Why is America pulling down the projects?

Summary: For decades some of the poorest people in the US have lived in subsidised housing developments often known as "projects". Many of these projects, however, are now being torn down and studies suggest only one in three residents find a home in the mixed-income developments built to replace them.

By Jasmine ColemanBBC News, Washington DC Windows are boarded up, chunks of plaster crumble from the walls and a collection of soft toys and flowers signifies the spot where a young man was recently killed. "Animals get better care and attention to housing conditions than this," says Phyllissa Bilal. "People can go to a Third World country and say they're shocked at the horrible conditions. But then they drive past people here every day who live in the same." Built in 1943, Barry Farm lies along one of the main commuting routes into the US capital. It is just over the Anacostia River from Washington Navy Yard, the US Navy's headquarters, and less than two miles (3km) from Capitol Hill. But while few would choose to bring up a family here, when Bilal and her husband were granted a home in 2011 she says it "meant everything". Their previous home had burned down several years earlier and a house on the Farms, as the estate is known, offered them - and their five, soon six, children - "a chance to get back on our feet". She has been proud to call the housing project home. "It's a community, it's almost like an extension of your family," she says. But now it is due for demolition. Neglected and plagued by crime, it is one of thousands of public housing projects across the US deemed to have failed, and slated to be replaced by mixed-income developments, of homes and shops. But during the process of destruction and reconstruction, Bilal does not know where her family will go. The construction of public housing became national policy in 1937 as part of President Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal - a series of social reforms introduced in response to the Great Depression. Ed Goetz, author of New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy, says many public housing projects built during this time were successful, well-built and well-managed. Some remain popular today. Plans to redevelop the country's first federally funded housing project for African Americans - Rosewood Court in Austin, Texas - have prompted a campaign to protect it by securing recognition of its historical importance. Public housing in the US Sources: HUD, ONS, Scottish government, NISRA, PHADA Although black and white people lived in separate buildings, the housing projects of the 1930s provided homes to working-class residents of all races. But this changed after World War Two when new low-interest mortgages helped white working-class people buy homes in the suburbs. A 1949 law also made public housing available only to people on the lowest incomes. So in time the projects began to house only the poorest minority communities. The US government had aimed to build one million homes in public housing projects by 1955, but by 1967 only 633,000 were in use. In an attempt to cut costs, many housing authorities also began skimping on materials and construction. From that point forward, the buildings tended to be neither well-made nor well maintained, says Goetz. By the early 1950s high-rise projects were being built that would soon become symbols of the problem with public housing. One was Pruitt-Igoe in St Louis, advertised as a paradise of "bright new buildings with spacious grounds" when it opened in 1954, but already by the mid-1970s crime-ridden, half-deserted and barely fit for habitation. Projects such as Pruitt-Igoe collapsed "badly and quickly", says Ed Goetz, leading popular consensus to view the whole public housing programme as a "spectacular failure". Crime is one yardstick by which that failure has been measured. One study by the US Department of Justice found the number of violent offences committed every year between 1986 and 1989 in housing projects in Washington DC was almost double that in nearby neighbourhoods - 41 crimes per 1,000 residents, compared to 23. Another study, carried out in 1994, found that nearly 30% of residents living in one public housing project in Chicago said a bullet had been shot into their home in the previous 12 months. Public housing officials came to see the problems associated with the projects as the "concentrated effects of poverty", says Goetz - problems that could be solved by creating mixed-income communities where public housing residents lived among wealthier neighbours. "At least that was the prevailing theory," says Goetz. "Other things were involved, including the revival of the real estate markets in central city areas." In 1992, housing officials began receiving government grants to tear down and replace the worst public housing complexes. Housing agencies had demolished or otherwise got rid of 285,000 homes by 2012 and replaced only about a sixth, according to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based research institute. Another 42,000 units have been lost since then, government figures suggest, leaving the volume of public housing at a level last seen in the 1970s. David Layfield, an affordable housing expert, says it is important to remember that many of the projects being demolished have been largely abandoned - with vacancy rates of up to 30% in some places - because they were so uninhabitable. "The reality is that public housing is being improved drastically - being made more durable and more energy efficient," he says. "And in many cases the developers have diversified the income levels." Amid stories of trees growing through the living rooms of crumbling properties and residents being attacked outside their homes, many residents of Barry Farm welcome a new start. However, some are determined to fight the development. "The process of transformation looks good on paper but across the country it has not worked and it is not going to work here," says Phyllissa Bilal. One of the main concerns is that current residents will not be able to return once the site is redeveloped. "This isn't the perfect place but at the same time this is still my home," says Paulette Matthews, who has lived at Barry Farm since 1995. "When you take people out of these places where are they going to end up?" Developers are required by law to help residents relocate during the demolition and construction process, and on paper they have a right to return to the redeveloped property - but on average, it has been estimated, only one in three do. People often "fall out of the system", says Goetz. "Much too little is done to make sure original residents really benefit." The housing authority in Washington DC says that all the public housing homes on Barry Farm will be replaced on a one-to-one basis and it has offered to help current residents move to alternative public housing projects, apply for government subsidies to pay for private rentals or try to buy their own home. History of Barry Farm But Paulette Matthews says local turf wars and the existence of gangs make moving between public housing projects dangerous. Meanwhile Phyllissa Bilal says people are "fearful… in a constant state of trauma" because of the high levels of homelessness they see around them. It is not a fate they want to share. By one estimate 3.5 million people in the US experience a period of homelessness in any given year. Another report has calculated that the US lacks 7.2 million affordable homes needed to house extremely low-income households. And even though hundreds of thousands of people are on waiting lists for public housing, the construction of additional publicly subsidised homes is seen as unlikely. "There are very different perspectives in the US on how you help people who are in poverty," says David Layfield, who set up a website to help people find available spaces. "There is a group of people who believe that you don't need to give a poor person anything, you just need to teach them how to work. "We have a dysfunctional government in the US with two very strong policy divides… How do you get them to agree that a basic resource such as housing is necessary?" Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox

दशकों से अमेरिका में कुछ सबसे गरीब लोग सब्सिडी वाले आवास विकास में रह रहे हैं जिन्हें अक्सर "परियोजनाओं" के रूप में जाना जाता है। हालाँकि, इनमें से कई परियोजनाओं को अब ध्वस्त किया जा रहा है और अध्ययनों से पता चलता है कि तीन में से केवल एक निवासी को मिश्रित-आय विकास में एक घर मिलता है जो उन्हें बदलने के लिए बनाया गया है।


Mrs Wilson: Still searching for the real Alexander Wilson

Summary: BBC One's Mrs Wilson - in which the actress Ruth Wilson plays her own grandmother - has shone an unforgiving light on the author, spy and bigamist Alexander Wilson. But not one living soul knows the whole truth about Alexander - my grandfather - except maybe inside MI5.

