Windrush generation: The dilemma of whether to accept an honour

Summary: Hundreds of workers aboard MV Empire Windrush arrived in Britain exactly 70 years ago, an anniversary that has an added significance following a scandal that culminated in the resignation of a home secretary.

By Winnie Agbonlahor & Valley FontaineBBC News, London When it began to emerge what had happened to the children of these Commonwealth citizens - being threatened with deportation despite living and working in the UK for decades - BBC Radio London presenter Eddie Nestor was faced with a difficult decision. At the time the scandal broke, Nestor - himself a child of immigrants from the Caribbean - had been told he was to be made a Member of the British Empire. Ultimately, he chose to accept the honour, believing it would help him raise more money for charity and validate his efforts "to encourage everyone, particularly people from a black, Asian and minority ethnic background, to be all they can be". But what have other black and ethnic minority people done when facing the same dilemma? For poet, writer and musician Benjamin Zephaniah, the answer to the question of whether he should accept an honour from the Queen was and remains an emphatic "no". Zephaniah, who grew up in Birmingham and is of Caribbean heritage, famously rejected his OBE in 2003 and says he feels "more determined" than ever about that decision in light of the scandal. Having been "writing against slavery, against Empire, against colonialism and against people controlling and ruling over other people all my life, how could I then put Empire, put slavery on the end of it?", he asks. "How could I do that and look my people in the face?" His view is echoed by hip hop artist and dancer Jonzi D, whose parents hailed from the former British colony of Grenada. He turned down an MBE in 2011. "The British Empire is nothing to be proud of as far as I'm concerned," he says. "It's been the result of murders and annihilations of whole communities all around the world for hundreds of years, so to have this badge that says I am part of the British Empire I think is an offence to all of the victims of the British Empire that are part of my ancestry." However, others believe a Queen's honour can help them to achieve meaningful things. Activist and author Dr Yvonne Thompson CBE, who moved to Britain from Guyana with her family when she was four, says that although the word "empire" made her "think", there is no point in "living in the past". Instead, she says she chose to move on and try to make the system "better from within". Six years ago, she was accepted on to the economy honours committee, which reviews nominations, and she believes her CBE helped her secure the role. She has made it her mission to increase the number of female and minority ethnic nominations and says: "I think I've made a difference." Ten percent of those on the most recent honours list were from ethnic minorities - something that was not the case when she arrived, she says. This sentiment is shared by activist Patrick Vernon, whose parents migrated to the UK from Jamaica in the 1950s. He believes his OBE has lent greater credibility to a petition he created calling on the government to grant an amnesty to anyone who arrived in the UK as a minor between 1948 and 1971, and thus helped to secure almost 180,000 signatures. Having a Queen's honour, Thompson believes, can open doors, although Zepheniah argues that "if that's what it takes to open a door then it's the wrong door you're going through". But such an honour isn't just for the person awarded it is also for his or her family, British soul master Jazzie B says. The founding father of British group Soul II Soul, whose parents are from Antigua and Barbuda, says he did feel a bit of a "sell-out" upon accepting his OBE in 2008. But he told the Telegraph that it signified "how far our family had come". The musician also felt the award signified vindication against those members of the "establishment" who "kept harassing" him in the past, and helps him "lubricate the situation" when he is "dealing with the authorities". Family reasons were also central to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's decision to accept her MBE in 2001. Alibhai-Brown, who was born in Uganda to Asian parents, says she begrudgingly took the honour to please her mother, who had been afraid the family would get deported because of her daughter's "big mouth". But the outspoken newspaper columnist decided to return the award two years later, partly in protest against the Iraq War and partly because she believes the honours system is "corrupt". Plus, the word empire "gets under" her skin, she says, and remaining an MBE would have meant accepting that "black and Asian people are still colonised in the mind". It's not just descendents of those from former British colonies who take issue with the word empire. Former chancellor of the exchequer Alistair Darling told the Public Administration Select Committee in 2012: "We do not have [an empire]. We are making someone a Commander of the British Empire and we are in no position to offer him such a command." Giving evidence to the same committee, George Reid, the Lord Lieutenant of Clackmannanshire, argued that the word empire was "inappropriate to a post-imperial UK", and said its use often posed problems for British businessmen abroad: "You go round the world and somebody says: 'So and so is a CBE. What does that stand for?' "The moment you say the word empire, you wish you did not have to. At one end you get the opium wars; at another you get some battle for independence. All over it smacks of arrogance." Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams says the word empire is "synonymous with imperialism, exploitation and slavery" to many people. He argues that the honour titles should be changed from "British Empire" to "British Excellence", which would allow the abbreviations to remain unchanged. "There's never been a specific reason given as to why it's remained the same," he says. A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: "Our honours system plays an important role in recognising people from all backgrounds who have contributed to public life. "The diversity of the honours system has improved greatly in recent years, with 10% of honours in the recent Queen's Birthday Honours list received by people from an ethnic minority background. "Nearly all honours are accepted, and a variety of reasons are given when they are not." Listen back to BBC Radio London's documentary 'My MBE and Me' on the BBC iPlayer.

एम. वी. एम्पायर विंडरश पर सवार सैकड़ों कर्मचारी ठीक 70 साल पहले ब्रिटेन पहुंचे थे, एक वर्षगांठ जिसका एक अतिरिक्त महत्व एक घोटाले के बाद है जो एक गृह सचिव के इस्तीफे में समाप्त हुआ।


Sri Lanka 'sink' LTTE ship

Summary: Military sources in Sri Lanka say the navy, backed by air force planes, has sunk a ship alleged to be carrying arms for the Tamil Tiger separatist rebels.

A navy spokesman said the ship was destroyed during an eight-hour battle near Kanthale after its crew refused to stop to allow the vessel to be searched. The spokesman said the ship had been intercepted about two-hundred kilometres off the east coast of Sri Lanka. Casualty figures remain unclear. LTTE military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan told bbcsinhala.com that he was yet to find out details of the incident. If confirmed, the attack will be the latest in a series of sea battles between the Tigers and Sri Lankan forces. Last week both sides agreed to take part in peace talks in the Norwegian capital, Oslo. On Saturday, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has told the BBC he was hoping for a political solution at next month's talks.

श्रीलंका में सैन्य सूत्रों का कहना है कि नौसेना ने वायु सेना के विमानों के समर्थन से तमिल टाइगर अलगाववादी विद्रोहियों के लिए हथियार ले जाने वाले एक जहाज को डुबो दिया है।


Auctioneer becomes a magnet for rare Harry Potter books

Summary: Like a store out of JK Rowling's imagination, rare artefacts brimming with magic keep turning up at the same auction house. It regularly trades in first editions of the debut Harry Potter book, fetching thousands for the seller, and offering literary history to the buyer. But how does the spell keep on being cast there?

There's an irony here. For a franchise centred around "he who must not be named", word of mouth has meant a tidy trade in Harry Potter books. Jim Spencer, who some say has more than a passing similarity to a certain wizard, is a book specialist at Hansons Auctioneers. He's had hundreds of emails from potential sellers since the business sold a first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in July 2019. Most people, it turns out, have to be let down gently. They're not quite sitting on the small fortune that only comes with the real McCoy. But he does promise to "check every single one" for the vital hallmarks. Derbyshire-based Hansons has sold eight first edition "Stones", with £68,000 the highest sum so far. Four were auctioned this month alone by the business which also has sales rooms in Banbury, London and Stafford. The first they ever sold originally belonged to Staffordshire Libraries, and was discovered when Mr Spencer was asked to value a private collection in the county, into which the library copy had found its way. He said he was "bowled over" to discover it was a genuine first edition and valued it between £20,000 and £30,000, because of its nice condition. But leading up to the auction about a year-and-a-half ago, "it was all very quiet". Some dealers advised him the book would struggle to sell at that price. "I have never been so nervous of risking my reputation," Mr Spencer said. But, once under the hammer, or wand, the book did indeed meet the guide price. And then the emails started. "It was absolutely crazy". Only 500 copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone were printed in the first run, with 300 going to libraries. They were all hardbacks, and it's these versions of the debut novel that fetch the big bucks. It's through them the character is first introduced to the reading world, on his way to becoming an internationally-recognised literary phenomenon beloved by children and adults alike. But hardbacks aren't the only ingredient here - there are a few other things on the checklist for a genuine, original print run, first edition. So, before you go scurrying to a shelf or a box in the attic, other signs you might have one include the following: A true first edition will feature the instruction "1 wand" repeated in a list Harry has. It accidentally appears twice. Take a look below... The problem is, it's also a mistake that appears in the first few printings, and even makes a comeback in some later editions. But don't despair. There are more tests to be done. One of the best indicators of a true first edition is the number sequence 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 on the copyright page, as seen here... Genuine copies, on the back cover, also have the titular word "philosopher's" misspelled. Spot the error below, along with the incorrect description of Hogwarts as a school of "wizardry and witchcraft". Any first-year Gryffindor can tell you it's actually the other way around. Occasionally, a deliberate fake is sent to be valued. Mr Spencer said he was once asked to inspect a book from Paris which "looked good at first", but turned out to be a first-issue paperback glued inside a fake hardback cover. He said it would probably have fooled a lot of collectors, but the print "didn't quite look right" when held up alongside a genuine first edition. Mr Spencer has produced this video guide to show what fakes can look like. First editions under the hammer July 2019 - A book bought for £1 by a 54-year-old office worker from Staffordshire to read on his holidays, before being put away in a cupboard, sold for £28,500. October 2019 - A book kept safe in a locked briefcase for 20 years exceeded the guide price and sold for £46,000. It had been given to the seller's family by an aunt. May 2020 - An edition rescued from a skip sold for £33,000. It was one of 10 Harry Potter first editions which once belonged to a school in Buckinghamshire. It was saved, along with some other Harry Potter titles, by a 65-year-old teacher who couldn't bear to see it go to landfill. October 2020 - A Philosopher's Stone bought by a British expat in Luxembourg to help teach his children English sold for £60,000. It was posted to Hansons in a tea towel, in reference to the magical house elves of the series. December 2020 - A well-worn copy which once belonged to a library in Edinburgh, the city where JK Rowling wrote the story, sold for £19,000. December 2020 - A book which had been one of 200 sold to private buyers in 1997 sold for £68,000. December 2020 - Another privately-owned book, which was discovered by a Blackpool family while they were having a clear-out, sold for £50,000. December 2020 - A badly-worn item, thought to have belonged to a library at some point, sold for £17,500. Most of the buyers and sellers have asked to remain anonymous, but Mr Spencer suspects some new owners could be "young tech millionaires" who have a love of the novels after growing up with them. Other books changing hands may have been bought as gifts, he said, or perhaps as investments in the hope their value rose further. And the auctions have attracted international interest, with the £60,000 copy from Luxembourg being sold to a buyer in California. One seller we do know about is 59-year-old Karen Rumsey from Blackpool, who discovered the book when her family helped her have a clear-out during lockdown, so she could move home. Hardback first edition copies of books two and three can also be valuable. While titles from later in the series, produced in greater numbers, are worth less unless they have the author's autograph, even unsigned copies of The Chamber of Secrets and The Prisoner of Azkaban could be worth up to £1,000, Mr Spencer said. He didn't, though, grow up a Potter fan and said he was teased over his disinterest by book store colleagues where he used to work, after studying literature at the University of Birmingham. "Funny how things have worked out," he said. Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, and sign up for local news updates direct to your phone. Related Internet Links Hansons Auctioneers

