यहां तक कि प्रीमियर लीग क्लब के कट्टर प्रशंसक भी सीन एलन से अपरिचित हो सकते हैं। ऐसा इसलिए है क्योंकि सीन-जिसे ड्रैगन के नाम से भी जाना जाता है-ने अपना नाम नए स्ट्राइकर के रूप में नहीं बनाया है जिसकी हैमर्स को आवश्यकता है, बल्कि फीफा वीडियो गेम के एक चैंपियन खिलाड़ी के रूप में बनाया है।


Stormy times ahead in the North Sea

Summary: Remember: the oil price can go up as well as down. Falling through $50 per barrel is being given the sense of a historic low. Yet only seven years ago, Brent crude peaked above $145, and sank below $40 in one tumultuous year.

Douglas FraserBusiness and economy editor, Scotland So we've been here before. We should know by now that the oil price is notoriously volatile. And the pressures that bring it down can create the conditions to make it rise again. You can hear more about why it's been falling recently. You can read here how it's feeding through - or not - to prices. We're told the UK Treasury is watching to see the big energy utilities drop their charges as wholesale energy costs fall. They may not get the candid answer that they're holding them up in case Ed Miliband becomes prime minister, with a pledge to impose a price freeze. You can also read here about who gains and who loses internationally. In short, the ones with most to fear use their oil revenue to fund very large chunks of their government spending. Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria are among the most vulnerable on that score. Others with a lot to fear have the environment in mind. Cheaper oil means more of it will be burned. For that reason, this could be a good time to introduce carbon trading, and to re-introduce an accelerator on petrol tax. But don't hold your breath for that. The ones with most to gain have to foot big foreign exchange bills to import their energy, including India, Turkey and Japan. Cheaper energy should give them a growth boost. And as more of the world depends on imported oil than depends on producing and exporting it, the net impact should be a boost to global growth of, very roughly, 0.1% of output for every $10 drop in the price. But what price instability? Stock markets don't like the impact on oil companies and their supply chains. A destabilised Russia, Iran or Arab exporters could bring positive political results, but that's far from guaranteed. And what about an economy that uses a lot of oil, but also produces it. Britain's, for instance? And Scotland's? Gainers and loser There are probably more gainers than losers in Britain. But many of the potential losers from the falling oil price are heavily concentrated in the north-east of Scotland. According to Professor Brian Ashcroft, an economist at Strathclyde University, it's hard to say what the net effect will be on the Scottish economy, but that Scotland's position relative to the rest of the UK will deteriorate. He also suggests the renewable energy sector will suffer in the short to medium term, as its costs, relative to fossil fuels, will become higher. Again, Scotland has a bigger footprint in that industry, so can be expected to suffer a bigger impact. Tax from offshore production will fall, but growth in the oil-consuming part of the economy could offset that. And worldwide, such growth could raise demand for oil, and therefore its price could bounce back. Vulnerable In and around Aberdeen, even though the industry has done well to diversify into exports of oilfield services and subsea specialisms, those export markets are in trouble too, as it's the offshore drilling that tends to be most expensive worldwide, and hence more likely to pull back on spending while the price is low. The North Sea itself looks particularly vulnerable in this downturn. It has weathered sharp changes before. But the industry is now at a turning point. Mature fields are depleting and the remaining oil and gas is getting more expensive to extract. New fields offer new and expensive challenges - in deep water, or requiring new technologies to handle difficult geology, high pressure and high temperatures. And while Britain is still among the world's top 30 producers, it's now seen as one of the more expensive places to operate, given a black mark by the industry for three unexpected tax hikes in the past 15 years. With a sharp decline in exploratory drilling, higher costs and poor recent results when it's tried, the replacement rate of reserves also looks downbeat. Volatile costs To put some numbers to those trends, the most recent assessment by industry body Oil and Gas UK showed: - UK production has more than halved since 2004. - While the rate of decline fell to 8% in 2013, the total cost of production rose 15% to £8.9bn, and was expected to reach £9.5bn last year. - The cost of producing the average barrel of oil in UK waters rose by 62% between 2011 and last year. - While 50 fields in 2013 produced oil (these figures include the gas equivalent) for less than £10 per barrel, 19 fields had operating costs above £30 per barrel - very close to the dollar price now reached. Now, one of the reasons costs have gone up is because the industry suffers from volatile costs as well as prices. The price of hiring a drilling rig is very volatile, and has recently fallen. Offshore workers' pay can go up fast, particularly where there's a skill shortage, just as contractors are now having pay cut. So the cost per barrel may be coming down. But that will be true also of other oil basins, where they haven't been rising so fast. And with scarce investment resources, oil companies can be expected to go where returns are most attractive. Use it or lose it There's another reason UK costs have been rising. Those mature fields have old equipment. It's more difficult and costly to maintain, meaning production has been halted more often than expected. If it becomes uneconomic to use, the temptation will be for operators to plug and abandon oil fields earlier than previously planned. This is not equipment that can be easily mothballed, or the taps turned off, as in the Arabian desert. Offshore drillers use it or lose it to corrosion. That's where the UK's new strategy for 'maximising economic recovery', written for the government by industry grandee Sir Ian Wood, faces much bigger challenges than Sir Ian thought when he published last summer. He said the oil companies had to co-operate more, on sharing facilities and equipment; that a tougher regulator should force companies to keep producing in marginal fields, or risk losing their licences; and that the Treasury had to revamp the tax regime to create the incentives to maintain UK waters as an attractive place to invest. The regulator is being set up. Its boss has just started work, though Scots lawyers, at the Faculty of Advocates, have this week warned that it carries significant risk of conflicts of interest as it's currently envisaged. In last month's Autumn Statement, George Osborne set out on a course to big tax changes, but with only small steps. Now the oil price has declined sharply, the pressure is now much more intense to get those incentives in place quickly. There's only so much delay can be expected in business investment decisions, as well as field closure decisions, while the Treasury cogitates. Frackers So yes, after this fall, the oil price may well go up again. Once the Saudis have squeezed enough higher-cost American shale frackers out of business, the OPEC exporters cartel - led from Riyadh - can take back some control and constrain supply, to push the price up again. But if it doesn't happen soon, it could have done irreparable damage to mature parts of the North Sea industry. Apart from tax changes, what can be done? As we'll probably hear from MSPs in a debate about this today, Holyrood has a lot of power over the north east's infrastructure and skills. From the business perspective, Aberdeen's ring road is long overdue. It's now under construction. Rail connections could be improved. Recent wage inflation for oil and gas industry workers was becoming a concern, pointing to a need to raise the number of Scots with the necessary technical know-how. A downturn now will take that pressure off, and may help some other Scottish industries which compete for workers with those skills. But don't be surprised if an upturn brings back skill shortages. These people are wanted around the world. In an election year, what response have we seen so far? Asked about it earlier this week, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon pinned her hopes on the price rising again. And asked about the impact on the spending plans if Scotland had been independent, she observed that she wouldn't wish to start from where we are, but with a large Norwegian-style trust fund. The new Labour leader, Jim Murphy, was in Aberdeen to call for a rainy day fund to handle industry downturns. That could be a bit like the fund which Labour and Conservative governments didn't set up with oil revenues in the boom years. According to oil experts, the adjustment all politicians may have to make is to lower their expectations of what the industry can provide in tax. As Colin Pearson colourfully put it to the BBC this week, it's been seen as a cash cow, but he thinks that bubble has burst.

