Covid hotel quarantine: 'It's the luck of the draw'

Summary: UK nationals and residents returning from "red list" countries will be made to quarantine in accommodation such as hotels for 10 days, Boris Johnson has said. While exact details of the policy remain unclear, similar schemes are already in place elsewhere, including in Australia and New Zealand. So how does it work?

By George BowdenBBC News After finally securing her family's place in Australia's quarantine system, Keri McMenamin prepared for the worst - and ordered a vacuum cleaner. The 38-year-old was returning to the country with her husband and two children after securing a job offer - leaving the UK in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic last year. "It is literally luck of the draw," she says of where her family would spend 14 days together once they arrived. "You didn't know what to expect." Having done some research, Keri discovered Facebook groups busy with people relaying their experiences of quarantine. "A lot of people were saying, 'Look, just expect the worst and then whatever you get is a bonus.'" "There were people who had, like, filthy hotel rooms, appalling food, you know, really sort of tiny spaces, no opening windows, no balconies," she adds. That's when she ordered the vacuum for a friend to deliver when the time came. In the end, the family was taken to a hotel in Surfers' Paradise on the Gold Coast and given an interconnecting room. But still, the windows were sealed and their only time outside was 20-minute stints every two to three days. "I think what kept us sane was having a routine," she adds. "Joe Wicks in the morning and our yoga in the evening and sort of keeping up your 12,000 steps a day walking around in loops." The vacuum came in useful. There are strict caps on the numbers travelling to countries using hotels to quarantine arrivals. Between July and October 2019, 7.5m people arrived into Australia to live, work and visit. But over the same period last year, when enforced quarantine was in place, just 72,111 people arrived, according to government figures. People like Keri who have been through quarantine in Australia told BBC News that airlines will only confirm seats once a spot in a hotel is secured - leading to last-minute scrambles. Online forums suggest expats desperate to get home are facing months of delays, cancellations and uncertainty - around 39,000 have said they want to return. Quarantine hotel stays themselves are costly - with fees paid for by travellers. In New South Wales, it costs the equivalent of around £1,700 per adult and £2,800 for a family of two adults and two children - billed after the quarantine is completed. Arrivals into New Zealand are charged £1,630 for the first adult, with an extra £500 for each additional adult and £250 for each child. The costs include the accommodation and a basic food service and even more basic cleaning - perhaps once per week, or not at all, with one change of linen and towels, depending on the facility. But it comes on top of airfares, which have increased due to the pandemic. Fees can be waived for those who cannot pay and there are some exemptions. Each region has its own rules. In Australia, packages can be brought in from outside, and in New Zealand some of those in quarantine are taken to fields to exercise. 'Fenced in' Mark Dickinson, from Liverpool, has lived in New Zealand with his wife Lisa for four years but returned to the UK to see their newborn granddaughter in December - he spoke to the BBC 10 days into a 14-day isolation near Auckland. "We had to have a test on day zero, then day three, then we're having a test tomorrow on day 11," Mark says. "The area at the front of the hotel is surrounded by a double-guarded fence. It may have cost us £2,000 but if that means New Zealand stays safe, then we're happy doing it." Many of those isolating found life does not stop in quarantine. Australian Brad Thiele started a new job and celebrated his 51st birthday alone in a 300 sq ft room at the Novotel in central Sydney. After being asked by a person wearing a full hazmat suit at Sydney airport whether he had any concerns about being held in a room for 14 days, Brad was taken to the hotel with a blue-light police escort. On arrival, the military were on hand to ensure he checked in. "I quite like practising meditation. So I was able to just sort of just sit and be at peace with the fact this was the first two weeks of the rest of my life having lived abroad in Britain for the past 23 years," he says. "I had some regimen, it was important to get up in the morning, make the bed, shower, iron a shirt and be smart casual for work. Just finding a rhythm and a pattern in the day." He's yet to decide whether to take the Novotel up on an offer of a 30% discount on a future stay. Outbreaks Other countries' experience of setting up a hotel quarantine system provides an insight into the sort of challenges politicians and civil servants in the UK may soon be grappling with. Initially those in quarantine across the world complained about the quality of food being provided. Then outbreaks at just two hotels in the Australian state of Victoria were traced to 99% of cases in a second wave across Melbourne that led to around 750 deaths. A public inquiry found a lack of training, cleaning and contact tracing seeded infections into the local community. Reports at the time suggested encounters between private security staff and those staying in quarantine caused the virus to spread. The inquiry did not find evidence to back up the claims. But former judge Jennifer Coate criticised a lack of "health focus" in the quarantine system in Melbourne, saying risks "were foreseeable and may have actually been foreseen". Meanwhile, New Zealand is investigating after a woman who had served 14 days in quarantine and tested negative twice went on to develop symptoms which were confirmed to be the South Africa variant of Covid-19. The 56-year-old woman had recently returned from Europe and is said to have visited almost 30 places in New Zealand before her case was detected. Local officials say she is likely to have been infected by a fellow returnee. 'Normal life' Back in Australia, knowing why the quarantine system is in place and the benefits it brings - the country has largely eradicated the virus - helps motivate people to keep to the rules, Keri McMenamin says. She has just spent a public holiday going about the sort of activities many of us in the UK can but dream of - and her children will be in school this week. "We went to a local gym and had a group workout with 30 people," she says. "And then we went to the countryside, and the kids built little boats out of wood and mingled around and there were families picnicking. "I almost feel guilty for having gone through this process and now living a normal life," she adds. "I feel like I don't want to talk to my friends in the UK about how easy our life here is and how normal it is."

बोरिस जॉनसन ने कहा है कि ब्रिटेन के नागरिकों और "लाल सूची" वाले देशों से लौटने वाले निवासियों को 10 दिनों के लिए होटल जैसे आवास में संगरोध किया जाएगा। हालांकि नीति का सटीक विवरण स्पष्ट नहीं है, ऑस्ट्रेलिया और न्यूजीलैंड सहित अन्य जगहों पर भी इसी तरह की योजनाएँ पहले से ही लागू हैं। तो यह कैसे काम करता है?


Coronavirus in Scotland: Acts of kindness helping the NHS

Summary: Countless small acts of kindness are being reported across the country as Scotland deals with the coronavirus pandemic. Here are just a few examples of the help being offered to NHS workers and others across Scotland.

By Calum WatsonBBC Scotland News website Free socks for nurses A Glasgow-based travel equipment firm has donated 5,000 pairs of compression socks to nurses at Scotland's hospitals. The socks, commonly worn during long haul flights to maintain blood flow, are popular with nurses as a way of combating fatigue during long shifts. Online company Trtl said its sales had dropped by 95% in recent weeks and it was happy to donate surplus stock, worth £250,000, to frontline staff. Socks have been distributed at hospitals in Glasgow, Paisley, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Dundee - with another 5,000 pairs due to be shipped to London next week. 3D printed masks GP Robbie Coull has been working with schools which have 3D printers to produce his own protective masks. He says he has been using them in his own surgery for lower risk cases, so that the N95-certified masks can be saved for higher risk situations. There have also been reports of acetate being donated to make visors in some areas - but health officials are stressing that equipment must be properly tested and for quality control reasons, unofficial protective equipment is not encouraged. Trucks to move equipment NHS Western Isles has thanked two local businesses who provided vehicles to move equipment at Stornoway Hospital. The health board wanted to clear areas at the hospital, so they would have more space available for treating patients. Fifteen thousand paper tape measures Staff at Ikea, at Braehead, handed over fruit, sandwiches and 15,000 paper tape measures to staff at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. The tape measures will be used to check the height of patients admitted to intensive care, which is necessary to adjust ventilator settings. The tape measures can then be binned, reducing the risk of cross-infection. New scrubs for health workers In Shetland, a charitable group has been set up to up make scrubs - the clothing worn by health workers. Volunteers are busy at their sewing machines, using materials that have been donated by members of the public. Hotel rooms for NHS staff Peterhead FC chairman Rodger Morrison has offered NHS staff directly fighting the outbreak free use of bed and breakfast rooms at his Cock and Bull restaurant near Balmedie. Similar offers have been made by hotels across Scotland. Manorview Hotels is offering rooms in its eight west of Scotland sites to NHS staff who may want to shorten their commute or just need a rest after a long shift. The Lodge at Perth Racecourse has also reportedly been made available as a closed facility for NHS and other emergency staff. Thank you and applause This letter was left for Debbie Doolan, a radiographer working at Inverclyde Royal Hospital. On Thursday evening thousands of Scots joined the UK-wide Clap for our Carers event - a huge round of applause to thank doctors, nurses, carers, pharmacists and other NHS staff working hard to help those affected by coronavirus. Handwashing 'enforcers' Volunteers have been helping to ensure proper hand hygiene is being maintained at Glasgow's superhospital. Earlier in the week, a consultant anaesthetist at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital complained that the hand gel station was "tucked away" and many visitors were failing to wash their hands properly. There have also been reports of hygiene products being stolen from hospitals. While most hospital visiting has been suspended, those still allowed to visit are now being met by volunteers armed with hand sanitiser. Free gloves In Edinburgh, catering business owner Wendy Paterson has been giving away disposable gloves and hand sanitiser to passersby from her garden. The 47-year-old has set up a table and erected signs along her fence alerting people to the free products. She said: "Our postman said it has really helped him recently as his gloves and ripped in a letter box, and now he's able to come here every day for a new pair. "My neighbours also have been coming for the gloves before they go to the supermarket." Surprise cheque A beauty therapist who has no income while her business is closed during the lockdown said she was close to tears when a client sent her a cheque in the post to help her out. Carole Fortune, from Oxgangs in Edinburgh, said the act of kindness had left her "touched" and "surprised". Ms Fortune, 55, who has two children, said: "We don't get our self employed government grant until June, so when I saw the £100 cheque in the envelope I couldn't believe it. "For a client to think about me in this way and to send me a gift like this is incredibly kind. I'm so touched. It is very tough times at the moment." Do you have a story of how people in Scotland are responding positively to the coronavirus crisis? You can share your experiences by emailing newsonlinescotland@bbc.co.uk. Please send photographs if possible, and include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist.

