‘I’m being jailed for four emails from 12 years ago’

Summary: The crime for which Matt Connolly was convicted, alongside British co-defendant Gavin Black, is conspiracy to commit fraud by rigging interest rates. The documentary evidence implicating him is four emails between 12 and 14 years old.

Connolly, 54, from Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and Black, 49, from Twickenham, southwest London, are the latest in a line of 11 traders to face jail for the same offence. At their sentencing hearing later this month, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) is pressing for Connolly to get at least nine years. By speaking out against his investigation and trial, Matt Connolly risks a longer sentence. But so shocked is he by his experience at the hands of the US justice system, he is determined to go public, publishing a book and giving an interview that could bring further time in a prison cell. "If I have to face more jail time for getting the truth out there, so be it. Because at the moment no-one realises what's gone on and how bad it is. I can't stay silent," he told the BBC. In common with nine other traders convicted of the same offence, the documentary evidence against Matt Connolly and Gavin Black consists of emails or messages making requests of colleagues. The US DoJ case was that these requests showed a fraudulent scheme to try to move the benchmark interest rate that tracks the cost of borrowing cash, Libor, to make profits on their trades at the expense of others in the market. "In their quest to make every extra dollar that they could… they cheated by rigging the Libor interest rate," said DoJ prosecutor Alison Anderson at the start of the trial. "They did it just to make more money for their bank and in turn more money for themselves… they cheated businesses and defrauded businesses around the world, right here in the United States and right here in New York." What the Nikkei or the FTSE 100 are to share prices, Libor is to the cost of borrowing cash: an index or benchmark, updated every day. The real interest rates paid on millions of consumer loans and mortgages depend not on official central bank interest rates but on the real cost to the banks of getting cash to lend. Libor keeps track of that cost by showing the average interest rate banks are paying to borrow funds from each other. Former Deutsche Bank traders Connolly and Black both face jail for taking part in an international conspiracy to "rig" Libor from 2005 to 2010. Yet until December 2017, when they attended court in New York, Connolly and Black had neither met nor spoken. No personal email has been unearthed from one to the other and Connolly, a former desk supervisor, left Deutsche Bank in March 2008. "This was the weird thing. We were accused of being in a criminal conspiracy. But we didn't actually know each other," Connolly said. Matt Connolly wrote three emails making requests about Libor, the most recent of which dates from August 2007. He was copied in on another. At the New York court, it was enough to condemn him to jail. On the one hand, prosecutors were unable to prove at the trial that Connolly and Black procured false statements that caused identifiable losses for others, nor to produce as a witness a victim of their actions. On the other, prosecutors did not need to show a fraud succeeded. For a charge of conspiracy, they needed only to convince the jury one was planned. "To convict them on the charges, you need to do nothing more than accept at face value the statements they made in which the defendants and their co-conspirators requested and submitted rates… to benefit trading positions," DoJ prosecutor Carol Sipperly told the jury. To work out Libor, a trader at each of 16 banks given the role of "Libor submitter" has to make an estimate, to at least two decimal places, of what interest rate they think their bank would have to pay to borrow cash from another bank (for example, RBS estimates 3.53%, Lloyds 3.55%). An average of those 16 estimates, or "Libor submissions", is taken and published as Libor - the London Interbank Offered Rate. Because banks also have billions of dollars in investments, loans and trading positions linked to the Libor average, they could make or lose money if Libor moved up or down by as little as one hundredth of a percentage point. So traders who knew the banks' positions would work out which way the bank was "facing" - whether it would benefit from a higher or lower Libor rate. The traders would then frequently make requests for the Libor submitters on the cash desk to put in "high" or "low" Libor estimates. If the submitter accepted the request, they would typically tweak their submission up or down by a hundredth of a percentage point or two - for example, from 3.53% to 3.54%. In nine rate-rigging trials since 2015, prosecutors have interpreted those "trader requests" as criminal - an attempt to procure false Libor submissions with the goal of skewing the Libor average in their favour, at the expense of others in the market. The DoJ and the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) insist there was only one "true" or "honest" estimate of the cost of borrowing cash that a submitter could put in. Therefore any attempt to influence it up or down to serve a bank's commercial interests must be dishonest. So when Connolly emails a colleague saying: "We would prefer it higher… thanks just asking is very much appreciated", the DoJ sees it as a criminal attempt to procure a "false or fraudulent" statement. Prosecutor Carol Sipperly told the jury: "They would get that Libor submitter… to move the Libor submission higher or lower, not based on any honest estimate of what that Libor submitter thought Deutsche Bank would have to pay to borrow money but in whatever direction benefited the defendants and their team on their trades." But trader requests have been viewed by other courts in a more innocent light: as requests for submissions that were adjusted to take account of the bank's commercial interests - yet were nevertheless accurate. The defence is that it was accepted practice to ask for "high" or "low" Libors - because there was a narrow range of accurate rates to choose from. Connolly's lawyer Ken Breen pointed to the Libor definition set out by the body that owned and ran Libor, the British Bankers Association (BBA), telling each bank to "contribute the rate at which it could borrow funds, were it to do so by asking for and then accepting interbank offers" [italics added]. "Some witnesses have noted that 'offers' is plural, which is important. On any given day, there was a range of offered rates where Deutsche Bank could borrow funds. Even the prosecutors' own expert supports this point… he drew the conclusion there is a range of true borrowing costs, that's a range of true, honest, accurate rates, not just one," Mr Breen told the court. Former Deutsche Bank Libor submitters, Mike Curtler and James King, both accepted on cross-examination that there would be more than one interest rate at which the bank might borrow cash (for example, an offer at 3.55% from UBS, another at 3.53% from Lloyds). Mr Curtler also testified that Connolly had never made a request for a Libor submission outside the range of interest rates at which the bank might realistically borrow. However, in her closing speech DoJ prosecutor Carol Sipperly denied that a range of accurate Libor estimates existed, saying it was "made up after the fact". That echoed repeated statements in the first Libor rigging trial, of Tom Hayes in 2015, where SFO prosecutor Mukul Chawla repeatedly said a range of accurate rates "does not exist". In April 2015, the top decision-making body of the Financial Conduct Authority, the Regulatory Decisions Committee, accepted arguments from former UBS trader Pete Koutsogiannis that requests made for high or low Libor submissions were not improper if they were within a range of accurate estimates of the cost of borrowing cash. He was exonerated. In 2017, John Ewan, the former Libor manager at the British Bankers' Association (BBA), testified at the trial of two former Barclays traders, Ryan Reich and Stelios Contogoulas, that if requests asked for high or low Libor submissions within a range of interest rates at which the bank might borrow, it was within the rules. The defendants were acquitted. 'We were toast' At Connolly and Black's trial, the DoJ's case was that fraudulent statements were made to the BBA. Yet the Department of Justice called no BBA witness and did not seek documents from the BBA until after Connolly and Black were indicted. "It wasn't interest rates that were rigged. It was our investigation and prosecutions," Connolly said. "It didn't matter that the judge accused prosecutors of lying. It didn't matter that a government witness was told by prosecutors to sign a sworn statement that was false. "It didn't matter that the DoJ never even contacted the British Bankers' Association which ran Libor until a year after we were charged. All they had to do was tell the jury what our bonuses had been and we were toast." From 2010 until the trial, Deutsche Bank's leadership co-operated so closely with the US government that the investigation was outsourced to Deutsche Bank's lawyers, Paul Weiss. In 2015, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay a record fine of $2.5bn to the DoJ and other regulators, with a 30% discount for "co-operation". The FCA said senior managers were directly involved in much of the "misconduct". However, only Connolly and Black were prosecuted. It was undisputed at the trial that Deutsche Bank senior managers, including Anshu Jain, Alan Cloete and David Nicholls, encouraged derivatives traders and Libor submitters to share information about trading positions, seating them close together. When he was told in April 2016 he was in line to be prosecuted, Matt Connolly was shocked and thought it was a mistake. When they announced the 2015 fines, regulators confirmed that sharing information was encouraged by senior management in London. Deutsche Bank said: "As we stated in April 2015, no current or former member of the Management Board was found to have been involved in or aware of the trader misconduct." The BBC has accumulated evidence, not shown to the juries in the rate-rigging trials, that much larger Libor requests, seeking to move Libor regardless of the accurate rates at which banks were borrowing, were made from the top of the financial hierarchy during the financial crisis. However, prosecutors on both sides of the Atlantic have chosen to charge not central bankers nor senior managers but only staff further down the banks' ranks and money brokers.

जिस अपराध के लिए मैट कॉनॉली को ब्रिटिश सह-प्रतिवादी गेविन ब्लैक के साथ दोषी ठहराया गया था, वह ब्याज दरों में धांधली करके धोखाधड़ी करने की साजिश है। उसे फंसाने वाले दस्तावेजी सबूत 12 से 14 साल की उम्र के बीच के चार ईमेल हैं।


Boy Erased author Garrard Conley on surviving 'gay conversion therapy'

Summary: It's not unusual for a writer to dedicate a book to their parents - but for Garrard Conley to have dedicated Boy Erased to his mother and father and thanked them in the acknowledgements is more surprising, given that it is all about what they put him through.