याद रखेंः तेल की कीमत ऊपर और नीचे भी जा सकती है। 50 डॉलर प्रति बैरल से नीचे गिरना एक ऐतिहासिक निचले स्तर की भावना दी जा रही है। फिर भी केवल सात साल पहले, ब्रेंट कच्चा तेल 145 डॉलर से ऊपर था, और एक उथल-पुथल भरे वर्ष में 40 डॉलर से नीचे चला गया।


The angry red panda that is Japan's new working woman

Summary: Being kawaii - or cute - is a huge part of being a good Japanese girl, but what happens when you finally grow up? For decades Hello Kitty was Japan's ambassador of cute, but now an angry red panda is channelling the frustrations of ordinary working women.

By Mariko OiBBC News In Japan, girls are taught etiquette from a young age and often much more strictly than boys. It's not just about your appearance, but also how you behave. The Japanese firm most closely associated with kawaii products, Sanrio, understands this all too well. It can take credit for the global phenomenon that is Hello Kitty, the well-mannered kitten which Sanrio claims is actually a British schoolgirl, despite being seen as perhaps the most quintessentially Japanese thing ever. She even appears in educational videos to teach children about manners. But recently the company has introduced a character with a somewhat different approach to life. Aggressive Retsuko - or Aggretsuko - is a 25-year-old red panda who works a mundane office job. Her appearance is cute, but when she gets angry at her boss or colleagues her face transforms until it becomes a made-up mask somewhat reminiscent of American glam metal band Kiss. "I'll quit one day anyway!!! This is not my fate!!!" she screams inside, as her boss piles up more paperwork on her desk. After work, she goes to karaoke alone and sings metal songs with lyrics complaining about her day. "She reminds me of myself when I was 25," said Reika Kataoka who is now a stay-at-home mother. "I used to spew venom like that at work." "Japanese girls suffer from a social structure where we are supposed to act properly," a cross-dressing singer who goes by the stage name Charlie Shikazaki and works as a researcher by day, told the BBC. "But many of us have two sides. They might look cute on the outside but can be aggressive inside. Sanrio shows this kind of girls quite well with Aggretsuko," she explained. In a society which puts a lot of value on politeness, you don't often see people expressing raw emotions in public and the Japanese language doesn't have equivalents to the everyday profanities you might hear muttered at work in English. 'Heartfelt screams' of office workers So how was Aggretsuko created? It was in fact through a popular vote of characters submitted by Sanrio staff and others. The theme was "salaryman" or office workers. It clearly struck a chord. Sanrio says the designer, who goes by the name of Yeti, wants to remain anonymous. But through the company's corporate communications department, the designer said: "I observed office workers who are at the centre of Japan's corporate culture and I could hear their heartfelt screams." "Japan's working environment often becomes an issue and I think there are many people who are enduring a lot of stress," Yeti added. It is a subject being debated in Japan at the moment as just last month, the chairman of Japan's top advertising agency Dentsu resigned to take responsibility for the death of a 24-year-old employee. Matsuri Takahashi who took her own life on Christmas Day in 2015, after complaining about excessive working hours. Her death is part of a phenomenon known as karoshi, or "death from overwork", which was first recognised 30 years ago. When we asked Japanese women what their Aggretsuko moment is, their most uncute habits, they were certainly forthcoming. Ms Shikazaki said it was the pressure to look cute and behave appropriately that drove her to start singing in a band dressed as a man one year ago. It was "to express my feelings and emotions". "Because I used to teach at universities, the reaction from my former students has been overwhelming - like 'what on earth happened?'," she said. "I sing in both London and Tokyo but I find that people in London accept me without any hesitation." "But in Japan, I don't really expect them to understand so I haven't told many people who I used to work with," she added. For communications specialist Momo Ohmura, it is about what she eats and drinks. "People say what I order at restaurants isn't cute," she said. "I like things like dried fish and inner organs like chicken liver. I also love Japanese sake - even more than champagne!" Kawaii ladies are allowed to drink in Japanese society, but being able to drink more than men is not something you'd show off to your boyfriend. Many Aggretsuko fans were surprised to find out that she was created by Sanrio. But she is not their first unconventional character. Gudetama or "lazy egg" was born in 2013 and suffers from crippling depression, spewing cold one-liners that reflect the dark realities of life. The character was seen as reflective of the younger generation's diminishing self-esteem and growing unhappiness. "I always thought Sanrio's target audience was children but I wonder if they are targeting millennial or older people," said Ms Kataoka. Ahead of Valentine's Day, Aggretsuko appears to have fallen in love. In her weekly programme on broadcaster TBS, for once, she didn't get angry for an entire episode. While it is adorable to watch her being just cute, her many fans hope she will continue to vent her darker feelings even after finding the love of her life. This appears to be what more working women in Japan want licence to do.

कवाई-या प्यारी-होना एक अच्छी जापानी लड़की होने का एक बड़ा हिस्सा है, लेकिन जब आप अंततः बड़ी हो जाती हैं तो क्या होता है? दशकों तक हैलो किट्टी प्यारी की जापान की राजदूत थी, लेकिन अब एक क्रोधित लाल पांडा आम कामकाजी महिलाओं की कुंठाओं को दूर कर रहा है।


Covid: Twelve Swansea University students test positive

Summary: Twelve students at Swansea University have tested positive for coronavirus.

Students have been arriving at the university over the past week for the new term. Officials have not disclosed details about the nature of how they came to be tested or if the cases were linked. In a statement, the university said it understood there would be "anxiety about this development" but insisted safety was the "top priority". "Our immediate concerns are for the affected students and their family along with the health and wellbeing of our wider university community," it added. "We are working closely with the NHS and PHW who are taking the lead on the response to this development and are following the track, trace protect strategy." The university previously said plans to keep students safe included "bubbles" among flatmates, which means a ban on parties or having people over to stay. Those plans are understood to be broadly in line with most other Welsh universities.

स्वानसी विश्वविद्यालय में बारह छात्रों ने कोरोनावायरस के लिए सकारात्मक परीक्षण किया है।


Azelle Rodney shooting: Jury retires in police marksman case

Summary: A jury has retired to consider its verdict in the trial of a police marksman who shot and killed a suspected armed robber 10 years ago.

Azelle Rodney, 24, was killed in Mill Hill, north London, in April 2005, the Old Bailey heard. Anthony Long opened fire on Mr Rodney after his police car pulled up in an operation to foil an attempted robbery. Mr Long, who says he believed his colleagues were in "imminent" danger, denies murder.

10 साल पहले एक संदिग्ध सशस्त्र डाकू को गोली मारकर मारने वाले एक पुलिस निशानेबाज के मुकदमे में अपने फैसले पर विचार करने के लिए एक जूरी सेवानिवृत्त हो गई है।


Why the Jaws shark is not a 'man-eating monster'

Summary: "When you're on top of the water, and you just see the fin, I think it's more scary because it's the unknown. But when you are underwater and you see the shark it is much less scary. When I saw him for the first time, he was bigger than expected and so much more colourful."

