Virginia shooting: Profiles of Alison Parker and Adam Ward

Summary: Profiles of the two US journalists who were killed by a gunman in Virginia while broadcasting live on air. Alison Parker and Adam Ward had been working together as a team at WDBJ7-TV for almost a year.

You can read live updates of the story here. Alison Parker, 24 Reporter In 2014 she became the reporter for the Mornin' show. Click here to see her being introduced. A reporter that covered a broad range of topics, she had recently presented a series of reports on child abuse. She also worked on lighter features such as "what is your favourite chicken wing flavour?" - a story she described as "a lot of fun" on Facebook. She grew up in Martinsville, also in Virginia. According to her WDBJ-TV profile, she attended Patrick Henry Community College and the James Madison University, where she edited the university newspaper, The Breeze. She worked at WDBJ-TV as an intern while studying. When she became a reporter she said it was this internship that had set her on a path to being a journalist. "It was that internship that took the skills I learned at JMU and allowed me to apply them. That internship made me fall in love with the business, and I knew broadcast journalism was exactly what I wanted to pursue. … I grew up watching WDBJ7," she told the Roanoke Times In her spare time, Alison liked to white-water kayak, play with her parents' dog Jack, and attend community theatre events, according to the station. She was dating another station employee, Chris Hurst, who tweeted: Mr Hurst added: "We were together almost nine months. It was the best nine months of our lives. We wanted to get married. We just celebrated her 24th birthday. She was the most radiant woman I ever met. And for some reason she loved me back. She loved her family, her parents and her brother." Adam Ward, 27 Cameraman Adam Ward graduated from Salem High School in Salem, Virginia, and Virginia Tech. He joined the WDBJ in 2011 and worked his way up to be a field cameraman. "He proved himself to be just a fine photojournalist, and the kind of guy who [if he] was on his way home from work and heard about something breaking, he would just turn around and go do it," WDBJ's General Manager Jeffrey Marks said as he paid tribute. Mr Ward was engaged to one of the producers at WDBJ, Melissa Ott. Wednesday was her last shift at the station, and Mr Ward was planning to follow her to a new job in North Carolina. Alison Parker had brought in flowers whilst another anchor brought in a cake. Afterwards, Ms Ott went into the live production gallery whilst Mr Ward joined Ms Parker as they headed out to film a live broadcast.

वर्जीनिया में सीधे प्रसारण के दौरान एक बंदूकधारी द्वारा मारे गए दो अमेरिकी पत्रकारों की प्रोफाइल। एलिसन पार्कर और एडम वार्ड लगभग एक साल से डब्ल्यूडीबीजे7-टीवी में एक टीम के रूप में एक साथ काम कर रहे थे।


Civil War centre opens in Newark

Summary: The Civil War was one of the bloodiest chapters in Britain's history and wiped out one in 20 of the population. Now, almost 370 years after the conflict, its story is being told in a dedicated museum.

The conflict from 1642 to 1646 split families as they took up sides with the supporters of King Charles I, known as Cavaliers, or the Parliamentarians, nicknamed Roundheads. The £5.4m National Civil War Centre has opened in Newark in Nottinghamshire, a Royalist stronghold which came under siege three times until the King surrendered the town in 1646. Broadcaster and historian Michael Wood said it was "amazing" there was nowhere in the UK dedicated to marking the conflict until now. "It is the first such exhibition to tell the story of the Civil War from start to finish," he said. "And it's a tale we all should know, drawing in the people of the British Isles from Elgin to Cornwall and from Newark to Haverfordwest and indeed over the sea to Dublin and Drogheda." Paid for by the local council and a £3.5m Heritage Lottery grant, its exhibits give a fascinating insight into the gruesome realities of everyday life during the tumultuous period. The buff coat bullet hole A Roundhead musket killed Royalist John Hussey, of Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire, while he was defending the town of Gainsborough in 1643. His breastplate and buff coat - complete with bullet holes - bring to life the reality of the battlefield, according to Michael Constantine, manager of the centre. "Some of the swords have got nicks out of them where they've been used in anger but you don't see breastplates that have got the actual musket ball holes in them," he said "Nor are you usually able to put that musket hole to the leather coat that was worn behind it and to be able to put a name and a face to that character." The angle of the shot indicates he was shot from a greater height, perhaps from horseback, he said. Royal branding It might look like an oven mitt but this gruesome implement was used to inflict a bloody punishment on those caught deserting the King's army. Dozens of pins would press into the unfortunate soldier's palm forever imprinting the mark of the Crown. "They must have had a department to think up such creative and gruesome forms of torture," said Richard Darn, from the centre. "We forget what a bloody battle it was - 5% of the population died," he said. 'A better ending' Another coat with a fascinating story belonged to Colonel Francis Hacker from East Bridgford in Nottinghamshire. He was the officer in charge of escorting Charles I to his beheading and was one of a number of signatures on the king's death warrant. "After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 King Charles II came after some of the people who killed his father. Hacker was amongst them," Mr Darn said. "He was executed but he didn't have the torturous death of being hanged, drawn and quartered because he was very kind to the King and treated him with a lot of courtesy. "He got off with a better ending." Hacker's family, like many others, had split loyalties - one Royalist brother died during the siege of Newark and the other lost his hand. But he chose the Parliamentary cause and clearly became a significant figure. Battlefield bone saws "If you are going to amputate somebody's arms you are going to need it to be fast," said Mr Darn. And bone saws were the best available tool for the job. But what if you needed to remove a musket ball? A long pointed implement would be screwed into the wound to extract the shot. An upcoming major exhibition at the National Civil War Centre will be based on research by the University of Leicester about battlefield medicine and the advances that were made during the Civil War. Siege silver Rare coins, which were found buried in hoards in Newark, were made in the town in preparation for a siege, according to Mr Darn. They were cut from a silver plate into diamond shapes to avoid wastage and were used to pay troops and issued to locals to buy food. The town was under siege for six months from November 1645, during which time it was completely cut off from the outside world. Mr Darn said it was difficult to establish why the coins were in the ground, but museum experts continue to speculate. "Did the owner plan to dig them up later but was killed in the war," he added. "Or did he simply forget where he'd buried them?" Soldiers' plague fears Part of the reason Newark was picked as the home of the Civil War centre was because the town's history is remarkably intact. Civil War expert Stuart Jennings, from Warwick University, who examined archived documents recently discovered in the town said they were a unique insight into the minutiae of everyday life. "This kind of material does not normally survive the Civil War, so we are getting a rare glimpse into ordinary lives," he said. "We have records of poor relief detailing how money was raised and to whom it was paid during the third siege. "There is a petition from a man with seven children whose house was blown up by cannon fire and receipts for food and medicine for plague victims." When the town was surrendered, plague was endemic and Parliamentarian and Scottish soldiers steered clear of the town rather than plunder or burn it to the ground. Information from the archive has been used by the National Civil War Centre, which also includes a smart phone app trail around town, to propel visitors back in time. Manager Michael Constantine said: "We tell the story through the eyes of those who took part, whether that's Charles I or the servant girl lamenting meagre rations." The Newark sieges Nearly 900 re-enactors will recreate the sieges to mark the opening of the centre on Sunday and Monday. But what actually happened? Located at a crossing of the River Trent at the crossroads of the Great North Road and Fosse Way, Newark held huge strategic importance. The last of three sieges saw 16,000 troops seal off Newark from November 1645 to May 1646. An outbreak of plague added to the town's woes as a third of the town's 6,000 inhabitants died but the Cavaliers refused to surrender. King Charles hoped to drive a wedge between them and their Parliamentarian allies and surrendered the town to them, but they insisted that Newark must yield immediately. Half-starved and disease ridden, 1,800 Cavaliers marched out. It was the beginning of the end for Charles who was executed by Parliament three years later. The most accurate reconstruction of how the town looked in 1646 has been commissioned by the National Civil War Centre. Visualisation expert Simon Fleming examined siege plans produced by both sides of the war, accounts of the siege and 17th Century military manuals to create it.

गृहयुद्ध ब्रिटेन के इतिहास में सबसे खूनी अध्यायों में से एक था और इसने 20 में से एक आबादी का सफाया कर दिया। अब, संघर्ष के लगभग 370 साल बाद, इसकी कहानी एक समर्पित संग्रहालय में बताई जा रही है।


Wilko weekend rota system: What's behind staff dispute?

Summary: For nearly 90 years, Wilko has been a fixture in high streets across some parts of the UK. The family-run business - known for many of those decades as Wilkinson's - sells toys, sweets and household goods at affordable prices. But about 1,800 workers could go on strike over "brutal" weekend working practices.

