Raised on Janet Jackson: How the pop star shaped one fan's life

Summary: Janet Jackson plays the last date of her State of the World tour in Atlanta this Sunday.

By Christine CardonaBBC News Staged less than a year after the birth to her first child, its a powerful return - condemning domestic terrorism, white supremacy and police brutality with a sense of urgency and alarm. The political nature of the production is supported by the musical choices, which highlight socially-conscious album tracks like The Knowledge and What About alongside Jackson's 28 top 10 hits. It's earned the star some of the best reviews of her career, and rekindled many fans' enthusiasm. Among them is Christine Cardona, who reflects here on her relationship with the singer. I recently found myself with a lapful of beignets, giddy with a childish excitement, in the backseat of a rental car. A few hours earlier, I'd flown from my home in New York to New Orleans, collected a friend in each airport, and started the two-hour drive to Lafayette for the opening night of Janet Jackson's State of the World Tour. As our "Ultimate Janet" playlist pumped through the speakers, I had flashbacks to the many drives, and the countless buses, trains and planes I'd boarded for a glimpse of Janet Jackson. I tried to remember how it all began. It was the mid-90s and I was not quite a teenager. MTV was thriving and Janet's video for Again was in heavy rotation. It made me feel things I wouldn't understand for years to come. It was soft. So soft. So sensual, so strong, so… feminine. I felt something when Gary Dourdan (Janet's love interest in the video) gently circled his hand around her washboard abs. My heart sank a little when her voice broke with longing, and her doe-eyes begged to be held. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my impressionable, adolescent brain I filed this away as "Woman." Not long after, Janet released her first greatest hits album, Design of a Decade. I saved my allowance money to purchase it. To my disappointment, Again was not on the track listing. Instead, there was a whole catalogue of songs I was only half-aware of. I began to work my way backwards through the albums that led to this compilation. What Have You Done For Me Lately? The bold sexuality of 1993's Janet is apparent at first glance. The album cover, famously, shows the star topless, her breasts covered by her then-partner's hands. My friend and I used to sit and read the lyrics until we had them committed to memory. I knew early on the actual words she sang in If, but I also remember the specific moment when I realised, with shock, exactly they meant. But it wasn't just sex. On You Want This her confidence is relentless. It remains an enormously underrated song of female empowerment. Then there was the social consciousness of 1989's Rhythm Nation. My discovery of this album coincided with my introduction to the African-American History curriculum, or as much of it as a suburban public school in a largely white community teaches. I wrote school papers on social and racial injustices, quoting Janet's lyrics. I can now only imagine the eye rolls that must have accompanied the grading of them, but everyone at least seemed to appreciate my passion. And there was Janet's breakthrough album, Control, with its message of emancipation and independence. It's easy to understand how a teenager would latch onto that one. By the time 1997's Velvet Rope album rolled around, I was acting in real time. I purchased it at midnight on its release date, 20 years ago this past October. The cover features Janet's bright red curls bowed down in... what? Reflection? Meditation? Gratitude? I listened to it alone, on headphones, in the privacy of my own bedroom, which at the time was a small shrine to Janet - posters plastered on the walls, the floors carpeted in piles of magazines. With themes of self-awareness, loneliness, and sexual exploration, the album mirrored feelings I wasn't even aware I was having. At 15, I was just figuring out who I was. I was navigating the ups and downs of my teenage years, exploring my emotions, learning my own body, finding my way. When the Velvet Rope Tour hit Detroit, Michigan in the summer of 1998, it would be my first concert. Looking back now, I realize this trip was one of my first true experiences with diversity - the kind that my suburban New Jersey upbringing hadn't really offered. The people, both in my group and the general audience, were of varying backgrounds, ages, races and sexual orientations. My mother, who had to accompany me because I was a minor, was really taken by the number of gay men in attendance. I remember her asking what it was about this iconic, overtly sexual singer, that were they into? It was a genuine inquiry, but at the time I had neither an answer nor the need to make sense of it. It would be well over a decade before I'd be able to wrap my mind around the relationships between female pop stars and gay men. Before I'd hear countless stories about how watching their male dancers made people realize they were gay, and made others know it was going to be OK to come out; or about how music gave teens who were uncomfortable in their homes, in their schools, and in their own skin solace. It would take even longer before I realised the complex relationships between gay men and women in general. The very types of relationships that would inform my 20s, and sustain me in the single years of my 30s. First meeting On the third night of our Detroit trip, we were taken backstage to meet Janet. For some unknown reason, the image burned into my brain is of plastic bowls filled with brightly-coloured candies. She came out, sweet as the confections, smiling big, in denim overalls and a sunshine-yellow top. I was flustered and emotional. I got a quick hug and the chance to say, "thank you," over and over again, as she nodded in a way that implied she knew what I was thanking her for and, at the same time, had no idea. I cried on the plane ride back. I had come so physically close to her, but I'd not been able to articulate the things I most wanted to say. When Janet released her next two albums (2001's All For You and 2004's Damita Jo) I was attending Boston University with one of the Janet fans I'd met in Detroit. We were taking sketchy $20 bus rides between Boston and New York City every few weeks for an endless blur of album signings, talk show appearances and performances. We'd sleep outside in lines on city sidewalks, near parks, under brightly-lit marquees and the fans' camaraderie on those nights stays with me. We took care of each other. I was taking my first women's studies classes during "Nipplegate" - that infamous Super Bowl moment when Justin Timberlake ripped open Janet's bustier and exposed her nipple to the world. We were specifically asked not to mention it in our work. The instructors had tired of it, or felt it was too ripe for plagiarism. I remember feeling it was a very specific sort of slight. The country was suddenly in the grips of Janet and her (literally) star-studded nipple, and I couldn't discuss it. I don't even know if I understand in present day all the implications of that nip slip - of what it says about how women's bodies are regarded (or disregarded); about society's fears of women as sexual beings, particularly black women; and about the way culture selectively chooses when to be prudish and when the sexualisation of women is marketable and acceptable. After college, I won a fan club contest to meet Janet again, and was flown with my friend to Las Vegas. After some professional obligations, she retired to a private balcony with us, a few assistants, and several friends. We stood together at the edge of a railing, and I scanned her face (OK, I was blatantly staring), watching her derive satisfaction from looking at the crowd below, dancing to her music. We took a tequila shot, and talked briefly. She was kind, generous with her time. This time, I found more words than "thank you". The club was loud, and she leaned in close, almost cheek to cheek, so I could hear her famously quiet speaking voice. She encouraged me to pursue a career in television. She referenced her favourite parts of my competition entry, and I couldn't believe she had read it. It was a life highlight, but I still couldn't shake the feeling there was something I needed her to know, something I still hadn't been able to communicate. Shortly after Vegas, I moved to New York City to try out that whole working-in-television thing. As my life picked up, I did fewer fan-related things. There were fewer of them to do - Janet disappeared and reappeared, weaving in and out of my life as her focus shifted away from music. In 2015, I was in my early 30s, searching for a way to ease newfound anxieties, when Janet's Unbreakable album was released. Her first record in seven years, it reminded me so much of The Velvet Rope - confident, yet vulnerable; reflective, but uninterested in other people's opinions. Aged 49, she had changed personally, vocally, and musically, but she was also, unmistakably the same Janet I fell in love with. For me, the most endearing part of the project was that it represented growth, not reinvention - the kind of growth and self-actualization we all strive for. I caught the Unbreakable Tour in Chicago and planned to see it again in New York, but Janet had some health issues followed by her pregnancy and the tour flickered out. When it was announced she would resume live performances so soon after giving birth (and getting divorced), I was surprised. I didn't imagine her coming back so quickly. At the urging of friends, I decided to take a last-minute chance on the opening night in Lafayette, Louisiana. The State Of The World tour mixes old songs that have never been played live, with others that have lain dormant for almost 30 years, alongside new material. It's all-encompassing, and it highlights a lengthy and exhaustive career. This woman owns the stage for the full duration. Her dancing is mesmerizing - the particular mixture of old and new choreography is masterful. She's out there "milly rocking" in a way that puts kids to shame. My bias is mine, but the reviewers seem to be with me. But something is different on this tour. I think people, including me, didn't expect to see her out here like this again. They've been dressing as different versions of Janet, wearing fun and thoughtful custom shirts. I've even invested in a gold key earring and some "State of the World" lip colour. Wearing them makes me so damn happy, I feel like a kid. I think we're all doing a bit of self-soothing under the security blanket of nostalgia, but we're also really thrilled that whatever this thing is, it isn't entirely in the past. The magic is still happening and that brings a distinct sort of satisfaction. The joy of having these songs and experiences to grow with is what I'd been trying to express to Janet all along. So many of us have stories about the ways Janet made us feel heard or accepted, or how she's left her mark on us. At 51, she may be embarking on her first journey through motherhood, but she already has generations of people who feel, at least a little bit, raised on Janet. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

जेनेट जैक्सन इस रविवार को अटलांटा में अपने स्टेट ऑफ द वर्ल्ड दौरे की अंतिम तारीख खेलती हैं।


Windrush: Coronation Street's Rhea Bailey explores family history

Summary: Actress Rhea Bailey, best known for playing Caz Hammond in Coronation Street, describes herself as being half West Indian and half English. To mark the 70th anniversary of Windrush, Rhea has been finding out more about her family history as part of a special report for BBC Radio 5 live .