जे. के. रोलिंग की कल्पना से बाहर एक दुकान की तरह, जादू से भरी दुर्लभ कलाकृतियाँ उसी नीलामी घर में आती रहती हैं। यह नियमित रूप से पहली हैरी पॉटर पुस्तक के पहले संस्करणों में व्यापार करती है, विक्रेता के लिए हजारों कमाती है, और खरीदार को साहित्यिक इतिहास प्रदान करती है। लेकिन जादू वहाँ कैसे डाला जाता है?


Why do we value gold?

Summary: Mankind's attitude to gold is bizarre. Chemically, it is uninteresting - it barely reacts with any other element. Yet, of all the 118 elements in the periodic table, gold is the one we humans have always tended to choose to use as currency. Why?

By Justin RowlattBBC World Service Why not osmium or chromium, or helium, say - or maybe seaborgium? I'm not the first to ask the question, but I like to think I'm asking it in one of the most compelling locations possible - the extraordinary exhibition of pre-Columbian gold artefacts at the British Museum? That's where I meet Andrea Sella, a professor of chemistry at University College London, beside an exquisite breastplate of pure beaten gold. He pulls out a copy of the periodic table. "Some elements are pretty easy to dismiss," he tells me, gesturing to the right-hand side of the table. "Here you've got the noble gases and the halogens. A gas is never going to be much good as a currency. It isn't really going to be practical to carry around little phials of gas is it? "And then there's the fact that they are colourless. How on earth would you know what it is?" The two liquid elements (at everyday temperature and pressure) - mercury and bromine - would be impractical too. Both are also poisonous - not a good quality in something you plan to use as money. Similarly, we can cross out arsenic and several others. Sella now turns his attention to the left-hand side of the table. "We can rule out most of the elements here as well," he says confidently. "The alkaline metals and earths are just too reactive. Many people will remember from school dropping sodium or potassium into a dish of water. It fizzes around and goes pop - an explosive currency just isn't a good idea." A similar argument applies to another whole class of elements, the radioactive ones: you don't want your cash to give you cancer. Out go thorium, uranium and plutonium, along with a whole bestiary of synthetically-created elements - rutherfordium, seaborgium, ununpentium, einsteinium - which only ever exist momentarily as part of a lab experiment, before radioactively decomposing. Then there's the group called "rare earths", most of which are actually less rare than gold. Unfortunately, they are chemically hard to distinguish from each other, so you would never know what you had in your pocket. This leaves us with the middle area of the periodic table, the "transition" and "post-transition" metals. This group of 49 elements includes some familiar names - iron, aluminium, copper, lead, silver. But examine them in detail and you realise almost all have serious drawbacks. We've got some very tough and durable elements on the left-hand side - titanium and zirconium, for example. The problem is they are very hard to smelt. You need to get your furnace up into the region of 1,000C before you can begin to extract these metals from their ores. That kind of specialist equipment wasn't available to ancient man. Aluminium is also hard to extract, and it's just too flimsy for coinage. Most of the others in the group aren't stable - they corrode if exposed to water or oxidise in the air. Take iron. In theory it looks quite a good prospect for currency. It is attractive and polishes up to a lovely sheen. The problem is rust: unless you keep it completely dry it is liable to corrode away. "A self-debasing currency is clearly not a good idea," says Sella. We can rule out lead and copper on the same basis. Both are liable to corrosion. Societies have made both into money but the currencies did not last, literally. So, what's left? Of the 118 elements we are now down to just eight contenders: platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, osmium and ruthenium, along with the old familiars, gold and silver. These are known as the noble metals, "noble" because they stand apart, barely reacting with the other elements. They are also all pretty rare, another important criterion for a currency. Even if iron didn't rust, it wouldn't make a good basis for money because there's just too much of it around. You would end up having to carry some very big coins about. With all the noble metals except silver and gold, you have the opposite problem. They are so rare that you would have to cast some very tiny coins, which you might easily lose. They are also very hard to extract. The melting point of platinum is 1,768C. That leaves just two elements - silver and gold. Both are scarce but not impossibly rare. Both also have a relatively low melting point, and are therefore easy to turn into coins, ingots or jewellery. Silver tarnishes - it reacts with minute amounts of sulphur in the air. That's why we place particular value on gold. It turns out then, that the reason gold is precious is precisely that it is so chemically uninteresting. Gold's relative inertness means you can create an elaborate golden jaguar and be confident that 1,000 years later it can be found in a museum display case in central London, still in pristine condition. So what does this process of elemental elimination tell us about what makes a good currency? First off, it doesn't have to have any intrinsic value. A currency only has value because we, as a society, decide that it does. As we've seen, it also needs to be stable, portable and non-toxic. And it needs to be fairly rare - you might be surprised just how little gold there is in the world. If you were to collect together every earring, every gold sovereign, the tiny traces gold in every computer chip, every pre-Columbian statuette, every wedding ring and melt it down, it's guesstimated that you'd be left with just one 20-metre cube, or thereabouts. But scarcity and stability aren't the whole story. Gold has one other quality that makes it the stand-out contender for currency in the periodic table. Gold is... golden. All the other metals in the periodic table are silvery-coloured except for copper - and as we've already seen, copper corrodes, turning green when exposed to moist air. That makes gold very distinctive. "That's the other secret of gold's success as a currency," says Sella. "Gold is unbelievably beautiful." But how come no-one actually uses gold as a currency any more? The seminal moment came in 1973, when Richard Nixon decided to sever the US dollar's tie to gold. Since then, every major currency has been backed by no more than legal "fiat" - the law of the land says you must accept it as payment. Nixon made his decision for the simple reason that the US was running out of the necessary gold to back all the dollars it had printed. And here lies the problem with gold. Its supply bears no relation to the needs of the economy. The supply of gold depends on what can be mined. In the 16th Century, the discovery of South America and its vast gold deposits led to an enormous fall in the value of gold - and therefore an enormous increase in the price of everything else. Since then, the problem has typically been the opposite - the supply of gold has been too rigid. For example, many countries escaped the Great Depression in the 1930s by unhitching their currencies from the Gold Standard. Doing so freed them up to print more money and reflate their economies. The demand for gold can vary wildly - and with a fixed supply, that can lead to equally wild swings in its price. Most recently for example, the price has gone from $260 per troy ounce in 2001, to peak at $1,921.15 in September 2011, before falling back to $1,230 currently. That is hardly the behaviour of a stable store of value. So, to paraphrase Churchill, out of all the elements, gold makes the worst possible currency. Apart from all the others. Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook

सोने के प्रति मानव जाति का दृष्टिकोण विचित्र है। रासायनिक रूप से, यह रुचिहीन है-यह मुश्किल से किसी अन्य तत्व के साथ प्रतिक्रिया करता है। फिर भी, आवर्त सारणी के सभी 118 तत्वों में से, सोना वह है जिसे हम मनुष्यों ने हमेशा मुद्रा के रूप में उपयोग करने के लिए चुना है। क्यों?


Coronavirus: Man accused of spitting at two ambulance workers

Summary: A man has been accused of spitting at two ambulance workers and threatening to cough in their faces as he referenced coronavirus.

Steven Roberts, from Skipton, North Yorkshire, is charged with two counts of assaulting an emergency worker. He was inside an ambulance on Broughton Road when he was arrested on Sunday evening, police said. The 18-year-old has been released on bail and due to appear at Skipton Magistrates' Court on 22 May. Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to yorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk.

एक व्यक्ति पर दो एम्बुलेंस कर्मचारियों पर थूकने और उनके चेहरे पर खांसने की धमकी देने का आरोप लगाया गया है क्योंकि उसने कोरोनावायरस का उल्लेख किया था।


Are fuel prices in Northern Ireland likely to keep on rising?

Summary: "It's awful - I used to fill up for £40 a week. Now a fill-up is £75. People can't hold out to it any longer. There has to be something done about it. There's no such thing as a drive on a Sunday afternoon now."

By Barbara CollinsBBC News The words of one Belfast motorist who was paying about £1.41 a litre when I met him on a Belfast forecourt. Northern Ireland now has the most expensive petrol and diesel prices in the whole of the UK and the European Union. Last year, drivers were paying about £1.25 and in 2010 about £1.16. So where is it all going to end? We know tensions in the Middle East cause prices to wobble, but the main reason we pay so much is down to tax. Last year, the chancellor left fuel tax alone in the budget. We will know what he plans to do this year on Wednesday. There is also a wide variation in what you pay for your petrol and diesel across Northern Ireland. The Consumer Council has an online map which shows a difference of as much as 9p a litre for petrol and nearly 6p a litre for diesel. "What we have asked for is clarification on the fuel duty stabiliser as it's been referred to in the media," said Scott Kennerly from the Consumer Council. "What we've discovered is that it's actually about what they call a 'fair fuel stabiliser'. Spain "It will basically limit the amount that fuel duty will increase, but won't actually do anything to reduce the cost of petrol and diesel so we're going to carry on seeing these high prices at the petrol pumps unless the government steps in and does something." Nipping across the border to fill up is not a solution. Their last budget saw prices increase to an average of £1.37 a litre for petrol and £1.33 for diesel. Maybe we should take a leaf out of Spain's book. They have reduced the speed limit by 10 kilometres an hour to save fuel. Or you could always declutter the car to reduce wind drag. Honestly - it has been suggested. One thing's for sure - people like a taxi driver I spoke to on the forecourt do not think prices are likely to come down much any time soon. "There's nothing more that they can tax us on because we're just taxed on top of tax," he said. "I think personally someone sits in an office everyday, all day and thinks of something else that they can put taxes on."