As the GMB union and management meet to discuss ways to avoid industrial action, BBC News looks at the issues facing workers and the retail chain. Talk to shoppers and you will find a lot of affection for Wilko. "It's a well established brand, it's been on the High Street for years," regular shopper John Denholm said. The hardware chain has been run by the Wilkinson family since 1930 - something of an anomaly in an age of private equity ownership and corporate buy-outs. But recently the Wilko story has taken a startling turn. Why are some staff angry? Staff complaints about a new weekend rota system led to 1,800 workers agreeing to strike at the chain's two distribution centres in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, and Magor, Monmouthshire. One worker, who wanted to remain anonymous, said she felt "like a zombie" most of the time. She said she had worked all but two Saturdays since March and it was getting in the way of seeing her family as she did not get two days off together. "I felt like quitting at one point but why should I have to give up my job after almost two decades?" she asked. Rob Abbott, 58, from Worksop, said when he started at Wilko as a forklift driver 12 years ago the firm was "good" but in June this year he felt he had no option but to quit, a decision he "didn't take lightly". "It just felt like you were working all the time," he said. "They introduced these shifts and it was almost like a never ending week. It made it pretty impossible for me to get to see my kids at weekends, I didn't see much of them. "The morale in the place is absolutely non-existent. Nobody is happy. Everybody's just miserable." GMB union officer Gary Carter said workers were "tired and worn out" by the lack of free time. "Trust between staff and management has broken down," he said. "People accept that weekend working has to happen but it is about the amount of weekends they are having to work, that is the problem. "And the company wants to resolve this and reduce the number of weekends people are working. "They are willing to employ more staff and are making progress on this." What does Wilko say? A spokesman said the company was doing "everything possible" to reduce the number weekends staff would work and had recruited 300 people in two months. "We want our team members to spend as much time as they wish with their families," he added. "The challenge is to develop rotas that work for everybody and we've developed more than a hundred different working patterns, many of them incorporating ideas directly from team members to try and accommodate everyone's wishes." The company previously said: "The reality is that our customers expect to shop with us seven days a week and we must respond to meet our customers' needs." History of Wilko Source: Insightdiy You may also be interested in: Are Wilko's demands exceptional? Like many high-street chains, Wilko has been under pressure in recent years, although in May it reported it had returned a profit, largely thanks to cost-cutting. Nelson Blackley, from the National Retail Research Knowledge Exchange Centre, said while he had sympathy with the chain's workers, online shopping was putting pressure on retailers to be as flexible as possible. "The move by Wilko is to an extent a 'sign of the times', with an increasing percentage of UK retail sales now taking place online, and providing consumers with instant access to millions of products 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," he said. "Whether opening earlier, or staying open later the vast majority of retailers now also trade every day of the week." Mr Blackley said the requirement for flexibility extended to store staff. "With many consumers being off work and wanting to shop at weekends, it's more difficult for employers to provide two consecutive days off each week," he said. Mr Blackley said not all stores were giving in to online pressures though. The family-owned toy store The Entertainer still refuses to open on Sundays to give staff quality family time. What do customers say? Leicester's main city centre store is now near the bus station on Charles Street. Wilko regular John Denholm said he shopped at the store at least once a week for household cleaning products. He said: "Staff have to be flexible if you work in the retail sector. "It's modern living unfortunately." The 68-year-old retired estate agent added: "The square footage of [the store] means there's a need for it to be open seven days a week." Fergus McBeath and Ocea Emery, both 22, shop at the Leicester store about twice a month for pet supplies and shampoo. Mr McBeath, who works at a branch of coffee shop chain Starbucks at a service station, said: "We all have to work on the weekends sometimes. "I work in a motorway service station and my hours are all over the place. "I've left jobs because of the hours, if you don't like the hours you should find a new job." Ms Emery, a student, was more sympathetic. "I get that it's tough, especially when you're trying to balance a family life, it'd be good if there was an added incentive." But she agreed that the shop should be open seven days a week and said: "It needs to be convenient for people when they get off work." Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk.

लगभग 90 वर्षों से, विल्को यूके के कुछ हिस्सों में ऊँची सड़कों पर एक स्थिरता रहा है। परिवार द्वारा संचालित व्यवसाय-जो उन दशकों में से कई के लिए विल्किंसन के रूप में जाना जाता है-सस्ती कीमतों पर खिलौने, मिठाई और घरेलू सामान बेचता है। लेकिन लगभग 1,800 कर्मचारी सप्ताहांत में "क्रूर" काम करने की प्रथाओं को लेकर हड़ताल पर जा सकते हैं।


German election marks unprecedented political shift

Summary: Rock music blaring, supporters cheering, Angela Merkel sweeps on to the makeshift stage. Under spotlights hastily rigged above what's usually an indoor tennis complex, the chancellor is relaxed and smiling as she acknowledges the applause of her loyal fans.

By Jenny HillBBC Berlin correspondent A few exuberant refugees - carefully chosen and given front row seats - wave a huge banner. Almost unnoticed, security staff quietly hustle a couple of scruffily dressed men out of the hall. Mrs Merkel has been heckled several times on the campaign trail by supporters of the right-wing party Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD). No one here is taking any chances. In fact her rallies have been moved to indoor venues during the last week of campaigning. As she launches into a well-rehearsed speech without notes, Angela Merkel knows she will - most likely - win this election. To many Germans she represents strength and stability in the shifting world of global politics. Her carefully stage-managed campaign is designed to reflect her experience; 12 years in the job. Even Mrs Merkel's trademark hand gesture - fingers held together to form a diamond shape while she speaks - has been replicated on the banners held up by the cheering audience. If the polls are right, a clear majority of German voters will choose Angela Merkel as their leader for the next four years. But then German voters don't have much choice. In the centrist politics of Germany today, commentators note that it can be hard to distinguish the mainstream parties from one another. And Mrs Merkel hasn't had to work particularly hard to see off the diminishing challenge of social democrat Martin Schulz. Traditional values In the old marketplace of Schwerin, shoppers have mixed views. One woman tells me that "Mrs Merkel is a bit too soft. She seems easily influenced. I can't decide who to vote for". The man selling honey at a nearby stall says: "I like her a lot. She has very good policies and I particularly like her refugee policy." But a young woman adds: "The big parties are already in power and they didn't do that much good. I don't want to support them with my vote." Around the corner the smashed windows of a shop front tell the real story of this election. The local AfD headquarters has been repeatedly vandalised. Someone has scrawled "hate Nazis" on the building. AfD's anti-Islam, anti-immigrant rhetoric may horrify many Germans but in this region, in Germany's old east, one in five voters are expected to support the party. As we walk along the lakeside here, among gulls and swans, Rolf Kronhagel explains why he shifted his allegiance to AfD. He's a teacher who turned his back on the social democrats. It was AfD's opposition to gay marriage that first won him over, he says. He likes their focus on traditional family politics. He also likes their stance on migrants. Mr Kronhagel teaches new arrivals the German language and explains that, in his experience, whilst many want to work and integrate, too many refuse to assimilate into German culture and society. "In a way," he says, "AfD is already sitting at the table of government. It's the most influential party in Germany because it breathes down the neck of the mainstream parties. "You can see the concrete results of that in Germany's new asylum laws. People are tired of hearing the same old things." Becoming mainstream Nationally, support for AfD surged during the refugee crisis but diminished as migrant numbers fell. But it's climbed back up in the polls, largely thanks to a campaign which focuses on immigration. One shows a pregnant white woman with the slogan "New Germans? We make them ourselves". Another shows two bikini clad white women along with the catchphrase "Burkas? We like bikinis". AfD is on course to comfortably win seats in parliament. It would be the first time since WW2 that a far-right party is represented in the Bundestag. It Is estimated that around one in 10 Germans support the party. What began life on the political fringe is fast becoming mainstream. The established parties here say they won't do business with AfD but it may yet emerge as the third largest group in the next Bundestag. Polls suggest there may be six parties altogether in the next parliament (there are currently four). A place which prides itself now on compromise and consensus is likely to be a rowdier, more fractious place. Those who describe this election as dull, this campaign as lacklustre, miss the fact that something really significant is happening here. The 2017 election marks an unprecedented shift in both the tone and substance of post-war German politics. What is the political norm in many other European countries was unthinkable here. Not any more.

रॉक संगीत बज रहा है, समर्थक जयकार कर रहे हैं, एंजेला मर्केल अस्थायी मंच पर झाड़ू मार रही हैं। स्पॉटलाइट के नीचे जो आमतौर पर एक इनडोर टेनिस परिसर होता है, उसके ऊपर जल्दबाजी में धांधली की जाती है, चांसलर शांत हो जाती है और मुस्कुराती है क्योंकि वह अपने वफादार प्रशंसकों की तालियों को स्वीकार करती है।


The urban farmers battling Bangalore’s concrete jungle

Summary: How do you farm surrounded by concrete and millions of people? What does urban sprawl mean for food safety and supply? Students from the University of British Columbia Graduate School of Journalism report from Bangalore in southern India.