In the 1940s, West Indians were invited from British colonies in the Caribbean to come to the UK to help rebuild Britain after World War Two. Growing up, I always wondered why droves of people decided to leave paradise and come to jolly old England. I couldn't understand it. It was only recently that I discovered they were invited here. Their trips were even subsidised. No-one stowed away. No-one sneaked into the country or begged to get in. They were invited. My dad's parents emigrated from Saint Kitts in the 1960s. They came on the back of a promise of "good jobs" and "great opportunities". Growing up in a British colony, they were always immersed in British culture. My black grandparents enjoy a good cup of tea and a biscuit just as much as my white grandparents, who are Yorkshire born and bred. In fact, on a recent trip back to the island, the only request was that I bring rich tea biscuits and Tetley teabags. But 50 years ago, the reality of building a life here was very different. Settling in Leeds, my grandmother said, they were met with prejudice. They had only ever lived on a very small island in the heart of the Caribbean, surrounded by people who looked and talked the same as them. My grandmother said she never regretted leaving Saint Kitts - to her, it was an adventure. She was bored with her tiny island and wanted to see more of the world. My father had a scholarship to a private school, so he stayed behind with his grandma until he was 14. In Saint Kitts, they would make fudge together (a tradition he has passed onto me) and he would go swimming in the sea before school. Moving to England, he was reunited with his siblings but he was also met with prejudice, cruelty from teachers and racism from the police. I can't imagine what a culture shock it must have been. My dad is an intelligent guy. In his 20s, he got a job working on some of the first computers in the country - back when they were the size of entire rooms. As a result, he drove a red MG convertible. And although he loved it, he would get pulled over on a daily basis - just for being a young black man in a sports car. My granddad worked on the trains until he retired. My grandma worked in a factory. Their plan was only ever to stay until their kids had finished school and they had saved some money. But the reality of living in a more expensive country where wages were not what was advertised and raising a family proved difficult. Plus, they had started putting down roots. My dad met my mum on a night out when they were teenagers and they got married a few years later. My grandparents ended up living in the same house in Leeds for 30 years, where I remember running around playing games in my vest and knickers because the heating was always on full blast. Fifteen grandchildren later, they were finally able to retire back on Saint Kitts. The house they built is a great symbol of the fruition of all their hard work. I asked my grandmother and my great auntie, Millie, if I could interview them. They had some funny stories to tell. It was clear it had been an adventure. But after the interview my great auntie Millie also told me a sad story about how when she had been baptised, in Leeds, the minister had asked her if she would go last because another man did not want to be in the same water as a black woman. She also talked about how hard it had been for them to find somewhere to live, as no-one wanted black people in their neighbourhood. What was interesting to me was how guarded and private they were whenever I tried to speak about the hard times. It was as though they were keeping things from me. Clean slate I notice it with my dad too. When I dig deep, he will tell a nice story or put a positive spin on it. I can only surmise that my father and my grandparents chose not to tell me all of the things they endured, so that I would be able to live in this country as an equal - to start life with a clean slate and not be angry or bitter about some of the things they went through. My parents and my grandparents did an incredible job of protecting me and my sisters from the racism they had received. I had a very happy childhood. I never felt out of place or unwelcome growing up. My oldest sister is the Grammy award winning artist, Corinne Bailey Rae. My second sister is a Labour councillor. And I am an actress and writer, who gets to travel the world doing the job I love. Everyone has their own reality of living in the UK, and though we were not rich, I recognise we have lived very privileged lives. I'm grateful to be British and thankful for the sacrifices my grandparents made for me. In my opinion, those that traded paradise to come and help rebuild our country deserve medals of honour, and nothing less.

कोरोनेशन स्ट्रीट में काज हैमंड की भूमिका निभाने के लिए जानी जाने वाली अभिनेत्री रिया बेली खुद को आधा पश्चिमी भारतीय और आधा अंग्रेजी बताती हैं। विंडरश की 70वीं वर्षगांठ को चिह्नित करने के लिए, रिया बीबीसी रेडियो 5 लाइव के लिए एक विशेष रिपोर्ट के हिस्से के रूप में अपने परिवार के इतिहास के बारे में अधिक जानकारी प्राप्त कर रही हैं।


Man arrested as car crashes into Leicester house and 'hits gas pipe'

Summary: A driver has been arrested after a car crashed into a house which is believed to have caused a gas pipe to rupture.

Leicestershire Police were called to Buller Road, Belgrave, Leicester, at about 15:00 GMT. Police said no-one was hurt but several properties were evacuated for safety reasons. The fire service said residents were able to return later. A 21-year-old man, from Leicester, has been arrested on suspicion of theft of a vehicle and dangerous driving. He has since been released under investigation. Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk.

एक कार के एक घर से टकराने के बाद एक चालक को गिरफ्तार किया गया है, जिसके बारे में माना जा रहा है कि इससे गैस की पाइप फट गई थी।


Storm Dennis: Isle of Man ferry sailings cancelled

Summary: The impact of Storm Dennis has led to ferry services between the Isle of Man and Lancashire being cancelled.

All sailings from Douglas to Heysham in Lancashire have been called off since Saturday, the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company (IOMSPC) said. Gusts of up to 60mph hit the island, also leading to disruption to flights from Ronaldsway Airport. The cancellation of Saturday's sailings meant no newspapers were delivered to the island on Sunday.

स्टॉर्म डेनिस के प्रभाव के कारण आइल ऑफ मैन और लंकाशायर के बीच नौका सेवाओं को रद्द कर दिया गया है।


Tjipetir mystery: Why are rubber-like blocks washing up on beaches?

Summary: For the past few years, 100-year-old rubber-like blocks from Indonesia have been mysteriously washing up on beaches in the UK and northern Europe. The Titanic has been suggested as one of the possible sources - but now a beachcomber says she may have solved the puzzle of the Tjipetir blocks.

By Mario CacciottoloBBC News In the summer of 2012, Tracey Williams was walking her dog along a beach near her home in Newquay, Cornwall, when she spotted a black tablet on the sand, made of something resembling rubber. It looked like a large chopping board and the word "Tjipetir" was engraved into it. Weeks later, she found another such curiosity on a different beach alongside bales of rubber, washed up in a cove. Her curiosity piqued, she began to research the origins of these mysterious blocks. What she learned included stories of shipwrecks, an infamous World War One tragedy and the Titanic. It also transpired that these blocks had been appearing on beaches across northern Europe, baffling everyone who had found them. There has been speculation in the press as to the source of the washed-up blocks, with the Daily Mail and the Times recently running articles. The French press covered the story in April also. But Williams believes she has worked out the source of the mystery - and it matches what the UK authorities think too. The word Tjipetir turned out to be that of a rubber plantation in West Java, Indonesia, which operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The blocks were not strictly rubber - they are most likely gutta-percha, the gum of a tree found in the Malay Peninsula and Malaysia. It was used in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries to insulate telegraph cables on the seabed. Before modern plastic began to be widely used, gutta-percha was also made into such items as golf balls, teddy bear noses, picture frames and jewellery, among many others. Williams began charting her progress on a Facebook page, which led to many people coming forward to reveal their own gutta-percha finds, often made when they were cleaning their local beach. These were not only around England and Wales but also in Shetland, the Channel Islands, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Along with these blocks, bales and rolls of rubber are also being washed up. There has been speculation that the gutta-percha could be coming from the wreck of the Titanic. "A French newspaper covered the story and reported that the Titanic had been carrying gutta-percha," Williams said. "I checked the ship's manifest and discovered that it had indeed been carrying gutta-percha and bales of rubber. There was much wild press speculation about this afterwards." Then, in the summer of 2013, Williams had a breakthrough. She was contacted separately by two people - who did not want to be named - and both pinpointed one wreck as the source. They knew of a salvage company carrying out recovery of cargo from Japanese liner the Miyazaki Maru, which had sunk during World War One. It had been carrying the Tjipetir blocks. It sank 150 miles (241.5km) west of the Isles of Scilly. Miyazaki Maru Source: Wrecksite "I was told that when salvage work is done, the cargo they are looking for is pulled out in large amounts, and the gutta-percha and rubber bales have been released from the ship's hold as a result," Williams said. "So both my sources told me that shipwreck is where those items are mainly coming from. I've been shown evidence supporting this." But Williams isn't the only person who thinks the gutta-percha is coming from the Miyazaki Maru. The government's Receiver of Wreck, Alison Kentuck, the official who administers wreck and salvage laws within UK territorial waters, also says it is most likely the blocks are indeed cargo from that ship. "When we are made aware of wreckage we conduct research to find the owner," she said. "We look at the age of the items, where they could have come from and examine any markings. "Our findings with these particular items pointed towards that particular wreck. So although we have not confirmed it, the Miyazaki Maru is our favoured possibility as the source of the washed-up blocks." The Miyazaki Maru was sunk by a German submarine, U-88, captained by Walther Schwieger, one of Germany's most successful U-boat aces. Schwieger was also in charge of another German U-boat which, in May 1915, sank the RMS Lusitania, a liner bound for Liverpool, carrying 1,924 passengers and crew from New York. That notorious event led to more than 1,100 deaths, including more than 100 Americans and is thought to have hastened the US's entry into the war. Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who specialises in tracking flotsam, says the Tjipetir blocks may be washing up on beaches for centuries. "Based on the findings so far, they are clearly being fed into the hemispheric ocean circulation. It only takes 25 years for flotsam to go around the world, and they've probably been around long enough to go around the world three times. "They're still in good condition after all these years, which is unusual. They're probably one of the great pieces of flotsam that people may be finding 100 years from now." Ebbesmeyer also said various gyres - or ocean currents - may pull the blocks from Spain across to the Americas "mirroring the same route that Columbus took" before possibly ending up in Florida. The ones found in the North Sea "should go up past Norway, turn east past the top of Siberia, go through the Bering Strait into the North Pacific and go all over from there". Several people have also reported finding Tjipetir blocks back in 2008, before the current salvage operation is thought to have begun on the Miyazaki Maru. One person has come forward to say they found a block more than 30 years ago and used it as a chopping board to gut fish on their fishing boat. "Many ships would have been carrying gutta-percha, so it's possible that the cargo is coming from more than one source," says Williams, who is writing a book about the Tjipetir story. "It is being seen as pollution - and I clean debris from my local beaches all the time - but the gutta-percha is a natural product, so it does degrade. I've seen disintegrated blocks on the beach." "Perhaps other companies are salvaging material from World War One wrecks too. It is possible that some of it is from the Titanic? I don't know." Walther Schwieger picture courtesy of the German Federal Archives (BArch, Bild 134-C1831 / o.Ang. / CC-BY-SA 3.0) Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

पिछले कुछ वर्षों से, इंडोनेशिया के 100 साल पुराने रबड़ जैसे ब्लॉक रहस्यमय तरीके से ब्रिटेन और उत्तरी यूरोप के समुद्र तटों पर बह रहे हैं। टाइटैनिक को संभावित स्रोतों में से एक के रूप में सुझाया गया है-लेकिन अब एक समुद्र तट पर काम करने वाले का कहना है कि उसने शायद ट्जिपेटिर ब्लॉक की पहेली को हल कर दिया है।


Chicken or fish? UK and EU clash over trade menu

Summary: From today's menu which fight would you prefer? The chicken or the fish? Boris Johnson's speech today confirmed what sources in Defra have been telling me for some time. The UK will take US chicken before sacrificing UK fish.

