Are celebs the best hope for saving endangered species?

Summary: As the Cites meeting in Johannesburg ends, Matt McGrath asks whether celebrities are having a bigger impact on saving species than the international body tasked with regulating the trade in threatened animals and plants.

Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondent@mattmcgrathbbcon Twitter The poor old peregrine falcon must feel like a total loser at this point. Driven to the edge of extinction in the 1960s and 70s thanks to the use of pesticides based on DDT, the world's fastest predator has made a remarkable recovery over the past 30 years. So much so that there is hardly a cathedral in the UK that doesn't have at least one of these high flying raptors. All that progress though, hasn't made a difference here at the Cites meeting in Johannesburg, which has just drawn to a close. Cites (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) aims to ensure that the trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. Despite plenty of data to say the falcon has recovered and that restrictions on trade should be loosened, the countries meeting here decided to keep it on the highest level of protection. "The peregrine falcon met the criteria for down-listing to Appendix II," said Heather Sohl, with WWF-UK "The parties discussed it but didn't agree to follow that, sometimes the science isn't always followed." Many here would say the peregrine falcon was an unfortunate exception. It would appear that science rather than politics is becoming a stronger factor in these discussions on which species to protect and which to reject. For instance, at the last meeting in 2013 in Thailand, a number of shark species were up-listed after a huge political battle that succeeded by just one vote. This time round, new safeguards for other sharks and devil rays, sailed through with huge majorities. Experts say this is because the regulations have been seen to work. But while there were science-based victories for Barbary macaques, African grey parrots and a host of other species, politics does still play a part in some of the biggest controversies. The decision to allow the EU to vote as a bloc had a major impact on one of the key debates about elephants. With about 130 countries actually voting on the floor, the EU group of 28 stopped the proponents of greater protection for elephants from securing the two-thirds majority needed to change the Convention. The EU argued that the science wasn't strong enough. Many campaigners thought it was plain old dirty politics. "It just doesn't make sense biologically, it's a political decision," Dr Roz Reeve, an adviser to the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, who thinks the EU sided with South Africa, which was against the proposal. "South Africa is the dominant voice on the continent, it's the largest economy on the continent, that's the only thing I can think of that might be driving this position." South African ministers were delighted that the up-listing of all African elephants was defeated. They see it as a justification of their policies that have seen their elephant populations less affected by poaching than almost anywhere else in Africa. They argue that imposing greater protection on their elephants would have been an insult to ordinary South Africans. "Had we taken this elephant to Appendix I, our people would have been denied the opportunity to benefit from them," said Edna Molewa, South Africa's minister for water and environmental affairs. "What's making the Southern African elephant population thrive is that the people are utilising them and benefiting and they feel that they are protecting them, they are part of them. "We feel that the rest of the continent and the rest of the world should go that way." This question of the uneasy relationship between humans and animals was a strong undercurrent at this meeting. Country after country argued that more needed to be done to give people living next to threatened species a cash-in-hand reason for keeping them alive. But perhaps there's another way, and what's really needed is a massive injection of celebrity power. There is growing evidence that the impact of sports stars, artists and well-known business people are making a big difference in educating people about the impacts of consuming products based on threatened species, and the positive benefits from their protection. In China, the popularity of former NBA basketball star Yao Ming has made a huge difference on awareness of species - not just with the public but with the government too. "He proposed to the National People's Congress the ban on ivory sales, which was later adopted by the Chinese government," said Peter Knights from Wildaid, who worked with Yao Ming on a documentary designed to raise awareness of the impacts of consumption on elephants and rhinos. "That is actually the only non top-down process in China, through the Congress- and the ivory trade ban is an example of that happening." Connecting celebrities to the Cites process could be a key step forward in forcing countries to take action. It already seems to be having an impact. Take, for example, pangolins. "A few years ago most people didn't know what a pangolin was, probably most still don't but a lot more do know something about these scaly anteaters," said Heather Sohl from WWF-UK. "But there have been campaigns where Prince William has been working with Angry Birds to get the youth understanding that these are the most heavily traded mammals in the world - and from that we've seen at this conference, proposals to give them greater protection successfully passed." This Cites conference has done much good work to protect threatened species. Apart from the peregrine falcon and perhaps the elephants, governments listened to the science and acted on it. For all its limitations, Cites remains the only safeguard for species that has real teeth. But there is only so much you can do with regulations. To really ensure the survival of species, you need hearts and minds. And that's where celebrities really can connect the Convention to the public. Some think this combination could make the peaceful co-existence of man and beast a reality. "It is this whole attitude to wildlife consumption, it is a once and forever societal change," said Wildaid's Peter Knights. "We used to do this in the UK and US, and then society kind of moves away from it, and this is where Asia is right now - this is a tipping point right now." Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathBBC and on Facebook.

जैसे ही जोहान्सबर्ग में साइट्स की बैठक समाप्त होती है, मैट मैकग्राथ पूछते हैं कि क्या मशहूर हस्तियों का प्रजातियों को बचाने पर अंतर्राष्ट्रीय निकाय की तुलना में बड़ा प्रभाव पड़ रहा है, जिसे संकटग्रस्त जानवरों और पौधों के व्यापार को विनियमित करने का काम सौंपा गया है।


Sheffield Ski Village: Fourth fire in a year breaks out

Summary: A fire has broken out at a Sheffield outdoor ski centre, nearly a year after a series of fires shut down the site.

South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue said the service had received more than 120 calls about the latest blaze at Ski Village on Vale Road, which started at about 20:30 BST. A spokesperson said a large wooden shed and outbuildings were alight, and 21 firefighters were at the scene. The main building of the Ski Village was destroyed by fire on 29 April 2012. That fire was ruled to be an accident but investigations showed two further fires on 1 May and 21 May were started deliberately.

शेफ़ील्ड के एक बाहरी स्की केंद्र में आग लग गई है, लगभग एक साल बाद आग की एक श्रृंखला ने साइट को बंद कर दिया।


Taken from life: The unsettling art of death photography

Summary: Photographs of loved ones taken after they died may seem morbid to modern sensibilities. But in Victorian England, they became a way of commemorating the dead and blunting the sharpness of grief.

By Bethan BellBBC News In images that are both unsettling and strangely poignant, families pose with the dead, infants appear asleep, and consumptive young ladies elegantly recline, the disease not only taking their life but increasing their beauty. Victorian life was suffused with death. Epidemics such as diphtheria, typhus and cholera scarred the country, and from 1861 the bereaved Queen made mourning fashionable. Trinkets of memento mori - literally meaning "remember you must die" - took several forms, and existed long before Victorian times. Locks of hair cut from the dead were arranged and worn in lockets and rings, death masks were created in wax, and the images and symbols of death appeared in paintings and sculptures. But in the mid-1800s photography was becoming increasingly popular and affordable - leading to memento mori photographic portraiture. The first successful form of photography, the daguerreotype - a small, highly detailed picture on polished silver - was an expensive luxury, but not nearly as costly as having a portrait painted, which previously had been the only way of permanently preserving someone's image. As the number of photographers increased, the cost of daguerreotypes fell. Less costly procedures were introduced in the 1850s, such as using thin metal, glass or paper rather than silver. Death portraiture became increasingly popular. Victorian nurseries were plagued by measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever, rubella - all of which could be fatal. It was often the first time families thought of having a photograph taken - it was the last chance to have a permanent likeness of a beloved child. But as healthcare improved the life expectancy of children, the demand for death photography diminished. The advent of snapshots sounded the death knell for the art - as most families would have photographs taken in life. Now, these images of men, women and children stoically containing their grief in order to preserve the likeness of a taken-too-soon loved one, continue to live up to their name. Memento mori: remember, you must die.

उनके मरने के बाद ली गई प्रियजनों की तस्वीरें आधुनिक संवेदनाओं के लिए रुग्ण लग सकती हैं। लेकिन विक्टोरियन इंग्लैंड में, वे मृतकों को याद करने और दुख की तीक्ष्णता को कम करने का एक तरीका बन गए।


Pregnancy advice 'scaremongering'

Summary: Pregnancy is a huge, life-changing period in a woman's life and there is no shortage of advice about what is best for your unborn child. But in this week's Scrubbing Up, Linda Geddes, the author of Bumpology, argues this can sometimes be misleading and scaremongering.

Expectant parents are bombarded with advice about what they should and shouldn't be doing. Pregnant women mustn't eat too much as it may raise the baby's risk of obesity or diabetes, but they mustn't diet as that could have a similar effect. Neither should they exercise for fear of triggering a miscarriage, or get too stressed out because that's bad for the baby too. And if they do get stressed, they can't drink alcohol or go for a spa treatment to relax. You might start to think that staying at home would be the sensible thing to do, only this too is ridden with potential dangers for your unborn child: from ice-cream, to pet shampoo, to hair dye. Even lying down or your back can allegedly cut off your baby's blood supply. When I fell pregnant three years ago, I felt paralysed and somewhat patronised by all the conflicting advice out there. I was also obsessed with the little life that was growing inside me, and desperate for more information about what it was doing in there. Could it taste the curry I was eating; hear the songs I was singing; or sense when I took a swim in the freezing outdoor swimming pool near my home? So I began a quest to investigate the truth behind the old wives' tales, alarming newspaper headlines and government guidelines, and to probe deeper into the inner world of the developing child. So Bumpology was born. Booze and breastfeeding Some of what I discovered while researching the book amused and amazed me: I learned that parents who already have a couple of boys are statistically more likely to go on having boys, though no-one really understands why; that the shape of a woman's bump provides no clues as to the gender of the baby within, but that women with severe morning sickness are slightly more likely to be carrying a girl; and that contrary to the received wisdom, babies actually can focus on objects further than 30cm away (even if they often under- or overshoot). I also learned that much of the research underpinning medical advice on things like alcohol consumption - and even the health benefits of breastfeeding - is far from clear-cut and often aimed at the general population, rather than taking the individual into consideration. In the case of alcohol, there's clear evidence that heavy drinking is harmful -- and even a daily glass of wine may increase the odds of a baby being born underweight, which carries additional risks to its health. However, below this level, there is a massive grey zone where scientists simply don't yet have an answer to whether or not alcohol causes harm. When it comes to breastfeeding, it's quite true that breast milk is best for babies, or at least better than formula milk in terms of protecting them against infections in the short term. But when it comes to the much-touted long-term benefits of breastfeeding, such as protection against obesity, diabetes or allergy, the research is less convincing. Certainly women who can't breastfeed for whatever reason, and who live in countries with a decent standard of health care, shouldn't waste too much time worrying that they are causing long-term damage to their baby's health. 'Overblown' However, what alarmed me the most was the realisation that much of what women are told about the risks of medical interventions during labour - things like induction, epidural anaesthesia and undergoing a c-section - are overblown. At the same time, statistics about the odds of needing medical assistance or on complications like tearing during a vaginal birth are frequently not talked about. I believe that access to this kind of information could have a big influence on women's expectations of labour and on some of the decisions they make when planning for the birth of their child. I also think it could help women to come to terms with things if labour doesn't go according to plan and they need additional help getting their baby out. Having a baby can be one of the greatest joys that life bestows. However, it is also hard work and new parents can do without the unnecessary guilt, anxiety and doubt that misleading pregnancy advice brings. It is also a time of great wonder and through my research I have learned things about my own children that will never cease to amaze me. I believe it's time to push aside the scaremongering and allow parents the freedom to enjoy this precious period of their lives.