In Ramagondanahalli village, Muniraju Hanumanthappa bends over his clay-coloured soil surrounded by bright green spinach leaves. He quickly prunes the plants, dwarfed by the apartment complex next to his small plot. Ramagondanahalli is an urban village being swallowed by the city. It lies on Varthur Lake, one of the biggest in Bangalore, which is known as the Silicon Valley of India. There are copper-tinted dirt roads, small-scale vegetable farms and a man who calls people to temple by beating a drum. The once-rural farming community is now part of eastern Bangalore, near the city's mighty IT campuses. This rapid urbanisation has thrust urban farmers like Hanumanthappa, who is 45, into a fraught relationship with the city. They are confronted with a choice: continue farming under adverse conditions, or sell their land. Ramagondanahalli is emblematic of what's happening throughout Bangalore. The city's concrete-covered area has expanded by 925% since 1970, with more farmland being sold off to developers as the city embraces its tech boom. The new urban landscape is testing farmers' resilience as they grapple with how to move forward. A stream from Varthur Lake irrigates Hanumanthappa's soft russet plot. The second biggest lake in Bangalore lies just beyond his farm. He has always used lake water, but now it is extremely polluted. Hanumanthappa knows he's not supposed to use water straight from the lake. But without enough money to drill a borewell, he feels he has no other choice. Varthur Lake is polluted with both industrial waste and untreated residential sewage from the apartments that line its perimeter. There is no hiding the pollution, since stinking foam froths at the lake's surface, especially when it rains. Upstream, Bellandur Lake periodically catches fire because of the cocktail of chemical pollutants it contains. Now, Hanumanthappa can only cultivate crops with short growing cycles so they don't rot in the field. Spinach is the only plant he's found that can grow with lake water. He sells his produce to the nearby HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd) market. "If I take it to the market, people who know about our crops do not purchase it," Hanumanthappa says. "They know that we use polluted lake water." A vendor at the market, Shashikala, says she and her colleagues avoid produce from this part of Bangalore. "If [the water] comes directly from the lake, then there will be contamination," she says. Farmers here admit they lie about how they grow their produce in order to sell it. Usually, Hanumanthappa stands beside farmers from a different village and demands the same price as they do. He doesn't reveal to customers where his own produce comes from. "People may lose trust… [but] I have no other choice but to do that," Hanumanthappa says. TV Ramachandra, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science and a leading authority on sustainability issues, warns that pollution in the city's lakes can get into the food supply chain through farms like Hanumanthappa's. "It's a sustaining flow of untreated sewage and industrial fluid getting into the waterway, which is used for growing the vegetables," Prof Ramachandra says. "That's why when we did an analysis of vegetables, green leaves, cabbage, etc... We found higher amounts of heavy metals." Prof Ramachandra's data also suggests that Bangalore's farmlands and green spaces are disappearing at an astonishing rate, with more high rises and commercial developments being put in their place. According to the state government's Department of Agriculture, as Bangalore was witnessing its IT boom and burgeoning growth, the area covered by vegetable crops in the district decreased from 0.1 million hectares in 2000 to a mere 0.04 million hectares by 2015. As a result, vegetable production went down 72%, from 0.29 million tonnes to 0.08 million tonnes during the same period. Bangalore's vanishing green space The city's development doesn't just affect farmers. It is being driven by vast numbers of people coming to the city, many to work in the vibrant IT sector. They all need access to reliable food sources. But some people in Bangalore's affluent middle class have noticed their food sources aren't trustworthy - and are doing something about it. Meenakshi Arun, an IT professional at Hewlett Packard, has joined a growing middle class movement who grow their own food. She says her group, Garden City Farmers, has trained more than 5,000 people in the last five years. But individual citizens growing vegetables on terraces and patios requires time, money and space that most people can't afford. For the traditional farmers in Ramagondanahalli, their only equity is in their land. When that land becomes less productive because of polluted water, they turn to selling. One villager who turned from rose farmer to real estate broker is embracing the development. Sanjeev Sanjeevappa grew up in Ramagondanahalli, but he doesn't think a farming lifestyle is feasible any more in the city. His community's farms are surrounded by high-rises for Whitefield's IT workers, and the market prices for crops are constantly in flux. Sanjeev is young, tall and wears solid gold necklaces and rings. He says he owns 10 acres of land outside the city, 20 times what Hanumanthappa farms on, and he bought it by selling a small portion of land in Ramagondanahalli. This struck him and he thought other farmers could do the same, so he started to broker land deals. Being a real-estate agent fetches him a lucrative commission. Typically, intermediaries like him take 2% of the selling price. In 2012, an acre of land in Ramagondanahalli was selling at 40-60 million rupees ($618,000-$927,000; £495,000-£742,000). Today it costs double that and fetches between 80-100 million rupees ($1,235,000-$1,544,000; £989,000-£1,236,000). He believes the only way out of agricultural instability is to bundle farmers' small plots together and sell their combined land as a package to developers. He is a farmer-turned-real-estate agent who connects farmers with builders. "For farmers who have one-tenth of an acre of land, it is very difficult to sell it to the builders directly. So, we pool farmers who own small portions of land and collectively make them agree to sell it to builders," Sanjeev says. He brings together about 50 farmers at a time. Then, he will work with a developer to build houses and negotiate with buyers for a good price. Within each new layout or set of apartments, two units are typically reserved for the farmer whose land it's built upon. That way, farmers can rent out one unit to use as a revenue stream. Or, the farmer can take their money and buy more land further away. "It is always better for them to sell the land and then go further away from the [city limits]," Sanjeev says. "After they sell it to the builders, I would buy land further away and continue the agriculture profession." Muniraju Venkataswamy worked with a broker like Sanjeev to sell his plot in Ramagondanahalli five years ago. His family had been farming his land for three generations. But the apartments being built in Ramagondanahalli draw more groundwater for utility purposes, which depleted the well around his farm. He now has to rely on polluted lake water. He's continuing to farm until the developer breaks ground on his farm. Venkataswamy got 5 million rupees ($77,000; £63,000) for his one-tenth of an acre plot. With that money, he built a three-story apartment building in Ramagondanahalli. His family lives on the ground floor and he rents out the upper two storeys, which brings him 15,000 rupees per month ($230; £185). He also had money left over to purchase a bigger piece of land 30km (19 miles) away from the city to continue farming. "My future generation will need land for farming. If I stay here it won't be enough. So we bought a bigger portion of land by selling here," Venkataswamy says. Bangalore used to be known for its image as a lush garden city with a foot firmly in the 21st Century. The municipal corporation acknowledges it has failed to provide the infrastructure the booming city needs. "As a civic body, we could not match the speed at which the city was growing. We accept that we had failed to provide basic amenities," says MB Thippanna, additional director of town planning. But he says the authorities have now woken up to take corrective action. "We have made it compulsory for all apartments with 20 or more units to have sewage treatment plants," Mr Thippanna says. "Also, all stakeholders have come forward to prepare a master plan for the city keeping in the mind the city's expected growth over the next decade." But as the city continues to expand, the future for traditional farmers who are being squeezed out is still uncertain. Unlike Venkataswamy, Hanumanthappa is not selling. He's dedicated to farming, and that's important for the city because the urban poor need locally-sourced food. As local farmers who supply Bangalore with produce leave farming, the city will have to source its food from further away. Affluent residents can afford such higher priced foods at supermarkets, but KC Raghu, a nutritionist, says cheaper, locally-grown produce provided to markets and street vendors is what the urban poor rely on. "We're talking about 20% of Indians earning less than $2 a day," he says. "They can't go to a supermarket and swipe their credit card, that's unthinkable in India right now." Taking a break from his field work in Ramagondanahalli, Hanumanthappa goes to rest under the ramshackle stone shed at the edge of his farm and smoke a beedi (a traditional hand-rolled Indian cigarette). Recounting his ordeal, he says the half an acre of land that he's farming on costs 40,000 rupees ($600; £490) a year to rent and fetches him a meagre 100,000 rupees ($1,500; £1,230) of income for the whole year. That money supports his entire family. Unlike some of his neighbours, he does not wish to move away. He knows no other job than farming. Helpless, he watches his neighbours who have quit farming extract groundwater from those plots, selling it to nearby apartments to make a living. Hanumanthappa could have earned three times what he does now by cultivating crops like carrot and cauliflower, had the lake been clean. But he sees no future in this as its polluted water has ruined his earning potential. "If the owner of this farmland chooses to sell the property and ask me to go, I have to leave," Hanumanthappa says. "I know nothing else and I have nowhere to go." Written, filmed and edited by Megan Devlin, Rohit Joseph, Prabhu Mallikarjunan, Romita Majumdar and Tara Sutton. UBC faculty editors for this part of the Surviving the City project were Peter Klein, Kathryn Gretsinger and Dan McKinney.

आप कंक्रीट और लाखों लोगों से घिरी खेती कैसे करते हैं? खाद्य सुरक्षा और आपूर्ति के लिए शहरी फैलाव का क्या अर्थ है? दक्षिण भारत में बैंगलोर से ब्रिटिश कोलंबिया ग्रेजुएट स्कूल ऑफ जर्नलिज्म विश्वविद्यालय के छात्र रिपोर्ट करते हैं।


Paraglider blown-off-course injured in Lake District

Summary: A paraglider was seriously injured after being blown off course and landing on a Lake District fell.

The man suffered severe head and leg injuries when he landed below the Old Man of Coniston on Wednesday afternoon. He was treated at the scene then carried by stretcher to a helicopter by members of Coniston Mountain Rescue team and soldiers from Catterick, who were training in the area. He was flown by Great North Air Ambulance to hospital in Newcastle.

एक पैराग्लाइडर को रास्ते से उड़ा दिया गया और झील जिले पर उतरने के बाद वह गंभीर रूप से घायल हो गया।


Can Birmingham Library stay successful?

Summary: In an era when libraries across England are closing, due to lack of funding and declining attendances , one is standing head and shoulders above the rest. So what is the secret behind the success of the Library of Birmingham and can it thrive despite major staff cuts?