Simon JackBusiness editor@BBCSimonJackon Twitter While saying that the UK would not accept any diminution of food standards, in a speech in which he bemoaned the number of American "bashers" he tellingly added that "science would be the guide" in setting standards. That is precisely the language US trade officials have used when discussing their use of anti-bacterial treatment of chicken and their approach to US-UK trade talks. Most scientists say there is nothing inherently wrong with chlorinated chicken - as Boris Johnson quipped, Americans appear well nourished and most people don't come back from the US complaining. The objection is that chlorination is deemed necessary/desirable to combat the greater risk of contamination due to overcrowding and longer transport distances. The PM said he would encourage the US to adopt higher animal welfare standards. There was a much harder line on fish. More fish for UK vessels from UK waters is a non-negotiable red line, according to Defra sources. British fishing grounds were "first and foremost for British boats", said Mr Johnson. That means less of the catch for French and Dutch boats. The political declaration hopes that a deal on fisheries can be concluded by the end of June, so this will be an early flashpoint in negotiations. As Boris Johnson and Michel Barnier dug their trenches today, Mr Barnier marked out his territory pretty much as advertised in the political declaration - the bit of the Brexit divorce bill which dealt with future arrangements. Boris Johnson moved quite a long way from what the UK originally signed up to. Article 17 of the political declaration said the EU and UK signed up to "ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition". That clearly means something different to Boris Johnson than it does to Mr Barnier. For Mr Barnier it means adopting the same rules and regulations on state aid, social and employment standards, environment and tax matters. Boris Johnson binned that idea today - emphatically saying the idea that the UK should be expected to follow EU rules was as unacceptable to the UK as the EU would find it having to adhere to UK rules. The UK would like to adopt a Canada-style approach - where tariffs on goods are abolished and yet both party remains largely able to set their own standards and pursue their own trade policies. The EU has made it pretty clear that what is appropriate for Canada (thousands of miles away, with quite a small trading relationship with EU) is not appropriate for a country that is on the EU's doorstep doing hundreds of billions' worth of two-way trade every year. Oh well, never mind, says Mr Johnson - we'll do an "Australia-type deal" with the EU. To be clear - Australia is also a long way away and does not even have a trade deal with the EU. It is essentially a no-deal relationship with a few extra agreements on the side. Businesses have reacted with cautious pessimism to these opening exchanges - meaning they don't like the apparent distance between the trenches dug today, but hope they are just opening positions.

आज के मेनू से आप कौन सी लड़ाई पसंद करेंगे? मुर्गी या मछली? बोरिस जॉनसन के आज के भाषण ने पुष्टि की कि डेफ्रा में कौन से स्रोत मुझे कुछ समय से बता रहे हैं। यूके मछली की बलि देने से पहले यूएस चिकन लेगा।


Community divided over how to protect Swansea's horses

Summary: Teddy was taken from his mother and sold when he was just a tiny foal. Kept in a garden shed, he ended up emaciated and infested with worms and lice, before being abandoned in horrific winter conditions.

In January, he was taken in by Swansea's Community Horse and Pony Scheme (Chaps). He is now a healthy, lively little pony, and a sponsor is giving the equine charity the £100 a week it needs to make sure Teddy is looked after; they hope he will soon find a forever family. Teddy's story symbolises the complexity of how to deal with Swansea's estimated 600 urban horses. "He is one of the cases of urban horse ownership being driven underground," said Katie Double, project officer with Chaps. "And with the focus now on Swansea, lots of animals are being abandoned here." A common sight across Swansea's estates and green spaces, horses have been an intrinsic part of the city's identity for decades. But welfare concerns are growing - and a proposed council ban on tethering horses on public land has polarised the emotional debate. Risk of abuse Chaps has launched a petition against any potential ban, and said it will lead to more abandoned animals like Teddy. Yet the Friends of Swansea Horses (Fosh) claim a ban is the only way to protect urban horses, and that as many as up to 80% of tethered horses do not get enough exercise, water or food. "Apart from the cruelty of being tied up, we have clear documentary evidence of horses being attacked by dogs. We have reports of horses being set alight. In one instance, somebody was actually filmed kicking a horse," said David Grimsell of Fosh. "The risk of abuse is very real." Their campaign has taken the issue to the top of the council. And over the coming weeks, the authority will make a decision. Swansea is already leading the way in using 2014 Welsh Government legislation designed to deal with stray and abandoned horses, with 233 animals removed in the first year of the law's introduction. But Fosh said much more needs to be done. "Public spaces provide free livery. What tends to happen is that the horses get neglected, or they break tether," Mr Grimsell added. "Animal welfare normally falls to the RSPCA. But they have difficulties identifying horses; you can't find who the owner is and it is difficult to prosecute for tethering. "In the past, the council has been reactive. It picks up a horse if there is a risk to public safety or if there is a nuisance. All that happens then is that those horses are replaced. So the cycle just keeps on going. But if the council was to make a formal prohibition, we think it would stop that cycle occurring." His work, he claimed, has led to intimidation. "There are a number of people who keep horses on public spaces who are very defensive. We learned that quite a lot of people are afraid to speak out," he said. Welfare concerns In 2014 alone, Swansea council received 664 complaints relating to horses and seized 225 animals, at a cost Fosh estimates at £74,000. And between 2012 and 2014, the authority destroyed 224 horses. Last year, that dropped to just five after the authority started sending abandoned animals to Norfolk's Hillside Sanctuary. About 200 horses from Swansea now live there. But Chaps said the sanctuaries were now full. Although they don't condone tethering, they said a ban would drive owners to hide their animals, indirectly leading to more horses being put down and badly treated. Unscrupulous dealers dumping horses are the real issue, Chaps equine welfare officer Lisa Lanfear said. She believes the council should create communal grazing grounds in the city. The charity runs education, microchipping and vet services for local horse owners, and the authorities could do the same - instead of introducing more regulation. "Otherwise, horses will be kept in garden sheds, garages and even houses. We won't be able to monitor their welfare. It will have a terrible effect. It's what goes on behind closed doors that we need to worry about. "The majority of urban horse owners would love to see their horses grazing. There is immense talent in the community; we need to nurture that instead of chastising it." Heritage The tradition of horse ownership in Swansea stretches back hundreds of years, when workers in the copper and mining industries moved to the city with their animals. Lisa says it's in the blood of many of the city's inhabitants, with horses at the heart of the city's evolution. And as a small city surrounded by countryside, Swansea people haven't lost their love of horses. Former rag and bone man Alan Jenkins lives in Penlan, and owns four horses. "It's very important for the area. A lot of children look after the horses, and it keeps them out trouble. There's nothing wrong with tethering. I've done it all my life. "The horses are quite happy and loved and fed. They are on a 20ft tether. They are well looked after." The RSPCA said it was constantly dealing with horse welfare issues in Swansea. Although the charity won't comment on a ban, it added it was "doing all it can to reduce tethering" of horses in the city, and that tethering is "not recommended as a viable way of keeping a horse." A balanced view Swansea council emphasises existing powers to seize animals tethered on their land are not duties - but it is not actively tackling the problem, with 72 horses impounded between April and November 2015. Cllr Jeff Jones, chair of the council group looking into the issue, said it was a highly sensitive problem for the city. He said he didn't realise the scale of the problem - nor the horrendous conditions many horses have been subjected to - until he started his investigations. "Historically people have kept horses in Swansea. But perhaps it is the time to review this. "This is a longstanding issue, and we just can't keep ignoring it. We need to tackle this. But we need to take a balanced view - if you introduced a total ban, what would you do with those horses?"

टेडी को उसकी माँ से छीन लिया गया और बेच दिया गया जब वह सिर्फ एक छोटा भेड़िया था। एक बगीचे के शेड में रखा गया, वह भयानक सर्दियों की स्थितियों में छोड़े जाने से पहले कृमि और जूँ से पीड़ित हो गया।


Newmarket celebrates 350 years of horse racing

Summary: The headquarters of British horse racing, Newmarket, is celebrating its 350th anniversary. As it hosts the Guineas Festival this weekend, BBC News looks at some of the significant moments the world-famous sporting venue has witnessed over the years.