"यह भयानक है-मैं एक सप्ताह में 40 पाउंड भरता था। अब एक भरने के लिए 75 पाउंड हैं। लोग अब इसे रोक नहीं सकते हैं। इसके बारे में कुछ करना होगा। अब रविवार दोपहर को ड्राइव करने जैसी कोई चीज नहीं है।"


German satellite on 'berg watch'

Summary: The German radar satellite TerraSAR-X is on "PIG watch".

By Jonathan AmosScience correspondent, BBC News, Vienna The spacecraft, which circles the globe at an altitude of 500km, is returning regular images of the Pine Island Glacier (PIG) ice shelf. Scientists expect its observations to alert them to the birth of a monster iceberg covering some 750 sq km. A huge crack in the shelf was first noticed in TerraSAR-X data back on 13 October. A Nasa aeroplane also got photographic confirmation the next day. The crack seems to have propagated in two main steps - the first break tearing a 24km-long gash in the shelf; the second, just a few days later, opening up the fracture to 28km in length. A few more km and the tabular block of ice will be floating free of the shelf. See the giant crack take shape "These are brittle failures, not ductile failures," explained Prof Angelika Humbert from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Bremerhaven . "When they break, they break really quite fast - typically, at one third the speed of sound." That means the initial gap in the shelf would have opened up along its full length nearly instantaneously. Prof Humbert has been describing the TerraSAR-X monitoring effort here at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna, Austria. The German Space Agency (DLR) satellite returns a picture of the PIG shelf about every third day, although it is 11 days before it gets exactly the same viewing angle. Being a radar mission, TerraSAR-X sees right through cloud and so is guaranteed to catch the "calving" event - once it has happened - on its next pass. "I'd bet a single malt it will go in the next six months," Prof Humbert told BBC News. "We'll probably be the first to see it go. I hope so, but that's not so important. "What's important here is that we acquire the data. We study calving laws - for small-scale calving, which is perhaps not so interesting to the public, but also for these big events. "We want to incorporate these laws into our ice sheet and ice shelf modelling. If you want to calculate the extent of Antarctic ice masses over centuries then you need these calving laws." The ice shelf is the floating projection of the mighty Pine Island Glacier, which drains something like 10% of all the ice flowing out of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet into the ocean. Gravity pulls the ice in the glacier westward along the Hudson Mountains towards the Amundsen Sea. The shelf itself reaches some 50km out over the water beyond the grounding line of the glacier. It is extending its reach by about 15m per day, and iceberg calving is an inevitable - and very natural - consequence of this behaviour. Very big tabular bergs will come off the end of the shelf every 6-10 years. Previous notable events occurred in 2007 and 2001. A recent University of Texas at Austin study , examining nearly 40 years' worth of satellite imagery, showed that many ice shelves in West Antarctica have been loosening their grip on the bay walls that constrain them. The analysis revealed that the locations where the shelves gripped on to rock or slower ice masses had fractured and retreated inland over the observation period. It is something that Prof Humbert has noted in relation to the PIG shelf. "Where you form the initial cracks - that location is now further upstream than it was in 2001," she said. When the big berg does finally break away, it will move westwards around Antarctica. It will gradually erode over time, but it may be many years before the block melts away completely. "With fracture mechanics it's not possible to predict with any sort of confidence when something will happen, but the velocity of the PIG ice stream is so high that the chances are it will break away sooner rather than later," the AWI researcher said. Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter

जर्मन रडार उपग्रह टेरासर-एक्स "पी. आई. जी. वाच" पर है।


Rescuers search Loch Ness after man falls in near Dores Bay

Summary: Police divers are taking part in a major search in Loch Ness after a man was reported to have fallen overboard from a boat.

The alarm was raised at about 18:50 on Thursday amid reports that two men had fallen into the water near Dores Bay. One man was rescued during a search which involved an RNLI lifeboat and a coastguard helicopter from Inverness. He was taken to hospital as a precaution while the search for the second man continued. It was stood down in the early hours and resumed on Friday morning. Insp Nick Macrae said: "Emergency services, including the Police Scotland dive and marine unit, are in attendance and are currently carrying out a search of the area for the second man."

एक व्यक्ति के नाव से गिर जाने की सूचना के बाद पुलिस के गोताखोर लोच नेस में एक बड़ी खोज में भाग ले रहे हैं।


Nourin Mohamed Siddig: The African art of reciting the Koran

Summary: Social media has enabled a revival in unique African styles of Koranic recitation, which were once dominated by Middle Eastern traditions and as Isma'il Kushkush reports a voice from Sudan has come to exemplify what the continent has to offer.

When Nourin Mohamed Siddig recited the Koran, people around the world described his tone as sad, soulful and bluesy. His unique sound made him one of the Muslim world's most popular reciters. As a consequence, his death at the age of 38 in a car accident in Sudan in November was mourned from Pakistan to the United States. "The world has lost one of the most beautiful [voices] of our time," tweeted Imam Omar Suleiman of Texas. Hind Makki, a Sudanese-American interfaith educator, said it had a hard-to-describe quality. "There is an African authenticity that people point to even if they are not able to articulate exactly what it is and they like it," she said. The comparison made with Blues music is not an accident. According to historian Sylviane Diouf the chants, prayers and recitation of enslaved West African Muslims - which can sound similar to that of Muslims across the Sahel region to Sudan and Somalia - may have contributed to the creation of "the distinctive African American music of the South that evolved into the holler and finally the Blues". According to tradition, the Koran, Islam's holy book, is typically recited in a singing manner, encouraged by the Prophet Muhammad, who said that people should "beautify the Koran with your voices". Different places, different approaches It is especially appreciated when large numbers come together for religious occasions such as evening prayers in the month of Ramadan, taraweeh. There are even several international recitation competitions. Overlooked at times, however, is the fact that there are many approaches to reciting the Koran. These may differ in tone and articulation according to geography, culture and historical experiences in the vast Muslim world beyond its heartland in the Middle East. Siddig's recitations and untimely death brought greater attention to a traditional African style. He picked up the tone studying in a traditional Koranic school in his village of al-Farajab, west of the capital, Khartoum, in the mid-1990s. When he later moved to Khartoum, he led prayers in a number of the city's main mosques and caught people's attention. His fame spread once videos of him were uploaded to YouTube. While sounds described as reflective of a seven-note heptatonic scale are popular in the Middle East, Siddig's recitation mirrored the five-note or pentatonic scale that is common in Muslim-majority regions of the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. "This is the tone of the environment I grew up in, the desert; it sounds like [Sudanese folk-music genre] dobeit", said Al-Zain Muhammad Ahmad, another popular Sudanese reciter. "The reciters in the Levant recite according to the melodies they know, as do the ones in Egypt, the Hijaz, North Africa and elsewhere." This view is backed up by musicologists such as Michael Frishkopf, music professor at the University of Alberta in Canada. While he cautions about lumping sub-Saharan Africa into one sonic tradition, he does confirm that the pentatonic scale is widely present in the region. "Broadly speaking you won't find pentatonic or hexatonic [six-note] recitation in Egypt, whereas you do find it in Niger and Sudan, Ghana and The Gambia." Imam Omar Jabbie of Olympia, Washington state, is a graduate of the prestigious Islamic University in Medina, Saudi Arabia. He was born in Sierra Leone and first learned to recite the Koran with teachers in Senegal and The Gambia. "That's where I learned many Koranic tones," he explained. In recent decades, Middle Eastern styles of reciting the Koran began to dominate in many regions in Africa and worldwide, especially in urban areas. Listeners of the Koran had access to recordings through vinyl records, shortwave radio broadcasts, audio cassette tapes and CDs, produced and distributed or sold by organisations largely from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Returning students from Egypt's Al-Azhar University and the Islamic University in Medina, and the impact of Gulf-funded charities, also helped spread and popularise these Middle Eastern styles among many reciters globally, including those from sub-Saharan Africa, with some even excelling in this approach. Some saw, and propagated it, as more authentic, which at times was at the expense of local traditions. But the internet and social media in particular has brought renewed attention, especially from a younger generation, to traditional voices. "The democratising forces of the social media and modern technology has mitigating effects on these historical forces," explained Professor Mbaye Lo, who researches the sociology of Islam. Elebead Elshaifa of Naqa Studio, a Khartoum-based media production company established in 2016 elaborated. "Social media doesn't need the same requirements of a satellite television station," he said, pointing to lower costs and fewer legal restrictions. Global appeal Ahmad Abdelgader, an amateur videographer has been recording Imam Jabbi's recitations for his YouTube channel since 2017. "The most popular video recording is the African style supplication [du'a] with over two million views," he said. "Most of the people watching were from France, where many West African Muslims live, followed by the United States." These online recordings have also brought attention to different schools of verbalising the Koran, qira'at. The Koran, for Muslims, is believed to have been transmitted according to seven schools of verbalisation that vary slightly in how some words are read. The most well-known of these schools today is Hafs, mandated by the Ottoman Turks in the lands they conquered and later widely taught in institutions of learning and distributed through printed copies of the Koran made in Cairo and Mecca. But in some parts of the Muslim world, especially in rural areas of the African continent, other schools of verbalisation continued to be used such as al-Duri in Sudan, which Siddig often followed in his recitations. His recitation style was a reminder of both the universal and diverse traditions among Muslims and for many followers and observers there is a clear lesson here. While the content and letter of the Koran is largely agreed upon, different recitation styles provide a universal message expressed through a "beautiful combination of local sound and global semantics," explains Prof Frishkopf. "This is the key point."