By Jenny HarbyBBC News In these days of public service cutbacks and closures, a new library launch is certainly newsworthy. But when the Library of Birmingham opened in September 2013, in a ceremony hosted by Nobel-prize winning Malala Yousafzai, the coverage was almost feverish. Eighteen months later, interest in the building clearly has not dipped. The library has just been named as one of the top 10 most popular visitor attraction in the UK, according to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (Alva). Alva said it was the first time any English attraction outside London had made it into the list. In getting there, the library pipped to the post other prestigious contenders such as London's British Library, which drew 1,627,599 visits compared to the Library of Birmingham's 2,414,860. Bernard Donoghue, chief executive of Alva, said Birmingham's library had exceeded all expectations. So what is the secret of its success? One of the primary reasons is its architecture. The building cost nearly £190m to build and was designed by Dutch firm Mecanoo. "The most important thing was to bring a kind of coherence because it felt as if the city had many fragments of buildings from different periods," said architect Francine Houben. "The architecture is compelling," said Mr Donoghue. "That alone attracts a lot of tourists. When you go inside, it feels as if it's a temple to learning and education. It also gives you a platform to look out over the rest of Birmingham." The building missed out on the Riba Stirling Prize for best new building of the year, which went to Liverpool's Everyman Theatre. But it did win a BBC poll, in which 90,000 people voted, to find the public's favourite on the shortlist. A library spokesman said winning the public's backing was "very gratifying". Lydia Williams, 33, a charity worker from Birmingham "I didn't like the building when it was being built. "Birmingham is a big mish-mash of different architectural styles and I don't like how it looks. "It's so different to everything around it and I think it will look really outdated in about 30 years. "But the facilities are amazing. I work in a team and we come here for meetings and it's really good and the Shakespeare room is brilliant." Another reason for the library's success is what it houses - books. But the books here are not the battered copies of Catherine Cookson or C.S Forester you might find at your local lending service. "The new building has put the value of libraries on the economic map," said Mr Donoghue. "You can tell when you walk in how learning and intellectual curiosity is valued." It is the largest public lending library in Europe, with a series of rotundas housing its collection of more than 400,000 books. Special features include its nationally-important photography collection and archives and its Shakespeare Memorial Room, on the ninth floor. The architecture here is deliberately different - a restored, wood-panelled relic from Birmingham's 1882 Victorian library - and contains one of the largest Shakespeare collections in the world, including a First Folio. Harprit Bilkhoo, 32, a GP from Birmingham "We come here quite often and bring the kids. It's a really good public space, on a par with the best of other cities. "You'd expect most top attractions to be in London, as there's more investment there. "But the library makes a statement that in the next 20 years or so Birmingham will truly take its place as the second city." It is not just the significance of its collections that make Birmingham's book bank "more than a library". It has a host of additional facilities include a digital gallery, a subterranean amphitheatre, an outdoor garden - or discovery terrace - and a gallery, which is used for visiting exhibitions and showcasing collections. Experts believe this mix of facilities is crucial to the library's wider appeal. "The library is a bit of a phenomenon," said Richard Moss, editor of Culture 24, which promotes cultural venues across the UK. "You can go and browse films and TV programmes from the British Film Institute national archive or visit exhibitions - it has elements of a museum, really. "Of course, not all libraries can do what Birmingham has done, and a huge amount of money has gone into it. "But I think it shows you what the 21st Century library can do - and maybe has to do in order to survive." Beck Millard, 23, an education mentor from Dudley "I come here with my students most days and it's great to read and learn in such a nice environment. "London is a number one city, so you would expect most attractions to be from there but Birmingham has good things too. "Birmingham is maybe misunderstood. People need to come here and see what we have." If you were going to invest £190m in a huge new attraction, common sense suggests you would try to locate it in London. England's capital city routinely pulls in millions more visitors than anywhere else in the UK, as demonstrated in its dominance of the Alva survey. But recent surveys have suggested Birmingham's tourism stock is rising. It is now the UK's fourth most-visited city, behind London, Edinburgh and Manchester and has been extolled in the likes of the New York Times and the Rough Guides. "The library is part of the renaissance of Birmingham - it's a place people are extremely proud of," said Mr Moss. "Birmingham is buzzing," said James Smart, destinations editor at Lonely Planet. "The city has outstanding museums and galleries, great restaurants, picturesque canals and reminders of its industrial past like the Jewellery Quarter. So is the library's success set to continue? Like other publicly-funded services, the library is set to make massive job cuts little more than a year after it opened. The Labour-led city council said 100 of the building's 188 staff would lose their jobs. However, the council's Conservative opposition said they were "saddened" by the cuts which they feared would threaten the library's legacy. "What sort of message does that send out to the wider world? What does it say about us as a city?" former council leader Lord Whitby, who helped spearhead the development said. Val Birchall, the council's assistant director of culture and visitor economy, said: "Like so many other libraries and publicly-funded cultural organisations across the whole country, we are facing challenging times ahead." "It's always the case that a new visitor attraction has a honeymoon period of about 18 months to two years," said Mr Donoghue. "After that, the figures inevitably tail off. But I really hope the city council continues its imaginative and brave investment in the library as a place which celebrates Birmingham."

एक ऐसे युग में जब पूरे इंग्लैंड में पुस्तकालय बंद हो रहे हैं, धन की कमी और घटती उपस्थिति के कारण, एक सिर और कंधे दूसरों से ऊपर खड़ा है। तो बर्मिंघम के पुस्तकालय की सफलता के पीछे क्या रहस्य है और क्या यह कर्मचारियों की बड़ी कटौती के बावजूद पनप सकता है?


SS Great Britain: From seabed to national treasure

Summary: After 37 years sitting on the seabed in the Falklands, the SS Great Britain was brought back home to Bristol in 1970. Exactly 40 years since its return, it has been restored to its former glory with a little help from the Duke of Edinburgh.

By Andrew BomfordBroadcasting House, BBC Radio 4 For the 100,000 people who lined the banks of the River Avon in Bristol on 5 July 1970, it must have been a strange sight. There to welcome home one of the jewels of Britain's maritime history, the dark rusting hulk which slowly came into view must have seemed like a disappointment. On that boat was the Duke of Edinburgh. "There were a lot of people there, I think they were intrigued," he said. "The story was fascinating. The dock they built her in was still there, untouched, after all that time. It was extraordinary. There was a real sense of occasion." Like a mortally wounded warrior from the battlefield, the SS Great Britain limped home to her birthplace, a shadow of her former glory. This was the culmination of a salvage operation which at times seemed futile. The ship has now become a museum, with over 150,000 people visiting it each year. The SS Great Britain was the world's first iron-hulled screw-driven ocean liner, propelled by a combination of steam and sail power and launched from Bristol in 1843. She criss-crossed the Atlantic, made 32 runs to Australia with emigrants, served as a troop ship in the Crimean war and the Indian Mutiny, and later became a cargo ship. The ship was eventually scuttled in the Falkland Islands in 1937 after 50 years as a storage hulk. It had been a sad end for a great ship. Then came the daring rescue mission. "She was a ship-shaped lump of iron, rust, and scrap," said Ivor Boyce, one of the tugboat skippers who gently towed her home. He remembered telling his friends: "What are they going to do with her? No way can they make that into a viable ship anymore." Many others though were swept away by the romance of the story. The daring rescue 8,000 miles from home, the near impossible task of raising Isambard Kingdom Brunel's great iron steam ship from the sea bed, the perilous journey across the Atlantic - all this stirred the hearts of Bristolians. After all, they were welcoming home one of their own, 127 years after she was launched from the city. "There was a sense of awe really," said Kim Hicks, who was 11 at the time. "We had rose petals with us, picked from the garden, to scatter down on her as she passed." Ms Hicks had a great vantage point. She was standing on another great Brunel creation - the Clifton Suspension Bridge. She was there with her mother and her brother, and was struck by the enthusiasm of the crowd. "There was a real buzz. We were waving union jacks and cheering. It was so exciting," she said. Down on the river, Mr Boyce was taken aback by the reception. "The crowds were absolutely phenomenal," he said. "They were lining the banks, eight, 10, 12 deep. There were horns, hooters and all sorts. It was really noisy." Huge crack It was the end of a journey home that had been anything but uneventful. After the ship had been raised from the seabed and brought to shore, the salvage team was faced with the rusting remains, peppered with holes and stripped of almost everything of any use. A huge crack ran from top to bottom, which in places was a foot wide. The plan was to patch the holes, pump her out and float her sufficiently to manoeuvre a submersible pontoon underneath and then raise her out of the water for the long tow home across the Atlantic. And, as Prince Philip said: "The idea of towing a ship on a platform up the Atlantic seemed to be me to be absolutely bloody lunacy. But there it is - it obviously worked." There were many sticky moments, some of which called for inventive solutions. A huge mast snapped and came crashing down on to the deck almost causing disaster. A frantic appeal had to be made on Falklands Radio for mattresses to stuff into the crack to make her watertight. It was an old naval technique dating back to Trafalgar, which worked. "I can't begin to describe the feeling of intense excitement that everyone felt," said Malcolm Macleod, a captain in the Royal Marines in 1970 and part of the salvage team. "Here we all were, 8,000 miles away from any support back home, using the wits of three or four quite brilliant people, with the ship coming up out of the water." 'Danger and suspense' Standing on the top deck of the now fully restored ship, Rhian Tritton, of the SS Great Britain Trust, remembers the story of the rescue. "It's a sort of Boy's Own story," she said. "It's got everything - there's adventure, there's danger, there's suspense. There are so many points when it could have gone wrong and very nearly did. "It's also got a sense of homecoming as well because the ship ended up back in the dock that she was built in, on the anniversary of the date she was launched." Mr Macleod agreed. "The whole thing was so typically British, in the typically British understated way of doing business in those days," he said. "To be honest it was bound to succeed." Sunday's full report from Radio 4's Broadcasting House can be heard on iPlayer.

फॉकलैंड्स में समुद्र तल पर 37 वर्षों तक बैठे रहने के बाद, एसएस ग्रेट ब्रिटेन को 1970 में ब्रिस्टल में वापस लाया गया था। इसकी वापसी के ठीक 40 साल बाद, ड्यूक ऑफ एडिनबर्ग की थोड़ी मदद से इसे अपने पूर्व गौरव में बहाल कर दिया गया है।


'Severe delays' on M25 in Essex after van fire

Summary: There are "severe delays" on the M25 in Essex following a vehicle fire, Highways England has said.

The van fire started on the anti-clockwise carriageway between junction 26 for Waltham Abbey and junction 25 for Enfield at about 06:40 GMT. The four-lane carriageway was closed while Hertfordshire and Essex fire and rescue services extinguished the fire. Highways England said all lanes re-opened after 09:00 but delays tail back past junction 27 for the M11. Related Internet Links Essex County Fire and Rescue Service

राजमार्ग इंग्लैंड ने कहा है कि वाहन में आग लगने के बाद एसेक्स में एम25 पर "गंभीर देरी" हुई है।


Do public bike hire schemes work?

Summary: Edinburgh is the latest council to announce plans to introduce an on-street cycle hire scheme. Glasgow launched its public hire scheme before the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and there are now plans to double its size - but a free scheme in Dumfries failed to take off. What is the key to the success of these schemes, and what can put the brakes on them?