By Kate WilliamsBBC News Three and a half centuries ago, King Charles II journeyed to a small town in Suffolk. He commanded a course be created there for a race in his name. Modern horse racing was born. The king's three-mile, six furlong Round Course, the first "modern" racecourse, was first run in 1666. It marked the start of Newmarket's reputation as a horse racing Mecca, something that has endured even through two world wars. John Berry, mayor of Newmarket, admitted that it was difficult to pinpoint exactly when racing began, although there were historical references before 1666. He said: "After the Restoration it meant 350 uninterrupted years of racing, during which the town of Newmarket has been the undisputed headquarters of racing." The three-mile Round Course is used for the Newmarket Town Plate. The race which, according to a law passed by King Charles II, must be run "for ever", has been staged every year since 1666. The two Newmarket courses of the Rowley Mile and the July Course - to which the Queen is a frequent visitor - are much better known. Newmarket is also home to the legendary racehorse Frankel, trained by the late Sir Henry Cecil. Events to mark the 350th anniversary include a tandem Spitfire flypast from the nearby Imperial War Museum at Duxford and the reading of a specially-commissioned poem. Amy Starkey, regional director, Jockey Club Racecourses East Region, said: "Newmarket's racing heritage is of international significance, and, with the world's spotlight upon us, we'll be marking this unique occasion with a series of special events and initiatives that involve 350 years of Newmarket making history."

ब्रिटिश घुड़दौड़ का मुख्यालय, न्यूमार्केट, अपनी 350वीं वर्षगांठ मना रहा है। जैसा कि यह इस सप्ताह के अंत में गिनीज फेस्टिवल की मेजबानी करता है, बीबीसी न्यूज उन कुछ महत्वपूर्ण क्षणों को देखता है जो विश्व प्रसिद्ध खेल स्थल ने पिछले कुछ वर्षों में देखे हैं।


Q&A: European elections in Scotland

Summary: The latest delay to Brexit means the UK could well take part in European Parliament elections, despite still officially being on course to leave the EU. How do these elections work in Scotland, and what might happen?

By Philip SimBBC Scotland political reporter How does it work? Plans are being put in place to hold elections on 23 May despite the government's hopes that they might not be necessary. An order has been laid in parliament setting the date of the election - but it could yet be called off if a Brexit deal is agreed before then. For European Parliament elections, Scotland is one big constituency, electing six MEPs. This has been the case since 1999, when the nation-wide constituency replaced a set of regional ones. What has changed over that time is the number of seats in Scotland, which dropped from eight to seven in 2004, and then from seven to six in 2009. These seats are elected using the same form of proportional representation as regional list seats at Holyrood - the d'Hondt method, since you asked. Parties put forward a list of candidates, and a certain number of them are elected based on the number of votes polled. This is designed to return a broader slate of representatives than the winner-takes-all first-past-the-post system used for Westminster elections; for example if a party wins roughly a third of the votes, they should get back roughly a third of the seats on offer. Obviously there are unique circumstances around this year's elections, which raise a series of questions. If the UK even takes part in them, will any of the MEPs elected take their seats? If they do, how will the seats be redistributed when (or indeed if) the UK does leave? All of these details remain up in the air. What happened last time out? The last set of European Parliament elections in Scotland, in 2014, saw the SNP and Labour hold two seats each, and the Conservatives and UKIP winning one apiece. The SNP returned two long-standing representatives - Ian Hudghton, the party's president, who won his seat in a by-election in 1998, and Alyn Smith, who entered the parliament in 2004. At the last poll, Scottish Labour's David Martin was returned as the UK's longest-serving MEP - and the second longest-serving in the entire parliament, having been first elected in 1987. The party's other seat from 2014 is currently vacant, after Catherine Stihler left to take up a new job with Brexit looming. The sole Scottish Tory elected in 2014 has also since quit. Having narrowly missed out on a Westminster seat in the 2017 snap election, Ian Duncan was given a peerage to become a Scotland Office minister in the Lords. His European Parliament seat was taken over by another peer, Nosheena Mobarik, after a brief row about who should get the post. The one party political change at the 2014 election was David Coburn taking UKIP Scotland's first seat, at the expense of the Lib Dems. He has since left the party he formerly led, and now sits as a member of the new Brexit Party. Is there a broader pattern? Looking at European elections in Scotland since 1999, despite the significant role played by the SNP, the pattern followed by the other parties is broadly the same as at UK-wide level. Both north and south of the border you can chart the rise of UKIP, the collapse of the Lib Dems after they went into coalition with the Conservatives, and Labour's zig-zagging fortunes under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband. The moves north of the border are slightly less pronounced - for example UKIP peaked at 27% of the vote UK-wide in 2014, while only making it to 10% in Scotland - but the pattern is the same. What none of this tells us - of course - is what might happen if there's a new election - given how things have changed in the intervening years. Do many people turn out to vote? Traditionally, it seems voters in Scotland and the UK as a whole haven't been particularly bothered about European elections. The average UK-wide turnout is roughly a third of the electorate, and in 1999 was actually less than a quarter. For many years, turnout in Scotland for these elections was slightly above the UK average - although not nearly as significantly as that in Northern Ireland, which has at times been almost double that elsewhere in the country. However since 1999, turnout in Scotland has been below the level in the UK as a whole. If you're wondering why, that's a complicated question without a clear answer - it could be down to the change to one big national constituency, or the addition of Scottish Parliament elections to the mix. How does this rate of turnout compare to other kinds of election? Since the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999, the average turnout for its elections has been 53%. For Westminster elections the figure is 64%, and for council votes just under 50%. The average turnout for the four European elections over this period is just 29.4%. So what's going to happen? This may be a familiar phrase around politics at the moment, but it's difficult to predict exactly what might happen. This is particularly the case in elections where turnout is low - which generally means those with strong opinions are more heavily represented in the result - and it's still difficult to say how many people might vote on May 23 (if there's an election). With Brexit a live issue, there could be more of a focus on these elections than there has ever been in the UK before, certainly since 1979. Some parties want to cast them as a sort of proxy referendum on what should happen next with Brexit, which might drive turnout up. However, others talk of boycotting the poll as a protest about how Brexit has panned out, and still more might question the point of voting for representatives to a parliament the UK is supposedly on course to be leaving. The result itself is also predictably, well, unpredictable. There's plenty of political campaigning going on at the moment, but none of it has specifically been about these elections - the last-minute nature of it all means most parties are only now settling their candidate lists. Mr Smith is hoping to stand again for the SNP, as are Mr Martin for Labour, Baroness Mobarik for the Tories and Mr Coburn for the Brexit Party. Work to decide who the other candidates might be is ongoing. In all, the elections are a bit like Brexit in miniature. Just about anything could happen; it's subject to change at a moment's notice; it could mean something or nothing; and ultimately, there's still a chance it could all get called off.

ब्रेक्सिट में नवीनतम देरी का मतलब है कि ब्रिटेन यूरोपीय संसद के चुनावों में अच्छी तरह से भाग ले सकता है, भले ही अभी भी आधिकारिक तौर पर यूरोपीय संघ छोड़ने की राह पर है। ये चुनाव स्कॉटलैंड में कैसे काम करते हैं, और क्या हो सकता है?


Russian cluster munitions: Now you see them, now you don't?

Summary: Just a few days ago Russian warplanes, allegedly using cluster munitions, attacked a US-backed Syrian opposition group based near al-Tanf - a small town close to the border with Iraq.

Jonathan MarcusDiplomatic correspondent@Diplo1on Twitter The Syrian Observatory for Human rights has released images from the location that appear to show the tail-section of a typical RBK-500 cluster bomb canister. And the Americans - to put it mildly - are far from happy. It is not just the use of the cluster munitions - which is controversial in itself. But it is also the target of the attack - a strike that the Russians have subsequently denied any responsibility for. Immediately after the Russian air strikes on 16 June, the US invoked a high-level agreement to exchange views on the incident via a videoconference. For one thing the Americans were clearly enraged that a militia group they support was hit. But the Pentagon insists that there were serious safety issues as well. US jets were diverted to the area after the initial strike. They tried to contact the Russian pilots and when they withdrew, more Russian jets appeared to carry out a second strike. US and Russian warplanes operating in close proximity carries obvious dangers. The Russians insist that the incident was caused by miscommunication on the part of the Americans. But to add an additional twist to the controversy, they have up to now shown little desire to prevent images of cluster munitions at their Syrian airfield from being distributed. However Russia Today recently re-edited a news package dealing with the visit of the Russian defence minister to Syria, to remove the frames that showed RBK-500s on the pylons of a warplane. But after a few hours they seemed to think better of it and - for whatever reason - re-instated the images. There has been evidence of the consistent use of cluster munitions by Russian warplanes since the beginning of its air campaign in Syria. Images of the RBK-500 family of weapons in particular have cropped up in several film reports carried by Russian television stations who have had reasonably unrestricted access to the base. Human rights campaigners such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have spoken out against the use of these weapons by the Russian air force in Syria since last year. And despite Russian denials, open source intelligence monitors including the Bellingcat web site and the Russia-based Conflict Investigation Team have analysed the imagery, proving incontrovertibly that the weapons are in regular use on Russian aircraft operating out of Russia's base in Syria. What are cluster munitions? Cluster munitions are a controversial weapon for two main reasons. They are essentially a canister filled with smaller bomblets or sub-munitions. When the canister opens after being released from the aircraft, the sub-munitions are spread over a large area. Arms campaigners insist that they can thus not discriminate between military and civilian targets. Furthermore many of the sub-munitions typically fail to explode, littering the battlefield long after the fighting has moved on, posing a risk to civilians and particularly children. That is why there have been long-standing efforts to ban them. A convention to this effect entered into force in August 2010 and to date some 119 countries have signed up, agreeing not just to destroy their stocks of these weapons but also to halt their manufacture. But not all countries have signed up. In particular two of the major military players, Russia and the United States, have so far refused to sign. The US State Department's website declares that "cluster munitions have demonstrated military utility. Their elimination from US stockpiles would put the lives of its soldiers and those of its coalition partners at risk". Indeed the US military claims that "cluster munitions can often result in much less collateral damage than unitary weapons, such as a larger bomb or larger artillery shell would cause, if used for the same mission". No doubt the Russians would take a similar view. It is clear that this incident near al-Tanf has further soured relations between Washington and Moscow, underlining once again that the purpose of Russia's air strikes continues to be far broader than simply striking so-called Islamic State. But quite why Russia apparently chose to bomb this particular US-backed group far to the south in Syria, near to where the Iraqi, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet, still remains something of a mystery.