By Sam WilsonBBC News When the many strands of Alexander's story began to emerge a decade or so ago we joked that it would have to be made into a film one day. And we turned to my sister Ruth and said: "And you can play Granny!" And she did. In fact she went further, making our grandmother Alison the central character in the drama - which became a three-part series in the end, rather than a film. It may not have been the obvious choice to focus on Granny, but the decision was fine by me because the gruelling poverty and psychological torture Alison endured as a result of Alexander's actions and lies deserved equal billing with his exploits. At a preview screening last month, about 50 members of my extended family gathered to see the story brought to life. At the end we were left stunned to silence, many in tears, at what felt like the culmination of our shared past. But there is still more to discover. Warning: Spoilers below After he died in 1963, the fabrications Alexander - known as Alec - had built up during his 22-year "marriage" to Alison quickly collapsed. He was still married to his first wife - there had never been a divorce - making Alison, as well as Alec, a bigamist. The country manor he had promised they would inherit was a sham, along with his aristocratic lineage. It would eventually emerge that he had two further families, with seven children in all. His credentials as a cad and bounder seem beyond dispute. But they are disputed by his children - each one of whom remembers him as a devoted dad. "He was very kind, very generous, very loving," recalled Mike Shannon, Alec's son from his second marriage. But Mike was victim of the cruellest deception in the whole story. He was told at the age of nine that his father had been killed in the war, when in fact he had moved across London to set up home with my grandmother. He only found out the truth six decades later. What makes Alec's story so compelling is the maze of contradictions, where it is difficult to grasp what is truth and what is not, let alone what his motives were. "His invention was extraordinary, and how do you pick out truth from untruth, after all this time?" Mike told me. 'Stunned, sick and cold' We know some truths because of Alison's private memoir. It tells how she met the charismatic older man, a best-selling spy author, while working for MI6 in London in 1940, where he translated and she transcribed bugged telephone calls from London embassies. She fell deeply in love, got pregnant, and they married. But their life quickly spiralled into extreme poverty. He was first sacked, then imprisoned twice, and declared bankrupt. "Stunned, sick and cold with terror", she was left desperate for somewhere to live with two lice-ridden young boys. Even after his death, she was drawn into the deception, keeping her sons in the dark for decades about their father's other family. The other side of Alec's story has been pieced together by Prof Tim Crook, a journalist and academic who dug and scoured and prodded, tracking down the children from each of his four bigamous marriages, thereby helping to unite an extended family that was spread between Southampton and Edinburgh. In Mrs Wilson, the battle for the truth is personified by Alec's two spy handlers - Coleman, the woman who ran the MI6 office in London, and Shahbaz Karim from Lahore - an invented character, since there are few records from his time in India in the 1920s. Viewers are left trying to decipher how much of his story was devised by the secret services, just as we in the family are now. According to Coleman's version, Alec was the author of his own downfall. His fall from grace was the rightful punishment due to a pathological pretender. Karim, however, puts Alec's side of the story in Mrs Wilson. His sacking and subsequent ostracisation by MI6, his convictions for wearing false uniform and embezzlement, were all part of the cover that would allow him to get close to fascists in prison and other intelligence targets. This is what Alec told my grandmother in as many words. This might seem far-fetched. And why would we believe a word Alec said when deception came so easily to him? But we should remember that there are not just two possibilities - the hapless scapegoat, or the deluded fantasist - there is a whole host of possibilities in between. 'Most secret' letter And Prof Crook has unearthed several anomalies which are hard to explain, and may lend credence to Alec's version. Alec's dismissal from MI6 was apparently because he'd staged a fake burglary at his own flat. We know this because "C" himself (the chief of MI6) said so in a 1943 letter marked "most secret", which was released in 2013 following Prof Crook's first biography of Alexander Wilson. But there are no records of any inquiry or prosecution for this fraud, and Alison makes no mention of it in her memoir. While Alexander Wilson's output as an author is undisputed - he had more than 20 books published in the 1920s and 30s - his records at his main publisher have been lost. Nor is there any trace of his membership of the Author's Club in Whitehall. Could this be a "sanitisation" operation? The biggest unanswered questions surround the claim that Alec had faked his translations at MI6, concocting reports implying the Egyptian ambassador was running a spy ring apparently to benefit Nazi Germany. The spy ring was investigated by MI5, which eventually concluded (after Alec's sacking) that it did not exist and Alec's translations were fabricated. But historical context suggests his reports may have been credible. There is now plenty of evidence that some factions in Egypt were actively helping Nazi Germany during the El-Alamein campaign, on the promise of real Egyptian independence if Britain was defeated. And Egypt's ambassador in London, Nachat Pasha, was a known nationalist activist who plotted to overthrow the pro-British government in Cairo. MI5 files What nobody disputes is that Alec was a fervent patriot. He wrote many letters pleading to be allowed to serve in World War Two despite his injuries from the previous war. Perhaps the spy writer had detected espionage in the Egyptian conversations, and was only embellishing his translations to raise the alarm? In the 1943 letters between C and other spymasters they agreed that Alec should never be allowed to work in an official capacity again. It is quite possible that they also warned publishers to steer clear of him. His prolific writing career ground to a halt. That's why Alison - and her sons Nigel (my father) and Gordon - spent years destitute. To make such a sweeping order the MI5 evidence against Alec must have been strong - but it is still being withheld. It was not included in the partial release of files in 2013 for reasons of national security, leaving the family unable to form a rounded view. Personally, I'm dubious that the file would provide the exoneration that many of the Wilsons would welcome. But we'd still like the full picture. "As things stand our father has been left in limbo as unreliable and a public danger," my father says. "I think he was better than that, but if the files are released and prove otherwise, so be it. "That would be a better conclusion than the current stench of concealment." My dad is 74. Dennis, Alec's oldest surviving son, is 97. And Mike, the son from his second "marriage" who was told his father was killed in World War Two, died in 2010. Prof Crook has appealed again for the report to be released, 75 years on. As my dad says: "All we want is the truth." Mrs Wilson is available to watch on the BBC iPlayer for the next 29 days (from date of publication) Professor Tim Crook's biography of Alexander Wilson, The Secret Lives of a Secret Agent (Second Edition), is available via Kultura Press

बीबीसी वन की मिसेज विल्सन-जिसमें अभिनेत्री रूथ विल्सन ने अपनी दादी की भूमिका निभाई है-ने लेखक, जासूस और कट्टरपंथी अलेक्जेंडर विल्सन पर एक अक्षम्य प्रकाश डाला है। लेकिन एक भी जीवित आत्मा अलेक्जेंडर के बारे में पूरी सच्चाई नहीं जानती है-मेरे दादा-शायद एमआई5 के अंदर के अलावा।


States defer Guernsey Airport runway land decision

Summary: The States of Guernsey has decided to delay debate until February on the compulsory purchase of land to allow the airport runway project to go ahead.

The majority of members voted to defer the debate to allow more time for all the information to be considered. The £81m project involves work on the runway, safety area, taxiway, airfield lighting and other operational systems. The Public Services Department suggested delaying its own motion so another report could be prepared. Minister Bernard Flouquet said: "If members have concerns that they do not have enough information there is a risk that they will feel obliged to vote against it. "This would put back the whole project by many, many months - something we can ill afford given the age of the existing runway and the critical importance of our airport."

ग्वेर्नसे राज्यों ने हवाई अड्डे के रनवे परियोजना को आगे बढ़ाने की अनुमति देने के लिए भूमि की अनिवार्य खरीद पर फरवरी तक बहस में देरी करने का फैसला किया है।


The schoolboy sailors who died at Gallipoli

Summary: Much has rightly been written of the boy soldiers who were able to lie their way into serving and dying on the Western Front. But what about the schoolboy sailors deliberately sent to war, writes Andrew Thomson.

The 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings - one of the costliest phases of World War One - will be commemorated next month. It's estimated that both sides lost 130,000 dead as the Allies unsuccessfully battled the Ottoman army for control of the Dardanelles strait. Among the dead were two 15-year-old boys from Scotland - best friends Torquil MacLeod and Ronnie Faed, who served aboard the Royal Navy battleship HMS Goliath. Both Torquil and Ronnie came from privileged backgrounds. Born on 11 September 1899, Torquil was the second son of Roderick and Alice MacLeod of Cadboll. The childhood home he shared with his two brothers and sister was Invergordon Castle, a now demolished stately home. Ronnie Faed was born on 29 May 1899, the son of the Scottish artist James Faed Jr. Ronnie's family were constantly on the move because of his father's work commitments but they considered Galloway to be their home. Like most boys of their social class Torquil and Ronnie were sent off to preparatory boarding schools. They probably first met at the age of 12 when they both enrolled at the Royal Naval College at Osbourne on the Isle of Wight in the summer of 1912. The two cadets completed two years of officer training there before moving on to the college's senior campus at Dartmouth. Discipline was strict for the trainee officers. There was constant military drill and they had compulsory "cold plunge" washes at 6am every day. They were also given intensive lessons on engineering and other practical skills that would be of use for life aboard a Royal Navy ship. However, Torquil and Ronnie, along with the rest of their class-mates, also got plenty of opportunity to enjoy sports and were particularly encouraged to become strong swimmers. Their routine was turned upside down on 1 August 1914 when 434 cadets of the Dartmouth cadets aged between 14 and 16 were ordered to mobilise and join the Royal Navy's reserve fleet. One of the cadets Wolston Weld-Forester, who survived the war, later wrote that on hearing the news they all rushed towards the main college building, joyous at the thought of the adventures that lay ahead. "Already an excited crowd was surging through the grounds - some with mouths still full from the canteen, others clutching cricket pads and bats and yet others but half- dressed, with hair still dripping from the swimming baths..." But while mobilisation was a source of joy for the cadets it undoubtedly caused anxiety among their parents and for some their worst fears were soon realised. By mid-November at least 23 of the youngsters had been killed in action, mostly at the hands of German submariners. The first Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill was forced to defend the decision to send the boys to sea in the House of Commons. He explained to MPs: "It was felt that young officers of their age would be of great use on board His Majesty's ships, and that they would learn incomparably more of their profession in war than any educational establishment on shore could teach them." More on World War One Torquil, then 14, and Ronnie, 15, were assigned to HMS Goliath, a pre-dreadnought battleship that was brought out of retirement at the start of the war. Although obsolete compared with more modern vessels, "Golly" - as she was known to her crew - could still pack a considerable punch with her four 12-inch guns. The two boys were made midshipmen, the most junior rank for officers, who were commonly referred to as "snotties". They were to get their first taste of action not in the North Sea but in the distant waters of the Indian Ocean where HMS Goliath was sent to take part in operations against enemy warships operating out of the German East African colony in modern day Tanzania. However, at the end of 1914 HMS Goliath had to go for a lengthy refit at the Simon's Town naval base near Cape Town in South Africa. While there Ronnie wrote one of many letters home to his parents, telling them that he and his best friend Torquil had both enjoyed going to what he described as a few "bun worry" tea parties with local young ladies. But in March 1915 they were ordered to head to the Aegean for the start of the fateful Dardanelles campaign. HMS Goliath's role in the operation was to help cover the landing of Allied troops on the peninsula by bombarding Ottoman positions. Battle for Gallipoli: February 1915-January 1916 Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Gallipoli Resistance was fierce and the young boys would have seen the horrors of this campaign up close as they helped transfer wounded men, often nursing terrible injuries, off the beach and back to hospital ships. In his final letter home just days before his death, Ronnie wrote: "I am as well and happy as a fiddle - there is absolutely nothing to be anxious about - just you think of afterwards." The Ottoman high command had decided that action had to be taken to stop Royal Navy battleships from raining down destruction upon their forces. In foggy conditions and under cover of darkness on the night of 12-13 May 1915, the Turkish torpedo boat Muavenet-i Milliye managed to sneak through the narrows and opened fire, hitting HMS Goliath with three torpedoes. Ronnie and Torquil's old classmate 15-year-old Wolston Weld-Forester was woken up by the explosions and later described the following moments in his memoir From Dartmouth to the Dardanelles. "Inside the ship everything which was not secured was sliding about and bringing up against the bulkheads with a series of crashes. Crockery was smashing - boats falling out of their crutches - broken funnel guys swinging against the funnel casings. Wolston described the ship heeling over to about 20 degrees, before holding steady for a few seconds. "In the momentary lull the voice of one of our officers rang out steady and clear as at 'divisions' : 'Keep calm, men. Be British!'" The ship then started to heel rapidly again. Wolston jumped overboard. "Just before I struck the water my face hit the side of the ship. It was a horrid feeling sliding on my face down the slimy side, and a second later I splashed in with tremendous force, having dived about 30ft. "Just as I was rising to the surface again a heavy body came down on top of me. I fought clear and rose rather breathless and bruised. I swam about 50 yards away to get clear of the suction when the ship went down. Then, turning round and treading water I watched her last moments." There were just three-and-a-half minutes between the torpedoes striking and Goliath sinking. Wolston was one of the lucky ones. He was in the sea for a considerable time before rescuers found him, just as he was beginning to lose consciousness through cold and exhaustion. There were 570 others who were not so fortunate. They included Torquil and Ronnie. Torquil was aged 15 and eight months while Ronnie was just a few weeks away from his 16th birthday. Sub-lieutenant Philip van der Byl wrote this letter to Ronnie's parents: "I am sure it will be some comfort to you to hear how much we all loved your son in the Goliath, and how much we miss him. He was the life and soul of the gunroom, and always most cheerful and optimistic. His best friend was (Torquil) Macleod, who also was drowned. "They always used to go ashore together and buy curios for you. He really was a charming boy, loved by all who knew him. On the night we were sunk he was sleeping outside my cabin, and I saw him when I turned out. He had got his safety waistcoat on, and was going quietly up the ladder on to quarter-deck. He seemed as cheerful as usual, and perfectly cool. "When I got on to deck a few seconds later he was just going-over the port side with two other 'snotties.' That was the last I saw of him, and I shall never forget his cheery little face absolutely as full of confidence and calm assurance as it could be. He was picked up unconscious by one of the Euryaliis boats, and died on board, and was buried at sea early the same morning. Poor boy! I hoped and prayed he might have been saved, and we were all miserable when we heard he had gone... It is always the good who die young." Dr Jane Harrold, an archivist at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, has researched the stories of these youngest of British military personnel who went to war. "They were incredibly enthusiastic. This was going to be a great adventure. It was going to be over fairly quickly as most people thought." Perhaps the most surprising thing for a modern audience is the apparent lack of contemporary concern at teenagers being sent to war. "There seems to have been surprisingly little opposition and a great deal of acceptance, which is surprising considering that if you had wanted to fight in the trenches you would have had to have lied about your age if you were 15 and convince the recruiter that you were 18. "The public doesn't appear to have rallied very much against it. Not being fully commissioned officers, the parents of these 15-year-olds would still be paying fees for the training they were receiving while they were out at sea and putting their lives at risk. The only concession being that if your son died after say six months you'd get half of your fees rebated." But this aspect of the war remains relatively unknown even now. "I am almost as surprised about the lack of interest now as the lack of concern 100 years ago. It seems inexplicable to me that so little is known about this. This was officially sanctioning schoolboys to go into the thick of war at a time where you weren't allowing that to happen when it came to land warfare." The situation of the young cadets was particularly precarious as they were used to crew older Royal Navy vessels. "There was pressure in terms of manpower. But knowing that these boys were not fully trained they weren't going to take a risk by sending them to the more modern, more expensive and more valuable ships in the fleet. Naturally they got sent to not only the oldest and least efficient but perhaps also the most exposed and most vulnerable at the same time. So it was a double whammy in terms of the risk these boys were running." Ronnie's great nephew, Stuart Faed, is planning to travel out to Gallipoli for the 100th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Goliath. "I feel I have to go. My grandfather always talked about his brother and I think I am doing it for him. I suspect it will be very emotive. "I have a daughter who is 15, which is the same age as young Ronnie was when he died on board that ship. So I think that has probably brought it home to me just what a tender age he was when he lost his life for his country." Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

