Oscars 2021: The female directors tackling tough truths

Summary: The inclusion of two female film-makers - Chloe Zhao and Emerald Fennell - in the nominations for best director at this year's Oscars has been hailed as historic. But two other women directors are also competing at the 2021 ceremony with their feature films.

By Emma JonesBBC Talking Movies Both The Man Who Sold His Skin, by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, and Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić's Quo Vadis, Aida? are nominated for the best international film award. And at the Baftas, Quo Vadis, Aida? is competing in the same category, while Žbanić is in the running for best director. Quo Vadis, Aida? is the story of a fictional UN interpreter, played by Jasna Đuričić, and her battle to save her family in the massacre at Srebrenica, where 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in 1995 by Bosnian Serb forces. The film was funded by nine European countries, including Bosnia-Herzegovina. "When we started on the film five years ago it looked like mission impossible," Žbanić explains. "Bosnia doesn't have a film industry. We produce around one film a year, with a budget of around €1m (£850,000). But this film, partly because of the extras we needed, would cost at least four times that and so had to be a co-production with other countries. "This is also a sensitive and painful topic, and as soon as we mentioned the word 'genocide', many people shied away, saying, 'It's too difficult.' Now I think, no, it's you who thinks an audience doesn't want to see difficult things. "The awards nominations are such an incredible honour. A director always hopes their story will reach people's hearts in big numbers, and now we have the Bafta and Oscar nominations, I know how many more people will now see the movie." One inspiration for the film was the book Under the UN Flag: The International Community and the Srebrenica Genocide by Hasan Nuhanović, but the director describes the main character of Aida as "a combination of many people we met or read about". "Hasan was an interpreter who was there at Srebrenica and his family was expelled from the space," she explains. "So I did approach him, but it was hard for him to have a film based upon him, and also I wanted a woman as the main character, who wanted to protect her sons and her husband. In the development there were many women as inspiration whose sons were at Srebrenica." Kaouther Ben Hania's film, The Man Who Sold His Skin, stars Yahya Mahayni as Sam, a Syrian refugee who agrees to make himself into a human canvas and be displayed around European galleries. Italian actress Monica Bellucci has a supporting role as a gallery owner. The story is inspired by the real-life example of Tim Steiner, who agreed for his back to be tattooed by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye and then sold to a German art collector. The director says she wants to show audiences how hard it is for a refugee to move around the world, compared with the movement of goods. "It's not only easier for art to move around, it's easier for everything - for goods, for pasta, for fruits, for perfume, for fashion," she argues. "My purpose is for the audience to live the experience of this refugee, who was a normal human being, but not 'born in the right place', as he says to the artist who meets him. "So, I wanted to give the possibility of empathy, to understand the journey of a refugee. But his journey is not a typical refugee journey. We don't have the boat, and it doesn't sink. He becomes a work of art. I wanted this combination between the survival world of the refugee and the luxurious world of contemporary art to make this contrast. "The art market, like any institution, they have their codes, their way of functioning," she adds. "So in the movie, the gallery owner, the museum guard, the museum director, they have the reflex of working with a work of art, because they signed a contract, and this is what they know. They can't deal with Sam as a human being." Ben Hania describes her Oscar nomination as "totally crazy". "It's the first ever nomination for Tunisia, and I'd love to bring Africa an Oscar," she says. "I'm also Arab, and it's my dream to offer all the Arabic-speaking countries an Oscar too." Žbanić won a Golden Bear - the highest honour at the Berlin Film Festival - in 2006 for her first feature film, Esma's Secret: Grbavica. Set in contemporary Sarajevo, it told the story of a single mother who was a victim of the systematic rape of women, most of whom were Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), by Serbian soldiers during the Bosnian war in the 1990s. "Many things have changed since I studied film as a student," she comments. "We never mentioned any female director in the history of film-making, so for four years I learned about genius men. "I was 17 when the war started so I didn't have access to many sources. Later, I was told by many of my colleagues that I should be with my small child instead of working when I was making my first film. "They just tried to put this guilt on me. But now audiences and film crews are getting used to the idea of a woman directing. "And with this film it shows the female gaze is really different in war, and a different mindset. For me, war can't be sexy. I can't find pleasure in framing this with my camera." Ben Hania's previous film, Beauty and the Dogs, premiered in 2017, months before the Harvey Weinstein scandal led to the #MeToo movement. It's the story of a young woman who is raped by male police officers. "I think it's an international experience of women not being heard and not being believed," the director says. "That film is the story of a young woman who is raped by policemen and she has to then go and report her rape to policemen. "I think it was a very important movie for me to do, because when you are a woman, you face at some point in your life something like this. Somebody telling you to shut up, somebody reminding you that you are helpless, that you can't fight. So, I was doing this movie with all the anger and indignation I have as a woman." The Oscars Academy's increasing diversity drive "is changing things slowly, but it is really changing," she adds. "There are now more voters outside the USA too, in Africa and Asia and Europe, so we definitely see this in the movies that are nominated. And we have two women directors in the main section, and two women directors in the international film section. "And they are beautiful movies - it's not just because they're women." Quo Vadis, Aida? is available on Curzon Home Cinema in the UK. The Man Who Sold His Skin is yet to receive a UK release date but will be available in the US from 4 April. BBC Talking Movies' award season specials are available to watch throughout March and April on BBC News and on BBC World News. Viewers in the UK can also watch on BBC iPlayer.

इस साल के ऑस्कर में सर्वश्रेष्ठ निर्देशक के लिए नामांकन में दो महिला फिल्म निर्माताओं-क्लो झाओ और एमराल्ड फेनेल का शामिल होना ऐतिहासिक है। लेकिन दो अन्य महिला निर्देशक भी 2021 के समारोह में अपनी फीचर फिल्मों के साथ प्रतिस्पर्धा कर रही हैं।


Natural Retreats consults on CairnGorm Mountain revamp

Summary: The operator of the CairnGorm Mountain snowsports centre, near Aviemore, has unveiled its planned revamp of the site that could cost up to £15m to complete.

Natural Retreats wants to make improvements to the restaurant, offer conference space and increase its facilities for making snow. The company has started a consultation on its plans. The ski centre in the Cairngorms National Park is owned by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE). Natural Retreats has released a series of architects' impressions of the new look. A new day lodge with food outlets, shops and a creche and an "adventure zone" have been planned. Highland Council has been informed of the proposals. Natural Retreats owns holiday accommodation at a number of locations in the UK and elsewhere. It has a 25-year lease for the running of CairnGorm Mountain. Last year, the company said it would invest more than £6m in the resort over five years.

एविमोर के पास केयर्नगोर्म माउंटेन स्नोस्पोर्ट्स सेंटर के संचालक ने साइट के अपने नियोजित सुधार का अनावरण किया है जिसे पूरा करने में 15 मिलियन पाउंड तक की लागत आ सकती है।


The people who think Noah had albinism

Summary: Darren Aronofsky's epic Noah is now out in UK cinemas. Russell Crowe's portrayal of the Biblical figure has prompted criticism from religious groups, but there are also people who believe it misses a key detail - that Noah might have had albinism.

By Damon Rose BBC News, Ouch People with the condition have little or no colour, or pigment, in their eyes, skin and hair, and it can also result in severe visual impairment. It is an inherited condition. Those with pure white hair are likely to have the variant OCA1 (Occularcutaneous Albinism). Though Crowe's Noah has a dirty grey beard, the Old Testament figure who was ordered by God to build an ark, is often depicted with a long white beard. This in itself is no evidence of albinism but some people have seized on text from the Dead Sea Scrolls which elaborates further. Discovered between 1946 - possibly 1947 - and 1956 in a cave east of Jerusalem, they are thought to contain the earliest known manuscripts of some parts of the Hebrew Bible. In the scrolls, there is a description of Noah as a child "the flesh of which was white as snow, and red as a rose; the hair of whose head was white like wool, and long; and whose eyes were beautiful. When he opened them, he illuminated all the house, like the sun". It doesn't exactly sound conclusive. Mark Sanderson, chair of the UK's Albinism Fellowship group, says: "It's fair to say some people believe he had albinism because of his visual distinctiveness and obvious characteristics, but who knows. I think the link is quite tenuous though others might disagree." The scroll translation comes via an article written by ophthalmology research professor Arnold Sorsby in the British Medical Journal in 1958. In it he attempts to find the root of a possible inherited genetic flaw by tracing Noah's family tree. Though Sorsby's article has a serious tone, there is a section at the end that reads as if it were meant humorously. It's left people wondering if Sorsby was writing with his tongue firmly in his cheek. Others have suggested that the scroll text refers to a tradition of Noah's angelicness rather than a medical condition. But the theory is cemented in the albinism community through the name of the US support group NOAH, standing for the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation. President Mike McGowan says there were members who had heard about a possible link with the Biblical Noah when the organisation was founded, but is keen to distance himself from the ark-builder and stresses that NOAH is a secular organisation. The albinism support organisation in Germany is also known as NOAH. The new film is said to bring out the dark side of the Noah story. While it might appear ironic, albinism is often used as a device to denote a dark character. The Skinema website, set up to monitor the portrayal of skin conditions in movies, records many examples of the "evil albino" in films. These include Silas, the murderous monk from The Da Vinci Code, the evil Uber-Morlock from The Time Machine and the violent Bosie from Cold Mountain. Sanderson is pleased Noah won't be on Skinema's list. "My personal view is that I'm glad Russell Crowe wasn't portrayed as having albinism because almost always when film-makers do it it's negative. I've rarely seen it done positively." Follow @BBCOuch on Twitter and on Facebook, and listen to our monthly talk show

डैरेन एरोनोफ्स्की का महाकाव्य नूह अब यू. के. के सिनेमाघरों में रिलीज़ हो गया है। रसेल क्रो के बाइबिल के चरित्र के चित्रण ने धार्मिक समूहों की आलोचना को प्रेरित किया है, लेकिन ऐसे लोग भी हैं जो मानते हैं कि यह एक महत्वपूर्ण विवरण को याद करता है-कि नूह को ऐल्बिनिज़म हो सकता है।


Louis Theroux: 'I needed to give more of myself away'

Summary: There's not much Louis Theroux hasn't experienced of humanity. In more than 25 years of documentary making, he's moved in multiple worlds including those of neo-Nazis, Scientologists, pornography stars, those living with dementia - and Jimmy Savile.