जब स्कॉटलैंड कोरोनावायरस महामारी से निपट रहा है तो देश भर में दयालुता के अनगिनत छोटे-छोटे कृत्यों की सूचना दी जा रही है। यहाँ पूरे स्कॉटलैंड में एन. एच. एस. कार्यकर्ताओं और अन्य लोगों को दी जा रही मदद के कुछ उदाहरण दिए गए हैं।


Rochester death: Man charged with Luke Sullivan stabbing

Summary: A suspect has appeared in court charged with murdering a man found stabbed to death in Kent.

Dennis Jones is alleged to have killed 31-year-old Luke Sullivan at a property in High Street, Rochester, on 21 November. The 35-year-old, also of High Street, appeared at Maidstone Crown Court and was remanded into custody. He is due to appear again at the same court on 10 July ahead of a trial listed for 7 December.

केंट में चाकू मारकर हत्या किए गए एक व्यक्ति की हत्या के आरोप में एक संदिग्ध अदालत में पेश हुआ है।


Eastbourne flat fire: Police appeal after man's body found

Summary: The body of a man has been found in a flat after it caught fire in the early hours.

Neighbouring residents reported the blaze in Seaside Road, Eastbourne to the emergency services shortly after 02:00 GMT on Sunday. The fire was confined to the flat and the occupants of nearby properties were evacuated Sussex Police force said. Officers have not yet identified the victim and say his death is currently being treated as unexplained. Anyone who saw anything suspicious around Cloister Court in Seaside Road is being asked to contact the police. Related Internet Links Sussex Police

तड़के आग लगने के बाद एक व्यक्ति का शव एक फ्लैट में मिला है।


Nigeria's precarious oil amnesty

Summary: An amnesty for thousands of militants in south-eastern Nigeria has brought relative stability to the region, enabling its huge oil industry to recover but, as the BBC's Will Ross reports, some are questioning how long the peace can hold.

"If I'd set eyes on you back in those days we would not be talking like this," says Tobine with a menacing smile. "I would have made a call to find one or two ways to make money out of you." Tobine means he would have kidnapped me for ransom. Until the 2009 amnesty agreement, he was a militant in the Niger Delta where rival gangs fought each other for supremacy and targeted the oil companies. The insecurity was costing Nigeria tens of millions of dollars every day as oil production was severely disrupted. "We were doing some bad, bad things; raping, kidnapping busting the pipelines just to make money," says the man who fellow militants used to call Jah Rule. Tobine is 25 and is reminded of these experiences every time he looks in the mirror. There is a deep vertical scar below his eye - a souvenir from the day he was attacked by a machete-wielding man from a rival gang. But Tobine's life has taken a dramatic turn and now he hopes to get a job with one of the oil companies whose pipelines he once attacked. He is among a group of 40 trainees graduating from a pipeline-welding course in Port Harcourt. "I'm doing great. I'm proud about myself, but I want to go higher. My parents are proud of me. I want to make them more proud," he says, adding he has no desire to return to the bush as he now wants to help his family, including his six-year-old daughter. Anger issues As the course ends, there is concern as to whether jobs will follow. There is a worrying lack of job opportunities. "They say the idle man is the devil's workshop. I don't want my mind to go to any evil thing at all, so I have to look for something to do," says another trainee - 32-year-old Abiye Godgift. It has not been an easy task for those who had the job of not only training the ex-militants, but also changing their whole attitude to life. "These are people who in the past had questionable characters," says Ikioye Dogianga, the head of IK Engineering Global Ltd which trains personnel for the oil industry. "They have stained their hands in blood and have done so many things, so it takes you a great deal to train them to the standard they are now. "There were issues of them getting angry very quickly. They were highly temperamental. They felt they were the authority themselves," says Mr Dogianga who intends to offer jobs to the five best trainees in order to motivate the next class. The amnesty was introduced in 2009 by the late President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua. All 26,000 people who have benefited from the amnesty are entitled to a monthly allowance of approximately $400 (£255). For how long, no-one knows. This is an expensive undertaking with the government spending $400m this year alone. The former militant leaders are now mostly based in the capital, Abuja, where they are living in relative luxury. Money was a key factor in ending the violence. Although many are awaiting promised training, close to half the beneficiaries have been offered courses in a variety of skills from carpentry to marine engineering, and 20 people were sent abroad to learn to be pilots. Not all the beneficiaries were perpetrators of the violence in the Niger Delta. Many were victims. "When I was seven, my village was burnt down by militants who didn't want it to develop," says 17-year-old Blessing Ogunga who is studying for her O-levels at Emarid College in Port Harcourt. "I remember that Saturday morning. People said everybody should shift from the village as bad boys were coming to burn down the village." Blessing dropped out of school at the age of 10 because her parents could not afford the fees. "My dad became a militant as he wanted to get the money to send me to school. He wanted me, the first daughter of the family, to graduate, so I would be able to speak for the family, to stand with my rights and speak," says Blessing, who wants to be a computer engineer. Time bomb The result of the amnesty is that the Niger Delta is relatively peaceful and oil production has soared. The government says at the height of the militancy, only about 800,000 barrels a day were produced compared to the current output of around 2.3 million barrels. But not everyone is convinced that the peace is permanent and there are fears that re-arming has been taking place in the Delta. "This is a dangerous time bomb. The Boko Haram issue in the north of Nigeria is child's play compared to what is going to happen in the Niger Delta," says Onengiya Erekosima, the reintegration and peace-building officer in the amnesty commission. Having played a role in persuading militants to embrace peace, he warns that a large number of guns are still in dangerous hands and says the whole amnesty has become a money-making exercise. "Militant leaders are pretending they had more boys following them than they really had and they are doing it to make money. "They are coming to the amnesty commission to say 'the names we brought were not the real people' and now they want to change the names," says Mr Erekosima. There is also concern that the amnesty programme was not rolled out to all areas of the Niger Delta. Just prior to the 2009 amnesty, there was no violence in the area known as Ogoniland. There has also been no oil production there since 1993 when Shell pulled out following years of agitation by the local population calling for a fair share of the oil wealth and an end to pollution. "The amnesty programme was lopsided. The Ogoni people did their own agitation through peaceful advocacy… while others resorted to violence. This violence appears to have been responded to through the amnesty," says Bariara Kpalap, the chair of the region's Kegbara-Dere town council. "In a situation where the government only looks for issues that relate to the flow of oil in the Niger Delta without thinking of addressing poverty… then peace in the Niger Delta will be elusive," says Bariara Kpalap who also feels the amnesty has favoured the Ijaw people - President Goodluck Jonathan's own community. President Jonathan has given his full backing to the programme and has ensured the money is flowing to the Delta. But the amnesty has not been gazetted into law and some feel that makes it precarious. "I see the future as very bleak because my impression is that if President Goodluck Jonathan is no longer in power, the co-operation the federal government has been receiving from the Niger Delta may no longer be there," says Erabanabari Kobah, an environmental campaigner. "Some are still holding their guns and are watching what will happen," he warns.

दक्षिण-पूर्वी नाइजीरिया में हजारों आतंकवादियों के लिए एक माफी ने इस क्षेत्र में सापेक्ष स्थिरता लाई है, जिससे इसके विशाल तेल उद्योग को ठीक होने में मदद मिली है, लेकिन जैसा कि बीबीसी के विल रॉस ने बताया है, कुछ लोग सवाल कर रहे हैं कि शांति कब तक बनी रह सकती है।


'How I hid my autism to fit in'

Summary: Eloise Stark struggled to make sense of why she felt different until she was diagnosed with autism at the relatively late age of 27, having hidden her "quirks" her whole life. It is hoped that a new tool developed by researchers will help professionals recognise sooner those who don't know they have the condition and the tricks they use to fit in.

I realised I was different when I went to primary school. I would talk about things I was interested in but that was not what everyone else seemed to be interested in. For example, I liked psychology and would talk about that and everyone else was talking about boys. I just had mismatched interests and I always felt more comfortable talking to adults than my peers. I did not quite know how to become a best friend to someone or to play what others were playing. I was really badly bullied. Someone spat on me once, while others would react by getting angry. I would respond by saying "that's a violation of the criminal behaviour act" or something like that. It was not how people would expect you to react. My strategies began at primary school - I wanted to fit in. Many people with autism are hyper-sensitive to sensory experiences, for example [some] don't like wearing socks because they feel tight around their ankles, or they don't like bright lights or loud noises. At school we had to have our hair tied up but I hated the feeling of that so would wear it down and get in trouble, with people thinking I was just trying to be cool. I would wear the same clothes as everyone else but it was always a bit tokenistic because I did not understand the deeper reasoning for why they might be wearing it. I was always battling between comfort and expectation. The teenage years were excruciating because you do not want to the one that stands out. There is a much greater pressure for girls to conform and be part of a social group. If a boy plays on his own he is seen as independent but if a girl does it people say something must be wrong. I adapted to try and fit in. I learned from an early age that you are expected to make eye contact, then read that, actually, people do not keep constant eye contact and that was something of an epiphany for me. So I started to look away for two seconds for every four sentences of a conversation. I know that if someone makes a joke, I am expected to laugh, whether I find it funny or not. Socialising is a bit like being among a crowd of people and all of a sudden you forget how to walk. Everyone around you is walking around nonchalantly and you have to think through every aspect of how to put the motor sequence together to stay upright and transition from one foot to the other. That's what it is often like to be autistic but trying to fit in. It takes energy, thought, and even though you might appear to walk just like everyone else, it takes a lot more effort to appear normal. I would sometimes get home and have a meltdown because I was so tired of having to keep eye contact. The camouflage checklist Autism is usually diagnosed in childhood but a growing number of adults are being diagnosed with the condition, many of whom develop strategies to hide their symptoms around neurotypical people - those not on the spectrum - which in turn can create a huge mental strain. Researchers from Cardiff University, King's College London and the University of Bath have come up with a 31-point checklist to help health workers find out if people are using camouflage strategies and if they could therefore have autism. Such strategies include: Dr Lucy Livingston, a psychology lecturer from Cardiff University who led the research, said: "At the moment, professionals know very little about these strategies and what to look for. The new tool, if found to be effective, could help clinicians assessing adults for autism and help them understand how hard the individual could potentially be working to keep up this appearance. "Ultimately, this could mean that autistic people receive a more accurate and timely diagnosis." Before I got diagnosed, I did not understand why I felt different. It was lonely. Just as I didn't understand neurotypical people, they did not understand me. There is an assumption sometimes that people with autism lack empathy, but when a neurotypical person talks to an autistic person it can actually be the neurotypical person who is lacking empathy. When I got the diagnosis [three years ago] it just clicked into place and I found there were other people like me and I was not the only one. Diagnosis as a child would have made a difference - I would have understood myself better and been able to have a more positive autistic identity rather than feeling like a part of it was missing. I am learning to be more authentically autistic and authentically Eloise, even if that means that I sometimes stand out. With people I do not know, I feel I need to fit in still, for example if I had a job interview I would feel I had to camouflage. But with friends and family, and increasingly larger circles, I'm learning to be authentic and just be me. It's wonderful and very liberating. There are so many stereotypes about autism, like in Rain Man or [the idea] they are all cis-men who really like maths. It's actually so much more diverse than that and the more people realise that the better. I'm a bit mischievous really and when I tell people I have autism and they say "oh, you don't look like it", I reply: "Well what does someone with autism look like?" That flummoxes them. I spent much of my teens and 20s trying to fit in and compensate for my autistic quirks, but as I hit my 30th year, it dawned on me that it doesn't really matter whether I do "fit in" and actually, as long as I am flourishing in my own individual way, I can drop the compensation, camouflaging and my mask - and that is OK. The National Autistic Society and NHS have information about exploring an autism diagnosis as an adult. You might also be interested in:

एलोइस स्टार्क ने यह समझने के लिए संघर्ष किया कि वह अलग क्यों महसूस करती थी जब तक कि उसे 27 साल की अपेक्षाकृत देर से उम्र में ऑटिज्म का पता नहीं चला, उसने अपने पूरे जीवन में अपनी "विचित्रताओं" को छिपा दिया। यह उम्मीद की जाती है कि शोधकर्ताओं द्वारा विकसित एक नया उपकरण पेशेवरों को उन लोगों को जल्द से जल्द पहचानने में मदद करेगा जो नहीं जानते कि उनकी स्थिति और वे चालें हैं जो वे फिट होने के लिए उपयोग करते हैं।


North Korea: Will new UN sanctions persuade or provoke?

Summary: North Korea has threatened to defend its sovereignty by launching pre-emptive nuclear strikes against both the United States and its ally, South Korea, claiming that Washington is itself preparing to attack the North with nuclear weapons.

By Dr John Swenson-WrightChatham House The ostensible trigger for this warning from Pyongyang has been a two-week-long set of extensive joint military exercises involving primarily some 13,000 US and South Korean forces on the Korean peninsula, scheduled to start on 11 March. The threat comes on the back of an earlier warning from the North to abrogate the Armistice Agreement of 1953 marking the cessation of hostilities between North Korea and the US and its allies during the Korean War. Notwithstanding the North's strident claims that the US is planning an unprovoked assault on the North, the exercises - known as Key Resolve and Foal Eagle - are defensive in character and have been taking place routinely, in varying form, since the 1970s. This year's exercise marks a departure only in being directed by the South Korean joint chiefs of staff rather than by the Combined Forces Command linking together US and South Korean top military officials. A more plausible explanation for Pyongyang's bellicose, provocative rhetoric is the unanimous passage of a new UN Security Council Resolution (2094), sharply condemning North's Korea's rocket launch of December 2012 and its apparent detonation of a nuclear device on 12 February. Historically, the North has routinely used belligerent statements when the council has been about to pass resolutions, possibly in an effort to discourage it from reaching an agreement. Effective measure? If blocking an agreement was the North's goal, it appears to have signally failed to achieve this. Resolution 2094 was passed unanimously by all 15 members of the Security Council. It significantly tightens existing sanctions intended to restrict the North's development of its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme, while introducing a more extensive set of new measures focusing on freezing the North's financial transactions, prohibiting the opening of bank branches, limiting bulk cash transfers (a common way for the North to gain access to finance), and restricting trade connected to any of the North's illicit activities. The resolution also targets individuals and institutions explicitly connected with the North's WMD program, strengthens interdiction measures to limit the transfer of WMD technology by land, sea and air, and also prohibits the transfer of luxury commodities - such as jewellery, yachts and cars - to the North. While 2094 has important declaratory weight in signalling the international community's clear opposition to the North's recent provocations, it is unclear how effective the new measures will be in impeding or reversing the North's nuclear programme. Targeting luxury commodities may impose temporary pain on the North's leaders, but it is questionable whether the list of commodities is sufficiently extensive to make a difference. Tightening controls on the flow of cash to the North may make it more difficult for the regime to protect its assets, but the North's leadership has become more agile in eluding financial restrictions since 2005 when the US treasury successfully closed down access to some of the bank accounts of senior North Korean officials. Most importantly, the interdiction provisions involve conditional language that could function as a loophole for non-compliance, mandating states to inspect cargo, but only if they have "reasonable grounds" to believe that cargo contains prohibited items. Diminishing opportunity Pyongyang's bellicose rhetoric and its decision to close the air and sea space on its east and west coasts have heightened regional anxieties that the North may be planning to engage in some form of military provocation. The threatened pre-emptive nuclear strike seems more bluff than reality, since the North's leaders know it would be suicidal, and an attack on the US seems impracticable given the still technically rudimentary quality of the North's ballistic missile programme and the unproven state of its nuclear miniaturisation technology needed to place a nuclear warhead atop a missile. A more troubling possibility is that the North might choose - out of irritation with the UN - to precipitate a border clash with South Korea, either on land or sea, as it did before in 2010. With US and South Korean forces primed to respond to any such action, there is a risk of limited conflict escalating rapidly into something far more uncontrollable and potentially destructive. Offsetting this pessimistic prognosis is the positive sign that the North has yet to single out the new Seoul administration of President Park Geun-hye for direct rhetorical condemnation. By contrast, in 2008, when Lee Myung-bak became president, the North was unreservedly condemnatory and critical of the new government. With the door still open, in principle, for dialogue and diplomatic negotiation (a route that China continues to advocate), there may still be an opportunity, albeit a rapidly diminishing one, for a negotiated settlement.

उत्तर कोरिया ने संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका और उसके सहयोगी, दक्षिण कोरिया दोनों के खिलाफ पूर्व-निर्धारित परमाणु हमले शुरू करके अपनी संप्रभुता की रक्षा करने की धमकी दी है, यह दावा करते हुए कि वाशिंगटन स्वयं उत्तर पर परमाणु हथियारों से हमला करने की तैयारी कर रहा है।


What's in a waste expert's rubbish bin?

Summary: Paper and card one week, plastics the next - it is easy to be fooled into believing the afterlife of our waste is simple. It is far from it, as the story of one woman's weekly refuse shows.

By Laurence CawleyBBC News Margaret Bates, professor of sustainable waste management at the University of Northampton, allowed the BBC go through her rubbish, weigh it out and chart its myriad journeys from the kerb outside her home in East Haddon, Northants. The black bag and a random sock Her non-recyclable black bag waste, which contained mainly food wrappers, such as crisp packets, dog food wrappers and an old sock, weighed in at 1.5kg (3lb 4oz). The contents - described by Prof Bates as "evidence of a very poor diet" - will travel 30 miles (40km) to a landfill site in Cranford, in east Northamptonshire. As of 1 April however, that journey will be shortened to just 13 miles (21km) when it is turned into a fuel at Malpass Farm in Rugby, for use at a neighbouring cement works. Defra said England's household waste rose 180,000 tonnes between 2013/2014 and 2014/2015. Food, glorious food A brief peek inside Prof Bates' two weighty green bags reveals a mixture of eggs, chopped cabbage and other vegetables. Hitting the scales at 4kg (8lb 13oz), her food waste is bound for Fernbrook Bio's treatment site 23 miles (37km) away in Kettering. There it is either composted or turned into biogas which, as well as powering the complex, is also put into the gas network. According to National Grid, the bio-methane made from her food waste could go anywhere in the UK. Glass action Prof Bates' 2.2kg (4lb 13oz) of glass recycling - all wine and beer bottles - is taken 113 miles (182km) up the M1 to URM (UK) in Knottingley, West Yorkshire, where it is separated and crushed into three main colours: clear, amber and green. "Our aim is to ensure as much glass as possible is recycled in the UK and turned back into containers," said Lee Glover, quality manager at URM (UK). "Many of the containers produced in the UK will be used within the UK but can also be shipped anywhere in the world." As well as supplying glass manufacturers across the UK, URM (UK) cullet also supplies firms across Europe including Spain, The Netherlands and France. And if URM (UK) finds errant material in Bates' glass waste, her recycling efforts could end up beneath our feet as glass aggregate in paving blocks. Plastic fantastic Prof Bates' 1lb 12oz (800g) of plastic waste (and her aluminium cans) is sent to plastic recycler Jayplas 66 miles (106km) away in Alfreton, Derbyshire. There it is sorted by type. "With plastics," says Prof Bates, "they could end up absolutely anywhere and turned into virtually anything. "It could go into clothing, food packaging or it could end up being turned into street furniture, such as bollards or benches." Mike Maxwell, operations director at Jayplas, said the bulk of the plastics he dealt with went to UK and European markets with some types going to China. Soft drinks and water bottles, he said, were sent 84 miles (135km) to a special plant in Corby for cleaning before being turned into vegetable trays, new bottles and food-grade packaging across the UK. The rest of the plastic cast offs, he said, would most likely end up either in the UK or in Europe, having been turned into anything from nappies to plant pots. "Everything gets traded on an international level," says Prof Bates. "So you might get a tonne of plastics coming from Northamptonshire mixed with a tonne of plastics coming from the Netherlands and ending up in China being converted into some kind of plastic bag or box or any other kind of plastic good. Such a journey from Daventry to China is a 5,800-mile (9,334km) trip. Or double that if the goods made from the plastics return to the UK. Metals One week steel cans will fetch £75 per tonne, two weeks later they will fetch up to £90. Aluminium cans are worth about 10 times as much. Jayplas sells Prof Bates' used aluminium cans to Novelis, a US-based company which is part of the multinational Aditya Birla Group, based in Mumbai, India. A spokesman for the company said it recycled aluminium products at a number of sites including its plant in Nachterstedt in Germany and turned them into "high value aluminium ingots to feed our European manufacturing network". Paper and card As for Prof Bates' card and paper waste, it will be squeezed into bales and taken first to DS Smith's Cambridge depot and then on to Kemsley, a total trip of 165 miles (264km). Joy Brown, of DS Smith, said: "Within two weeks, her waste paper could be back on the shelves as new packaging material." So her recycling will not only travel the globe but will do so again and again, as it is further recycled and reincarnated by other people, in other places, into other things. What does Prof Bates make of all this? "Having looked at my waste and what I have just put out - probably more carefully than I have ever looked at my own waste before - I think I will be much more aware of the level of packaging I buy and try and buy things loosely such as vegetables and fruit. "But ideally what we would like is to have the reprocessing infrastructure all in the UK, because then it means we are keeping the value of our materials rather than having to send it off only to then buy it back from those countries." A Defra spokesman said: "Waste going to landfill fell by 20 per cent in 2014-2015 and the total amount of all waste recycled was up by 1.3%. This reflects hard work by local authorities and a desire from people to recycle more." Inside Out East will look at why people are producing more and more rubbish despite the recycling effort on Monday at 19:30 GMT on BBC One.