उन लड़कों सैनिकों के बारे में बहुत कुछ सही लिखा गया है जो पश्चिमी मोर्चे पर सेवा करने और मरने में सक्षम थे। लेकिन एंड्रयू थॉमसन लिखते हैं कि जानबूझकर युद्ध में भेजे गए स्कूली नाविकों के बारे में क्या?


IndyRef2: the questions Nicola Sturgeon faces

Summary: The Scottish government is to start work towards a second independence referendum in the wake of the UK voting to leave the EU, with the SNP launching a nationwide "listening exercise" to gauge views. Political reporter Philip Sim looks at the questions the party will seek to answer before taking Scotland back to the polls.

By Philip SimBBC Scotland News A second Scottish independence referendum is "on the table"; in fact Nicola Sturgeon says it's "highly likely". Her ministers have been set to work to draw up legislation to make this "option" a "deliverable" one. Note, for a start, that the language is all still hypothetical. So is it really going to happen? Before we find out the answer to that question, a whole host of others need to be addressed. The SNP leader is, obviously, dedicated to Scottish independence. But she has been hesitant to call for a second vote on the matter straight away, despite some members (and MPs) straining at the leash. This is because Ms Sturgeon doesn't just want to hold a second indyref - she wants to win one. The next poll will be a zero-sum game; lose, and it really is over for a generation. The first minister won't fire the starting gun on the race until she's absolutely sure she can win. And amidst the shockwaves of the UK's vote to leave the EU, how sure can a politician be about anything at the moment? Ms Sturgeon will be hoping that her 120,000 party members can bring back some answers about the mood of the nation from the doorsteps. Here are a selection of the other questions the first minister will be pondering before she starts down the road to indyref2. Legality Perhaps the biggest hurdle first - can Scotland even hold a referendum which would bring about independence? Winning the approval of Holyrood would not be the issue. The SNP may have lost their majority in May, but the cohort of pro-indy Greens mean there would be no issue gathering the support of enough MSPs - despite Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems all lining up in opposition. The problem is, the power to call a referendum is reserved to Westminster. The 2014 plebiscite was only held with the blessing of David Cameron; would Theresa May sign off on another constitutional wrangle? She initially made Scotland a high priority, visiting Ms Sturgeon in Edinburgh shortly after taking office, and has said she is "willing to listen to options". However, she warned that some of those mooted may be "impracticable". With a Brexit to negotiate while settling in at Number 10, it might seem unlikely that Ms May would want to add a further complication to her crowded plate. But blocking a referendum would look distinctly undemocratic - and even a Yes vote in an unauthorised referendum would make life uncomfortable for the new PM. Timing If there is to be a second independence referendum, when could or should it be held? Ms Sturgeon had hoped to have more time on her hands to build the case for independence anew. She wanted time to draw up a plan to win over No voters; on that front, Brexit might create an opportunity, but it also presents challenges. Once Westminster sets the wheels of leaving the EU in motion, the clock is ticking on a two-year window. Former first minister Alex Salmond has suggested that Scotland would need to win its independence before the Brexit negotiations are complete, so that Scotland could effectively just stay put in the EU while the UK leaves. Beyond the practical issues of setting up a referendum, when would the best time for the vote be? There are council elections scheduled for 2017 already, and it's still not entirely inconceivable that there could end up being a UK general election ahead of schedule too. Scottish voters have spent a relatively large amount of time in polling stations of late - they've had five trips there in the span of just over two years. The fatigue not just of the electorate but of the party activists who go out knocking on doors to "get out the vote" has been cited as a possible reason for referendum turnout shrinking from 85% in 2014 to 67% in 2016. Holding yet another vote too soon could be a risk. Alex Neil, a member of Ms Sturgeon's cabinet up until May, has warned against being "stampeded" into holding a "premature and unnecessarily risky" referendum. He says the SNP must wait until there has been a "decisive and evident shift in support for independence over a sustained period of time". The electorate Social media is already awash with anecdotes about avowed No voters casting off their unionist roots and pledging themselves for Yes. But as the frantic tangle of polls in advance of the EU referendum showed, gauging what the electorate really think on any issue is increasingly difficult. And in Scotland, the political picture is like an MC Escher painting. There are Remain vs Leave allegiances, reflected through the original indyref Yes vs No prism, and all of that on top of party loyalties. There are endless layers of nuance; for example, what of SNP members who voted Leave out of concern for trade deals like TTIP? Will they now abandon their Eurosceptic leanings for the overarching goal of independence? (Probably, yes). The same could be said for all Leave voters - there were a million of them, after all, and they need to be considered (and indeed represented) too. A million votes is not to be sniffed at, and could lock off a significant proportion of the electorate if the contest is characterised as one about EU membership. As SNP deputy leadership candidate Angus Robertson has pointed out, winning over No voters will be the key task going forward. The collapse in the price of oil, reflected in the GERS figures released in August, may have served to entrench some who voted No primarily to protect their bank balance. Even former SNP aides have gone so far as to say that the 2014 case for independence is "dead". And, again on turnout, what about voters who don't turn up to vote at all? When it came down to it, only 43,000 more people voted Remain in the EU referendum than voted Yes in 2014. Voter engagement appears to be shrinking; would the people come back the ballot box for indyref2? Practical issues Ms Sturgeon has a puzzle to solve over currency; it was an issue in 2014, and it's another of those problems she'd hoped to have more time to mull over. Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, a member of both Mr Salmond and Ms Sturgeon's economic advisory teams, has conceded that the proposal to share the pound with the UK "may have been a mistake". Mr Salmond similarly says the Yes side were "gazumped" on the matter. The first minister has has insisted that "the pound is Scotland's currency", but Mr Robertson has cautiously welcomed the idea of discussing a "Scottish pound", while fellow MP Joanna Cherry has suggested that Scotland might not want to be tied to the pound if it sinks post-Brexit. There could be an upside to this; Mr Stiglitz reckons a floating Scottish currency could boost the economy and potentially smooth Scotland's entry to the EU, by cutting its deficit - which is currently far higher than that required of new members. But would the EU let Scotland "join" (or Remain) without taking the Euro as its currency, another common rule for new members? On the flip side of the coin, would the UK allow independent Scotland to keep the pound? Furthermore, what of borders? This was a simpler matter in 2014, but would Brexit Britain want an open land border to an EU member state? Ms May has pledged that there will not be one in Northern Ireland, but she might well strike a less conciliatory note in the heat of a referendum battle. Would Scots vote to leave the UK if it meant embracing a new currency and putting up passport checkpoints at Gretna? And more fundamentally, would an independent Scotland even be allowed to stay in the EU? Some influential member states have already voiced opposition the idea - including France and significantly Spain, which would be loathe to see Catalonia follow a similar path. This is unprecedented territory, so it's hard to know what would be allowed, or who might have a veto - hence Ms Sturgeon's talks with EU leaders. The wider picture Despite the impression that Scotland and England are becoming two rather different places, what happens at Westminster is still going to have an enormous impact on Ms Sturgeon's decision-making. First and foremost, what is the Brexit deal going to look like? Beyond Theresa May's circular mantra of "Brexit means Brexit", we don't really know. We're yet to find out what the UK will look for at the negotiating table, far less what the likely settlement will be. This again is both bad and good for Ms Sturgeon - she can (and has) point out that the UK that Scotland voted to remain in in 2014 will be fundamentally changed. But at the same time, she can't really know what she's campaigning to leave until it is clearer what the post-Brexit UK is going to look like. Beyond these shores, what does Brexit mean for the European Union? The UK is far from the only country unhappy with the role of Brussels. Indeed, it's been suggested that the EU's leaders could be harsh in their negotiations with Britain primarily to discourage other states from eyeing exits of their own. Before you even consider the economic impact, other European leaders will surely be eyeing up special concessions in the vein of David Cameron's (failed) deal. Who can say for sure what the EU will look like in a few years' time? In effect, can Ms Sturgeon even be sure what Scotland would be leaving the UK to remain part of?