By Soutik BiswasBBC News This is what a 26-year-old woman, a tourist from England, told researchers after going down in an aluminium cage into the choppy waters off the coast of Bluff, a southern seaport town in New Zealand, to watch the great white shark, the largest predatory fish in the world. Working in what they call one of the five great white shark "hotspots" in the world, two researchers, India-based Raj Aich and his British associate, Soosie Lucas, are studying how cage diving impacts human interaction with the great white shark. Over the past year, the two have interviewed 150 cage divers - the youngest was 12 years old, and the oldest was 70 - from some 20 countries. "Our research shows divers participating in the study return with a positive attitude towards the sharks after a cage dive," Dr Aich says. "This helps them demystify the great white shark." The great white shark has suffered from a crippling image problem ever since the release more than 40 years ago of Steven Spielberg's Jaws, a horror blockbuster about a shark that repeatedly attacks beachgoers in a resort town in the US. "It is as if God created the Devil and gave him jaws," a voice drones in the trailer about the film's subject, the most maligned of the 500-odd species of sharks. It is, the narrator says coldly, a "mindless eating machine" which "lives to kill". Since then generations have grown up with the image of a "man-eater" which glides from the sea floor to the surface, searching for human prey to catch and tear apart with its serrated teeth. Decades after Jaws, scary images and stereotypes about the shark are again being perpetuated in rating-thirsty TV shows. Two years ago, a video of a diver escaping an encounter with a great white that smashed through the bars of a diving cage off the coast of Mexico went viral and provoked scary headlines. So much so that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red list has put the great white on its 'vulnerable' list because of this "typically exaggerated threat to human safety and almost legendary 'Big Fish' status". The species, according to IUCN, is targeted as a source of sports-fishing, hunting (for jaws, teeth and even entire specimens preserved), sporadic human consumption or merely as the piscine whipping-boy of individuals pandering to shark attack paranoia". In real life, the great white shark - the fish can weigh up to two tonnes, grow to lengths of 20ft (6m), reach speeds of 40mph in water and live reasonably long - prefers seals, sea lions, tuna, salmon and small toothed whales as prey. "They are inquisitive, sharp and sentient beings," Dr Aich says. "Sometimes I go down in the water after baits have been thrown, and the shark doesn't come to the boat. Or she will come for a few seconds and go away. The shark's will to encounter humans is pivotal." The great white shark, according to shark specialist Craig Ferreira, is also "capable of explosive violence, but is absolutely not a blood thirsty and aggressive animal, and its behaviour is centred on not becoming involved in conflict and combat, with combat being the last resort." Shark attacks have gone down over the years: there were 84 cases of unprovoked attacks on humans in 2016, according to the International Shark Attack File. Between 2011-2016, there were 82 such attacks annually. More than half of the unprovoked attacks took place in the Continental north American waters. Only 13 fatalities have been attributed to great white sharks in Western Australia since 1870, according to Leah Gibbs, a senior lecturer in geography at Australia's University of Wollongong. Every day, between December and June, two boats ferry hundreds of tourists who pay NZ$500 ($363;£262) each to climb into cages yoked to boats for a view of the undisputed 'king of the ocean' in 12-degree sea water. Attracted by tuna bait, the sharks swim to the turquoise blue waters where the Tasman Sea and the Southern Ocean meet. When the researchers spoke to cage divers near Bluff, many of them reported a "great white epiphany". 'Calm and peaceful' They found the shark "calm, peaceful and beautiful" to look at. Others found it "inquisitive and curious". "It comes and looks at the cage just to see what is going on," said one tourist. Watching the great white, according to a 60-year-old Canadian man, was a "moving experience, and there was no fear at all". "People say all scary things about sharks, and as a child you are moulded into certain beliefs. But I felt totally at peace with those animals," he said. "It's a completely different experience for me than that I've seen on TV," a honeymooning American couple told the researchers, "It seems they are much more docile". The jury is out on whether cage diving is a good way to improve interaction between humans and sharks. Ladling tuna bait in the water to attract the fish creates an "unnatural situation, leading to unnatural behaviour by the sharks,", George H Burgess, shark expert at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told me. In New Zealand's Stewart Island, the country's third-largest island and another popular shark diving destination, local fishermen have complained about sharks following and attacking boats. In Jaws, Matt Hooper, a character who plays an oceanographer and shark expert, tells the the chief of police investigating the beach deaths, "There's nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That's their instinct. But this fish doesn't run from anything. He doesn't fear." Not quite, as shark divers around the world are beginning to discover. Pictures by Getty Images and Raj Aich

"जब आप पानी के ऊपर होते हैं, और आप सिर्फ पंख देखते हैं, तो मुझे लगता है कि यह अधिक डरावना है क्योंकि यह अज्ञात है। लेकिन जब आप पानी के नीचे होते हैं और आप शार्क को देखते हैं तो यह बहुत कम डरावना होता है। जब मैंने उसे पहली बार देखा, तो वह उम्मीद से बड़ा और बहुत अधिक रंगीन था।"


Man arrested over York cyclist's death

Summary: A motorist has been arrested after a cyclist was killed in a crash with a car in York.

The cyclist, a 29-year-old local man, died at the scene of the crash at 01:00 BST on Stockton Lane near Heworth, said North Yorkshire Police. A man has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by driving without due care and attention, said the force. Police are asking for witnesses to the collision involving a black Toyota to get in touch. Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to yorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk.

यॉर्क में एक कार के साथ दुर्घटना में एक साइकिल चालक की मौत के बाद एक मोटर चालक को गिरफ्तार किया गया है।


Closure of Port Talbot M4 junction to continue

Summary: A trial closure of of a slip road on the M4 at Port Talbot has been extended.

The closure of the junction 41 westbound on-slip during peak hours was due to end on 31 March. But it will now continue until May, when a decision on whether to have a public consultation on a permanent closure will be made. Traders attended a public meeting last month, complaining the eight-month trial affected footfall in the town.

पोर्ट टैलबोट में एम4 पर एक स्लिप रोड के परीक्षण बंद को बढ़ा दिया गया है।


Sima Qian: China's 'grand historian'

Summary: Speaking truth to power has always been a high-risk strategy in China. Its rulers tend to prefer flattery, and writers who forget this do so at their peril. China's "grand historian" - 2,000 years ago - was one of many who have paid a terrible price.