By Rebecca Thomas Entertainment reporter While his approach has altered over the years, from comic gonzo to sober inquisitor, Theroux's ability to extract uncomfortable truths without confrontation has not. Yet, the one person we don't get to know is Theroux himself. The questions are simple. The expression inscrutable. Only his eyebrows sometimes go rogue. In other words, he gives his interviewee space to show who they are. Epithets from "faux-naive", "impenetrable" and "wacky" have been employed in an attempt to define him. Theroux says he can, up to point, understand why. "I plead guilty to, back in the day of Weird Weekends and When Louis Met, sometimes being a 'wacky' satirist, finding fringe people in marginal, wrongheaded or poisoned lifestyles and having fun with them, making them look a bit silly," he says. "Now I cover stories I'm interested in, funny or not. "We used to say, 'Where are the laughs?' as a way of eliminating a subject. But it's not about being Jeremy Paxman or David Frost, but being engaging, exciting and interesting and being the best me I can." As Theroux edges towards 50, his latest project - a memoir - could help unmask the "real" him. In Gotta Get Theroux This, he turns the focus inwards, to the workings of his TV world and his complicated mind. The title's pun comes from the ironic "cult of Louis" that spawned a range of Theroux-themed merchandise. Theroux wanted to "repurpose the meme, which never struck me as really that funny. Any pun on my name, I've heard a million times". "But a theme of the book is getting through things, so I focused on challenges, things I found difficult: professional failures and worries, feeling I'm not up to it, I'm in over my head." Theroux goes into forensic detail as he takes us through his childhood, into adulthood and becoming an alumnus of Michael Moore, to the present day. As for his personal life, it's been a rollercoaster of anxiety, self-doubt and emotional detachment. (There's also been a lot of pot smoking.) "I take my work arguably too seriously. I neglected my personal life to focus on achieving some sort of professional success. The price of my lack of emotional nous was paid by those nearest and dearest to me." He's had to learn to overcome the commitment issues which contributed to his first marriage's breakdown and almost broke his second to Nancy Strang, mother to his three boys. Given the commitment he's now asking of readers, he felt it necessary to be as open as possible. "I owed them something that connects in a deeper way. I needed to be honest and to give more of myself away... feel kind of naked, in a surprising, maybe a shocking way." Theroux talks about being "socially awkward" and not feeling right in his skin. It started young: aged five or six, he was already contemplating his death. His father is the American writer Paul Theroux. His mother was a BBC World Service producer. Though loving, their parenting was hands off, leaving Louis and older brother Marcel (also a documentary maker and writer) with au pairs. Paul was also a philanderer. The couple divorced in 1993. The young Louis, felt "freakish" and had few friends. He was fascinated with the macabre and taboo, and worked and worried himself to "emotional exhaustion" at his private school. Academic success was a pacifier when the rest of life felt out of control. He went on to read history at Oxford. Theroux says his early resentment of his parents has mellowed but adds, "I'm very much the person I was as a child." "For me, childhood is the most difficult passage of life. You feel imprisoned, enclosed within the choices made by other people. That can feel overwhelming." Needing distance, Theroux went to America after graduation (he's lived there on and off for several years). There, he was hired by the influential documentary maker Michael Moore - the man who would shape his future. Fronting segments on Moore's satirical TV Nation, the naïf Theroux delved into the lives of off-the-wall characters and learned the naturalistic tricks of his trade. "I can't imagine where I would be today were it not for that fateful day when Michael hired me and later told me to get on a plane and interview apocalyptic Christians. I felt completely out of my depth. But he had faith in me at a time when I didn't have faith in myself. I'd never considered being a TV correspondent. I've made sure I thanked him." His subsequent move to the BBC and Weird Weekends, again set in the US, gave Theroux more doubts. "I had enough American in me to be concerned that we might be making one of those 'let's make fun of Americans' type programmes." Weird Weekends became the vehicle by which Theroux was introduced to the British public. His "going native" rapport-building approach told a truer story than hard-nosed interrogation and won him an army of fans. The pay-off for Theroux was escapism: "When you're on location with people who think the heavens are going to rain down fire, the fact that you haven't renewed your car's tax disc doesn't seem so preoccupying." However fame and success have sometimes divided Theroux. Even when winning awards, he's been torn between pride and feeling unworthy. The limelight first blindsided him in the When Louis Met celebrity interview strand. The episode with UK politician Neil Hamilton and wife Christine saw him caught in the media commotion surrounding allegations of rape made against them (later discredited). "I got into TV almost as a way of becoming invisible, in worlds where I was immersed in something remote from my daily concerns. But then I became the subject of tabloids and news reports. It wasn't comfortable," says Theroux. But it's the first show he made with Jimmy Savile in 2000 that left an indelible mark. Unsurprising, given what we know now. At the time Theroux could only say he felt Savile was "really odd, like someone with something to hide". The two struck up a kind of friendship, so the revelations about Savile's serial sexual abuse hit hard. "I was stressed and upset and had a level of guilt, as part of me resisted believing," says Theroux. "I've come to the conclusion it was an understandable human response. The extent of his offending was so broad, it took a while to get your head around it." He revisited the story in 2016, concentrating on Savile's victims. Personally, he hoped it might "exorcise" the ghosts still haunting him. "His victims have changed the landscape in the UK and how we think about historic sexual abuse or predatory behaviour by powerful people," says Theroux. "But what also came across clearly is the way some victims don't always immediately recognise it." The seriousness of the programme was illustrative of the shift in tone of Theroux's documentaries over the last decade. Mental illness, adoption, and rape on campus are among the issues he's covered. The consistency lies in Theroux's human touch. The film-maker says he hopes to be remembered for "showing human nature in an honest way that connects with people for years to come". His view of humanity now is "we are who we are". "That can be really positive, altruistic, self-sacrificing and sometimes really bonkers". As for his attitude towards himself, he says: "I'm at peace with not being at peace." Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

लुई थेरॉक्स ने मानवता के बारे में बहुत कुछ अनुभव नहीं किया है। 25 से अधिक वर्षों के वृत्तचित्र निर्माण में, वह नव-नाज़ियों, साइंटोलॉजिस्ट, पोर्नोग्राफी सितारों, डिमेंशिया के साथ रहने वाले लोगों और जिमी सेविले सहित कई दुनियाओं में चले गए हैं।


Florence & The Machine and N-Dubz to play open air gigs

Summary: Florence & The Machine and N-Dubz are among the artists confirmed to play open air gigs at this year's Somerset House summer series.

Mystery Jets, Air, Noah & The Whale, The Temper Trap, The XX, Corinne Bailey Rae and Soul II Soul have also been confirmed to play in the courtyard of the central London landmark. The series begins on 8 July and runs throughout the month. Tickets for the gigs go on sale on 26 March. The full dates are: Mystery Jets - 8 July Air - 9 Noah & The Whale - 10 N-Dubz - 11 The Temper Trap - 12 The XX - 13 Florence & The Machine - 15 Corinne Bailey Rae - 16 Soul II Soul - 18

फ्लोरेंस एंड द मशीन और एन-डबज़ उन कलाकारों में से हैं जिन्हें इस साल की समरसेट हाउस ग्रीष्मकालीन श्रृंखला में ओपन एयर गिग्स खेलने की पुष्टि की गई है।


'My car rolled six times after smart motorway crash'

Summary: A coroner has called for a review of smart motorways after an inquest heard the deaths of two men on a stretch of the M1 could have been avoided . Between 2015 and 2018, 11 people a year on average died on smart motorways in England.