यूरोपीय संघ को छोड़ने के लिए ब्रिटेन के मतदान के मद्देनजर स्कॉटिश सरकार दूसरे स्वतंत्रता जनमत संग्रह की दिशा में काम शुरू करने वाली है, जिसमें एसएनपी विचारों का आकलन करने के लिए एक राष्ट्रव्यापी "सुनने की कवायद" शुरू कर रही है। राजनीतिक रिपोर्टर फिलिप सिम उन प्रश्नों को देखते हैं जो पार्टी स्कॉटलैंड को चुनाव में वापस ले जाने से पहले जवाब देना चाहेगी।


Fantasy fans head to Liverpool's Comic Con

Summary: Thousands of fantasy fans have descended on Liverpool for the city's Comic Con dressed as their favourite characters.

The weekend-long event celebrates films, gaming, comics, anime and TV. Celebrities attending the show at the Exhibition Centre include Flash Gordon's Sam J. Jones. David Soul, Paul Michael Glaser and Antonio Fargas from Starsky and Hutch are also there with their famous car - the bright red Ford Gran Torino. Chris Barrie and Danny John-Jules from Red Dwarf and Dr Who's Peter Davidson are also making guest appearances.

हजारों फंतासी प्रशंसक अपने पसंदीदा पात्रों के रूप में तैयार शहर के कॉमिक कॉन के लिए लिवरपूल में उतरे हैं।


Wrexham River Gwenfro pollution incident averted

Summary: Action has been taken to protect the environment following a river pollution incident at Wrexham, according to Natural Resources Wales (NRW).

It said officials worked through the night to prevent any impact on the River Gwenfro near Kingsmill. NRW has called on firms that store chemicals to ensure they have the right permits to avoid possible action. It said knowing which chemicals are stored where means it can ensure safe storage to prevent pollution incidents. All such firms in the River Dee Water Protection Zone - which stretches between Gwynedd and Wrexham - are required by law to obtain consent from NRW.

प्राकृतिक संसाधन वेल्स (एन. आर. डब्ल्यू.) के अनुसार, रेक्सम में नदी प्रदूषण की घटना के बाद पर्यावरण की रक्षा के लिए कार्रवाई की गई है।


French reforms: Why France is resisting Macron's push on pensions

Summary: The rolling transport strikes that crippled Paris through much of December and January have stopped, as empty pay packets post-Christmas took their toll. Instead there has been a change of tactic, with the more radical unions now planning sporadic days of action.

By Hugh SchofieldBBC News, Paris President Emmanuel Macron's bid to radically overhaul the post-war pension system reaches the National Assembly on Monday, ahead of a long period of debate. The moment is being marked by a strike on the Paris metro and further protests on Thursday. For the government, the pressure from the street has clearly diminished, even though the protests still draw tens of thousands. But the bigger difficulty is with the broader public - polls continue to show a majority in favour of the strikes, and rejecting the government's handling of the reform. The pensions issue has also served as a rallying-cry for all those with other grievances against President Macron. How Macron changed his plans The proposed law would radically overhaul the country's post-war pension system, merging the 42 existing private and public sector regimes into one, universal points-based system. Early retirement privileges enjoyed by some workers would come to an end. President Macron started off with one kind of reform, then as the protests grew he tried to convert it into another. The initial proposal, as sold to the public, was to create a fairer system by making everyone put into - and get out of - the same pension pot under the same rules. It was a "systemic" reform, to use the parlance. But somewhere en route it also became a "parametric" reform. In other words the government decided that now was also the moment to shuffle the numbers around in order to ensure the system's long-term financial survival. Somewhere in the change, the government decided it had to be written in that people were going to have to work for longer, retiring later in life. This may have been eminently sensible, but it was not what the government had advertised. And the unions - even the "moderate" ones - got cross. The number of French people who actually understand the pensions reform can probably be counted in fingers and toes. What on earth, for example, is the difference between an age de pivot (age of pivot) and an age d'équilibre (age of balance)? They both have something to do with the year you first claim your pension, and whether or not you get penalised or rewarded. The government says it backed down in response to the protests, abandoning the pivot age in favour of the latter. And yet no-one in France can figure out what that implies. Meanwhile, the government has set up a working group to report on ways of balancing out the current €14bn (£11.5bn; $15bn) pensions deficit. So what does any of it mean for France's workforce? Who are the winners and losers? Most public sector employees receive a lot of their pay in the form of bonuses. But teachers just get it straight. In the new universal pension system that's not good, because for the first time bonuses will be used in the calculation of who gets what. So teachers fear they will lose out. The government says it will boost teachers' salaries to compensate. But will it? And by how much? Farmers, mothers and the low-paid are all said to be future beneficiaries of the new system. Metro and train drivers will suffer, because they see the end of their special status. But some other special statuses will survive, like for the army and police. Lawyers will be allowed to keep their special caisse (fund) with its massive surplus - for a while. What happens now? The National Assembly will now prepare to take up the baton on this mother of all reforms. There are technically two laws going before parliament. One is an ordinary law, and one is an "organic" law. The far-left opposition have tabled 20,000 amendments in committee; the State Council has ruled that in several aspects the government's intention to resort to decrees to implement the reform needs clarification. Is it any wonder that the pension reforms have triggered the longest opposition movement since President Macron came to power? The key point is not that people necessarily dislike the idea of a universal points-based system. After all, as the president says, its much-vaunted prime characteristic - and what distinguishes it from the dreaded Anglo-Saxon systems - remains intact. It is and will be a single "share-out" system in which workers pay in and pensioners take out. There are no scary pension funds. No, the key point about the reform is that most people simply find it impossible to make head or tail of.

दिसंबर और जनवरी के अधिकांश समय में पेरिस को पंगु बनाने वाली परिवहन हड़तालें बंद हो गई हैं, क्योंकि क्रिसमस के बाद खाली वेतन पैकेटों ने अपना प्रभाव डाला है। इसके बजाय रणनीति में बदलाव आया है, और अधिक कट्टरपंथी संघ अब छिटपुट दिनों की कार्रवाई की योजना बना रहे हैं।


Viewpoint: Nicolas Sarkozy's G20 China visit

Summary: French President Nicolas Sarkozy is in Nanjing, China for a meeting of G20. The aim is to discuss global monetary policy reform, but one expert tells us that the controversial topic of the Chinese currency will likely creep onto the agenda.

