Could Brexit concession intensify Tory warfare?

Summary: Phew! Thank god, the government sighed collectively.

Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter Another day when last-minute haggling avoided the red faces of getting beaten by MPs and avoided what ministers believe would be an impossible restriction on their ability to negotiate a Brexit deal - a condition the House of Lords wants to set where Parliament would be able to direct Number 10 if the final Brexit deal is sunk. Hang on. The defeat was only stopped in its tracks because more than a dozen Tory rebels got what they believe is a real promise from the prime minister that the draft law will be changed. Three of them have told me that Theresa May said it is a "matter of trust". But was that a real promise? Pity the government minister who had, in public, to broker the deal during hours at the despatch box, the Solicitor General Robert Buckland. When I asked him tonight what had really been agreed, he was crystal clear that there has been no assurance or guarantee that the government will actually make a change to its plans, just a commitment to "further discussions" to try to find a way forward that may well result in a tweak - such as a new amendment. Politics is often about the big picture, but sometimes it is a festival for pedants. Believe me, in Westminster, there is a very very big difference between the promise of more serious chat about something with the possibility of a change, and a promise actually to do something different, especially if it is made by the occupant of Number 10. So just hours after the concession, (or non-concession) very very dark mutterings began from those who had been persuaded by what they thought was a promise. Some can't be repeated on air or in this blog, suffice to say one of them told me the PM should not mess with them. Another at the meeting was furious, saying "the problem is she is weak and stubborn, it's the worst combination". On the other side, the Brexiteers believe they have had their own assurances that nothing has actually been promised and the Remainers are trying to save face. The government has until Thursday to come up with whatever the product of the "further conversations" will be. But the prime minister has been able to get this far by giving assurances, in turn, to all sides in the Tory party. The risk is that appears as double dealing. One senior Brexiteer says people are starting to see that the prime minister "talks from two different sides of her mouth". Instead of peace and harmony after the government avoided a defeat tonight there is ill will and mistrust. The immediate disaster of defeat was avoided but the action taken to stop it happening may have made the situation even worse.

फू! भगवान का शुक्र है, सरकार ने सामूहिक रूप से आह भरी।


Is the Scottish government about to take ownership of a smelter?

Summary: As England gets another factory making wind turbines, Scotland may yet get the consolation of the contract that pitched BiFab fabrication yards into administration Prestwick and Ferguson Marine are two assets owned by the Scottish government that may bring important developments this month, ahead of the Holyrood election Another manufacturing enterprise could fall into Scottish government hands. If the GFG metals empire fails to refinance and quickly, there could be consequences for ministers from the eye-popping deal they did to underwrite the hydro-powered aluminium smelter in Lochaber

Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland The search for an industrial policy continues. It has been spotted today on Teesside where 750 jobs are pledged by GE Renewables, for a factory building the turbine blades to go in a vast wind farm to the east, on Dogger Bank. With 1,500 jobs estimated in the supply chain, that is great news for a part of England that feels left behind. It adds to the Siemens turbine factory on Humberside, employing 750 so far, and recently unveiling plans to double its footprint. But it's a reminder of all the announcements of turbine factories in Scotland - "the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy" - that have come to, er, nothing much. As a sort of consolation prize, a large hydro plant and aluminium smelter may be about to fall into Scottish government hands. More on that later. You'll probably recall that second prize to the turbine factories was fabricating the jackets on which the turbines sit - and that turned into a sorry and expensive tale of the demise of BiFab. Its Methil and Burntisland fabrication yards were supposed to get a £30m contract for eight platforms for the wind farm being built by EDF off the East Neuk of Fife. But the Scottish government withdrew the offer of a security bond for that contract, saying it had been rendered commercially unviable and therefore illegal under state aid rules. The good news for Methil, and perhaps the BiFab yard near Stornoway, is that all is not lost. With the business bought out of administration by a newcomer to fabrication, under the Harland & Wolff brand best known at its Belfast shipyard, EDF'S principal contractor has not placed the order anywhere else, and Harland & Wolff told me that security bonds are, in general terms, something they handle. To the Scottish government, there might yet be something to show for the £53m ploughed into BiFab as equity and debt, and lost. Ferries timetable It might also get something for the £43m loaned to Prestwick Airport since it was saved from closure in 2013. A preferred bidder has been found at last. It would be a relief for Scottish ministers to get it off their hands before the Holyrood election campaign starts. I hear that's the intention. But don't expect a new owner to take on that debt. Both seem quite minor beside the Ferguson shipyard saga. It's months since we last had an update on the delivery timetable and cost for those two Cal-Mac ferries that were due to cost £97m, and should have been in service two years ago. The price is at least double that, with £45m loans also lost when the business was put into administration. Tim Hair, the yard's boss under Scottish government ownership, has just updated MSPs on some extra millions added to the bill by lockdown delays. His immediate challenge is to find the skilled workers needed to move to seven-day working. They are sought after by other shipyards and building sites, less tainted by a history of insolvency. The firm is "working to" the timetable for delivering the first ferry, Mr Hair told Holyrood. In the world of project management, that's not the most reassuring phrase. MSPs have been promised a fuller update before parliament winds up on 25 March. Steel rolling By that time, a sizeable chunk of Lochaber may have fallen into public hands. It should be stressed that Sanjeev Gupta, chairman of the GFG Alliance group of companies, sounds optimistic about finding new finance, since the Australian money man he relied upon to build a global metals empire, Lex Greensill, had his company put into administration this week. Greensill Capital was deemed by credit insurers to be too exposed to GFG. By unhappy coincidence, GFG was heavily exposed to Greensill, and needs to refinance, in a hurry. A GFG subsidiary, Liberty Steel, operates several steel plants and employs 3,000 people in the UK, more than 100 of them at the Dalzell steel-rolling works in Motherwell. Under pressure to explain his predicament, Mr Gupta told unions on Tuesday that metal prices had picked up with global economic prospects, but his UK operation requires a lot of financial support. His plant in Rotherham is a particular problem. On Thursday morning, he went further, with a company statement: "Some UK businesses will be operating intermittently, which can and will be achieved without compromising the condition of the plants. We are working closely with the trade unions and will be making use of the government furlough scheme for employees where possible in those circumstances." Wheel factory Hydro power on Ben Nevis to power Britain's only aluminium smelter, an industrial concern that comes with a Highland estate selling its own branded venison, might seems an esoteric diversion from the heavy duty requirements of a steel works. But having taken over Dalzell and a large shed in Cambuslang, the Scottish government was very keen to get Mr Gupta to take on the Lochaber plant being sold by Rio Tinto five years ago. He did so, with a grand plan to create a large factory making alloy wheels, but only after Scottish ministers had agreed to an eye-popping deal to underwrite the hydro plant. The figures have been seen in private by MSPs. In 2019, while trying to figure out Mr Gupta's unorthodox financing, there was unattributed and unconfirmed reporting by Reuters of a liability to pay out more than a half a billion pounds over 25 years. 'Comprehensive security' Not long after business conditions in the car industry had forced a shift from the alloy wheels to the less grand vision of an aluminium recycling plant, there was more clarity in an Audit Scotland report last December. It highlighted the Scottish government's exposure to industrial enterprises going wrong. The hydro plant does indeed have a 25-year contract for the Scottish government to pay between £14m and £32m a year for energy that cannot be used by GFG. I'm told the bigger numbers are at the start of the contract. If you assume the average is the mid-point of £23m per year, you get to £575m over 25 years, suggesting Reuters got it right. For this under-writing, a sort of insurance premium had to be paid by GFG to the Scottish government. The value of this promise to pay the Scottish government was put at £21.4m in 2016-17. It's now valued at nil. Audit Scotland did not reckon the Scottish government is on the hook for the full half billion or so, but it did report that the potential exposure to default payments at £36.7m. I asked the Scottish government how this deal looks now. It isn't arguing with the Audit Scotland numbers. And in the event that Mr Gupta can't refinance his metals empire, St Andrew's House claims to have a "comprehensive security package relating to the guarantee". That appears to mean it has a claim on the asset. So don't be surprised if this haphazard form of industrial portfolio management brings the Scottish government a smelter, a hydro scheme, the Jamaha Highland shooting estate, a staff of sharp-shooting stalkers, and a shop in Fort William selling Fiadh á Fireach (Gaelic for "deer from the hill") branded venison.