By Carrie GracieBBC News, Beijing "Among defilements, none is so great as castration. Any man who continues to live having suffered such a punishment is accounted as a nothing." The man who wrote those words is by no means a nothing today. In a nation obsessed by its history, Sima Qian was the first and some say the greatest historian. Wind back two millennia. It is 99 BC. On China's northern frontier, imperial forces have surrendered to barbarians. At court, the news is greeted with shock. The emperor is raging. But an upstart official defies court etiquette by speaking up for the defeated general. "He is a man with many famous victories to his credit, a man far above the ordinary, while these courtiers - whose sole concern has been preserving themselves and their families - seize on one mistake. I felt sick at heart to see it," writes Sima Qian in a letter to a friend afterwards. The general had committed treason by surrendering. And Sima Qian had committed treason by defending him. "None of my friends came to my aid, none of my colleagues spoke a word on my behalf," he writes. There is an interrogation. Sima Qian tells his friend his body is not made of wood or stone. "I was alone with my inquisitors, shut in the darkness of my cell." At the end he is offered an unenviable choice - death or castration. To his contemporaries, death was the only honourable option but Sima Qian had a bigger audience in mind than the Chinese court of the 1st Century BC. He was writing a history of humanity for posterity. Sima Qian's father had been court historian before him and had started the project. On his sickbed, with both of them in tears, the father extracted from the son a promise to complete the epic work. So he chose castration. "If I had followed custom and submitted to execution, how would it have made a difference greater than the loss of a strand of hair from a herd of oxen or the life of a solitary ant?" he wrote. "A man has only one death. That death may be as weighty as Mount Tai or it may be as light as a goose feather. It all depends on the way he uses it." But neither in the letter nor in his autobiography can Sima Qian bring himself to describe the horror of castration. He talks instead of going down to the "silkworm chamber". It was already well known that a castrated man could easily die from blood loss or infection so after mutilation the victims were kept like silkworms in a warm, draught-free room. Sima Qian never recovered from the humiliation. "I look at myself now, mutilated in body and living in vile disgrace. Every time I think of this shame I find myself drenched in sweat." But he also wrote that if, as a result of his sacrifice, his work ended up being handed down to men who would appreciate it, reaching villages and great cities, then he would have no regrets even after suffering 1,000 mutilations. If only he could have seen the future as well as he saw the past. In today's China, Sima Qian's book, The Records of the Grand Historian, is regarded as the grandest history of them all. What Herodotus is to Europeans, so Sima Qian is to Chinese. What is special about Sima Qian's history is that, even when he wrote about the court, it was not just flattery. Here is his verdict on an emperor from the Shang dynasty 1,000 years earlier: "Emperor Zhou's disposition was sharp, his discernment was keen, and his physical strength excelled that of other people. He fought ferocious animals with his bare hands. He considered everyone beneath him. He was fond of wine, licentious in pleasure and doted on women… "He then ordered his Music Master to compose new licentious music and depraved songs. By a pool filled with wine, through meat hanging like a forest, he made naked men and women chase one another and engage in drinking long into the night." The emperor had critics turned into mincemeat, and nobles who were not up for the party roasted alive. Zhou was a good illustration of a theory Sima Qian had about dynastic change, as Frances Wood, curator of the Chinese collection at the British Library, explains. "He introduced the idea… that dynasties begin with the very virtuous and noble founder, and then they continue through a series of rulers until they come to a bad last ruler, and he is so morally depraved that he is overthrown." No suprises - Zhou was the last of the Shang dynasty. Sima Qian thought the purpose of history was to teach rulers how to govern well. By contrast, China's current government - like every other Chinese government I can think of - sees it as a means of legitimising its rule. "History is totally political in China, and I think it always has been," says Frances Wood. Just look, she says, at the fate of historians in 20th Century China. "Somebody who actually became deputy mayor of Peking, Wu Han, was a very important historian who had written about the first Ming emperor. "The first Ming emperor… in 1368, he's often been compared with Mao Tse-Tung, because he was a charismatic bandit leader who, in his last years, went pretty crazy and paranoid. So you have Wu Han writing that history in the 1950s, which was a very dangerous thing to do, because Mao was already beginning to totter into paranoia." For criticising the present by writing about the past, Wu Han was arrested. He died in prison in 1969. Last year China re-opened its national museum, lauded as the world's biggest museum under one roof. It is hugely popular, but it illustrates just how much history is a pick-and-mix for China's rulers. They leave out the bits that do not do them credit and - masters of selective memory - they big up the moments they are proud of. So instead of the tens of millions who died in Mao's Great Leap forward and the Cultural Revolution, you get China's first nuclear test in 1964, or a celebration of the reform era after Mao's death. A panel as you exit the museum spells out the key message: "Since the founding of the Communist Party of China 90 years ago, under the strong leadership of the Party, our great nation has successively achieved many historic changes… Socialism is the only way to save China, and reform and opening up is the only way to develop China." I am sure Sima Qian would hope someone like him is sitting unnoticed in a quiet corner writing a more nuanced history of this period, even if it can only be published when the powerful have passed on. This, in fact, is how The Records of the Grand Historian saw the light of day. After his death, his daughter risked her own safety to hide his secret history. And two emperors later, his grandson took another risk in revealing the book's existence. The rest, as they say, is history. Translation of The Grand Scribe's Records by William Nienhauser. Letter to Ren An by Burton Watson.

चीन में सत्ता से सच बोलना हमेशा एक उच्च जोखिम वाली रणनीति रही है। इसके शासक चापलूसी पसंद करते हैं, और जो लेखक इसे भूल जाते हैं वे अपने जोखिम पर ऐसा करते हैं। चीन का "महान इतिहासकार"-2,000 साल पहले-उन कई लोगों में से एक था जिन्होंने एक भयानक कीमत चुकाई है।


How May summoned up her inner Trump for her Brexit address

Summary: Theresa May has not wanted for people telling her how she should have and could have done things better with regards to Brexit. But perhaps some of the most unwanted and unwelcome advice has come from the other half in the special relationship, Donald Trump.

Jon SopelNorth America editor@bbcjonsopelon Twitter She has taken a whole lot of heat from him over her handling of Brexit. You'll remember that when he was over in London last summer he gave an interview to the Sun newspaper in which he said that she hadn't taken his advice on how to deal with the EU (his advice was sue them), that a trade deal would be difficult to achieve with the US if Britain was still somehow joined at the hip to the EU - and for good measure added that he thought Boris Johnson would make a fine British prime minister. Ouch. And he was at it again last week telling the cameras that it could have been negotiated differently, but Theresa May had ignored him and that he hated to see how everything was being ripped apart. Add to this sense of discomfort the president's national security advisor has joined in the tut-tutting, and even Don Junior has weighed in. He took to the Daily Telegraph to declare British democracy dead if Brexit didn't happen. Trump Jr claimed that May "ignored advice from my father," resulting in a process that "should have taken only a few short months has become a years-long stalemate, leaving the British people in limbo." She should have been tougher. She handled it all wrong. It's a mess. What the estimable son of the president doesn't tell us is how it could have all been neatly sorted in a "few short months". And how would he solve the Irish border problem? Again we are not enlightened. But if Donald Trump had seen her address to the nation last night, I suspect he would have approved. Why? Because it was straight out of the Trump playbook. Theresa had summoned her inner Donald. Her argument was that she was the voters' champion, trying tirelessly to execute the will of the people. And all that was stopping her were those awful, vain, game-playing lawmakers in Parliament with their procedural shenanigans and puffed up self-importance. A risky pitch of Parliament versus public Leave to one side that I thought an integral part of Brexit was to re-establish the sovereignty of parliament over the institutions of the EU. Listening to Theresa May's speech last night you could be forgiven for thinking that in her eyes Parliament was an unwelcome meddler in the absolute right of the executive to do as it wishes. That is how Donald Trump plays it too. When Congress or the courts strike down one of his measures, he rounds on those who've thwarted him. Showing respect for the other co-equal branches of the US constitution (the legislature and the judiciary) is not how he rolls. They are weak, or they are biased or they are part of the deep state trying to subvert the will of the people. When he wanted to introduce a ban on transgender service personnel being able to remain in the US armed forces, the Pentagon pushed back. He sought to overturn Obama's health policies - the Congress voted it down. His ban on migrants from mainly Muslim countries was blocked by the "liberal" courts. Funding for a border wall? Again lawmakers blocked it, so he declared a national emergency to secure the cash. To his base - to the people - it looks as though he is staying true to his word. I promised you I would build a wall, but those swamp creatures on Capitol Hill are blocking me. The Russia investigation is a total witch-hunt and there was no collusion. Donald Trump defines his own reality, and millions of his supporters believe what he says. Wasn't that the force of Theresa May's appeal last night? Her reality is that Parliament is to blame for the worst mess and impasse that anyone can remember in British politics. The language she chose may be very different from Donald Trump's but her tactics look identical. Trump's inspiration was a rough-house lawyer, Roy Cohn, who came to prominence when he worked for Senator Joe McCarthy in the communist witch-hunts of the 1950s and has been dead for thirty years. He became a mentor to the young New York property tycoon as he sought to make a name for himself in the shark infested waters of Manhattan. Cohn was old school tough. And his tactics were uncompromising. You never apologise, you never compromise and you never give up. It is total war. Life is a zero sum game. There are no win/wins. There are only winners and losers. How many times have you heard Donald Trump say "I really screwed up there"? Never. It's not part of his lexicon. One other thing. Donald Trump doesn't always win. But what he has always understood instinctively is that if you are going to lose make sure there is someone else to blame. And Donald Trump does something more brilliantly that I have seen any politician do before. When he wins, he wins big. And he proclaims it loudly. But when he loses, he also manages to turn it into a win. Although for Theresa May to win she does need the votes of these parliamentarians, and maybe slagging them off some might argue is an odd tactic. From 3,000 miles away I wouldn't dream of guessing how the Brexit process is going to end. I have more chance of getting a perfect bracket in the March Madness basketball tournament, which kicked off today in the US (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, the chances of guessing the results of every game are gazillions to one), than I have of guessing how the Brexit denouement arrives. From Downing Street last night the blame game started. And if Donald Trump had wandered last night out from the Oval Office to the adjoining West Wing dining room where he has installed a 60 inch flat screen TV along one wall, and watched the Theresa May speech he might have found himself giving a knowing nod of the head. Maybe she had listened after all. Follow Jon Sopel on Twitter More from Jon

थेरेसा मे नहीं चाहती थीं कि लोग उन्हें बताए कि उन्हें ब्रेक्सिट के संबंध में चीजों को कैसे बेहतर करना चाहिए था और कर सकते थे। लेकिन शायद कुछ सबसे अवांछित और अवांछित सलाह विशेष रिश्ते के दूसरे आधे हिस्से से आई है, डोनाल्ड ट्रम्प।


Elizabeth Line fares same as those across TfL network

Summary: Fares on the new Elizabeth Line will be the same as those across Transport for London's (TfL) network, City Hall said.