एक सप्ताह कागज और कार्ड, अगले सप्ताह प्लास्टिक-यह विश्वास करना आसान है कि हमारे कचरे का मरणोपरांत जीवन सरल है। यह इससे बहुत दूर है, जैसा कि एक महिला के साप्ताहिक कचरे की कहानी से पता चलता है।


Brexit anxiety: 'I can't sleep because of it'

Summary: Tory MP Huw Merriman revealed this week he has lost four inches from his waistline as a result of Brexit-related stress, and it has since emerged that civil servants around the UK were offered counselling to help prepare for no deal.

By Hamish MackayBBC News But it is not just those directly involved in the political process who are suffering. Many people have contacted the BBC to say how recent political developments - or a lack of - are having an impact on their mental state. Paul Groom, 61, had a heart attack two years ago and says both he and his cardiologist believe Brexit-related anxiety contributed towards it. "I think about Brexit every day, no matter what," says Mr Groom, who retired to France with his wife two years ago. "We were living in Devon. We planned to sell our UK house and put the equity into our future financial plan. Then came Brexit. "Our whole lives have been put on hold since then. We, along with many others, have no idea of where our lives are going to end up." "Me and my wife are both losing sleep over it," adds Mr Groom, who voted to remain in 2016. He worries that he may have to move back to the UK. "At the moment, if I wake up in the night the first thing I do is check my phone to see what else has happened in Parliament." The worry and subsequent lack of sleep, Mr Groom believes, has negatively affected his physical health as well as his mental wellbeing. "I've never had heart issues before," he says. "Lifestyle is the main cause but, as my cardiologist says, the stress doesn't help. "It makes you do things you wouldn't have done otherwise - you eat differently, you maybe drink a bit more, you worry more, you have less sleep and all this can contribute to health issues like mine." 'It's ridiculous' And it's not just those who voted remain who are suffering anxiety as a result of the UK's current political journey. Rachel Muse, 50, who voted to leave in 2016, says she thinks about Brexit every day. "It's something that very much plays on my mind," says Ms Muse, who is a chef from Salisbury. "It's ridiculous but I'm finding it very stressful." She adds: "I don't have many hobbies - work takes up a lot of my time - but my main hobby is following the news, finding out what's going on in Westminster and Brussels. "I would normally make a point of listening to the news. I listen to PM and the Six O'Clock News because I want to know what's going on and how it's going on." Recently, however, Ms Muse says she is no longer tuning in. "I'm procrastinating so I don't have to listen to it," she says - adding she no longer watches the News at Ten so she doesn't have to think about Brexit before going to sleep. But is being this affected by current affairs a common occurrence? Or are we living in extraordinary times? 'Constant stream of information' "I think that's a really important question," says Dr Louise Theodosiou from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. "In the past decade, our awareness of current affairs has escalated. "Going back a decade, people I work with might have got up in the morning and switched on the radio or the television, but it wouldn't be a situation where they could immediately have an update on debates that happened overnight. "You can now get news sent to you very rapidly - but what's challenging about that is obviously the information is presented in a succinct form, which means people might be getting headlines but not developing a full understanding. "Yes, it's right to keep yourself informed because information can reduce anxiety - but the constant stream of information can be really challenging." Brexit anxiety - who is affected? A survey of more than 2,000 people carried out in March by research company Britain Thinks suggested that: So, what can people do to reduce that anxiety? "The first thing to do is to tell people around you how you are feeling," says Dr Theodosiou. "We can all normalise something and put it into context and introduce a sense of humour." Another important factor, Dr Theodosiou adds, is to "spend time away from the stream of information in a constructed way". For example, avoiding technology during meal times or when you wake up in the morning. Finally, Dr Theodosiou says, gentle exercise can help alleviate stress. "Even things like walking up and down stairs if you're getting public transport, taking the opportunity to walk a little bit where possible, can make a difference."

टोरी सांसद ह्यू मेरिमैन ने इस सप्ताह खुलासा किया कि ब्रेक्सिट से संबंधित तनाव के परिणामस्वरूप उन्होंने अपनी कमर से चार इंच की दूरी खो दी है, और यह तब से सामने आया है कि यूके के आसपास के सिविल सेवकों को बिना किसी सौदे की तैयारी में मदद करने के लिए परामर्श की पेशकश की गई थी।


In pictures: North Korea's mass games propaganda show

Summary: North Korea on Sunday kicked off a huge propaganda festival, featuring enormous co-ordinated displays unlike anything else in the world.

The spectacle is called the Arirang Mass Games and will run throughout September to mark the country's 70th anniversary. It features tens of thousands of performers. The event is striking but the United Nations has in the past said children are forced to take part, or to help in the build-up. All pictures subject to copyright.

उत्तर कोरिया ने रविवार को एक विशाल प्रचार उत्सव की शुरुआत की, जिसमें दुनिया की किसी भी चीज़ के विपरीत विशाल समन्वित प्रदर्शन किए गए।


Nasa's new 'megarocket' set for critical tests

Summary: Nasa has been developing a "megarocket" to send humans to the Moon and, eventually, Mars. The last critical tests of the giant launcher's core section are expected to take place within the next few weeks. Sometimes compared to the iconic Saturn V, can the Space Launch System (SLS) help capture the excitement of lunar exploration for a new generation?

By Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website In southern Mississippi, near the border with Louisiana, engineers have been putting a remarkable piece of hardware through its paces. A giant orange cylinder is suspended on an equally imposing steel structure called the B-2 test stand on the grounds of Stennis Space Center, a Nasa test facility outside the city of Bay St Louis. Measuring about 65m (212ft) from top to bottom, the cylinder represents the core of a space vehicle more powerful than anything the world has seen since the 1960s. It's called the Space Launch System (SLS) and it consists of the liquid-fuelled core stage - with four powerful RS-25 engines at its base - and two solid fuel boosters which are strapped to the sides. The fully assembled vehicle provides the massive thrust force necessary to blast astronauts off the Earth and hurl them towards the Moon. Under Nasa's Artemis programme, the next man and the first woman will be despatched to the lunar surface in 2024. It will be the first crewed landing on Earth's only natural satellite since Apollo 17 in 1972. It may use technology developed for the space shuttle, but in many ways, the SLS is a modern heir to the Saturn V, the gigantic rocket that lofted the Apollo lunar missions. After a decade of development, the SLS is now approaching a critical stage. A year-long programme of testing for the core stage is coming to an end. Called the Green Run, it's designed to iron out any issues before the rocket's maiden flight, scheduled for November 2021. On 12 January this year, the first SLS core stage was shipped to Stennis on a barge from the New Orleans factory where it was assembled. It was then lifted by cranes and installed in a vertical position on the B-2 test stand. Ryan McKibben, SLS Green Run test conductor at Stennis Space Center, told BBC News: "When you actually see the real deal, with the real avionics, the real tanks - the liquid hydrogen tank which holds 500,000 gallons and the liquid oxygen tank with over 200,000 gallons - it is an incredible vehicle." The Green Run is split into eight parts - or test cases. Since the beginning of the year, engineers from Nasa and Boeing, the rocket's prime contractor, have been working through these individual tests. They have included powering up the avionics (flight electronics), evaluating the performance of different systems and components, and simulating problems. "We're very fortunate to be able to put it through its paces: power it up, do leak checks, even pressurise some systems," says Ryan McKibben. "One of the test cases, test case five, we ended up gimballing the engines - that's when we move them around hydraulically so that you can do course corrections during flight. It's been a lot of fun." During its first mission next year, known as Artemis-1, the SLS will launch an uncrewed Orion capsule on a loop around the Moon. It will allow Nasa to evaluate the capsule before astronauts are allowed on. The remaining two core stage tests are crucial. Number seven, known as the wet dress rehearsal (WDR) involves a full loading of the core stage tanks with liquid hydrogen (LH2) - the rocket's fuel - and liquid oxygen (LOX), which makes the fuel burn. Together, these are known as propellants. A waterway snakes through the grounds of Stennis Space Center, linking it to the nearby Pearl River. This allows heavy equipment and hardware to be shipped between different Nasa sites. A total of six barges carrying LH2 and LOX will be docked near the B-2 test stand during the wet dress rehearsal. The cold (cryogenic) propellants will be piped from these barges to the core stage tanks. This is relatively easy with hydrogen - a very light fluid, but oxygen is heavy, and has to be pumped. The loading will take place over about six-and-a-half hours. After the tanks are full, they will be continually topped up, because the propellants are at temperatures of several hundreds of degrees below zero and some of it boils off over time. The liquids also flow through the turbopumps - which feed propellant to the engine combustion chambers - and the engines themselves. This helps prepare the systems to be started. Engineers will gather data and compare it against mathematical models to check that the entire system behaves as expected. The Stennis teams will simulate a launch countdown during the WDR, taking things up to the T-minus (time remaining) 33 seconds mark. "We'll spend about two weeks looking at the data to make sure all the systems behaved as expected," John Shannon, vice president and SLS programme manager at Boeing, told journalists last month. "We'll go out and inspect the vehicle, make sure there are no surprises." The eighth and final test, called the engine "hotfire", will pick up from the 33-second mark. With the core stage anchored to the stand, the hotfire will see its four powerful RS-25 engines fired together for the first time. "It's a full duration burn - that's what we're targeting," said Mr McKibben. "It's exciting to light more than one off at the same time... We haven't done that for close to 40 years at the site." Aside from the engineering data it will generate, the test will demonstrate the awesome power of the SLS. The engines - the same ones that powered the now-retired space shuttle orbiter - will generate a whopping 1.6 million pounds of thrust. That's roughly the same as six 747 airliners at full power. Although the propellants are at hundred of degrees below freezing when they're fed to the RS-25 engines, the exhaust that emerges is 3,315C (6,000F) - hot enough to boil iron. "We fire down into a bucket that has a lot of water going into it. The water keeps it from burning straight through the test stand," said Ryan McKibben. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water are directed into the flame bucket to cool the exhaust. In addition, tens of thousands of gallons will be used to create a water "curtain" around the engines to suppress the noise generated when they fire for 8.5 minutes. This is done to protect the core stage from vibrations while it is anchored to the stand. "We are definitely excited, because you don't get to try out a new space vehicle very often," says McKibben. Engineers have recently been troubleshooting an issue with a pre-valve, which supplies liquid hydrogen fuel to the RS-25 engines. But Mr McKibben says this is "something we're more than capable of handling". The testing has largely proceeded smoothly, but there was a five-week stop due to Covid-19. In addition, work at the site also had to be shut down six times due to tropical weather, given the particularly active hurricane season. Originally scheduled to take place in early to mid-November, the wet dress rehearsal and hotfire are now expected to take place within the next six to three weeks. Teams are conscious of meeting a January timeline for delivering the core stage to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will undergo final processing and preparations for launch in November 2021. McKibben says he believes teams can still meet this schedule, but adds that it depends on how the core performs during WDR. The SLS has long been a lightning rod for those who would prefer Nasa to hand over more of its activities to commercial companies, and those who believe the government rocket, designed specifically to carry humans and based on proven technology, is the best option for deep space exploration. The SLS will have cost more than $17bn by the end of this year, but without significant modifications, no existing commercial rocket can send Orion, astronauts and heavy cargo to the Moon in one go. There is no clear sign as yet of the direction in which a Joe Biden administration might take the human spaceflight programme. The Artemis effort enjoys bipartisan support. But some Capitol Hill lawmakers may not necessarily be as wedded to the timeline, announced last year by Mike Pence, of landing humans on the Moon by 2024. There's no doubt that the Moon programme has recaptured some of the excitement of the Apollo era. Mr McKibben says he is in awe of what the Saturn V engineers did back in the 1960s. It's not lost on him that the B-2 test stand was built to test the five engines of the Saturn's first stage. Going mobile with his laptop, Mr McKibben shows me a car he owns: a navy Dodge Dart from 1969 - the year Neil and Buzz touched down in the Sea of Tranquility. "It's something an old test guy that would have been testing the Saturn V would have driven," he tells me. "I'm kind of a nostalgic person." Follow Paul on Twitter.

नासा मनुष्यों को चंद्रमा और अंततः मंगल ग्रह पर भेजने के लिए एक "मेगारेकेट" विकसित कर रहा है। विशाल प्रक्षेपक के मुख्य खंड के अंतिम महत्वपूर्ण परीक्षण अगले कुछ हफ्तों के भीतर होने की उम्मीद है। कभी-कभी प्रतिष्ठित सैटर्न वी की तुलना में, क्या अंतरिक्ष प्रक्षेपण प्रणाली (एस. एल. एस.) एक नई पीढ़ी के लिए चंद्र अन्वेषण के उत्साह को पकड़ने में मदद कर सकती है?


National Express to run Norwich bus ticket desk

Summary: The ticket office at Norwich bus station has been saved one day before its planned closure.

National Express Coaches has agreed to take over the desk from Monday. Norfolk County Council had decided to close the ticket office and information desk from Saturday 2 April, a move it said would save £250,000. Now National Express will run it, initially selling tickets for its own buses, park and ride, First Bus and Chenery Coach.

नॉर्विच बस स्टेशन पर टिकट कार्यालय को इसके नियोजित बंद होने से एक दिन पहले ही सुरक्षित कर लिया गया है।


Colourising historical photos of the civil rights movement

Summary: Friday is the 92nd anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King - and, after extensive historical research, Jordan J Lloyd has added digital colour to black-and-white photographs of Dr King and other public-domain images of the US civil rights movement in the 1960s.

"People have a right to access their history," Lloyd told BBC News. "And colour removes a level of abstraction that usually distances ourselves from the past "All of a sudden, the photo feels real, more visceral." In 1963, a multiracial rally of a quarter of a million people marched peacefully on Washington to highlight racial injustices and put pressure on Congress to pass a civil-rights bill proposed by President John F Kennedy. The rally received worldwide media coverage - but the federal government took no political action to deal with the issues raised. "Progress is made through struggle," Lloyd says. "And I think a lot of people today can make a parallel between social and racial inequality in the 1960s and today." Lloyd sourced the photos from the Library of Congress - but his research also unearthed a handful of colour photos actually taken on the march. "Shooting in colour at the time was prohibitively expensive to reproduce," he says. "And nowadays, the genuine colour images can only be used by purchasing an expensive license. "Skin is a complex topic. "It is also what we're naturally drawn to when we look at photographs for the first time. "People's skin tones vary by ethnicity but also by age too, which has to be taken into account along with the ambient lighting and weather conditions of the day. "In these photos, we can make a determination of the weather by looking at things like shadows and the weather reports from the day of the march. "Critics of colourised work conflate the results of a technological process, like AI [artificial intelligence], and claim it's cultural vandalism. "I believe that the laborious process of restoring, researching and colourising photographs make an authentic supplement [to history], rather than a substitute. "Something familiar can then be seen and explored with a different perspective." "[The civil-rights movement] is such an important part of America's history and is often consigned to small black-and-white photos in textbooks and online." Lloyd's photos are available to be freely used and adapted, at Unsplash. "This important part of American history deserves to be viewed and shared by as many people as possible, whether it be in class presentations, on posters, book covers, et cetera," he says.

शुक्रवार को मार्टिन लूथर किंग की 92वीं जयंती है-और व्यापक ऐतिहासिक शोध के बाद, जॉर्डन जे लॉयड ने 1960 के दशक में अमेरिकी नागरिक अधिकार आंदोलन की डॉ. किंग और अन्य सार्वजनिक-डोमेन छवियों की काले और सफेद तस्वीरों में डिजिटल रंग जोड़ा है।


Child abducted at knifepoint on Anglesey and six arrested

Summary: Six people have been arrested after a child was abducted at knifepoint and taken about 200 miles (320km) away from home.

North Wales Police said the child was taken from Anglesey at about 16:00 GMT on Wednesday. The child was found on Wednesday evening in Northamptonshire after a car was stopped in the English county. Police said the incident was not a stranger attack and that the child was recovered safely and was unharmed. Det Ch Supt Gareth Evans, from North Wales Police, said: "This has been a frightening incident for those involved. "Can I reassure our communities on Anglesey that this was not a stranger attack, the incident is isolated and we are dealing with those we suspect were involved."

चाकू की नोक पर एक बच्चे का अपहरण करने और घर से लगभग 200 मील (320 किमी) दूर ले जाने के बाद छह लोगों को गिरफ्तार किया गया है।


Man's body found after search in Snowdonia

Summary: A man's body has been found on Cader Idris in Snowdonia by mountain rescue teams looking for a missing tourist.

They found the body on ground above Llyn Cau on Wednesday afternoon. It has not yet been formally identified. A French man, aged 30, failed to return to his hotel on Sunday and his car was found near a Cader Idris trail head. Aberdyfi and South Snowdonia search and rescue teams were called in with two dogs from Search and Rescue Dogs Wales and a Coastguard helicopter crew.

एक लापता पर्यटक की तलाश में पहाड़ी बचाव दलों को स्नोडोनिया में कैडर इदरीस पर एक व्यक्ति का शव मिला है।


The US debt ceiling crisis that ended with a whimper

Summary: The US Congress has agreed to raise the debt ceiling until March 2015, averting another crisis that almost four months ago threatened to trigger a default on US debt and plunge the global financial markets into chaos.