By Lauren TurnerEntertainment reporter They are the ones who told him he had to go through "gay conversion therapy" or leave the family forever. Conley had been outed to his parents by his rapist after being assaulted in college. But, to his Baptist preacher father and his mother, the crime was in him being gay. They lived in Arkansas, in Bible belt southern US, where it was taught that yoga is wrong and Harry Potter is evil. Conley, both terrified of (and conflicted by) his sexuality, felt at the time there was only one solution - to go through with the controversial practice. "I had believed there were actual demons possessing me," Conley tells BBC News. "I had lived 18 years of my life in this almost cultish environment. It was cult-lite." The programme he was sent to was "a full-on cult", he says, but he found the strength to break out of it and the path his family expected him to take. He went on to study queer theory and is now living with his husband in New York, having written of his experiences in Boy Erased. Now a film is being made of that memoir by actor and director Joel Edgerton, with Lucas Hedges starring as Conley. Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman will play his parents, with Troye Sivan starring as another victim of conversion therapy. 'I was in freefall' "I waited 10 years before I wrote a word of the book," Conley explains. "I was so worried about looking stupid - I felt everyone was already judging my background, the fact I had believed these things. "I was really minimising the whole experience. To me it felt normal, like, 'That was a crazy thing that happened'. But then, I read some blog entries saying that people were suffering and I began to recognise some of those symptoms in myself - sometimes, I couldn't touch my partner without feeling shame." He set out to write about his experience in what he calls a three-part story - of him, his parents and the counsellors at the centre that was supposed to "cure" him of being gay. But why did he agree to the "therapy"? "I was in freefall from being raped, and having the rapist say he had also raped a 14-year-old boy," he says - adding that he was also brought up to believe gay people were perverts. "And then my dad gave me the ultimatum. I was terrified of losing God. I prayed every night. "My parents had some hope I could have a 'normal' life - I'd dated a girl for two years. I did love her in many ways, and she'd protected me. So, I thought, 'Well, there's just this sex thing - what does that matter?'" 'My parents had no idea' He went through a 12-step programme, with a focus on Bible study, that was meant to see Conley leave the facility as a straight man, "cleansed" of his "impure" thoughts. There were rules about how to behave and look during the intense two-week "therapy". Conley had his phone taken from him and was told all photographs and messages would need to be read. The experience - those two weeks, and then six months of one-to-one therapy - left him close to suicide. "You didn't question these leaders," he says. "So my parents never knew what went on there until I told them, many years later. "They had no idea what was going on. My mum had started asking questions at the end, and that's when they'd taken me out of the programme. We weren't meant to talk about what happened in there. "Yes, my parents made a terrible mistake which could have cost me my life. But they didn't know what they were doing to me. "It's why I do this advocacy work. It's so important for people who may be considering this for their own kids." Even when his mother read Boy Erased, Conley says "she didn't know everything". "I didn't give them early copies," he admits. "My mum downloaded it the minute it came out. She was so worried she would be embarrassed and it would be a screed against them. "So it was actually a relief to her. But my dad claims he hasn't read it - which I don't think is possible." Conley adds of his father: "We still have disagreement on LGBT issues. He thinks it's a choice. And he has a congregation who, if he came out in support of me, would leave his church. "He doesn't preach against LGBT issues. I'd say he's moved on." 'It's my story' But he says that by refusing to attack his parents, he has been criticised by some who say he has been humanising them too much. "My response is that it's my story, and I get to choose how I feel," he says. "One of the things that really annoyed me about conversion therapy is that I was meant to hate my father. "I feel the same about things people say on Twitter - don't tell me how I feel about my father. I have three-dimensional feelings." Joel Edgerton, fascinated by Conley's story, wrote the screenplay for the film - which he also produced, directed and stars in. It's due out in September in the US. And while Crowe was researching the film, the Hollywood star turned up to Conley's father's church unannounced. "Russell Crowe visited the church and then he and my dad texted for weeks. It's added a level of scrutiny to their lives which wasn't there when the book came out [it was released in the US in 2016, two years before its UK publication this month]. "They can't go to the Post Office now without someone mentioning Russell Crowe." He says the film being made has been "nerve-racking", but adds: "Joel made this his passion project. "From when I sat down with him, he wanted to speak to other survivors of conversion therapy. I thought, 'This is someone who cares'. And when I sat down with Lucas Hedges, he had marked every page of the book. "I've seen the film a few times and it's so true to the book. It's not sensational at all. I don't feel it got the Hollywood treatment." Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

एक लेखक के लिए अपने माता-पिता को एक पुस्तक समर्पित करना असामान्य नहीं है-लेकिन गैरार्ड कॉनले के लिए बॉय इरेज़्ड को अपनी माँ और पिता को समर्पित करना और स्वीकारोक्ति में उन्हें धन्यवाद देना अधिक आश्चर्यजनक है, यह देखते हुए कि यह सब इस बारे में है कि उन्होंने उसे क्या दिया।


Somali hotel raid: 'How I survived my fourth siege'

Summary: Former BBC reporter Mohamed Moalimu survived Sunday's siege on a beachfront hotel in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu - the fourth time he has been caught up in an attack by Islamist al-Shabab militants over the last seven years.

Moalimu, who now heads the Federation of Somali Journalists, told the BBC's Basillioh Mutahi about his ordeal and how his friend was among the 20 people to lose their lives at the Elite hotel during the raid: I was trembling. My heart was beating like a drum and my body was shaking. A huge cloud of dark smoke had gone up and it was even difficult to see the entire area. People were screaming. I could see the impact of the blast. Some people had been hit by the shattered glasses, and some were bleeding, others were shouting for help. My friend, Abdirizak Abdi, wanted to run away immediately. I wanted to stop him because heavy shooting was going on but he ran away from me, towards the entrance. I waited up to the point where I could understand where the shooting was coming from, having been trained on what to do in a hostile environment. I was very self-conscious and that actually helped me, because I checked what was going on. That is what saved me. I knew where to rush to, and I ran in a zigzag way. I jumped up a wall and landed on the side where the hotel faces the beach. 'Removed my T-shirt' I could not run immediately after jumping. People running away from the scene were being shot at. I knew if you have anything coloured, like a shirt, it could easily attract the attention of the attackers. I had on a green T-shirt so I removed it and started to run on the beach. I was barefoot, having abandoned my shoes. The shooting was still going on but I am lucky I survived. Then I tried to call my friend but the call was not going through. I tried to look for him, alive or dead. I saw a lot of people after the blast lying on the ground. Some of them were screaming. It was a very tragic scene. The ambulances had started to arrive despite the fact that shooting was still going on. Somebody told me that Abdirizak had been injured and taken to hospital. Unfortunately, he had been hit by the bullets from the terrorists who were firing indiscriminately. He was hit in the leg and the chest. 'I ran to the hospital' At that time, movement was limited and soldiers had taken over and lot of shooting was taking place. Abdizirak, who was working at the Ministry of Information, had just a few hours earlier collected me from my home and we had driven together to the hotel. Since cars were not allowed, I ran until I reached the hospital but unfortunately Abdirizak had been pronounced dead. It was a terrible day - and the fourth time I have witnessed such a tragic incident in Mogadishu. It is the only time I have not had any injuries. In 2013 I was in front of the UN compound when al-Shabab attacked - a suicide bomb hit my car. The other time was in 2016, near the hotel on Lido beach, where my face was badly injured. I was lying in a pool of blood for more than two hours and it took many months being treated in hospitals here and in Nairobi and in London for my injuries to heal. In February last year, the blast that hit Hotel Maka al-Mukarama was very destructive. I got minor injuries from shrapnel all over my body, including on my hand. I escaped through a hole on the wall that had been created by the suicide car bomber. You may also be interested in: But imagine somebody who was my colleague, a friend - we were only having a friendly chat and coffee that day - is now dead. He was dead in a few minutes. You can imagine how tragic it was. I was not able to sleep at all. I tried to but I could not. It has affected me badly. Almost 20 people have been confirmed dead, in addition to the four attackers and a suicide bomber. 'My family couldn't believe I was alive' That's a big number - people here in Mogadishu who work during the day usually have tea at restaurants in the afternoon. I'm very concerned that this attack happened. I had hoped that things would improve. My wife and family always advise me not to go to restaurants. Now I need to follow their advice because this is something that is not stopping. This time my family was very worried because they knew Abdirizak was dead. When I called them from the hospital, they could not believe that I was alive until they saw me. They have found it hard to believe I escaped - for the fourth time.

बीबीसी के पूर्व रिपोर्टर मोहम्मद मोआलिमु सोमालिया की राजधानी मोगादिशु में एक समुद्र तट के सामने वाले होटल में रविवार की घेराबंदी में बच गए-चौथी बार वह पिछले सात वर्षों में इस्लामी अल-शबाब आतंकवादियों के हमले में पकड़े गए हैं।


Prince William and Kate bowl over royal fans on Pakistan tour

Summary: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have enjoyed a game of cricket at a Pakistan sports academy on the fourth day of their royal tour of the country.

Prince William and Catherine took turns to bat at the National Cricket Academy in Lahore and chatted to young players. The couple also visited the country's second largest mosque, the Badshahi Mosque, following in the footsteps of the duke's parents. His late mother Diana, Princess of Wales, visited the holy site in 1991. His father, the Prince of Wales, went to the mosque with the Duchess of Cornwall on their royal tour in 2006.

ड्यूक और डचेस ऑफ कैम्ब्रिज ने देश के अपने शाही दौरे के चौथे दिन पाकिस्तान खेल अकादमी में क्रिकेट के खेल का आनंद लिया है।


Courts 'to be told' of Aberdeen bypass legal bid plan

Summary: Campaigners against the construction of the Aberdeen bypass say they are to inform the courts they intend to launch a fresh legal challenge.

An appeal at the Court of Session, which was recently rejected, delayed the construction of the £400m Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR). Road Sense has now instructed its legal team to start preparing a case. The bypass was originally given the go-ahead by Scottish ministers in December 2009 following a public inquiry. Many business leaders in the area support the project. Opponents criticise the cost and environmental impact of the plan, which is aimed at creating a fast link to the north, west and south of Aberdeen.

एबरडीन बाईपास के निर्माण के खिलाफ अभियान चलाने वालों का कहना है कि वे अदालतों को सूचित करेंगे कि वे एक नई कानूनी चुनौती शुरू करने का इरादा रखते हैं।


'My mother gave me away to give me a better life'

Summary: Xenia Karayiannis was just three when she was separated from her mother following the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus and would not be reunited with her until she was 17. Her story is among those featured in a new documentary, Queens of Amathus, which explores the lives of women who migrated from the Mediterranean island and settled in Birmingham.