गर्भावस्था एक महिला के जीवन में एक बहुत बड़ी, जीवन बदलने वाली अवधि है और इस बारे में सलाह की कोई कमी नहीं है कि आपके अजन्मे बच्चे के लिए सबसे अच्छा क्या है। लेकिन इस सप्ताह के स्क्रबिंग अप में, बंपोलॉजी की लेखिका लिंडा गेडेस का तर्क है कि यह कभी-कभी भ्रामक और डराने वाला हो सकता है।


Syndicate of Guernsey teachers wins £695k lottery prize

Summary: A syndicate of teachers from a school in Guernsey has scooped the £695,000 top prize in the Christmas lottery.

The teachers from La Mare de Carteret school have decided to remain anonymous but said in a statement it was "a wonderful Christmas surprise". The prize was lower than previous years, where first prize regularly topped £1m. There was a second prize of £50,000 in addition to five lots of £10,000 for third prizes.

ग्वेर्नसे के एक स्कूल के शिक्षकों के एक समूह ने क्रिसमस लॉटरी में 695,000 पाउंड का शीर्ष पुरस्कार जीता है।


Bishop of Tewkesbury to take up Bishop of Gloucester's duties

Summary: The Bishop of Tewkesbury is to take up the duties of the Bishop of Gloucester, who withdrew from his role last week "for personal reasons".

The Right Reverend Michael Perham is due to retire in November. The diocese said "the process is under way to enable the Right Reverend Martyn Snow to take up the duties of the Bishop of Gloucester in his absence". It said Mr Perham had "stepped back from his role as Bishop of Gloucester". The Diocese of Gloucester has not given any more details about the move. A spokesman said: "It follows standard procedure set out in church legislation and is a process used on other occasions. It is expected to be formally ratified in the near future." A special service had been due to take place on 8 November to celebrate Mr Perham's time as Bishop of Gloucester. Church officials said they "did not know" whether this was still going ahead.

टेवेक्सबरी के बिशप को ग्लूसेस्टर के बिशप के कर्तव्यों को निभाना है, जो पिछले सप्ताह "व्यक्तिगत कारणों से" अपनी भूमिका से हट गए थे।


Covid: Years waiting for trial mean 'people will lose faith'

Summary: There are fears the justice system could collapse as victims and defendants wait years for trials during the coronavirus pandemic.

By Rachel FlintBBC News While jury trials have resumed, a backlog of cases means some trials have been pushed back to 2023. Now those representing victims and defendants in Wales have told the BBC trials could collapse due to the waits. The UK government said it was investing record sums in justice, and opening temporary courts to clear cases. By the end of February 2020, pre-Covid, the number of outstanding cases in crown court in England and Wales had reached 39,331, official figures show. But by the end of October this backlog had increased to 51,595 - a rise of 31% in eight months. HM Courts and Tribunal Services (HMTS) said the number of cases being resolved in crown courts had trebled since lockdown in April, and it was investing £110m to boost capacity. While criminal trials have resumed after the initial lockdown, those working in the courts say a lack of open court rooms able to hold socially-distanced trials means the backlog in cases was growing almost daily. Now, some barristers and solicitors and those supporting victims, witnesses and defendants across Wales have warned lengthy waits could see cases collapse. They fear criminals who may have been convicted at trial could walk free as witnesses and victims lose faith, while innocent defendants could spend years - sometimes in custody - waiting to have their names cleared. James Rossiter, of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), said: "Delays are going through the roof, there is a risk in rape cases that complainants will give up and walk away. "I've heard that this is already happening, people are wanting to get on with their lives. "It is impacting everybody, defendants' lives are on hold. It's not great for justice, it means that people who might have been convicted will walk free and could harm someone else." So what's the issue? Jury trials across England and Wales were halted at the end of March, as the pandemic hit, with almost half of courts shut and hearings being held via video link. But those working in the justice system say a backlog of cases existed before coronavirus, with the virus only serving to exacerbate a growing "crisis". In February, more than 9,000 cases were being brought before crown courts for hearings and trials, but judges were only able to dispose of around 8,400, while in the last week before lockdown 292 trials were delayed. The CBA, which represents barristers in England and Wales, said budget cuts leading to court closures, usable court rooms remaining shut and a lack of staff led to cases piling up in recent years. In May, the first jurors were sworn back in at Cardiff Crown Court as jury trials resumed. But like most aspects of life, the court system had to adjust. One of the major challenges of clearing the backlog during the pandemic is making sure no-one comes into contact with anyone with coronavirus. Major efforts have been made to make courts safe, with glass screens installed in over 400 courts and jury deliberation rooms, with over 250 courtrooms assessed as "capable and able to hold trials", HM Courts and Tribunals said. The use of video links is also helping, with new video technology being used for 70,000 hearings in magistrates' and crown courts during the pandemic. Jury trials in England and Wales involve 12 jurors, court staff, barristers and legal teams, and while some can give evidence via video link, many still need to attend court. "If one person goes down the whole thing collapses," Scott Bowen, a solicitor in Cardiff and Newport, said. Ahead of courts reopening, Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett said radical measures would be needed to restart trials, as many old court buildings were not suitable for social-distancing. In England and Wales, 16 temporary courts - known as Nightingale Court buildings - were opened to free up court rooms for trials needing cells and secure docks. Only one is currently operating in Wales, in Swansea, and the CBA said, with few courts acting at capacity, at least 60 extra criminal court rooms would need to be opened to deal with the rising cases. "The government assured us we would have over 255 court rooms ready to hear trials, which were secure, safe, but that is nowhere near enough," Mr Rossiter said. Some courts have trialled extended opening hours, and HMCTS wants to extend this to crown courts as officials tackle the backlog. But Mr Rossiter warned this move would be against the human rights of advocates and would discriminate against those with caring responsibilities, as well as causing issues for witnesses, defendants and court staff. Since March, the backlog of cases has widened, with hundreds of trials being pushed back every week. In the last week of October, just 99 crown court trials took place across England and Wales, while 465 trials were postponed. Trials involving several defendants - mostly serious crimes including trafficking, gang violence, human slavery, and sex offences - are particularly problematic due to social distancing, and many simply cannot be held. The CBA estimates at least 120 "multi-hand" trials are sitting in the system without a date. These are known as "orphaned trials". "It means the date given for some of the bails are unacceptable, we are seeing people being given provisional trail dates for late 2022 and 2023, for offences that might have happened two or three years ago," Mr Rossiter said. "There is a bigger risk of people getting anxious, or being intimidated the longer you wait. There are greater risks of self-harm. It is miserable." However, where additional courts have been sitting on a Saturday, HMTS said it had been "consistently completing more cases than they received" and the case load was falling. 'Don't give up hope' In February, Alice - who is partially sighted - was attacked by a stranger and dragged along a crowded street in south Wales. Her attacker only fled when a woman stopped her car and challenged him. Alice (not her real name) did not want to contact the police, having not being believed by officers in the past, but after approaching Victim Support for help she reported the hate crime. "It was clear when he grabbed me he wasn't trying to rob me, he really wanted to hurt me. I believe that it could have been death," she said. The man was identified but Covid-19 complications and a skipped court date led to delays. However, he eventually admitted common assault by battery and was jailed for 12 weeks. While Alice believes she was lucky not to have faced a lengthy wait, she has been left traumatised and shaken by the attack. "He may be free now, but I am still suffering," she said. Alice said she she was speaking out to encourage others not to lose hope in the system. "Don't give up hope, sometimes justice does prevail, you will get through it," she said. 'People are locked up for 22 hours a day' On four occasions, Mr Bowen's client packed a bag and said goodbye to his family, ready to go to prison. But each time the man, who was arrested in December 2018 for supplying Class A drugs and waited 22 months to be sentenced, had his case adjourned. He was eventually given a suspended sentence due to the impact of the delays, which the judge said was a form of punishment. "Some people are waiting so long, by the time they get to court they have pretty much had a mental breakdown," said Mr Bowen, a solicitor in Cardiff and Newport and member of The Law Society. He added that, with only four courtrooms able to run trails at Cardiff Crown Court, cases were being pushed back months. "It's chaos, there are cases being moved left, right and centre." During the pandemic, the UK government extended the amount of time a defendant could be held in custody before trial, from six to eight months, before applications have to be made to extend the time in custody if the trial is delayed. And with fewer people going to trial, the number of people in prison who are yet to be convicted is growing. By September, the latest data available, the number of people in prison on remand - either awaiting trial or sentencing - had reached 12,274, equating to around one in six prisoners, the highest level since 2014. Meanwhile, the number of prisoners serving sentences has fallen below 62,000, a 10% fall since 2019. As less people are being sentenced. "People can serve two years on remand, that's the equivalent of a four-year sentence," Mr Bowen said, adding the prisons were on lockdown with people confined to their cells for all but two 45-minute slots a day. "They could be in custody for eight months and be acquitted. There are defendants who know their cases will take 18 months and are taking a chance the witnesses will just give up. "A few weeks ago, they had a whole wing in isolation in Cardiff prison, it meant none of the defendants could go to court, we couldn't have conferences with them. "It is a crisis. If we want it to work it needs investment, we are now at a breaking point," he added. 'People are suicidal, they have nowhere to turn' Those accused of a crime are waiting longer and longer for their day in court, to clear their name or to be convicted. Now a couple, who were both wrongly accused, have set up a charity which aims to help defendants and their families left in "limbo" as cases drag on. Liam Allan, who was falsely accused of 23 counts of rape and sexual assault as a student, and Hannah Arkwright, set up the helpline during lockdown. Ms Arkwright said a lot of defendants were being given trial dates that were years away, and many were feeling suicidal, isolated and alone. "We get a lot of people feeling like there's never going to be an end," she said. "Once you've lost your job, your family, your friends, so what's the point anymore... people have no where to turn." Ms Arkwright said, once arrested, there was little people could do but wait to be charged. Once charged, they had to wait for their day in court. "One friend's case was postponed for two weeks because they had to air jury bundles, they need to print them off 24 hours beforehand and air them," she said. "Someone I know was meant to have his trial in March and it's now been pushed back to September 2022. "It's impossible not to think about it, you are constantly thinking, 'there's no point me doing this because I might spend years in prison'. Even before people have been charged, they have literally lost everything." What do those in charge of courts say? A HMCTS spokeswoman said the backlog in magistrates' courts was continuing to fall and the number of cases resolved in crown courts had increased since April. "To drive this recovery further we are investing £110m in a range of measures to boost capacity, including recruiting 1,600 new staff and shortly opening several more Nightingale Courts," she said. "These efforts will be bolstered by an extra £337m the UK government is spending next year to deliver swifter justice and support victims, while £76m will further increase capacity in family courts and tribunals."