By Jamie RobertsonPresenter, BBC World News Raising the debt ceiling is the only way the US government can raise more money to pay off its debts. Without agreement, it runs the risk of default. The issue has been an on-again-off-again headache for almost three years. But this time, it never really had the look of the honest-to-goodness end-of-capitalism crisis that came to a head last October. Back then, just a couple of weeks short of defaulting on its debt, with the markets in crisis alert and the government in shutdown, Congress finally agreed to a temporary solution delaying the problem until this month. Rather than the bang that some were expecting, it has now vanished with little more than a whimper. This crisis had none of that drama: much of the fire has gone out of the Republican fight to keep the debt ceiling where it is. Instead, mid-term elections in November have become their focus, and reluctantly they allowed the ceiling to be raised until March 2015. The problem was that the "habit of governing by crisis" as President Barack Obama called it, was hurting the Republicans more than the Democrats. House Speaker John Boehner had tried to attach conditions to the bill, but simply couldn't get agreement from his party. Drawing a line Instead, accepting the realpolitik of an election year, he agreed to vote with 27 other Republicans for a "clean bill", no strings attached, to let the bill through. He's been pilloried by right-wing groups of the GOP, most specifically the Tea Party, for "giving up". But a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief, not least Mr Boehner himself, who, according to Reuters, was seen strolling from a news conference afterwards singing "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah". Now that a political line has been drawn under the debt ceiling debate, there is the question of where it leaves the economy. Republicans would argue that it leaves it with an ever-escalating debt. But it has restored some faith among investors. The deal in the House of Representatives came after the US markets had closed, but Asian and European equities rose - though they were also reacting to strong economic numbers out of China and optimistic comments from the new head of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen. Madhur Jha, senior global economist at Standard Chartered, said: "The problem of the debt ceiling will of course keep coming back, but the economy has a year in which to recover, and by 2015 there may well be a real recovery taking place, which will help the economy fiscally." Dangerous debts Even with the start of the painful and unpopular sequestration last year, which is aiming to knock $1.1tn off the budget over the next eight years by forcibly cutting billions off spending each year, debt levels are only really going to come down as the economy grows. Madhur Jha says: "Debt is not a problem if your economy is growing. There is a lot of debate as to what the proper level of debt should be for a developed economy, say 70%. "The economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff wrote a paper saying historically, growth has not suffered significantly until debts reached 90% of a nation's GDP. But it's still not clear. However, once you get over 100%, it really does begin to have structural effects on the economy." However, Justin Urquhart Stewart, co-founder of Seven Investment Management, believes the US could be at a turning point. He says that there are signs that the annual budget deficit is coming under control. He says: "If they can get it down to around 2% of GDP, then they will be able to hold the overall debt levels steady, and who knows, even reduce it. The sequestration helped last year on the spending side, but it is really the growth that is doing the work." If that happens, there may not need to be another raising of the debt ceiling - a distant, if not forlorn hope. But there is a growing belief that the debt ceiling process is itself doing little to help the economy. Faith in US economic governance has taken a real battering over the last three years, as the debt ceiling issue has been a circus for political fights between Republicans and Democrats. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has looked on, knowing that if no deal was done and the US defaulted, the result would be, in the words of the US Treasury, "catastrophic economic consequences". Who needs a debt ceiling? So why not just do away with the whole political palaver? There are few other countries in the world where total debt is monitored in such a single-minded way. Proponents of the process say it keeps Congress accountable. Opponents say it dates from a period when the President had far more influence in spending, and that a responsible Congress should be able to control spending as and when it was needed. Mr Urquhart Stewart says: "The system is unable to distinguish between debt investment, long-term debt for the building of infrastructure, like power networks and bridges, and short-term 'household' debt. "Each should be judged on its own merits and the debt ceiling process doesn't do that."

अमेरिकी कांग्रेस मार्च 2015 तक ऋण सीमा बढ़ाने पर सहमत हो गई है, जिससे एक और संकट को टाला जा सकता है जो लगभग चार महीने पहले अमेरिकी ऋण पर चूक को ट्रिगर करने और वैश्विक वित्तीय बाजारों को अराजकता में डालने की धमकी देता है।


HMP Parc inmate starts three fires at prison

Summary: An inmate and a prison worker were taken to hospital after three separate fires were started at a Bridgend prison.

Firefighters were called to HMP Parc at about 21:05 BST on Thursday after the juvenile prisoner set fire to a paper tissue in the young offenders' unit. Two more fires - one in a cell and another involving clothing - happened just after 22:00 and 23:00. A lighter was taken from the offender. Both were discharged from hospital. Security firm G4S, which runs the prison, said: "The offender involved will face the consequences for breaking prison rules and our staff will work with him to try and prevent a repeat of this damaging behaviour."

ब्रिजेंड जेल में तीन अलग-अलग आग लगने के बाद एक कैदी और एक जेल कर्मचारी को अस्पताल ले जाया गया।


Covid and suicide: Japan's rise a warning to the world?

Summary: Japan reports suicides faster and more accurately than anywhere else in the world. Unlike most countries, here they are compiled at the end of every month. During the Covid pandemic the numbers have told a disturbing story.

By Rupert Wingfield-HayesBBC News, Tokyo In 2020, for the first time in 11 years, suicide rates in Japan went up. Most surprising, while male suicides fell slightly, rates among women surged nearly 15%. In one month, October, the female suicide rate in Japan went up by more than 70%, compared with the same month in the previous year. What is going on? And why does the Covid pandemic appear to be hitting women so much worse than men? Warning: Some may find the content of this story upsetting Meeting face-to-face with a young woman who has repeatedly tried to kill herself is a troubling experience. It has given me new respect for those who work on suicide prevention. I am sitting in a walk-in centre in Yokohama's red-light district, run by a suicide prevention charity called the Bond Project. Across the table is a 19-year-old woman, with bobbed hair. She sits motionless. Quietly, without any emotion, she starts to tell me her story. It started when she was 15, she says. Her older brother began violently abusing her. Eventually she ran away from home, but it didn't end the pain and the loneliness. Ending her life seemed the only way out. "From about this time last year I have been in and out of hospital many times," she tells me. "I tried many times to kill myself, but I couldn't succeed, so now I guess I have given up trying to die." What stopped her was the intervention of the Bond Project. They found her a safe place to live, and began giving her intensive counselling. Jun Tachibana is the founder of the Bond Project. She is a tough woman in her 40s with relentless optimism. "When girls are in real trouble and in pain, they really don't know what to do," she says. "We are here, ready to listen to them, to tell them - we are here with you." Ms Tachibana says Covid seems to be pushing those who are already vulnerable closer to the edge. She describes some of the harrowing calls her staff have received in recent months. "We hear lots of 'I want to die' and 'I have no place to go'," she says. "They say 'It is so painful, I am so lonely I want to disappear'." For those suffering physical or sexual abuse, Covid has made the situation much worse. "A girl I talked to the other day said she is getting sexually harassed by her father," Ms Tachibana tells me. "But because of Covid her father is not working so much and is at home a lot, so there is no escape from him." A 'very unusual' pattern If you look at previous times of crisis in Japan, such as the 2008 banking crisis or the collapse of Japan's stock market and property bubble in the early 1990s, the impact was largely felt by middle aged men. Large spikes were seen in male suicide rates. But Covid is different, it is affecting young people and, in particular, young women. The reasons are complex. Japan used to have the highest suicide rate in the developed world. Over the last decade it has had great success in reducing suicide rates by around a third. Professor Michiko Ueda is one of Japan's leading experts on suicide. She tells me how shocking it has been to witness the sharp reverse in the last few months. "This pattern of female suicides is very, very unusual," she tells me. "I have never seen this much [of an] increase in my career as a researcher on this topic. The thing about the coronavirus pandemic is the industries hit most are industries staffed by women, such as tourism and retail and the food industries." Japan has seen a large rise in single women living alone, many of them choosing that over marriage which entails quite traditional gender roles still. Prof Ueda says young women are also far more likely to be in so-called precarious employment. "A lot of women are not married anymore," she says. "They have to support their own lives and they don't have permanent jobs. So, when something happens, of course, they are hit very, very hard. The number of job losses among non-permanent staff are just so, so large over the last eight months." One month really stands out. In October last year, 879 women killed themselves. That is more than 70% higher than the same month in 2019. Newspaper headlines sounded the alarm. Some compared the total number of suicides by men and women in October (2,199) to the total number of deaths in Japan from Coronavirus up to that point (2,087). Something particularly strange was happening. On 27 September last year, a very famous and popular actress named Yuko Takeuchi was found dead at her home. It was later reported that she had taken her own life. Yasuyuki Shimizu is a former journalist who now runs a non-profit organisation (NPO) dedicated to combatting Japan's suicide problem. "From the day the news of a celebrity suicide is reported, the number of suicides increases and stays that way for about 10 days," he says. "From the data we can see that the suicide of the actress on 27 September led to an extra 207 female suicides in the next 10 days." If you look at the data for suicides by women around the same age as Yuko Takeuchi, the statistics are even more stark. "Women in their 40s were most influenced out of all the age groups," Mr Shimizu says. "For that group it (the suicide rate) more than doubled." Other experts agree that there is a very strong connection between celebrity suicides and an immediate uptick in suicides in the days following. The celebrity phenomenon This phenomenon is not unique to Japan, and it is one reason why reporting on suicide is so difficult. In the immediate aftermath of a celebrity suicide, the more it is discussed in the media, and on social media, the greater the impact on other vulnerable people. One of the NPO's researchers is Mai Suganuma. She is herself a victim of suicide. When she was a teenager, her father took his own life. Now she helps to support the families of others who have killed themselves. And just as Covid is leaving relatives unable to grieve for those who have succumbed to the virus, so it is making life for the families of suicide victims much more difficult. "When I talk to the family members, their feeling of not being able to save the loved one is very strong, which often results in them blaming themselves." Mai Suganuma tells me. "I too blamed myself for not being able to save my father. "Now they are being told they must stay at home. I worry the feelings of guilt will grow stronger. Japanese people don't talk about death to begin with. We do not have a culture to talk about the suicides." Japan is now in a so-called third wave of Covid infections, and the government has ordered a second state of emergency. It is likely to be extended well into February. More restaurants and hotels and bars are closing their doors. More people are losing their jobs. For Prof Ueda there is another nagging question. If this is happening in Japan, with no strict lockdowns, and relatively few Covid deaths, then what is happening in other countries where the pandemic is much worse? If you have been affected by the issues raised in this article, help and support can be found at this BBC Action Line. If you are in Japan you can contact the Bond Project, Japan Suicide Countermeasures Promotion Center or Life link.

जापान दुनिया में कहीं और की तुलना में तेजी से और अधिक सटीक रूप से आत्महत्या की रिपोर्ट करता है। अधिकांश देशों के विपरीत, यहाँ वे हर महीने के अंत में संकलित किए जाते हैं। कोविड महामारी के दौरान संख्याएँ एक परेशान करने वाली कहानी बताती हैं।


What journalist-haters get wrong

Summary: Across the world today, journalists are under sustained attack.