By Lisa WrightBBC News "It's not something you can describe, to give a child away. It's not just the impact on my mum, but also the impact on me, I feel I was robbed of my childhood, [but] I understand why she did it and the sacrifices that had to be made." Xenia has only sporadic memories of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. She was born in London to Greek Cypriot parents three years earlier, but had returned to the Mediterranean island with her mother following her parents' separation. They lived with her grandparents in Famagusta, a popular holiday destination that boasted a "beautiful coastline". But their lives were to change forever when Turkey invaded the north of the country, the fighting displacing thousands of Cypriots, both Greek and Turkish. The family fled to a refugee camp just outside Larnaca, where they would stay for months. When word reached her father who was still in England, he asked his brother who lived in Limassol to find his daughter, who, being British-born, could return to the UK. "My mother didn't want to part with me and it was very very difficult for her," said Xenia. "It was a very hard decision to make to give up your child." "My uncle was very adamant and said 'it's for the good of the child, she's going to have a better future' and 'once it's all over you can come back to London and everything will be OK again', but unfortunately that wasn't to happen because of the situation and lack of communication. "Everyone just lost touch, there was no way of keeping in touch. "You couldn't send a letter because there was no fixed abode. The safest way was to give me away." The conflict and separation had a profound impact on Xenia and she returned to England "a different child". "I would have nightmares at night and wake up screaming. It stayed with me for a very long time," she said. "I always wondered whether it was something I had imagined or something I had had nightmares about or whether it was something that actually happened." Aged 11 she moved to Birmingham and her father took over her uncle's fish and chip shop in Bordesley Green, where Xenia would help out from an early age. But growing up there was a void. "All this time I grew up not knowing my mother, I didn't know who she was. No photos were ever shown or shared, but the majority were lost in the war." It was not until 1987 that out of the blue she received a letter from her mother. "The first thing I took out was a photograph," she said. "Suddenly I found myself looking at a woman who looks just like me. "It was very bizarre, very surreal, the similarity was just astonishing." Later that year she flew to Cyprus, where her mother still lives. It was an emotional reunion. "I was greeted by a family I never knew I had at Larnaca airport, a day I will never forget." As mother and daughter got to know each other, it was a bittersweet time for Xenia. "The doctors said because I had been so traumatised it affected my childhood memories. "I felt like I was letting her down because I couldn't remember. "That was the hardest part, to tell your mum that you don't remember her. It was so painful." Forty-five years on, Famagusta remains abandoned. "Our homes and towns and villages became a ghost town," Xenia said. "We were never allowed to go back and that's the most upsetting part because I never got to see where my mum came from or where I lived as a child." Xenia, now 48 and mother to 25-year-old Anastasia, still lives in Birmingham, in the suburb of Moseley, and has a PR and events business. Sharing her story for the documentary was a "rollercoaster", she said. "It was emotional, painful and a big responsibility to represent my community." But she added: "It's been an amazing journey." Queens of Amathus premieres on Sunday 3 November at Cineworld, Broad Street, Birmingham, and will be screened during Birmingham Film Festival on Thursday 7 November. You may also be interested in: Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, and sign up for local news updates direct to your phone.

ज़ेनिया कारायियानिस सिर्फ तीन साल की थीं जब वे 1974 में साइप्रस पर तुर्की के आक्रमण के बाद अपनी मां से अलग हो गई थीं और 17 साल की उम्र तक उनके साथ फिर से नहीं मिलेंगी। उनकी कहानी एक नए वृत्तचित्र, क्वीन्स ऑफ़ अमाथस में दिखाई गई है, जो उन महिलाओं के जीवन की पड़ताल करती है जो भूमध्यसागरीय द्वीप से प्रवास करके बर्मिंघम में बस गईं।


Closeburn sheep farm raiders strike twice

Summary: Police are investigating the theft of 78 sheep worth more than £14,000 in two raids on farmland in southern Scotland.

In the first incident, at land near High Mains just north of Loch Ettrick at Closeburn, some 49 animals were taken in mid-February. Another 29 sheep were then taken sometime between Monday and Tuesday. The sheep are all in lamb and are North of England Mule breed. They are microchipped and tagged and have brown faces and legs.

पुलिस दक्षिणी स्कॉटलैंड में कृषि भूमि पर दो छापों में 14,000 पाउंड से अधिक की 78 भेड़ों की चोरी की जांच कर रही है।


Talks end over Newport's Friars Walk shopping centre sale

Summary: Talks over a deal to sell Newport's Friars Walk to a Canadian firm for £110m have been called off.

The shopping centre opened in November 2015 after the city's council loaned the developers £90m to build it. Queensberry Real Estate said the talks related to the centre being bought and not leased. A spokesman added other parties were interested in buying Friars Walk and trading figures have been hitting projected forecasts.

न्यूपोर्ट के फ्रियर्स वॉक को एक कनाडाई फर्म को 110 मिलियन पाउंड में बेचने के सौदे पर बातचीत बंद कर दी गई है।


Crickhowell convenience store protest shops boarded up

Summary: Shopkeepers in a town opposed to plans for a convenience store have boarded up their windows to show what the high street may look like if it goes ahead.

A protest and meeting have previously been held in Crickhowell, Powys, against a proposal to turn The Corn Exchange pub into a convenience store. On Saturday afternoon, shop owners covered their windows with cardboard. Baker Steve Askew said they wanted to show what their high street could look like if shops closed. He added: "We believe up to eight family-run independent shops could be affected if a supermarket chain came to town." The town has only one national chain - Boots chemist - while all other businesses are family run and independent. Punch Taverns wants to turn the Corn Exchange pub into a convenience store. The final decision on the application will be taken by Brecon Beacons National Park Authority.

एक शहर में एक सुविधा स्टोर की योजना का विरोध करने वाले दुकानदार अपनी खिड़कियों पर चढ़ गए हैं ताकि यह दिखाया जा सके कि अगर यह आगे बढ़ता है तो ऊँची सड़क कैसी दिख सकती है।


Coronavirus: Lockdown bites poor as France eases grip

Summary: Behind a faded door, in a side-street near Montmartre, a long straggly queue is starting to form. In Paris under lockdown, hotels and restaurants may be deserted but food banks are getting busier.

By Lucy WilliamsonBBC Paris correspondent Women with pushchairs, men with umbrellas, everyone a metre apart; there's very little talking. The government will set out on Thursday how it plans to lift restrictions on movement on Monday. But for many the damage from one of Europe's strictest lockdowns has been done. This centre, one of a network run by the charity Les Restos du Coeur (restaurants of the heart), saw a 40% rise in subscriptions last week. Director François Coadour expects the numbers to keep rising and says the profile of his clients is changing. "We have workers, precarious workers, people who were moonlighting, and part-time workers," he told me. "These are people we didn't see before." Clients here used to choose their own food from the shelves inside the centre; now they're simply handed a bag of goods through an open door. I meet a young woman waiting in the queue, who introduces herself as Madame Ouattara. Even behind her mask, her face wears a gentle smile. She tells me she began coming here last month after the lockdown left her husband out of work. They ate through their savings in weeks. What will happen to France's economy? France's biggest economic players have also been badly hit by coronavirus: tourism, construction and manufacturing in particular. The economy shrank by almost 6% in the first part of this year. Philippe Martin, an economist at the prestigious Sciences-Po University and an adviser to President Emmanuel Macron, says the construction industry in France was hit more harshly than in other heavily confined countries such as Italy, and that conditions for restarting work were also tougher here. But he also questions whether financial support packages offered by the government, such as "partial unemployment benefit", may have helped to slow the economy too: "Because this system was quite generous," he said, "it may have pushed some firms to close down, rather than keep trying to produce, because the full wages were paid by the [government]." Others believe the high losses felt by France are a sign of its efficiency in policing the lockdown. The impact on the future economy here is likely to be severe - the worst recession since World War Two, as the government put it. It's also expected to hit Italy, Spain and Greece very hard. Germany and Austria, meanwhile, seem to have escaped relatively lightly, leading some to question whether this crisis could create fatal cracks in the eurozone. Jean-Claude Trichet, who ran the European Central Bank during the last financial crisis, says he's been through this kind of "stress test" before: "I was permanently told, 'You will explode the euro, it will evaporate, the euro area will disappear,'" he said. "We did not disappear, as you know, but on top of that, four new countries decided to enter the euro area after [the collapse of] Lehman Brothers. The resilience of this historical project is very, very high, and I am absolutely convinced that will prove true in the future." How France will ease restrictions on 11 May Prime Minister Edouard Philippe gave details of the changes on Thursday. The plan is to divide the country into red and green zones, with different rules for different places. "From Monday we will progressively unwind the lockdown that started on 17 March... but the country is cut in two, with the virus circulating more quickly in some regions, notably in the Paris region, which is very densely populated," the prime minister said. France's borders will remain closed, as will its hotels and restaurants. France has seen 25,809 deaths in hospitals and care homes, and reported 278 deaths in the past 24 hours on Wednesday. Paris is classified as red, along with three other regions. Of more than 23,000 patients in hospital, almost 10,000 are in the Paris area. Geneviève Rossillon runs almost a dozen tourist sites around France and says the country needs a "psychological boost" from the government. "Obviously when you hear what Italy has been saying last week, they have been saying 'we are ready to welcome everybody from this summer'," she says. "It's not the message France is sending so far." France's approach to lifting the lockdown may be localised, detailed and bureaucratic but the message after almost two months of confinement is changing: don't stay at home. A new mantra for the nation's economic health. More stories from France

मोंटमार्ट्रे के पास एक बंद दरवाजे के पीछे, एक बगल की सड़क पर, एक लंबी कतार लगने लगी है। पेरिस में लॉकडाउन के दौरान, होटल और रेस्तरां खाली हो सकते हैं लेकिन खाद्य बैंक व्यस्त हो रहे हैं।


Elizabeth Prout supporters await saint decision

Summary: Twenty years on and still some way to go.