The roads replace sections of the network and use the hard shoulder to carry traffic, either at busy times or all the time, with emergency refuge stops in place. BBC Radio 5 Live's Your Call has heard from drivers affected by what they've experienced on the roads. 'There was nowhere to go' Charlotte Chappell, from Sheffield, developed post-traumatic stress disorder after her car flipped six times following a collision on what the 40-year-old describes as a smart motorway "blind spot" on the M1 near the Meadowhall shopping centre. She says: "After my experience, I never drive in the left lane. I was driving past Meadowhall which is a route that I do regularly. It was about 7pm at night. "The left-hand lane on that particular area of the motorway is not a hard shoulder because it has become a smart motorway. It is an exit for coming off and down into Meadowhall and a different stretch of road. "Sadly, when they designed the motorway and made it into a smart road they put one of the refuge areas at the end of a blind bend. So here I was... driving along at 70mph… came around the blind bend to find that there was somebody in the refuge area with their indicator on who pulled straight out in front of me. "There was a car next to me on the next lane. There was really nowhere for me to go. "I tried to squeeze between the two cars and ended up getting flipped over and rolled six times down the road, landing upside down. I was pretty quick to get out thinking I was going to get crushed by all the other cars on the motorway. "The first thing that the ambulance said to me when they came was 'you're so lucky that you're alive, that you've just walked out of that'. I had no physical injuries really. "The accident was in December 2018 and I'm still living with the consequences now. I find it hard to sleep, my anxiety levels are through the roof. "About two weeks later, somebody on the other side of the road died in similar circumstances. It's easy for people to say they're safe but if you're the one person that has an accident as a result of it you just can't know what it's like to have an accident like that until it happens to you." 'I left my driving job' John [not his real name], from Brighton, left his job as a long-haul driver after seeing several scary incidents on smart motorways. He says: "They installed the smart motorways on the worst motorway [given] the amount of freight and haulage and the traffic that are bombing along those inside lanes. "The problem is that the gantry and the lane enclosures do not work. What you have - and I've witnessed this - there was a woman in a large people carrier trying to get three kids out of the car, with the door open on the outside. "A truck driver basically blocked the motorway for her. I witnessed so many near misses. I had somebody pull out of a lay-by in front of me and I had to slam my brakes and use my handbrake in the inside lane. "There's just no time for them to get the speed up... like there is on the hard shoulders. They need to knock it on the head." 'Smart motorways? No they're not' Bob is a traffic officer with Highways England and was speaking to 5 Live in a personal capacity so we have not used his surname. He says smart motorways are a measure to expand capacity while avoiding costly new hard shoulders - and he claims the latest changes to the road scheme do not make it safer. "Smart motorways? No they're not. It's all about cost. It's too costly to build another hard shoulder… so they are putting in refuge areas. What they are doing now is putting in more of them - but I can tell you now it is still dangerous. "[When someone breaks down] we get there first - we have to put a roadblock on to make a sterile area. But it's the time it takes us to get to the breakdown or the collision [that is a problem]. "Of course, when we get there, the emergency services are then stuck behind us as there is no hard shoulder for them to travel down - there is three or four lanes of stationary traffic." 'Drivers to blame' Not everyone is critical of smart motorways, however, with some 5 Live listeners suggesting drivers have responsibility. The Department for Transport said it aims to make smart motorways as safe as possible. It said: "We are committed to improving safety, which is why we tasked Highways England with delivering an 18-point action plan to ensure smart motorways are as safe as they can be." Highways England said it was "determined to do all we can to make our roads as safe as possible".

एम1 के एक हिस्से पर दो लोगों की मौत को टाला जा सकता था, एक जांच के बाद एक मृत्यु समीक्षक ने स्मार्ट मोटरवे की समीक्षा का आह्वान किया है। 2015 और 2018 के बीच, इंग्लैंड में स्मार्ट मोटरवे पर औसतन एक वर्ष में 11 लोगों की मौत हो गई।


Men summonsed over Bury St Edmunds Cycle King shop fire

Summary: Two men have been summonsed to court over a "major" fire in the historic centre of Bury St Edmunds last year.

About 60 firefighters tackled the blaze at the Cycle King store on Angel Hill on 29 September. Two neighbouring buildings, including the One Bull pub, were also damaged. A 23-year-old man from Stowmarket and a 24-year-old man from the Bury St Edmunds area will be charged with arson when they appear at Ipswich Magistrates' Court on 28 August.

पिछले साल बरी सेंट एडमंड्स के ऐतिहासिक केंद्र में "बड़ी" आग लगने पर दो लोगों को अदालत में तलब किया गया है।


Second closure for A696 in Northumberland

Summary: A section of one of the main routes in Northumberland has been closed after a tanker containing aviation fuel rolled onto its side.

The incident happened on the A696 between Kirkwhelpington and the B6342 in the early hours. Emergency services are at the scene and a pump is removing the fuel from the tanker. Diversions are in place and the road will be shut all day. It is the second time in less than three weeks that it has been blocked. On 28 May, a wind turbine stem came off a trailer near Otterburn and the recovery operation took five days.

नॉर्थम्बरलैंड में मुख्य मार्गों में से एक के एक हिस्से को विमानन ईंधन से भरे एक टैंकर के अपनी तरफ लुढ़कने के बाद बंद कर दिया गया है।


Dangerous driving arrest after double-fatal crash in Derbyshire

Summary: A man has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving after a crash in which two women died.

Derbyshire Police said the collision, which involved a blue Vauxhall Corsa and a blue BMW, happened just before 05:40 BST on the A6135 Station Road between Renishaw and Eckington. The two women, who were travelling in the Corsa, died at the scene. Any witnesses or anyone with dashcam or CCTV footage is being asked to contact the force. Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk. Related Internet Links Derbyshire Constabulary

दुर्घटना में दो महिलाओं की मौत के बाद खतरनाक ड्राइविंग से मौत के संदेह में एक व्यक्ति को गिरफ्तार किया गया है।


Six accused over 'ATM explosion plot' across England

Summary: Six men have been charged with conspiracy to cause explosions during cash machine raids across England.

The charges relate to incidents involving ATMs across the north west, Midlands, Leicestershire and Oxfordshire, Merseyside Police said. All six defendants, aged 27 to 39, will appear before Liverpool Magistrates' Court on Thursday. They are accused of conspiracy to cause explosions and conspiracy to burgle, between January and December this year.

पूरे इंग्लैंड में नकदी मशीन पर छापे के दौरान छह लोगों पर विस्फोट करने की साजिश रचने का आरोप लगाया गया है।


Spying on Europe’s farms with satellites and drones

Summary: Farmers who claim more EU subsidies than they should, or who break Common Agricultural Policy rules, are now more likely to be caught out by a camera in the sky than an inspector calling with a clipboard. How do they feel about being watched from above?

By Laurence PeterBBC News Imagine a perfect walk in the country, a few years from now - tranquillity, clean air, birdsong in the trees and hedgerows, growing crops swaying in the breeze. Suddenly a model plane swoops overhead. But there is no-one around manipulating radio controls. This is not a toy, but a drone on a photographic mission. Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres up in space, the same patch of land is being photographed by a satellite, which clearly pinpoints individual trees and animals. What is there to spy on here? No secret military installations, just farmland. But Europe's farms cost taxpayers billions of euros in subsidies each year, and EU agricultural inspectors are turning to technology to improve their patchy record on preventing fraud and waste. Satellites have already been in use for several years, and drones are currently undergoing trials. Scanning a farm with a satellite costs about one third as much as sending an inspector on a field visit - £115 ($180; 150 euros) rather than £310 ($490; 400 euros), says the UK's Rural Payments Agency (RPA), which is responsible for disbursing the subsidies in the UK and checking for irregularities. "The RPA follows up only on those claims where there is some doubt about accuracy, and then only at the specific fields for which the doubt exists," the RPA says. "This saves time, lifts the burden on farmers and reduces cost to the taxpayer." Satellites can rapidly cover a huge area in detail and quickly return to photograph it again if necessary. In 2010, about 70% of the total required controls on farm payments in the EU were done by satellites, which photographed more than 210,000 sq km (81,000 sq miles) of land in all. But they are not infallible. Austria does not use them, on the grounds that the shadows cast by very mountainous terrain sometimes make satellite images inaccurate. And Scotland, unlike the rest of the UK, decided against satellites "because of the difficulty of getting enough clear weather for flyovers", a Scottish government spokeswoman told the BBC. Many things in the countryside are constantly changing and when the satellite passes over, "the animals may be in a field or in a barn - you can't count the numbers very well", says Roland Randall, an English farmer and environmental researcher in Cambridgeshire. "When planners looked at the aerial photo records of our farm they thought we had an additional building without permission, but it was actually a haystack," he told the BBC. The satellite checks are done partly to produce accurate maps of farms, showing clearly the areas eligible for subsidies. But farmers these days have to keep their land in "good agricultural and environmental condition" to qualify for subsidies, so images also reveal whether the farmer is complying with the rules on hedges and ponds, say, or buffer strips around arable fields. A farmer who breaks the rules risks losing 3% of his or her direct payment - and more if it is a repeat infringement. There have been few prosecutions in the UK based on satellite evidence, says Ray Purdy, a senior law researcher at University College London (UCL) specialising in satellite monitoring. One case in the UK was dropped in 2001 because a farmer proved that he had planted a linseed crop, even though the satellite image appeared to show bare earth. The sparse young plants had failed to show up against the bright reflection off chalk downland. This could be the kind of situation where a drone - an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) - would come in useful. Drones are best known for their role as remote-control killers in Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas, but supporters see a role for smaller and much simpler drones in agricultural monitoring. They can get up close and take sharp photographs - and unlike satellites, which always look directly down, drones can get an angled view of their subject. They are currently being tried out in vineyards in the south of France, to check that "grubbing up" of vines is done legally and ecologically. Wine-growers get as much as 10,000 euros ($13,000; £8,300) per hectare in subsidies for digging up uncompetitive vines - a scheme to prevent new EU "wine lakes" caused by overproduction. "There has to be 100% control, as it's a huge amount of money," says Philippe Loudjani, an agronomist at the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission's main satellite monitoring hub in Ispra, northern Italy. "The French are testing to see if the drones need to go up to 10cm resolution - to see what accuracy is required." Drones are also being tested in Italy, and are already in use on a small scale in Spain's Catalonia region, where authorities say their 25cm and 12.5cm resolution photos are ideal for inspecting the small landholdings with mixed crops that are typical of the Mediterranean. The EU is hurrying to develop a "strategy for Unmanned Aircraft Systems", which would see the existing very tough restrictions on the use of civilian drones in Europe relaxed. A discussion paper prepared for a European Commission workshop in Brussels this week, envisages their use not only in crop or farm monitoring, but also terrain cartography, goods transport, monitoring of borders, the fight against illegal immigration and drug trafficking, and intervention in natural or industrial disasters. "They can also be sent to deliver rescue packages to ship crews in danger at sea," it adds. However, in the short term it's likely that UAVs will only be widely approved for use within line of sight of an operator and at a distance of no more than 500m, which limits their value for agricultural inspection. And what about the privacy issue? Ben Hayes of the campaign group Statewatch worries that Europe is rushing into the use of drones without sufficient public discussion. "We would accept the argument that there are lots of things they can be useful for, but ... the questions about what is acceptable and how people feel about drones hovering over their farmland or their demonstration - these debates are not taking place," he says. Ray Purdy of UCL surveyed 202 farmers in the UK, and 428 in Australia - where satellites are routinely used to monitor land use, especially vegetation clearance - and found that only about a quarter in Australia and a third in the UK were against satellite monitoring. Some farmers voiced concerns about invasion of privacy, but many said remote sensing was preferable to inspectors on their land taking up their time. A majority in the UK also agreed that the satellites would help to deter fraud. Rob Allan, a farmer in Warwickshire, said "it's modern life really - I don't think there's anything you can do about it".