सोशल मीडिया ने कुरानिक पाठ की अनूठी अफ्रीकी शैलियों में एक पुनरुद्धार को सक्षम किया है, जो कभी मध्य पूर्वी परंपराओं का प्रभुत्व था और जैसा कि इस्माइल कुशकुश ने बताया कि सूडान की एक आवाज महाद्वीप की पेशकश का उदाहरण देने के लिए आई है।


Charlie Sheen's screen character 'to be given funeral'

Summary: Charlie Sheen's character in US TV show Two And A Half Men is to be given a funeral when the series returns in September, according to reports.

US website Deadline Hollywood said Charlie Harper's home would also be sold off and Sheen's replacement, Ashton Kutcher, would be introduced. The storyline comes after Sheen was sacked from the show in March after criticising its producers. Broadcaster CBS and programme makers Warner Brothers declined to comment. Sheen lost his job after months of reported drug and drink-fueled partying and repeated spells in rehab. The studio said it had acted after "careful consideration". At the time Sheen was the highest paid actor on US television. The star has since signed a deal for a new series called Anger Management, but the show has yet to be taken up by any TV networks.

अमेरिकी टीवी शो टू एंड ए हाफ मेन में चार्ली शीन के चरित्र को सितंबर में श्रृंखला की वापसी पर अंतिम संस्कार किया जाना है।


Denmark's ash disease dieback toll poses warning to UK

Summary: The UK's 80 million ash trees are under threat from the spread of ash dieback disease. And experts may not find much comfort from Denmark, where they have been struggling against the fungal infection for a decade.

By Jeremy CookeRural affairs correspondent, BBC News The humble ash tree has always enjoyed an elevated position in Denmark. Generations of school kids have been told and retold that it is tree of life - essential to the health and welfare of this country's landscape and culture. It is a story Moreton Kyelmann, a guide at the Danish Museum of Hunting and Forestry, regularly gives to pre-school children. These days he spares them some of the darker detail: "In Old Norse mythology, the tree of life is the most important thing of all. It connected everything. "The legend is that when the ash tree dies, the world will fall as we know it. It will be the end of the Earth." The sad fact for Denmark today is that the ash trees are disappearing. The Chalara fraxinea fungus which causes ash dieback was first discovered in Denmark in 2002. By 2005 it had spread across the entire country. Today at least 95% of ash trees here are either dead, or dying because they have the disease. 'Financial disaster' For foresters like Anders Grube, the disease is a management nightmare. Many of his ash trees have already been cut down - the timber worth a fraction of the price he was getting before the fungus arrived. "It is a disaster. I am losing lots of trees and lots of money. In this forest I have lost about a million pounds," he says. "Before this disease we were getting double the money for ash we are getting now. I am lucky I can sell to China, but I am only getting half the price." Ash dieback also causes big problems for those who rely on a steady supply of ash wood. The PP Mobler workshop looks and feels like something from the 1950s. It's all handtools and smell of sawdust. The high-end, hand-made furniture they make here relies on the strength, flexibility and colour of Danish ash. Manager Kasper Pedersen says there's enough in store for just three more years of production. "We don't know the exact consequences yet. If it really comes to a point when all of the European ash forests disappear, then we really will have a hard time. "It will be a great loss. It will be like losing something really valuable.... We can live without it, but it will be a great loss." If the message from Denmark is bleak, there is also hope. A very few ash trees - maybe 2% - seem to be naturally resistant to the killer fungus. When such trees are identified, specialist tree climbers are despatched to climb 20m and higher into the canopy to collect the seeds. The idea is to conduct detailed, scientific trials to establish whether their apparent immunity is passed on to their offspring. Prof Erik Kjaer, of the University of Copenhagen, warns that the experience in Denmark suggests that Britain too will find it impossible to halt the spread of the disease. Instead, the focus, he says, is on finding survivors with natural immunity to provide the ash trees of the future. "It is a terrible disease and this is the only kind of optimism I can offer the UK - there seems to be some kind of resistance and maybe it can work. But of course this is based on a very pessimistic view that the vast majority of trees seem to be highly susceptible." Back at the university's greenhouses and laboratories there is intense activity. Hundreds of metre-high saplings are being deliberately infected with the disease so scientists can watch how it develops, and establish which of the clones are genetically immune. But PhD student Lea McKinney believes the real key to finding a cure lies deep in the heart of the nation's state forests. "The idea is that we want to go and collect these individuals in the forest and then we will graft them and put them in new seed orchards and this will be used to make new trees for the future."

ब्रिटेन के 8 करोड़ राख के पेड़ राख डाईबैक बीमारी के प्रसार से खतरे में हैं। और विशेषज्ञों को डेनमार्क से ज्यादा आराम नहीं मिल सकता है, जहां वे एक दशक से कवक संक्रमण के खिलाफ संघर्ष कर रहे हैं।


Should BAME be ditched as a term for black, Asian and minority ethnic people?

Summary: It's a term often used by politicians, officials and the media - including the BBC - but does anyone in real life ever refer to themselves as BME (black and minority ethnic) or BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic)?

By Rajdeep SandhuPolitical reporter More than 7.6 million people in the UK came under the category of black, Asian and ethnic minority in the most recent census. Ex-cabinet minister Priti Patel would be one of them, as a British Asian. But don't make the mistake of ever referring to her as BME or BAME. In an interview with the BBC last month she said: "I don't like the labelling of people. I don't like the term BME. I'm British first and foremost, because I was born in Britain. "I challenge all my colleagues in the Conservative Party and in Westminster: Don't label me as a BME. I've said that to people in the cabinet. I've said that to civil servants. I think it's patronising and insulting." She said the term was "totally unhelpful because we are people and everybody wants to be recognised for their individual merits". Was she right? The origins of the term The term BME has its roots in the idea of "political blackness", a term used by many in the anti-racist movement in the 1970s. Professor Ted Cantle, who chaired a government review of community cohesion in 2001, says different ethnic groups banded together under a "universal term" - black - to fight back against discrimination. But this was challenged by people unhappy being lumped all together. In the 1990s, sociologist professor Tariq Modood began arguing that including different people under one label - black - was confusing and wouldn't work. He argued it was particularly harmful for British Asians, as it gave undue prominence to Afro-Caribbean people. At the time, his ideas were met with "great hostility by anti-racists", he says, who called him "divisive". Now, he says, he's "pleased to say my argument won". But it doesn't mean he is keen on the acronym BAME - which stands for black, Asian and minority ethnic - which has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Instead, he would like to see it changed to just "ethnic minorities". Separating out black and Asian suggests those groups are not ethnic minorities, he argues, or are special groups which need to be treated differently. Replacing it with the term ethnic minorities he says is "simple, neutral and all-encompassing". Does it work? Omar Khan, director of the Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank, says very few people would stand up and identify themselves as a black, Asian and minority ethnic person. He says the comments by Priti Patel shows how the acronym doesn't really work for the people it includes because "it's not something that in their day-to-day lives they feel reflects their own experience". But he adds: "The racist in the street isn't going to stop and ask you which country are you from and how much money is in your bank account. They're still going to treat you in a racially discriminatory way and I think that goes to show why we still need some sort of term but also some sort of movement to challenge racism in Britain today." David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham who recently chaired a report highlighting racial bias in the justice system and led the campaign for justice for members of the Windrush generation threatened with deportation, says it's lazy and a piece of jargon. He says it is time to think again about how people are described. "It's easy to say I'd like to see it scrapped," said Mr Lammy. "I'm comfortable with getting rid of it but the key question is what it would be replaced with?" The UK, he says, needs to develop a more complex system similar to America which draws on a person's heritage. For example: "You are African American, Italian American, Jewish American, Hindu American." Do young people identify with it? Creative Access is a social enterprise that helps young people from "Black, Asian and other non-white minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds" to secure internships. How do they feel about a term that on the face of it is helping them? Shamaan Freeman Powell, 24 "I think that being a black British 24-year-old woman the term has benefited me because it's meant that a lot of doors have been opened. However, I feel because it groups a whole sort of different types of cultures and races and religions together, I think sometimes an organisation may be able to use that as a tick box to say 'well we've got one, so we don't really need to focus on any other sort of areas that may be misrepresented or underrepresented'." How she identifies herself: "It's always a difficult question when people ask that. I would always say I'm black first, British second. But really I'm black British." Ayo Ogunshakin, 24 "The term does identify the group but I occasionally have felt there is some negativity when the word is used because it's immediately met with 'that's other'. But it's also really useful to have the term because immediately you do just naturally identify (with it) because it is a fact. I do think its useful. It would be interesting to see what would come about as its replacement because it's been used for so long I can't imagine why we would change it." How she identifies herself: "I would normally say British but whenever I'm coming to filing in forms I would always go black British. But also if there was a place to say Nigerian as well - that is my heritage so I try to acknowledge it but when people ask me I would say British." Ishan Ganjoor, 22 "I think the BAME term is pretty broad, it's a good umbrella term to quickly understand what someone might mean but it's not nuanced enough for people of that category. It seems a useful term, ironically, for people not in BAME... not for people who are." How he identifies himself: "I'd say Indian/British Indian." Darren Barnes, 26 "It's useful in that it promotes a kind of solidarity between the people that come under it belong to a BAME background, but it does lack nuance. I'm not sure that's as important as the solidarity - the inclusiveness it does also promote. I'd say it's more of a sledgehammer than a scalpel." How he identifies himself: "It depends whether I am having a conversation in an informal context or filling out a tick box form. The latter I think the actual term is mixed white black African. If I was in the pub I'd just say I was black." Mary O'Connell, 23 "It's just a more PC word rather than saying marginalised and I think it's important to still have it. When we talk about terms... we're not addressing the actual tension that lies underneath words because you can just introduce a newer, more exciting, more PC word but are you actually addressing the tensions underneath it? So I don't see the point in changing language when actions and behaviours aren't going to change." How she identifies herself: "I identify as being mixed race, in the tick box Caribbean British." Kamilah McInnis, 24 "I don't really find it that negative. If people could come up with an alternative term rather than saying that it is outdated and complaining about it than I'd be willing to accept it. But you can't just say I don't like this and not come up with an alternative, so that would be my argument. If you've got something better then give it to me." How she identifies herself: "I would say black British. Always when you are ticking the boxes it says black British or Caribbean but I always say black British. I never say I am just British by itself, just because I identify as being black British and also when you say British a lot of people go 'but where are you really from?' and that's very annoying."