ऐसी आशंका है कि न्याय प्रणाली ध्वस्त हो सकती है क्योंकि पीड़ित और प्रतिवादी कोरोनावायरस महामारी के दौरान मुकदमे के लिए वर्षों तक प्रतीक्षा करते हैं।


Can science fiction ever get the science right?

Summary: New film Gravity promises to rekindle the debate over how "hard" - or accurate - science fiction should be. Should film-makers adhere to basic scientific principles, or should audiences just feel the magic instead, asks Peter Ray Allison.

The relationship between science and science fiction has always been tempestuous. Gravity focuses on two astronauts stranded in space after the destruction of their space shuttle. Since Gravity's US release (it comes to the UK in November) many critics have praised the film for its scientific accuracy. But noted astrophysicist Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, had several issues with the accuracy of Gravity's portrayal of space. Through a series of posts on Twitter, Tyson - who later emphasised that he "enjoyed the film very much" - highlighted various errors. He noted the Hubble space telescope (orbiting at 350 miles above sea level), the International Space Station (at 250 miles), and a Chinese space station could never be in line of sight of one another. On top of that, most satellites orbit west to east, yet in the film the satellite debris was seen drifting east to west. Tyson also noted how Sandra Bullock's hair did not float freely as it would in zero-gravity. This is arguably not so much an error in physics, but a reflection of the limitations of cinematic technology to accurately portray actors in zero-gravity. That is, of course, without sending them into space for the duration of the film. There has always been a drive for scientific accuracy within science fiction, especially within the "hard science fiction" literary sub-genre. But sci-fi, especially in film, tends to have a more flamboyant approach, where realism is often dispensed with in favour of visual flair. The Michael Bay film Armageddon is known for its woeful number of inaccuracies, from the space shuttles separating their rocket boosters and fuel tanks in close proximity to each other (risking a collision) and to objects falling on to the asteroid under a gravitational pull seemingly as strong as the Earth's. More than one interested observer tried to work out how big the bomb would have to be to blow up an asteroid in the way demanded in the movie. Answer: Very big indeed. Nasa is reported to have even used Armageddon as part of a test within their training programme, asking candidates to identify all the scientific impossibilities within the film. Despite the presence of physicist Prof Brian Cox as a scientific adviser on Danny Boyle's Sunshine, artistic licence seeped in. There's a communications "dead-zone" around the Sun - not something easily explicable using real world rules. Despite claims to the contrary, Red Planet was riddled with scientific implausibilities, from the compatibility between modern equipment and 30-year old Russian technology (imagine attempting to connect a modern PC with a Sinclair Spectrum), to the Martian "nematodes" which had been eating algae that had been sent from earth for the past 30 years. The nematodes should have been worms but looked closer to beetles. And there was no explanation as to how they had evolved to eat non-Martian algae nor what they had eaten before. The science across the film was so "creative" that Nasa refused to act as scientific adviser on the film. But perhaps the biggest example of scientific licence occurs in a plethora of space-based dramas. "The most commonly lauded example of 'bad science', intentionally placed into science fiction, is that of sound," says Ed Trollope, spacecraft operations engineer at technology firm Telespazio VEGA Deutschland. "Because space is a vacuum, there is no sound, which means all those explosions and engine noises shouldn't be there." There's a simple cinematic reason for having the sound of an explosion when a spacecraft blows up - it feels right to the viewer. But other conventions are more difficult for scientists to accept. "My pet peeve is inertia," says Trollope. "There are many good reasons for keeping your engines on in space, but 'maintaining speed' is not one of them. If you turn your engines off, you don't stop." Some do it slightly better than others. "I'd prefer not to single out a single film/book/series for this particular error, because it's so common - but I will laud the old television show Babylon 5, for doing a wonderful job of representing the mechanics of spaceflight inertia so nicely," explains Trollope. 2001: A Space Odyssey's silent scenes of space craft, with their rotating Stanford torus design, were closer than many later examples to the reality of travelling in space. "A classic case of scientific inaccuracy was the first edition of Ringworld by Larry Niven, a novel which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1971," suggests science fiction author Charles Stross. "The author inadvertently set up a series of scenes which implied that the Earth spun on its axis in the wrong direction." Niven fixed it in the second printing. The Duncan Jones film Moon was lauded for a reasonably accurate portrayal of what lunar mining for Helium-3 could look like in the future. Helium-3 is rare on Earth but less rare on the Moon, and using an automated method with a human overseer might be possible. But the economics behind the mining is not explained. The alien signal in Contact is a prime example of what Seti (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) is looking for. This is perhaps not surprising as Contact was written by astronomer Carl Sagan. The use of mathematics in the transmission of the message seems reasonable and the time lag in the sending and receiving of the signal is also accurately represented in the film. Science fiction is not just expected to accurately portray science but also to anticipate future developments. "Science fiction hits some predictive targets," says science fiction author Neal Asher, "but rather in the way that a clip fired from an assault rifle will hit some of the enemy hidden in the jungle, but mostly hits trees and leaves." "One of the past criticisms of science fiction has been that it's all 'zap-guns and rocket ships'," suggests Asher. "Now the science fiction writer can smugly point out the LaWs - the US navy laser system - knocking down drones, and then wax lyrical about the X Prize, Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk's SpaceX." Richard Blott, principal consultant at Space Enterprise Partnerships, recalls an early episode of Star Trek ("Spock's Brain", 1968) where the latest space ship is described as having an "ion drive". "Nowadays most new communications satellites have ion engines and they have powered missions to Vesta and Ceres," says Blott. "In the end," Asher concludes, "science fiction is not there to make accurate predictions about the future, it is there to entertain and stimulate the imagination. There is absolutely no doubt that many of the imaginations it stimulates belong to scientists. To some extent it drives and directs science." Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook

पीटर रे एलिसन पूछते हैं कि नई फिल्म ग्रेविटी इस बहस को फिर से जगाने का वादा करती है कि कितनी "कठिन"-या सटीक-विज्ञान कथा होनी चाहिए। क्या फिल्म निर्माताओं को बुनियादी वैज्ञानिक सिद्धांतों का पालन करना चाहिए, या इसके बजाय दर्शकों को सिर्फ जादू महसूस करना चाहिए।


Are Zimbabwe's new farmers winning, 10 years on?

Summary: In 2000, President Robert Mugabe launched Zimbabwe's controversial fast-track land reforms, seizing the majority of the 4,500 farms held by mostly white commercial farmers. More than a decade on, while some of the new farmers are doing well, others have found that if they cross the ruling party, they face losing their new land.