Amol RajanMedia editor@amolrajanon Twitter We know a lot more about it, as we know about the death of George Floyd, because of smartphones. When I say attack, I don't mean the broad ways in which their trade has been undermined, or their daily lives made more difficult, for example by the digital destruction of many traditional business models. When I say attack, I mean punched, beaten, bloodied and killed. For doing their job. Jamal Khashoggi is one of the most high-profile victims of recent years, murdered and mutilated for having the temerity to point out, on more than one occasion, that the House of Saud has not been a historic champion of universal human rights. Further back, but still very much within living memory, Anna Politkovskaya was killed for daring to get close to the truth about the modern Russian state, not least its activities in Chechnya. Just this week, we have seen a grim escalation, as protests and riots in response to Floyd's killing tear at the fabric of America. The attacks on journalists have been led by the US President, who has regularly cast them as "enemy of the people". On Saturday night, police in Minneapolis shot rubber bullets at two members of a Reuters crew in Minneapolis. Cameraman Julio-Cesar Chavez said: "A police officer that I'm filming turns around and points his rubber-bullet rifle straight at me." Radio reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez took a rubber bullet to his throat. Yesterday, live on Australian television, a cameraman was punched near the White House. Footage from a different angle clearly shows he displayed no aggression toward the police officer who used the edge of a police shield to hit the cameraman's stomach before punching the lens. A few days ago, my very distinguished colleague Pete Murtaugh was charged at by police officers, not far from the White House. The BBC's Paul Danahar, who runs the BBC News' bureaux across the Americas, was right to say that Peter was "clearly identifiable as a member of the media". The camera is always a giveaway, you see. Danahar went on: "The team had been following all directions from the police as they covered the protests in front of the White House. The assault took place even before the curfew had been imposed, and happened without warning or provocation." It must be exceptionally tough for police officers trying to uphold law and order. That said, in each of the cases I have mentioned, the journalist was probably identifiable as a member of the media. And as for Pete Murtaugh, you've never heard of him, have you? Well, here's your moment. He's a father of three, universally adored in the BBC's Washington bureau, and widely regarded as one of the outstanding news cameramen of his generation. He lives just outside the city, and is an exceptionally kind and smart bloke. A few years ago, when I door-stepped Rupert Murdoch outside his office in New York, a lot of people got in touch to say well done (often from within his company, as it happens). But the credit wasn't mine. It was almost all Pete's. I had been looking the other way, facing the camera, when eagle-eyed Pete looked in the distance and saw him coming out of the office. He shouted, "It's Murdoch!". For some reason, despite being in New York specifically to cover a story about Rupert Murdoch, something about Pete's accent, and my misspent youth, made me think, 'Why has he suddenly brought up the A Team?'. But that's a story for another day. Between them, Pete and my magnificent producer colleague Elizabeth Needham-Bennett, got us in position to ask the questions. I had the easiest job of the lot, saying mere words. Look at the clip of that moment: you can clearly see Pete's reflection in Murdoch's car window. My job was to articulate a few sentences. Pete's job was infinitely harder: running with a very heavy camera on his shoulder; adjusting the focus and light exposure; and constantly and instantly responding to my movements and that of Murdoch's driver and security personnel - while keeping the shot tight. Most people could ask Rupert Murdoch some questions on a Manhattan Street. How many could do what Pete Murtaugh did that day, let alone as well as he did? One in 10,000? It's a skill, and that's why we call it a trade, and camera men and women are as much part of the trade as reporters are. In fact, to my mind, they're more important. If you're lucky in news broadcasting, you get to work in teams of three: reporter, producer, camera operator. The reporter is the one who often gets the credit, and is always the best paid. But if the reporter wasn't there, and the camera operator was, you'd still have pictures for the news. Whereas if the camera man or woman wasn't there, you'd have nothing. The single biggest and most frequent mistake made by those currently attacking journalists as enemies of the people is the tendency to react emotionally to some provocation by a high-profile journalist by impugning the whole trade. It's as if, in the minds of these journalist-haters, one famous anchor is by default an ambassador for the millions of people who work in the trade around the world. This is how fame distorts. It gives a false picture to many people of what - and, crucially, who - constitutes journalism. Naturally, President Trump isn't representative of public opinion, but you can see him make this conflation often. When he didn't like a line of questioning by CNN's Jim Acosta, he would attack him - and then by extension CNN. When he didn't like a line of questioning by NBC's Peter Alexander, he didn't just attack Alexander, but NBC and Comcast, which owns it. You see this in many of the attacks against the BBC. Of course, a huge number of criticisms of the BBC are entirely valid and necessary. Moreover, modern media has countless failings, many of them accentuated in recent years by social media. That's why the media these days is so often the story itself. But the species of criticism which begins from disapproval of what one well-paid, high-profile figure says on a particular occasion, to eviscerate the whole organisation, as if that one person represents more than 20,000 others, is sloppy. Journalism, as I have said elsewhere, is a noble trade whose higher callings are to inform the citizenry, apply scrutiny to power, and enlighten a culture, by spreading ideas and ideals. Cameramen and women, and producers and sub-editors and fact-checkers, all contribute to this effort. Most of them are not famous. In fact, most people in journalism - though obviously not all - are decent, civilised, public-spirited people who enjoy elegant sentences, could get paid better elsewhere, and are in it more to scratch an itch for information than adulation. They are local reporters knocking on doors to make sure silenced voices are heard, or sitting in tedious council meetings to ensure bureaucrats don't get away with deceit, or fixing interviews with people who want to contribute to a phone-in. In their small way, all these courses of human action fortify the collective effort of the trade. What, after all, are camera operators who chronicle the unrest in America today doing, if not informing the citizenry, and so helping to apply scrutiny to power? The work is vital, the danger growing; and the reward often smaller than you think, financially at least. They also, I can report, have a preference not to be targeted by democratically elected leaders - or punched in the face. Is that too much to ask? If you're interested in issues such as these, please follow me on Twitter or Facebook; and also please subscribe to The Media Show podcast from Radio 4.

आज दुनिया भर में पत्रकारों पर लगातार हमले हो रहे हैं।


'I felt vulnerable and violated': Why rape victims fear smear tests

Summary: Attempts to encourage women to go for a potentially life-saving smear test don't always fall on deaf ears, but if you're a victim of sexual assault then an insensitive remark urging you to "get over it" or "just get it done" could be enough to put you off for years.

By Annie FluryBBC News A survey for Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust found many women don't go for regular smear tests because of embarrassment and you'd be hard-pushed to find any woman who says they look forward to it. However, for women who've survived sexual assault the experience, or even the thought of it, can be almost as traumatic as the original offence. Jo, 49, who was raped when she was young, said she has only summoned the courage twice since her 20s to go for a smear test and said that even making the call to book an appointment "can leave me in bits". While Donna, who was sexually assaulted both as a child and an adult, said "the very thought of a smear test leaves me feeling terrified". Both women find the distress they experience overrides any potential benefits that a smear test might bring. Here, in their own words, they explain how they have attempted but failed to overcome their fears. 'Vulnerable and violated' Donna, 37, who's from the Midlands, said candidly: "I know I might be putting my health at risk as a result. "Last year I had just reached the point where I knew I had to swallow my fears and go. I had been looking at the support that might be available given my past. "Around this time I attended a doctor's appointment for a cold virus and mid-appointment was tackled by my male GP in a verbally aggressive manner about the fact I had not been for a smear test. "His manner and attitude did nothing to take into account any genuine reasons or fears I may have had, and left me feeling vulnerable and violated all over again. "Subsequently I am back to square one, and the very thought of a smear test leaves me feeling terrified. "I have looked at attending a clinic for survivors of sexual assault but the only one is in London and this would involve a long journey and time off work." 'Barely able to speak' "I'm not being precious," said Jo, who's from London. "I'm not being a silly girl. "I know I'm putting my health at risk because of something that someone chose to do to me but I can't do it. "I became very anxious in the lead-up to the appointments, and, somewhat inevitably, become tearful as soon as I walked into the room. "By the time I got on the bed, I was openly crying and barely able to speak. "On both occasions, I've tried to pre-empt things and explained to an untrained receptionist why I needed to have the last appointment of the day and the most patient of nurses. "And although the nurses were lovely, I was so tense on both occasions I had to be asked to come back and try again as they had not been able to collect enough cells. "Of course, I have not gone back." If you need help dealing with rape or sexual assault you can find information here. If you have concerns about attending a cervical screening following a sexual assault you can contact Rape Crisis for support. You might also be interested in:

महिलाओं को संभावित जीवन रक्षक स्मीयर परीक्षण के लिए प्रोत्साहित करने के प्रयास हमेशा बहरे कानों पर नहीं पड़ते हैं, लेकिन यदि आप यौन हमले के शिकार हैं तो एक असंवेदनशील टिप्पणी जो आपसे "इससे उबरने" या "बस इसे पूरा करने" का आग्रह करती है, आपको वर्षों तक दूर रखने के लिए पर्याप्त हो सकती है।


Coronavirus doctor's diary: Don't ask me which vaccine is best, please

Summary: Dr John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary says he's noticed that his medical colleagues show a preference for one vaccine, while members of the public often prefer another. He argues that this isn't a time to be choosy.