जैसे-जैसे इंग्लैंड को पवन टर्बाइन बनाने का एक और कारखाना मिल रहा है, स्कॉटलैंड को अभी भी उस अनुबंध का सांत्वना मिल सकता है जिसने प्रशासन में बायफैब निर्माण यार्डों को खड़ा किया, प्रेस्टविक और फर्ग्यूसन मरीन स्कॉटिश सरकार के स्वामित्व वाली दो संपत्तियां हैं जो इस महीने महत्वपूर्ण विकास ला सकती हैं, होलीरूड चुनाव से पहले एक और विनिर्माण उद्यम स्कॉटिश सरकार के हाथों में आ सकता है। यदि जी. एफ. जी धातु साम्राज्य पुनर्वित्त और जल्दी से विफल रहता है, तो मंत्रियों के लिए लोचाबेर में पनबिजली से चलने वाले एल्यूमीनियम स्मेल्टर को अंडरराइट करने के लिए किए गए आंख मारने वाले सौदे के परिणाम हो सकते हैं।


Devonport ship HMS Ocean tests Hellfire missiles

Summary: British Army Apache helicopters have fired Hellfire missiles for the first time while flying from a Royal Navy warship, Devonport-based HMS Ocean.

The ship is one of seven navy warships on exercise in the Mediterranean. Nine of the radar-guided air to surface missiles hit targets successfully said the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Cdr Jol Woodard, commanding officer of HMS Ocean's Air Group, said the missile firing was "very important step" for the UK's amphibious capability. HMS Ocean set off on Operation Cougar II in April to test the capability of the newly-formed Response Force Task Group (RFTG). The multi-national amphibious exercises in the Mediterranean and later in the Indian Ocean includes troops from 40 Commando Royal Marines. The MoD said the aim of the RFTG was to be held at "very high readiness" to respond to "unexpected global events".

ब्रिटिश सेना के अपाचे हेलीकॉप्टरों ने रॉयल नेवी के युद्धपोत, डेवोनपोर्ट स्थित एचएमएस ओशन से उड़ान भरते हुए पहली बार हेलफायर मिसाइलें दागीं हैं।


Sarah Palin stumbles, others rise on Iowa stage

Summary: The Sarah Palin surge may be over before it really began.

By Anthony ZurcherEditor, Echo Chambers The former Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee made headlines last week when she said she had a "servant's heart" and was "interested" and then "seriously interested" in running for president in 2016. Thanks to these remarks, and the devoted following she still commands, the national spotlight was firmly on Ms Palin as she took to the stage on Saturday at a gathering of presidential aspirants before grassroots conservatives in Des Moines, Iowa. The post-event reviews, however, have not been kind. The Washington Examiner's Byron York calls her 33-minute speech "long, rambling and at times barely coherent". Ms Palin spoke about media bias, the film American Sniper, Barack Obama, energy policy, Margaret Thatcher and women in politics, among other topics. And while she did supply a steady diet of her trademark zingers - "The man can only ride you when your back is bent" - the end result was something more akin to avante garde, improvisational performance art. "By the time Palin finished speaking, it was hard for anyone to believe she truly is 'seriously interested' in running for president," York concluded. The speech isn't the only evidence that Ms Palin's presidential aspirations may be nothing more than talk, however. As the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza points out, while other possible candidates have been building campaign infrastructure and engaging in the often gruelling work of courting local party functionaries, Ms Palin has done nothing. "Yes, by dint of her name recognition and the vaunted place she occupies for some part of the conservative movement, if she announced her candidacy tomorrow there would be a constituency for her," he writes. "But her ability to build and grow that constituency in a way that would allow her to, you know, actually have a chance at winning would be entirely dependent on her having built a political apparatus that she has never shown an interest in doing." Although Ms Palin's appearance may have been all noise, signifying nothing, the Iowa event was an opportunity for some more organised candidates to improve their presidential prospects. Of the nearly two dozen potential candidates to take the stage, Senator Ted Cruz received one of the warmest receptions. Just two years after bursting onto the national political arena in a surprising upset of a well-funded primary opponent, the Texan has made a name for himself as a grassroots, Tea Party favourite who is willing to take on the Republican establishment. "Mr Cruz credibly and inspirationally touched on every key theme of the current zeitgeist, and is clearly the favourite of the conservative activists," writes conservative radio talk show host Steve Deace for the Washington Times. "If there were a straw poll at this event, he would've won it." The National Review's Jim Geraghty agrees that Mr Cruz would "easily get elected president of Conservative America," although he wondered about his broader appeal. "The question is whether he can win votes among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents who don't already agree with him," he writes. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker also garnered considerable praise - for his folksy demeanour in Iowa and his proven ability to win elections while governing conservatively in a battleground presidential state. "The Wisconsin governor, in rolled-up shirtsleeves, paced the stage as he blasted big government and touted a long list of conservative reforms he's pushed through in blue Wisconsin," writes Cameron Joseph of the Hill, a Washington, DC, political newspaper. "The governor also showed a rhetorical flourish that's largely been absent from his previous campaigns, drawing the crowd to its feet multiple times." Mr Walker has the ability to become a Republican fusion candidate, writes Slate's John Dickerson, by appealing to both Tea Party conservatives and the party's establishment. "As Walker spoke you could almost hear the political boxes being checked off," he says. "He thanked the conservative voters of Iowa, and the country, for supporting him in his fight against unions with money and prayers. This wasn't only good form - it highlighted that he has a national fundraising base (ie he can go the distance) and that he is a man of faith (ie he's just like you)." Meanwhile Chris Christie made waves in Iowa just by showing up. The New Jersey governor is considered an East Coast establishment pick, so the gathering of roughly 1,500 grass-roots activists hosted by hard-right Congressman Steve King wasn't his natural constituency. But while other perceived establishment candidates - such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney - gave the Iowa event a pass, Mr Christie put the best face on his brand of combative, New Jersey style politics. Noah Rothman of HotAir sums up his pitch: "You may not love me, but you'll respect my honesty." "Christie closed with a fiery call to arms in defence of the nation's freedoms, and he was given a standing ovation from the audience of Freedom Summit attendees," Rothman writes. "Christie knows he has a problem with conservatives and, without wallowing in it, he did what he could to address and mollify those voters' concerns." Also on the stage on Saturday were two former candidates both appealing to the same social conservative right that Mr Cruz is targeting, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. And then there was the "clown car" of longshot aspirants, as Politico's Roger Simon puts it, including eccentric businessman Donald Trump, paediatrician-turned-conservative-pundit Ben Carson and Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn. Their presence was notable, according to Simon, less for their electoral chances (slim to hopeless) than for their willingness to level attacks against Mr Bush, Mr Romney and the Republican establishment. "In the circus, the worse thing clowns lob is confetti," Simon writes. "In the political circus, the clowns lob grenades. Verbal, to be sure, but they still can be deadly." If any of the barbs drew blood, however, there's a lifetime of opportunity to recover after only this first skirmish in the long 2016 Republican nomination campaign. In fact, the following day, two of the more prominent presidential hopefuls who didn't travel to Iowa, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, appeared alongside Mr Cruz in Palm Springs, California, during a forum hosted by the deep-pocketed conservative kingmakers Charles and David Koch. If Iowa was all about appealing to the grassroots Tea Party conservatives, Palm Springs was catering to an audience of high-rolling Republican fundraisers. Performing for activists and soliciting money from donors - it was arguably the first weekend of the 2016 Republican presidential nomination battle, but the routine is already set. It'll just be much, much more of the same leading up to the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, a mere 344 days away.