By Martin PlautWorld Service Africa editor Shadrack Rwafa stands outside the home he has built. He is one of Zimbabwe's 170,000 new farmers, the proud owner of Land Hunger Farm. A short, muscular man, he has worked hard to grow crops on this dry, unforgiving soil, which used to be a cattle ranch. It took two months just to dig the well, and he is proud of the clean, fresh water it produces. "It's like milk," he tells the BBC. Mr Rwafa is no ordinary farmer. He is a war veteran who fought against the white minority rule which ended in 1980, when Robert Mugabe replaced Ian Smith as the country's leader. In the intervening years he has been a sculptor, painter and miner. But after Mr Mugabe inaugurated the Fast Track Land Reform Programme in 2000, Mr Rwafa saw his chance. 'Life-long dream' He joined the invasion of a white-owned farm in the area in the south-east of the country. Many of the commercial farms were seized violently, but Mr Rwafa says his case was different. "We didn't just come without talking to the then farm owner. "We asked 'can we share the land' and that's how we came here," says Mr Rwafa. "He accepted and there was no violence at this place. "We even helped him to put his sheep on the truck and he left us some fertilizers and we parted nicely." The farm is the fulfilment of his life-long dream. Today he grows peanuts, beans and maize and says his life has improved dramatically. A ranch that once raised cattle has been split into 252 separate units, each farmed by a family growing a range of crops as well as raising some cattle. Mr Rwafa says it is far more productive than it was when it was commercially farmed. The farm's former owner was not available for comment. The progress of Mr Rwafa and his fellow new farmers in Masvingo Province has been recorded by a 10-year research project, conducted by the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University, which followed 400 new farmers. It is one of a number of studies which challenge popular perceptions that Zimbabwe's land reform programme has been an unmitigated disaster. The Sussex University study does, however, accept that the process has had setbacks. Only just over a third of the new farmers are doing well, about a fifth are supplementing their income by other means, and the rest are struggling, are not using the land for active production, or have given up altogether. Even this sober view is challenged. Economic consultant John Robertson suggests that agricultural output is only around 50% of the level it was before the land invasions began in 2000. "Most of the new people involved who are farming the land that was confiscated from the large-scale farmers are producing enough for themselves and not much more," says Mr Robertson. Land invasions have not ended. Just as we were visiting new farmers like Mr Rwafa, a white farmer lost the land he was born on. Political patronage He did not want his name to be mentioned - the whole issue is too politically sensitive - but he seemed almost resigned to what had taken place. "You didn't have to be a genius to work out that we weren't going to be there for the rest of our lives. "One supposes they could stop it now, but I think they do not want to see a white on the land, and don't need to see any whites left," he says, more in sorrow than anger. Mr Robertson believes the entire land redistribution exercise was meant to create a system of patronage, through a pool of voters who were dependent on the ruling Zanu-PF party. "If you display your loyalty to the ruling party, you will get a free piece of land. If you show any disloyalty to the party, guess what… you'll lose it," he says. Not even high-ranking Zanu-PF members are necessarily secure. Tracy Mutinhiri was deputy minister of labour and social welfare until the middle of this year. She was also a beneficiary of land reform, with one of the biggest farms in the country. Then she began to get too close to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the former opposition, which is now in an uneasy government of national unity with President Mugabe's party. "When we got into the inclusive government, I wanted to work with everybody. That's how it started: building up and building up, and then one day they decided to come and invade my farm," says Ms Mutinhiri. "If it could happen to me, it could happen to anybody else," she adds. But the real losers in this process have been the 500,000 workers who were once employed on the commercial farms. Many were seen as potential MDC supporters, and were therefore not allocated any of the redistributed land. I spoke to some of these workers who were too fearful to be named. "Sometimes we are getting by on just $10 (£6.40) a month," says one woman, a former farm worker, now living in a disused tobacco barn. The farm workers' official minimum wage is $44 (£28.80) per month. "We are really suffering, and we don't know how we're going to live. "This land reform must be reversed, and maybe our life can change." President Mugabe's land reforms have had a mixed outcome, with at least as many farm workers losing their livelihoods as there are new farmers working their own land. The country is also now a net food importer where it once exported grain to the region. The United Nations World Food Programme is appealing for $42m (£27m) to help more than one million Zimbabweans get through to the harvest early next year. Crossing Continents is on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 1 December at 11:00 GMT and Monday 5 December at 20:30 GMT. Listen via the Radio 4 website or download the podcast.

2000 में, राष्ट्रपति रॉबर्ट मुगाबे ने जिम्बाब्वे के विवादास्पद फास्ट-ट्रैक भूमि सुधारों की शुरुआत की, जिसमें ज्यादातर गोरे वाणिज्यिक किसानों के 4,500 खेतों में से अधिकांश को जब्त कर लिया गया। एक दशक से अधिक समय बाद, जबकि कुछ नए किसान अच्छा कर रहे हैं, अन्य ने पाया है कि अगर वे सत्तारूढ़ दल को पार करते हैं, तो उन्हें अपनी नई भूमि खोने का सामना करना पड़ता है।


The Voice: Grace Holden tells of opening up about her grief

Summary: Grace Holden was just 13 years old when her mother, Shirley, died of cancer. After years of struggling to articulate her grief, Grace finally felt able to give voice to her pain in the most unlikely of settings - in front of millions of people on primetime television. Why?

By Charlotte BallBBC News Online "Talking about it always scared me," says 18-year-old Grace, who just a few weeks ago finished runner-up in The Voice UK. "But after being on the show and opening up about it a little bit, it opened my eyes to how talking about it, as much as it's scary, once you've done it that first time, it gets so much easier. "It's kind of like a weight lifted off your shoulders." Grace's mother was the root of her passion for singing. Growing up in the family home in Thurrock, Essex, a young Grace would watch her mum singing at home. And when the family discovered Grace too had an aptitude for singing, it was Shirley who encouraged her to audition for a production of Annie. Grace landed a role in the ensemble. She was six years old. "It all started from there," says Grace. "Mum just looked at me and asked if I fancied giving it a go." One performance turned into another and for the past 12 years Grace has been with the same theatre school, becoming one of its teachers after she turned 16. "Mum was always backstage, chaperoning, helping out with costumes," says Grace. "She was the one they'd come to with costume ideas and stuff like that, which was always quite fun. "Everybody knew her and loved her which is always really nice." Shirley would be there at every show and audition from those earliest days with the theatre group to, eventually, the bigger performances in London. Shirley was diagnosed with cancer when Grace was two years old. "It was just a thing we dealt with," says Grace. "We got on with normal life, everything that me and my brothers ever wanted to do, she got us there. "Even if she was feeling ill, she got us there. We just got on with it as normal life, because to us it was normal, we didn't know any different. "It definitely impacted how she threw herself into everything, I think because we knew it was always going to be there we just thought to ourselves, let's make the most of everything we have together. Just throw ourselves into anything we can." About a week before her death, Shirley gave Grace some instructions from her hospital bed. "She said to me 'make sure you carry on going. I know what you're like, you'll know it's a place that we went and you won't want to do it. So please, carry on. Because I know you love it'. "So I carried on for her, and after a while I just thought, 'I'm so glad I did'. "Every time I'm on stage she's the person I'm thinking of. "My family and friends have been by my side through every knock-back," says Grace. "I literally could not have asked for better support throughout this process and I know my Mum would have been right there with them. "It was hard to talk about her on the show [The Voice], but I think the fact that they didn't know her made it easier. I love talking about my mum and keeping her memory alive. "So when a stranger says, 'tell me about your mum', I'm like 'I will, no worries, I love talking about her'. "She was such an amazing woman and if she can inspire someone, or help someone, even though she's not here, I will do that at any opportunity." You might also be interested in: The coronavirus pandemic made this year's series quite unlike any other. Contact between contestants and their teams was limited and they were performing to the judges and the cameras rather than hundreds of people in a packed audience. One highlight was a powerful duet she performed with her mentor Olly Murs. "It was so weird to do such an amazing performance, we did it and that was the best we'd ever done it - and it was kind of like we just wanted to congratulate each other," Grace says. Because of the coronavirus restrictions on set, Grace was unable to celebrate by sharing a hug with Murs. "But they made sure that everyone felt amazing no matter what happened. And even though there was no contact with anyone, you still felt like it was normal," Grace says. Their performance of "Rule the World" by Take That was broadcast as part of the live final on Saturday 20 March to more than 4.5m viewers. She says the contestants are now planning their first ever get-together once restrictions allow. "We kind of missed out on the social side of it," she says. "But it was just incredible anyway. "And the fact that we did it during the lockdown, I think it kind of upped how proud we all were of the show and how incredible it came across." "Right now, I think my plan is to push social media and get myself out there that way. "One day, hopefully soon, I'll be able to release my own music," she says. "The dream would be to one day have an album out there, but I'll start with a single, maybe an EP, and build from there." When it comes to opening up about grief, Grace's advice is to "feel how you need to feel". "There's no right or wrong way or specific order you need to feel things. "And if you need to talk about it, talk about it, with whoever that is. Whether it's a teacher, parent, friend, counsellor - just talk about it," she says. "Because as much as it never goes away, and the grief will always be there, it gets easier the more you talk about it and the more you open up." What would Shirley have made of Grace's appearance in The Voice? "My mum would have been the same as all my family - just so proud of me. Knowing that definitely helped me to get through the competition," she says. "Just knowing that she'd be happy with who I've become and where I've got to, it made the experience so much better." Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk Related Internet Links The Voice

ग्रेस होल्डन केवल 13 वर्ष की थीं जब उनकी माँ शर्ली की कैंसर से मृत्यु हो गई। अपने दुख को व्यक्त करने के लिए वर्षों तक संघर्ष करने के बाद, ग्रेस ने आखिरकार अपने दर्द को सबसे अप्रत्याशित सेटिंग्स में आवाज देने में सक्षम महसूस किया-प्राइमटाइम टेलीविजन पर लाखों लोगों के सामने। क्यों?


Golden Globes: Winners in full

Summary: The winners of this year's Golden Globes Awards, celebrating the best in film and television as voted for by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, have been revealed at a glittering ceremony in Los Angeles hosted by Amy Poehler and Tina Fey.