By Louise AndrewBBC Scotland news website "My aim was four-fold: to get fitter, to save money, to save time and to do my bit for the environment," says Hugh McKenzie. Hugh subscribed to Nextbike about two years ago and describes himself as a "fair weather" cycle scheme user. "In the warmer months, I pick up a bike each morning at a bike station near my home in Stirling and cycle to another one at the bus station. "At the other end I pick up a bike in Glasgow and cycle to work. Hugh is one of thousands of users of the Nextbike schemes run in Glasgow and Stirling. Glasgow City Council launched its project with £600,000 in 2014. It started with 400 bikes located at 31 hire stations, and now has plans for up to 900 bikes at 100 stations. It has just renewed its contract with Nextbike, providing £856,880 for start-up costs and operational support for the first year. After that, Nextbike must operate and maintain the scheme without public subsidy. Instead it will rely on sponsorship and rental charges. Nextbike is confident - it already operates schemes elsewhere without public funding. Operating for a decade, and now with 35,000 bikes in 24 countries, it says "the model works regardless". But is the company being overly optimistic? A £155,000 scheme launched in Dumfries in 2010, was dropped by the council after it failed to win public support. The 42 bikes were hired just 2,270 times over three years, working out at more than £60 per rental. Sally Hinchcliffe, of cycling Dumfries, said: "It's complex but I think the town is realistically too small to support a bike hire scheme. "Even London has had to subsidise its scheme with sponsorship so it was always likely Dumfries would not be self-supporting." Bike Plus, an umbrella group for Britain's bike-sharing schemes, says success relies on a range of factors. For example, schemes benefit from an area with more than 50,000 homes, high employment, parking issues, a flat topography, and a favourable climate. Despite not meeting all the preferred criteria, the Glasgow scheme does appear to be successful. Bike data mapper Oliver O'Brien, a researcher at UCL, looked at data covering two weeks this month. He compared Glasgow, Stirling, London, Reading and Liverpool, and found that Glasgow had the highest "simultaneous use" of bikes at 12.9%. Stirling had the second highest usage at 11.5%, while London had 11.2% and Reading and Liverpool had 7.8% and 6.6% respectively. The Stirling scheme proves bike-sharing can be successful even on a smaller scale. Corporate memberships have been key to the Stirling Nextbike scheme, which has 160 bikes. The community project, led by Forth Environment Link and funded by Transport Scotland, has buy-in from local organisations. Stirling University and Forth Valley College both pay an annual fee, which allows students and staff to get free membership. Graham McQueen, of Forth Environment Link, says it is the fastest growing scheme in the UK. In the past five months, the scheme has had 8,041 hires compared to 7,624 for the entire previous year, he says. Royal Bank of Scotland has been trialling a Nextbike scheme at its Gogarburn site in Edinburgh. It has 20 bikes, which the company says are well used by staff to travel around the site. But will the scheme in Glasgow be able survive without public subsidy, and attract the eye of lucrative sponsorship? That certainly happened in Portland, Oregon, in the US. Last year, Nike paid $10m over five years to sponsor the city's 1000-strong bike-sharing scheme. Clearly a "one size fits all" doesn't apply when it comes to bike-sharing schemes. And things are changing rapidly, says Bike Plus, with the emergence of private sector "free floating" models. Chinese company Ofo has plans to start a scheme in Cambridge this year, described as the "Uber for bikes". Under this system, there are no docking stations and instead there is an app to find a nearby bike, with no need for users to plan when and where to leave it. These types of schemes could be controversial, with concerns over dumped bikes and pile ups at train stations. Bike Plus hopes to introduce a new accreditation scheme to ensure certain standards for safety and environmental practices are met. Despite the challenges, the benefits of these schemes may prevent any back-pedalling just yet. A survey by Bike Plus found that bike-sharing schemes helped people become healthier, and cities less clogged. It suggested that 13% of people began cycling because of the scheme, and 37% increased the amount they cycled. It said the schemes also encouraged more women to cycle. Nextbike user Hugh says: "The benefits are clear, so my advice would be: get out of that car and get cycling. "I also - and I didn't think I'd say this - enjoy travelling to work and look forward to it."

एडिनबर्ग एक ऑन-स्ट्रीट साइकिल किराया योजना शुरू करने की योजना की घोषणा करने वाली नवीनतम परिषद है। ग्लासगो ने 2014 में राष्ट्रमंडल खेलों से पहले अपनी सार्वजनिक किराया योजना शुरू की और अब इसके आकार को दोगुना करने की योजना है-लेकिन डमफ्रीज़ में एक मुफ्त योजना शुरू करने में विफल रही। इन योजनाओं की सफलता की कुंजी क्या है, और उन पर क्या ब्रेक लगा सकता है?


Prince Philip at 90 on a lifetime of speaking his mind

Summary: Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, has stood at the Queen's side for nearly 60 years. He is recognised the world over and has become the longest serving consort in British history. But he has told the BBC that he had to work out for himself what his role was "by trial and error".

"There was no precedent. If I asked somebody, 'What do you expect me to do?' they all looked blank. They had no idea, nobody had much idea." Over the years, the duke has involved himself with more than 800 different organisations. But he was very reluctant to talk about himself and his achievements to Fiona Bruce in a special BBC One programme to mark his 90th birthday and refused to say what he was most proud of. "I couldn't care less," he said when asked if he thought he had been successful in his role. "Who cares what I think about it, I mean it's ridiculous." One of Prince Philip's most successful initiatives has been to create The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, which has stretched the capabilities of more than seven million young people globally since 1956. But he said he could not take credit for the highly successful scheme. "I don't run it - I've said it's all fairly secondhand the whole business. I mean, I eventually got landed with the responsibility or the credit for it. "I've got no reason to be proud of it. It's satisfying that we've set up a formula that works - that's it." 'Bunny hugger' The duke was also a champion of the early environmental movement and was the first president of the World Wildlife Fund. He was more happy to open up about his passion for conservation. "If we've got this extraordinary diversity on this globe it seems awfully silly for us to destroy it. All these other creatures have an equal right to exist here, we have no prior rights to the Earth than anybody else and if they're here let's give them a chance to survive." But he said he would not describe himself as green: "I think that there's a difference between being concerned for the conservation of nature and being a bunny hugger... people who simply love animals. "People can't get their heads round the idea of a species surviving, you know, they're more concerned about how you treat a donkey in Sicily or something." He said he believed the growing human population was the biggest challenge to conservation and "voluntary family limitation" was the only way to tackle it. The duke's comments on the environment reflect his reputation for plain speaking. "He always speaks his mind, sometimes not necessarily with a high degree of tact," says his cousin Countess Mountbatten. "But on the other hand, I think that people have come to expect that of him, and they really rather enjoy it and they think, how nice to hear somebody actually say what they think." For decades the duke has made off-the-cuff remarks that have been reported around the world. On a tour to China, he quipped to British students, off the record, that if they stayed in China much longer they would come back with slitty eyes. When Fiona Bruce suggested that some people may have thought he should not have said that, he replied: "It has no effect in China if that's what you're worried about." Pushed on what he felt about the comment, he admitted: "I'd forgotten about it." So does he feel the press has been unfair to him or misrepresented him? "I suppose, yes, occasionally but I think it has its own agenda and, and that's it, you just have to live with it." Winding down Prince Philip admitted he did not want to be interviewed by the BBC for a documentary to commemorate his 90th birthday and Fiona Bruce's attempts to delve into his early years were given short shrift. As a member of the exiled Greek royal family he had a nomadic childhood living in France, England and Germany. Asked if that was unsettling, he replied: "Well I just lived my life - I haven't been trying to psychoanalyse myself all the time." Aged just 10, Prince Philip was separated from every member of his immediate family, as they moved to live in different countries. But he said that was "no great deal". His reluctance to speak about all aspects of his life is due to modesty, according to his son, Prince Edward. "My father plain and simply is very modest about himself and doesn't believe in talking about himself. One of his best pieces of advice he gives to everybody is talk about everything else, don't talk about yourself - nobody's interested in you." At 90, Prince Philip said he was "winding down" his involvement with charities. "I reckon I've done my bit so I want to enjoy myself a bit now, with less responsibility, less frantic rushing about, less preparation, less trying to think of something to say. On top of that your memory's going, I can't remember names and things," he admitted. "It's better to get out before you reach the sell-by date." The Duke at 90 was broadcast on BBC One on Thursday 9 June at 2100 BST, and is available on BBC iPlayer.

राजकुमार फिलिप, ड्यूक ऑफ एडिनबर्ग, लगभग 60 वर्षों तक महारानी के पक्ष में खड़े रहे हैं। उन्हें दुनिया भर में पहचाना जाता है और वे ब्रिटिश इतिहास में सबसे लंबे समय तक सेवा करने वाली पत्नी बन गए हैं। लेकिन उन्होंने बीबीसी को बताया है कि उन्हें खुद के लिए काम करना पड़ा कि उनकी भूमिका "परीक्षण और त्रुटि से" क्या थी।


Rocker's son Charlie Gilmour appeals over jail sentence

Summary: Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour's son has launched an appeal against his jail sentence for a rampage at a student fees protest in central London.

Charlie Gilmour, 21, of Billingshurst, West Sussex, received a 16-month jail term at Kingston-upon-Thames Crown Court in July. He admitted to violent disorder after being seen hanging from a Union flag on the Cenotaph. He joined thousands protesting against tuition fees in London last year. Cambridge University student Gilmour was also spotted leaping on to the bonnet of a Jaguar car that formed part of a royal convoy of cars containing Prince Charles. He was found to have hurled a rubbish bin at the vehicle. A spokeswoman for the Judicial Office confirmed that papers have been lodged with the Court of Appeal. But she added that "as yet, no decisions have been made about the case".

पिंक फ़्लॉइड गिटारवादक डेविड गिलमोर के बेटे ने मध्य लंदन में एक छात्र शुल्क विरोध प्रदर्शन में तोड़फोड़ के लिए अपनी जेल की सजा के खिलाफ अपील शुरू की है।


Nato to counter 'hybrid warfare' from Russia

Summary: Nato has pledged to counter "hybrid warfare" from Russia.

The alliance said it must adapt to the mixture of conventional military tactics, subversive campaigns and cyber-warfare that Russia was using in Ukraine. Nato says that Russia is backing rebels in Ukraine - a claim denied by Moscow. Three Baltic countries are preparing to ask for a permanent presence of Nato troops on their soil to act as a deterrent to the Russian military. "Hybrid warfare combines different types of threats, including conventional, subversion and cyber," said Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg. "When the world has changed, Nato has to adapt," he added. Speaking after a meeting of defence ministers in Turkey, Mr Stoltenberg said that a more assertive Russia had been using force to change borders and intimidate its neighbours. The two-day conference was also attended by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. Nato has said that it will look to increase its co-operation and intelligence sharing with the EU. "We will ensure that the strategies we are developing are complementary, so that we can work together quickly and effectively in the case of a hybrid threat against any of our members," said Mr Stoltenberg. 'Deterrent' In another development, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have said they are preparing to ask Nato to station one troop battalion in each country. Lithuanian Army spokesman Capt Mindaugas Neimontas said that the request would be made in a joint letter later this week. "It is necessary because of the security situation," he told The Associated Press news agency. "It's not getting better in our region, so it will be a deterrent." There is growing concern over increased military activity from Russia. On Thursday, RAF fighter jets were scrambled after two Russian military aircraft were seen flying towards UK airspace. Nato forces have also stepped up military exercises, especially in eastern European nations. The alliance is conducting its largest ever anti-submarine warfare exercise in the North Sea, off the coast of Norway. The West has criticised Russia for annexing the Crimean peninsula and has accused Russia of arming rebels in the east of Ukraine. More than 6,000 people have been killed in fighting which began in April 2014 between Ukrainian government forces and rebels in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The lull in the conflict in eastern Ukraine since February's ceasefire has been punctuated by frequent violations, and on Tuesday Ukraine said three of its soldiers had been killed in the past 24 hours.