कुछ दिन पहले ही रूसी युद्धक विमानों ने कथित रूप से क्लस्टर हथियारों का उपयोग करते हुए इराक की सीमा के करीब एक छोटे से शहर अल-तंफ के पास स्थित एक अमेरिकी समर्थित सीरियाई विपक्षी समूह पर हमला किया था।


David Cameron in Afghanistan at 'end of an era'

Summary: There are 2,700 British troops left in Afghanistan - most of them here at Camp Bastion - and hundreds of them gathered round the prime minister to hear him thank them one last time before they leave at the end of the year.

James LandaleDeputy political editor@BBCJLandaleon Twitter Camp Bastion was once a huge military city in the desert, a headquarters the size of Reading that served 137 British bases across Helmand. Now it is the only base left, a fraction of its former self and in a few weeks will be closed for good. When Tony Blair first came here in 2006, he said the fate of the world's security would be decided in this extraordinary piece of desert. But he was wrong. High price For while this campaign is ending, David Cameron is acutely aware that he is beginning another, in another desert in Iraq. So it is no surprise that the prime minister is being cautious. He refuses inducements to say it is mission accomplished. Instead he notes that Britain has paid a high price for its engagement in Afghanistan and talks of the vital work that had been done to rid the country of al-Qaeda and build up its army. "We have gone a long way to achieve that," he says. The one small glimmer of hope comes in the shape of the new government. Mr Cameron flew to Kabul to meet Ashraf Ghani, the new Afghan president who was sworn in this week after months of political uncertainty. The successor to President Karzai has struck a deal with the Americans to help with security once Nato troops leave. He is open to engaging with the Taliban but he is frank about the challenges he faces. 'No return' I asked him if he really was going to end corruption, make government function and build up the army and police and he replied: "We have to deliver. Either we deliver or we collapse. There is no alternative." Local British commanders told me the Afghan army was more than capable of maintaining security by itself and would cope when Nato combat troops leave at the end of December. I asked the prime minister, if Afghanistan did collapse, would British combat troops ever return? His reply left no room for doubt: "We are not going to send combat troops back to Afghanistan because we have trained up an effective Afghan army and Afghan national police force." So a military campaign in Afghanistan that has dominated and shaped British politics is coming to an end. The fight against terror has moved to a different battle ground. It was not too long ago that I used to go on prime ministerial trips to visit British troops in Baghdad and Basra. But David Cameron insists that simply isn't going to happen. For for 13 long years British prime ministers have been coming to Afghanistan to meet the troops they have sent to fight and the politicians they hope to support. But that era is coming to an end. For this is David Cameron's ninth visit here as prime minister and almost certainly his last before the election.

अफगानिस्तान में 2,700 ब्रिटिश सैनिक बचे हैं-उनमें से अधिकांश यहां कैंप बैशन में हैं-और उनमें से सैकड़ों साल के अंत में जाने से पहले आखिरी बार उन्हें धन्यवाद देने के लिए प्रधान मंत्री के आसपास जमा हुए।


Greece and the Eurogroup need a marriage counsellor

Summary: The thing about marriages that break down is they can take an unconscionable age either to be mended or to be formally ended - because of a combination of the evaporation of trust, the tendency to blame the other for failure and the difficulty in working out who gets what of the assets and liabilities.

Robert PestonEconomics editor So none of us should really have been surprised last night when Jeroen Dijssselbloem, finance minister of the Netherlands and chair of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, told us that discussions with Greece "covered a lot of ground but we didn't reach a joint conclusion". More troubling perhaps is that the Eurogroup's talks with Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's brainy and unusually charismatic member of their ilk, did not agree either on a basis for having further talks: they could not even reach a conclusion on how and what to negotiate about, such is the gulf between them about what's required to patch up the marriage, or to keep Greece in the eurozone. That said, it is not all gloom: they start apparently with a shared objective, which is that Greece should not leave the euro. The problem is that Greece wants debt reduction, an end to austerity and cancellation of the formal bailout agreement - and the rest of the Eurogroup wants none of this. If this was a marriage, friends of the couple - and disinterested outsiders - would be saying to each of them that negotiating face to face, on their own, is a disaster. That is the road to things being said which should never be said, can never be taken back, and can lead to irreparable damage to the relationship. So what would often happen now is that the two would go off and see a counsellor, who would get them to focus on what they really want - and perhaps salvage something from the wreckage. The problem is that there is no obvious neutral, impartial counsellor available for the Greeks and Berlin/Brussels. The natural candidate would have been the IMF, but Syriza sees the IMF as part of the problem, since it was part of the troika that imposed the bailout conditions on the country so loathed by the new government (and, opinion polls show, a majority of Greek people). But if there is no role for the IMF as counsellor and mediator, then what hope is there for the warring sides of reaching an accommodation. We should expect fireworks in coming days.

विवाहों के बारे में जो बात टूटती है वह यह है कि वे या तो सुधारने या औपचारिक रूप से समाप्त होने के लिए एक असहनीय उम्र ले सकते हैं-विश्वास के वाष्पीकरण के संयोजन के कारण, विफलता के लिए दूसरे को दोष देने की प्रवृत्ति और यह पता लगाने में कठिनाई कि संपत्ति और देनदारियों में से किसे क्या मिलता है।


Heatherwood Hospital judicial review sought by council

Summary: Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Council is to challenge a decision by the NHS to close a minor injuries unit at a hospital in Ascot.

It has applied for a judicial review of the local NHS Clinical Commissioning Group's decision to move the unit at Heatherwood Hospital to Bracknell. Under the plans, a stroke rehabilitation ward and a birthing centre will also close at the hospital. The birthing centre has been closed since 2011 due to staffing issues. All closures are due to be implemented in January 2014. In place of existing services, the surgical unit at Heatherwood Hospital will expand with new theatres expected to be ready for patients by 2015/16. Surplus land and buildings will be sold off to invest in the new facilities. Since the closures were announced, 3,420 people have signed up to online and paper petitions protesting against the plans.

रॉयल बरो ऑफ विंडसर एंड मेडनहेड काउंसिल एस्कॉट के एक अस्पताल में एक मामूली चोट इकाई को बंद करने के एनएचएस के फैसले को चुनौती देने वाली है।


US mid-terms: Twitter deletes anti-voting bots

Summary: Twitter has deleted an estimated 10,000 automated accounts that were posting messages discouraging people from taking part in next week's US mid-term elections.

Most of the accounts were posing as Democrats, the social media company said. They were taken down in late September and early October. Twitter was alerted to the accounts by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). The DCCC launched the effort this year following the party's failure to respond to widespread false and negative information on social media about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, Reuters reported. Twitter believes that the network of now-deleted accounts was run from the US, CNN reported. The DCCC is reported to be working with contractors to identify misinformation campaigns. Last month the state of California signed legislation that bans the use of undeclared bots during elections. The bill would make it illegal to use the bots to influence voting.

ट्विटर ने अनुमानित 10,000 स्वचालित खातों को हटा दिया है जो लोगों को अगले सप्ताह के अमेरिकी मध्यावधि चुनावों में भाग लेने से हतोत्साहित करने वाले संदेश पोस्ट कर रहे थे।


Man dies after M1 slip road crash in West Yorkshire

Summary: A man has died after being hit by a car on a motorway slip road in West Yorkshire.

The 36-year-old was struck by a white Volvo S80 at junction 44 of the M1 at 11:30 GMT on 28 February, police said. He was seriously injured and taken to hospital but died as a result of his injuries on 9 March. A West Yorkshire Police spokesman appealed for witnesses or anyone with dashcam footage of the crash to come forward.

वेस्ट यॉर्कशायर में मोटरवे स्लिप रोड पर एक कार की चपेट में आने से एक व्यक्ति की मौत हो गई है।


HIE signs £32m deal with construction firm Rok

Summary: Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) has signed a £32m contract with Rok to handle every stage of most of its building projects.

The national company constructs, refurbishes and maintains buildings. Rok's contract with HIE will run for four years and covers all work from the design of buildings through to their construction and completion. Its previous work for the enterprise agency includes building Inverness's £22m Centre for Health Science.

हाइलैंड्स एंड आइलैंड्स एंटरप्राइज (एच. आई. ई.) ने अपनी अधिकांश निर्माण परियोजनाओं के हर चरण को संभालने के लिए रॉक के साथ 32 मिलियन पाउंड के अनुबंध पर हस्ताक्षर किए हैं।


'Shopping can be so embarrassing for me'

Summary: Shopping can be frustrating at the best of times, but for many disabled people it comes with even more unnecessary challenges - narrow aisles, no step-free access, rushed shop assistants. But one businessman and wheelchair user has turned his frustrations into a national event - Purple Tuesday - in a bid to get hundreds of retailers to improve their customer experience and tap into the £249bn disabled customers spend each year.