The process of recognising someone as a saint can be a slow process, as supporters of Victorian nun Elizabeth Prout have discovered. Born in Coleham, Shrewsbury in 1820, it is for her teaching and support for the poor in the industrial slums of Manchester which have led to calls for her to be canonised. The Archdiocese of Liverpool, which has led the campaign, supported by the Diocese of Shrewsbury, spent 15 years compiling evidence and analysing Prout's life. "Boxes and boxes" of evidence was sent to the Congregation for Cases of Saints in Rome, which is due to make a decision on whether to proceed with the case. Despite submitting details in 2008, campaigners are still waiting to hear from Rome if Prout has completed step three of a five-stage process. Sister Dominic Savio, Prout's biographer and one of three people responsible for compiling the evidence, said she "would be delighted if she was canonised", but acknowledged "that's not going to be today or tomorrow". Despite the wait Sister Dominic said the matter was "in the hands of the Lord" and she was confident a decision would be made at the right time. After local interest the diocese was instructed to compile Prout's case, meaning she could be referred to as a "Servant of God". The Catholic Church in England and Wales said if the committee in Rome approves the application, Prout would be declared "venerable". Two miracles The matter would then return to the diocese as they seek further information to back up step four, beatification. It is at this point that the first of two miracles will need to be identified. Sister Dominic said there would have to be "full proof" before the title of "blessed" would be granted. "People will have to pray to her and nobody else, and be healed. That's an example of the level of proof they are looking for," she said. A second miracle, after beatification, would prove that Prout was interceding directly on behalf of people and only then could she be canonised and recognised as a saint. Campaigners have become used to waiting and said the system was lengthy, partly due to the volume of evidence. The diocese has three applications lodged with Rome's Congregation for Cases of Saints. The Blessed Dominic Barberi was beatified in 1963 and his case for canonisation is still being considered. Yet the process has not stopped a number of people being fast-tracked. Pope John Paul II made a number of changes to the process in 1983 and his beatification in May 2011 is thought to be the quickest in modern times. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was beatified in 2003, just a year more than the minimum five years required after death. Despite reports of miracles being done in Prout's name, the diocese said the search was still continuing. Potato famine In her early 20s Prout converted to Catholicism in Stone, Staffordshire, probably as a result of a preaching by Passionist Dominic Barberi, according to Sister Dominic. Barberi was also the man responsible for bringing the now Blessed John Henry Newman to Catholicism. Newman was beatified in a ceremony in Birmingham in 2010. In 1848 Prout joined a convent in Northampton, but was soon forced to return to the family home in Stone after the first of many attacks of TB. But Sister Dominic said Prout soon faced a choice between her family and her faith, which took her to some of the poorest areas of Manchester, teaching mill workers and Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine. Despite her "delicate" state, and bouts of TB, Prout co-founded the order of the Sisters of the Cross and Passion, championing the care and education of the poor. In all Prout taught at or set up nine schools across the country. When Sister Dominic joined the Sisters of the Cross and Passion herself at the age of 17, she said very little was known about the foundress. Now 75 years old, Sister Dominic, who was educated at one of the schools set up by the order in the wake of Prout's death, studied Prout's life as part of a PhD at the University of Manchester and went on to write three books about her life. She said renewed interest in Prout was rekindled after the centenary of her death in 1964.

बीस साल हो गए हैं और अभी भी कुछ रास्ता तय करना है।


Dorman Long: The Teesside firm that bridged the world

Summary: Steel production on Teesside has ceased after SSI mothballed the Redcar works following a global downturn in the price of steel and later announced its UK arm had gone into liquidation. But what became of the company that founded the plant almost 100 years ago?

By Duncan LeatherdaleBBC News Monty Python's Michael Palin has been from pole to pole, circumnavigated the world in 80 days and traversed the entire Pacific Rim but - until last week - he had never been to Middlesbrough. So how, when he did eventually make it to Teesside as part of his Thirty Years Tour, did he introduce himself to the men and women of Middlesbrough? By expressing his admiration for engineering firm Dorman Long - gone from Teesside but not forgotten. From a small railway station in Brazil to one of the icons of Australia, the writer and actor has discovered the company's name around the world, he told the audience. The company was responsible for the harbour bridges in Sydney and Auckland, river crossings across Africa as well as projects closer to home such as London's Lambeth Bridge, the Tyne Bridge connecting Newcastle and Gateshead and Middlesbrough's Newport Bridge. Dorman Long in numbers 1875 Year Arthur Dorman and Albert de Lande Long formed company 20,000 Employees by 1914 £4.5m Cost of steelworks at Redcar which opened in 1917 8 Years to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge 1 Man died during the 1925-28 construction of the Tyne Bridge (pictured) Dorman Long was a key player in the British Empire construction trade along with another Teesside firm, Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company. "Dorman Long and Cleveland Bridge together produced most of the steel structures and bridges around the British Empire," said David Dyer, managing director of Dorman Long Technology, the modern firm derived from the original Dorman Long. "From India to Africa, Australia to Asia, the Dorman Long name can be found. "After the terrible earthquakes in Nepal (in April), we were contacted by somebody who found the company's name stamped into metal in one of the damaged buildings." Metal production started on Teesside in the 1840s following the discovery of iron ore in the Cleveland Hills. The burgeoning industry saw the population boom from just 40 in 1929 to more than 5,400 12 years later. By 1865 more than 30 blast furnaces were operating within a six-mile radius of Middlesbrough with about 1m tonnes of iron being produced a year. In 1876, 28-year-old metal worker Arthur Dorman launched a partnership with Albert De Lande Long making iron bars and angles for ships. In the 1880s Dorman Long started making steel and over the following years bought several other firms and work sites around Teesside. By 1901 the firm employed about 3,000 people and produced 180,000 tonnes of finished material a year. When World War One started in 1914 Dorman Long had 20,000 workers and, after becoming a major manufacturer of shells for the war effort, started building a £4.5m plant at Redcar. The Redcar works opened in 1917 and Dorman Long competed for and won numerous large-scale projects around the world. One of their chief competitors was Darlington-based Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company which launched in 1877 and went on to build numerous bridges including the Tees Transporter Bridge and the Victoria Falls Bridge across the Zambezi river between Zimbabwe and Zambia. Dorman Long won the contract for the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1924 and completed the crossing eight years later. In that time the company bought Bolckow, Vaughan and Co which, in 1841, had opened the first ironworks on Teesside. In the late 1940s Dorman Long turned its hand to building railway engines and by 1956 the company owned numerous steel, engineering, chemical and construction works around the UK. In 1967 the company merged with 13 other steel manufacturers, who between them made about 90% of the nation's steel, to form the nationalised British Steel. In 1990 Dorman Long merged with its one-time competitor Cleveland Bridge, while the steelworks remained with British Steel. Now Dorman Long Technology is based in Northamptonshire and provides tools technology to firms building large construction projects. Recent projects include London's Wembley Stadium, the Honam high speed railway in South Korea and the Estadio Nacional De Brasilia in Brazil. But what became of Dorman Long's previous projects? One of their closest to home, Newport Bridge, still operates as a bridge for vehicles and pedestrians although the vertical-lifting deck has been permanently fixed down. The bridge, which links Middlesbrough with Stockton, was completed in 1934. Australia's Sydney Harbour Bridge is one of the most famous in the world. "Schoolchildren in Australia are still taught the name Dorman Long," said Mr Dyer. And other Dorman Long bridges can be found crossing the Nile, connecting Danish islands and in far-flung reaches of the British Empire such as Hong Kong. Though its former steelworks may face one of its greatest crises, Dorman Long's bridges continue to connect the world.

टीसाइड पर इस्पात का उत्पादन तब बंद हो गया जब एस. एस. आई. ने इस्पात की कीमत में वैश्विक मंदी के बाद रेडकार का काम बंद कर दिया और बाद में घोषणा की कि इसकी यू. के. शाखा परिसमापन में चली गई है। लेकिन उस कंपनी का क्या हुआ जिसने लगभग 100 साल पहले संयंत्र की स्थापना की थी?


Viewpoint: Fear and loneliness in China

Summary: What kind of society will China's new leaders inherit? China has developed at unimaginable pace, lifting millions out of poverty. But as part of a series of viewpoints on challenges for China's new leadership, Gerard Lemos, who conducted research in the mega-city of Chongqing, says it is easy to overlook its lonely underbelly.