नाटो ने रूस से "संकर युद्ध" का मुकाबला करने का संकल्प लिया है।


Olivia Colman: From TV comedy actress to Hollywood award winner

Summary: From her breakthrough in TV comedies in the early 2000s to her award-winning performance on the big screen in The Favourite in 2019, British actress Olivia Colman is fast becoming both a national treasure and a major Hollywood player.

She has already won a Golden Globe for best actress so far this awards season and been shortlisted for a Bafta, with an Oscar nomination likely later this month. At the age of 44, Colman has reached star status after appearing in a vast array of TV shows and films. She first caught our attention as a sidekick to Robert Webb and David Mitchell in sketch shows and sitcoms like Peep Show, Bruiser and That Mitchell and Webb Look (pictured). In 2008, she appeared in a BBC Four drama to mark the centenary of Mills & Boon, playing a typist who writes a steamy hospital romance. The cast also included a certain Jodie Whittaker as the wife of the publishing house's co-founder Charles Boon. Colman played mum Debbie in BBC Two's Beautiful People a year later, a story about a boy who rose from his suburban English upbringing to running a New York fashion house. The wife of Tom Hollander's priest in BBC sitcom Rev often found herself below his flock in her husband's priorities. The actress showed a different side in the hard-hitting independent film Tyrannosaur in 2011, and credits director Paddy Considine with allowing her to show her dramatic skills. That led to roles in tougher shows like Accused (Mo's Story), an instalment of Jimmy McGovern's crime anthology. It earned her a Bafta TV Award for best supporting actress in 2013. At the same ceremony, she also won best female performance in a TV comedy for playing Sally, the PA to Hugh Bonneville's Olympic mandarin in the BBC's Twenty Twelve. Another big hit came in the form of ITV's crime drama Broadchurch, in which she played DS Ellie Miller opposite David Tennant, earning her another Bafta the following year. She popped up as a gloriously hideous stepmother in Phoebe Waller-Bridge's comedy Fleabag - and received yet another Bafta TV nomination. Her role as spy boss Angela in glossy drama The Night Manager led to her first Golden Globe win - for best supporting actress in a limited TV series in 2017. Two years on, she now has another Golden Globe, thanks to her delectable performance as the fragile Queen Anne in The Favourite. And she will be seen playing another monarch later in 2019 when she takes over the role of Queen Elizabeth II in Netflix's royal saga The Crown. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

2000 के दशक की शुरुआत में टीवी कॉमेडी में अपनी सफलता से लेकर 2019 में द फेवरेट में बड़े पर्दे पर अपने पुरस्कार विजेता प्रदर्शन तक, ब्रिटिश अभिनेत्री ओलिविया कोलमैन तेजी से एक राष्ट्रीय खजाना और एक प्रमुख हॉलीवुड खिलाड़ी दोनों बन रही हैं।


What would chopped up Traprain Law Roman silver have looked like?

Summary: The largest hoard of "hacked up" Roman silver ever found was discovered on a hill east of Edinburgh almost 100 years ago. Now experts have taken a fresh look at two of the small fragments in the treasure and think they were from one of the biggest silver dishes in the whole of the Roman world. Why was valuable and ornate Roman silverware cut into small pieces and what would it have looked like if it had not been?

By Steven BrocklehurstBBC Scotland news website It is thought the hoard of Roman silver from Traprain Law in East Lothian was buried more than 1,500 years ago, at the beginning of the Early Medieval period - or, as it used to be referred to, the Dark Ages. This is the period when, after 400 years of occupation, the Roman empire receded from Britain. Of course, the land now called Scotland was never truly part of that massive empire but, at various times during the previous centuries, it had been under Roman control. Dr Fraser Hunter, principal curator of the Iron Age and Roman collections at the National Museum of Scotland, says: "At the date the hoard is buried in the 5th Century, Scotland is definitely outside the Roman empire and it is the largest silver hoard from beyond the edge of the empire. "It is also the largest 'hacked up' hoard anywhere. There is no larger hoard known. So, of its kind, it is the biggest and the best." The hoard, which was discovered in 1919, was at first assumed to have been acquired by the barbarians of Traprain as "loot". Dr Hunter says: "This was thought to be our barbaric ancestors descending on the soft underbelly of the Roman empire, looting and pillaging the treasure and then bringing it back here to what was called the Pirates Nest at Traprain, where it was hacked to pieces because they were barbarians." He says this always seemed a slightly odd explanation because the people at Traprain were on good terms with the Romans for several hundred years. The museum has been looking at other hacksilver across Europe and reinterpreting the Traprain find. It is now believed that, rather than being about barbarians who did not appreciate the beauty of an intricately patterned dinner plate, it was more likely to have been a response to economic crisis. "You find it inside the Roman empire as well," says Dr Hunter. "At times of economic crisis, people stopped trusting other forms of currency and they turned to silver and gold. "Suddenly, all the pretty twiddly bits no longer mattered. What mattered is the sheer weight of metal, so the bullion value becomes much more important than whether it is a fine cup or a plate or a dish." Dr Hunter says it is also striking that many of the fragments are cut up into sizes that correlate with Roman weight standards. He says this is "not random destruction", it is done by people who have contact with the Roman world. "The most likely explanation is that the hacking is actually done inside the empire and the silver is moved to Traprain Law, perhaps as a diplomatic gift, perhaps as payment for mercenary services or something like that," Dr Hunter says. The Traprain Law treasure includes about 250 items and weighs about 22kg. Among the pieces are two "quite small fragments" of a silver dish, says Alice Blackwell, the research officer behind a project to reconstruct one of the hoard's platters. The National Museums of Scotland project, funded by whisky firm Glenmorangie, used laser scanning technology to recreate what it would have looked like. Ms Blackwell believes the dish, which would have measured 70cm (28in) in diameter, was "up there among the most important and prestigious and largest pieces of tableware anywhere from within the whole Roman empire". "From these two surviving fragments, we now know for sure it is among the best silver from the empire," she says. Silver tableware in the Roman empire was used to show people how important the owner was, explains Ms Blackwell. "It is not functional silver platters and things, this is a very prestigious showcasing display of power. These are deliberately power symbols. They would have been used by the most important members of society." The reconstructed design is based on small areas of surviving decoration on the original silver fragments. None of the middle portion of this dish has survived and so the central engraved medallion is taken from a very similar dish found in Switzerland. "The recreation of this one dish helps us to get a better sense of the importance of the hoard as a whole and helps to re-emphasise that Traprain contains some exquisite pieces of late Roman silver, " Ms Blackwell says. "Some incredibly high-quality pieces." She says the hacking is part of why the treasure is such an interesting and valuable find. And she suggests her project to recreate the dish has a fitting symmetry. "We are taking two small fragments and making a whole from them," she says. "But the process has happened for real in reverse - it was a whole plate that was taken and fragmented up."

रोमन चांदी का अब तक का सबसे बड़ा भंडार लगभग 100 साल पहले एडिनबर्ग के पूर्व में एक पहाड़ी पर पाया गया था। अब विशेषज्ञों ने खजाने में दो छोटे टुकड़ों पर नए सिरे से नज़र डाली है और उन्हें लगता है कि वे पूरे रोमन दुनिया के सबसे बड़े चांदी के व्यंजनों में से एक थे। मूल्यवान और अलंकृत रोमन चांदी के बर्तन को छोटे टुकड़ों में क्यों काटा जाता और अगर यह नहीं होता तो यह कैसा दिखता?


Jersey College for Girls homes plan turned down

Summary: Permission for a private developer to turn the former Jersey College of Girls into homes has been refused because the States wants it for social housing.

The Planning Minister refused to renew consent given a number of years ago which had lapsed. The building has been empty since the college moved its facilities to Mont Millais in 2007. Jersey Property Holdings will submit a fresh application for 183 homes, 40 of which are for social housing. Planning permission had been given in 2006 and the development company had hoped it would be extended for a further three years. Deputy Rob Duhamel, the Planning Minister, refused it because the Island Plan had changed since the original application was granted.

एक निजी विकासकर्ता को पूर्व जर्सी कॉलेज ऑफ गर्ल्स को घरों में बदलने की अनुमति देने से इनकार कर दिया गया है क्योंकि राज्य इसे सामाजिक आवास के लिए चाहते हैं।


Jim Haynes: A man who invited the world over for dinner

Summary: Jim Haynes was both an icon and a relic of the Swinging Sixties, an American in Paris who was famous for inviting hundreds of thousands of strangers to dinner at his home. He died this month.