Viewpoint by Tommy Xie Economist, OCBC Bank Nicolas Sarkozy has been criticising Chinese currency policy for the past few years. His concern is not unfounded as the yuan has depreciated 5.2% against the euro since the beginning of this year, even though it gained 0.5% against the US dollar during the same period. China's trading partners, including France, say the country has an export advantage because of a cheap currency. Not bowing However, the outcome of the meeting, at least as far as the yuan is concerned, is likely to be inconclusive. China will reiterate its stance to keep the yuan appreciation at its own pace. In fact, China's central bank has recently said that it wants to keep the currency stable at a reasonable level. This is also confirmed by the fact that a one-time revaluation has been excluded from China's policy toolkit. But the other thing that might prevent officials from letting the yuan appreciate faster is the Chinese habit of not bowing to international pressure. Its key trading partners, including the US, have been turning up that pressure in recent months. So a material impact from this round of G20 meeting on China's currency policy is not expected. Pay-off But global leaders' patience on yuan appreciation may bear fruit in the long run. It is in China's interest to allow its currency to appreciate on a gradual basis. Most analysts agree a rising yuan will play a role in curbing China's high inflation. A gradually appreciating yuan will also help China build its nascent offshore yuan market. It will give investors and exporters the incentive to accumulate the currency. We expect the US dollar to trend down against the yuan to 6.3500 this year from current 6.5600 level and decline further in 2011 by an annualised 3-5%. Increasing influence With the rising influence of the Chinese economy, some researchers say the yuan is a candidate for a new global reserve currency. Seeing as the yuan is not a fully convertible currency, this may still take at least five years. However, the yuan is already emerging as a trade settlement currency in North Asia and South East Asia. Total trade settled in yuan in 2010 surged to 506.3bn yuan, about 2.5% of China's total trade in 2010, from almost zero in 2009. The yuan will play a more important role in global trade settlement in the next few years. That, along with the development of the offshore yuan market, will likely lead to the yuan becoming a new global reserve currency at some stage. Tommy Xie works as an economist in Singapore for OCBC Bank. He focuses on Treasury Research & Strategy. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are not held by the BBC unless specifically stated. The material is for general information only and does not constitute investment, tax, legal or other form of advice. You should not rely on this information to make (or refrain from making) any decisions. Links to external sites are for information only and do not constitute endorsement. Always obtain independent, professional advice for your own particular situation.

फ्रांसीसी राष्ट्रपति निकोलस सरकोजी जी20 की एक बैठक के लिए चीन के नानजिंग में हैं। इसका उद्देश्य वैश्विक मौद्रिक नीति सुधार पर चर्चा करना है, लेकिन एक विशेषज्ञ हमें बताता है कि चीनी मुद्रा का विवादास्पद विषय संभवतः एजेंडे में शामिल हो जाएगा।


Could there be an effort to censure the PM?

Summary: Rather to its own surprise, Parliament is back in action...

Mark D'ArcyParliamentary correspondent But having been summoned back to scrutinise Brexit, there's not much Brexiting to scrutinise and MPs and peers will instead face a series of legislative chores, with only one major piece of legislation, the Domestic Abuse Bill, in play. There's a certain element of "pick up sticks and lay them straight" about the agenda in both houses, but keep an eye out for unscheduled business - urgent questions will certainly drop into the agenda, and later in the week it is possible there might be some further attempt by backbench Remainers to seize control of Commons business. Such manoeuvres seem unlikely while the Conservative conference is in play - it would look like a dirty trick to try and push something through while many ministers and Conservative MPs were hours away in Manchester, and it might invite retaliation against future opposition party conferences later. At the moment an attempt to no-confidence the government looks unlikely, on the argument that it would get in the way of securing a further Brexit postponement, but there could be some effort to censure the PM or demand key documents from the failed prorogation, or some move to head off an attempt to get round the Benn-Burt legislation which would otherwise force the PM to seek a postponement of Brexit. This is all very speculative, but all I can really point to is the sight of conspiratorial little huddles all around Parliament, and the enigmatic smiles that greet any attempt to find out what the different factions are up to. Elsewhere, it will be a pretty quiet week on the Committee Corridor. Since the Commons was not expected to be sitting, no meetings were arranged and the lead time for organising witnesses to come in has meant that few committee hearings could be arranged. The exception is the ever-industrious Public Accounts Committee, which maintains its Stakhanovite reputation with two important-looking sessions, first on special educational needs and then on the supply of medicines after Brexit. The other committee event to look out for is the hoped-for appearance by the prime minister before the Liaison Committee. This is the super-committee of all the select committee chairs, which questions the PM at least twice every parliamentary session. Boris Johnson was due to make his debut appearance a couple of weeks ago, but it was forestalled by prorogation that never was. The session, if it happens (and as I write there is no confirmation of any new date) will doubtless be dominated by Brexit, but there is one amusing sub-plot; what if the PM's chief adviser, Dominic Cummings turns up in his entourage? Mr Cummings, remember, has been held in contempt of Parliament for his refusal to appear before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which is probing the allegations about the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum. There's a strong view that it would be completely wrong for him to attend, while his contempt remains unpurged. So if he does turn up he would be ordered out - which could provide some interesting theatrics. I imagine murmured warnings via the usual back-channels will prevent such a scene, but at the moment there seems to be a bit of a taste for drama. Monday 30 September In the Commons (14:30) MPs will deal with any urgent questions or ministerial statements before moving on to a series of Northern Ireland-related debates. There is no departmental question time, because there has not been sufficient notice to put down questions - but there will have been by Tuesday, so the normal question times will then resume. The Northern Ireland debates, required under the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act, cover historical institutional abuse, victims' payment, human trafficking and gambling. On the Committee Corridor, Public Accounts (16:00) takes evidence on the support for children with special educational needs and disabilities, based on this report from the financial watchdog, the National Audit Office. The report concluded that while many pupils with SEND were receiving excellent support, many others were not - with serious consequences for their long-term prospects. In the Lords (14:30) questions to ministers include the former chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, Labour's Lord Harris of Haringey, asking when the additional 20,000 police officers promised by the prime minister will be deployed on duty. The day's legislative business starts with the second reading debate for the Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) Bill - this would implement the government's commitment to alter the length of time between revaluations of rateable values for business rates, bringing the next revaluation forward a year, to 2021, in England and Wales. It would also move the business rates revaluation cycle in England, from the present five-year cycle to a three-year cycle. Peers will then be asked to approve statutory instruments on Human Medicines and Medical Devices and Insolvency Regulations. Tuesday 1 October Ministerial question times resume in the Commons (11:30) with Chancellor Sajid Javid at the despatch box. The main listed business is a humdrum series of Brexit SIs, on common organisation of the markets in agricultural products, import and export licences and pesticides. So there will be plenty of scope for urgent questions and ministerial statements - although ministers might prefer to be making any big announcements at the Conservative conference in Manchester. Debates also resume in Westminster Hall, with Conservative ex-minister Sir Christopher Chope continuing his long running campaign on the rights of people living in mobile homes (09:30), Bob Seeley leading a debate on improving healthcare on the Isle of Wight (11:00) and the former Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable discusses social care funding (14:30). Other debates include Labour's Liz Kendall on child poverty in Leicester (16:00) and whipless ex-minister Margot James on adult learning and vocational skills training in Dudley (16:30). In the Lords (14:30) Big Issue founder and crossbench peer Lord Bird has a question about taking into account the interests of future generations at every level of government policy-making And then peers settle down to debate another mixed bag of orders and regulations. Wednesday 2 October Commons business opens (11:30) with international development questions, followed by prime minister's question time. This will probably not have Mr Johnson in the starring role, because he's expected to be addressing the Conservative Party conference. The assumption is that Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, who is First Secretary of State, will deputise. Next, Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards will present a Ten Minute Rule Bill to set up an advisory body on the share-out of government money across the UK. The day's legislation is the biggest single thing on the week's parliamentary agenda; the second reading debate for the Domestic Abuse Bill - which was the major casualty of the abortive prorogation of Parliament. It has now sprung back to life and can begin its legislative journey. The adjournment debate, led by Conservative MP Glyn Davies, is on the Welsh language. In Westminster Hall, subjects for debate include the role of community pharmacies (09:30); proposed changes to free movement of EU nationals (11:00); trophy hunting imports (14:30); progress on leasehold and commonhold reform (16:00) and performance of child maintenance service in recovering payments from absent parents (16:30). The Treasury Committee has an evidence session on the economic opportunities from decarbonisation and green finance (14:30. The Public Accounts Committee (also 14:30) quizzes the top civil servant at the Department of Health and Social Care, Sir Chris Wormald, ands a supporting cast of senior officials about the availability of medicines and other medical supplies after Brexit, based on this report from the National Audit Office In the Lords (15:00) questions to ministers include Lord Young of Cookham (the former transport secretary and later Leader of the Commons, Sir George Young) asking about the procedures followed in the dismissal of Sonia Khan as a special adviser - she was the media adviser to the chancellor, who was sacked and escorted out of Downing Street by an armed police officer. It was an incident that raised eyebrows in Whitehall. Then Brexit minister Lord Callanan bats for the government in the overwhelmingly Remainer upper house, in a general debate on the UK's withdrawal from the EU. Thursday 3 October MPs begin (09:30) with digital, culture, media and sport questions - a despatch box debut in her new role for Nicky Morgan, followed by a mini-question time, but probably quite an entertaining one, for Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, fresh from his combative statement to MPs on the prorogation issue. Tow general debates follow; first on a motion from the Lib Dem Vera Hobhouse on the rise of mental illness among women; then on the spending of the Ministry of Justice, led by the chair of the Justice Committee, Conservative Bob Neill. In Westminster Hall (13:30) the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, leads a debate on sanctions policy, following a report from his committee describing the current policy as "fragmented and incoherent." In the Lords (11:00) the normal half hour of questions to ministers is followed by debates on subjects raised by backbench peers from the crossbenches. The first is from former Chief Inspector of Prisons Lord Ramsbotham on reforming the management and treatment of offenders in prison and the community. Then former Bishop of Oxford Lord Harries of Pentregarth has a debate on ensuring that human rights are respected in any future trade deals with other countries. Neither House is expected to sit on Friday 4 October, but these days, you never know......