जो किसान यूरोपीय संघ से अधिक सब्सिडी का दावा करते हैं, या जो सामान्य कृषि नीति के नियमों को तोड़ते हैं, अब क्लिपबोर्ड के साथ कॉल करने वाले निरीक्षक की तुलना में आसमान में एक कैमरे द्वारा पकड़े जाने की अधिक संभावना है। वे ऊपर से देखे जाने के बारे में कैसा महसूस करते हैं?


Llandudno beach rescue: Woman and dog stranded by tide

Summary: A dog walker and her puppy had to be rescued by coastguards when they got cut off by the incoming tide during a visit to a beach.

The woman was walking her dog along West Shore in Llandudno, Conwy county, at about 16:00 GMT on Tuesday. Holyhead Coastguard said the pair were trapped on a sandbank by the rising tide, prompting 22 people to call 999. A spokesman said they were rescued - shocked and with wet feet but unharmed - and the woman was given safety tips.

एक डॉग वॉकर और उसके पिल्ला को तट रक्षकों द्वारा बचाया जाना था जब वे एक समुद्र तट की यात्रा के दौरान आने वाले ज्वार से कट गए थे।


Brazil's economy grew 0.1% in 2014

Summary: Brazil, the world's seventh largest economy, narrowly avoided contracting in 2014 with a growth rate of just 0.1% for the year.

The economy had been growing at a fast pace for the past decade but has slowed considerably in the past four years. The slowdown is a result of low commodity prices, sluggish global growth and low investor confidence. Under new Finance Minister Joaquim Levy, the country has moved from stimulus to austerity. From 2011 until last year, Brazil's government had been trying to stimulate the economy by offering labour tax breaks, subsidising petrol and lowering the price of electricity. Mr Levy has reined in government spending and raised taxes in order to balance government finances. As a result, analysts predict 2015 is likely to be a difficult year for the country.

दुनिया की सातवीं सबसे बड़ी अर्थव्यवस्था ब्राजील ने 2014 में केवल 0.1 प्रतिशत की विकास दर के साथ संकुचन से बचा लिया।


Election 2017: How the Tory campaign went so wrong

Summary: At the start of this campaign, we started tracking where the party leaders went, in the hope of picking up clues about what to expect. Had we done this in 2015, it would have helped us spot the Conservatives' big push against the Liberal Democrats. We hoped our experiment might help us avoid a 2015-style shock. So how did it do?

Chris CookPolicy editor, Newsnight The main thing we have learned is that past performance is a poor guide to the future. The Tories were largely using much of the same team as in 2015 and, once again, they were very well funded. But this evidence implies that the Conservative party campaign in England was an absolute catastrophe, and appalling data and analysis drove them to use their resources poorly. The dots in this graph represent the state of the Tory-Labour battleground before polls opened on Thursday. The higher-up dots show places with more UKIP voters. The furthest left dots show safe Labour seats, and the furthest right dots show safe Conservative seats. The blue rings show where Theresa May visited. You can see she was more ambitious - going further left - in areas with more UKIP voters. This stuff matters. While leader visits may be a small part of a party's campaign arsenal, if they were getting that wrong, they were probably getting other campaigning efforts wrong. So I've drawn in a rough line showing where the Tory campaign thought the battleground roughly was - what we have called an "implied frontier" between the parties. Think of it as the centre of the fight. Towards the end of the race, the Tories thought it was closer in. Earlier on, they thought it was a bit further out. But treat it as a rough campaign summary. In short, they hoped to flip those Labour seats on the right hand side of the dotted line. This was a strategy aiming for a triple-digit majority - or something close. Instead, though, everything went wrong. In a graph below, I have coloured in the seats by who holds them now. And you can see the actual battleground was in a totally different place. That is the second line I've drawn in. You could draw this line in a few ways, but none of them get close to the Tory implied frontier. And the length of that big arrow is the size of the error. This was a double-digit polling error. Note, amid this, one further piece of evidence on the importance of polling to this disaster. Last month, YouGov broke from the consensus and got close to the real result. Their model implied a hung parliament. When it was published, the Conservatives' pollsters in England - Mark Textor and Jim Messina - used Twitter to comment on how poor it was. Their reading of the race was, it transpires, way off. There is another datapoint which supports this conclusion. The campaigns tracker implied the frontier that the Conservatives were aiming for in Scotland was 13 gains. They made 12. And Nicola Sturgeon's patterns of visits suggest she roughly agreed. So the Conservative campaign there seemed to make sense. It so happens, though, that this was the one part of Great Britain where Mr Messina and Mr Textor were not running the show. The data operation in Scotland was run by James Kanagasooriam of Populus. Labour's campaigns triumph Labour's efforts have always been harder to read. They did seem to build events designed to emphasise their presence on local TV bulletins, which made the charts difficult to interpret. Here, though, is a graph showing Jeremy Corbyn's visits, combined with that same estimate of where the real frontier was. Look at the right side. However they did it, Mr Corbyn was actually being deployed right there on the front line. The front line is just not where most public polls said it was. Did Labour quietly run a perfect campaign, then? Labour activists have had a great day, so I hope they do not mind me saying "no". Before the vote, as I said in my last piece, campaign officials in the party told me that they did not think Mr Corbyn's visits to Tory-held seats should be read as showing their ambitions. He went to places where he was wanted, which was not always a helpful guide to the party's thoughts. In truth, their analysis was, in effect, very close to the Conservative analysis I posted up above. You can see that elsewhere. When you look at the party's ground operations, they were not matching these visits with resources. I know of MPs who got cut off by the party as dead losses who held their seats comfortably. Just on Thursday, activists were dispatched to a deep defensive line. Shock gains like Enfield Southgate and Canterbury were shocks to lots of local activists, too, who yesterday were being sent to defend Labour-held seats elsewhere. To be clear, this is not about people trying to do Mr Corbyn down. I have spoken to people today who could be claiming credit for their foresight, who are wandering around in a state of shock. And, frankly, it is a tribute to Mr Corbyn that Labour did so well, when they put their troops in strange places. What, then, can we learn?

इस अभियान की शुरुआत में, हमने पता लगाना शुरू कर दिया कि पार्टी के नेता कहाँ गए, इस उम्मीद में कि क्या उम्मीद की जाए। अगर हमने 2015 में ऐसा किया होता, तो इससे हमें लिबरल डेमोक्रेट्स के खिलाफ कंजर्वेटिव्स के बड़े दबाव को पहचानने में मदद मिलती। हमें उम्मीद थी कि हमारा प्रयोग हमें 2015 की शैली के सदमे से बचने में मदद कर सकता है। तो यह कैसे हुआ?


Can cod comeback keep a Canadian fishery afloat?

Summary: A generation after Canada declared a moratorium on northern cod fishing off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, the species is making a comeback. But can the province's troubled fishery survive to take advantage of cod's resurgence?