सारा पॉलिन का उछाल वास्तव में शुरू होने से पहले ही समाप्त हो सकता है।


Norwich Anglia Square shopping centre plan gets go-ahead

Summary: Multi-million pound plans to redevelop Anglia Square shopping centre in Norwich have been approved.

The proposals, approved by the city council's planning committee on Thursday, will involve the widespread demolition of shops and the seven-storey Sovereign House office block. It will be replaced with a larger shopping centre with a supermarket and restaurants and 136 new homes. The new houses must include at least 49 more affordable homes.

नॉर्विच में एंग्लिया स्क्वायर शॉपिंग सेंटर के पुनर्विकास के लिए कई मिलियन पाउंड की योजनाओं को मंजूरी दी गई है।


'Witness' appeal after Newark Northgate Station train death

Summary: British Transport Police (BTP) are trying to trace a man who might have witnessed a railway worker being hit by a train at Newark Northgate Station.

John Wright, 49, from Doncaster, a member of Network Rail's track team, died in hospital after being struck on 22 January. Detectives want to speak to a man who was captured on CCTV close to the scene of the accident. BTP have said they are not treating Mr Wright's death as suspicious. Det Insp Stuart Mellish said: "We are conducting a thorough investigation into the events that led up to him being hit by the train and are trying to piece together all the information possible. "The man in the photo was captured on CCTV close to the location where John was struck. "We have already spoken to a number of witnesses but would like to trace this man who may have important information about what happened to John immediately before the accident." Mr Wright was flown by air ambulance to the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham with crtitical injuries, but died days later.

ब्रिटिश ट्रांसपोर्ट पुलिस (बीटीपी) एक ऐसे व्यक्ति का पता लगाने की कोशिश कर रही है जिसने नेवार्क नॉर्थगेट स्टेशन पर एक रेलवे कर्मचारी को ट्रेन से टकराते हुए देखा होगा।


Hong Kong protests: The symbols and songs explained

Summary: After a week of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, many symbols and songs have emerged as favourites among demonstrators. Here is a look at some of the most common sights and sounds on the streets - and what they mean.

By Jasmine ColemanBBC News Yellow ribbons Yellow ribbons have become synonymous with Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, with protesters taking up Tony Orlando and Dawn's song Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree. The ribbons adorn railings and trees around the territory's government buildings. Meanwhile supporters around the world have joined Hong Kongers in pinning the ribbons to their shirts and posting them on their social media profiles. Yellow has long been the official colour of many suffrage organisations, stemming from the women's suffrage campaign in the US in the 1860s. Blue ribbons Not everyone in Hong Kong is sympathetic to the protesters' actions. After days of disruption to parts of the financial district and other major areas of the city, some are saying they have had enough. They started wearing blue ribbons, the colour of the local police uniforms, in response and calling for peace and a return to normalcy. "We just want the peaceful Hong Kong to come back," one resident told the BBC. Crossed arms "We crossed our arms because we want to express our dissatisfaction toward the government," protest leader Joshua Wong told CNN earlier this week. A similar gesture has been used in recent years by Mr Wong's student activist group Scholarism in its campaign against government plans for schoolchildren to take Chinese patriotism classes. But it has now been widely adopted by pro-democracy campaigners. "It symbolises that we are against the current political balance in Hong Kong," Mike Cheung, a student and protester, told the BBC. "But it also shows that we are not holding any weapons or utilising violence." Umbrellas They were originally intended to protect against sunshine and rain - but protesters were forced to use umbrellas to defend themselves against police tear gas and pepper spray when clashes broke out on Sunday. Since then, umbrellas have become one of the unofficial icons of the movement, so much so that it has become known as the "umbrella revolution". The umbrellas have also become a protest art phenomenon online, with Hong Kong artist Kacey Wong leading a call for designers to create images to represent the campaign. "The umbrella has been transformed from a normal everyday object to a symbol of defiance, a symbol of resistance," Mr Wong told the BBC. Songs Demonstrators have been indulging in mass sing-along sessions in the streets, with a Cantonese hit from the 1990s becoming a popular anthem. Under a Vast Sky by Canto-rock band Beyond, which has lyrics about longing for freedom, has become a crowd favourite. Many protesters are too young to remember its release in 1993. But Mike Cheung said the song remained popular because it had taken on a special significance. "The band Beyond was about more than just music performances - they represented the people of Hong Kong and motion in society," he said. "We love the music and we love the message as well." Other favourites include Do You Hear the People Sing? from the musical Les Miserables and John Lennon's Imagine. Lyrics from the songs have been painted on banners strung across buildings and bridges. Meanwhile China's state news agency Xinhua published a report on Friday about a video showing what it called a "worried uncle" tearfully singing a song entitled "waiting for you to come back". The agency said the video had gone viral. Memes Images of Hong Kong's vilified leader CY Leung as a devil and a vampire have appeared both on the internet and in the streets. One cartoon showed the leader with a baby's dummy and the slogan "Good baby", AFP news agency reports, in reference to Mr Leung being considered Beijing's stooge. A stuffed toy wolf stocked by Swedish furniture giant Ikea has also become an unlikely symbol of the protest. The character is called Lufsig in Hong Kong - but its Chinese name sounds similar to a Cantonese profanity. Critics have long nicknamed Mr Leung "the wolf". Numbers In their calls for him to step down, Hong Kong's pro-democracy activists mockingly call Mr Leung "689". It refers to his backing by Beijing and the number of votes he received from China's electoral committee in 2012. Other figures used by demonstrators include 926, which refers to 26 September when the street protests kicked off, and 8964, the date of the Tiananmen crackdown. Commentators say numbers are useful political shorthand in Hong Kong and mainland China, where critics complain of limits placed on free speech.

हांगकांग में लोकतंत्र समर्थक विरोध प्रदर्शनों के एक सप्ताह के बाद, कई प्रतीक और गीत प्रदर्शनकारियों के बीच पसंदीदा के रूप में उभरे हैं। यहाँ सड़कों पर कुछ सबसे आम दृश्यों और ध्वनियों पर एक नज़र है-और उनका क्या अर्थ है।


Stourport builder fined after fence causes brain injury

Summary: A building contractor has been fined £20,000 and must pay costs of £10,250 after a woman suffered brain damage when she was hit by fencing that collapsed in a gust of wind.

Thomas Vale Construction of Stourport, Worcestershire, was working in Kidderminster when it happened in 2012. The woman, 56, who does not want to be named, was walking past some hoarding when it blew over on top of her. She was knocked unconscious and sustained bruising on the brain. 'Foreseeably catastrophic' Her injuries affected her balance and senses of hearing, smell and taste, and she was unable to work for seven months. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which brought the prosecution, said the contractor should have carried out a more thorough risk assessment because the impact of collapse were "forseeably catastrophic". Kidderminster Magistrates' Court heard the woman's injuries were sustained two weeks after another part of the perimeter fence had blown over in the wind, when nobody had been hurt. The company pleaded guilty to breaching safety regulations.