यह एक ऐसा शब्द है जिसका उपयोग अक्सर राजनेताओं, अधिकारियों और मीडिया द्वारा किया जाता है-जिसमें बी. बी. सी. भी शामिल है-लेकिन क्या वास्तविक जीवन में कोई भी कभी खुद को बी. एम. ई. (अश्वेत और अल्पसंख्यक जातीय) या बी. ए. एम. ई. (अश्वेत, एशियाई और अल्पसंख्यक जातीय) के रूप में संदर्भित करता है?


Scottish election 2021: Does Scotland's future lie in or out of the Union?

Summary: Sweet sounds are tripping down a potholed lane in Glasgow's wealthy west end.

By James CookChief News Correspondent for The Nine It is the music of the clarsach, the old Gaelic harp, which ripples over the air and down the ages. From Viking raids and Wars of Independence, to Union and Enlightenment, Empire and oil, Scotland has sung many songs. Now, says Sophie Rocks, leader of clarsach group The Willow Trio who are rehearsing in a garage studio, it's time for a new tune. She reckons the "divide between Scotland and England" is more prominent now than when she, and a majority of her fellow Scots, opposed independence in 2014. First she points to the contrasting styles during the pandemic of first minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and prime minister and Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson. Then, Sophie adds, there is Brexit, which has left the UK "isolating itself from a greater community" while Scotland retains "a sense of a collective that makes the 'we' more important than the 'I'." There is no doubt that the UK's 2016 vote to leave the European Union despite the opposition of 62% of voters in Scotland has breathed new life into the old constitutional debate. What are the parties promising you? Use our concise manifesto guide to compare where the parties stand on key issues like Covid-19, independence and the environment. Opinion polls suggest support for independence rose above 50% to its highest ever level last year. It has since fallen back somewhat but there are clearly underlying reasons why so many voters still want to leave the UK. Many nationalists say Brexit is just one example of a "democratic deficit" — in the 11 general elections since the Conservative Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, Scotland has returned a majority of MPs from the party which formed or led a government on just three occasions. Sophie's fellow musician Sam MacAdam did vote Yes in 2014 and says she still supports the concept although she is now more cynical about politics. "We were promised," says Sam "that if we remained in the union, we would stay in the EU, we would get 'devo max' [expanded powers for the Scottish Parliament] and yet the next day they stood up in Westminster and said "English votes for English laws" and started this very anti-Scottish campaign." A modern browser with JavaScript and a stable internet connection is required to view this interactive. More information about these elections Who won in my area? Enter your postcode, or the name of your English council or Scottish or Welsh constituency to find out. Eg 'W1A 1AA' or 'Westminster' Still, the pandemic and Ms Sturgeon's daily briefings during it have highlighted the extent to which power over domestic affairs such as health and education has shifted from London to Edinburgh since the establishment of a devolved parliament and executive in the Scottish capital in 1999. Observers have also noted a decline in a general sense of "Britishness" in Scotland, fading along with memories of the unifying experiences of running and supplying an Empire and fighting for survival in the Second World War. In the place once known as the Second City of the Empire, Oona Miller, who works for a charity which aims to widen access to education, dismisses the idea that national identity should matter in the constitutional debate of 2021. "It just doesn't feel like a driving factor for me," she tells me in the back garden of her home in Glasgow. Oona describes Brexit, which she opposed, as "utterly devastating," arguing that it has led to political instability and serious economic problems. But, she says, she can't understand how anyone could look at that "instability" and decide the solution is to leave another "more entrenched, more complicated union". "My core concern," she adds, "is that we will be subjected to a decade or more of austerity and recession," if Scotland leaves the UK. Her view is supported by the Institute for Fiscal Studies which published a report last week predicting that an independent Scotland would need to bring down its deficit with "some combination of tax rises or spending cuts" in the absence of a "probably unlikely" rapid increase in economic growth, a warning rejected by Ms Sturgeon who says the SNP will publish updated economic projections closer to a referendum. "I care about education inequality," says Oona. "I care about poverty. I care about disability rights. I care about a lot of things and I feel like we don't really get to talk about them because we've spent seven years talking about a constitutional issue that I wish we could move on from." Some independence supporters have related concerns. For example, before casting a second vote in favour of independence Sam MacAdam says she wants to know more about the terms on which an independent Scotland would be able to trade with the EU and the rest of the UK. But will there even be a referendum? Last time both sides accepted both that the SNP's majority victory in the Holyrood election of 2011 was a valid trigger for one and that it needed the consent of the UK Parliament. The timing, question and franchise were negotiated by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition and the SNP Scottish government in a deal called the Edinburgh Agreement which was signed on 15 October 2012. Now though the stated policy of Mr Johnson's government is to refuse to hold another referendum even if voters again send a majority of pro-independence MSPs to Holyrood. The prime minister argues that the 2014 vote was promoted by the SNP as "once-in-a-generation," telling the BBC in January that the "right sort of gap" between referendums was around 40 years. The Scottish Conservative Party leader Douglas Ross has said any attempt by the Scottish government to hold its own referendum would be "illegal" although his party appeared to muddy the waters earlier this week by tweeting "An SNP majority is a guarantee of another independence referendum." Denying Scotland a referendum would be extraordinary, argues Professor Ciaran Martin of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, who, a decade ago, was the senior UK civil servant responsible for the Edinburgh Agreement. "In effect, it would change the union from one based on consent, to one based on the force of law...the most profound transformation in the internal governance of the United Kingdom since most of Ireland left almost exactly a century ago," said Prof Martin in a lecture last month. All three members of The Willow Tree, say they would prefer a referendum to take place in a negotiated manner, partly to ensure that any vote for independence would be accepted by the international community, a necessity, argues the Institute for Government think tank, for Scotland to be able to rejoin the European Union. Ms Sturgeon insists any referendum held by the Scottish government would be legal unless it was struck down by the courts. Polls suggest most people in Scotland do want to return to the European fold but in the fishing communities of the North East Euro-scepticism remains alive and well. In Fraserburgh, John Stephen, skipper of the white fish trawler "Sunrise" is disappointed by Brexit but even more concerned about recovering from the pandemic. "A sea of opportunity ended up being the tide half in," he says of promises that Scottish fishermen would thrive after leaving the EU and its Common Fisheries Policy, "but if you're asking me, 'would I like for Scotland to be independent and go back to Europe?' I think that would be the final nail in the coffin for the fishing fleet." "Instead of harping on about another independence referendum," he adds, "how about we get the country back up and running?" Louise Leach agrees. She is a sales designer for a company that supplies fitted wardrobes and other furniture based in Edinburgh but working throughout central Scotland. She insists the 2014 referendum was a once-in-a lifetime vote during which "the whole country was set up against each other. Many families were destroyed, fighting." "The independence voice is very loud," adds Louise. "It can be very mob-like. If you are not of the independence movement, you are often vilified and isolated. "I lived through the miners' strike in Fife and I thought things couldn't get any more vitriolic than that and I was wrong." SCOTLAND'S ELECTION: THE BASICS What's happening? On 6 May, people across Scotland will vote to elect 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). The party that wins the most seats will form the government. Find out more here. What powers do they have? MSPs pass laws on aspects of life in Scotland such as health, education and transport - and have some powers over tax and welfare benefits. Marjory Smith, a legal secretary in Nairn and former SNP member who has now resigned and switched her support to Alex Salmond's Alba Party, rolls her eyes when I tell her about Louise's concerns. "Well, I just think that's ridiculous because they won the last time. And who was rioting in George Square? It was all the people with the Union Jacks," she says. Marjory says she is not going to sit around waiting for a Tory prime minister to tell her when she can vote again on the future of her country. Nor does she have confidence in Ms Sturgeon's leadership of the SNP. "I don't think she has confidence in her own ability to deliver independence," she says, "I think she's frightened of it. "I just don't think she's got the substance, the strength, the vision and the guts to actually go for it." Marjory is supportive of Alex Salmond's Alba Party which she believes is more willing to "have a go". Her fall-out with the SNP is not just about the strategy for independence, it's linked to the issue of gender which she says is tearing the party apart. In 2019 Marjory was reported to SNP headquarters for alleged "transphobic" and "hateful" remarks although she insists the comments were taken out of context and defends them as a legitimate expression of women's rights in the face of what she claims was aggressive provocation. Marjory would rather the SNP focused solely on independence but she does not think another referendum is necessary for Scotland to leave the UK. Rather if there is a pro-independence majority after the election, she says, Scotland should just start negotiating with Westminster to secede. And if Westminster simply says no and refuses to engage? "Well, tough," says Marjory, "because Scotland's people have just said yes. Is the UK government a dictatorship, that's just going to keep Scotland locked up in the basement and just try and impose its will on us? That's not acceptable." Seven years after the referendum the political landscape has been transformed. The independence movement has fractured with two of its leading figures at odds. Brexit has driven up support for independence while also complicating calculations about its economics. The pandemic has shone a light on political decisions in Edinburgh and London while also throwing the public finances into turmoil. The future of Scotland, and the future of the United Kingdom, remains messy, uncertain and divisive.

ग्लासगो के समृद्ध पश्चिमी छोर पर एक गड्ढे वाली गली से मीठी आवाज़ें गिर रही हैं।


Q&A: Ireland's cervical cancer scandal

Summary: Less than a month after an Irish woman launched a legal action over incorrect smear test results, the cervical cancer tests scandal has pushed the head of Ireland's health service to resign. But there are still many questions over how the health service and the government will handle the fallout.