By Jessica MurphyBBC News, Newfoundland and Labrador The wharf in Petty Harbour is quiet, and Todd Chafe, a 46-year-old fisherman, is slicing up cod for a nearby family restaurant in a shack near the water. "Some fellas like to point fingers: 'Ah, this done it, foreigners done it'," he says. Chafe is talking about the collapse of northern cod off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador 25 years ago. "We all done it, every single person that went fishing done it. Everybody fished for it so everybody had a hand in destroying it." On 2 July 1992, after decades of bungled fisheries management, Canada put an end to a cod industry that had supported rural Newfoundlanders for 500 years. Stocks of the once mighty northern cod had fallen to an estimated 1% of 1980s levels. The government had overestimated how many cod there were and didn't act when it first became clear the fish were disappearing. That day, in a St John's ballroom, federal cabinet minister John Crosbie announced a moratorium on cod fishing. Angry fishermen pounded on the barred doors trying to get in. Overnight, 38,000 people were put out of work in Newfoundland and Labrador - the single largest layoff in Canada's history. Crosbie promised the moratorium would only last about two years. It's been more than 20. Now there is a glimmer of hope. Northern cod stock has reached about 25% of the levels seen in the '80s. But there is a fierce debate over what the return of cod fishing should look like in Newfoundland. Musician Arthur O'Brien entertains the lunchtime crowd at Chafe's Landing, a popular Petty Harbour restaurant, with songs about Newfoundland and Labrador. As a child, O'Brien used to be part of the fishing economy. "Right here you're sitting off what was once one of the best fisheries in the world," he says after his set. O'Brien hails from Bay Bulls, a nearby coastal community. Like many children in fishing villages, O'Brien was a "wharf rat", making pocket money cutting out and selling cod tongues by the dozen or the pound. Bay Bulls - a fish processing hub - was one of the hundreds of rural towns whose economic backbone was the inshore fishery. The inshore fishery is relegated to smaller boats that are essentially small independent businesses, unlike the industrial-sized trawlers that fish further out in the Atlantic. A lot of things changed after the cod fishery was shut down, the 43-year-old recalls. People left the Atlantic province in droves, losing about 14% of its population. "Every Newfoundlander has someone gone away. Everybody," says O'Brien, who gets a big reaction when he sings about locals leaving to work in the Fort McMurray oil fields in Alberta. Some 18,800 people from the province went to work in the western province between 1996 and 2006 alone. Until recently, the decade-long oil boom in both Alberta and in the waters off Newfoundland helped fill the gap left by cod. But low oil prices have sent unemployment rates in the province ticking upwards and squeezed government revenues. Crab and shellfish also gave fishermen a reprieve, but now those stocks are also showing signs of stress. In April, angry fishermen forced their way into the headquarters of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), while others burnt their gear in front of a regional office over cuts to shrimp and crab quotas. The same month, another fisherman, Richard Gillett, went on a hunger strike outside DFO offices in St John's, demanding a meeting with the federal fisheries minister. Then in June, search and rescue workers had to airlift the crew of a fishing vessel to safety after they were caught in thick sea ice. The ice has delayed the snow crab season, another source of income. Neil Ward's son was among the men rescued as the vessel sank below the ice. "For them to be doing this, it shows how desperate people are," Ward, a store owner in the coastal town of La Scie, Newfoundland, says. "They're willing to take the risk." DFO has begun to loosen the moratorium, if only slightly. In 2017, the agency extended the length of the cod fishing season and doubled the weekly catch limits in most regions under a "stewardship fishery" programme. Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union (FFAW) President Keith Sullivan calls the current levels set by DFO "really, really conservative". FFAW is asking DFO to further expand the cod fishery to make up for the squeeze fishermen are feeling over cuts to crab and shrimp quotas. Sullivan sees an opportunity to create an international market for Canadian northern cod, and rebuild the fishery infrastructure. "People understand it's got to be done sustainably, but they can also see that this is something that's going to bring value back to communities, hopefully for years to come," he says. But Tony Blanchard, the resource management director for DFO in the region, says "caution" is the current approach. The government will start making annual assessments of the stock in 2018. Ryan Cleary, a former journalist and ex-federal politician, says fishermen are impatient and the industry, beyond cod, is in crisis. "It's going to continue to heat up until it boils over," he says. Cleary, along with Gillett, is trying to launch a splinter union - the Federation of Independent Sea Harvesters of Newfoundland and Labrador - in a bid to take on the FFAW. He says the independent, small boat operators need their own representation. FFAW says about 10,000 of the 15,000 workers they represent are inshore fishermen. "The average Newfoundland and Labrador fish harvesters are dying out," he says. Many coastal fishermen are now in their 60s, with few young people willing to take a risk in an industry that's been struggling for decades, or pay the upfront costs of training, licensing and buying a vessel. Cleary and Gillett also believe the inshore fishery is facing an unprecedented crisis in many ways worse than the cod collapse, with stocks of most commercial species on the decline or delicate in terms of rebuilding. "It hasn't gotten better, it's gotten worse." says Cleary. "We didn't learn anything from the moratorium." Some independent scientists have been raising alarm bells about any imminent ramp up in the cod fishery. Memorial University's Noel Cadigan says cod stocks are still fragile. "You can catch more cod now. I don't think we're going to do irreparable harm but we certainly are delaying recovery of the stock," he says. He worries DFO is under pressure from fishermen who see crab and shrimp stocks failing. Cadigan and his colleagues say a better management plan - one that includes a timeline for recovery and defined targets along the way - is necessary. Back on the Petty Harbour wharf, Tom Best is frustrated and worried about what will happen if the moratorium is lifted. He says politicians and agency staff, most of whom live thousands of kilometres away in Ottawa, were nowhere to be found in the last 25 years when it came to making tough decisions about the fishery's future. "You could have hundreds of communities in this province prospering from the cod fishery if people just used their brains and their heads," the president of the Petty Harbour Fishermen's Cooperative says. "People are geared up to do things that were destructive before the moratorium, and they're going to go right back to it again."

कनाडा द्वारा न्यूफाउंडलैंड और लैब्राडोर के तट पर उत्तरी कॉड मछली पकड़ने पर रोक लगाने की घोषणा के एक पीढ़ी के बाद, यह प्रजाति वापस आ रही है। लेकिन क्या प्रांत की परेशान मछली पालन कॉड के पुनरुत्थान का लाभ उठाने के लिए जीवित रह सकती है?


Iran nuclear deal: Trump's speech in full

Summary: Thank you very much. My fellow Americans: As President of the United States, my highest obligation is to ensure the safety and security of the American people.