एक इमारत ठेकेदार पर £20,000 का जुर्माना लगाया गया है और उसे £10,250 की लागत का भुगतान करना होगा जब एक महिला को मस्तिष्क की क्षति का सामना करना पड़ा जब वह हवा के झोंके में बाड़ से टकरा गई थी।


Rhyl Sun Centre demolition plans submitted

Summary: Plans to demolish a landmark water park in Denbighshire in a bid to rejuvenate the area's promenade, has taken a step forward.

Rhyl's Sun Centre shut in 2014 after the trust running it ran out of money. Denbighshire council said the upkeep of the building would be better spent elsewhere and want to pull it down. If demolition plans are backed, a new aquatic centre would be built and cash would also be used on improving the Pavilion theatre's exterior. Funding of about £3.5m would come from the Welsh Government's Vibrant and Viable places scheme. Rebecca Maxwell, the council's corporate director, said if the demolition and theatre revamp is approved, "will mark the next phase of regeneration in Rhyl" with work starting as early as July.

क्षेत्र के सैरगाह को फिर से जीवंत करने के लिए डेनबिघशायर में एक ऐतिहासिक जल उद्यान को ध्वस्त करने की योजना ने एक कदम आगे बढ़ाया है।


Actor Edward Petherbridge puts stroke story on stage

Summary: Veteran actor Edward Petherbridge was two days into rehearsals for King Lear when he suffered two strokes. He is now back on stage and has turned the experience into a new show about having the strokes and missing the chance to play Lear.

By Ian YoungsArts reporter, BBC News After more than five decades as one of Britain's most dependable and distinguished thespians, Edward Petherbridge had never had the chance to tackle an actor's biggest challenge - a lead role in one of Shakespeare's great tragedies. So when an email came asking him to play King Lear in New Zealand in 2007, he had no hesitation. "I'd have gone to Timbuktu," he says. Petherbridge earned his spurs as part of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre company in the 1960s and as a mainstay of the Royal Shakespeare Company from the '70s. He formed The Actors' Company with Sir Ian McKellen, played Newman Noggs in Nicholas Nickleby in the West End and on Broadway, has won an Olivier Award and was the original Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. "Olivier himself handed me the script," the 76-year-old recalls. "He said, 'Marvellous part. Marvellous play.' That's all he said. As I opened it on the bus home, I realised that my number had come up in a rather big way." On television, Petherbridge is best known for playing the snooty sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey in the Dorothy L Sayers Mysteries. "I played him on television in '86 with Harriet Walter, who I must now remember to call Dame," he says before adding, like a true Shakespearean delivering an aside: "I think my knighthood was lost in the post." Indeed, it is hard not to accidentally address him as Sir Edward - he is the archetypal august actor who, despite hailing from the back streets of Bradford, has the poise and voice of the most venerable thesp. Petherbridge has been in King Lear before, as the Fool in New York in 1974 and as the King of France to Olivier's monarch for a TV version in 1984. So he went to New Zealand to prepare to play the lead role. But at the end of the second day, he suffered his first stroke. "I had two, actually," he says. "One day after another. "The second time I was paralysed on my right hand side, couldn't write, couldn't walk very well at all, couldn't see very well at all." King Lear was off. But while part of his brain had malfunctioned, Petherbridge realised that it had still retained every word of the script. As he gradually made a recovery, he harboured hopes of returning to the role. "When I began to be viable again, which took a bit, I began to think, 'I must do a one-man show of King Lear because nobody's going to risk me doing the same thing all over again,'" he says. "So yes, I found I knew most of it pretty well as ever I had done. That hadn't been wiped. Nothing had been wiped actually. I've been very lucky. "And the best thing you can do for an actor who's had a stroke is to throw him into a rehearsal room, because he suddenly finds he has to use parts that he didn't think he could use very well. "It's like sending old people to exercise classes and dance classes - they get better, they get younger." Petherbridge's first stage role after the stroke came in the West End production of musical The Fantasticks in 2010. Although the run was short-lived, he struck up a double-act with fellow actor Paul Hunter. "I thought we could do a two-man Lear, but Paul had a better idea - a show about somebody not doing Lear." That was the origin of their new show, which borrows its title, My Perfect Mind, from a line from King Lear. It is Petherbridge's story told in an absurd, inventive and affectionate way. The actor describes it as taking "bits of my life and shaking them up in a kind of kaleidoscope", or like "attending a seminar on King Lear under the influence of LSD". Hunter plays Petherbridge's mother, doctor, director and driver as the pair hop around in time and space on a slanted stage, which makes everything feel rather disorientated. As Petherbridge's personal story unfolds in a disjointed but touching and very funny fashion, the story of King Lear resurfaces from time to time and plays out in parallel in the background. Petherbridge says he was only able to put his own life on stage because it had been given a theatrical treatment. "It's not documentary," he says. "It's entirely playful, irreverent, but I hope, not to sound too pretentious, life-loving, I suppose." Compared to playing King Lear for real, though, it is, he admits, "a kind of booby prize". "I must be honest about that. But it's the most wonderful booby prize because I get to play my nine-year-old self in it, I get to meet my mother and brother in it, and I get to do a piece of Lear. "I'm not thinking about whether the RSC or the National or Scunthorpe Rep are going to ask me to do Lear or not." He lowers his voice and cannot resist another aside: "I will be as soon as this is over." My Perfect Mind, made by the Told By An Idiot theatre company, is at Liverpool's Unity Theatre until 9 March before touring to the Salisbury Playhouse and the Young Vic in London.

दिग्गज अभिनेता एडवर्ड पेथरब्रिज किंग लियर के लिए अभ्यास में दो दिन थे जब उन्हें दो स्ट्रोक का सामना करना पड़ा। अब वे मंच पर वापस आ गए हैं और उन्होंने स्ट्रोक होने और लियर खेलने का मौका गंवाने के अनुभव को एक नए शो में बदल दिया है।


Writer and artist Alasdair Gray seriously injured in fall

Summary: The artist and writer Alasdair Gray has been seriously injured after falling down a flight of stairs at his home.

The 80-year-old is being treated in hospital in Glasgow after the fall, which happened early on Thursday. Mr Gray is best known for his novel Lanark but he is also known for his artwork, including a series of murals. The most famous of them spans the ceiling of the Oran Mor pub and restaurant complex in the west end of Glasgow.

कलाकार और लेखक एलासडेयर ग्रे अपने घर पर सीढ़ियों की उड़ान से गिरने के बाद गंभीर रूप से घायल हो गए हैं।


Does the US have a pet tiger problem?

Summary: There may be more captive tigers in the US than wild ones in the rest of the world. But in states like Texas that bristle at government interference, no-one really knows how many are being kept as pets.