An old man was hanging upside down in the public square. His feet in traditional cloth shoes were over the parallel bars from which he had suspended himself, for what were presumably his morning exercises. He was fully clothed and in a padded overcoat to combat the spring chill. I saw this when visiting a factory community in Beijing in 2008. On the face of it, this was a peculiar act to perform in a public space, but people walked past taking no notice. In such traditional Chinese communities, this public square served as a communal living room; most of the people around are friends and neighbours. Not being surprised by the unusual behaviour of your neighbours is an aspect of intimate community life. But this kind of sight will become rarer as a changing China sees the fragmentation of these communities. When I was a visiting professor at a Chinese university I was asked by the government's civil affairs bureau to find out people's fears and dreams to help the authorities better understand the risks of social unrest. In the Mao era factory units, between the smoky brick factories and chimneys and cramped, dark flats was a bare concrete public space like the one where this old man was exercising. Because people lived in such uncomfortable and overcrowded conditions, these public spaces were claimed by residents taking exercise, spontaneous groups performing tai chi or playing Chinese chess. Old men would take their caged songbirds out for some air and a change of scene. But this way of life is disappearing, in the cities and in the countryside. For many in China isolation is a new experience brought on by economic transformation. In the neighbourhoods where I worked in Chongqing and Beijing, loneliness was spreading like pollution. The new leadership scheduled to be announced in November will not just have to address failing economic growth and foreign policy dilemmas such as regional territorial disputes, but also the absence of a social safety net, the consequences of the one-child policy and the unhappiness of migrants to cities and factories. High-rise isolation For many in China isolation is a new experience brought on by economic transformation. From the 1950s to 1970s people were allocated to factory units for life by the Party authorities. Megaphones blared propaganda continuously. Workers had to sing Maoist songs, wear uniforms and participate in daily group exercises. Party officials were everywhere and permission was needed for everything, including getting married or moving house. But there was an upside. The residents were promised a job for life, a free school and clinic. The intention was they stayed in one place all their lives, though the Cultural Revolution threw that into turbulence. Over time living side-by-side turned neighbours into families and families became communities, however hard their lives. Since the 1990s the factories have been closed and demolished. Farmers' land near cities is being sold for development into high-rise flats. One ex-farmer in Chongqing whose land had been confiscated told me: "My land being expropriated [changed my life. I wish] to have my own land and to live my life as a peasant farmer." Another was worried about where he would live now that his land had gone: "[My greatest worry] is having no place to live. [I wish] to have more living places built for the peasant workers." Another said: "[I wish] the urban residents who have just changed from rural residents could all get employed." In fact, longstanding residents are evicted from their homes and given a small flat and minimal financial compensation in the least desirable accommodation. Either there is no public space or it is far away and soulless. Employment prospects for ex-farmers are poor or non-existent. There is nothing to do except stay indoors, watch TV or gamble on the stock market - now, some believe, approaching a national obsession. Millions of mostly young people have moved to the east coast to work in factories and live itinerant and restricted lives. The hours are long and the work is repetitive. The workers, many young women, live in dormitories and are corralled with other people from their region under the watchful eye of an overseer from the same part of the country. They work hard, save assiduously, send money home and if they lose their job, they often don't go back, because they cannot face the shame of returning home unemployed and no longer supporting their families. Some, in desperation, are driven to prostitution to maintain their remittances home. Sex can be bought for less than £1 ($1.60) under a bridge or flyover in Sichuan. Suicide rates are so high in some of these factories that the owners have put nets around them to break the fall of people jumping out of windows. Lonely children Back home the parents of these "factory girls" are left alone to grow old without the care of their children - breaking a long Confucian tradition of caring for elders. As one man in Chongqing told me: "I'm a lonely old fellow. I have had good service for the elderly [from social workers]. I hope this service will carry on." This old man was facing a fate unknown in China until recently, but all too familiar in the West. "I hope the old people's home can be built quickly," he said. In many villages there are no young adults, just old people and a few of their grandchildren sent back to the countryside. Old people without family support and few financial resources have to fall back on social workers. The one child policy has made children lonely too. Without siblings for company or rivalry, all their parents' and grandparents' expectations rest on their young shoulders, bringing untold anxiety and pressure. As one 11-year-old boy told me: "I'm worried in the future I will not be a good student and I will disappoint my parents. I hope I can go to university and make a positive contribution to my homeland." Play and the pleasures of childhood are hard to fit in around homework. One girl told me: "I have little time to get rest because I need to study hard every day and to learn singing… I wish to be a very good student and to become an artist when I grow up." The old restricted, hierarchical, multi-generational families built on Mao's authoritarian utopianism and an older tradition of Confucian values have been replaced by isolated and impoverished old people, listless ex-farmers, hard-pressed factory girls and children trying to cope alone with extreme educational pressure and unrealistic family expectations. Loneliness, ineradicable and irreversible, coupled with anxiety about the unpredictability of the future, could become pervasive across all generations in China.

चीन के नए नेताओं को किस तरह का समाज विरासत में मिलेगा? चीन ने अकल्पनीय गति से विकास किया है, लाखों लोगों को गरीबी से बाहर निकाला है। लेकिन चीन के नए नेतृत्व के लिए चुनौतियों पर दृष्टिकोण की एक श्रृंखला के हिस्से के रूप में, जेरार्ड लेमोस, जिन्होंने बड़े शहर चोंगकिंग में शोध किया, कहते हैं कि इसके अकेलेपन को नजरअंदाज करना आसान है।


Gateshead police station gets Space Invaders art overhaul

Summary: A youth project will be taking over a derelict police station and turning it into an art venue in Gateshead.

The Space Invaders group uses architecture graduates working with young people from the town to reclaim unused spaces for creative purposes. The transformation of the Old Police House at Swinburne Road is part of celebrations for the Cultural Olympiad. Funding comes from NE-Generation, which aims to create a lasting impact from the Olympics across the North East. Space Invaders is one of 15 cultural projects receiving funding from a £1m pot. The team will turn the disused police station into an art exhibition space ready to host public exhibitions during The Bridges Festival in August.

एक युवा परियोजना एक परित्यक्त पुलिस स्टेशन को अपने नियंत्रण में ले लेगी और इसे गेट्सहेड में एक कला स्थल में बदल देगी।


Prince Philip: A life in London

Summary: Charities were an essential part of the Duke of Edinburgh's working life as a member of the Royal Family. Many of the 800 organisations he supported were in London and without his efforts, parts of the city could look very different today.

Prince Philip was always "very hands on" when it came to the groups he helped, according to Ian Lloyd, author of The Duke: 100 Chapters in the Life of Prince Philip. "He really carved out his own role. He didn't have a role at the beginning [of the Queen's reign]," he said. Shakespeare's Globe on the South Bank was an example of that work. He was a patron for more than 40 years, helping gain financial backing from donors for it to be built, and continuing that support as it opened to the public and flourished as a cultural and tourist destination. "In the early days, Sam Wanamaker (the actor and director who led the project) faced enormous challenges to get the Globe built, and Prince Philip's support for us at that time was integral to finishing building the theatre and opening in 1997," explained the Globe's chief executive Neil Constable. The duke donated oaks from Windsor Great Park for the construction of the building and would regularly return for events over the years as the complex grew, with more than one million people normally visiting each year. "He has always taken a huge interest in the craftsmanship of our beautiful theatres, particularly in the traditional materials and methods used," Mr Constable said. "Royal patronage is an honour and connects us to our Shakespearean history with the theatrical companies of the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts." Further down the River Thames in Greenwich is the world's only remaining tea clipper, Cutty Sark. The famous ship, which first set sail in November 1869, was facing the scrap yard after World War Two but the Cutty Sark Society was formed to rescue it. The vessel has since become a major tourist attraction. "The importance of the role played by the Duke of Edinburgh in the life of the Cutty Sark cannot be overestimated," said Paddy Rodgers, director of Royal Museums Greenwich. It was the duke who first suggested the craft should be moored off Greenwich for the Festival of Britain and he helped gain support for its restoration before it opened to the public in 1957. The prince also became a trustee for Royal Museums Greenwich in 1948 and Mr Rodgers said that over the decades he had "regularly attended board meetings, offering influential suggestions" about the collection and Cutty Sark. "His unwavering interest and continuity of support over more than 70 years speaks volumes for his interest and dedication," Mr Rodgers added. London was the place where the duke's charitable work began when he became patron of youth organisation the London Federation of Boys' Clubs, now known as London Youth. One of his first solo engagements was for the charity in March 1948, when he attended its boxing finals at the Royal Albert Hall. He marked 70 years of his patronage with a garden party at Buckingham Palace in 2017. London Youth's president, Sir Ken Olisa, said the duke's "deep personal engagement with our work shone a light on the needs of those from tough backgrounds". "In so doing, he helped to ensure that generations of young people were inspired to improve their life chances and so play a fulfilling role as citizens." The National Playing Fields Association was another organisation he supported very early on. As president, he had his own desk at its London headquarters from which he joined campaigns and gathered support for green spaces in the city and across the UK. He even persuaded Frank Sinatra to release what many consider to be the first charity record, on behalf of the association, on which the duke provided an introductory message. Now known as Fields in Trust, the charity said Prince Philip had been "involved in every aspect of the organisation during his long and committed service". "The Duke of Edinburgh has provided a lasting legacy of parks and green spaces protected in perpetuity to ensure people will always have places to play and be active," Fields in Trust added. Away from his charitable work, the UK's capital was always a significant location for Prince Philip, even before his marriage to the Queen. "He was an orphan in his teenage years. He didn't have a base and so he would spend time staying with his London-based relatives," Mr Lloyd explained. When not in school or when on shore leave from the navy, Prince Philip would often stay at the home of the Mountbattens in Chester Street, Belgravia, where it was said he had a camp-bed and the butler would darn his socks. He would also stay with his grandmother, Victoria Mountbatten, Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven, who had apartments in Kensington Palace. The young Philip would make the most of the London lifestyle. John Dean, who was employed as a valet for him and his cousin David Mountbatten, 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven, wrote in his memoirs that the pair "retained a very real and wholesome respect" for Victoria. "[Nevertheless] to avoid waking her they behaved like schoolboys, especially late at night when they would clamber over the roof and in through their bedroom windows for fear of waking her." He and a young Princess Elizabeth would also have evenings out together in the city during the years before she became Queen. "They went dancing at the big clubs of the day, like the 400 Club and the Embassy Club," royal biographer Mr Lloyd said. "They were also very much into the new wave of US musicals like Carousel and South Pacific. Their favourite was supposed to be Oklahoma!, with their favourite song being People Will Say We're In Love." The couple were married in Westminster Abbey on 20 November 1947 and spent some time at Buckingham Palace, where Prince Charles was born the following year. They were given Clarence House and, after extensive restoration and decoration work, they moved into their new home. Yet they would only stay for 18 months, until George VI's death. "They really wanted it to be their home... but Winston Churchill, who was prime minister at the time, insisted they would have to live in Buckingham Palace. "It broke their hearts in a way," said Mr Lloyd. Even after the Queen's coronation, the duke would continue to enjoy the London high life, most famously with the Thursday Club, which met on the third floor of Wheeler's restaurant on Old Compton Street. As the royal biographer explained: "It was an all-male social event. It was on Thursdays so they could all meet up, have a boozy lunch in Soho and, being rich, they could go home for the weekend after." Menus would consist of "steak and lots of wine" and regulars included the actors David Niven and James Robertson Justice. Kim Philby, the MI6 officer who defected to the Soviet Union, was also said to have made an appearance. The club gained some notoriety over the years, but according to Mr Lloyd it was mostly just a lot of "pratting about", such as when Philip set off smoke bombs as photographer Baron Nahum was trying to take pictures of a clock mechanism. "The Queen just dismissed them as Philip's 'funny friends'. She wasn't bothered by them," Mr Lloyd said. London's West End remained a draw over the years, with the royal couple enjoying "the odd theatre trip" to see the likes of Billy Elliot, One Man, Two Guvnors and War Horse. To get to events and functions, the duke bought a gas-powered London Metrocab in 1999 so he could whizz around the city unnoticed. Trips would also be made to Savile Row, where tailors like John Kent of Kent & Haste made clothing for him. "He happened to go past me once [while he was being chauffeured in his taxi]. He had his glasses on and was looking over documents in the back," said Mr Lloyd. Some of Prince Philip's London patronages Whether in work or his personal life, the capital was a hugely important place both before the duke's marriage to the Queen and afterwards. Prince Philip's final solo engagement in August 2017 saw him receive three cheers from a group of Royal Marines in the grounds of Buckingham Palace to mark his many decades of service. As royal biographer Mr Lloyd said: "He really had a connection to London right through his entire life." All images subject to copyright Related Internet Links The Royal Family Shakespeare's Globe Cutty Sark

शाही परिवार के सदस्य के रूप में चैरिटी ड्यूक ऑफ एडिनबर्ग के कामकाजी जीवन का एक अनिवार्य हिस्सा था। उन्होंने जिन 800 संगठनों का समर्थन किया, उनमें से कई लंदन में थे और उनके प्रयासों के बिना, शहर के कुछ हिस्से आज बहुत अलग दिख सकते थे।


President Trump's challenge to media credibility

Summary: The Donald giveth, and the Donald taketh away.