Here are the winners and nominees in full: FILM AWARDS Best motion picture - drama Argo Django Unchained Life of Pi Lincoln Zero Dark Thirty Best motion picture - musical or comedy Les Miserables The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Moonrise Kingdom Salmon Fishing in the Yemen Silver Linings Playbook Best director Ben Affleck, Argo Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty Ang Lee, Life of Pi Steven Spielberg, Lincoln Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained Best actor - drama Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln Joaquin Phoenix, The Master Richard Gere, Arbitrage Denzel Washington, Flight John Hawkes, The Sessions Best actor - musical or comedy Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook Ewan McGregor, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen Bill Murray, Hyde Park on Hudson Jack Black, Bernie Best actress - drama Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty Marion Cotillard, Rust and Bone Helen Mirren, Hitchcock Naomi Watts, The Impossible Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea Best actress - musical or comedy Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook Emily Blunt, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Maggie Smith, Quartet Meryl Steep, Hope Springs Best supporting actor Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained Alan Arkin, Argo Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master Tommy Lee Jones, Hope Springs Best supporting actress Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables Amy Adams, The Master Sally Field, Lincoln Nicole Kidman, The Paperboy Helen Hunt, The Sessions Best screenplay Django Unchained Zero Dark Thirty Argo Silver Linings Playbook Lincoln Best original score Life of Pi Anna Karenina Argo Cloud Atlas Lincoln Best original song Skyfall, Skyfall Safe and Sound, The Hunger Games, Suddenly, Les Miserables Not Running Anymore, Stand Up Guys For You, Act of Valor Best foreign language film Amour Rust and Bone The Untouchables A Royal Affair Kon-Tiki Best animated feature Brave Frankenweenie Rise of the Guardians Wreck-It Ralph Hotel Transylvania Cecil B DeMille lifetime achievement award Jodie Foster TELEVISION AWARDS Best TV Series - Drama Homeland Breaking Bad Downton Abbey The Newsroom Boardwalk Empire Best TV Series - Comedy Girls The Big Bang Theory Episodes Modern Family Smash Best Miniseries or Motion Picture made for TV Game Change The Girl The Hour Hatfields & McCoys Political Animals Best Actor - Drama Damian Lewis, Homeland Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad Jeff Daniels, The Newsroom Jon Hamm, Mad Men Best Actress - Drama Claire Danes, Homeland Connie Britton, Nashville Glenn Close, Damages Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife Michelle Dockery, Downton Abbey Best Actor - Comedy Don Cheadle, House of Lies Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock Louis CK, Louie Matt LeBlanc, Episodes Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory Best Actress - Comedy Lena Dunham, Girls Zooey Deschanel, New Girl Tina Fey, 30 Rock Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep Best Actor - Miniseries or Motion Picture made for TV Kevin Costner, Hatfields & McCoys Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock Toby Jones, The Girl Woody Harrelson, Game Change Clive Owen, Hemingway & Gelhorn Best Actress - Miniseries or Motion Picture made for TV Julianne Moore, Game Change Nicole Kidman, Hemingway & Gelhorn Sienna Miller, The Girl Jessica Lange, American Horror Story Sigourney Weaver, Political Animals Best Supporting Actor Ed Harris, Game Change Max Greenfield, New Girl Danny Huston, Magic City Mandy Patinkin, Homeland Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family Best Supporting Actress Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey Sofia Vergara, Modern Family Sarah Paulson, Game Change Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife Hayden Panettiere, Nashville

हॉलीवुड फॉरेन प्रेस एसोसिएशन द्वारा वोट किए गए फिल्म और टेलीविजन में सर्वश्रेष्ठ का जश्न मनाते हुए इस साल के गोल्डन ग्लोब अवार्ड्स के विजेताओं का खुलासा लॉस एंजिल्स में एमी पोहलर और टीना फे द्वारा आयोजित एक शानदार समारोह में किया गया है।


Murder arrest after Dwaine Haughton shot in Wolverhampton

Summary: A man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of a man who was shot in Wolverhampton.

Dwaine Haughton, 24, died in hospital on 20 July after being injured in Valley Road, Park Village, West Midlands Police said. A post-mortem examination confirmed he died from a gunshot wound to the chest. A 21-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday and has been released on bail. Detectives believe the shooting was a targeted attack.

वूल्वरहैम्प्टन में गोली लगने वाले एक व्यक्ति की हत्या के संदेह में एक व्यक्ति को गिरफ्तार किया गया है।


Taylor forces Apple to listen

Summary: Apple is not a company famed for listening. After all, it prides itself on knowing what consumers want before they do, so why should it care what they think? All the more surprising then, that it should have listened to one angry customer, a Ms T Swift of Beverly Hills, California.

Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter It helped, of course, that Taylor Swift is probably the biggest name in the recording industry right now. But her more in sorrow than anger Tumblr post about Apple's "shocking, disappointing" plan to pay artists nothing for the first three months of its Apple Music service certainly had an instant impact. Within hours Apple's Eddy Cue - he of the rather embarrassing dad-dancing sequence at the launch of Apple Music - had reversed the policy. And even more surprisingly, this executive at a company which has until recently been very shy about using social media took to Twitter to do it. "#AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming, even during customer's free trial period" said @cue in only the 81st Tweet he had ever sent.(Presumably more than one artist will benefit.) Warming to his theme he fired out his 82nd: "We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. Love, Apple". Now, cynics may say that Apple listened to Taylor Swift, after ignoring the plight of thousands of those indie artists. They had been making a fuss ever since it emerged that during the three-month free trial period of Apple Music they would get nothing. For Ms Swift - as she acknowledged in her Tumblr post - this was going to be only a minor inconvenience. But for less well-known artists and their labels, there was the prospect of all their revenue just drying up quite suddenly on 30 June when Apple Music launches. After all, 800 million people have iTunes accounts and must be quite likely to at least try this new service for three months - and while they do, they are unlikely to spend much on downloads or other ways of consuming music. At least one boss of an independent record label was grateful for the superstar's intervention. He's still in the middle of complex negotiations with Apple so didn't want to go on the record but he said of Taylor Swift "she's a very smart cookie. There was a huge worldwide unhappiness and she picked a very effective moment to speak". He still thought there was plenty of detail to be sorted out with Apple but said "they blinked". The question is why they did that. Sure, the money that will now be paid out to artists over the next three months will hardly be more than a rounding error, so this is not a costly u-turn. But it is still unusual for the company to back down in negotiations with much weaker parties. Perhaps the veteran music producer Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre, inside Apple since their Beats business was purchased, are making their voices heard on behalf of artists. Or maybe Apple has realised it's found a way of wrong-footing the current leader in the music streaming market. Spotify has also had its problems with a number of artists over what it pays out for every stream, and Taylor Swift has been among the fiercest critics, keeping all of her music off the service. If Apple can now boast that it will be the place to stream Bad Blood and other hits you can't get on a certain Swedish service, then an embarrassing climb-down may turn into a brilliant coup.

ऐप्पल सुनने के लिए प्रसिद्ध कंपनी नहीं है। आखिरकार, यह खुद को यह जानने पर गर्व करता है कि उपभोक्ता क्या चाहते हैं इससे पहले कि वे क्या करें, तो उन्हें इस बात की परवाह क्यों करनी चाहिए कि वे क्या सोचते हैं? तब और भी अधिक आश्चर्य की बात यह है कि उसे एक क्रोधित ग्राहक, बेवर्ली हिल्स, कैलिफोर्निया की सुश्री टी स्विफ्ट की बात सुननी चाहिए थी।


Suffolk residents vote on future of two councils

Summary: Residents in two areas of Suffolk are being asked to vote on whether their councils should be abolished and a single authority created.

Babergh and Mid Suffolk councils said a single authority could save £1.8m-a-year, by 2014. More than half the voters in each council will need to vote yes before the Boundary Commission can seek approval from the Secretary of State. A single council would then be created from April 2013. If more than 50% vote no, the councils will remain separate. However, the vote will not affect the continuing process to integrate staff and services at both authorities into a single operation, under a newly-appointed chief executive. Voting will be open until Monday 6 June, and people can vote by post, phone, text or electronically.

सफ़ोक के दो क्षेत्रों के निवासियों को इस बात पर मतदान करने के लिए कहा जा रहा है कि क्या उनकी परिषदों को समाप्त कर दिया जाना चाहिए और एक एकल प्राधिकरण बनाया जाना चाहिए।


A golden age of discovery in neuroscience

Summary: Developments in imaging technology, genetics, brain chemistry and computing are promising fresh insights into the workings of the mind and mental illness. Our science correspondent Tom Feilden asks what neuroscience has to say about what it means to be human.