The Elizabeth Line, due to open in December, will cover 60 miles from Reading and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. Heathrow Airport is currently served by the Piccadilly Line on the TfL network, whereas Heathrow Connect services through west London is not. TfL will also take control of Heathrow Connect services from 20 May. The confirmation from City Hall means Oyster and contactless payments will be accepted on rail services between Heathrow Airport and Paddington.

सिटी हॉल ने कहा कि नई एलिजाबेथ लाइन पर किराया ट्रांसपोर्ट फॉर लंदन (टी. एफ. एल.) नेटवर्क के समान होगा।


Sanquhar wind farm plans approved

Summary: A wind farm in Upper Nithsdale has been approved despite opposition from council planning officers.

They had recommended that councillors refuse Element Power's application to build nine turbines at Twentyshilling Hill, two miles south of Sanquhar. Two local community councils had supported the scheme with the other offering no objection. Approval was given by Dumfries and Galloway Council's planning committee, subject to conditions.

परिषद योजना अधिकारियों के विरोध के बावजूद ऊपरी निथ्सडेल में एक पवन फार्म को मंजूरी दी गई है।


Pontardawe pub evacuated over World War One bomb

Summary: Homes have been evacuated in a Neath Port Talbot town after a World War One device was found.

South Wales Police cordoned off Herbert Street, Pontardawe, at about 19:30 GMT after the device was brought into the Pink Geranium pub before being taken outside. The Army's explosive ordnance disposal team has been called to make the device safe. The public has been asked to stay away from the area.

प्रथम विश्व युद्ध का एक उपकरण मिलने के बाद नीथ पोर्ट टैलबोट शहर में घरों को खाली करा लिया गया है।


Hermann Hauser: ARM sale to Nvidia would be a disaster

Summary: The co-founder of the company described as the jewel in the crown of British tech has said it would be disastrous for it to be sold to a US computing firm that is reportedly negotiating a takeover.

Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter It's the second time in four years that the future of Cambridge-based chip-designer ARM Holdings has been uncertain. In 2016, Softbank ended up buying it. But the Japanese firm is now reportedly in advanced talks to sell it to Nvidia. Hermann Hauser told the BBC he thought the UK government should intervene. The tech entrepreneur - who spun off ARM from Acorn Computers in 1990 - says ministers should help make it an independent UK business again. 'Unsuitable owner' ARM creates computer chip designs that others then customise to their own ends. It also develops instruction sets, which define how software controls processors. Just about every modern mobile phone and smart home gadget is powered by a chip that relies on one or both of these innovations. When Softbank bought the firm for £24bn soon after the referendum to leave the EU in 2016, it was hailed by the government as a vote of confidence in a post-Brexit Britain. But Dr Hauser said at the time it was a sad day for him and for UK technology. Four years on, after a number of big bets went wrong for the Japanese firm - notably its investment in the shared office space business WeWork - SoftBank wants to dispose of ARM, either returning it to the stock market through a share sale or letting another organisation buy it outright. In recent days, there have been a number of reports that Nvidia - which recently overtook Intel to become the world's most valuable chip-maker - is keen to buy it. The last weekend in July, I contacted Dr Hauser who spends the UK's winters in New Zealand and remained there because of the coronavirus pandemic. He told me that a sale of ARM to Nvidia would be a disaster, but thought it very unlikely to happen. This past weekend he got back in touch to say the reports now looked very credible and his concern had deepened. He explained that ARM's business model - in which all the big chip-makers license its technologies - made Nvidia an unsuitable owner. "It's one of the fundamental assumptions of the ARM business model that it can sell to everybody," he explained. "The one saving grace about Softbank was that it wasn't a chip company, and retained ARM's neutrality. "If it becomes part of Nvidia, most of the licensees are competitors of Nvidia, and will of course then look for an alternative to ARM." While Dr Hauser voted against the Softbank deal in 2016, he says the Japanese firm kept its promises to retain Cambridge as the main focus of ARM's research and to boost employment there. He has little faith in that remaining the case if Nvidia takes over. "It will become one of the Nvidia divisions, and all the decisions will be made in America, no longer in Cambridge." But the Austrian-born venture capitalist hopes that can still be avoided. "The great opportunity that the cash needs of Softbank presents is to bring ARM back home and take it public, with the support of the British government," he said. 'Not about the money' Dr Hauser added that he would like to see it listed on both the London and New York Stock Exchanges. He acknowledged that an already financially stretched government could not be expected to provide cash for the deal, but could still encourage it to happen. "It's not about the money, it's the industrial strategy statements that the government can make," he said. Dr Hauser thinks the government's recent move to invest $500m (£378m) in the satellite firm OneWeb may be a sign that it is prepared to intervene when the UK's technology future is at stake. And he thinks the UK's wider microprocessor sector should be championed, pointing to the success of Bristol-based Graphcore in designing AI chips. "[OneWeb was] a strong statement that the government is actually serious about industrial strategy," he said. "And if ever there was a big strategic prize to be had, it would be to take the crown away from Intel as the number one microprocessor company in the world and make it part of the UK". Both Softbank and Nvidia declined to comment.

ब्रिटिश तकनीक के मुकुट में रत्न के रूप में वर्णित कंपनी के सह-संस्थापक ने कहा है कि इसे एक अमेरिकी कंप्यूटिंग फर्म को बेचा जाना विनाशकारी होगा जो कथित तौर पर अधिग्रहण पर बातचीत कर रही है।


Coronavirus: Keeping lighthouses working during the lockdown

Summary: Lighthouses dotted around the UK's coastline play an essential role in ensuring shipping lanes stay open and trade continues. But the team of engineers and technicians who look after Scotland's lighthouses have had to adapt and adjust to ensure their important work continues during the lockdown.