By James JeffreyAustin, Texas Taj was a four-month-old tiger cub when purchased at a Texas truck stop by the driver of an 18-wheeler lorry. But after Taj began tearing up the truck's cab, the driver contacted Austin Zoo to get the animal off his hands. The zoo now looks after the fully grown 17-year-old Bengal tiger male. Taj is one of as many as 7,000 tigers living in the US either in zoos or privately owned, according to some estimates. That's nearly double the estimated 3,890 tigers still prowling in the wild around the world. Many of America's tigers could be in people's backyards as pets, and often aren't registered, especially in states like Texas. No-one really knows just how many tigers there are out there. At the heart of this surprising tiger turnout is the very American notion of a God-given right to do one's own thing, including owning a pet - no matter how exotic - being an individual liberty that the state should not mess with. "A man came up to me and called me a communist," said Ben Callison, a former animal sanctuary director and animal welfare activist, describing the reaction after he addressed a US Department of Agriculture conference on the problems with exotic pets. "People say you are trying to take away their rights to own what they want, and do what they want." Others, however, want to see more state involvement due to public safety concerns. Many of America's exotic pets are not covered by the 1973 Endangered Species Act, which only applies to animals taken from the wild. Many of the tigers originate from breeders within America. "The vast majority of tigers in the US come from the irresponsible captive breeding to supply the cub petting industry," says Callison. "Tigers are smuggled in, but this is mostly a US-born issue." So the regulatory burden falls on individual states, and while regulations have increased - even in Texas - too often they prove ineffective, observers say. "People want something unique, they look for the exotic - there's a whole host of large carnivorous pets across the country: black bears are common, people have African lions, mountain lions, and then there are the reptiles, alligators, crocodiles, constrictor snakes," says Nicole Paquette, vice-president of wildlife protection at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). It is easier to own a tiger than a dog that has been labelled dangerous in the state of Texas, which could have between 2,000 and 5,000 tigers. "Texas is a conservative state and values personal liberties and the right to keep what you want," says Pamela Boich of the Texas Human Legislation Network, an animal welfare lobbying group. "There's sense to that, but if it's at the price of animal welfare, that is wrong. You can buy a tiger online, it's just crazy." In 2001, Texas passed a law requiring owners of exotic pets to register them, after a tiger ripped off the arm of a young boy. But enforcement is left to the state's 254 counties, making it difficult to track unregistered tigers. "Texas is a home rule state, which means it gives a lot of authority to local jurisdictions," says Chris Van Deusen, spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, noting that only about 50 tigers are currently recorded. This lack of oversight raises concerns about animals escaping, especially from a combination of the powerful hurricanes and storms that rake the region and often shoddy enclosures. "There's no enforcement of standards for enclosures," Boich says. When a female tiger was found wandering the streets of Houston in 2016, it turned out she had been evacuated from a nearby rescue farm because of intense flooding. But the person who had been given the tiger for safekeeping was not adequately prepared - and she escaped. Floods and hurricanes notwithstanding, Texas's climate is usually very amenable for tigers, meaning they can live outside year round, without the need for winter quarters, says John Gramieri, general curator at Austin Zoo. He notes how Texas's enormous size, abounding in relatively cheap ranching land, also helps. "You're not going to have a tiger in Brooklyn as easily - Texas lends itself to keeping these animals," Mr Gramieri says. Texas is also well-positioned for the cross-border trade in tigers with Mexico. Exotic animal seizures at the border used to be mostly birds and reptiles coming from Mexico, but the trade has reversed with mostly tigers and cats bred in the US being smuggled into Mexico. Most estimates of America's tiger numbers stem from a 2005 study by Brian Werner of the Tiger Missing Link Foundation, which estimated America had just under 5,000 tigers in zoos, sanctuaries and individual ownership. The Feline Conservation Federation did its first big cat census in 2011, and in 2016 completed a five-year follow-up to establish population trends. It reported the total number of big cats in the US fell from 6,563 in 2011, to 5,144, a decrease of 22%. The total number of facilities holding big cats fell 24%, from 718 to 548. Why the decline? According to the Feline Conservation Federation, the dropping figures reflect an overall ageing population "as well as many facilities discontinuing the keeping of big cats". "Surely more education and some legislation has helped," says Pamela Boich. "My personal theory is that younger generations are more informed on the issues and will not patronise places that keep or breed them. Animal welfare groups are also working to get custody of the animals as they hear of them." One of the major concerns is tigers kept at roadside zoos, which often aren't accredited or noted by surveys. "We call these substandard zoos, and there are thousands of them all over the country," Paquette says. "Not all have tigers, but many do." In addition, the likes of state fairs, pay-to-play facilities and even shopping malls drive demand for tigers nationally. "People love getting their pictures taken with tiger cubs," says Angela Culver, media director of In-Sync Exotics Wildlife Rescue and Educational Center in Texas, which houses 78 big cats, including about 35 tigers. "Often they are kept on a bottle too long to keep them artificially small, and malnourished so they can be more easily handled; then they are either sold off, used for breeding or euthanised unless a sanctuary steps in - it's a vicious cycle." One school in Florida even had a caged tiger as star attraction at its senior prom party, it was widely reported last month. But captive tigers often have diseases and other traumas, including the wrong diet and lack of nutrients. It would cost about $200 a week in meat to adequately feed your 400-pound pet tiger, and declawing them involves the amputation of each toe bone. Some develop serious muscular atrophy from spending a life in small enclosures with no room to roam. "In the wild a tiger's territory can be 20 square miles or more," Callison says. "If they spend their entire captive lives in a space equivalent to that of a bedroom the physical and psychological damage is extensive." Since 1990, more than 22 people have died and nearly 500 have been injured by captive big cats and primates nationwide, according to the HSUS. America already has a sizeable population of indigenous wild animals. It's estimated there are 300,000 black bears, along with 30,000 mountain lions (also known as cougars), and 1,500 grizzly bears. But statistics indicate that attacks by wild animals are exceedingly rare. A 2017 report by Stanford University concluded that between 2008 and 2015, of the 1,610 animal-related fatalities in the US, the largest proportion were due to the likes of cattle and horses, followed by venomous animals and dogs. "A mother bear with her cubs can be a dangerous situation if she feels they are threatened, but if you take proper precautions that's exceedingly unlikely to happen," Callison says. "It's horses and farm animals that cause more deaths because of the sheer quantities and close proximity of humans working with them." Those lobbying for more regulations ultimately want a federal ban on the breeding of and new ownership of dangerous animals, though they say it's a hard sell due to people's distrust of big government. Even if such legislation passed, and law enforcement and other agencies worked out a strategy to capture illegally-owned tigers, that still leaves the question of what to do with them. Zoos and animal sanctuaries say they already have more tigers than they can take. In the meantime, changing public attitudes may well be more effective, those with animal welfare organisations say. "People think if they raise an animal from it being a baby then it won't be aggressive, but these animals are still wild, it's in their DNA," Culver says. "The animal might not mean to hurt you, but they are so much stronger- it might want to play and will just rake your arm. Even bobcats pack a punch, let me tell you."

अमेरिका में बाकी दुनिया में जंगली बाघों की तुलना में अधिक बंदी बाघ हो सकते हैं। लेकिन टेक्सास जैसे राज्यों में जो सरकारी हस्तक्षेप से परेशान हैं, वास्तव में कोई नहीं जानता कि कितने को पालतू जानवर के रूप में रखा जा रहा है।


First Great Western submits rail franchise bid

Summary: Train operator First Great Western has submitted its bid to extend its current contract by more than two years.

It follows a request by the government earlier in the year asking if it could operate trains on the Great Western line for another 33 months. It followed the collapse of the West Coast Mainline deal. The First Great Western franchise includes services from London Paddington to South Wales, the Cotswolds and the West of England. Ten of the country's 16 rail franchises are due for renewal before the general election, expected in 2015.

ट्रेन संचालक फर्स्ट ग्रेट वेस्टर्न ने अपने वर्तमान अनुबंध को दो साल से अधिक बढ़ाने के लिए अपनी बोली प्रस्तुत की है।


Curious cats and trapped seals among 8,000 rescues

Summary: A seal pup trapped under a three-tonne boulder and a kitten dropped by a seagull were just some of the 8,220 animals rescued by the RSPCA in 2017 - the equivalent of 23 every day.