By Tom FeildenScience correspondent, Today programme "So this is it. This is our new toy. Not bad for eight million quid." I'm standing in the control room at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences's Brain Imaging Centre at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Looking through a plate glass window with me, and gesticulating enthusiastically, is the centre's director, Professor Irene Tracey. On the other side of the glass is one of the most powerful imaging machines anywhere in the world. Weighing in at 40 tonnes - and generating a magnetic field strength of 7 Tesla - its central component, a huge cylindrical magnet, is so big they had to take the roof off the building to get it in. "There are only two of these ultra high field whole-body imaging systems in the UK" Professor Tracey explains. "It's just so much more powerful than anything we've had before, and the detail you can see and the resolution of the images is just fantastic. It's taken us to the next level in terms of brain imaging." It's at about this point that it dawns on me why Irene Tracey was quite so keen that I should come and see the scanner for myself. The magnet was only lowered into position in July, and since then staff have been working hard to connect it all up, ready for the first patient studies - the science - to begin in the autumn. All that remains is for a few human guinea pigs to have their brains scanned to help calibrate the machine. "Don't worry you'll be fine," says a smiling Professor Tracey. "You like roller coasters don't you? I'm told it feels a little like your brain is going round a corner inside your head - something to do with the iron in your blood and the powerful magnetic field probably. Anyway the nausea will soon pass." But it's not just about pretty pictures. Similarly rapid advances in our understanding of the genetics and basic chemistry of the brain have raised the prospect of genuine breakthroughs across a range of previously intractable neurological disorders, and are promising fresh insights into psychological conditions like schizophrenia and autism. "We're on the cusp of a series of major breakthroughs in our understanding of the brain" according to the head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust, Dr John Williams. "We have a range of tools available now that will allow us to ask very profound questions of the central nervous system. Questions we were unable to ask even five years ago. Not just about how the brain functions under normative conditions, but what might happen when things go wrong." It's a positive view that's warmly endorsed by the professor of Neuroscience at Oxford University, Colin Blakemore. "Undeniably brain research is going through an extraordinary phase of development" he says, "a golden age of discovery fuelled by a combination of all the new knowledge coming from genetics, and the dramatic improvements in imaging technology". So much so that these days a brain scan is a fairly routine procedure. It's easy to forget that because functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) allows researchers to see what's happening, as its happening in the brain, it's transformed our understanding of the biochemical basis of neural activity. Dr Belinda Lewis is using fMRI to study bipolar disorder at Cambridge University's Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre. As her patients lie in the scanner they are shown a series of images conveying a range of human emotions - from fear and sadness, to joy and laughter. The study shows both that the brains of those suffering from bipolar disorder are excessively stimulated by these images, and that they are less able to process, or interpret, that information accurately. But perhaps the important aspect of the research, Dr Lennox claims, has been to demonstrate the presence of bipolar disorder in the brain. "Fundamentally it shows that bipolar disorder, and in fact all mental illnesses, are brain disorders of a biological nature that warrant proper investigation including scanning. And that that will be of clinical utility in the near future." It's a biological determinism that Leonard Mlodinow takes to the extreme in Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behaviour. The invention of fMRI, he suggests, has finally elevated psychology to the status of a proper empirical science. "Suddenly scientists could look into the brain and watch it at work. That's caused a revolution in our understanding of the unconscious mind." What this new, evidence based, understanding of the unconscious mind tells us Leonard Mlodinow argues is that there's no hidden meaning or emotional value attached to the subliminal processing that goes on in the brain. "You don't consciously think about it every time you take a breath, or when sound waves hit your eardrum, your brain just processes the information. In the end we're just - admittedly complex and wonderful - biochemical machines. Freud is bunk," he explains. "What we've found is that the unconscious mind doesn't really work the way Freud, Jung and others in the 20th century thought," he said. "They didn't have access to these new technologies, and in fact they weren't really scientists because they would extrapolate and form ideas and theories based on talking to their patients. But the unconscious is not hidden from us for emotional or motivational reasons, and it can't be revealed through introspection or therapy". Understandably perhaps psychoanalysts reject what many regard as a narrow and deterministic interpretation of development in neuroscience. The professor of Psychology at University College London, Rachel Blass, argues that it's quite wrong to dismiss people's feelings or emotions simply because these don't show up well in an fMRI scan. "It's an extreme materialist position. One that says mental illness is all about identifying some chemical imbalance in the brain and developing a quick-fix drug to correct it. That does nothing to help the patient address the issues or problems they might be facing and come to terms with them in their life." Whether or not the psychological aspects of human behaviour can be adequately described in terms of biochemical activity in the brain, it seems clear that neuroscience is going to play an increasingly important role in our lives. That was certainly the conclusion reached by the Royal Society's Brain Waves project, chaired by Prof Blakemore earlier this year. "Everything we do must be the result of all of the influences on the state of our brain at the moment we do it," he said. "You can include family background, genetics, our social circumstances, how much money we earn, memories of particular events. All of that's in our heads, and we will get some kind of mechanistic description of that in time." And the brain scan? In the end, the hardest part turned out to be trying to keep still and not to scratch my nose. And while it was quite a snug fit in the centre of one of the most powerful imaging machines in the country, the only sensation I felt was a weird warming at the top of my head. Not bad for an experience that allows me to boast - like Hooke or Faraday - about putting my body on the line for science. The Today programme is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 06:00 BST Monday to Friday and 07:00 on Saturdays.

इमेजिंग प्रौद्योगिकी, आनुवंशिकी, मस्तिष्क रसायन विज्ञान और कम्प्यूटिंग में विकास मन और मानसिक बीमारी के कामकाज में नई अंतर्दृष्टि का वादा कर रहे हैं। हमारे विज्ञान संवाददाता टॉम फील्डन पूछते हैं कि तंत्रिका विज्ञान का क्या कहना है कि मानव होने का क्या अर्थ है।


Aberdeen engineering firm bought by Wood Group

Summary: An Aberdeen engineering company which went into administration with the loss of more than 50 jobs has been bought by oil services company Wood Group.

Enterprise Engineering Services called in administrators last month following a significant drop in orders. A total of 54 people were made redundant at its Aberdeen base, with four more in Caithness. The remaining 10 employees will transfer to Wood Group and remain based at the company's Craigshaw Road HQ. Enterprise Engineering Services, which has been trading since 1966, offers engineering services including design, fabrication, assembly, installation and inspection. Administrators KPMG said that orders had dropped due to the "sustained drop in the price of oil".

एक एबरडीन इंजीनियरिंग कंपनी जो 50 से अधिक नौकरियों के नुकसान के साथ प्रशासन में चली गई थी, उसे तेल सेवा कंपनी वुड ग्रुप ने खरीद लिया है।


Ten steps to improve your photography

Summary: Whether you take pictures purely for your own pleasure or have ambitions to build a career for yourself through photography, there comes a time when you have to stop snapping and start making pictures. Here, professional photographer, writer and lecturer Grant Scott explains how you can take your photography to the next level.

Phil CoomesPicture editor We all take more photographs than we have ever done or were able to in the past. We post images on social networks, share them with friends and use them as a form of visual shorthand to communicate where we are, what we are doing and often how we feel. Yet few of us would describe ourselves as photographers. Even fewer would describe themselves as professional photographers or understand what that job description means. So how can you begin to understand what a professional photographer is or does? And start to move your own work into an area of professional photography? The answer is actually very simple. You need to use photography to document your passions and explore the work of professional photographers who are already doing so. For example, if you enjoy cooking, look towards food photography. If you enjoy sports, look at the photographers documenting your favourite sport. If you enjoy styling and decorating your home, interiors photography could be the area for you. These are just a few examples of genres of professional photography, and there are many more such as: By focusing on your passions, you will bring insight and commitment to your photography that will show in your pictures. Thanks to the advancements in camera technology, most of us can take technically good pictures to what many consider to be a professional standard, but the professional photographer can and has to do this consistently and to order. They also need to understand the importance of telling a story with a series of images and having an area of photographic specialisation that a potential client needs for their business. Every decision you make in your life from what you wear, what you eat, how you vote, how you decorate your home, where you visit, what you listen to, what you watch and what you believe are influenced by professional photography and professional photographers. They don't just shoot weddings. Here are 10 tips to help you get started in taking your photography to a different level: Grant Scott is a professional photographer and senior lecturer in editorial and advertising at the University of Gloucestershire. He is also the writer of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography. You can read more of Grant's articles on his website United Nations of Photography and follow him on Twitter @UNofPhoto.

चाहे आप विशुद्ध रूप से अपनी खुशी के लिए तस्वीरें लें या फोटोग्राफी के माध्यम से अपना करियर बनाने की महत्वाकांक्षा रखें, एक समय आता है जब आपको स्नैपिंग बंद करनी होती है और तस्वीरें बनाना शुरू करना होता है। यहाँ, पेशेवर फोटोग्राफर, लेखक और व्याख्याता ग्रांट स्कॉट बताते हैं कि आप अपनी फोटोग्राफी को अगले स्तर तक कैसे ले जा सकते हैं।


Why would anyone want an eyeball tattoo?

Summary: The sentencing of a convicted criminal with an eyeball tattoo in an Alaskan court has drawn attention to an unusual form of facial decoration - one that is less than a decade old, but winning new converts all the time.