How were the incorrect smear tests uncovered? In April, Vicky Phelan, a 43-year-old woman from Limerick with terminal cancer, launched a High Court action in Ireland after it emerged the results of her smear test seven years ago - which showed no abnormalities - was later found to be incorrect. The false negative was uncovered during a retrospective audit. It was relayed to her doctor in 2016, but Mrs Phelan was not told for another 15 months. Did she win her case? The case was taken against the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE) and Clinical Pathology Laboratories, the US laboratory which was analysing the tests for Ireland's National Cervical Screening Programme. Mrs Phelan settled the case for €2.5m (£2.2m). Was Mrs Phelan the only woman affected by an inaccurate test result? No. In the days following the settlement it emerged that more than 200 other women diagnosed with cancer may have missed out on earlier medical intervention. The HSE established a serious incident management team in April this year to ensure that the affected women were informed that their smear tests had been reviewed. According to the HSE at least 17 of the 208 women have died. Why did Tony O'Brien resign? Calls for the HSE's director general's resignation were first made following Mrs Phelan's settlement with the HSE. Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty criticised Mr O'Brien on-air and expressed her immense dissatisfaction at Mrs Phelan being hauled through the courts "by the HSE". At first, Mr O'Brien refused these calls but admitted the cervical cancer controversy was a "personal blow" to him. While giving evidence to the Oireachtas Joint Health Committee, Mr O'Brien said he believed a planned review of issue would find testing laboratories were operating within internationally accepted norms. But after Ms Ní Mhathúna's interview and the pressure to resign intensified for Mr O'Brien. He announced his resignation on Thursday evening. Mr O'Brien had been due to retire in the summer. Who is Emma Ní Mhathúna? Emma Ní Mhathúna is one of the 208 women who had been misdiagnosed. She had previously featured by the HSE in its campaign to promote the cervical cancer vaccine. The 37-year-old mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2016, three years after she had received the all-clear from a smear test. That test turned out to be wrong. In a candid interview with RTÉ, Ms Ní Mhathúna, who is a single mother, said he had to sit down with her children to tell them she was dying. The interview triggered fury across Ireland as many fingers started to point to the HSE's director general. What happens now? Irish president Michael D Higgins is set to intervene in the cervical cancer tests scandal and will meet with Emma Mhic Mhathúna, according to the Irish Examiner. A small number of the 208 have yet to be contacted. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that women affected by the cervical cancer smear controversy will be compensated. On Wednesday, Varadkar told the Dáil that the attorney general has been asked to work with the State Claims Agency to settle outstanding cervical cancer cases similar to that of Mrs Phelan. A scoping inquiry into the issues will also be established and a report on the controversy is expected to be published by the end of June.

गलत स्मीयर परीक्षण परिणामों पर एक आयरिश महिला द्वारा कानूनी कार्रवाई शुरू करने के एक महीने से भी कम समय के बाद, गर्भाशय ग्रीवा कैंसर परीक्षण घोटाले ने आयरलैंड की स्वास्थ्य सेवा के प्रमुख को इस्तीफा देने के लिए मजबूर कर दिया है। लेकिन अभी भी इस बात पर कई सवाल हैं कि स्वास्थ्य सेवा और सरकार परिणाम को कैसे संभालेगी।


MasterChef marathon death: Runners for Matt Campbell 'finish' race

Summary: Hundreds of runners "finished" the London Marathon in honour of a chef who died after collapsing 22.5 miles into the race.

Matt Campbell, from Kendal in Cumbria, was a semi-finalist on BBC's MasterChef: the Professionals in 2017. He aimed to raise £2,500 for the Brathay Trust, but more than £300,000 has been donated since he died. A "Finish for Matt" Facebook page was set up, with thousands pledging to run the 3.7 miles he was unable to. In London, hundreds set off from Shadwell, following the rest of the marathon course on the pavement, ending up at The Mall. On Thursday, more than 500 people - including local chefs and the MP Tim Farron - joined Mr Campbell's family in the Lake District to run or walk the distance in his honour.

सैकड़ों धावकों ने एक शेफ के सम्मान में लंदन मैराथन को "समाप्त" किया, जिसकी दौड़ में 22.5 मील की दूरी पर गिरने के बाद मृत्यु हो गई थी।


Six hoax bombs found at Belfast City Cemetery

Summary: Police have found six hoax bombs during a security alert at Belfast City Cemetery in the west of the city.

Five of the devices were found in a pillow case and another near-by. Part of the cemetery was closed during the alert and one controlled explosion was carried out by the Army. Police have described the find as significant and said the devices were to be used in other areas to cause as much fear and disruption as possible.

पुलिस को शहर के पश्चिम में बेलफास्ट सिटी कब्रिस्तान में सुरक्षा चेतावनी के दौरान छह नकली बम मिले हैं।


Phone-hacking trial explained

Summary: Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson was found guilty of conspiracy to hack phones and one-time chief executive Rebekah Brooks was cleared in what became known as the phone-hacking trial. Four other defendants were cleared along with Ms Brooks.

What was the hacking trial? Allegations that News International journalists were involved in hacking people's phones for information led to the closure of the 168-year-old News of the World tabloid in 2011 and a trial costing reportedly up to £100m. The scandal went to the heart of Downing Street. Among those in the dock at London's Old Bailey for the eight-month trial were a close family friend of the prime minister and Coulson, David Cameron's official spokesman. It was some nine years ago that the News of the World published a story about Prince William's treatment for an injury, based on information that it could only have come by because one of its journalists had listened to the prince's voicemails. The ensuing police investigation, which uncovered "a vast number" of other victims, would begin the saga that led to the conviction of Coulson, the closure of a newspaper bought by millions every week and moves to change the way newspapers are regulated. What is phone hacking? Phone hacking was a technique used to listen to people's mobile voicemail. Reporters and a private investigator working for the News of the World used it to target people in the news - celebrities, politicians and crime victims - so they could find angles on stories that would get them ahead of the competition. They would listen to private messages left on voicemail, make a recording of them, and use the information to help write stories. Why did this trial come about? The News of the World was closed down in 2011 after its owners, Rupert Murdoch's News International, admitted the scale of hacking that had been going on, dating back many years. The company had battled against growing allegations for two years - one of its private investigators and the News of the World's royal editor were jailed in 2007 over a story gleaned from hacking. The paper's original position - that rogue staff had acted alone - could not stand. Eventually Rupert Murdoch decided he had no choice but to close the newspaper down after it emerged Milly Dowler, a teenager who was abducted and murdered, had her voicemails hacked. The Crown Prosecution Service charged two former editors - Rebekah Brooks and her successor Andy Coulson with conspiracy to intercept mobile voicemails alongside others connected to the newspaper. Who was on trial? Alongside Rebekah Brooks and Coulson was former managing editor Stuart Kuttner. Five others had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hack phones before the trial began: private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, news editors James Weatherup and Greg Miskiw and reporters Neville Thurlbeck and Dan Evans. Mulcaire performed thousands of hacks for the newspaper under the instruction of news editors. The newspaper's former royal editor Clive Goodman was also charged with illegal payments to public officials - as was Rebekah Brooks and Coulson. Brooks' husband Charlie Brooks, her former personal assistant Cheryl Carter and News International's head of security Mark Hanna were accused of a conspiracy to hide material from the police. Mrs Brooks, Charlie Brooks, Cheryl Carter, Mr Kuttner and Mr Hanna were cleared of all charges against them. The jury was discharged after failing to reach verdicts on charges that Coulson and Goodman conspired to commit misconduct in a public office by paying police officers for two royal directories. How did hacking come to light? Glenn Mulcaire and Clive Goodman were jailed seven years ago after pleading guilty to intercepting voicemails - but that first trial only concerned a small number of cases. Police did not go through all the evidence seized from Mulcaire. Two years later it emerged that News International had agreed a series of confidential out-of-court settlements which had prevented more allegations being aired. How did the newspaper carry out hacking? Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire would be "tasked" to target a particular mobile phone number to acquire voicemails and report back to the news desk. Mulcaire kept detailed notes of each operation that he carried out, including the target and who had commissioned him. At one point he was being paid £100,000 a year. Prosecutors sought to prove that Rebekah Brooks and Coulson were part of this conspiracy because they must have known how stories were being acquired and who was being paid. Rebekah Brooks was acquitted of all charges.

न्यूज ऑफ द वर्ल्ड के पूर्व संपादक एंडी कॉल्सन को फोन हैक करने की साजिश का दोषी पाया गया और एक समय की मुख्य कार्यकारी रेबेका ब्रूक्स को फोन हैकिंग मुकदमे में बरी कर दिया गया। सुश्री ब्रूक्स के साथ चार अन्य प्रतिवादियों को भी बरी कर दिया गया।


How South Africa is learning to live with mixed-race couples

Summary: Under apartheid inter-racial relationships were banned in South Africa. Journalist Mpho Lakaje, who is married to a white woman, reflects on how the country has changed in the 20 years since the end of white minority rule.