By Angie BrownBBC Scotland News Mechanical technician Ross Russell works for the Northern Lighthouse Board. He is part of three-man team of specialists who have just returned from fixing an electrical fault on the Bell Rock lighthouse, 11 miles (18km) east of the Firth of Tay in the North Sea. He told BBC Scotland he was proud to play his part in fixing and maintaining the lighthouses so mariners could remain safe at sea. The 32-year-old, from Oban, said: "I feel great about the work I'm doing out there because of the importance of keeping our shipping lanes open." The team has currently stopped doing any routine maintenance and upkeep work, such as painting, and is instead focusing on the essential work required to keep the lights operating. "Our working practices have changed dramatically, said Ross. "It has been difficult working under the social distancing rules." For the trip to Bell Rock, each member of the team had to drive to Dundee Airport separately before catching a 30-minute helicopter ride to one of the Northern Lighthouse Board's ships anchored out at sea, called the Pharos. There are two ships that sail to each of the lighthouses carrying water and fuel for workers. The other ship is the Pole Star. Ross spent the night on the Pharos before being dropped on the Bell Rock with his colleagues. He said: "We normally mingle with the ship's crew of about 20 but this time we were kept away from them and given our own isolation deck." The next day they were flown by helicopter wearing PPE kit and screened off from the pilot. He said: "We can only land when the tide is low as the lighthouse is sea washed and therefore the helipad is only exposed when the reef is exposed. "When the tide turns, the water comes to just below the door at entrance level so once you're on, you're on and that's you stuck there until the tide recedes again. "There are two bedrooms with three bunk beds on the Bell Rock but because of the new social distancing rules we had to bring a blow up mattress. One of us slept in the kitchen on that and the other two had a bedroom each. "We also brought all our food and bedding as well." He said the group had to take it in turns to cook their own food in the narrow circular kitchen inside the lighthouse and they each had a different floor inside the 115ft tower. He said: "Normally the trips fly by because there is so much banter between us but on this trip there was a serious air about it." The lighthouses are fully automated but run from batteries powered by generators which use fuel. The team will next make trips to lighthouses on Skerryvore, 12 miles (19km) south-west of the island of Tiree, and Dubh Artach, 18 miles (29 km) west of Colonsay, to refuel them. Before the lighthouse was built on the Bell Rock there was a bell which would ring out to mariners in the wind. Lighthouse keepers, who would stay for three months at a time, were no longer needed in the 1990s when they became automated. Ross said: "There is a note in the Bell Rock lighthouse from the last lighthouse keeper who says 'I'm leaving this rock to it's rightful owners, the seals.' "I was thinking how right he was when I could hear them barking all night there, they have no comprehension of any pandemic either."

ब्रिटेन की तटरेखा के आसपास बिखरे हुए प्रकाशस्तंभ यह सुनिश्चित करने में एक आवश्यक भूमिका निभाते हैं कि शिपिंग लेन खुले रहें और व्यापार जारी रहे। लेकिन स्कॉटलैंड के प्रकाशस्तंभों की देखभाल करने वाले इंजीनियरों और तकनीशियनों की टीम को यह सुनिश्चित करने के लिए अनुकूलन और समायोजन करना पड़ा है कि लॉकडाउन के दौरान उनका महत्वपूर्ण काम जारी रहे।


Milford-on-Sea £2.3m seafront revamp unveiled

Summary: New beach huts built to replace those lost in the St Valentine's Day storm on the Hampshire coast in 2014 have been handed to their owners.

Most of the privately-owned concrete huts at Milford-on-Sea were destroyed during the storm, with the rest later requiring demolition. New Forest District Council said the huts had been set into the promenade "to reduce exposure to the elements". The authority said the 119 huts, new promenade and sea wall had cost £2.36m. It said owners had made a "substantial contribution" towards the replacement huts and the expenditure of the project would be recouped over time through licence fees.

2014 में हैम्पशायर तट पर सेंट वेलेंटाइन डे तूफान में खोए हुए लोगों को बदलने के लिए बनाई गई नई समुद्र तट झोपड़ियों को उनके मालिकों को सौंप दिया गया है।


Q&A: Special Educational Needs

Summary: The government published a Green Paper in March which proposes changes to the provision for children with special educational needs (SEN) in England. What are SEN and how are children with them currently supported? What are special educational needs?

More than a fifth of children (21%) in England are said to have special educational needs (SEN) - about 1.7m children. SEN refers to learning difficulties or disabilities which range from problems in thinking and understanding, to physical or sensory difficulties and/or difficulties with speech and language. But they can also be social problems - how they relate to and behave with other people, or emotional and behavioural difficulties. What types of SEN are most common? The largest categories are "moderate learning difficulty" (24.2%), behaviour, emotional and social difficulties (22.7%) and speech, language and communications needs (16.3%). A much smaller proportion of pupils have physical disabilities (3.8%), visual or hearing impairments (3.4%), and autism spectrum disorders (8.1%). What types of children have SEN? Children from all backgrounds can have special educational needs, but they are more prevalent among some sections of society. At secondary school, boys are three times more likely to have statements than girls. Black pupils are most likely to have SEN, while Chinese pupils are the least likely. Pupils with SEN are much more likely to be eligible for free school meals - a measure of deprivation - than those without them. How are special educational needs met? It depends on the severity of the need. SEN are usually picked up when the school or the child's parents notice that a pupil is falling behind their classmates. All state schools are required by law to ensure that special help is provided for children with SEN. In most cases an assessment of the need and action plan will be drawn up by the individual school alone. This is initially done under a programme called "school action", under which more than half of children with SEN are listed. If more support is needed, the child is listed as "school action plus", which may involve the school bringing in specialist help from outside. In more severe cases, local authorities will have to make a formal assessment of a pupil's needs based on specialist advice. This is a statutory assessment, resulting in what is known as a statement of special educational needs. It describes the child's need and defines the specialist help that they should get. About 13% of children with SEN have statements, but the number of formal statements written by local authorities is falling, despite an increase in the proportion of children known to have learning difficulties. Where do children get this extra help? The Labour government had a policy of inclusion, under which the aim was to give any child with mild to moderate learning difficulties a place in a mainstream school. The policy aimed to end the situation where children were effectively kept separate from their more able peers. However, some children have learning difficulties or disabilities severe enough for them to be educated separately in special schools. Some of these will be private schools specialising in certain kinds of special needs provision. And local authorities are obliged to fund places for children who they have assessed as needing them. Alternatively, parents unhappy with the school and the local authorities' response to their child's case may take the step of funding the place themselves - if they can afford it. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat government says, in its coalition agreement, that it will "prevent the unnecessary closure of special schools, and remove the bias towards inclusion". The number of state and private special schools in England has fallen from 1,197 in 2000 to 1,054 in 2010. Does the system work well? Parents have long complained that they had to battle hard to get statements of SEN for the children facing the most severe difficulties. Special needs campaigners have said some local councils are unwilling to "statement" pupils because of the legal entitlement and possible extra costs that brings. A Commons education committee report in 2006 found the system "not fit for purpose". And despite attempts to improve matters, Ofsted in 2010 still concluded that the system is complex and widely perceived as "unfair", with parents who are able to make sense of it having quicker and greater access to resources and support. At the other end of the spectrum, Ofsted said as many as half of the pupils listed on "school action" would not actually have required that designation if teaching in schools was better. This was partly because schools were not picking up problems that could be solved through normal teaching methods early enough, and partly because they were inappropriately labelling pupils' problems, Ofsted said. Is the government planning to make changes to the system? The coalition government wants to change the way pupils with SEN in England are provided for. It published a Green Paper in March 2011, which set out a range of proposals. Four months of consultation follows the publication of the paper and a period of testing proposals will run in local areas from September 2011. Any changes that require new legislation to be implemented will not happen until May 2012 at the earliest. What does the Green Paper propose? The Green Paper proposes a new single category of SEN and a single assessment process. Children with SEN should be identified in both early-years settings and in schools. By 2014, the government wants those identified with SEN to have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) which will support them children from birth to the age of 25. This will replace the current statutory SEN assessment and statement and allow professionals from different social services areas to work together more closely. The Green Paper proposes a personal budget, by 2014, for all families with children with a statement of SEN or Education, Health and Care Plan. It also sets out to "remove the bias towards inclusion" and "prevent the unnecessary closure of special schools", giving parents the choice of a mainstream or special school for their child. Do schools get extra money for pupils with SEN? In some cases, schools can apply for extra funding. But for pupils on school action, the cases Ofsted flagged up as more likely to be over-diagnosed, schools are expected to provide support from their own resources. Funding systems vary between local authorities, and in some areas, even if a school takes a child with a statement, it may have to provide some of the help for that child from its own budget. Ofsted said that funding could be an "obvious motivation" for schools to inflate SEN figures, but said that in its study it did not find evidence that this was happening. Inspectors said some local authorities had reformed their funding systems, partly driven by concerns that they were creating incentives for schools to identify pupils as having special needs. Does having a large number of SEN children boost league table positions? School league tables look at the attainment of pupils in national curriculum tests, know as Sats, and GCSEs. They also feature a measure called "contextual value added" (CVA), which aims to rate schools on how much progress their pupils make, taking into account factors about the school's intake, such as the number of pupils on free school meals. The proportion of pupils with SEN is one of the measures used in this calculation. Ofsted said some schools it visited believed increased numbers of SEN pupils would boost CVA scores, and this had led to over-identification of SEN, and contributed to lowering expectations for children. But it said the problem was not system-wide. Schools also point out that all their pupils' achievements are taken into account in attainment data, so taking pupils with severe special needs can make them appear less successful in the tables. What happens elsewhere in the UK? The systems in Wales are Northern Ireland is broadly similar to that in England, although they both have their own codes of practice. In Scotland, the concept of special educational needs has been broadened to "additional support needs" and includes factors affecting a child's learning such as bullying, bereavement, family being in care or being a teenage parent. Local authorities must provide for all such needs, and a plan must be produced if the child needs support from different agencies - such as health or social services.