By Joanna JollyBBC News Jason Barnum, 39, who pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of a policeman, has ornate tattoos on his head and part of his face - teeth on his cheek, an eyeball in middle of his forehead. But even more dramatically, the white of his right eye has been tattooed jet black. Arguing for the prosecution, Anchorage Police Department Chief Mark Mew urged the judge to take a look at Barnum's face which, he said, showed the convicted criminal had "decided a long time ago that his life was about being hostile to people". But, in tattooing his eyeball, was Barnum really expressing hostility to the rest of society? And if our eyes really are the window to our soul what else might a tattooed eyeball say about its owner? The man who first experimented with injecting ink into an eyeball is a US tattoo artist who goes by the name of Luna Cobra. Far from wanting to look evil, the original goal was to look like the blue-eyed characters from the cult science fiction film, Dune. "There used to be a private body modification convention that happened every few years in Canada," Luna Cobra says. "That year, an old friend had Photoshopped a picture of his eyes to look blue like in Dune. I told him, 'I think I can do that for real.'" The next day, Luna Cobra took a syringe and practised on three brave volunteers. "I'm aware of how insane that sounds, but I've been doing this type of thing for my whole life so I wasn't coming from nowhere with this," he says. His technique, which he has modified over the years, involves injecting pigment directly into the eyeball so it rests under the eye's thin top layer, or conjunctiva. A single small injection has enough ink to cover about a quarter of the eye. It takes several injections to completely cover the sclera, which is then coloured for life. He has done it for hundreds of people - in blue, green, red and black - from Singapore and Sydney to London and the US. "If you want to amuse yourself by decorating your eyeball, why not do it?" he says. "I do a lot of things that look like tie-dye or 'cosmic space'. I think it brings a realm of fantasy into everyday life." Looking a little out-of-this world is something that appealed to Kylie Garth, a body piercer who works in Luna Cobra's Sydney studio. Before deciding to change the colour of her eyeballs, Garth had experimented with a number of body modifications including face tattoos, piercings, elf-like pointed ears and a bifurcated tongue. "It was mentally intense," she says of the several injections needed to colour her eyeballs a delicate blue-green, a colour she refers to as sea foam. "It feels like somebody is poking at your eye, then it feels like strange pressure and then it feels you have a bit of sand in your eye, but there's no pain." One customer who might disagree with this is a Polish rapper, Popek, who was filmed having his eyes tattooed green by Luna Cobra in London. A couple of days later he experienced a painful burning sensation in his eyes that prevented him sleeping. Fortunately, it was temporary - he was later reported to be considering going back under the needle to darken the tattoos - but opticians warn about a risk of damage to the eyes, and even loss of vision. Garth says the reaction to her eyes has been universally positive. "It's thinking about getting a needle in your eye that makes people say, 'I can't believe you did that.' But I've never had anyone say my eyes look scary," she says. The same can't be said of darker tattoos, however. "I try to keep people away from it, especially if they have a dark iris," says Luna Cobra. About one person a week contacts him to inquire about eyeball tattoos - and many want black. "I tell them you're going to look frightening forever to the majority of people you encounter. You might find people have trouble connecting with you or looking at you because they can't follow your iris." Luna Cobra says he urges young people to wait until they have a job before getting a black eyeball tattoo, because otherwise they may never get hired. "I was living on the streets, and I tried to get a job, but of course my beautiful face didn't allow me to do that," Barnum said at his sentencing in Anchorage. But whether or not Barnum intended to shock, many of Luna Cobra's clients are hoping to do just that. Some dismiss his warnings saying it would be "cool" to frighten people. Others say they don't care. Over the past few years, some US prison inmates, who already use tattoos to signal their crimes and gang affiliations, have attempted to colour their own eyeballs. An episode of the US reality TV programme, Lockup, shows two inmates who try to tattoo their eyeballs blue and red using smuggled-in instruments. "Everybody's got tattoos, everybody's got stretched ears [but] you never see anybody with the whites of their eyes tattooed," says prisoner David Boltjes, explaining why he took a huge risk to inject himself. Luna Cobra says that what started as an experiment between friends, and fans of Dune, has run out of control. He's also heard that it's fashionable among Brazilian teenagers and in some Russian sub-cultures - and worries that people could be being harmed. "It's shocking. We had no idea anyone else would do it. And now everyone's obsessed with it," he says. "We often felt like we released a beast into the world and now all these people will be damaged," he says referring to the many ways the tattooing process can go wrong - from using the wrong ink and needle to injecting too much pigment or going too deep. "It's a shame because I think it's something really beautiful, but it's taken an odd course." For its part, the American Optometric Association unequivocally condemns the practice, saying it puts the patient at risk of infection, inflammation and blindness. "My advice is not to do it as there's not enough benefit to even warrant considering that risk of potential pain and loss of vision," says Jeffrey Walline, the chair-elect of the association's Contact Lens and Cornea Council. Such is the concern that several US states have debated banning eyeball tattoos. Garth, who says she is one of only a handful of women in the world with both eyeballs tattooed, says anyone considering the procedure needs to be absolutely sure they are making the right choice. "It's not like you're going to get a little tattoo on your wrist," she says. "This is the most permanent body modification you can get, you can't take the ink out of your eye." That may explain why eyeball tattooing is still rare art. But, despite the risks, its popularity is growing. Before long it may not be that uncommon to come face to face with a stranger whose appearance is literally eye-popping. Colouring the iris Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

अलास्का की एक अदालत में नेत्रगोलक टैटू के साथ एक दोषी अपराधी की सजा ने चेहरे की सजावट के एक असामान्य रूप की ओर ध्यान आकर्षित किया है-एक जो एक दशक से भी कम पुराना है, लेकिन हर समय नए धर्मान्तरित लोगों को जीतता है।


FBI threats to MLK prompt snooping warnings

Summary: A disturbing, decades-old letter sent to Martin Luther King Jr by the FBI is serving, for many, as a reminder of the scope and history of US governmental surveillance programmes - and their potential for abuse.

By Echo ChambersOpinion and analysis from around the world Heavily redacted versions of the 1964 letter have been available for years, but an uncensored copy was recently discovered by Yale historian Beverly Gage. Now revealed are brazen threats to smear King by making details of his numerous extramarital affairs public and hints at an audiotape that may have accompanied the letter. While the letter is unsigned, a Senate Committee confirmed a decade after it was sent that it had come from the FBI during then-Director J. Edgar Hoover's five-decade-long leadership of the bureau. In a piece for the New York Times, Gage writes that the FBI had originally started monitoring King because of suspected ties to the US Communist Party. But after King began criticising the government for failing to enforce civil rights in the American South and his participation in the 1963 March on Washington, Gage says the range of the FBI's surveillance spread. While they failed to link King to communism, the wiretaps and bugs in his home, office and hotel rooms did discover a number of extramarital affairs, which many civil rights leaders already knew about. When FBI officials brought information about King's personal life to journalists, though, the story was largely ignored. In 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, and King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That year, Hoover condemned King, calling him "the most notorious liar in the country". A few days later, William Sullivan, a deputy to Hoover at the FBI, sent the letter. "King, like all frauds your end is approaching," the letter, crafted as a message from a disillusioned supporter, reads. "You could have been our greatest leader. You, even at an early age, have turned out to be not a leader but a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile." The correspondence ends with a vague threat. "King, there is only one thing left for you to do," it reads. "You know what it is." Many, including King at the time he received it, see this as a suggestion that King should kill himself. Gage writes in her piece that the odd thing about this time period is that the FBI's campaign against King was a spectacular flop. While today King is looked at as a moral ideal, Hoover is wildly unpopular. "In this context, perhaps the most surprising aspect of their story is not what the FBI attempted, but what it failed to do," she writes. Although the FBI's attempts to discredit King were unsuccessful, that doesn't mean modern intelligence agencies have given up on similar tactics. Nadia Kayyali, writing for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's blog, Deeplinks, says the King letter could be a page out of the handbook of the British online intelligence unit dubbed the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group - a group whose mission is to "destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt enemies by discrediting them". Today, she writes, that translates into rummaging through Facebook chats, embarrassing internet browsing history and emails in order to discredit any leader who threatens the status quo or to blackmail someone into becoming an informant. "These are not far-fetched ideas," she says. "They are the reality of what happens when the surveillance state is allowed to grow out of control, and the full King letter, as well as current intelligence community practices, illustrate that reality richly." Salon's Marcy Wheeler writes that there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to the intelligence community - including who today's targets are, if they are at the same level of importance as King or how exactly the National Security Agency or the FBI is getting information about them. But, she writes, we do know that today's spies are more powerful than ever because of technology, and they have more access because so much of our lives are spent online. "It may take a half-century, as it has with King, to see the fruits of the surveillance the NSA and FBI direct at leaders of groups perceived to be a threat, whether it be Muslims fighting to defend their legal rights or overseas preachers criticising American expansion," she writes. "But we should still be vigilant in insisting that the tactics used with King have no place in this day and age." And when it comes to what Americans do and don't know, Nick Gillespie says that it's important to consider a wider scope. "The more we learn about the government these days, the less we can trust it," he writes for the Daily Beast. He adds that it's fitting that the full details of the government's surveillance of King are coming to light in the age of Wikileaks, NSA leaker Edward Snowden and a White House that promised to be the most transparent administration in US history. "There's a real opportunity for the politicians, the parties and the causes that dare to embrace real transparency - about how legislation is being crafted, about our surveillance programs at home and abroad - as a core value and something other than a throwaway slogan," Gillespie writes. "But as an unbroken thread of mendacity and mischief binds the present to the past, a future in which the government can be trusted seems farther off than ever." Gage closes her piece by noting that James Comey, the current director of the FBI, keeps a copy of the agency's King wiretap request on his desk "as a reminder of the bureau's capacity to do wrong". On Tuesday night, the US Senate narrowly voted down a measure that would have curtailed the government's ability to search through private phone records. The King request may be a potent symbol of government intrusion, but campaigners today would say it is dwarfed by the thousands of similar orders and warrants being issued by the FBI each year. (By Kierran Petersen)

एफ. बी. आई. द्वारा मार्टिन लूथर किंग जूनियर को भेजा गया एक परेशान करने वाला, दशकों पुराना पत्र कई लोगों के लिए अमेरिकी सरकार के निगरानी कार्यक्रमों के दायरे और इतिहास और उनके दुरुपयोग की संभावना की याद दिलाता है।


Scottish Borders Council by-election date set after MSP resigns

Summary: Voters will go back to the polls in the Scottish Borders in February after an MSP resigned from her council role.

South of Scotland Conservative Michelle Ballantyne announced earlier this month that the "time was right" to leave her local authority position. She took up the seat in the Scottish Parliament vacated by fellow Tory Rachael Hamilton who quit to fight a constituency seat which she won. The Selkirkshire ward by-election will now be held on 22 February. A report to the council said the cost of the vote was likely to be somewhere between £25,000 and £28,000. It said the local authority should be able to meet it from the budget set aside for the elections held in May this year.

एम. एस. पी. द्वारा उनकी परिषद की भूमिका से इस्तीफा देने के बाद मतदाता फरवरी में स्कॉटिश सीमाओं में चुनाव में वापस जाएंगे।


Brexit: The EU and UK are locked in last-minute power play

Summary: In a city where masks are now compulsory in public places, it can sometimes be hard to understand exactly what someone's saying to you. Or to work out exactly what they mean. If you can't read their lips, how can you begin to read their mind?