By Johny CassidyBusiness reporter, BBC News For Holly Greader, from Cardiff, going shopping is like "tackling an obstacle course". Like many other 21-year-olds she's interested in fashion with a keen eye for a bargain, but as a wheelchair user she's often left frustrated by the barriers she faces on her local high street. "I've got money that I want to spend, but, due to the fact I can't even get into some shops with steps, they miss out on my cash," she says. Once she's in a shop, she often finds accessible changing rooms are filled with stock, tills are out of her reach, and many retailers are simply unaware of the needs of her and other disabled customers. "If staff thought a bit more about my needs and saw me as a proper person rather than a problem to deal with then I think that would make shopping a lot better for me," she says. It's a frustration felt by many and it translates into hard cash. According to the Department of Work and Pensions, of the estimated £249bn disabled people spend each year - the so-called Purple Pound - it is believed only about 10% of that is being realised by retailers. That's the trigger behind Purple Tuesday - a day to make customer-facing businesses in retail more aware of the challenges faced by disabled customers. It's something entrepreneur and wheelchair user Mike Adams created out of his own experience. "I used to get taken on my school 'Happy Bus' as we called it, from my special school in Sussex once a month to the nearby town. "We were taken into a shop for a special treat where we were able to spend any pocket money our parents had provided." He said the shop treated their arrival as a "special event", which he hated. "I very much felt like a disabled person, rather than a person first who happened to have a disability," he recalls. Mike says that while the retail experience for disabled people in 2018 is a lot better than when he was a child, he's also very clear that retailers still need to do more. "Shop staff are still unsure of engaging with me," he says. "This isn't through prejudice, but more a fear of offending me through the use of the wrong language or etiquette." What is the Purple Pound? Though communication needs some more work, he says physical access is also still an issue and, though many stores now have ramps or level floor access into the building, the crowded layouts inside make it very difficult to get around without causing damage. This is something Holly knows only too well. "Small aisles are virtually impossible to navigate," she says. "If I'm in a clothes shop and there's a sale on, the sale items are usually clumped together making it very hard for me to get to them. I have to ask a member of staff which is embarrassing for me." Mik Scarlet, a fellow wheelchair user, is a consultant who advises businesses about best practice for disabled access to their stores. He says there needs to be a two-pronged approach to access needs for disabled customers. "First you need physical access," he says. "Then you need staff trained to assist disabled people to shop as they wish" and points out wheelchair users make up only 10% of the disabled community. "The rest," he says, "can access the building but need assistance to shop. This is where a lot of businesses let shoppers down." Scarlet says describing clothes to visually impaired shoppers, learning some sign language or giving people with speech impairments time to ask questions would improve the experience. "Just giving good service all round makes a business accessible without spending fortunes on redesigning buildings," he says. Those with hidden disabilities can also find shopping a challenging experience, something the National Autistic Society agrees with. A survey it conducted found 64% of autistic people avoided the shops and "shockingly" 28% of autistic people have been asked to leave a public place for reasons associated with their autism. It says: "Like anyone else, autistic people and their families want to have the option of going to shops, whether to pick up the weekly shopping, buy a coffee or browse with a friend." Purple Tuesday is being supported by hundreds of retailers across the UK, including Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer, Asda and Argos and will involve thousands of members of staff getting some extra training and support to help them in future awareness. But some disabled people have questioned if there needs to be a day like this at all. Kathy Bole, chair of the Suffolk Coalition of Disabled People, is sceptical about the concept and worries that retailers will think they've done their bit by being involved. "It's all well and good having this day on 13 November, but what happens the day after that, and the day after that?" she says. Holding it on a Tuesday has also raised eyebrows. Diane Wehrle from retail consultancy, Springboard, says it's one of the least busiest shopping days of the week. "I don't want to have just one day where I might be comfortable going shopping. Disabled people need to be able to go shopping whenever we want," she says. Holly, in Cardiff, is also somewhat cynical about the day, but is hopeful retailers will learn from Purple Tuesday and that staff will instinctively be able to help in the future. "This should happen all the time and naturally - not just on a certain day or a certain time," she says. "As someone with a disability I just want to blend in rather than being forced to stand out and be different." For more Disability News, follow BBC Ouch on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to the weekly podcast.

खरीदारी सबसे अच्छे समय में निराशाजनक हो सकती है, लेकिन कई विकलांग लोगों के लिए यह और भी अधिक अनावश्यक चुनौतियों के साथ आती है-संकीर्ण गलियारे, कोई कदम-मुक्त पहुंच नहीं, जल्दबाजी में दुकान सहायक। लेकिन एक व्यवसायी और व्हीलचेयर उपयोगकर्ता ने अपनी हताशा को एक राष्ट्रीय कार्यक्रम-पर्पल मंगलवार-में बदल दिया है ताकि सैकड़ों खुदरा विक्रेता अपने ग्राहक अनुभव को बेहतर बना सकें और हर साल 249 बिलियन पाउंड के विकलांग ग्राहकों के खर्च का लाभ उठा सकें।


Article 50: Is Whitehall ready for Brexit?

Summary: If you walk down Whitehall in central London, you cannot escape reminders of wars fought and empires run from this small district on the north bank of the Thames. There are memorials to the fallen, statues of field marshals and even a Turkish cannon captured in some long-forgotten conflict.

James LandaleDiplomatic correspondent@BBCJLandaleon Twitter Yet the civil service that once gloried in its global administrative stretch is now the smallest it has been since World War Two. And with the government launching the British state on its greatest administrative, economic and legal reform since it committed the nation to total war in 1939, there is a simple question: is Whitehall up for Brexit? "It's been a scramble but the ducks are in a row," one Cabinet minister told me confidently. For the scale of the challenge is immense. Thousands of civil servants to be mobilised and retasked, thousands of laws and regulations to be rewritten or rejected and thousands of people trained and employed to do the many things currently carried out by the European Union. This endeavour is not only about the two years of initial negotiations with 27 EU member states that will shortly begin, it is also about the mammoth preparations the UK must make for leaving the EU whatever the outcome of the negotiations. "The challenge of Brexit has few, if any, parallels in its complexity," says Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary. "Its full implications and impact on the political, economic and social life of the country... will probably only become clear from the perspective of future decades." Perhaps the greatest challenge the civil service has faced was its utter lack of preparation for the British people voting out in the referendum last June. They were expressly forbidden from drawing up any plans by David Cameron's administration and have been playing catch up ever since. Ministers say the civil service has responded well, creating two new government departments from a standing start. The Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU) has something north of 320 staff, the Department for International Trade, several thousand. Both departments, along with the Foreign Office, have been given an extra £400m by the Treasury over the next four years to pay for their work on Brexit. There were some initial turf wars but officials now say there is greater singularity of purpose. Much work has been done analysing options, quantifying markets and assessing laws. Huge volumes of paper have been landing on DExEU desks looking at the impact of Brexit on every aspect of the economy. The aim is to allow David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, to draw up an a la carte menu for the prime minister, setting out potential options and costs so that she can navigate the negotiations ahead. For there is no doubt that these will be Theresa May's negotiations. The main negotiating team will include Mr Davis, his permanent secretary, Olly Robbins, and Sir Tim Barrow, the UK permanent representative to the EU. Below them will be civil servants from all affected government departments, summoned in to work on specific "chapters" of the negotiations, on everything from fish to agriculture to financial services. They will be the team dealing with the European Commission negotiators on an almost daily basis. Yet above them will be Mrs May who will have to drive the talks and make the big calls. But such is the size of the task that even the prime minister will struggle to retain her usual iron grip. One minister told me: "This is the first big test to see if she can delegate. This is so big that No 10 cannot control it, they cannot be on top of all the detail." Not all are so sanguine about the preparedness of Whitehall. The National Audit Office says in a new report that, while 1,000 new roles have been created in the civil service to deal with Brexit, a third remain unfilled and most of the new appointees have simply been transferred from other parts of government. And the Institute for Government warns that departments such as the Home Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are underfunded, cannot afford more staff and will be forced to drop non-Brexit work. Other insiders warn that, although much work has been done setting out options, less thought has been devoted to how the negotiations will progress themselves and how the government should organise itself. Officials talk of not knowing precisely for what they are preparing because Downing Street refuses to reveal its negotiating plans. The process, inevitably, will begin with negotiations about the negotiations. Who will talk to whom, about what and in what order? The UK government wants to discuss its divorce from the EU at the same time as its future trade relationship. The EU says the two issues must remain separate. Then will come the exit agreement itself. Much will be visceral and hard-fought. Protecting the rights of EU nationals in the UK and vice versa sounds easy as both sides say they want this to be resolved early on and want to keep the status quo. But the hugely complex detail will be hard to agree. Yet sorting that out might be easy compared to agreeing how much money, if any, the UK will owe the EU when it leaves. The government says nothing, the EU is hinting at £50bn. And all this is before any negotiations about any future trade arrangement between the UK and the EU and any transitional process that may be needed. While this will generate a huge amount of work for some in the civil service, many other officials will be focused instead on preparing the UK for leaving the EU come what may. Much of this will focus on Westminster. There is the Great Repeal Bill to be written and passed through Parliament to ensure that all EU law is transferred automatically into UK law the moment we leave. The aim is to ensure there is no legal chaos and to allow Parliament all the time it needs gradually to unstitch the UK from four decades of EU legislation. This will be a massive piece of legislative work that will require officials to re-examine huge swathes of UK law. They will have to decide which bits of EU law to return to Westminster and which bits are devolved, a tricky issue in light of Holyrood's demand for a second independence referendum. The Institute for Government warns there might be a need for further 15 separate Brexit Bills. In the short term, there are a huge number of separate parliamentary inquiries into Brexit - 55 in all - being carried out by various committees of MPs and peers. Ministers have to reply to each one within 60 days and officials are struggling to meet that deadline. Then there is the process of the UK re-establishing its status at the World Trade Organization (WTO), something that will be needed even if we get a new trade deal with the EU. The government hopes to transfer its current EU tariff rates into a new UK-specific schedule of trade commitments. But such a "copy and paste" arrangement will be complicated and will almost certainly face challenge from other WTO members. UK diplomats in Geneva, where the WTO is based, have a hard job of reassurance ahead of them. And then there is also the process of creating new organisations that will fill the gaps in our national life left as the EU tide ebbs from our shores. Officials will need to set up new customs and immigration systems, neither of which will be simple or easy. So, as the phoney war ends with the triggering of Article 50, Whitehall is facing perhaps its greatest challenge in a generation.