History has shown that the longer we ignore a threat, the more dangerous that threat becomes. For this reason, upon taking office, I've ordered a complete strategic review of our policy toward the rogue regime in Iran. That review is now complete. Today, I am announcing our strategy, along with several major steps we are taking to confront the Iranian regime's hostile actions and to ensure that Iran never, and I mean never, acquires a nuclear weapon. Our policy is based on a clear-eyed assessment of the Iranian dictatorship, its sponsorship of terrorism, and its continuing aggression in the Middle East and all around the world. Iran is under the control of a fanatical regime that seized power in 1979 and forced a proud people to submit to its extremist rule. This radical regime has raided the wealth of one of the world's oldest and most vibrant nations, and spread death, destruction and chaos all around the globe. Beginning in 1979, agents of the Iranian regime illegally seized the US embassy in Tehran and held more than 60 Americans hostage during the 444 days of the crisis. The Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah twice bombed our embassy in Lebanon - once in 1983 and again in 1984. Another Iranian-supported bombing killed 241 Americans - service members they were, in their barracks in Beirut in 1983. In 1996, the regime directed another bombing of American military housing in Saudi Arabia, murdering 19 Americans in cold blood. Iranian proxies provided training to operatives who were later involved in al-Qaeda's bombing of the American embassies in Kenya, Tanzania, and two years later, killing 224 people, and wounding more than 4,000 others. The regime harboured high-level terrorists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, including Osama bin Laden's son. In Iraq and Afghanistan, groups supported by Iran have killed hundreds of American military personnel. The Iranian dictatorship's aggression continues to this day. The regime remains the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, and provides assistance to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist networks. It develops, deploys, and proliferates missiles that threaten American troops and our allies. It harasses American ships and threatens freedom of navigation in the Arabian Gulf and in the Red Sea. It imprisons Americans on false charges. And it launches cyberattacks against our critical infrastructure, financial system, and military. The United States is far from the only target of the Iranian dictatorship's long campaign of bloodshed. The regime violently suppresses its own citizens; it shot unarmed student protesters in the street during the Green Revolution. This regime has fuelled sectarian violence in Iraq, and vicious civil wars in Yemen and Syria. In Syria, the Iranian regime has supported the atrocities of Bashar al-Assad's regime and condoned Assad's use of chemical weapons against helpless civilians, including many, many children. Given the regime's murderous past and present, we should not take lightly its sinister vision for the future. The regime's two favourite chants are "Death to America" and "Death to Israel". Realising the gravity of the situation, the United States and the United Nations Security Council sought, over many years, to stop Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons with a wide array of strong economic sanctions. But the previous administration lifted these sanctions, just before what would have been the total collapse of the Iranian regime, through the deeply controversial 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. This deal is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. As I have said many times, the Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into. The same mindset that produced this deal is responsible for years of terrible trade deals that have sacrificed so many millions of jobs in our country to the benefit of other countries. We need negotiators who will much more strongly represent America's interest. The nuclear deal threw Iran's dictatorship a political and economic lifeline, providing urgently needed relief from the intense domestic pressure the sanctions had created. It also gave the regime an immediate financial boost and over $100bn its government could use to fund terrorism. The regime also received a massive cash settlement of $1.7bn from the United States, a large portion of which was physically loaded onto an airplane and flown into Iran. Just imagine the sight of those huge piles of money being hauled off by the Iranians waiting at the airport for the cash. I wonder where all that money went. Worst of all, the deal allows Iran to continue developing certain elements of its nuclear programme. And importantly, in just a few years, as key restrictions disappear, Iran can sprint towards a rapid nuclear weapons breakout. In other words, we got weak inspections in exchange for no more than a purely short-term and temporary delay in Iran's path to nuclear weapons. What is the purpose of a deal that, at best, only delays Iran's nuclear capability for a short period of time? This, as president of the United States, is unacceptable. In other countries, they think in terms of 100-year intervals, not just a few years at a time. The saddest part of the deal for the United States is that all of the money was paid up front, which is unheard of, rather than at the end of the deal when they have shown they've played by the rules. But what's done is done, and that's why we are where we are. Iranian regime has committed multiple violations of the agreement. For example, on two separate occasions, they have exceeded the limit of 130 metric tonnes of heavy water. Until recently, the Iranian regime has also failed to meet our expectations in its operation of advanced centrifuges. The Iranian regime has also intimidated international inspectors into not using the full inspection authorities that the agreement calls for. Iranian officials and military leaders have repeatedly claimed they will not allow inspectors onto military sites, even though the international community suspects some of those sites were part of Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons programme. There are also many people who believe that Iran is dealing with North Korea. I am going to instruct our intelligence agencies to do a thorough analysis and report back their findings beyond what they have already reviewed. By its own terms, the Iran Deal was supposed to contribute to "regional and international peace and security". And yet, while the United States adheres to our commitment under the deal, the Iranian regime continues to fuel conflict, terror and turmoil throughout the Middle East and beyond. Importantly, Iran is not living up to the spirit of the deal. So today, in recognition of the increasing menace posed by Iran, and after extensive consultations with our allies, I am announcing a new strategy to address the full range of Iran's destructive actions. First, we will work with our allies to counter the regime's destabilising activity and support for terrorist proxies in the region. Second, we will place additional sanctions on the regime to block their financing of terror. Third, we will address the regime's proliferation of missiles and weapons that threaten its neighbours, global trade and freedom of navigation. And finally, we will deny the regime all paths to a nuclear weapon. Today, I am also announcing several major steps my administration is taking in pursuit of this strategy. The execution of our strategy begins with the long-overdue step of imposing tough sanctions on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Revolutionary Guard is the Iranian Supreme Leader's corrupt personal terror force and militia. It has hijacked large portions of Iran's economy and seized massive religious endowments to fund war and terror abroad. This includes arming the Syrian dictator, supplying proxies and partners with missiles and weapons to attack civilians in the region, and even plotting to bomb a popular restaurant right here in Washington DC. I am authorising the Treasury Department to further sanction the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for its support for terrorism and to apply sanctions to its officials, agents and affiliates. I urge our allies to join us in taking strong actions to curb Iran's continued dangerous and destabilising behaviour, including thorough sanctions outside the Iran Deal that target the regime's ballistic missile programme, in support for terrorism, and all of its destructive activities, of which there are many. Finally, on the grave matter of Iran's nuclear programme: Since the signing of the nuclear agreement, the regime's dangerous aggression has only escalated. At the same time, it has received massive sanctions relief while continuing to develop its missiles programme. Iran has also entered into lucrative business contracts with other parties to the agreement. When the agreement was finalised in 2015, Congress passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act to ensure that Congress's voice would be heard on the deal. Among other conditions, this law requires the president, or his designee, to certify that the suspension of sanctions under the deal is "appropriate and proportionate" to measure - and other measures taken by Iran to terminate its illicit nuclear programme. Based on the factual record I have put forward, I am announcing today that we cannot and will not make this certification. We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran's nuclear breakout. That is why I am directing my administration to work closely with Congress and our allies to address the deal's many serious flaws so that the Iranian regime can never threaten the world with nuclear weapons. These include the deal's sunset clauses that, in just a few years, will eliminate key restrictions on Iran's nuclear programme. The flaws in the deal also include insufficient enforcement and near total silence on Iran's missile programmes. Congress has already begun the work to address these problems. Key House and Senate leaders are drafting legislation that would amend the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act to strengthen enforcement, prevent Iran from developing an inter - this is so totally important - an intercontinental ballistic missile, and make all restrictions on Iran's nuclear activity permanent under US law. So important. I support these initiatives. However, in the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated. It is under continuous review, and our participation can be cancelled by me, as president, at any time. As we have seen in North Korea, the longer we ignore a threat, the worse that threat becomes. It is why we are determined that the world's leading sponsor of terrorism will never obtain nuclear weapons. In this effort, we stand in total solidarity with the Iranian regime's longest-suffering victims: its own people. The citizens of Iran have paid a heavy price for the violence and extremism of their leaders. The Iranian people long to - and they just are longing, to reclaim their country's proud history, its culture, its civilization, its cooperation with its neighbours. We hope that these new measures directed at the Iranian dictatorship will compel the government to re-evaluate its pursuit of terror at the expense of its people. We hope that our actions today will help bring about a future of peace, stability and prosperity in the Middle East - a future where sovereign nations respect each other and their own citizens. We pray for a future where young children - American and Iranian, Muslim, Christian and Jewish - can grow up in a world free from violence, hatred and terror. And, until that blessed day comes, we will do what we must to keep America safe. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you.

बहुत-बहुत धन्यवाद। मेरे साथी अमेरिकीः संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका के राष्ट्रपति के रूप में, मेरा सर्वोच्च दायित्व अमेरिकी लोगों की सुरक्षा सुनिश्चित करना है।


£1bn regeneration masterplan for Dundee's waterfront

Summary: With an international museum, a new train station, a marina and an enormous park all in the pipeline, there is no end to the ambition in the masterplan city planners have drawn up for the Dundee waterfront. They are even looking at building an urban beach which doubles as an ice rink.

By Philip SimTayside and Central reporter, BBC Scotland Those behind Dundee's £1bn waterfront regeneration programme forecast it will create 9,000 jobs, attract hundreds of thousands of tourists, and bring in millions of pounds of investment. At the same time they say it will tempt everything from oil rigs to cruise liners and yachters to travel up the Tay. "People always laugh about the beach," admits Allan Watt, waterfront project co-ordinator. "But in winter you could take away the sand and replace it with this new plastic surface that people can ice skate on. "So you'd have a beach that in winter would become an ice rink." It is far from the biggest part of the project, but it underlines the breadth and depth of the vision planners have painstakingly constructed over the past decade. The waterfront project can trace its roots back to 2001, when the local authority held a consultation with residents and businesses about the future of the area, drawing up the masterplan Mr Watt calls a "pact with the public". Long before plans had been dreamt up to build an outpost of the Victoria and Albert museum in the city, now at the heart of the project, the council was considering how to completely redefine the city's long-standing relationship with the Tay. 'Ludicrously ideal' "The city's growth has been built on its relationship with the river - fishing, whaling, the jute industry and then ship-building," Mr Watt says. "But when the Tay Road Bridge was built in 1966 the access road network unintentionally cut the city centre off from the waterfront. "It created a confusing and negative image, and the area became grossly under-utilised. "The waterfront is the front door to the city, and what did people used to see? The old railway station, not exactly a landmark; the old Olympia swimming pool, which had seen better days; and the Tay Hotel, which at the time was falling apart." But behind the crumbling facade, planners saw the city's potential - Mr Watt likes to quote former Dundee University rector Stephen Fry, who described the city's setting as "ludicrously ideal". In the past 12 months, five major demolition projects have created a clean slate, leaving the masts of Captain Scott's RRS Discovery, moored at Discovery Point, the sole remaining landmark in the area. Towering former council headquarters Tayside House, once voted the least-loved building in the city, was the first to be torn down - brick-by-brick rather than in a grand detonation, given its position straddling the main east coast train line. It was followed by the city's dilapidated railway station, which will be replaced by a £14m five-storey complex complete with shops and a hotel. A series of precarious demolition projects had to be carried out over consecutive Christmas holidays for fear of blocking the tracks. Next to go were the Hilton Hotel and Gala Casino, followed by the old Olympia swimming pool after its £31.5m replacement opened nearby. The land formerly occupied by those buildings is now being cleared for the construction of the V&A at Dundee museum, a £45m centre of design created by renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. It is projected the V&A could bring 500,000 extra tourists to Dundee in its inaugural year in 2017, with 300,000 more following every year thereafter. Several hotel firms have already spotted the potential market developing in the city, and Malmaison opened a new luxury location in the former Tay Hotel building right across the road from the museum site earlier this year, after a £15m refurbishment. Creative sector Permanent residents are also expected to move in, to fill the slew of new jobs created. New housing is being built along Riverside Drive, with flats set to go on the market within weeks. And Mr Watt has had "serious discussions" with property firms about the central waterfront, with hundreds of flats potentially in the offing, along with a mix of bars, cafes and shops to keep the area busy through the day and night. There are also plans for more housing towards the west end of the city and the Seabraes area, which is also home to the city's burgeoning creative and life sciences sector. The city which spawned Grant Theft Auto and Lemmings is looking to build on a growing reputation - Mr Watt wants it to be "a place for new businesses to set up and existing ones to expand". This is where District 10 comes in, a futuristic-looking office block built out of old shipping containers on a former railway yard at Seabraes. Existing office space has already been snapped up by a number of innovative local businesses and entrepreneurs, many of whom trade internationally, and more blocks are set to follow. 'Open for business' Dundee's port plays a vital role in the masterplan, second only perhaps to the central waterfront itself. The area is already attracting investment, with a new oil rig repair and maintenance facility recently announced, and it has been singled out by the Scottish government's National Renewables Investment Plan as a top location in Scotland for manufacturing and maintaining offshore wind turbines. Thanks to improvements to the local road network, one shipment of giant wind turbine parts built in Scandinavia has already passed through the city's port, bound for Aberdeenshire, and Mr Watt has designs on attracting more - or even seeing them built locally. He said: "We are open for business and I think we'll see more turbines passing through. A number of companies are now talking to Forth Ports about that. "The offshore turbines are so big they can't be transported by road or rail in the UK - but they could be manufactured right on the quayside here and shipped straight out to the wind farms. "We're beautifully placed to play into that." As part of the bid to house offshore wind farm maintenance vessels, the city council is in negotiations with Forth Ports to take over the lock at City Quay. With the lock currently broken and stuck shut, the only vessels inside the quay are the HM Frigate Unicorn, the world's sixth oldest ship, now converted into a museum, and another historical curio in the North Carr, Scotland's last lightship - but Mr Watt has much grander plans for the area. Not only is the new lock being designed with the specifications of offshore service vessels in mind, planners hope to build a thriving marina in the waters of City Quay. "I've spoken to consultants who say there's massive need for berthing of yachts in this part of Scotland," said Mr Watt. "There can't be many cities in the UK where you can sail straight into the heart of the city - you'd be five minutes walk from the V&A, and not many places could boast that."