When I started dating the woman I was to marry many of my friends and some of her family - black and white - were united in opposition. Some members of Daniela's family were not at all keen. One even refused to let me into their home. They told her that I was "not good enough for her". My peers from Soweto were equally opposed. One of my childhood friends, Muzi, repeatedly told me he would never date someone who was not Zulu, let alone a person who was not black. So when he first saw my white girlfriend, the reality of living in a non-racial country finally hit him. The Mandela effect Thankfully, most of my family members, including my grandparents who experienced the brutality of apartheid and racism first hand, surprised me by warmly welcoming my wife-to-be. I was born in Soweto, the famous Johannesburg township that used to be home to Nelson Mandela. I come from a family of freedom fighters and learned about prominent anti-apartheid leaders like Oliver Tambo, Solomon Mahlangu and Anton Lembede at an early age. My whole life I was indoctrinated and made to believe that I would grow up, go into exile in Southern Africa and come back to my country to fight white people. When I first saw an AK47 in my uncle's room, my political beliefs intensified. The same month that Mr Mandela left prison in February 1990, I celebrated my 10th birthday. I remember vividly how some in my community thought that this was the moment for exiled freedom fighters to return home and drive white people out of South Africa. But the tone in my family gradually changed as we approached South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994. Elders at home began to help the young ones understand the concept of forgiveness and reconciliation as advocated by Mr Mandela. These were profound lessons that gradually and drastically changed my views too. When I went to college to study journalism, I was exposed to students from different parts of the world. I was now living in a cosmopolitan environment. As a young man in my 20s, I was in experimental relationships with girls who were not from my background. In later years, it did not matter to me whether a person was a white South African, Portuguese or Angolan. However, many of my black friends couldn't understand the logic behind hanging out with people whose languages we did not understand. Personally, I was fascinated by learning about a world different to mine. As a result, I had a burning desire to travel. Fortunately for me, many of my dreams came true. I became a journalist and joined the BBC World Service, getting an opportunity to see the globe. Changing attitudes In 2007 I met Daniela Casetti-Bowen, who had come from Chile to study tourism in South Africa. We became friends and later started dating. Two years later, against her family's will, we moved in together. Daniela's uncle, who arrived in South Africa in the early 1980s, was extremely sceptical about our relationship. He refused to let me inside their house. Daniela's white South African friends also warned her about dating a black boy from Soweto. Daniela and I had to take a conscious decision to disregard those opposed to our relationship. Most of my relatives told me it did not matter to them whether my partner was black or white, South African or not. While I was a bit shocked by their open-mindedness, I also saw their actions as a demonstration of their authentic commitment to Mr Mandela's dream of a Rainbow Nation. But post-honeymoon, reality hit and we started experiencing challenges that come with inter-racial relationships. Some of Daniela's relatives discouraged us from starting a family. They said mixed-race children always had a tough upbringing because they do not have an identity. Again, we ignored this advice and went on to have a baby, Mpho Jr. Interestingly, relations between myself and Daniela's family have improved tremendously in recent years. However, problems started to arise from my side of the family. Questions were being raised about Daniela's "lack of commitment" to our traditions. Daniela and I both agreed that culture evolves and therefore we would only follow what is practical. But some members of my family remain totally opposed to our views. They feel that Daniela needs to follow or perform most of our traditions. For example, shortly after our son was born, Daniela was supposed to spend 10 days at my mother's house with the baby. But for us, this was not practical. However, there are many things that Daniela has agreed to do. For example, my family insisted on shaving our son's head at three months as opposed to my wife's belief that this should be done immediately after birth. But my feeling is that Daniela and I have it easy compared to some of our friends in mixed-race relationships. Bevin van Rooyen is a coloured (mixed-race) man who was born in Johannesburg. He met his girlfriend Jacqueline Louw, a white South African, while studying at an arts college in Johannesburg. Born in 1984, Bevin, like me, did not experience much racism while growing up because South Africa was beginning to change. "I only started experiencing racism when I met Jacqueline's family," Bevin tells me. "I was completely shocked. I did not know what was happening." While Bevin's parents welcomed his partner into their family, Jacqueline's did not. "From the beginning, it was a problem with me not being white. I was not welcome in the house. Her dad had issues," Bevin tells me. When they started dating, the pair kept their relationship a secret from her family. "When they found out, they kicked her out of the house and she had to move in with me and my folks," Bevin remembers. 'Engraved racial classification' Another friend, Jake Scott, arrived in South Africa in 2009 and is now a citizen. He was born and raised in West Virginia in the United States. His mother is white and his father is an African-American. Jake's wife Mandi is a black woman from Soweto. Most days, Jake is in the shanty town of Diepsloot where he runs an organisation that introduces young people to theatre, sports and music. "At times somebody would refer me as a white person. There are times I would say: 'Wait a second, I'm black'," Jake says. He says they get "the looks" when walking through the shopping centre with his wife but he is not too worried about it. "This racial classification is very engraved," he says. "It's like in the psyche of South Africans." As South Africans we still have a long way to go before we can fully embrace each other. I consider myself fortunate to be educated and liberal. But the reality is, I have many friends, black and white, who are not ready to live in a non-racial society. I remain optimistic though. My country is definitely not where it was 20 years ago. We have made progress.

रंगभेद के तहत दक्षिण अफ्रीका में अंतर-जातीय संबंधों पर प्रतिबंध लगा दिया गया था। पत्रकार एमफो लकाजे, जिनकी शादी एक श्वेत महिला से हुई है, बताते हैं कि श्वेत अल्पसंख्यक शासन के अंत के बाद से 20 वर्षों में देश कैसे बदल गया है।


Pope Benedict in Germany: Pontiff's state visit home

Summary: How do you put the Pope's return to his homeland into perspective? It is not like his first visit after he became Pope in 2005, when he was greeted jubilantly by a proud nation that saw him as a great German success. The atmosphere this time has been quieter.

By Stephen EvansBBC News, Berlin It is true that there were about 9,000 protesters in Potsdamer Platz, but there were many more participants - more than 60,000 - in the Mass at the vast Olympic Stadium in Berlin. And it is true that some members of parliament did boycott his speech to the Bundestag - but many more stayed, listened and then stood and applauded at the end. Unlike previous returns, this is an official visit, with all the panoply and ceremony accorded to a head of state. When Pope Benedict emerged from the Alitalia plane in Berlin, he stood at the top of the steps and listened to a 21-gun military salute as his first, incongruous act on this return to German soil. History lesson From there, everyone he met seemed like a reminder of the diversity and perhaps the difficulty for a spiritual leader in a secular state: President Christian Wulff is a divorced and remarried Catholic who is, accordingly, not allowed to participate in some parts of Catholic services; Chancellor Angela Merkel is the daughter of a Lutheran priest; Mayor Klaus Wowereit of Berlin is openly homosexual. In the midst of these differences, the Pope has stood out. He went to the German parliament and gave a surprising speech which was political but above the day-to-day detail of specific issues. And the Bundestag is in one of the most historically charged buildings, the Reichstag which was set ablaze in 1933 and then lay in ruins throughout the years of Communism until it was rebuilt as the parliament of a democratic, united Germany. Pope Benedict stood at the centre of the newly built forum, under the modern dome, and delivered a cerebral discourse on politics and the duty of politicians. "We Germans know from our own experience" what happens when power is corrupted, he said, describing Nazis as a "highly organised band of robbers, capable of threatening the whole world and driving it to the edge of the abyss". But, he said, even under the Nazi dictatorship, resistance movements stuck to their beliefs at great risk, "thereby doing a great service to justice and to humanity as a whole". Priest shortage How did it go down? For some on the Left, it was just empty words. "The Pope who has nothing to say" was the headline in the Tageszeitung newspaper. But elsewhere, there was approval. A range of newspapers praised the speech - a "great speech", was the verdict of the immensely popular Bild. Throughout the four days of his visit, the Pope is scheduled to make 18 speeches or sermons. More than a quarter of a million people have registered to take part in the Masses which he will celebrate. So it is clear that he remains the leader of a church with an immense following in Germany. The uncomfortable fact for him, though, is that it is a big but diminishing following. Last year, on official figures, 181,000 Catholics left the Church. And there is a shortage of new candidates coming in to the priesthood. That has prompted calls from within for change. Rainer Kampling, a Roman Catholic theologian at the Free University in Berlin, wants married men to be allowed to become priests. He told the BBC that the shortage meant there might not be enough to administer the last rites on death beds. "Nowadays it's hard to find one," he said. "We have not enough priests for the people. "Of course, we have enough priests for the government of the church. This anybody can do. Nobody needs to be a priest of a Catholic church to look after money. But for the religious life, there are not enough priests". Christian Weisner of the reform organisation "We are the Church" says: "I hope this pope is not only giving speeches but listening to the people in the parishes. "But expectations are not very high. People don't expect too much from this pope. He is an old man on the side of tradition."

आप पोप की अपनी मातृभूमि में वापसी को कैसे देखते हैं? यह 2005 में पोप बनने के बाद उनकी पहली यात्रा की तरह नहीं है, जब एक गर्वित राष्ट्र ने उनका खुशी से स्वागत किया था, जिसने उन्हें एक महान जर्मन सफलता के रूप में देखा था। इस बार माहौल शांत रहा है।


Viewpoint: Will South Africans' anger boil over?

Summary: The massacre last week at the Lonmin-owned platinum mine in South Africa's North West province, which left 34 miners dead and 75 injured when police opened fire on striking workers, shows a colossal lack of leadership at almost all levels - the government, trade unions, business and the police.

By William GumedeSouth African academic and author The killings, reminiscent of the brutal days of apartheid, have left many South Africans anxious about the direction of the country, 18 years after it became democratic under the now-retired Nelson Mandela's leadership. The fact that no-one in responsibility has yet resigned - the government minister in charge of the mining industry, the police chief, the CEO of Lonmin, which is listed on the Johannesburg and London stock exchanges, and trade union leaders - shows the lack of accountability in South African society. The strike and subsequent violence at the mine shows that the expectation of many black people that their lives will improve in democratic South Africa has largely been dashed. It is true that the African National Congress (ANC) - the liberation movement now in government - has provided low-cost housing, education, health care and other services to the poor, but it has not done enough of this. In many parts of South Africa, basis services are either non-existent or of a low standard. People who can afford it rely on the private sector for education, health and security by employing armed guards to protect their homes and businesses. 'Despair and frustration' Last year, South Africa replaced Brazil as the most unequal society, with the gap between the poorest and richest individuals the highest in the world. Since apartheid ended, the overall wealth distribution has not changed much. The majority of black South Africans are still impoverished while white citizens are generally better off. South Africa does not have a system based on meritocracy, which rewards hard work and excellence. As a result, a small black elite, from the ranks of the ANC and its trade union ally, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), has become fabulously rich through shares in long-established white companies, winning government contracts and holding top posts in the public sector - all under the guise of black economic empowerment. There has been no genuine effort to lift black South Africans out of poverty by giving them quality state education and technical skills, or to help small businesses grow. Neither has economic growth been accompanied by serious moves to diversify the economy - from exporting raw materials to developing industries that would boost employment. The impact of the global economic crisis has made things worse. Economists estimate that between 2007 and 2009 nearly one million jobs were lost, while the chief executives of top companies continued to get huge bonuses. Poor South Africans are caught up in a sense of despair and frustration, which explains the frequent protests over a lack of services in residential areas and now the violence at the Lonmin-owned mine. But South Africa's leaders seem to believe that the country's mineral wealth - gold, platinum and diamonds, among others - will see it through its economic problems. They are being complacent - and risk social upheaval on a scale they will not be able to manage. William Gumede is Honorary Associate Professor, Public and Development Management at the University of the Witwatersrand and author of Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times

दक्षिण अफ्रीका के उत्तर पश्चिम प्रांत में लोनमिन के स्वामित्व वाली प्लैटिनम खदान में पिछले हफ्ते हुआ नरसंहार, जिसमें 34 खनिक मारे गए और 75 घायल हो गए जब पुलिस ने हड़ताली श्रमिकों पर गोलीबारी की, लगभग सभी स्तरों पर नेतृत्व की भारी कमी को दर्शाता है-सरकार, ट्रेड यूनियन, व्यवसाय और पुलिस।


Bloodhound Diary: Partnership made in China

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 first mount an assault on the world land speed record (763mph; 1,228km/h). Bloodhound should start running on Hakskeen Pan in Northern Cape, South Africa, in 2017.