By Vicky BakerBBC News Last February, I took my last trip abroad before lockdown closed in on us. I bought a last-minute ticket and jumped on the Eurostar to Paris, motivated by a sudden urge to have dinner with a friend. Jim Haynes had entered his late '80s and his health was declining, yet I knew he would welcome a visit. Jim always welcomed visitors. The essence of that trip now feels like the antithesis of Covid times. I was far from the only guest wandering into the warm glow of his atelier in the 14th arrondissement on a wet winter's night. Inside, people were squeezing, shoulder to shoulder, through the narrow kitchen. Strangers struck up conversations, bunched together in groups, balancing their dinners on paper plates and reaching over each other to press the plastic spout on a communal box of wine. Jim had operated open-house policy at his home every Sunday evening for more than 40 years. Absolutely anyone was welcome to come for an informal dinner, all you had to do was phone or email and he would add your name to the list. No questions asked. Just put a donation in an envelope when you arrive. There would be a buzz in the air, as people of various nationalities - locals, immigrants, travellers - milled around the small, open-plan space. A pot of hearty food bubbled on the hob and servings would be dished out on to a trestle table, so you could help yourself and continue to mingle. It was for good reason that Jim was nicknamed the "godfather of social networking". He led the way in connecting strangers, long before we outsourced it all to Silicon Valley. I only knew Jim in his later years, but his entire life was extraordinary. Born in Louisiana in 1933, he had lived in Venezuela as a teenager; founded the alternative culture centre Arts Lab in London, where he mixed with David Bowie, John Lennon and Yoko Ono; ran a sexual liberation magazine in Amsterdam, and all before becoming a university lecturer in sexual politics in Paris, his home since 1969. And yet he was often seen as a son of Scotland, following an influential stint there in the late '50s and late '60s, when he established Edinburgh's first paperback bookshop, co-founded the Traverse Theatre and helped kickstart the Fringe festival. When Jim died, at 87, earlier this month, a Herald obituary called him "the unofficial agent for the beat generation in Scotland". While a lot of highly regarded people tend to retreat into their own circles after finding success, Jim never stopped reaching out to new people. The first time I heard from him was an email out of the blue in 2008. I had written a newspaper article from Barcelona - not the one in Spain but the one on the coast of Venezuela - and it had brought back memories for him. His father worked in the oil business and had moved the family there when Jim was in his early teens. My article was about meeting people through the Couchsurfing website, where locals opened their homes to strangers for free around the world. This was before AirBnB worked out how to monetise the idea, and the concept of non-commercial cultural exchange was right up Jim's street. "When you are back in Europe, come to dinner," he wrote, promising to tell me about an old travel project of his own that he thought I might like. Intrigued, I headed to Paris soon after my return. I had imagined some sort of intimate dinner party with cultural elites, but what I found was more like a student house party - albeit with more mature attendees and only moderate alcohol consumption. (Jim was teetotal and proceedings ended strictly by 23:00.) Jim instantly greeted me like an old friend and, as we chatted, he reached up on to his living room shelves to offer me a book. People to People read the cover line. It was the project he had wanted to tell me about. He explained that, in the late 1980s, he had founded a guidebook series for countries behind the Iron Curtain. Instead of the standard descriptions of sights and hotel listings, the format was like an address book, including the contact details for hundreds of in-country hosts. The idea was that if people could not easily see the Western world themselves, he would bring it to them via travellers. It was "couchsurfing", but offline. The hand-sized copy he pressed into my palm centred on Poland. I loved it and decided to travel there to see if the participants were still up for receiving random visitors, even though so much had changed. Each person was filed under the town where they lived, followed by two or three lines, including their address, date of birth, phone number and hobbies. Through a combination of Google and snail-mail, I managed to get hold of several of them. Most had all known Jim either personally or through friends of friends. All had fond memories of the project and all were still willing to act as local guides to show me around. In Gdansk, I asked civil servant Krystyna Wróblewska why she had signed up originally. She told me she had been working as a media fixer, helping reporters cover the anti-communist shipyard strikes. "They [the media] went looking for women with handkerchiefs on their heads and horses with carts, perpetuating the same old picture. I suppose I wanted to meet people to subvert stereotypes and show that not all the pictures you have in your head are real." "It surprised me how easy it was," Jim insisted to me. He produced guides for Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Baltics and Russia, featuring thousands upon thousands of locals. Some of his contacts came from his personal, multi-volume address books, and he got new sign-ups after placing interviews in local papers and jazz magazines. "Some of the older people in Russia were scared about being put on a Western list, because they thought it would be easier to be rounded up and carted away," he said. "But a lot of younger people wanted to be in the book… I was getting sackfuls of mail. I'm sure the local postman wondered what the hell was going on." Over the years, the authorities often wondered what was going on at Jim's place. Not least during the period when he started issuing fake passports. It was back in the 1970s, after he had caught wind of an American traveller, who, 20 years before, had renounced his American citizenship and created his own "world passport". For Jim, non-national passports seemed to encapsulate his ideals of peace and global freedom. So he turned his home into an "embassy" and started producing world passports for anyone who wanted one. The documents were so convincing that some people used them to cross borders. "Look, you can't do this any more. You have to stop making passports," exasperated French police would say when they came to his door. But Jim continued until he ended up in court. Though he was eventually acquitted of fraud and counterfeiting, he was found guilty of "confusing the public". Jim always dismissed the idea that it was a naïve undertaking, but he was trusting to a fault, according to some of his friends, and this led to financial mistakes and legal troubles over the years. He wouldn't deal with problems, waiting until they blew up instead. "I often had to stop him signing things. Sometimes he didn't even read them," says Jesper, his son, who was born during Jim's marriage to Viveka Reuterskiold in the 1960s. Jesper grew up in Stockholm after they separated, but visited Paris every summer from the age of 10. "There were mattresses on every spare bit of floor, people sleeping everywhere," he says, as he recalls his earlier visits. "It was exciting and fun, but sometimes I felt jealous. Lots of people did. People were very possessive of him. People wanted to claim him, but he was unclaimable." Jesper credits his father with opening the world to him. He used Jim's contacts books extensively as he travelled and he is currently living with his own family in Bangkok, where he briefly replicated the Sunday dinners. "Just for six months... It was a lot of work." During the 1990s, the crowds started to dwindle at the Paris dinners, as the original hippy crowd aged. But then a new wave of younger visitors started to get in touch. The bloggers had discovered him. "The internet both ruined and saved the dinners," says Seamas McSwiney, a close friend who helped on Sunday evenings for decades. "It became less spontaneous as people tried to book six months ahead - which was anathema to how Jim travelled and also annoying as those people were more likely to do a no-show - but at the same time, these online articles re-energised the idea. There was a younger crowd and new momentum." At the dinners' peak, Jim would welcome up to 120 guests, filling his atelier and spilling out into the cobbled back garden. An estimated 150,000 people have come over the years. "The door was always open," says Amanda Morrow, an Australian journalist who stayed with Jim for a year-and-a-half. "It was a revolving door of guests - some who wanted to stay over, and others who just wanted to say hello. Jim never said no to anyone." The only thing that really got Jim down was people leaving," says Jesper. "He struggled with that. He didn't like being on his own... Though fortunately there was usually a new person to distract him." In the final years, Jim would sit quietly, as others gravitated into his orbit. On my last visit, he looked frail and pained by his various ailments, but he also had an air of contentment, clearly never tiring of being the conduit for human interactions. "I was wondering when you'd come back," he said to me, in the rasping American accent he somehow had never lost. Here was a man who had spent time with Lennon and Bowie, who was once friends with Sonia Orwell and used to walk round Paris with Samuel Beckett. And yet he made everyone feel special. Every connection mattered. "It felt like politician's trick, but it was natural," says Seamas. In very recent times, Covid restrictions reduced the dinners' clockwork schedule, but his friends say he was not depressed by the pandemic. He had figured the get-togethers would resume and, until then, had enjoyed a smaller stream of visiting carers and, whenever possible, friends. Amid the outpouring of online tributes since his death in his sleep on 6 January, these words from Jesper stand out: "His goal from early on was to introduce the whole world to each other. He almost succeeded." You may also be interested in:

जिम हेन्स पेरिस में एक अमेरिकी स्विंगिंग साठ के दशक के प्रतीक और अवशेष दोनों थे, जो अपने घर पर सैकड़ों हजारों अजनबियों को रात के खाने के लिए आमंत्रित करने के लिए प्रसिद्ध थे। उनका इस महीने निधन हो गया।


Koo Stark on both sides of the lens

Summary: Around 30 years ago while browsing in a book shop in Shepherd's Bush, I picked up a copy of a small book called Contrasts by Koo Stark. It contained around 100 pictures taken by her, from portraits to landscapes, many showing a light-hearted touch.

Phil CoomesPicture editor@philcoomeson Twitter For the first time in around two decades, a selection of those pictures are on show once more, alongside her photographs of actors and musicians, a few nudes and, of course, pictures of the model and photographer herself. Koo Stark had an unusual route into the business. A relationship with the Duke of York in the early 80s meant pictures of her were in high demand by the press, with photographers camped out around her home and tailing her every move. Reasoning that the faces of the photographers were all hidden behind their cameras, perhaps she could do the same thing and take some of that anonymity for herself. Koo Stark decided to pick up a camera and shoot back - arguably the first to make the leap from one side of the camera to the other. "I thought if I put a camera up to my face they wont be able to tell it is me," says Stark. Though she says there was no way of hiding her long hair. "I thought it would illustrate the fact that I was an unwilling celebrity. I wasn't posing for the cameras. I was ducking and diving and had a miserable expression on my face." That decision led to her being offered a book deal for her photographs. She needed a mentor to help guide her, and who better than fashion photographer Norman Parkinson who had photographed Stark before. "I flew to Tobago and Parkinson taught me how to take pictures," says Stark. "He taught me about light and told me to look at the old masters, starting with Caravaggio. "Parkinson would then look at my work and initial what he thought was a good image, training me to look for humour." Parkinson also told Stark that if she was really good she could expect three successful images out of a roll of film - one in 10. "Funnily you feel that moment on the other end of the camera as well," says Stark, explaining that when working as a model with a photographer you also know when you've got the shot. "You feel the light catch your eye, you have a real smile too, not a fake one." Stark continued her photographic education by studying the greats of photography, including the work of Angus McBean, who she later photographed alongside his portrait of Vivien Leigh, quizzing him about his lighting techniques. "There was only one portrait that was awkward," says Stark. "It was Eric Clapton singing, and I froze. It was so beautiful, and the audience was just me and my assistant, I felt it was just to me. I couldn't take a picture, I was mesmerised." Stark's photograph of the Geldof family shows that quirky side to her work. "Their daughter Fifi Trixibelle was running around and wouldn't be photographed, so Bob held her like this. Yet Paula is just there, hoping for a bit of modesty as she tries to pull the skirt up." The exhibition, Kintsugi by Koo Stark, can be seen at Leica Mayfair, London, until 26 May 2017. Photograph of Koo Stark in New York is Copyright Norman Parkinson Ltd / Courtesy Norman Parkinson Archive

लगभग 30 साल पहले शेफर्ड बुश में एक किताब की दुकान में ब्राउज़ करते समय, मैंने कू स्टार्क की कंट्रास्ट नामक एक छोटी सी किताब की एक प्रति उठाई। इसमें उनके द्वारा ली गई लगभग 100 तस्वीरें थीं, चित्रों से लेकर परिदृश्य तक, जिनमें से कई हल्के-फुल्के स्पर्श को दर्शाती थीं।


Model gives ancient Iceman Oetzi new face

Summary: Oetzi the Iceman has reappeared looking fighting fit - as a new model on show in the Italian Alps, where he died from an arrow wound some 5,300 years ago.