अपने आप को आश्चर्यचकित करने के बजाय, संसद फिर से सक्रिय हो गई है...


Saving the Amazon: Winning the war on deforestation

Summary: For years, the story told about the Amazon has been one of destruction - the world's largest rainforest, a region of amazing biodiversity, key to the fight against climate change, being remorselessly felled. But that is no longer the whole truth.

By Justin RowlattBBC News, Amazonia The Environment Agency special ops team gathered in a sultry town right on the southern edge of the Amazon. A group of officers, men and women, were relaxing in the shade of a majestic mango tree outside their offices. They were smoking and chatting. These aren't bureaucrats with crumpled suits and clipboards. In Brazil, environment agents wear military fatigues, with heavy black pistols slung casually on their thighs. These officers are, as I was to discover, soldiers on the front line in what Brazil regards as a war - a war to protect the Amazon rainforest. I'd been invited along on one of the agency's routine raids in the jungle. The idea was to target a gang of illegal loggers the satellite monitoring team had spotted working in the forest. On a map pinned to the wall, three commanders were working out strategies and logistics, just like a military operation. I was starting to feel distinctly anxious. "Are the loggers likely to be armed?" I asked. "Don't worry about guns," said the lead officer, Evandro Selva. "They're only likely to have hunting rifles. Nothing serious." Nothing serious? Moments later, we were in a pickup truck on our way to the airstrip and before I knew it, Evandro was urging me into the helicopter, its blades already scything through the humid air. I just had time to strap myself in before he gestured for take-off and the ground shrank away. The pilot banked the craft round and off we thudded towards our target. I was in Brazil to report on that rare thing, an environmental battle that is actually being won. For decades, pretty much the only story we've heard from the Amazon is about the remorseless tide of destruction sweeping through the forest. The received wisdom has always been that it is unstoppable. It is certainly true that the economic logic of deforestation is powerful - land in the Amazon is worth far more if the trees are cut down. But I was here to discover the remarkable progress Brazil has made in silencing the chainsaws. My journey was to take me across the southern Amazon, the area the Brazilians call "the arc of destruction" - a grey area between civilisation and one of the world's last true wildernesses. For years it was a vision of hell here. Vast fires swept through the forest while the chainsaws whined, and armoured tractors roared as they grubbed up the roots of the great Amazonian trees. We could see the fruits of all this labour from the window of the helicopter. We flew over vast open fields, some many kilometres square that have been carved out of the virgin forest just in the last decade or so. An hour into our flight, Evandro signalled that we were nearing the target. We were over what looked to me like pristine jungle when suddenly the carpet of trees gave way and a vast clearing opened up beneath us. Even I could tell they had been freshly cut. There were still some trees standing - tall fragile-looking Brazil nut trees - but on the ground were great rough mounds of branches and brush. I could see open scars in the red earth where the machines had gouged their passage. Over the headphones I could hear excited shouting in Portuguese. One of the officers pointed down. I saw a truck piled high with tree trunks and a tractor in front of it. Beside it were two, possibly three men, looking up at the helicopter. We wheeled around and pilot started to bring the helicopter down. It kicked up a storm of dust and dry leaves. The rotors seemed perilously close to the trees. I hung on tight. Then we were on the ground and running. The truck and tractor were still there but, of course, the culprits had fled. "They'll be back," Evandro said confidently. "We'll just hide here and wait for them." The three officers hid among the logs and branches, pistols in their hands. Cameraman Keith Morris and I also took cover. Meanwhile, the helicopter flew off in another flurry of leaves and red earth. Then all was silent. Just the five of us crouching silently in the hot sun, clouds of tiny bees swarming around our faces and hands. How can this possibly stop the onslaught, I thought to myself. In the decade between 1996 and 2005, 19,500 sq km (7,530 sq miles) of jungle was lost on average every single year. The comparison is overused, but that really is an area about the size of Wales or New Jersey each year. It reached a peak in 2004 when more than 27,000 sq km was lost. Then, in 2004 Brazil declared war - it said it would cut deforestation by 80% by 2020. Seven years later and it has almost reached its goal. The latest figures, released just weeks ago, show that 2011 had the lowest rates of deforestation since records began three decades ago - just over 6,200 sq km was cut. That's 78% down on 2004, still a lot of trees - an area the about the size of Devon, or Delaware - but a huge improvement. Of course, the Brazilian government cannot claim all the credit. On my journey across the arc of destruction I met a bizarre cast of characters all of whom are playing a role: But for the moment I was still hunched in the bushes, the first twinges of cramp in my leg and a river of sweat running down my back. We had been waiting half an hour when - just like in the movies - I heard a branch snap underfoot and suddenly the officers were up and running. Hope "Para ai! Para ai!" they shouted - "Stop right there!" I saw a man in a ragged T-shirt dive into the dirt, arms wide as if he had been crucified. Another hesitated on the edge of the forest. The officer in front of me fired his gun. The man turned and darted off into the trees. In all, the officers arrested five men and impounded three trucks and two tractors. I'd been nervous about confronting these guys but they seemed rather pathetic, smoking rollups in their scruffy clothes. The agents, however, seemed very content with their haul. We hitched a lift back to the helicopter sitting on top of a pile of huge tree trunks on the back of a truck the enforcement officers had seized from the loggers. As we bounced back through the jungle, I couldn't help feeling a great sense of hope. Of course, the fact that there is still an illegal logging operation like this just an hour's helicopter ride from a major Brazilian city shows that there is still huge pressure on the forest. But extraordinary as it sounds, it really does seem as if the war to stop the destruction of Amazon rainforest is being won. What's more this is happening before it is too late, because what most people don't realise is just how much of the forest is still standing. Satellite images confirm almost 80% of the Amazon is still intact. What an inspiring thought to begin the New Year, I thought, as the battered old truck coughed and wheezed its way along the dusty path between the towering trees. Crossing Continents is on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday, 5 January at 11:00 GMT and on Monday, 9 January at 20:30 GMT. Listen again via the BBC iPlayer or by downloading the podcast.

वर्षों से, अमेज़ॅन के बारे में बताई गई कहानी विनाश की रही है-दुनिया का सबसे बड़ा वर्षावन, अद्भुत जैव विविधता का क्षेत्र, जलवायु परिवर्तन के खिलाफ लड़ाई की कुंजी, बिना किसी अफसोस के नष्ट किया जा रहा है। लेकिन अब यह पूरी सच्चाई नहीं है।


How nose art and pin-ups boosted WWII USAAF troops' morale

Summary: In the heat of battle, high over enemy lines, America's heavy bombers flew into occupied Europe with the images of loved ones emblazoned on the sides of their planes as a reminder of home.

By Martin BarberBBC News, Norfolk The troops who were based in East Anglia during World War II said their lives became more bearable thanks to the talents of United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) artists who created highly personalised art for the nose cones of their aeroplanes. Don Allen was a nose artist and crew chief with the Fourth Fighter Group, based at Debden in Essex during the conflict. "Some of them wanted outright nudes - but I guess my Eagle Scout background gave me little bit of a puritan approach. I guess I tried to keep the necessary parts covered, even though I wanted to make a tease out of it." There were 200,000 US servicemen of the Eighth Air Force in England during the war. Based mostly in East Anglia the Mighty Eighth, as they were known, consisted of bomber and fighter groups. This weekend marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the USAAF heavy bombing offensives against Germany in World War II from USAAF Station 110 (RAF Polebrook) in Northamptonshire. 'A bit saucy' The nose art created by Mr Allen, and the memories of the American servicemen who flew in the planes he painted, have been captured in Nose Art and Pin-Ups - a documentary by former Norfolk-based film-maker Gail Downey. Capturing the veterans' memories on film became Ms Downey's own mission. "I was fascinated by the images the crews had chosen and what they meant to these young men facing deadly dangers every day. "I wanted to make sure their stories of life in East Anglia were preserved for future generations. If I didn't do this there would come a point when nobody was around to tell them, now I've got them recorded forever." From pin-ups such as Blondie, to girlfriends and wives such as Margie Darling, the aircrafts' nose art has become part of WWII history. The nose art united bomber crews and "gave them an identity". 'Something to pat' Examples of the work are now displayed at the 100th Bomb Group Memorial Museum at Thorpe Abbotts, near Diss, in south Norfolk. Museum curator Ron Batley said: "They did it to show it was their plane, their crew and painting their jackets with the same art showed they were a team. "It gave them an identity and it was something they could do to colour their lives - it was a great morale booster. "It was frowned upon by the top brass as it broke all the rules, but they tolerated it. You could say some of it was a bit saucy." Ms Downey spent five weeks travelling across America's East Coast to record the veterans' memories of service in East Anglia. "These were young men who faced death every day. They told me the artwork personalised their aircraft and gave them something 'to pat' before and after every mission," she said. "These men, now in their 90s, were once brave young men, who, in their own words, were just doing their job - but what a job they had to do." Supported by the USA-based Eighth Air Force Historical Society, Nose Art and Pin-Ups will be screened at veterans' reunions across America in October, with plans for it to be screened at independent cinemas throughout East Anglia.