By Nick BeakeBBC Brussels correspondent Despite rising cases of Covid-19 seeing Belgium being added to the UK's quarantine list, the teams who are striving to bridge considerable differences and deliver a trade deal between the EU and the UK were still able to meet face-to-face this week - albeit from a safe distance. Unlike those on the squares and boulevards outside, the negotiators wore no masks, but it seems this advantage did little to reveal any new understanding of where the other side was coming from. I'm told the latest round of discussions were courteous and friendly - with a warmth between the two chief negotiators facing each other - even when each was delivering an uncomfortable message. As ever, the EU and UK are hardly seeing eye-to-eye though. Michel Barnier cut a despondent figure ("disappointed, concerned and surprised" to use his words) at his conference once he'd finished his working breakfast. What he evidently found harder to digest was what he said was the British side's ongoing disregard for the terms of the political declaration both sides agreed last year. It's been a while since the refrain beloved of Theresa May has been invoked, but Mr Barnier wanted to tell us that he understood "Brexit means Brexit". What he couldn't fathom though was the UK's insistence on cherry-picking access to the single market without wanting to play by EU rules. He cited the British demand for wide-ranging access for UK lorries travelling across Europe but the refusal to agree to EU rules on, for example, drivers' rest times. 'Frustration' David Frost, the man who reports directly to the prime minister, issued his own public reaction to the latest talks through a press statement, rather than press conference. His frustration was fuelled by what he sees as the EU's insistence that the UK accept current EU rules on state aid and fisheries, before any wider deal can be committed to paper. These areas remain the two defining stumbling blocks in the negotiations. The way coronavirus has battered European economies has given a new perspective on how governments may want to support struggling business, especially for the Johnson government which says it's committed to a "levelling-up" agenda to boost poorer parts of the UK. But it's the so-called 'level playing field' for industries across member states that the is EU worried about - the fear that British firms get an unfair advantage. The British side believes this itself is unfair and says it has a commendable record on abiding by EU rules, certainly in comparison to some of its neighbours, including France and Germany. There's also no sign of agreement on the access EU vessels will have to British waters. As we know, fishing is an industry which forms a relatively small part of the economy but has a much larger symbolic and cultural significance. Despite their public declarations of frustration, both sides still say a deal can be reached but it must happen by October to allow time for ratification by the European Parliament. Downing Street has ruled out an extension to this year's transition period. So, if no deal is done, the UK would trade with the EU on World Trade Organization terms for the first time in decades. Next month, the talks return to London. The negotiating teams arriving in the UK from Belgium or France will not have to quarantine for two weeks, unlike the rest of us. The whole Brexit drama for the past four years has been characterised by extra scenes that weren't in the script. It seems both sides are locked into another last-minute power-play. In what is the theatre, the negotiation, the art of the deal, the EU and UK are holding out for the best possible arrangement in the new socially-distanced, face-covering world that Covid-19 has created. Each denounces the other side as unreasonable, unfair and uncompromising. A tough tactic which increases the chances of another cliff-edge of sorts. As time runs out, and the coronavirus crisis continues, will they keep up the act or will the mask slip?

एक ऐसे शहर में जहां अब सार्वजनिक स्थानों पर मास्क पहनना अनिवार्य है, कभी-कभी यह समझना मुश्किल हो सकता है कि कोई आपसे क्या कह रहा है। या यह पता लगाना कि उनका क्या मतलब है। यदि आप उनके होंठ नहीं पढ़ सकते हैं, तो आप उनके दिमाग को कैसे पढ़ना शुरू कर सकते हैं?


The government's priority is to act big and act fast

Summary: You are reading this right - the Conservatives are arguing for spending tens of billions of public money without certain results, while the Labour Party is arguing for a much more precise use of taxpayers' pounds.

Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter Of course, over decades, some Tory governments have been big spenders. And of course, Labour has always cared about spending public money wisely. But while coronavirus has had a profound impact on our health, it is also having an enormous impact on our economy - and on the political debate around it. The reason for that is not that Labour has suddenly turned into a flock of fiscal hawks - as one party source joked today. Perhaps, the uncertainties around how the pandemic affects people's ability to make a living are so profound, traditional instincts are being blurred. The numbers of job losses are cranking up every day. Announcements from John Lewis and Boots were both proof the government would have no choice but to act to stem unemployment, but also a reminder that for many businesses, and many workers, it's too late. Decisions that were made public today were likely made in board rooms weeks ago. And, on the day after the big statement from the chancellor, it's become increasingly clear how uncertain the outcome of Rishi Sunak's big ticket schemes will be. That's not just because one of the government's top officials felt he had to put on the record doubts over the outcome of the scheme. 'Significant level of doubt' A "direction" like this is not unprecedented, but it is certainly unusual. And that was compounded when the Tories made plain there had been such "directions" over all of the flagship schemes - like the furlough scheme - that have been introduced during the crisis. That does not mean ministers have acted foolishly. It does not even mean officials believe the plans are a mistake. But it does mean there is a significant level of doubt about how effective the plans that are meant to protect millions from the misery of unemployment will really be. For one former Tory cabinet minister, the directions are an alarm bell. "Reading between the lines," they told me, "basically Treasury officials suggest that the money is a PR stunt with taxpayers' money that won't really save jobs. "No wonder they wouldn't sign them off." For government ministers ,the priority is to act big and to act fast. And if some of the money doesn't end up in the right place, they believe that's a price worth paying for the jobs that might be saved. But it is notable how uncertain they are of the outcome too. I understand the Treasury doesn't have modelling of how many of the nine million workers on furlough's jobs they expect to survive. The offer to employers who take them back at a £1,000 each could cost up to £9bn - if every single one of them returns to work and is still on the pay roll by the end of January. But several different Treasury sources told me today they haven't been able to model how many jobs they expect to protect that way, or how many workers they expect to return to their previous roles. Few expect, however, for the number to be anything like the nine million - with perhaps less than half of those jobs returning in their previous form. 'Too much unknown' The government is trying to find ways of protecting jobs quickly, and preserving employment after a huge shock. But they are trying to stimulate the behaviour of businesses and consumers that they don't control. It may seem surprising that ministers have no firm expectation of how many people will participate in a huge scheme that is designed to minimise the misery of unemployment. But, like it or not, it seems there is just too much unknown to be sure. The government can manufacture big levers and pull them hard, but what happens at the other end is not just up to them.

आप इस अधिकार को पढ़ रहे हैं-रूढ़िवादी बिना किसी निश्चित परिणाम के दसियों अरबों सार्वजनिक धन खर्च करने के लिए बहस कर रहे हैं, जबकि लेबर पार्टी करदाताओं के पाउंड के अधिक सटीक उपयोग के लिए बहस कर रही है।


Scottish Labour conference 2015: The sunshine of socialism

Summary: At the Labour conference, among other elements, a day to commemorate, a day to reward. Not, to be clear, that this was purely or even faintly an occasion dominated by congratulations and nostalgia.

Brian TaylorPolitical editor, Scotland Indeed, far from it. Even the awards spoke obliquely of the contemporary problems the party faces. Edinburgh South Constituency Labour Party was honoured for its efforts. Yes, that CLP. The one that returned Labour's sole MP north of the Border in May. Presenting those awards, Kezia Dugdale emphasised the D word. Nobody, she said, was in denial about the scale of Labour's defeat in May or the concomitant challenge of the Holyrood elections next year. But, still, there was a slight sense of a party summoning up its history, its origins, with delegates drawing these elements around them like a warm cloak to ward off the inclement political weather. They staged a mini-drama, with party members quoting the sayings of James Keir Hardie, Labour's founder who died a century ago. The talk was of solidarity and socialism. Later the conference rewarded another delegate, a first time speaker at this Scottish gathering, with a standing ovation. But then Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of the party. Like Hardie - whom he quoted - the talk was of solidarity, both global and domestic. The talk was of Socialism. The talk was of an explicitly Left-wing offer to challenge the Tories and counter the SNP offer. In the hall, delegates - mostly - loved it. It was as if their intrinsic enthusiasms were stirred rather than suppressed as they had been in relatively recent times. Yes, they had felt obliged to applaud Tony Blair's New Labour pronouncements. After all, the guy had rather a habit of winning elections. They tolerated a lot in order to achieve that prize through him. But they - or, more precisely, those who were here - really prefer the old-time messages: support the unions, protect jobs, defend welfare, reach out to Socialists round the world. Jeremy Corbyn gave them - this defeated, subdued party - what they wanted. Perhaps what they needed at this stage. He spoke of Allende and Chile. He spoke of Mandela and apartheid. He offered "the sunshine of Socialism", a phrase borrowed from Keir Hardie. What of the economy? His predecessor, Ed Miliband, landed in trouble because he failed to mention the deficit in a conference speech. Jeremy Corbyn scarcely mentioned the economy. Or, more precisely, his economic references were entirely about redistribution and poverty. Not about business or economic growth. It was left to the Shadow Scottish Secretary Ian Murray to make the point - in a thoughtful speech - that public spending requires a buoyant economy and business sector. But the audience seemed unconcerned at the economic dog that declined to bark in Mr Corbyn's speech. They loved his insistence that the Scottish party will have relative autonomy over their own affairs, while remaining in the wider Labour family. To be clear, his speech went down very well in the hall. In which respect, there was another interesting development today. Members were asked to select topics to debate on Sunday. They voted to give top billing to the issue of Trident. It is plainly the expectation that the conference will vote to oppose Trident's renewal. Both Kezia Dugdale and Jeremy Corbyn emphasised that any money saved from scrapping Trident would be used to help redeploy workers on the Clyde. But, I asked Ms Dugdale in a webcast interview, is this real policy autonomy for the Scottish party? I pointed out that Scottish Labour had routinely voted against Trident in the 1980s and 1990s, only for that verdict to be overturned by the UK leadership. Her answer was that she was responsible for autonomous Scottish policy. Any disputes would be resolved through a reconciliation mechanism: details of which are currently under scrutiny. This debate, of course, already reaches beyond Scotland. Left-supporting delegates plainly indicated that they would use a Scottish vote against Trident - if it occurs - as a lever to apply pressure to the party across the UK. Indeed, one senior figure recalled that the abolition of Class Four by Tony Blair had first been carried by the Scottish party conference, prior to a UK vote. Ditto Trident, I was told.

श्रम सम्मेलन में, अन्य तत्वों के अलावा, याद करने के लिए एक दिन, पुरस्कृत करने के लिए एक दिन। स्पष्ट रूप से, यह स्पष्ट नहीं है कि यह विशुद्ध रूप से या यहां तक कि मामूली रूप से बधाई और पुरानी यादों से भरा एक अवसर था।