In 1991 a German couple found Oetzi's mummified corpse embedded in a glacier, in a high mountain pass. Using 3D images of the corpse and forensic technology two Dutch experts - Alfons and Adrie Kennis - created a new Oetzi model. They gave him brown eyes. The model is on show at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano. The museum is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Iceman discovery - a find which became an international sensation. Oetzi was found still wearing goatskin leggings and a grass cape, and his copper-headed axe and a quiver full of arrows were lying nearby. He was named after the Oetz Valley, on the Italy-Austria border, where he was found. Researchers say Oetzi was about 159cm tall (5ft, 2.5in), 46 years old, arthritic and infested with whipworm.

ओटज़ी द आइसमैन इतालवी आल्प्स में शो में एक नए मॉडल के रूप में फिर से दिखाई दिया है, जहां वह लगभग 5,300 साल पहले एक तीर के घाव से मर गया था।


Music piracy - who’s on the moral high ground?

Summary: It's a battle between one of the world's most powerful companies, Google, and the trade body representing British music labels, the BPI. The increasingly bitter confrontation over what responsibility the search firm has to help in the battle against web piracy is the subject of my film for Newsnight on Wednesday evening .

Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter The BPI says Google has become a directory for piracy - put Adele or any artist plus MP3 into the search box, and you'll find page after page of unauthorised sites before you come to anything legitimate. The trade body wants the pirate sites pushed down the search rankings - Google says it already removes two million links a month on requests from rights holders, and it can't mess with its search algorithm. I suspect that many of you reading this will come down on Google's side. After all the music industry is hugely powerful, and has been ripping off consumers for years, right? Who are they to take the moral high ground? But don't forget that Google now earns about three times as much in the UK as the entire music industry. And if you think the call for action against the firm comes exclusively from bloated record industry executives who deserve no sympathy, listen to Alastair Nicholson. He has been running the UK hip-hop label Son Records for more than a decade, battling to keep afloat. Visit his office, and you'll find no flunkies delivering flowers or a boardroom decorated with rock memorabilia - just one man in an attic flat. Son Records has been a labour of love for Alastair, who believed UK hip-hop artists were more political and less crassly commercial than their American equivalents - and wanted to get them a wider hearing. He had modest success at first, but gradually found that sales were falling away. "When I looked online I'd just find a lot of my stuff myself lying around for free and it seemed to me to be getting a worse and worse problem." So with one album, Genghis by Cappo and Stylee C, he tried a new approach to try to beat the pirates. First, he released a special edition of the album on vinyl, without handing out any digital copies to reviewers. They complained, but the vinyl version sold well - and when Nicholson searched the web he found no trace of any unauthorised copies. The vinyl edition covered some of the costs, but the album was never going to be profitable without a full release. Alastair prepared to release Genghis on a wide range of formats - CD, digital download, even a special edition USB stick. The day after the release he went to his computer: "Every day up to the release it had been clean - links to our websites, reviews, and so on. The day after the release when it had become simultaneously available on all the download sites I was just horrified. I did a search for the artist name and the album titles and it was just page after page of file shares and free downloads and I didn't get to anything legitimate until the bottom of the fifth or sixth page." He spent the next 10 days trying to hunt down every pirated link, contacting Google and issuing takedown notices. Eventually the search results began to look better, but the damage had been done. "In my opinion it pretty much killed it," he says. "Having had this month long period when I was selling a lot of copies of records - the limited edition - well to call it a trickle is to be quite generous. It slowed down to almost nothing." Alastair says his kind of album has a short window to make an impact - and if in that time it is available free online then there is little prospect of any substantial sales. A couple of years on, and the prospects for Son Records do not look any brighter. In fact, the business has effectively shut down, and its owner puts much of the blame at Google's door as an enabler of piracy. I put it to him that it wasn't Google's fault if the web was awash with free music and that was what people were searching out. "You're right," he said. "There's any number of people distributing music for free, I'm not trying to lay that at Google's door." So how would he describe Google's stance, I asked. He thought for a bit, and then said: "There's a lack of a moral viewpoint." Google's Theo Bertram strongly disputes that: "I'm happy to say Google doesn't support piracy and does support freedom of expression," he told me. "Those are not in conflict." But Alastair Nicholson also points to an irony in the way music fans behave. He thinks the people who like his kind of music and would get it for free online would see themselves as anti-establishment, "sticking it to The Man," as the saying goes. But the result of their actions is that the only future for a small music label is to cosy up to a corporate giant: "Unless you're going to become the corporate mascot for Barclaycard, Weetabix, whatever, I don't see there's that many ways to make a business selling music." Whatever anti-piracy measures are tried - from blocking the Pirate Bay to changing Google's search rankings - seem unlikely to make much of a difference unless music fans become convinced that there is something not quite right about taking illegal downloads. The big labels represented by the BPI will no doubt find a way to survive but music fans may find that an industry where Son Records can't make a living is not quite what they wanted. UPDATE 10: 43 BST, 19 July 2012 Someone who knows music industry finances like the back of his hand has been in touch to point out that my line about Google earning three times as much as the entire industry does not tell the whole story. True, retail sales for music in the UK amounted to just under £800m, which compares to Google's UK revenues of around £2.4bn. But add in licensing income, and the growing receipts from live music - and you get nearer to £4bn for the entire UK industry. Now, if you wanted to have a punt on what would be worth more in the coming years - Google's advertising business or the music industry - I know which way I'd bet. But for now, there are still ways to make money from music.

यह दुनिया की सबसे शक्तिशाली कंपनियों में से एक, गूगल और ब्रिटिश संगीत लेबल, बी. पी. आई. का प्रतिनिधित्व करने वाले व्यापार निकाय के बीच एक लड़ाई है। वेब पायरेसी के खिलाफ लड़ाई में खोज फर्म को किस जिम्मेदारी से मदद करनी है, इस पर तेजी से कड़वा टकराव बुधवार शाम को न्यूजनाइट के लिए मेरी फिल्म का विषय है।


Keanu Williams: Changing heads of Birmingham's children's service

Summary: As a serious case review is published into the death of two-year-old Keanu Williams, who was beaten to death by his mother Rebecca Shuttleworth, BBC News looks at the recent bosses of Birmingham City Council's troubled children's department.

The authority has had four strategic directors of Children, Young People and Families since 2009. Tony Howell (April 2006 - Jan 2011) Tony Howell started as strategic director for children, young people and families in April 2006. He announced his retirement in July 2009 but stayed in post until January 2011. During his reign there were 14 serious case reviews. Khyra Ishaq - the seven year old who was starved to death by her mother and her boyfriend in Handsworth - came to the attention of social services in March 2006 and died in 2008. Ofsted concludes the department is "failing to protect vulnerable children" in July 2010 and brands it inadequate. Eleanor Brazil (Jan 2011 - April 2012) Appointed interim strategic director on a 12 month contract in 2011. The contract had an option to extend to 18 months - which it was. She was reportedly paid £1,000 a day. Keanu Williams was murdered by his mother Rebecca Shuttleworth during her tenure, in January 2011. Colin Tucker, Birmingham City Council's director of children's social care, was suspended in January and left his post by "mutual agreement" in April 2011. A senior council source said Mr Tucker's department had not improved quickly enough. No serious case reviews were published in 2011/2012. Peter Duxbury (April 2012 - July 2013) Started in April 2012 but left after just 15 months. A council spokesman said this was by "mutual agreement" after taking "unplanned emergency leave to deal with private family matters". They added: "The council is continuing with the improvement strategy for its services for children, young people and families and has asked Peter Hay CBE, strategic director for adults and communities, to take over responsibilities in the interim." Before he left Mr Duxbury, a former social worker, said there was "little likelihood of special measures being lifted before 2015." No serious case reviews were commissioned during his tenure. Peter Hay (July 2013 - current) Appointed to manage the department "in the interim". One serious case review has been commissioned so far. Birmingham City Council leader Sir Albert Bore said in September the most urgent issue facing the council was the need to establish permanent management arrangements for children's services. He said they needed someone who could "win the loyalty and respect from staff and give confidence to the political leadership." "We believe we have in Peter Hay, who has been asked to manage the service in the interim, such a person," he said. He added: "It is clear that with Peter Hay we do have an officer who has all the requisite qualities to lead the service and provide assurance. In fact the last time Children's Social Care showed signs of externally accredited improvement was when he managed it." Perry Barr MP Khalid Mahmood said the department would not improve until there was some continuity with the person in charge. "There are never any results because people are always in limbo," he said. "Every time a new person takes charge, the department is changed to suit them. "None of the leaders ever look at the systemic failures. They come in, give out press releases, then in the end they are booted out because they have not delivered what they should have."

जैसा कि दो वर्षीय कीनू विलियम्स की मौत में एक गंभीर मामले की समीक्षा प्रकाशित की गई है, जिसे उसकी माँ रेबेका शटलवर्थ ने पीट-पीटकर मार डाला था, बीबीसी न्यूज़ बर्मिंघम सिटी काउंसिल के परेशान बच्चों के विभाग के हाल के मालिकों को देखता है।