By Joe MillerBBC News, Davos That's the verdict of veteran journalist Alan Murray, now chief content officer at Time Inc, the parent company of Time and Fortune magazines. "Trump has been good for the economic viability of the American media," he says, citing the bump in digital subscriptions at the New York Times, the Washington Post and the increase in traffic at his own business in the wake of the presidential election. "But I think he has been bad for the credibility of the media". There is research to back him up. According to public relation behemoth Edelman's latest "trust barometer", the media has become the least-trusted institution in the world. In the US, more than 70% of Donald Trump's supporters distrust mainstream outlets. This, Mr Murray warns, is having a corrosive effect on the business of journalism in America - despite an increasingly engaged audience. 'Dual crisis' "The media in the US is in the midst of two simultaneous crises, which predated Donald Trump," he explains, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. "One is an economic crisis: how do we make enough money to support what we do?" "The other is a credibility crisis. In a world where anyone can be a publisher, and people are sitting in their pyjamas in their bedrooms putting out stuff on Facebook and the internet - how do people know what to believe?" That task, he adds, is made all the more difficult by the man in the Oval Office. "It's very difficult when the president takes things that simply have no basis in truth and puts them into his Twitter feed," says Mr Murray, referring to when Donald Trump took aim at one of Mr Murray's own publications, Time. Last November, the president tweeted that: "Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named 'Man (Person) of the Year' like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway" This claim, says Mr Murray, was "just completely untrue." "I was well aware of the thought that went into who was going to be Person of the Year this year, Trump was never on the list." No one, he says, has ever been Person of the Year two years in a row. At the time, Mr Murray took to his own Twitter feed to set the record straight, but he says this entertaining saga is emblematic of a more serious attack on the press in the US. Ben Smith, editor in chief of what Donald Trump has termed a "failing pile of garbage", otherwise known as Buzzfeed News, agrees. "For any given media outlet, being attacked by the President of the United States for an accurate story that he is unhappy with, draws attention to that story, draws attention to your reporting," he says. It also, in the case of Buzzfeed, helps shift some tongue-in-cheek merchandise - "failing pile of garbage" T-shirts and bumper stickers. "The sum, though, of the president and his allies' attacks on the idea of a legitimate press is incredibly damaging." 'Failing at failing' For Elisabeth Bumiller, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times and a veteran White House watcher, the best response to such attacks is robust journalism, which, she claims, is serving her newspaper well. "I think globally we are seen as very tough on the president," she says, when asked about what the Oval Office has done for the Gray Lady's reputation (as the New York Times is known). "He refers to us constantly as the failing New York Times," an exhausted Ms Bumiller adds. "I like to say that the failing New York Times is even failing at failing, and we have record high readership and interest." Mr Murray's publications are also doing well - Time Inc (soon to be subsumed into Meredith Corp) attracts 140 million unique visitors to its sites a month, and its print magazines still have the power to create international headlines. But he cautions that increasingly, links to stories by Time and Fortune on social media are indistinguishable from less trustworthy - or even downright fake - news outlets. Mark Zuckerberg, he says, may be a bigger cause of upheaval for the US media than Donald Trump. "Facebook and Google to some extent have helped lead the confusion that people have about what can be trusted and what can't," he says, echoing a warning from billionaire investor George Soros, issued at the World Economic Forum. The answer, he says, lies in good old-fashioned branding. "There have to be strong brands that people trust and believe in, in order for them to get news they can feel confident in," he says, adding that appearing to be fair and impartial is vital to this endeavour. "Branding is basically a shortcut to trust" 'Trends on our side' Buzzfeed News, which piggy-backed on a popular online entertainment brand, has been growing too, both in stature and audience. But although the company recently announced layoffs and a broad restructuring plan, Ben Smith says he is "optimistic about the business of news," particularly when it comes to the digital media. "The underlying trends - the shift towards social media, the shift towards mobile consumption are on our side," he says. And what of the bogeyman of many an online newsroom, Mark Zuckerberg? "We are less dependent on Facebook than we were a year, or two years, or three years ago," says Mr Smith, defiantly. The former Politico writer is also less pessimistic than many in his industry about the proposed changes to Facebook's news feed, which would make posts from businesses, brands and media less prominent, under the guise of cracking down on fake news outlets. But did executives from the Silicon Valley giant consult Buzzfeed - after all a driver of huge amounts of interaction on social media networks - about the tectonic shift in Facebook's algorithm? Mr Smith chuckles: "If only".

डोनाल्ड देता है और डोनाल्ड ले जाता है।


Nicola Faith: 'Mummy, have they found the red boat yet?'

Summary: "Mummy, have they found the red boat yet?"

By Chris DeardenBBC Wales News A small boy and his mother walk past Conwy's medieval castle, the child looking down towards the quayside and a gap in the line of fishing boats anchored there. It is a gap which would normally have been filled by the Nicola Faith, a ten metre vessel that was a familiar sight to Conwy residents. Her distinctive red colour scheme caught children's eyes. People on a late-night dog walk would exchange hellos with her owner and skipper Carl McGrath as he unloaded his catch of whelks. Down on the quayside, Nathania Minard is also looking at the space where the Nicola Faith would be. Her son Alan was one of the three men on board when the boat set sail on 27 January - and never returned. "He was 20, and quite a bit younger than the other two lads on board", she says, "but he always felt like everyone's big brother." Alan has three siblings, Poppy, 16, Jessica, 6, and two-year-old Percy. "He had waited 18 years to have a little brother. He's just got one and it's devastating that he's not going to be here to see him grow," she added. "Every day the other children ask if the policeman is bringing Alan home today. It's heart-breaking. "Jessica keeps asking if I can try ringing his phone again. It makes you feel like a failure as a mother." This is one of the reasons why Nathania and her wife Rebekah have joined with families of the other two missing men to set up a fundraising page on the internet site JustGiving. Relatives of 39-year-old Ross Ballantine and 34-year-old Carl McGrath have formed close links with the Minard family to offer support, share information and co-ordinate fund-raising. The families want to hire additional deep sea search expertise to help look for the Nicola Faith and her three crew, working alongside the official investigation currently being run by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB). In less than a week, the appeal had raised £27,000. The families say it's an impressive total, but they still need to raise more. "Everything raised is a great comfort to us at the moment. There's so much love towards the boys. It shows how much people care and that they haven't forgotten," added Nathania. "They deserve better than for the case to remain open for years, we can't do that. "Alan had his whole future ahead of him. He was a natural engineer and kept our ancient vacuum cleaner going for years by constantly repairing it. "We bought him a games console for Christmas one year and he took it to bits within six months, then forgot how to put it back together again! "He's one of those people who will always have work. He'd got a marine engineering apprenticeship in Devon, but when work dried up because of the pandemic, he headed back to north Wales and landed a job on board the Nicola Faith. "He's a grafter. Over the last year, he'd turned from a boy into a man and we were so proud of him. "He got on really well with Carl on board the Nicola Faith. Carl appreciated Alan because he was a hard worker - they really hit it off. It's hard to believe Alan had only been on the crew two weeks." Alan was not the only man new to the crew. Ross had come on board the when his work as a carpet fitter also slowed down because of the coronavirus pandemic. His sister Lowri Taylor said: "He's a devoted dad. Working on a fishing boat isn't easy, but he loved it. "The job meant he could see his two boys more often. He could stay local for them rather than having to work away during the week." The mother of those two boys is one of the many people around the Conwy area helping the families begin their private search. Zoey Walker runs Dollybirds Beauty Parlour in Llandudno and is co-ordinating a fundraising auction. She said: "My boys feel we are doing something to help after a horrendous month of not knowing and such a devastating time for them." Singer Tom Stockdale is to shave his head live online over the weekend. Another local supporter is running laps of the Great Orme headland in Llandudno to raise funds. Others are organising raffles. It reflects the warmth felt towards all three crewmen on the quayside in Conwy and in the wider community. One boat owner mentions how he and Carl would lend each other engine spares. Others speak of the energy he brought to the local fishing industry and the time and effort he spent maintaining and upgrading the boat. Nathania added: "We've been overwhelmed at the support we've had from our own community and from further afield. "We're not going to give up, we need to know where they are, we need to know what happened. "It's not just to answer our questions today but as the children get older, there'll be questions that they'll ask and I don't want years to go by without us knowing." The expert who is advising the families about their private search is David Mearns, who successfully found the wreckage of the plane carrying footballer Emiliano Sala and pilot David Ibbotson when it crashed into the English Channel in 2019. He is confident that the Nicola Faith can be located. The families say more sonar surveys will take place this weekend on behalf of the MAIB. On land they continue to raise money and awareness, while pausing to reflect by the vigil candles and tributes that have been placed on Conwy quayside. But for the moment, the answer to the little boy's question of whether the red boat has been found remains a painful "no".

"माँ, क्या उन्हें लाल नाव मिल गई है?"


Registration of citizens in the north suspended

Summary: Government will immediately suspend registration of citizens in the north.