सरकार ने मार्च में एक ग्रीन पेपर प्रकाशित किया जिसमें इंग्लैंड में विशेष शैक्षिक आवश्यकताओं (एस. ई. एन.) वाले बच्चों के लिए प्रावधान में बदलाव का प्रस्ताव है। एस. ई. एन. क्या है और उनके साथ बच्चों को वर्तमान में कैसे समर्थन दिया जाता है? विशेष शैक्षिक आवश्यकताएँ क्या हैं?


The city that allows women to sell sex

Summary: A suburb in Leeds is the first place in the UK where it is permitted for women to sell sex between specified hours. The "managed approach" was introduced to try to control the trade. The Victoria Derbyshire programme spent a night there to find out how it is working.

By James Longman and Sarah HatchardBBC Victoria Derbyshire programme Chelsea, whose name has been changed, 29, has been a sex worker for five years. She's addicted to crack cocaine and earns roughly £150 a night - which she spends on drugs and gifts for her children. They do not live with her and she would hate for them to know what she does. In the evenings she puts on her make-up and gets the bus to Holbeck, a mainly industrial area to the south-east of Leeds city centre. During the day it is bustling, but on a cold March night it is quiet with lots of small, dark areas for sex workers to operate. Chelsea knows her work is dangerous. "You don't know what type of man you're getting next. They may look all right but they could be nasty. You take a gamble with yourself. It's life or death," she says. Find out more: Watch the film in full here It is not actually illegal to sell sex in Britain, but it is illegal to solicit - offering sex in a public place. But in this specified network of roads, street prostitutes can sell their services from 19.00 to 07.00 BST, without being stopped by police. Traditionally, workers operated across the whole of Holbeck - this scheme has moved them from residential streets to places where businesses operate in the day but not at night. What are the rules of the managed area? Source: Safer Leeds Partnership Chelsea points out a cul-de-sac where men pull up if they want business and the railway bridge that marks the end of the managed area. She says most of the people driving past are punters as they stare at her as she walks down the main road. "I charge a lot. I tell them if they pay for steak they get steak, if they pay for mince they get mince," she says. Around 40 women work here regularly - a mixture of migrant and British sex workers - who must be over 18. Chelsea says street work has "changed a lot" since the area was introduced last October after a year-long pilot. Police check their welfare instead of arresting them. "I used to get a lot of cautions. It's better like this. We are all in agreement. They're giving you a time, you have to stick to it. If you go over you've only got yourself to blame," she says. But this approach is more than just a physical zone. The police, council and charities also support the sex workers and try to keep them safe. Emily, a caseworker from the charity Basis, visits regularly to check if there is anything the women are concerned about and offers hot drinks and condoms. "If we have a managed area, we know where people are. It's policed properly with marked vehicles and a liaison officer. There's extra street cleaning. It's a whole approach," she explains. Woman killed Chelsea was attacked two years ago on a nearby back street - badly beaten and raped while she was pregnant. "What I suffered was bad, I was close to dying at one point. He was a vicious man. He's serving a 10-year prison sentence," she says. But a woman has been killed since the zone was established. In December, Daria Pionko, 21, from Poland, was found injured and later died in hospital. A 24-year-old man has been charged with her murder. Emily admits it is not completely safe, but says it is safer, with the key being an improved relationship with the police. The percentage of crime victims willing to report their incidents has increased from 26% to 51%, according to National Ugly Mugs - a sex worker support organisation which runs database sharing information on potentially dangerous clients. "What happened as a result of the managed area - the trust now between girls and police - girls coming forward, punters coming forward," she said. Safer Leeds - the police and council partnership - says the previous approach of police enforcement had not worked, so the zone was an attempt to reduce a long-standing nuisance. It says it has led to fewer complaints in residential areas and a significant increase in women accessing support services. 'Offensive debris' But some people want it to close and it is under review this month. Greg Adams, owner of an office supplies company, says while he cannot disagree with a scheme that supports the vulnerable, he feels the problem has been forced on to the businesses. "It's just every time you drive to the end of the road you see street prostitutes plying for trade - it's very obvious - they eye you up. "It's not that offensive, but what is offensive is the debris from nefarious activities. Used condoms, drugs paraphernalia. In the first month, two items of soiled undergarments on the street, in my yard used condoms. It's all shocking," he says. At the end of her night's work we meet Chelsea again - she has earned £150 from three men in an hour: "Doesn't take me long to make money. Sexy girl like me. Who can resist?" she says. The next morning it is clear it has been a busy night, they leave behind litter - beer cans, condom wrappers - you can see why people coming back to work are not happy. It is a difficult balance - women like Chelsea would still be on these streets with or without the permission of the authorities. But the impact some feel the managed approach has had on this area's reputation may force its closure. Watch the Victoria Derbyshire programme on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel.

लीड्स में एक उपनगर यू. के. में पहला स्थान है जहाँ महिलाओं को निर्दिष्ट घंटों के बीच यौन संबंध बेचने की अनुमति है। व्यापार को नियंत्रित करने की कोशिश करने के लिए "प्रबंधित दृष्टिकोण" पेश किया गया था। विक्टोरिया डर्बीशायर कार्यक्रम ने यह पता लगाने के लिए एक रात बिताई कि यह कैसे काम कर रहा है।


CEO Secrets: 'We tried paying everyone the same salary. It failed'

Summary: When Calvin Benton started his psychotherapy company Spill, he had the idea of paying everyone the same amount of money. He thought it would bring harmony to the team. Instead, he was forced to abandon the scheme within a year because of the rancour it created and pay people according to their seniority and expertise.