By Andy GreenWorld Land Speed Record Holder Exactly 12 months ago we held the public launch of the nearly completed Bloodhound SSC in the centre of London. We were swamped by the media (over £100m of global coverage for the launch) and the general public, with some 8,000 people packing out our Canary Wharf venue during the two brief days that the car was on show. It was obvious that we had a winner; now we just had to find the right partner to help us get it finished. This has taken a little longer than we’d hoped, but finally we are able to announce our new Lead Partner, Geely (technically, it’s the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, but let’s keep it simple – Geely). If we were choosing an ideal new partner, we’d look for someone that would understand Bloodhound's mission as "an Engineering Adventure" to inspire the next generation’. Better still, we’d look for someone to help us put the Bloodhound Engineering Adventure in front of millions of people we haven’t reached yet. Now here’s the good bit: the Geely Group makes cars (inlcuding Geelys, Volvos and London Taxis), the Group runs research and development centres around the world (including one in Coventry), and it’s also set up a number of universities in China. This is a company that clearly understands the technology and the education mission of our story. Following our recent press launch, Bloodhound is fast becoming big news in China and I’ve had two email enquiries already from the British Embassy in Beijing. Thanks to this new partnership, we’re starting reaching out to country of well over 1.3 billion people, as well as the other countries in the region. We’ve only just started working together, but Geely already seems like a great partner for Bloodhound’s Engineering Adventure. We’ve had a lot of texts, emails, tweets and notes of congratulations since we announced our new partner, as well as lots of "about time – when’s it running?" comments. My personal highlight was seeing a picture of Bloodhound SSC, and our announcement about Geely, on a billboard in Times Square in New York. From Beijing to NY, there is no escape, Bloodhound is coming to get you. Thanks to all of you who wrote in and yes, I do know just how you feel, I can’t wait to see it running either! As well as helping to promote our adventure around the world, Geely is keen to make some technical contributions to Bloodhound. For example, we’re now working with the company’s engineers to see how they could help us with finishing off the cockpit. Fitting our high-tech sound-proofing is a key job, as one of my big concerns is the huge noise level, caused by the supersonic shockwaves on top of the car, which will reverberate through the carbon-fibre cockpit structure. Slightly worryingly, we’re not exactly sure how noisy this will be (not really surprising, since no-one has ever done 1,000mph in a car). The acoustic energy (noise) levels could be enough to stop the cockpit instruments from functioning properly, never mind what it will feel like for me, so from my point of view the sound-proofing is a critical part of the finish. The colour of the interior is also fairly important, to make the cockpit as easy to use as possible. Here’s a simple example. You’re probably reading this as black text on a white background, which works well for text, but the black/white contrast can be a bit much for complex information. Instead of the high contrast ratio (e.g. BLACK/WHITE or WHITE/BLACK), a lower contrast (e.g. incorporating grey) generally works better and looks less "cluttered" for high-tech instruments. This is the science behind modern jet fighter cockpits and I’ve used the same approach to designing Bloodhound’s cockpit. Using the wrong colours can also make things difficult, as it can create an effect called chromostereopsis. People have been using colour like this for many years (it’s been used in stained glass windows for centuries), but it doesn’t make it easy to read labels or instruments, so we need to avoid it. I know how I want Bloodhound’s cockpit to look when it’s finished, now we need to work out how to make it happen. Those of you who watched our live press event online recently will have noticed that we sat the media down in front of our full-sized show car, not the real thing. The real car is already being stripped down, so that we can finish off the last of the 3,500 pieces that go to make up Bloodhound. Each piece of the car is being painstakingly removed, inspected, finished if required, and then tagged and put into our stores. Once this process is complete, we’ll reverse the whole thing and start the final build. It’s this attention to detail that makes it possible to build and run a 1,000mph car safely. Attention to detail is equally important for our desert track in South Africa. After the truly heroic effort that the Northern Cape Government team has put into clearing the track for us over the past seven years, I’m off to Hakskeen Pan to have a look at the finished product. I haven’t been out there for a couple of years, so a lot has changed since I was last working on the track (have a look at a short video clip here). Our team has been sending back glowing reports of the finished track surface, so we’re really looking forward to seeing the 20-plus million square metres of hand-cleared surface, on what has to be the best straight-line race track in history. More to follow next month. This year’s model rocket car competition was a huge success, with over 5,000 teams from across the UK taking part, and the Santa Pod finals including a "demo" run of 522mph by Joseph Whitaker School (if you haven’t seen it, have a look at this video – wow!). As our chief engineer Mark Chapman simply put it: "There’s nothing more exciting than building your own car, putting a rocket in the back and firing it. The kids’ eyes are like dinner plates." Next year we’re planning an even more ambitious programme, with 25,000 rocket car kits available, and a first prize of the chance to see Bloodhound SSC run in South Africa next year. Book here now to make sure you receive your free rocket car kit, as the entry list will close at the end of October. And if you fancy having a go at Joseph Whitaker School’s record, there’s still time to make sure that the world’s first supersonic rocket car run happens in a playground near you. Good luck, we’ll all be watching!

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 पहले विश्व भूमि गति रिकॉर्ड (763 मील प्रति घंटे; 1,228 किमी/घंटा) पर हमला करेगा। ब्लडहाउंड को 2017 में उत्तरी केप, दक्षिण अफ्रीका में हक्सकीन पैन पर चलना शुरू करना चाहिए।


Just a Minute's Indian Adventure

Summary: For 45 years, Just a Minute has been challenging contestants to talk for one minute on a subject without hesitation, deviation or repetition - a feat seldom achieved.

To celebrate its milestone birthday, the host of the BBC Radio 4 panel game - Nicholas Parsons - travelled to India to meet some of the game's fans, and to record special editions of the programme. On his journey, he found fast-paced hybrid versions of Just a Minute - so-called 'jamming' - being played in clubs across the country. Just a Minute's Indian Adventure can be heard on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 2 April at 11:30 BST - then available on BBC iPlayer. Photography by Siddharth Khajuria. Slideshow production by Paul Kerley. Publication date 2 April 2012. Related: BBC Radio 4 - Just a Minute in India BBC Radio 4 - Just a Minute homepage More audio slideshows: India's love affair with Charles Dickens The books that shaped history - BBC Radio 4 In Our Time undefined

45 वर्षों से, जस्ट ए मिनट प्रतियोगियों को बिना किसी हिचकिचाहट, विचलन या पुनरावृत्ति के किसी विषय पर एक मिनट के लिए बात करने के लिए चुनौती दे रहा है-एक उपलब्धि जो शायद ही कभी हासिल की जाती है।


UN ask for 'compromise'

Summary: The Sri Lankan army said the remaining rebels were trapped in an inland area in the north-east of the island. War is not over yet, says the defence secretary. Meanwhile the UN warns about the consequences of not having a compromise.

Aid agencies have warned that thousands of civilians may also be trapped with them. Meanwhile The UN's humanitarian envoy, John Holmes, warned of a possible guerrilla war if no compromise on Tamil autonomy is achieved. John Holmes In an interview with the BBC, John Holmes warned about the difficulty of a solution. "I'm afraid it's going to be very difficult given the casualties and the violence to arrange the kind of compromise which is going to be needed on the political front for a proper autonomy for the Tamils. That's what needs to happen, otherwise whatever the military victory now we'll simply go back to a kind of guerrilla war of some kind or other and the government will have won the war but lost the peace and that's a very great danger I'm afraid". not over yet But the war is not over yet says the The defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse. "We have rescued all the civilians from the area, now we are searching for any more civilians. In the meantime, we have restricted the LTTE to one square kilometre-like area, so we will mop up and seize the rest of the LTTE cadres and the leadership." Mr Rajapaksa said the army did not know exactly where to find the rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, but expressed confidence that he would be tracked down soon. Meanwhile, the military spokesperson said two senior leaders of the rebels had been killed in the conflict and that they were still looking for others.

श्रीलंकाई सेना ने कहा कि शेष विद्रोही द्वीप के उत्तर-पूर्व में एक अंतर्देशीय क्षेत्र में फंस गए थे। रक्षा सचिव का कहना है कि युद्ध अभी खत्म नहीं हुआ है। इस बीच संयुक्त राष्ट्र ने समझौता न करने के परिणामों के बारे में चेतावनी दी है।


Durham Police appoints Jo Farrell as its first female chief constable

Summary: Durham Police has appointed its first female chief constable.

Jo Farrell, who is currently the force's deputy chief constable, was confirmed in the post by Police and Crime Commissioner Ron Hogg. In March, Mike Barton announced that he would be stepping down after seven years as chief constable. Ms Farrell became Durham's deputy in 2016, when she moved from Northumbria Police where she was the force's assistant chief constable. Lucy Hovvels, chair of the Durham's police and crime panel, said: "We were impressed with Jo's breadth of experience and therefore pleased to endorse her appointment." Ms Farrell is due to take up her post on Friday.

डरहम पुलिस ने अपनी पहली महिला मुख्य कांस्टेबल नियुक्त की है।


Which landmarks tell you you're nearly home?

Summary: This copse on the Cornwall Devon border has long symbolised one thing - coming home.

The beech trees which stand tall on a hill south of the A30 tell travel-weary locals their journey is nearly over. People have been taking to social media to share their love for the Cookworthy Knapp trees, which were planted around 1900 and have become known as the "coming home trees". We invited you to tell us about the landmarks that mean you're nearly home and are investigating your answers.

कॉर्नवॉल डेवोन सीमा पर यह कॉप्स लंबे समय से एक चीज का प्रतीक रहा है-घर आना।