युद्ध की गर्मी में, दुश्मन की सीमाओं के ऊपर, अमेरिका के भारी बमवर्षक अपने विमानों के किनारों पर प्रियजनों की छवियों के साथ कब्जे वाले यूरोप में घर की याद दिलाने के लिए उड़ गए।


Russia to spend $35bn on economy plan

Summary: The Russian government is to spend at least 2.34 trillion roubles ($35bn, £23bn) to try to stave off an economic crisis, following a collapse in oil prices and the value of the rouble.

The country has also been subject to economic sanctions by the West over its involvement in the crisis in Ukraine. Russia will spend most of the cash on federal loans, pensions and recapitalising its banks. The country will also make public spending cuts. Over the next three years most spending, apart military and social programmes, will be hit. Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund forecast that Russia's economy will contract by 3% this year and 1% in 2016. Measures Russia's government will spend about one trillion roubles to recapitalise banks through the issue of government bonds. The plan includes a separate scheme to help recapitalise some banks with 250bn roubles, while 300bn roubles will be provided to Vnesheconombank, the state development bank. There will be an extra 200bn roubles in state guarantees to finance investment projects, and regional governments will get 160bn roubles in federal loans. Meanwhile, the government has proposed public spending cuts of 10% this year and 5% over the next two years. The cuts have yet to be approved by the Russian parliament.

तेल की कीमतों में गिरावट और रुबल के मूल्य में गिरावट के बाद, रूसी सरकार को आर्थिक संकट से बचने के लिए कम से कम 2.34 खरब रुबल (35 अरब डॉलर, 23 अरब पाउंड) खर्च करने हैं।


Man in 90s dies after three-vehicle Newlyn road crash

Summary: A man in his 90s has died after a crash involving his car, a people carrier and a double-decker bus in Cornwall.

Devon and Cornwall Police said the man was in a red Nissan Micra with his wife when the crash happened on Chywoone Hill, Newlyn, at about 10:30 GMT on Thursday 12 November. He later died from his injuries. His wife, in her 80s, was recovering in hospital, police said. Police have appealed for witnesses and dashcam footage of the crash.

कॉर्नवॉल में अपनी कार, एक जन वाहक और एक डबल डेकर बस की दुर्घटना में 90 के दशक के एक व्यक्ति की मौत हो गई है।


Coronavirus: The race to stop the virus spread in Asia's 'biggest slum'

Summary: On 23 March, a 56-year-old man living in a vast, labyrinthine slum in the western Indian city of Mumbai went to see a doctor. He was feeling feverish and had a bad cough.

Soutik BiswasIndia correspondent The garment trader lived in Dharavi where more than half-a-million people are spread over 2.5 grubby sq km, which is less than a square mile. (Imagine a population larger than Manchester living in an area smaller than Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.) The slum was the inspiration for the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire film and city planners from all over the world have studied its throbbing economy and society. The local doctor examined the man and he left with a prescription for cough syrup and paracetamol. Three days later, the man turned up at the Sion Hospital close to home. His fever had climbed and the cough was getting worse. He said he had no travel history, so doctors gave him more cough syrup and sent him home once again. On 29 March, the man returned to the hospital with signs of respiratory distress. Doctors admitted him, and promptly sent swabs for the Covid-19 test. Three days later, the results arrived - he had tested positive. His condition deteriorated sharply and doctors tried to move him to a bigger hospital already treating Covid-19 patients. It was too late: he died that evening. That garment trader was the first Covid-19 patient from Dharavi. People living in this packed-to-the gills slum city suffer from all the common diseases afflicting Mumbai, one of the world's most densely-populated cities, from diarrhoea to malaria. But an outbreak of coronavirus in a place where social distancing is an oxymoron could easily turn into a grave public health emergency and overwhelm the city's stretched public health system. Nobody realises this more than the officials racing to track and contain the infection. Patient No 1 of Dharavi lived with his eight-member family - his wife, four daughters, and two sons - in a poky 420 sq ft one-room apartment in a low-rise slum tenement ringed by squalid shanties. "When we asked his family, they told us the man had no recent travel history and only went to the local mosque," Kiran Dighavkar, an assistant municipal commissioner in charge of the area, told me. But there was a twist in the tale. The man owned another apartment in the same complex. There he hosted five people who had reportedly arrived from Delhi after attending a conference in early March organised by Tablighi Jamaat, a religious movement that has followers in more than eight countries including Indonesia, Malaysia and the US. Hundreds of people who attended the religious event in the capital set off several Covid-19 clusters across the country and are now linked to some 650 cases across 14 states. The police believe the five men lived in the Dharavi apartment for two days - between 19 and 21 March- before they left for Kerala. "We are trying to trace these people," said Mr Dighavkar. "We have to find out the source of infection. How did this man get the infection and from whom? And we have to contain this infection by taking aggressive steps," he said. The family of the deceased trader insists he didn't have a passport, something that the police are sceptical of. So they are trying to dig out his mobile phone records to find out more about his movements. For the moment, the race is to ensure that the infection is contained. So 308 apartments and 80 shops in nine six-storey buildings in the complex where the trader lived have been completely sealed. Some 2,500 residents have been put under home quarantine. Food rations are being supplied. Health workers have disinfected the apartments with household bleach. Swabs of eight 'high-risk' occupants of the building - the trader's family and an acquaintance in the building - were sent for testing. More than 130 residents above the age of 60 and another 35 who are suffering from unrelated respiratory diseases are being closely watched for Covid 19 symptoms. Fearing an outbreak, authorities have taken over the 50-bed Sion Hospital, and quickly set up a 300-bed quarantine facility in a neighbouring sports complex. Protective gear has been given to doctors and nurses at the hospital. Yet all this may not be enough to prevent an outbreak. On Thursday, a 35-year-old doctor working with a private hospital and living in the slum tested positive for the virus. Municipality workers scrambled to isolate and seal 300 people living in the doctor's building. They have also identified 13 high-risk contacts in the building and sent their swabs for testing. The doctor told officials that two nurses in his hospital had tested positive for the virus. And at the weekend, a 30-year-old woman inside the same building complex as the trader, a 60-year-old man, who owns a metal fabrication shop and a 21-year-old male lab technician, tested positive. "We are still able to try to contain the infection of the gated slum colonies. But there are the slums outside, and if we get cases there, we can't isolate them at home, and have to send even the high-risk cases to the sports complex quarantine centre," says Mr Dighavkar. If that happens, the struggle to contain the infection will turn into a messy battle. The local hospital and makeshift quarantine will be easily overrun by cases. Testing will have to be stepped up and results will have to arrive in time. After the first two cases - the trader and the doctor - 21 samples were collected from the slum. After more than 48 hours, the results of only seven have come in. The state-run hospital where the testing is being done says it is swamped by samples. Another 23 samples were picked up after the two new cases and sent to the lab on Saturday. It is not clear when the results will arrive. "We are losing time because of the delay in results. It also delays shifting people who test positive into isolation," Virendra Mohite, the medical officer, who is leading the health teams in the slum, told me. These are some of the real challenges to contain a massive outbreak of a disease in a unique, otherwise self-contained slum, which is home to fishermen, potters, furniture makers, garment makers, tailors, accountants, waste recyclers and even some of Mumbai's edgiest rappers. Dharavi, writer Annie Zaidi once observed, is a place full of "stories of desperation and grit, initiative and very, very hard work." Now it faces its most daunting challenge of preventing a cataclysmic wave of contagion.

23 मार्च को, पश्चिमी भारतीय शहर मुंबई में एक विशाल, भूलभुलैया झुग्गी में रहने वाला एक 56 वर्षीय व्यक्ति डॉक्टर के पास गया। उसे बुखार आ रहा था और उसे खांसी हो रही थी।


Felixstowe port officers seize nine million cigarettes

Summary: Border staff have seized nine million cigarettes at Felixstowe docks, which would have avoided £2m in unpaid tax.

Border Force said the cargo arrived on Wednesday, 17 April with a false manifest. The cigarettes arrived at the port from Malaysia. The ship's documents claimed it was carrying plastic containers. Charlotte Mann, Border Force officer at Felixstowe, said: "You would struggle to find a more brazen smuggling attempt. "The container was full of cigarettes stacked floor to ceiling throughout," she added. The government agency said confiscated cigarettes were destroyed.

सीमा कर्मचारियों ने फेलिक्सस्टो डॉक्स में नौ मिलियन सिगरेट जब्त की हैं, जिससे 2 मिलियन पाउंड के अवैतनिक कर से बचा जा सकता था।


Bloodhound Diary: Building on the tides

Summary: A British team is developing a car that will be capable of reaching 1,000mph (1,610km/h). Powered by a rocket bolted to a Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine, the vehicle will mount an assault on the land speed record. The vehicle will be run on Hakskeen Pan in Northern Cape, South Africa, in 2015 and 2016. Wing Commander Andy Green, world land-speed record holder, is writing a diary for the BBC News website about his experiences working on the Bloodhound project and the team's efforts to inspire national interest in science and engineering.