Its rescues are at a three year high with storms leading to an increase in seals and birds getting into trouble. Miracle the seal was rescued after being trapped by rocks in Port Talbot . It had wriggled into a gap on Aberavon Beach and had been unable to get out for about two days in November. The pup's plight is highlighted in the charity's Annual Summary for Wales, which shows that in 2017 inspectors rescued the equivalent of 23 animals a day - an almost 10% increase from 2015. About 600 dogs were rescued, 1,930 cats, and 4,919 wild animals - including hundreds of Manx shearwater seabirds rescued in west Wales after becoming blown off course in storms Ophelia and Brian. More than 800 animals were rescued in Swansea, the highest number in one place in Wales, while the lowest, just 87, were helped in Blaenau Gwent. A kitten was rescued in Neath after becoming wedged between a wall and a wooden fence - a gap only 2.5 inches wide. The RSPCA worked with the caller to release the cat. They managed to push the fence back and bring the kitten out unharmed, so it was immediately released. And in May a feral kitten was rescued after being picked up and dropped by a seagull in Denbighshire. On the darker side, figures show the charity investigated 10,176 complaints of cruelty, convicted 67 people of animal welfare offences, and rehomed more than 2,100 animals. RSPCA Cymru Supt Martyn Hubbard said its work was "tireless and never-ending" and it had been an "exceptionally busy year".

2017 में आर. एस. पी. सी. ए. द्वारा बचाए गए 8,220 जानवरों में से केवल तीन टन के पत्थर के नीचे फंसा एक सील पिल्ला और एक सीगल द्वारा गिराया गया एक बिल्ली का बच्चा था-जो हर दिन 23 के बराबर था।


Man dies in Llŷn peninsula road crash

Summary: A man has died following a crash on a rural road on the Llŷn peninsula in Gwynedd.

North Wales Police said a single Skoda Octavia car was involved in the collision between Llithfaen and Pentreuchaf. Officers said a local man in his 20s died at the scene, after the crash was reported at 01:52 GMT on Sunday. The road was closed for about six hours while a crash investigation was carried out. Sgt Raymond Williams added: "I and my team offer our heartfelt condolences to the young man's family and friends at this incredibly difficult time."

ग्वेनेड में लेन प्रायद्वीप पर एक ग्रामीण सड़क पर दुर्घटना के बाद एक व्यक्ति की मौत हो गई है।


15,000 fish rescued after canal leak at Fourteen Locks

Summary: More than 15,000 fish had to be rescued after a stretch of canal suffered a big leak at Newport.

The incident happened at Fourteen Locks, Rogerstone, on a section of the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal. Pontymister Angling Club members helped staff from Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and Newport council with the rescue. The fish were safely relocated further along the waterway, said NRW.

न्यूपोर्ट में नहर के एक हिस्से में एक बड़ा रिसाव होने के बाद 15,000 से अधिक मछलियों को बचाना पड़ा।


Thousands of dead fish are just 'nature at work'

Summary: Reports of thousands of small fish being washed up on beaches in Ceredigion and Gwynedd are no cause for concern, said Natural Resources Wales (NRW).

People have reported dead fish in Aberaeron, Aberystwyth, Barmouth, Harlech and Chwilog. Other beaches are also likely to be affected. NRW experts said it was a "natural phenomenon" caused by mackerel and other fish chasing food in calm seas. Rowland Sharp, marine fisheries officer for NRW, said: "The calm seas means that mackerel chase small fish all the way on to the beaches. "The fish in these bait balls will ground themselves on beaches in an effort to escape." He added: "It may appear worrying, but it's only nature at work really."

नेचुरल रिसोर्सेज वेल्स (एन. आर. डब्ल्यू.) ने कहा कि सेरेडिगियन और ग्वेनेड के समुद्र तटों पर हजारों छोटी मछलियों के बह जाने की खबरें चिंता का विषय नहीं हैं।


Anti-US sentiment is 'rife' in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Summary: The deaths of 25 Afghans after nearly a week of anti-American rioting in a dozen cities across the country - coupled with a steady stream of anti-American demonstrations across Pakistan over several issues - signal new challenges for the US-led Western alliance as it tries to stabilise the region and pull its forces out of Afghanistan. Guest columnist Ahmed Rashid reports from Washington.

The violence in Afghanistan was sparked off by the burning of the Koran in the US. The rioting began in Mazar-e-Sharif when the UN office was ransacked and seven UN officials and guards were brutally murdered. The demonstrations then spread south to Kandahar where over two days some 13 people were killed. After six days it had spread to the eastern provinces and the capital, Kabul. There was anger among some Western observers at President Hamid Karzai, who drew attention to the Koran burning. Most Afghans did not know about it until he condemned the burning publicly a few days before the riots started. However there is also little doubt that the Taliban have taken enormous advantage of the issue in their heartland of southern Afghanistan and it is they who have been whipping up the crowds. The out-of-control violence comes as the Kabul government is supposed to take charge of some areas of Afghanistan from US forces in July in the transition process that will extend to 2014. Overwhelming corruption Whatever the circumstances, there is no doubt that anti-US feeling is growing in the country after a series of appalling incidents. Afghan civilians have been repeatedly killed in night raids by US special forces and mis-targeted bombings by US aircraft while a handful of US soldiers have been charged with deliberately killing Afghans and committing other atrocities. A great deal of public anger and frustration is due to the lack of good governance and overwhelming corruption, which could see the collapse of Kabul Bank - the largest in the country. The Americans are blamed by Afghans for tolerating the failure of the government to get its act together 10 years after 9/11 and for fuelling corruption by giving money to the wrong contractors. In Pakistan the case of the alleged CIA agent Raymond Davis - coupled with an acute economic downturn, massive energy shortages, corruption and the blasphemy issue that has led to two senior officials being murdered - has also led to widespread anti-Americanism. Fast deteriorating Mr Davis was charged with shooting dead two Pakistani men and remained in a Lahore jail for more than a month before his case was resolved. Relatives of the dead Pakistanis accepted "blood money" worth an estimated $2m in exchange for his release - something that the Pakistani legal system allows for. And while the US drone attacks on the Pakistani border with Afghanistan has claimed many Taliban and al-Qaeda lives it has also claimed the lives of Pakistani civilians. All these issues have been overly exploited by the well entrenched Islamist parties and their extremist allies as well as by parts of the right-wing media. In the meantime Afghans and Pakistanis are warning the Americans that there is enormous anti-American rage building up in both countries - and the usual tactics to address this, such as more US aid or more visits by US officials - will do little to reduce it. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan the domestic security situation is fast deteriorating, their economies are faltering, their governments are seen as corrupt and incompetent and ordinary people cannot see any improvement in their lives. Logically unrest should be directed at the governments concerned, but the overriding issue for many people is the continuing US and Nato presence in Afghanistan and the over-long war against the Taliban, which has now entered its second decade. Moreover anti-Americanism is reaching a peak as conspiracy theories abound in both countries on how and when foreign forces will exit, when the US will begin public talks with the Taliban and how it will resolve its tensions with the Pakistani military as the end-game in Afghanistan approaches. Afghans are deeply divided over talks between the Taliban and the US and Afghan governments. The majority of Pashtuns are in favour but many non-Pashtuns are against any talks with the Taliban at whose hands they suffered so badly in the 1990s. President Karzai has yet to build a national consensus on the issue. Meanwhile the Pakistani establishment fears that the US will mediate with the Taliban without taking Pakistan into confidence. Islamabad also fears that in a post-war Afghanistan, the US will hand over to India a major role in running the country. In Washington there is widespread agreement now between all parts of the US government on the need for going public soon about talks with the Taliban. Secret talks between the US and the Taliban began some six months ago but so far they have not gone very far. If there is a genuine attempt at peace talks by the Americans, that could go a long way in reducing anti-Americanism in the region, although nobody claims that such talks would be easy. As long as extremist groups act as spoilers in the peace process or have the ability to whip up anti-Americanism, the situation remains dangerous. Both countries need an end to the war in Afghanistan, a withdrawal of foreign troops and a US-Afghan-Taliban reconciliation that can heal the deep scars of the past 10 years. Ahmed Rashid's book, Taliban, was updated and reissued recently on the 10th anniversary of its publication. His latest book is Descent into Chaos - The US and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