By Jeremy HowellBusiness reporter, BBC News "We realised that we had to pay attention to market forces," says Calvin. "Sometimes, traditional practices are there for a reason." Calvin set up Spill in Dalston, east London, to provide online counselling and therapy to companies' employees. It helps them with problems such as depression and work-related stress. Started two and a half years ago, the firm now has more than 100 UK companies on its books, 13 full-time staff and a number of part-time psychotherapists dotted around the country. Over the last year, Spill's sales have grown by 40%. "We've seen an explosion in demand," says Calvin. "This is partly because of the pressures that people have been feeling, working from home during the lockdowns. Many cannot set their work aside at the end of the day and suffer from burnout. Others struggle to get motivated to work when they're not in the office." In addition to work-related issues, people also go to Spill to seek help for depression and bereavement. "More and more firms are paying for their staff to get therapy for their problems because it's getting harder to get therapy on the NHS," Calvin explains. Both of Calvin's parents are qualified psychotherapists. He specialised in computing. He put the two disciplines together to create a service where therapists treat their clients over apps such as Zoom. One of the big decisions that Calvin made when he founded Spill was to pay himself and his colleagues an equal salary. "There were five people, and everyone was pretty much contributing the same," he says. "So we tried this experiment where we paid each of us an equal amount of money - regardless of experience, regardless of role. We wanted to challenge the traditional model of pay. We decided on £36,000 a year for everyone. We calculated that was a decent living wage for London." Initially, the measure worked well and fostered a lot of goodwill within the team. "Let's say we were going out for drinks," says Calvin. "There wasn't a problem of who pays, or whether this person doesn't get paid as much as this person so maybe the manager has to pay. Everyone got paid the same, so it was much easier in those social situations." As Spill took off, Calvin recruited new staff such as a software developer, a salesperson and clerical workers - and decided to offer them all the same £36,000 salary. This is when the problems started. "Software developers are typically very in demand, and they usually take a higher salary than £36,000," says Calvin. "Salespeople are typically paid on commission. So it was not a model which particularly suited either of those two industries. "We really struggled to attract senior talent for the software role. And it got to about three months in when the salesperson started asking to be paid according to sales targets they'd achieved, saying the fixed salary wasn't working for them." At the same time, Calvin was getting overwhelmed with applications for the £36,000-a-year clerical jobs he was advertising. "We were offering a lot more than other clerical jobs paid and a lot of people were applying to the roles because they really wanted this high salary, rather than wanting to work at Spill because they believed in the mission behind the company." Among the newly expanded workforce, the equal pay system was starting to cause grumbling. "When we grew the team, we started to have some people who contributed more than others. You had some people who worked longer hours than others. The question started to arise: should this person be paid the same amount as me? "That caused a conflict in the team and a conversation in the team about whether this experiment was right to continue." After a year, Calvin bowed to the pressure from his staff and scrapped the equal pay system, replacing it with a traditional structure of pay grades based on seniority in the company and technical expertise. "I think it was a disappointment when the experiment failed. We wanted to do something which was democratic and egalitarian. But sometimes traditional practices are there for a reason. Sometimes you don't have to reinvent the mould on everything." One good thing came out of Spill's equal pay experiment, however. After it was scrapped, Calvin decided to make everyone's salary level common knowledge to the rest of the staff. "Since our salary policy is open," he says, "there are no rumours over who is being paid what. That has helped produce harmony in the office. And if you are in the therapy business, it's important to have harmony in your own workplace." Read more CEO Secrets here.

जब केल्विन बेंटन ने अपनी मनोचिकित्सा कंपनी स्पिल शुरू की, तो उन्हें सभी को समान राशि देने का विचार आया। उन्होंने सोचा कि इससे टीम में सामंजस्य आएगा। इसके बजाय, वे एक साल के भीतर इस योजना को छोड़ने के लिए मजबूर हो गए क्योंकि इसने लोगों को उनकी वरिष्ठता और विशेषज्ञता के अनुसार भुगतान किया।


Example signs US record deal with Universal

Summary: Example has signed a record deal in the USA.

The British singer has signed with Mercury and Universal in a deal which will see him try to break the American music market. Example said: "It was important to me to sign with someone who understands not only my ambitions but also the way I work. "I want to do it on my own terms, I enjoy a good challenge and can't wait to get started." David Massey, the president of Mercury Records U.S. said: "Everyone here is very excited to be working with Example, a world class songwriter and performer who is now a leading force in the live arena." Massey described Example as "a true modern day rock star who is at the forefront of the new wave of exciting electronic music exploding here in the U.S." Example, whose real name is Elliot Gleave, is currently signed to Ministry of Sound (MoS) in the UK. David Dollimore, the managing director of MoS, said: "The US market is primed for an electronic artist like Example, he is the real deal, a rock star making hit songs and exciting, cutting edge dance music. "He is the only artist making dance tunes with huge choruses, think a hybrid between Skrillex and Coldplay," Dollimore added. Example is nominated for best British single for Changed The Way You Kiss Me at this year's BRIT Awards. The 29-year-old topped the UK album chart last year with Playing In The Shadows. Gleave is currently working on his fourth album and is headlining a UK arena tour in April.

उदाहरण ने संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका में एक रिकॉर्ड सौदे पर हस्ताक्षर किए हैं।


How is a bullied child like 'Milkshake Duck'?

Summary: "Milkshake Duck" is slang for someone who is briefly and universally cheered, but then swiftly turned upon because of their previous social media posts. The family of an 11-year-old boy is the latest example of the phenomenon.

By BBC TrendingIn-depth stories on social media Keaton Jones just wanted the bullying to stop. "It's not OK," he said. "People who are different, don't need to be criticised about it." His heartfelt plea was videoed by his mother and instantly went viral after she posted it on Facebook. Celebrities including Lebron James and Justin Bieber pledged their support, and offers of help and money rolled in. But the tone of the online conversation changed dramatically when photos surfaced allegedly showing the family posing with the Confederate flag. The flag, flown by Southern troops during the US Civil War, is a highly controversial symbol. Although some see it as an emblem of heritage, many others view it as a symbol of racial hatred and the legacy of slavery. You might also be interested in: Facebook posts indicate that Keaton's father, Shawn White, could be a member of the Aryan Circle - a prison gang identified by the FBI as an "organised white supremacist group". A photo also emerged allegedly showing his father alongside a man with a swastika tattoo. The two men are apparently making a white supremacist gang symbol. Court documents show that his father had a criminal past. Over the last 20 years, Shawn White has been convicted of drug possession, reckless driving, theft, vandalism, and aggravated assault. Keaton's mother went on US TV to defend the family, fend off accusations that she was using the incident for personal financial gain, and apologise for the flag photo. But the damage had already been done, and people online began to heap scorn on the family. The incident was just the latest "Milkshake Duck" example - so called after a jokey tweet that went hugely viral: One of the most well-known examples was Ken Bone, a man who became famous after asking a question at one of the US presidential debates in 2016. Bone's ordinary-guy demeanour and uncool dress sense captured the internet's imagination, but after it emerged that he'd made several unsavoury Reddit posts, some of the love turned to hate. "On one hand it's a fun meme - its a typical example of millennial humour, you have the complete randomness of this babbled nonsense phrase but then you put it together with this very bleak dystopian look at our society," explains Aja Romano, a web culture reporter for the website Vox. "You never know how the information you put on the internet is going to be used or used against you." Romano wrote that Milkshake Duck is "about instant virality in the age of social media, as well as the growing polarization of publicly professed ideologies." "Anyone can become a public figure overnight - but it also means an increased likelihood of discovering that a new favorite has a checkered past." Romano also notes that the phenomenon is particularly pronounced amongst young people online. "It becomes this quintessentially Millennial way of approaching internet culture that is light-hearted but also deeply cynical at the core," she told BBC Trending radio. An 11-year-old boy and his family have found out just how fickle internet fame can be. Do you have a story for BBC Trending? Email the editor. More from Trending: Chinese visitors left furious by 'fake' butterfly exhibition Visitors hoping to see an exhibition displaying thousands of "dancing butterflies" in China last weekend were left disappointed after realising they had bought tickets to see plastic butterflies attached to sticks instead. READ MORE You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending.

"मिल्कशेक डक" किसी ऐसे व्यक्ति के लिए अपशब्द है जो संक्षिप्त और सार्वभौमिक रूप से खुश होता है, लेकिन फिर अपने पिछले सोशल मीडिया पोस्ट के कारण तेजी से सक्रिय हो जाता है। एक 11 वर्षीय लड़के का परिवार इस घटना का नवीनतम उदाहरण है।