By Andy GreenWorld Land Speed Record Holder It was exactly 30 years ago that Thrust 2 broke the World Land Speed Record - 633mph - and brought the record back to Britain. Until then, it seemed that the US had taken the record away from us for good, with all their new-fangled jet and rocket technology. Fortunately for Britain, a certain Richard Noble decided that we should get it back. When he set the record in 1983, he reminded us (and the rest of the world) that Britain was still a world-beater. Now, 30 years later, we're building something that would go past Thrust 2 like it's standing still - Bloodhound SSC, the world's first 1,000mph car. We have the best motorsports industry in the world (if you need proof, just have a look at where all the Formula 1 teams are based) and one of the best aerospace industries (see the RAF's world-class new Typhoon aircraft for further details). Bloodhound is going to be a product of both industries, with a bit of space technology thrown in. It's another world champion in the making. The car is being assembled at our Technical Centre in Bristol, and every time I see it, more parts have been added. It's also attracting attention from all over the globe: we've got more than 200 countries following it on the Bloodhound SSC website. One of the impressive things about the build is the precision involved. For example, we are aiming to assemble the fin to an accuracy of better than 1/12th of a degree. The whole car is being assembled with this kind of precision with the aid of a "surface table" - a super-flat, 7m-long slab of cast iron that weighs 10 tonnes. The accuracy of the build is regularly checked using a Hexagon laser, which will measure the position of any part of the car, in three dimensions, to one millionth of a metre. This has given us a bit of a problem, though, as the surface table (all 10 tonnes of it) keeps moving. After a lot of checking, it would appear that the surface table, and the whole of our Technical Centre, is actually floating. The ends of the table move up and down by a couple of millimetres or so with the tide. We're only a few hundred metres from the River Avon and the tide in the river makes the floor (and the surface table, and therefore our chassis) go up and down very slightly. If we're fitting new components, the first thing we have to do is re-level the chassis, so that the new bits go on perfectly straight. No-one said that building a 1,000mph car was going to be easy - but we didn't expect to be afloat while we were doing it! The last of the rear upper-chassis ribs have now been delivered. These are the big heavy ribs that will have to support the fin, while it's keeping the car straight. The fin has been stressed to take a 25kN (2.5 tonne) side load. I'm staggered by how much that is (we could lay the car on its side and park two normal road cars on the fin) and how little it is (at 1,000mph, the fin will develop 25kN of side load at a yaw angle of only 0.9 degrees). Sounds like my driving might have to be as accurate as the chassis build - although the 2.5 tonnes of correcting force should help. Don't forget that while the fin is doing its best to keep us pointy-end forwards, you can be right there (or at least your name can). If you want your name to travel at 1,000mph, then sign up here to our fin programme. There's more good news from the aerodynamics team this month. We've been worrying about something called the "yaw static margin" for a while now. The yaw static margin is the distance between the centre of gravity and the aerodynamic centre of the car. In other words, this is what keeps the car pointy-end forwards at high speeds. Ideally, we want the car to look like a dart, with the weight up front and big feathers at the back. We were worried that the static margin (a measure of how dart-like the car is) was smaller than we wanted. It turns out that we'd made two small errors in the calculation. One was in the aerodynamic model of the fin, which hadn't captured the latest changes to extend the trailing edge, so that made the centre of yaw move back a bit. The other change was finding an error in the (hugely complex) centre of gravity calculation, which moved it forward almost 300mm. That's a big gain, and suddenly the car is looking a lot more stable. This will make it easier to keep the car pointy-end forwards and, since that's my job as the driver, I'm delighted. While we're running the car on the desert, one of the key things we'll be checking is the wheel loads. These wheel loads are the result of the car's weight plus all the aerodynamic loads on the vehicle, so we're going to be checking all the aerodynamic forces (and pressures) very carefully. I've just seen a computer programme written by David Naumann, a PhD student at Swansea University. David's programme will compare the real-world pressures, from 120 pressure sensors on the car, with the predicted pressures from the Swansea computer model. This will allow us to check the car's performance very rapidly. We're planning to publish the programme before we start running, so that you can check the car's performance for yourself at home, every time we run. It will also let the 5,500 schools in our Education Programme follow the science as we test it. If your school hasn't signed up to our free programme yet, then join the Bloodhound Education Programme here. It's going to be quite an adventure. URT is now finishing off our carbon-fibre intake duct, which is essentially just a tube to feed air to the car's EJ200 jet engine. The intake was made in two halves and then bolted together to form the 2.2m-long tube. It's another part of the car that will see some big forces. At 1,000mph, the intake will be pressurised to 1.6 Bar (24lb per sq inch), which will try to force the two halves apart with a force of 290kN. That's 29 tonnes. Put another way, each bolt that holds the two halves together will take a load of 13.2kN, or 1.3 tonnes. So after parking two average-sized cars on the side of the fin, we could pick each of them up in turn with just one bolt from the intake. That would explain why the bolts cost about £20 each! If that wasn't enough to worry about, the intake has also been designed to withstand an engine "backfire" without collapsing. If the airflow into a jet engine breaks down, the jet can burp back the air it has been ingesting, known in the jet engine world as a "surge". This could briefly push the intake pressure up almost 3 Bar (44 psi), increasing the load on the intake to over 50 tonnes. That's the weight of four double-decker buses. The bad news is that this load would pretty much wreck the intake. The good news is that we're using the Typhoon's EJ200 engine, one of the world's best jet engines. In normal operation it just doesn't ever surge. I can floor the throttle pedal (which controls the jet engine) at a standstill, and the engine will give me as much power as possible, without any risk that it will surge. The intake doesn't have much to worry about - and neither do I.

एक ब्रिटिश टीम एक ऐसी कार विकसित कर रही है जो 1,000 मील प्रति घंटे (1,610 किमी/घंटा) तक पहुंचने में सक्षम होगी। एक यूरोफाइटर-टाइफून जेट इंजन को बोल्ट किए गए रॉकेट द्वारा संचालित, वाहन भूमि की गति के रिकॉर्ड पर हमला करेगा। वाहन 2015 और 2016 में उत्तरी केप, दक्षिण अफ्रीका में हक्सकीन पैन पर चलाया जाएगा। विंग कमांडर एंडी ग्रीन, विश्व भूमि-गति रिकॉर्ड धारक, ब्लडहाउंड परियोजना पर काम करने के अपने अनुभवों और विज्ञान और इंजीनियरिंग में राष्ट्रीय हित को प्रेरित करने के लिए टीम के प्रयासों के बारे में बीबीसी समाचार वेबसाइट के लिए एक डायरी लिख रहे हैं।


Soho police attack: Image of wanted man released

Summary: Police have released an image of a man wanted in connection to a "cowardly" attack on an officer who was hit in the neck with a glass bottle.

The officer was struck in the back of the neck as she arrested a man on Old Compton Street, Soho, shortly after pubs closed at 22:00 GMT on 4 November. Police were patrolling the area as bars closed for the last time before a four-week lockdown began. The Met Police said the officer was "thankfully not seriously harmed". PC Jack Greaves said: "This was both a cowardly and dangerous action that could have had much more serious consequences for the officer. "Police officers are just like you, we put ourselves in harm's way to protect you. "No officer should have to face being assaulted at work." The incident has been widely shared on social media, the force said.

पुलिस ने एक अधिकारी पर "कायरतापूर्ण" हमले के संबंध में वांछित एक व्यक्ति की तस्वीर जारी की है, जिसे कांच की बोतल से गर्दन में मारा गया था।


Internet speed tests for east Sutherland and Edderton

Summary: The Highlands is to be used as a test location for the development of lower cost technology to speed up internet access in rural areas.

The UK government has delayed the roll out of 2 megabits per second broadband because of a lack of funds. Broadband companies have met with politicians and civil servants in London to discuss ways of finding cheaper alternatives. East Sutherland and Edderton is among areas where test projects will run. Development agency Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) was involved in the London talks.

पहाड़ी इलाकों का उपयोग ग्रामीण क्षेत्रों में इंटरनेट की पहुंच में तेजी लाने के लिए कम लागत वाली प्रौद्योगिकी के विकास के लिए एक परीक्षण स्थान के रूप में किया जाना है।


Serbian scare on president's plane after coffee spill

Summary: A Serbian inquiry has found that the president's jet went into a sudden plunge on a flight to Rome last week when the co-pilot tried to mop up a coffee spill.

President Tomislav Nikolic and other passengers were reportedly thrown around the Falcon 50's cabin before the captain managed to regain control. Coffee was spilt on the control panel and the co-pilot mistakenly disengaged the autopilot when trying to mop it up. The jet later turned back to Belgrade. President Nikolic had been heading to Rome on 17 April for a meeting with Pope Francis. Co-pilot Bojan Zoric has been suspended after the inquiry found he had "accidentally activated the emergency switch". That caused the plane to plunge from a height of 34,000 feet (10,303m). One of the Falcon's three engines shut down because of the sudden drop in altitude, but it was quickly restarted.

एक सर्बियाई जांच में पाया गया है कि राष्ट्रपति का जेट पिछले हफ्ते रोम जाने वाली उड़ान में अचानक गिर गया था जब सह-पायलट ने कॉफी के रिसाव को साफ करने की कोशिश की थी।


Two 'migrants' found in inflatable boat in Channel

Summary: Two suspected migrants have been brought ashore at Dover after coastal patrols intercepted an inflatable boat in the Channel.

The vessel was spotted off the Kent coast near St Margaret's Bay. Both said they were Iranian nationals and were passed to immigration officials, the Home Office said. More than 100 migrants, the majority of whom claimed to be Iranian, crossed the Channel from northern France in November. Warnings have gone out from UK authorities about the dangers of taking small boats on the Dover-Calais route - the world's busiest shipping lane.

तटीय गश्ती दल द्वारा चैनल में एक हवा वाली नाव को रोके जाने के बाद दो संदिग्ध प्रवासियों को डोवर में तट पर लाया गया है।