देश भर के एक दर्जन शहरों में लगभग एक सप्ताह के अमेरिकी विरोधी दंगों के बाद 25 अफगानों की मौत-साथ ही कई मुद्दों पर पूरे पाकिस्तान में अमेरिकी विरोधी प्रदर्शनों की एक निरंतर धारा-अमेरिका के नेतृत्व वाले पश्चिमी गठबंधन के लिए नई चुनौतियों का संकेत देती है क्योंकि यह क्षेत्र को स्थिर करने और अफगानिस्तान से अपनी सेना को बाहर निकालने की कोशिश करता है। अतिथि स्तंभकार अहमद राशिद वाशिंगटन से रिपोर्ट करते हैं।


The scientists calling Tom Brady and Gwyneth Paltrow's bluff

Summary: From coffee enemas to alkaline diets, celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Tom Brady are using their star power to sell dubious health treatments to the adoring masses. What's a scientist to do?

By Robin Levinson-KingBBC News, Toronto New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady on Sunday hopes to break the record as the oldest quarterback to win the Super Bowl. Brady, 40, is still at the top of his game. This season he led the Patriots to a spot in the championship game while nursing a hand injury. His secret? You'll have to buy his latest diet book, The TB12 Method, if you want to find out. Brady advocates in the book that people eschew "nightshade" vegetables like aubergines (eggplants) and tomatoes, in favour of "alkalizing" and "anti-inflammatory" foods to increase the blood's pH and speed up muscle recovery. But just because Brady may be the GOAT (greatest of all time) on the field, does not mean he is the greatest scientist of all time, says Tim Caulfield, a Canadian health policymaker and pseudoscience critic. "There is almost no evidence to support this monk-like approach to eating," Caulfield wrote in an article . "Brady's approach seems to be loosely based on the alkaline diet, which is the idea that you can control the pH of your blood through the food you eat. (Spoiler: you can't.) As noted in a 2016 systematic review of the relevant evidence, 'there is almost no actual research' to support the ideas behind the alkaline diet." Caulfield, the government-appointed Canada Research Chair in health law and policy and the author of the book, Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?, is part of a growing segment of scientists loudly critiquing celebrity health-guru culture online. "Quackery," Caulfield says, has always been around. From sideshow elixirs to bloodletting, snake oils have always co-existed with evidence-based medicine. "But what I think has happened right now has a bit of a different flavour to it." As people become more science-literate, pseudoscience has adopted scientific language to justify itself, Caulfield says. For instance, in a recent edition of Gwyneth Paltrow's newsletter, Goop, Paltrow praises an alternative treatment to Lyme disease that uses "quantum science to analyze varied aspects of a patient's health, including energetic aspects". While one would be hard pressed to find an actual quantum physicist who believes that subatomic particles can treat a bacterial infection, Caulfield says that alluding to something as complex as quantum science can be powerfully persuasive. "Because it is so complicated, it looks like it could explain anything," he says. Another factor in the rise of quackery is the growing power of celebrity, he points out. With huge social media presences and the ability to appear on multiple platforms at once, celebrities are able to spread ideas broadly - and quickly. Studies have shown how celebrity promotion can influence people's medical choices for good and bad. A 2017 study published in Health Service Research found that the number of women opting for a risk-reducing mastectomy increased after Angelina Jolie wrote an op-ed about her own procedure. Another study, published in 2017 in Prevention Science, found that sales for oral HIV testing kits went up after Charlie Sheen announced he was sick. "Celebrities can keep ideas alive, they allow ideas to gain traction," Caulfield says. People seem especially susceptible to pseudoscience when science fails to provide an easy answer, he says. Science does not promise certainty - only probability. "Purveyors of these unproven treatments are offering simple answers, and they're offering comprehensive answers - 'This will fix you'," Caulfield says. So what's an evidence-loving scientist to do? Ask Dr Jen Gunter, a California-based gynaecologist who uses her popular blog and active Twitter account to take on everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Donald Trump. In posts on her own blog and in columns for the Guardian and the New York Times, Gunter implores women to ignore the latest celebrity-backed health trend. "Coffee enemas and colonics offer no health benefit," she wrote after a Goop newsletter suggested one might help women rid their colons of "toxins" leftover from a cleanse. More like this: "The biology used to support these therapies is unsound and there can be very real complications. Keep the coffee out of your rectum and in your cup. It is only meant to access your colon from the top." Gunter's profanity-laden wit has turned her into a kind of Amy Schumer-with-a-medical-degree, and has endeared her to some 67,000 followers on Twitter. "I think the only way you can beat celebrity is with some degree of celebrity," she says, which means if scientists want to go after celebrity gurus like Paltrow and Brady, they will need to both entertain and inform. Gunter's frequent attacks on Goop's lack of scientific underpinnings have not endeared her to Paltrow, who published a letter calling out Gunter by name. "Since her first post, she has been taking advantage of the attention and issuing attacks to build her personal platform - ridiculing the women who might read our site in the process," wrote Goop's "contributing doctors". In subsequent letters to the media, Goop was quick to point out they always carry a disclaimer that their articles are not "a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice". Gunter is not the only one who has earned the ire of a health guru. Joe Schwarcz, who holds a PhD in chemistry and is the director for McGill University's Office for Science and Society, has gotten into heated arguments with alternative food blogger Vani Hari, known as "The Food Babe". She advocates against all synthetic ingredients, often touting the motto, "if you can't pronounce it, it must be harmful". Hari's attitude, Schwarcz says, is symptomatic of a misconception that he has been fighting for nearly 40 years - the association of natural with beneficial and synthetic with harmful. "We spend most of our life trying to overcome the ravages of nature," he says, rattling off deadly substances like botulism, snake poison and malaria - all which occur in nature. After Schwarcz was quoted in a New York Times article she felt was biased against her, Hari slammed Schwarcz and accused him of being funded by chemical companies. "Based on his advocacy, one could say Dr Schwarcz hasn't met a chemical he doesn't like," she wrote on her own website. Schwarcz denies receiving funding from the chemical industry to attack her work. In 2005 he received funding from the Council of Biotechnology Information, which includes chemical-industry firms such as Monsanto and Dow, to pay for research interns. Vocal critics like Caulfield, Schwarcz and Gunter have also gained a level of popularity themselves. Caulfield has published multiple books and hosts a television show. Schwarz hosts a science radio programme and is frequently interviewed by the media. Gunter has parlayed her blog into a New York Times column and is working on a book about women's health. But Gunter says there is a world of difference between advocating for listening to medical experts and advocating for a person to delay cancer treatment to, say, start a course of "vitamin supplement therapy". "Those are dangerous messages," Gunter says. "It pushes everybody a step back if people actually believe that."

कॉफी एनीमा से लेकर क्षारीय आहार तक, ग्वेनेथ पाल्ट्रो और टॉम ब्रैडी जैसी हस्तियां अपनी स्टार पावर का उपयोग संदिग्ध स्वास्थ्य उपचारों को प्यार करने वाले लोगों को बेचने के लिए कर रही हैं। एक वैज्ञानिक क्या करे?