Attorney General gave an undertaking to suspend this programme when a fundamental rights case against this programme was taken up for hearing on Thursday.Illegal Five Tamil National Alliance parliamentarians filing a petition in the Supreme Court said that it was illegal for military to carry out such a registration process in the Jaffna and Killinochchi districts. Emergency regulations Lawyer representing the five MPs challenged that as certain sections of emergency regulations have been abolished there is no legal provision for registration of residents . Attorney General has agreed that registration of residents in the north is illegal.

सरकार उत्तर में नागरिकों के पंजीकरण को तुरंत निलंबित कर देगी।


East Midlands Airport profits down for fourth year

Summary: Profits have dropped for the fourth consecutive year at East Midlands Airport but passenger numbers were slightly up, according to a report.

Parent company Manchester Airport Group (Mag)'s annual report said the airport's profits were down by half a million pounds to £6.6m. It said 4.3 million passengers used the airport in the financial year 2011-12; 200,000 more than the previous year. Mag said passenger numbers were expected to fall in the short term. It said Lufthansa's decision to review future options for BMIBaby would have an impact in the short-term, but that agreements with other carriers would offset this from 2013. Budget airline BMIBaby announced it was to stop eight of its routes from East Midlands Airport to parts of Europe in June. Chief executive Charlie Cornish said this year had been full of "tough global trading conditions for the aviation sector".

एक रिपोर्ट के अनुसार, ईस्ट मिडलैंड्स हवाई अड्डे पर लगातार चौथे वर्ष लाभ में गिरावट आई है, लेकिन यात्रियों की संख्या में थोड़ी वृद्धि हुई है।


How the Taliban groom child suicide bombers

Summary: On a cold winter's day, a stream of relatives, neighbours and well-wishers come to see 10-year-old Naqibullah at his uncle's mud house in Pakistan's Balochistan province. They are happy to see him alive.

By Dawood AzamiBBC World Service Naqibullah had mysteriously disappeared from the madrassa in Balochistan where he had been studying. There were five months of silence until one day a neighbour watching an Afghan TV station recognised Naqibullah in a police "line-up" of insurgents captured in the southern Afghan town of Kandahar. "I ran and told Naqibullah's uncle that I just saw him on TV and that he had been arrested for trying to carry out a suicide attack in Kandahar," neighbour Abdul Ahad said. Naqibullah's story is an unsettling insight into how the Taliban and other militants groom child suicide bombers. Identify the vulnerable Afghans have a proud warrior tradition, but suicide attacks were never a part of it. They emerged as a regular deadly reality of Afghan life in 2005 - a tactic adopted from Iraq's theatre or war. And children have suffered disproportionately in the Afghan conflict, where government and international forces have been fighting the Taliban since it was toppled in 2001. Children have long been deployed for insurgent activities such as blowing up IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), surveillance and information about the whereabouts and location of Afghan and Nato security forces and government officials. Teenagers have been found dragging away wounded Taliban, collecting dropped weapons and even fighting. Afghan authorities say they have arrested up to 250 children over the past 10 years for such activities. The disturbing regional twist is the increasing number of child suicide bombers. Children are recruited simply for being children. The capacity of Afghan security forces has increased and adult suicide bombers find it increasingly difficult to hit their target. Children are seen as more "recruitable" - easily influenced to carry out an attack and rarely suspected by security forces. Madrassas as recruiting grounds Just like hundreds of thousands of other boys, Naqibullah's uncle - who cared for him since the death of his father - enrolled him into a religious school. Poor families in Pakistan and Afghanistan send their sons to such madrassas for free education and lodging. Such madrassas are prime recruiting ground for Taliban groomers. Interviews with detained children reveal they are picked up from the streets as well and from low-income neighbourhoods. In many cases, parents and guardians say they are totally unaware. Girl recruits There are extremely rare cases of girls being recruited. One 10-year-old girl, Spozhmai, got international media attention when she was detained on 6 January 2014 in southern Helmand province. She said her brother tried to make her blow herself up at a police checkpoint. In 2011, an eight-year-old girl was killed in central Uruzgan province when she carried remotely controlled explosives to a police checkpoint in a cloth bag. Pakistan the training ground More than 90% of juvenile would-be suicide bombers who have been arrested are "trained, lied to, and brainwashed or coerced in Pakistan", Afghan officials say. But there is also evidence of training in Taliban-controlled parts of Afghanistan. Last year, a father in Afghanistan's northern city of Kunduz handed over his teenage son to police. "I did so because I feared [he] might have been radicalised when he disappeared for a few months," said the 50-year old man. His family had returned from Pakistan a year earlier. Some have successfully carried out suicide attacks in Pakistan. One 12-year-old boy wearing a school uniform blew himself up killing around 30 in the town of Mardan in February 2011. Promise of brighter future Naqibullah says his handlers told him he would go to heaven and all his problems will end. Officials say children are offered a path out the boredom and drudgery of poverty by preachers with promises. "They offer them visions of paradise, where rivers of milk and honey flowed, in exchange for giving up his life by becoming a suicide bomber," one official said. Although confessions obtained from juveniles can sometimes be unreliable, they provide chilling accounts of how they were persuaded. In some cases, they are simply lied to. Some were given an amulet containing Koranic verses and told it would help them survive. Some handlers gave children keys to hang round their necks and were told the gates of paradise will open for them Taliban denials There are of course international laws against the use of children in conflict. According to the Article 1 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, everyone under 18 is a child. Afghan law also forbids the recruitment of minors into armed forces or the police. Taliban spokesmen usually deny using children, especially girls. Indeed all the three Laihas [Codes of Conduct and Regulations] issued after the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001 prohibit youths with no beard to join their ranks. But one Taliban official acknowledged that there may be violations by local commanders acting alone. For many the exact age is not important. Anyone beyond puberty and mentally sound is considered fit for fighting. Rehabilitating children According to Afghan security officials, more than 30 children accused of having links with the insurgency are still held at detention facilities. Rehabilitation is complicated with scant resources. While some children go through rehabilitation steadily enough, according to one insider, a few even regret failing to carry out suicide missions. Naqibullah describes what happened to him: "They kept me in the other madrassa for a few months. Then other men came and took me to Kandahar. "One day they took me in a car, gave me a heavy vest to wear and pointed to [some] soldiers." But the police stopped him before he exploded his vest and his handlers who were looking on from a distance left in the car. To secure his release his uncle contacted local tribal elders, religious scholars and lobbied Afghan officials. Back at his home the boy tells every well-wisher how happy he is to have returned.

सर्दियों के ठंडे दिन, रिश्तेदारों, पड़ोसियों और शुभचिंतकों की एक धारा पाकिस्तान के बलूचिस्तान प्रांत में अपने चाचा के मिट्टी के घर में 10 वर्षीय नकीबुल्लाह को देखने आती है। वे उसे जीवित देखकर खुश होते हैं।


Laxton plane crash: Pilot suffers leg injuries

Summary: A pilot has been taken to hospital after a light aircraft crash-landed in woodland.

The single-seater plane came down close to Spanhoe airfield, Laxton, near Corby, at 15:25 BST on Sunday. Emergency services attended and the pilot was taken to the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham by air ambulance. He suffered leg injuries which are not believed to be life-threatening. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch has been informed.

वुडलैंड में एक हल्के विमान के दुर्घटनाग्रस्त होने के बाद एक पायलट को अस्पताल ले जाया गया है।


Axe-men and goldfish enthusiasts among those to escape 5p bag levy

Summary: A 5p levy on single-use plastic bags will be introduced in England from October 2015 - but there will be exceptions with the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs suggesting that if you buy the following goods your bag will be free....

By Ed LowtherPolitical reporter, BBC News Axes Purchasers of a variety of bladed goods, including axes, knives and razor blades, will not be charged an additional 5p to carry them home in a plastic bag if they are not already packaged in some other way. It is not clear whether this is meant to protect the carriers of blades from injury as they rummage in their reusable bags, or whether ministers fear that penny-pinching blade-buyers will provoke panic on the streets as they roam around with their unsheathed acquisitions. At AHC tool shop in Surrey, where axe-buyers are handed their purchases in a cardboard box, the notion of distributing axes in a single-use plastic bag is greeted with some derision. Meat Plastic bags that hold otherwise unpackaged meat will also be free of charge. The Food Standards Agency's Michael Jackson has previously warned: "Packing raw meat and fish with ready-to-eat foods can lead to spreading germs which can cause food poisoning, especially if there are any spillages or leaks from the raw meat packaging. "While a carrier bag may look clean, there is always the potential for these germs to spread onto food which is ready to eat. "That's why it's a good idea to have separate, identifiable bags for raw and ready-to eat-foods." But Paul Williams, from Brighton's Brampton Butchers, is not impressed with the case for a meat-motivated exemption. Branded bags designed by a local firm and made from reusable materials are used to distribute the meat he sells, with bag proceeds going to support a local children's hospice. Meat securely wrapped in two layers of paper can be placed in a reusable bag quite hygienically and with a reduced environmental impact, he claims - before adding that bags that do sustain leakages can simply be washed. As it has fewer than 250 employees, Brampton would not be forced to charge the levy under the proposed new law, but Mr Williams is critical of larger retailers' reliance on plastic bags, even when selling meat. "If we can find a solution, then so can they," he says. Live aquatic creatures The Welsh government pioneered the move towards charging for single-use bags in the UK and masterminded many of the exemptions which now look likely to be adopted in England. A spokeswoman defended its inclusion of bags containing live fish in water on the exemption list, arguing that it was unreasonable to expect fish-shoppers who weren't also planning to buy a new tank to bring more substantial receptacles to the pet shop. They would struggle to carry their new aquatic friends home in their hands, she remarked. She also highlighted the importance of avoiding perverse incentives that might steer people towards using the thicker "bags for life" only once. Raw fish The exemption also applies to bags containing recently deceased fish and their ilk. "In the old days, we used to use greaseproof paper," recalls Gerald Fletcher, from East Lincs Seafood. "It was alright for a while, but then it made a mess." So as a matter of course, fish are now dispensed in "throwaway" plastic bags, Mr Fletcher says - although he has noticed a greater proportion of customers transferring these to their own reusable bags, made of washable linen. But, he concedes, 5p does not seem like an excessive premium on the average seafood purchase. Bulbs Green-fingered shoppers may benefit from the exemption on bags containing loose seeds, bulbs and similar products. Peter Burks, the chairman of the Garden Centre Association, is supportive of the proposal. "My thinking is you couldn't possibly carry them out any other way," he says. There is also a risk of skin irritation from contact with Hyacinth bulbs, Mr Burks notes - but he is not aware of any other potential health risk associated with placing the exempted products in reusable bags with other produce. It is interesting to speculate, he agrees, on whether gardeners would be more likely to struggle back to their cars with armfuls of loose produce - or simply cough up the additional 5p. Prescription drugs The government also does not plan to impose a 5p premium on the privacy of prescription-drug recipients as they leave the pharmacy. In a submission to the consultation ahead of the law-change in Wales, Boots the chemist also suggested that a bag levy charged at pharmacies - but not when drugs were dispensed at GP surgeries - would "work against" the Welsh government's strategy to "deliver care in the heart of communities". The precise influence that an additional 5p premium on plastic bags is likely to have on consumer behaviour in England is uncertain. But it is worth bearing in mind that the levy heralded precipitous declines in the distribution of single-use bags in Wales and later Northern Ireland - despite the odd exemption. The levy will spread to Scotland in 2014, and the UK government anticipates that England will join the 5p-club in 2015, with retailers encouraged to donate the proceeds to worthy causes. One academic paper scrutinising a similar scheme's impact in Ireland in 2006 wondered whether it was the "most popular tax in Europe". The Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs has set up a consultation website with full details on the plans, aiming to gather evidence - including on whether these exemptions are the right ones.