The dash for vaccines has thrown up a rather peculiar situation. With so many pharmaceutical companies competing in this greatest of scientific races, we now have a variety of vaccines, and people are starting to ask me, "Do I get a choice?" And "Which vaccine would you recommend?" The concept of consumer choice when it comes to immunisation, or even medications, is alien. No-one asks about the brand of their annual flu jab, or which company produces the MMR vaccine that will protect their precious children. But the intense global relief that greeted the Pfizer covid vaccine, and then Moderna, AstraZeneca and most recently Novavax and Janssen vaccines (though the last two are still awaiting regulatory approval) has created brand awareness in a population that has had a crash course in epidemiology and infectious diseases. My answer is a simple one: we take whatever vaccine we are given and thank the lucky Northern stars that we live in a developed country. The idea of choice seems so wrong, when there is such an acute shortage of vaccines across the world. In Italy, however, it's reported that police unions are refusing the AstraZeneca vaccine in the belief that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are more effective, and some Italian doctors are said to be rejecting it on the grounds that it takes longer to provide immunity. It is still too early to make such claims: as evidence accumulates from the continuation of vaccine trials and real-world evidence we will get a clearer picture. Comparing vaccines is not as simple as comparing cola drinks or cars. The clinical trials that have reported very early results will continue for their full 12-month duration and the results will become more reliable with time. We have yet to start vaccine trials that can make head-to-head comparisons between different vaccines, so it may be that early results reflect different populations, or dosing regimes. Side-effects after the vaccines will also vary - some may cause localised problems such as sore arms, others systemic effects such as flu-like symptoms. Again, as vaccine roll-out continues we will get a better picture of these profiles. In my very unscientific straw-polling of preferences I find my medical colleagues have a slight preference for the Pfizer vaccine - they tend to be more comfortable than non-medics with new mRNA technologies and preliminary trial data suggested better clinical effectiveness, which is a key part of all our clinical decision-making. However when Pfizer's summary trial data was recently released by the US Food and Drug Administration it turned out that over 3,000 suspected but not confirmed cases of Covid were not included in the heavily publicised press releases, so the vaccine may well be less effective than the original 95% claim. Front-line diary Prof John Wright, a doctor and epidemiologist, is head of the Bradford Institute for Health Research, and a veteran of cholera, HIV and Ebola epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa. He is writing this diary for BBC News and recording from the hospital wards for BBC Radio. In my patients and non-medical colleagues there seems to be a greater preference for the AZ vaccine. People are comforted by its made-in-Britain roots, and its more traditional, tried-and-tested viral vector platform, using a harmless virus to deliver the gene for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein into the patient's body. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine (made by its subsidiary Janssen), takes the same approach. The Novavax vaccine uses a novel nanoparticle technique - it consists of a laboratory-made SARS-CoV-2 spike protein together with an adjuvant, an agent that signals to the immune system that it must take defensive action. The UK has ordered 60 million doses, so Novavax is likely to be widely used as the roll-out continues. There is a dismissive scepticism about Russian or Chinese alternatives both among doctors and members of the public, although the effectiveness of the rather scarily named Sputnik V looks pretty good and as yet unpublished results for Sinovac's CoronaVac, which have been circulating in the medical community, also look promising. I was due to have my hospital (Pfizer) vaccine just before Christmas, but the SARS-CoV-2 virus nipped in just beforehand and gave me a dose of the real thing. I have held out for a couple of months before re-joining the queue. It is likely that I will maintain a good immune response for the first two or three months, and I feel that while the vaccine is so precious, someone else will benefit more than me, so I would rather give up my dose to those in greater need. However having had possible reinfection already I don't want to push my luck by leaving it too long. While being choosy about vaccines seems inappropriate to me, the reality is that some older health workers already have a choice and I will soon be in this position myself. My hospital is providing the Pfizer vaccine to all our staff. It will not be so long before my GP offers me the AZ vaccine or possibly the Novavax vaccine that I have been helping to trial, assuming it is licensed by then. I would of course take any of these vaccines: they have all turned out to work much better than we could have imagined. If I had a choice then it would be an ethical decision. Which vaccine manufacturer reflects the zeitgeist of our collective humanity during the pandemic - the kindness and compassion, the sharing and donating? I'm impressed by the companies that have offered to make doses available on a not-for-profit basis to low and middle-income countries. Others may have different ways to assess a company's ethics, but this is surely a time when we should encourage the pharmaceutical industry to show us what corporate social responsibility truly means. Follow @docjohnwright, radio producer @SueM1tchell on Twitter

ब्रैडफोर्ड रॉयल इन्फर्मरी के डॉ. जॉन राइट का कहना है कि उन्होंने देखा है कि उनके चिकित्सा सहयोगी एक टीके को प्राथमिकता देते हैं, जबकि जनता के सदस्य अक्सर दूसरे को पसंद करते हैं। उनका तर्क है कि यह चुनने का समय नहीं है।


Collapsed marathon runner Ricki Savage was 'extremely fit'

Summary: A man who died after collapsing at the finish line of a marathon in Ireland had only taken up running within the last year, one of his friends has said.

Ricki Savage, 27, from Ramsgate, Kent, had a suspected heart attack at the Airtricity Dublin Marathon last Monday. David Lehmann, who had known him since childhood, said he was "happy-go-lucky" and extremely fit. Mr Savage had been running for the British Heart Foundation, and more than £8,000 has been raised in his memory. Mr Lehmann said: "It wasn't the first time he'd gone for a long run - granted it was his first marathon attempt - but he was an extremely fit lad. "I'm sure he knew what he was doing... he'd been training for a number of months." Mr Savage had been one of more than 14,000 runners taking part in the marathon.

आयरलैंड में एक मैराथन की समाप्ति रेखा पर गिरने से मरने वाले एक व्यक्ति ने केवल पिछले वर्ष के भीतर दौड़ना शुरू किया था, उसके एक दोस्त ने कहा है।


Hostage safe after Cologne railway station drama

Summary: German police say they now have an armed assailant at Cologne's main railway station "under control" and the woman he took hostage is receiving medical treatment.

She had minor injuries from the incident but he is reported to have serious injuries. There was a full evacuation of the station, one of Germany's biggest transport hubs. Local media say the incident does not appear to have been terror-related. Earlier there were unconfirmed reports of shots being fired. Police quoted by the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger daily said a couple were involved, and the man had argued with the woman in a McDonald's restaurant, before holding her in a pharmacy at the station. Reports speak of at least one explosion during the incident. Deutsche Bahn cancelled or delayed train services in Cologne during the stand-off.

जर्मन पुलिस का कहना है कि अब उनके पास कोलोन के मुख्य रेलवे स्टेशन पर एक सशस्त्र हमलावर "नियंत्रण में" है और जिस महिला को उसने बंधक बनाया था, वह चिकित्सा उपचार प्राप्त कर रही है।


Fly-tippers dump wrecked boat in Pembrokeshire lane

Summary: Police are looking for fly-tippers who left a hull-of a mess after dumping an entire boat in a country lane.

Police were called to a single track road at Thornton, Milford Haven, at about 07:30 BST on Wednesday, following reports the road was blocked. Pembrokeshire council workmen removed the 10ft (3m) fishing vessel that had been cut in two and abandoned. Dyfed-Powys Police are appealing for information from anyone who may have seen the boat being towed on 18 June.

पुलिस फ्लाई-टिपर की तलाश कर रही है जो एक पूरी नाव को एक ग्रामीण गली में फेंकने के बाद एक गंदगी का पतवार छोड़ गए।


Murder arrest over death of woman, 82, in Stourbridge

Summary: An 82-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a woman of the same age was found at a house.

The woman was discovered at a house in Trehernes Drive, Stourbridge, West Midlands, on 23 January. A post-mortem examination has proved inconclusive. The death is being treated as suspicious and the man is being questioned while the exact circumstances are established, West Midlands Police said. Specialist officers are supporting the woman's family and anyone with information has been asked to contact the force. Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, and sign up for local news updates direct to your phone.

एक घर में इतनी ही उम्र की महिला मिलने के बाद हत्या के संदेह में एक 82 वर्षीय व्यक्ति को गिरफ्तार किया गया है।


Fall Out Boy and Linkin Park roadies start own band

Summary: Have you ever had a dream where you've been dropped into a terrifying situation that you're totally unprepared for; maybe taking a penalty at the World Cup final, or performing open heart surgery?

By Will ChalkNewsbeat reporter How about playing songs you've only just learnt, on stage, in front of 50,000 people? That's exactly what happened to Ben Young - except he was wide awake at the time. After years working as a roadie for some of the biggest artists on the planet he was called in, at the last minute, to play guitar with Linkin Park in Brazil. It's what inspired him to start his own band, Knifes, with fellow roadies Warren Johnson and Brian Diaz. Between them they've worked with everyone from the Black Eyed Peas to Slipknot and Fall Out Boy. Now they're trying to make it on their own. "We landed in Brazil and our production manager called me," Ben explains, "I thought he was going to tell me what flight I needed to get on, but he said Linkin Park's guitarist Brad wasn't coming - and that I had to play the shows. "It's weird because, as a roadie, you've been on the stage before - but the actual experience is so different because you're concentrating so hard on which part of the song comes next." Even if you've got the notes down perfectly, you also need to perform. "I rocked out, but in my own little zone," laughs Ben, "part of me loves performing, but another part of me knows there's like 60 people in the band's crew, and they would not stop making fun of me if I took it too far". As it turned out, though, another member of that crew was in a similar boat - Warren Johnson, now Ben's bandmate in Knifes, had filled in for Linkin Park both on drums and behind the DJ booth. "Linkin Park's drummer is also a film director, so it started out with me covering for him in rehearsals when he couldn't make it," Warren says. "And it got to the stage where if we were playing in my hometown or it was my birthday, he would let me come up on stage and play a song instead of him. "My birthday was actually the last Linkin Park show ever. I played a couple of songs - it was the ultimate present." After Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington took his own life in 2017, both Ben and Warren started working for Fall Out Boy - where they recruited yet another roadie, Brian Diaz, to be their bassist. They've since recorded two EPs - the first of which is out next month and was, sneakily, made using some of the finest equipment money can buy. "We were working with Linkin Park while they recorded One More Light and they had this room set up with like three different drum sets," Warren explains. "They left it set up that way for like two weeks and they weren't using it the whole time, so we snuck in one day and recorded our first five songs. "Then, in order to get the second set of tracks up to par, we had to do the same thing with a different band... but I don't think we're allowed to talk about that." Before lockdown, the band were all still working in the industry (Warren operates Slipknot's animatronic masks) - but they say, ideally, they'd like things to be different. "I try to underplay what our goals are for this because, like, I'm a just a roadie, but secretly of course we'd love to be bigger than the bands we work for," Ben says. He also admits that, after fifteen years of touring, he doesn't have the same hunger for it he once did. You might also like: "The most partying and debauchery I got into was in the van and trailer days playing tiny clubs - these days, with the big bands who've got families and whatever, it's just a job." Brian adds: "I go back and forth from playing tiny bar shows with Knifes, to working on massive stadium shows with other bands. "It's really taught us to be flexible." Follow Newsbeat on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.

क्या आपने कभी सपना देखा है कि आपको एक ऐसी भयानक स्थिति में डाल दिया गया है जिसके लिए आप पूरी तरह से तैयार नहीं हैं; शायद विश्व कप फाइनल में पेनल्टी लेना, या ओपन हार्ट सर्जरी करना?