यदि आप मध्य लंदन के व्हाइटहॉल में चलते हैं, तो आप थेम्स के उत्तरी तट पर इस छोटे से जिले से लड़े गए युद्धों और साम्राज्यों की याद दिलाने से बच नहीं सकते हैं। यहाँ मारे गए लोगों के स्मारक, फील्ड मार्शल की मूर्तियाँ और यहाँ तक कि लंबे समय से भूले हुए संघर्ष में कैद एक तुर्की तोप भी है।


Nazi legacy: The troubled descendants

Summary: The names of Himmler, Goering, Goeth and Hoess still have the power to evoke the horrors of Nazi Germany, but what is it like to live with the legacy of those surnames, and is it ever possible to move on from the terrible crimes committed by your ancestors?

By Frances CroninBBC News When he was a child Rainer Hoess was shown a family heirloom. He remembers his mother lifting the heavy lid of the fireproof chest with a large swastika on the lid, revealing bundles of family photos. They featured his father as a young child playing with his brothers and sisters, in the garden of their grand family home. The photos show a pool with a slide and a sand pit - an idyllic family setting - but one that was separated from the gas chambers of Auschwitz by just a few yards. His grandfather Rudolf Hoess (not to be confused with Nazi deputy leader Rudolf Hess), was the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp. His father grew up in a villa adjoining the camp, where he and his siblings played with toys built by prisoners. It was where his grandmother told the children to wash the strawberries they picked because they smelled of ash from the concentration camp ovens. Rainer is haunted by the garden gate he spotted in the photos that went straight into the camp - he calls it the "gate to hell". "It's hard to explain the guilt," says Rainer, "even though there is no reason I should bear any guilt, I still bear it. I carry the guilt with me in my mind. "I'm ashamed too, of course, for what my family, my grandfather, did to thousands of other families. "So you ask yourself, they had to die. I'm alive. Why am I alive? To carry this guilt, this burden, to try to come to terms with it. "That must be the only reason I exist, to do what he should have done." His father never abandoned the ideology he grew up with and Rainer no longer has contact with him, as he attempts to cope with his family's guilt and shame. For Katrin Himmler, putting pen to paper was her way of coping with having Heinrich Himmler in her family. "It's a very heavy burden having someone like that in the family, so close. It's something that just keeps hanging over you." Himmler, key architect of the Holocaust, was her great-uncle, and her grandfather and his other brother were also in the Nazi party. She wrote The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History, in a quest to "bring something positive" to the name of Himmler. "I did my best to distance myself from it and to confront it critically. I no longer need to be ashamed of this family connection." She says the descendants of the Nazi war criminals seem to be caught between two extremes. "Most decide to cut themselves off entirely from their parents so that they can live their lives, so that the story doesn't destroy them. "Or they decide on loyalty and unconditional love and sweep all the negative things away." She says they all face the same question: "Can you really love them if you want to be honest and really know what they did or thought?" Katrin thought she had a good relationship with her father until she started to research into the family's past. Her father found it very hard to talk about it. "I could only understand how difficult it was for him when I realised how difficult it was for me to accept that my own grandmother was a Nazi. "I really loved her, I was fond of her, it was very difficult when I found her letters and learned that she maintained contact with the old Nazis and that she sent a package to a war criminal sentenced to death. It made me feel sick." Trying to find out exactly what happened in her family's past was hard for Monika Hertwig. She was a baby when her father Amon Goeth was tried and hanged for killing tens of thousands of Jews. Goeth was the sadistic commander of Plaszow concentration camp, but Monika was brought up by her mother as if the horrors had never happened. As a child she created a rose-tinted version of her father from family photos. "I had this image I created [that] the Jews in Plaszow and Amon were one family." But in her teens she questioned this view of her father and confronted her mother, who eventually admitted her father "may have killed a few Jews". When she repeatedly asked how many, her mother "became like a madwoman" and whipped her with an electric cable. It was the film Schindler's List that brought home the full horror of her father's crimes. Goeth was played by Ralph Fiennes and Monika says watching it "was like being struck". "I kept thinking this has to stop, at some point they have to stop shooting, because if it doesn't stop I'll go crazy right here in this theatre." She left the cinema suffering from shock. For Bettina Goering, the great-niece of Hitler's designated successor Hermann Goering, she felt she needed to take drastic action to deal with her family's legacy. Both she and her brother chose to be sterilised. "We both did it... so that there won't be any more Goerings," she explains. "When my brother had it done, he said to me 'I cut the line'." Disturbed by her likeness to her great-uncle, she left Germany more than 30 years ago and lives in a remote home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. "It's easier for me to deal with the past of my family from this great distance," she explains. While Bettina decided to travel far from the site of her relatives' crimes, Rainer Hoess decided he had to visit the heart of his family's shame - Auschwitz. As a child he was not allowed on school trips to Auschwitz because of his surname, but as an adult in his forties, he felt the need to face "the reality of the horror and the lies I've had all these years in my family". Seeing his father's childhood home he broke down and kept repeating the word "insanity". "It's insane what they built here at the expense of others and the gall to say it never happened." He could not speak when he saw the "gate to hell". In the visitors centre he encountered the raw emotion of descendants of camp victims. One young Israeli girl broke down as she told him his grandfather had exterminated her family - she could not believe he had chosen to face them. As Rainer spoke about his guilt and shame, a former Auschwitz prisoner at the back at the room asked if he could shake his hand. They embraced as Zvika told Rainer how he gives talks to young people, but tells them the relatives are not to blame as they were not there. For Rainer this was a major moment in dealing with the burden of his family's guilt. "To receive the approval of someone who survived those horrors and knows for sure that it wasn't you, that you didn't do it. "For the first time you don't feel fear or shame but happiness, joy, inner joy."

हिमलर, गोयरिंग, गोएथ और होएस के नाम अभी भी नाजी जर्मनी की भयावहता को जगाने की शक्ति रखते हैं, लेकिन उन उपनामों की विरासत के साथ रहना कैसा लगता है, और क्या आपके पूर्वजों द्वारा किए गए भयानक अपराधों से आगे बढ़ना कभी संभव है?


Summary: From the terrace of his winery near the baroque town of Caltagirone in south-eastern Sicily, Cesare Nicodemo surveys his fields of ripening vines - a glass of his finest spumante in hand.

By Manuela SaragosaBusiness reporter, BBC News How a winemaker is taking on Sicily's rural Mafia It's a warm July evening and the surrounding hills glow golden in the setting sun amid the chirruping of swallows and the song of cicadas. It should be an image of rural peace and contentment, but on closer inspection, all is not quite as it seems. Security cameras on high stilts dot the perimeter of his land. The metal gates leading into his winery remain securely shut throughout our interview, and inside the winery's main building, images from across his vineyard flicker on a bank of screens. This, he says, is what it takes to run a modern business in Sicily in 2017. Cesare has been threatened, his land has been repeatedly trespassed on, his buildings have been damaged and trees cut down or set alight. He's even been physically attacked. "The rural Mafia was trying to drive us off our land and destroy our business," he says between careful sips of wine. Sicilian struggle So who are the rural Mafia? Well, they're shepherds in the main - but some officials believe they're acting in cahoots with local lawyers, accountants and possibly even local politicians. Cesare believes the battle against them pits modern Italy against forces that want Sicily to remain rooted in the ways of the past. Driving out of his winery, he points out wooden stakes in the ground. "See that?" he says. "They're the signs of the rural Mafia" The stakes are dotted across the land around his vineyard. They're about a metre-long, distinctive for the strip of white cardboard wrapped round them. And they're a common sight in rural Sicily. Burnt out There are more about 100km (60 miles) away from Cesare's winery, in the foothills of Mount Etna, where Sebastiano Blanco is rebuilding a house on his plot of land. "What those stakes say is 'this land belongs to us'," Sebastiano says. "They, the rural Mafia, see all this land as their own, regardless of who has legal title to it." Like Cesare, he says there are local clans who believe that they, and not the Italian state, set the laws. Last year, Sebastiano's house was burnt down. The police and fire brigade said the fire was probably started by a homeless person who'd come inside to warm up. But Sebastiano thinks it's no coincidence that the fire happened soon after stakes appeared on his land. He believes the rural Mafia took revenge when he wouldn't hand over his land. He cuts a forlorn figure, kicking at the blackened rubble strewn across the charred ground of what were once his bedroom, with the early evening's purple sky visible through the exposed beams of his shattered roof. So, what exactly is it that the Mafia wants? Widespread fraud Giuseppe Antoci, president of Sicily's largest national park, Nebrodi, and co-ordinator of Federparchi Sicilia, the Federation of Sicilian National Parks, has been investigating the matter for the past few years. What he's uncovered is widespread fraud involving European Union farm and rural development funds. In an investigation conducted together with the deputy police commissioner Daniele Manganaro of the district of Messina, Mr Antoci found that local crime networks were falsely claiming land as their own - or presenting forged documents saying they had leased it - in order to make applications for EU subsidies. "We've seen an evolution of Mafia here," he says. "This is not the Mafia of the illegal drugs trade or the trafficking of arms. It takes a lot of work and research to commit this sort of fraud. We're not talking about the Mafia that existed 30 years ago, where the shepherd demanded a ransom or protection payment from a tradesman. "What we have here is a Mafia whose business is to commit fraud with EU funds. And to carry out this sort of fraud, you need more than just a shepherd. "What it requires is a network of people, people with schooling and education, people who know how the system works, because the first step in perpetrating this sort of fraud is to set up a company," says the police commissioner. New law Mr Antoci has tried to put a stop to it. He's set in motion a new law that states that anyone claiming EU subsidies on land must now show anti-Mafia certification. In Italy, this means complying with regulations that require that a company's shareholders and directors have no restrictions, limitations and bans according to anti-mafia regulations. Sceptics say this is hardly enough to stop the fraud from being repeated, pointing out that many will simply make use of proxies to make claims on their behalf. The European Union's anti-fraud office, Olaf, says it is reviewing 35,000 applications for agricultural subsidies in Italy covering some 500m euros in disbursements going back all the way to 2006. It has also started nine criminal proceedings, all of which involve a network of organised crime. But this 500m euros (£447m) that the EU is looking into is far less than the 3.5bn euros that Mr Antoci and the local police force say may have been fraudulently claimed. "I can tell you that there is a very strong commitment at the level of the EU as well as the level of national authorities to fight this kind of phenomenon," says Francesco Albore, the head of the Olaf unit investigating the matter. Another 2.2bn euros have been earmarked in EU and Italian government funds for rural and agricultural development in the six years to 2020. So what guarantees are there that all those funds will be properly distributed? Mr Albore says it's difficult to guarantee but points out the EU also demands guarantees that payments go to the correct recipients. Where this is not the case, he says, "payments can be stopped." Ambush Meanwhile, back in Sicily, Mr Antoci's efforts to fight this fraud have come at a high personal price. He's suffered death threats and now lives under permanent armed guard. Last year, as he was being driven home through the Nebrodi national park following a late night dinner, his car came under a volley of gunfire. If he's alive today, he says, it's only thanks to his armed guard and the fact that his car was being followed by that of the deputy police commissioner Daniele Manganaro who managed to scupper the attack by firing back. In the aftermath, there were attempts to discredit his investigation. Some Italian media reports questioned the authenticity of the attack, suggesting Mr Antoci and the local police force had made it up. But it's only made him more determined. "You know, afterwards, they found petrol bombs hidden in nearby bushes," Mr Antoci says. "They wanted me dead. But my first thought as I was being saved that night was for my family and for all the police officers who guard me - the sacrifices they have to make for this battle I've chosen to wage." Still, one businessman I speak to, who's been subjected to similar threats for not handing over land, complains that he's had little support from local Sicilian political authorities in his fight to protect his land. Which is why, back in the foothills of Mount Etna, Sebastiano Blanco wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: "Rural mafia - a protected species". "It's 2017," he says. "How can this be happening in our day and age?" He gestures at the smoking volcano, looming large in the distance over his land. "This is a Unesco world heritage site," he says. "But as long as we're intimidated this way, how can we possibly build on the economic value of our land and property?" In collaboration with Diego Gandolfo and Alessandro di Nunzio Listen to more from BBC World Service's Business Daily programme here