एक अंतरराष्ट्रीय संग्रहालय, एक नया ट्रेन स्टेशन, एक मरीना और एक विशाल पार्क के साथ, डंडी तट के लिए शहर के योजनाकारों द्वारा तैयार किए गए मास्टरप्लान में महत्वाकांक्षा का कोई अंत नहीं है। वे एक शहरी समुद्र तट बनाने पर भी विचार कर रहे हैं जो एक बर्फ के रिंक के रूप में दोगुना हो जाता है।


Why a long night's sleep may be bad for you

Summary: Many of us try, but often fail, to get eight hours' sleep each night. This is widely assumed to be the ideal amount - but some experts now say it's too much, and may actually be unhealthy.

By Ruth AlexanderBBC News We all know that getting too little sleep is bad. You feel tired, you may be irritable, and it can contribute to obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease, doctors say. But too much sleep? You don't often hear people complaining about it. However, research carried out over the past 10 years appears to show that adults who usually sleep for less than six hours or more than eight, are at risk of dying earlier than those sleep for between six and eight hours. To put it more scientifically, there is a gradual increase in mortality risk for those who fall outside the six-to-eight-hour band. Prof Franco Cappuccio, professor of cardiovascular medicine and epidemiology at the University of Warwick, has analysed 16 studies, in which overall more than a million people were asked about their sleeping habits and then followed up over time. Cappuccio put the people involved into three broad groups: • those who said they slept less than six hours a night • those who said they slept for between six and eight hours • those who said they slept for more than eight hours His analysis showed that 12% more of the short sleepers had died when they were followed up, compared to the medium sleepers. However, 30% more of the long sleepers had died, compared to the medium sleepers. That's a significant increase in mortality risk, roughly equivalent to the risk of drinking several units of alcohol per day, though less than the mortality risk that comes from smoking. But can it really be true that getting nine hours' sleep is worse for you than getting five? There are different ways of looking at this. Cappuccio was aware of the possibility that people sleeping too long might be depressed, or might be using sleeping pills. He corrected for this, though, and found the association was still there. His own theory is that people who sleep for more than eight hours sometimes have an underlying health problem that is not yet showing in other symptoms. So, it's not the long sleep that is causing the increased mortality risk, it's the hidden illness. But not everyone agrees. Prof Shawn Youngstedt of Arizona State University carried out a small study involving 14 young adults, persuading them to spend two hours more in bed per night for three weeks. They reported back that they suffered from "increases in depressed mood" as Youngstedt puts it, and also "increases in inflammation" - specifically, higher levels in the blood of a protein called IL-6, which is connected with inflammation. The participants in the study also complained about soreness and back pain. This makes Youngstedt wonder whether the problem with long sleep is the prolonged inactivity that goes with it. He has now been carrying out an experiment where long-sleeping and average-sleeping adults are asked to spend an hour less in bed each night. The results will be published soon, he says. Anyone studying sleep has to contend with a number of difficulties. One is that it's often not possible to measure sleep very accurately. "We tend to rely on very simple methods of asking people on average how many hours they sleep a night. It has to be taken with a pinch of salt," says Cappuccio. "Naturally, you have to rely on your memory, and… you don't know if you're reporting time in bed or time asleep and whether you're accounting for naps, and so forth." Apparently we have a general tendency to overestimate how long we've been asleep. And when it comes to quality of sleep, all experts seem to agree it could affect your health, but it's even harder to measure than how long you sleep. Another caveat is that babies, children and teenagers all have different sleep requirements than adults. But if it's the case that less than six hours of sleep is too little for an adult, and more than eight hours is too much, what is the ideal amount - what do our bodies want? As we've reported before, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that until the late 17th Century people did not sleep in one long uninterrupted stretch, but in two segments, separated by a period of one or two hours in which they prayed, read, chatted, had sex, smoked, went to the toilet or even visited neighbours. That may be more natural than the current tendency to sleep - or try to - in one stretch. Putting this question to one side, and focusing on the total number of hours spent asleep, Cappuccio says three-quarters of people in the Western world sleep between six and eight hours a night on average, the range associated with the best results in terms of length of life. But can we say that eight hours are better than six? The magic number, according to Dr Gregg Jacobs, of the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School may actually be seven. "Seven hours sleep keeps turning up over and over again," he says. He points, for example, to the National Sleep Foundation's annual poll of a random sample of adults in the US "The typical adult today [in that poll] reports seven hours of sleep. And that actually seems to be the median sleep duration in the adult population around the world. That suggests there's something around seven hours of sleep that's kind of natural for the brain." But if you enjoy sleeping, spend a lot of time in bed and feel good, you're probably just fine. There's no hard evidence that extra time asleep, or just lying down and relaxing, is going to kill you. Listen to More or Less on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, or download the free podcast. Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

हम में से कई लोग हर रात आठ घंटे की नींद लेने की कोशिश करते हैं, लेकिन अक्सर असफल हो जाते हैं। इसे व्यापक रूप से आदर्श राशि माना जाता है-लेकिन कुछ विशेषज्ञ अब कहते हैं कि यह बहुत अधिक है, और वास्तव में अस्वस्थ हो सकता है।


Queen to present The Royal Welsh regiment's colours

Summary: The Queen will present new colours to Wales' infantry regiment The Royal Welsh at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff next week.

She is the regiment's colonel-in-chief and will attend the colours parade at the home of Welsh rugby on 11 June. Members of the public from across Wales and the UK have been invited to attend the event. The presentation of new colours will be the final formal recognition of The Royal Welsh. It was formed in 2006 after the merger of two regiments - the Royal Welch Fusiliers and the Royal Regiment of Wales. She will also address the regiment and meet soldiers, their families and others associated with the regiment. In recent years the regiment has served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

महारानी अगले सप्ताह कार्डिफ के मिलेनियम स्टेडियम में वेल्स की पैदल सेना रेजिमेंट द रॉयल वेल्श को नए रंग प्रदान करेंगी।


Will Paris pull-out hurt Trump?

Summary: In the end the collected pressure from environmentalists, diplomats, major US corporations, foreign leaders, Mitt Romney, Leonardo Di Caprio and Ivanka Trump wasn't enough. The US is charting its own course, leaving the international community to fend for itself.

Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter The implications for that community, and the role of US leadership in it, will be the subject of considerable discussion in the days ahead. This decision was not made with international affairs in mind, however. It was one of domestic politics, pure and simple. If anything, the international community was the foil against which the president made a show of his dedication to the American people - putting Pittsburgh over Paris, as he phrased it. "The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country's expense," he said. "They don't put America first. I do, and I always will." Donald Trump campaigned on the economy, jobs and deregulation first and foremost. While he's had more than a few tweets and asides about climate change over the years - the "Chinese hoax" quote being the most publicised of the bunch - environmental issues hardly came up over the course of the campaign, either in debates or on the stump. On a sun-drenched Thursday afternoon in the White House Rose Garden, it was more of the same. Despite a few throw-away lines about clean air and loving the environment, the president's speech was all about jobs and the economy; the "unfairness" of the agreement and the US as the object of international derision. Traditionally, environmental issues have tended to rise in importance in the US during good times and taken a back seat when voters are more concerned about their economic livelihood. According to Gallup polling, 40% of Americans worried a "great deal" about climate change in 2000, dropping to 26% in 2004 after the 9/11 attacks and the dot com recession. Concern peaked again at 41% in 2007, before collapsing to 25% in the wake of the Great Recession. Now the issue is on the rise again, reaching a record high of 45% in March, up 8 points from the same time last year. Some of this can be attributed to the anti-Trump phenomenon, where the president's position drives near universal opposition from those who hold him in low esteem. The dynamic played itself out earlier this year on healthcare, where the Obamacare reforms reached net-positive levels of approval for the first time shortly after Republicans began efforts to pass repeal legislation. The question now is whether global warming and environmental issues will have political legs. Activists will certainly be motivated to unseat Mr Trump and his fellow Republicans - including some of the Bernie-or-bust voters and Green Party supporters who turned their backs on Democrats last autumn. Because of the way the Paris agreement withdrawal is structured, the process won't be complete until just weeks after the 2020 presidential election, virtually guaranteeing the issue will come up in the campaign in some fashion. Read more Whether it hurts Mr Trump and his party will have little to do with the amount of scorn he receives from the international community or degraded US influence on the world stage, and considerably more to do with the state of the US economy over the next few years. Are coal-country jobs coming back? Given the underlying economic fundamentals of the US energy sector, that seems unlikely, despite the president's boast of a new mine opening up soon in Pennsylvania (resulting in only about 70 new jobs). During his White House speech, Mr Trump predicted that the US economy would grow in the range of 3% to 4% in the coming years - an ambitious mark that, if realised, would put him well on the way to re-election. Come in under that mark, however, and the president will have to campaign on jobs not lost and economic growth not thwarted. If working-class Americans continue to struggle, that will be as hard a sell for him as it was for Democrats when they held power the last eight years. Then there's history's judgement to consider. Decades from now, Americans could look back and see 1 June 2017 as a missed opportunity, when the US had a chance to address an impending environmental disaster and shrugged. If that's the case, there will be one party - and one president - to blame. Or, if Republicans are right and the dire climate warnings are overblown, the date will be nothing more than a historical footnote. In the near term and long, Mr Trump and Republicans are playing political roulette, betting against the rest of the world and half of their own nation. The price for being in the wrong spot when the wheel stops spinning will be high. Read more