अक्टूबर 2015 से इंग्लैंड में एकल-उपयोग वाले प्लास्टिक थैलों पर 5 पी शुल्क लगाया जाएगा-लेकिन पर्यावरण और ग्रामीण मामलों के विभाग के साथ अपवाद होंगे जो सुझाव देते हैं कि यदि आप निम्नलिखित सामान खरीदते हैं तो आपका थैला मुफ्त होगा।


What is sustainable palm oil?

Summary: Palm oil is used in everything from cosmetics to food to soap. There is enormous demand for it. But it is hugely controversial because it involves the clearing of tropical rainforests to grow palm oil plantations. This has led to the loss of biodiversity and habitat for under-threat animals such as the orang-utan. But some companies are signing up to comply with a standard known as "sustainable" palm oil. BBC environment correspondent Claire Marshall explains.

There is a generally-agreed global standard set by the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which is made up of oil palm growers, retailers, NGOs and manufacturers. To become officially "sustainable", a company pledges not to clear any primary forest, to have transparent supply chains, to check how much carbon they are emitting, to limit planting on peatlands, to treat workers fairly, and create wildlife zones. Who is using it? In 2016 75% of the total palm oil imports to the UK were sustainable. Many large retailers and leading brands use it. Chester has declared itself the first sustainable palm oil city in the country. Why haven't I heard of it before? According to the largest player in the sustainable palm oil industry, Sime Darby Plantation, the companies that buy it often don't then make it clear on product labels. One reason could be that because palm oil is so controversial few companies want to be linked to it - even if it's sustainable. What are the problems with it? Several leading environment charities say the rules aren't strict enough and the sanctions aren't strong enough. A recent report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature said there was "limited evidence of the conservation effectiveness." So … why not just ban palm oil? We are unlikely to stop demanding things like ice cream, soap or ready meals. The vast majority of these need vegetable oil to be made - and palm oil is the most productive vegetable oil crop on the planet. Alternatives are sunflower oil, or rapeseed, or coconut. But palm oil is far more productive, yielding up to ten times more oil from the same amount of land. Put it another way: ten times more land would be needed to grow these other crops to get the same amount of oil. Most leading environmental charities are not calling for a boycott, saying it would just shift problems to different parts of the world - and maybe make matters worse. How can I find sustainable palm oil? It's tricky, because often it's not used. But there is a label. There is also a free app called Giki, recommended by WWF, where you use a smartphone to scan the barcode. You can watch the full documentary, Unmasked: Make-Up's Big Secret on iPlayer. If you're from outside the UK you can watch the film here.

ताड़ के तेल का उपयोग सौंदर्य प्रसाधनों से लेकर भोजन से लेकर साबुन तक हर चीज में किया जाता है। इसकी भारी मांग है। लेकिन यह बेहद विवादास्पद है क्योंकि इसमें ताड़ के तेल के बागानों को उगाने के लिए उष्णकटिबंधीय वर्षावनों को साफ करना शामिल है। इससे ओरंग-उटान जैसे कम खतरे वाले जानवरों के लिए जैव विविधता और निवास स्थान का नुकसान हुआ है। लेकिन कुछ कंपनियां "टिकाऊ" ताड़ के तेल के रूप में जाने जाने वाले मानक का पालन करने के लिए हस्ताक्षर कर रही हैं। बीबीसी पर्यावरण संवाददाता क्लेयर मार्शल बताते हैं।


Will PCC poll be a by-election or a referendum?

Summary: If you want to demonstrate just how low turnouts in public elections are capable of plummeting, you could do no better than to plan a poll to choose a police and crime commissioner (PCC) during the dog days of summer: Thursday 21 August to be precise.

Patrick BurnsPolitical editor, Midlands Especially in the West Midlands where the numbers in the original PCC elections in November 2012 were the second lowest anywhere in England and Wales. Just 12%of the two million people eligible to vote in the police force area actually did so. In some areas only one person in 20 took the trouble. Following the untimely death in July of the region's first PCC, former Wolverhampton Labour Councillor Bob Jones, this is bound to be seen not just as a by-election to replace him but also as a referendum on the role itself. He certainly disapproved of the job despite his obvious determination to make the best of it. And, following a party commission of inquiry, an incoming Labour government would be expected to scrap PCCs altogether. But the original "Big Idea" set out by ministers when they first proposed PCCs was to establish a high-profile heavy-hitter in each force area as a focal point to make policing more directly accountable to the public. Home Secretary Theresa May singled out the West Midlands as an example of how the former police authorities, eventually replaced by PCCs, had become "invisible and ineffective", notably after the summer riots of 2011 when she she said the West Midlands body had been nowhere to be seen. So the irony was lost on no one that this radical departure, billed as an opportunity for voters to have more democratic clout, should produce such a display of public apathy. The government took the flak for generally failing to deliver an effective lead from the top and for its decision to veto, on cost grounds, free postal distribution of candidates' literature to publicise new-fangled elections in large and unfamiliar electoral areas. Amid renewed concerns about the political mandate and democratic legitimacy of the incoming commissioner, the government has rushed though legislation guaranteeing that all four candidates will now be able to have their campaign leaflets posted to every household in the area. This time the taxpayer will foot the £700,000 bill for delivering them. 'Indecent haste' One other measure which might also have eased those fears of an even more embarrassing turnout could have been to hold the by-election later, after the end of the school holidays in September. I understand most of the parties would have welcomed a delay, not just to allow voters to return from the beach but also out of respect for Bob Jones himself. But two local voters, including the UKIP activist Mike Rumble, formally requested a poll even before Mr Jones's funeral. Mr Jones's family said they felt insulted and accused the two of indecent haste. But under electoral law the move triggered a thirty-five day election period culminating in polling on the third Thursday in August. This has done nothing to quell suspicions, hotly denied by UKIP, that its eagerness for an early poll is tantamount to an admission that its support peaked in the European elections and is now set to fall like autumn leaves. In the absence of the coverage that attended UKIP's every move during the earlier months of this year, this looks more like Labour's election to lose. For a start, as an electoral process, it is about as different to the European elections as it could possibly be. When Bob Jones was elected, he secured no fewer than 42 per cent of the first preference votes with his Conservative challenger 23 per cent behind. In the run-off, he received 60 per cent of all the valid second preference votes cast. 'Eager hopefuls?' As for the candidates themselves, I understand there has not exactly been a stampede of eager hopefuls looking to serve-out the remaining two years of the term of office. Not even with the job's £100,000-a-year salary! The candidates selected to try to breathe new life into the contest all have local credentials. David Jamieson (Labour) grew up in Solihull and, as MP for Plymouth Devonport, was a transport minister in the last Labour government Les Jones (Conservative) has lived and worked in the West Midlands virtually all his life and is a member, and former leader, of Dudley Metropolitan Council Ayoub Khan (Liberal Democrat) is a barrister and a former member of Birmingham City Council Keith Rowe (UKIP) is his party's main spokesman in Birmingham, where he is a prominent member of the city's small business community. One final question remains: Does all this talk of public apathy run the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy? Committed democrats instinctively prefer high turnouts to low ones of course. But aren't there times when stayaway voters can speak just as eloquently as those who turn out? Which leads us back to where we began, with what will inevitably be seen as a referendum as much as an election.

यदि आप यह प्रदर्शित करना चाहते हैं कि सार्वजनिक चुनावों में मतदान कितना कम हो सकता है, तो आप गर्मियों के कुत्तों के दिनों के दौरान एक पुलिस और अपराध आयुक्त (पीसीसी) चुनने के लिए एक सर्वेक्षण की योजना बनाने से बेहतर कुछ नहीं कर सकते हैंः सटीक होने के लिए गुरुवार 21 अगस्त।


'Nine killed' in Turkey train crash

Summary: At least nine people have been killed after a passenger train crashed into a minibus carrying people to work in Turkey, local media say.

The accident happened at a level crossing near the Mediterranean port city of Mersin. It appeared all the dead - and a further five people who were injured - had been aboard the bus, and that train passengers were not hurt. Local media suggested the level crossing barrier may have been open. Basri Guzeloglu, the local governor, said the cause of the accident would be investigated. The minibus was carrying the workers to an industrial zone on the edge of Mersin when it was hit. Video footage showed the destroyed minibus lying by the side of the railway line and emergency services trying to reach the victims.

स्थानीय मीडिया का कहना है कि तुर्की में लोगों को काम पर ले जा रही एक मिनी बस में एक यात्री ट्रेन के दुर्घटनाग्रस्त होने से कम से कम नौ लोगों की मौत हो गई है।