दक्षिण-पूर्वी सिसिली में बारोक शहर कैल्टागिरोन के पास अपनी वाइनरी की छत से, सिजेर निकोडेमो पकने वाली बेलों के अपने खेतों का सर्वेक्षण करते हैं-हाथ में अपने बेहतरीन स्पूमेंटे का एक गिलास।


China's gamble for global supremacy in era of Trump

Summary: At his inauguration last week President Trump reframed the American mission from leadership of a global rules-based system in the interests of all, to 'America first'. Meanwhile the leader of Communist China rebranded his prickly protectionist power as the defender of globalisation and shared values. So after week one in this upside down new world, how stands China's bid for global leadership?

Carrie GracieChina editor@BBCCarrieon Twitter 'Trump confirms socialism is the way' A week is just a week, but when it comes to strategic focus, China is on course. It's easier to look laser sharp when the competition is in disarray. Here the internal difficulties of the US and the European Union are helpful to China. As Chinese Foreign Ministry official Zhang Jun put it in a discussion with foreign journalists: "If people want to say China has taken a position of leadership, it's not because China suddenly thrust itself forward as a leader. It's because the original front-runners suddenly fell back and pushed China to the front." In the past week alone, a bitter row over the size of the crowd at the Trump inauguration, followed by street protests the next day, underlined the divisions of the world's superpower even at the very moment which was supposed to heal. For China's citizens, brought up to see street protests as dangerous, this was another symptom of dysfunction in a political system they've been taught to distrust. And next, an American president echoed Beijing's message that the mainstream American media can't be trusted. So it's been a week to put a spring in the step of China's communists, to shake off the inferiority complex of an autocratic political system, and even to advance the claim that China's system is superior. Among business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Xi talked the language of global togetherness, but back home his Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily, lost no time in declaring the bankruptcy of Western politics. "The emergence of capitalism's social crisis is the most updated evidence to show the superiority of socialism and Marxism," it said. This ideological inoculation is invaluable for Xi Jinping ahead of the vital Communist Party Congress which will clarify China's leadership line-up for the next five years. What's more, greater political confidence at home allows him to focus out. The inauguration of a billionaire celebrity promising to make America great again through building walls confirms the view of some in Beijing that the United States is in terminal decline, and that this is a moment of opportunity for China. President Xi's favourite slogans are the "China Dream" and the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese people". But it's all happening faster than his predecessors could have imagined. It's less than two decades since China fully entered a US-led world of global capitalism. When China joined the World Trade Organization, it complained bitterly about living under rules made by the US and its friends, while fully expecting to live under those rules for decades to come. But November's American presidential election finished what the 2008 financial crisis had begun: a shift in worldview. And now we are one week into the new leadership mission set out by President Xi at Davos. In comparison, Xi Jinping looks balanced A word about character. In China there are some who compare Mr Trump's character and leadership style with China's Chairman Mao. They point to the former's relentless tweeting as a new version of the latter's daily deluge of quotations. They note other similarities: the unpredictability, distrust of media, and overwhelming self-confidence. Some admire and some despise, but Donald Trump, they say, is a great disrupter in the Maoist mould. All of which is a discussion which takes some of the heat off President Xi at home. Until recently critics accused him of Maoist tendencies after his relentless concentration of titles and power and his frenetic media personality cult. But as China's citizens look out on a world of strongmen this week, their own president may seem comparatively sober, predictable and experienced: not too much the Caesar, nor too little, for a global leader in our age. China becomes the voice of globalisation Meanwhile Mr Xi's outward facing message, that China wants a world of fair trade and globalisation, got a boost this week from several quarters, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The Chinese-led development bank said it is set for expansion. It currently has nearly 60 members and now says another 25 are likely to join this year. Two years ago when the AIIB was launched, it became a symbol of the pulling power of China's money and nimble diplomacy when US allies lined up to join despite strong US opposition. This week, AIIB president Jin Liqun told journalists, it was China's turn to contribute to the world: "China needs to do something that can help it be recognised as a responsible leader." But in the long view, if this week is to be remembered as a tipping point towards Chinese power, it will not be because of anything announced in Beijing but because of what happens in Washington. One of President Trump's first acts in office was to sign an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact which the Obama administration had insisted would cement US leadership in Asia. "Protection will lead to greater strength", said Mr Trump. But in an open letter, outgoing US ambassadors in the region disagreed. "Walking away from TPP may be seen by future generations as the moment America chose to cede leadership to others in this part of the world and accept a diminished role." Certainly in response to the Trump announcement, US ally and TPP signatory Australia immediately said it hoped to recast the trade agreement without the US, and said China might be invited to join. China remains unchallenged in Asia... Asia is the key testing ground where the US stands in the way of China's ambitions. Since the end of World War Two, Washington has insisted that the US is in Asia for the good of all and invested decades in diplomacy and defence to maintain the liberal international order. On the campaign trail, Mr Trump expressed impatience with that investment. And having withdrawn from the TPP, the Trump administration will have to find a new way to nurture key allies and partners in the region and to reassure them that 'America first' does not mean everyone else last. But at the same moment, China's diplomats and bankers are stepping up their efforts and their focus does not waver. Last year, Beijing turned an international legal defeat over the South China Sea into a diplomatic triumph by charming and disarming the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. In the Trump era, it has other US allies in its sights. Only this week, Thailand confirmed funding for the purchase of a Chinese submarine. ... and not afraid to defend itself But on security, the week also saw a cloud on China's leadership horizon. The new White House spokesman Sean Spicer seemed to echo warnings to China from incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when he sketched out a position on the South China Sea. "We're going to make sure that we defend international territories from being taken over by one country," said Mr Spicer. It's not clear exactly what he meant or exactly what Mr Tillerson meant, but a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman immediately restated China's claim to sovereignty in the region, and insisted that Beijing would be resolute in defending its own rights and interests. If the Trump administration is to push back against China in the South China Sea it will need support from US allies who ask themselves whether Mr Trump has the strategic focus necessary for such a risky undertaking. China will naturally encourage those doubts given its preference for making domination of the South China Sea a fait accompli with as little fuss as possible. But there are many players, many unpredictable variables and many wrong moves in this game. One week into the new world order, China's leaders may feel some things are playing into their hand. But it will be many months, perhaps years, before they can judge whether China's global gamble is a win against Trump's America.

पिछले सप्ताह अपने उद्घाटन समारोह में राष्ट्रपति ट्रम्प ने सभी के हित में वैश्विक नियम-आधारित प्रणाली के नेतृत्व से अमेरिकी मिशन को 'अमेरिका प्रथम' में बदल दिया। इस बीच कम्युनिस्ट चीन के नेता ने वैश्वीकरण और साझा मूल्यों के रक्षक के रूप में अपनी कांटेदार संरक्षणवादी शक्ति को फिर से ब्रांड किया। तो इस उलटी नई दुनिया में पहले सप्ताह के बाद, वैश्विक नेतृत्व के लिए चीन की बोली कैसे खड़ी है?


Train services between Edinburgh and Aberdeen cancelled due to sinkhole

Summary: Train services between Aberdeen and Edinburgh have been suspended due to a sinkhole on the line north of Leuchars.

Network Rail said that ballast stones had subsided as a result and engineers need to assess the depth of the subsidence. ScotRail said services between Edinburgh and Perth, Kirkcaldy, and Glenrothes were unaffected. The rail operator said it had secured replacement buses running from Dundee and Aberdeen.

एबरडीन और एडिनबर्ग के बीच ट्रेन सेवाओं को ल्यूचर्स के उत्तर में एक सिंकहोल के कारण निलंबित कर दिया गया है।