अंत में पर्यावरणविदों, राजनयिकों, प्रमुख अमेरिकी निगमों, विदेशी नेताओं, मिट रोमनी, लियोनार्डो डी कैप्रियो और इवांका ट्रम्प का एकत्रित दबाव पर्याप्त नहीं था। अमेरिका अपना रास्ता खुद बना रहा है, जिससे अंतर्राष्ट्रीय समुदाय को खुद को बचाने के लिए छोड़ दिया गया है।


Shan villagers feel force of Burmese army anger

Summary: The journey from Lashio to the rebel village of Wan Hai in eastern Myanmar takes about five hours. The area is off-limits to foreigners so our driver had taped darkened plastic over the windows and we hoped for the best.

By Jonah FisherBBC News, Shan State, Myanmar He needn't have bothered. At the Burmese army checkpoints none of the soldiers even stood up, let alone look into the car. Despite intense fighting last year the presence of the rebel group known as the Shan State Army - North (SSA-North) is accepted here and vehicles pass through with minimal fuss. The SSA-North is a long established part of the patchwork of armed groups in Shan State. The conflicts here tend to simmer not rage. For long periods army, militia and rebels have existed in close proximity, focusing more on drug production, logging and smuggling than fighting each other. Its own history is littered with broken ceasefires, ignored promises and internal division. It is a fairly typical Burmese rebel group. Back in 1989 the Shan State Army, as it was then known, signed a ceasefire brokered by Burmese General and Intelligence Chief Khin Nyunt. Along with some other rebels, the SSA stopped fighting in return for unfettered control over pieces of land." Its territory, now centred around the village of Wan Hai, spans a radius of about 15km (9.5 miles), though the rebels say their influence extends further. Over the years other factions, also using the name Shan State Army, sprung up. So observers appended "North" to try to bring some much needed clarity to this melange. The SSA-North have run this area as a kind of "jungle government". There are schools, a basic hospital and - unlike most of Myanmar (also known a Burma) - 24-hour power, thanks to a hydroelectric turbine from China. But it is no utopia for its residents. Villagers are "taxed" for supplies and families are expected to give up their young men to bolster rebel ranks. A history of failed ceasefires Early one morning we are taken to see the newest group of recruits being put through their paces, a motley bunch just three weeks into training. Some are very young, others surprisingly old. Most of the drill focuses on how to perform a decent salute. We are told that only once they have had a political education and reached what is called "Level Five" will they be given a gun and allowed to fight. In 2009 that 20-year-old ceasefire negotiated by Khin Nyunt broke down when the government tried to force rebel armies to become part of a Border Guard Force. Many groups simply refused to join, but the SSA-North split, with some brigades agreeing to become part of this new force. Those that refused remained in Wan Hai and after more clashes another local ceasefire was signed in 2012. It then joined nationwide talks alongside 15 other armed groups aimed at brokering yet another ceasefire. This time the idea was that all rebel groups could engage in meaningful talks to address the root cause of these conflicts. But that final ceasefire proved elusive until Myanmar's outgoing President Thein Sein decided to go for broke. He set a deadline of 15 October 2015 and called all rebel groups to the capital, Nay Pyi Daw. Of the eight groups that showed up, none were particularly active. The SSA-North was among the eight who refused. The SSA-North was among the eight who refused. As hollow applause rang out at the signing of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement the Burmese army took its frustration out on villagers in rebel areas near Wan Hai. For several weeks mountaintop villages were shelled and helicopter gunships used in clashes with the SSA-North. The rebels say 30 of their fighters died and claim to have killed hundreds from the Burmese army. The numbers are impossible to verify. Several thousand villagers from ethnic minorities fled their hilltop homes to camps deeper in rebel territory. One of them was a Palaung woman called Nai Song. We found her outside the bamboo hut that's been her home for the last three months and she agreed to take us back for a quick look at her village. We travelled on motorbikes and then on foot up along narrow rocky paths to reach Kong Nime. From the mountaintop you could just about make out the camp where the village's residents now squat. 'I cry every day' Before the Burmese army attacked Kong Nime there were about 500 people living here. Now there are just a handful, sent back to look after the livestock. They told us that at night they are too scared to stay in their own homes so huddle together. When the villagers fled the shelling soldiers from the Burmese army moved in, taking everything of value. Nine houses were burnt to the ground. Nai Song says she was once one of Kong Nime's more affluent citizens, but not any more. When the fighting started she had just purchased 1m kyat (about $800) worth of supplies on credit. "Three containers of cooking oil, three containers of alcohol, three containers of kerosene, all gone," she begins to list the things that have been taken. Upstairs she points out some grotty blankets she rescued and washed from the street. Then she brings out a battered kettle and starts to weep. "This all I have here now - and there's not even a lid for my kettle," she sobs. Another woman called Ba La also came with us back to Kong Nime. "All our medicine has been lost," she says. "We had five packs of medicine carried by five motorcycles, bought on credit for about 500,000 kyat. I've got no money to pay back." Ba La has suffered at the hand of the Burmese army before. Back in 2011 her son Aikor was abducted by Burmese soldiers and she hasn't heard from him since. For years the Burmese military has been taking boys from ethnic minorities to use as porters. What's changed? Efforts to bring peace to Myanmar have been built on the assumption that the Burmese army is changing. That its leaders really want a lasting, just peace, and despite having fought against federalism for decades they are now committed to devolving power. The evidence on the ground suggests that very little has changed. The Burmese army has been looting and burning villages just like Kong Nime for decades. Elsewhere in Shan and Kachin state it is continuing to attack other non-signatory groups. Even among those who were persuaded to sign the so-called Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement there is a strong suspicion that the army just sees the peace process as a way to force the rebels to disarm and effectively surrender. It was a view reinforced in Nay Pyi Daw two weeks ago when the army's Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing bluntly told the signatories that he wanted a timetable for their demobilisation. It didn't go down well. So what then are the chances of the new government lead by Aung San Suu Kyi breathing fresh life into the fractured negotiations? Having made ethnic peace her number one priority, she's promised to try to get all the rebel groups back into the process. But there are clear limits to her power. "She will try," General Hsay Htin, one of the SSA-North's veteran commanders, told me with a shrug. "But she will have a hard time because her main obstacle is the army."

लासियो से पूर्वी म्यांमार के विद्रोही गाँव वान है तक की यात्रा में लगभग पाँच घंटे लगते हैं। यह क्षेत्र विदेशियों के लिए सीमा से बाहर है इसलिए हमारे चालक ने खिड़कियों पर काले रंग के प्लास्टिक को टेप किया था और हम सबसे अच्छे की उम्मीद कर रहे थे।


Plaintiff drops compensation claim

Summary: The complainant of the case, against the three Sri Lankans charged with theft and threathing civilians in Saudi Arabia has agreed to pardon them and not ask for compensation for the injuries he received.

Senior Embassy official ,P.R.Wickremasinghe said that Sri Lankan officials including himself were able to convince in the court their inability of the respondent and his family to pay compensation. The complainant, Hassan Mohideen from Kerala listening to the appeals told court that he would agree not to claim compensation. However,the three Sri Lankans, D.D Ranjith de Silva, Sanath Pushpakumara and Victor Corea are in the death row to be executed in Saudi Arabia. "A fresh appeal is now before the new king who will decide the fate of the three Sri Lankans", senior embassy official, Wickremasinghe told Sandesaya. The earlier appeal made on behalf of the families and children of the three Sri Lankans by the Sri Lankan president were before the former King of Saudi Arabia and receiving attention of the King at the time of his death, he said.

सऊदी अरब में चोरी और नागरिकों को पीटने के आरोप में तीन श्रीलंकाई लोगों के खिलाफ मामले के शिकायतकर्ता ने उन्हें क्षमा करने और उन्हें लगी चोटों के लिए मुआवजे की मांग नहीं करने पर सहमति व्यक्त की है।