Who uses Reddit in the UK?

Summary: It's Reddit's 10th birthday.

By Felicity MorseNewsbeat social media producer Even if you haven't heard of the social media site, you will have read a news story, shared pictures or watched a video that passed through Reddit on its way to you. Reddit users submit pictures, comments or news stories which are then voted up or down by other users. You can ask questions and start discussions too. The more 'up' votes your post gets from other users, the more points you get and the more your post gets seen. If your post is really popular, you might make it to the Reddit homepage, which calls itself "the front page of the internet". This allows you to submit more of your own content (if you don't have many points you might be stopped temporarily from submitting content). Downvotes on your posts take points away from you. It's a popularity contest. This reward/punishment system is what social media wonks call "gamification". Devices like this are used by networks to hook you in and keep you coming back for more. This culture also allows cliques and fosters certain interests. Some types of content or news do really well on Reddit in particular. Other posts might be more popular on Instagram or Twitter. Reddit has a distinct sense of humour. Case in point: one of the most commented posts congratulates former Reddit chief architect Jeremy Edburg on his marriage, asking people not to generate a gigantic Reddit post as it slows the site down. Reddit says on its blog: "This comment thread really and actually has broken commenting site-wide many, many times, as every few months someone would find it and comment again and prevent it from archiving, until we had to specifically write code to lock this thread and preserve Reddit for all of you." Like all social media networks, Reddit's value lies in the people who use it. Although it started in the US, there are millions of Redditors worldwide. Reddit claim there are 36.1m current active user accounts and that it has 172m unique visitors a month which "would make up the 8th largest population in the world, just after Nigeria and larger than Russia, Japan, and Mexico". In the UK there are 6.6 million users per month, according to statistics Reddit gave to Newsbeat that covered four weeks in April and March. This compares with 31 million users on Facebook (according to figures in 2014) and 15 million active users on Twitter (according to figures in 2013). The UK is the third biggest user of Reddit after Canada and the US. UK users exhibit specific behaviours on the site and are more likely to use a tablet. They are also more likely than worldwide users to enter directly into a subreddit, instead of going through the homepage. Subreddits are pages devoted to particular topics. There is a subreddit on almost anything, from thoughts you have in the shower, DIY, depression or science. You can check if what you want to talk about is there by typing www.reddit.com/r/xxx. Replace xxx with your favourite topic. Football is UK users' favourite topic. They are significantly more likely to enter through /r/soccer than worldwide users. UK favourite subreddits are: There are probably quite a few Reddit voyeurs too. People who browse the site, peeping into different subreddits without subscribing. You can see how popular a subreddit is by checking out the number of subscribers to the right of the column. It also tells you how many people are in that Reddit right at that time. The most popular co.uk domain submitted to Reddit is bbc.co.uk links, accounting for 36% of all UK URLs. The top 10 are below: Gaming seems to be a popular topic for UK users, with gaming site frontier making the top 10. Posts from mattsgametheory.blogspot.co.uk are the second most likely to generate discussion. The top sites that generate comments are on average: The Blackpool Gazette might seem like a rogue entry but this is because one user submitted a link to the local news story in the r/askreddit forum after he saw a man die during an altercation. The user wanted to ask Reddit for help. The dynamic is slightly different from other social networks because users are anonymous. Other people shared their experiences of death and what helped them through. The top voted comment advised the user to get counselling. Another popular Blackpool Gazette post was to a diabetes thread with users discussing if it was fair that a diabetic woman was jailed for causing an accident after slipping into a hypoglycaemic coma at the wheel. Reddit's last ten years hasn't been completely plain sailing There's been a lot of controversy over what people post in forums. Most recently they had to shut five of its forums because they were being used to "harass individuals". The closures were announced in a post placed on Reddit, saying the sub-reddits had been banned because they had broken community rules on harassment and the forum's volunteer moderators had not taken action to stop the behaviour. The subreddits directed abuse towards overweight, black and trans people as well as gamers. Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter, BBCNewsbeat on Instagram, Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube and you can now follow BBC_Newsbeat on Snapchat

रेडिट का आज 10वां जन्मदिन है।


Analysis: Can police pay be cut?

Summary: The first part of a review of police pay in England and Wales has recommended major changes, including the scrapping of long-standing enhancements. Tom Winsor, the report's author, says that these short-term proposals could save the police £1.1bn from the pay bill - more than half of which could be used to reward officers working in the toughest jobs.

By Dominic CascianiBBC News home affairs correspondent Why overhaul pay? Tom Winsor says in his report that the police are paid comparatively well compared with others in the public services, particularly the other emergency and armed services. He says that the big problem is that there has been no review of pay and conditions since the late 1970s. In 1978, the vast majority of police were men who worked shifts - and hardly any of them were graduates. But today's force is massively more diverse with almost of a third of officers holding a degree. Six out of 10 officers work anti-social shifts - even though their pay deal pays them to work shifts at all hours. Only 40% of officers work in stereotypical beat-based roles. The reality of the modern job is specialist units - from child abuse to regional crime - because chiefs believe they clear up more crime than simply sending uniformed officers onto the streets. What all of this means, argues the report, is that police are being paid under a system designed for a world that simply no longer exists. Pay enhancements Two particular enhancements aimed at constables are in the cross-hairs of the Winsor review: CRTP does not date back to the 1970s - it was actually an attempt at performance-related reforms introduced in 2003. At that time, police chiefs were given the chance to earn bonuses of up to 15% and superintendents were told they could see themselves accelerate up the pay scale if they were good at the job. Constables gained the right to apply for CRTP - a special top-up of £1,212 available to those who had been at the top of the pay scale for at least a year and could demonstrate they were among the top men and women in uniform in the force. Ministers thought that three-quarters of constables might qualify. But in reality 98% of officers who applied got the payment. In other words, says Winsor, it has nothing to do with competence and performance. Special Priority Payments have, if anything, proved even more controversial and divisive. These were also introduced in 2003 and can be as high as £5,000 - costing the taxpayer £84m a year. SPPs were designed to attract and retain people to tough or unpopular posts in which the officer is effectively asked to carry higher responsibilities than their rank would suggest. The only problem with the system was that it was subjective. Some forces considered some posts more demanding that others - and that list could be changed. That led to canteen divisions between officers who could not understand why one was being paid more than another in particular circumstances. The report recommends scrapping the system and introducing what it says is a clearer and fairer system called Expertise and Professional Accreditation Allowance. This top-up of £1,200 a year would only be available to officers who are qualified and working in strategically vital areas: Why these posts? Winsor's entire thrust is that too much money is being spent on the salary of officers who are not in the toughest and most important jobs. One example he cites is detectives investigating online child abuse. These officers may not work unsocial shifts - but they have to deal with the immense psychological pressure of viewing appalling images of abuse created by paedophile rings. He says the police service needs to reward the hardest jobs and "incentivise" officers and chief officers to shift resources to "hard-edged" police jobs. The scrapping of these allowances has one specific aim: To focus chiefs on deploying to the most important jobs, while discouraging some officers from seeking out the easiest. That is an argument that does not necessarily wash with the Police Federation which represents rank and file officers. It argues that constables in particular do not exactly get a choice of what they do - which is why the various allowances and bonuses have been a legitimate means of recognising the demands placed on all officers. The federation argues that police face a perfect storm of pay cuts, funding cuts and pension reforms - and morale is at rock bottom. But the report says that a freeze in police pay does not necessarily mean that pay gets frozen. It says that an automatic escalator in the system means that a constable with seven years' service "would cumulatively receive an additional £4,143 between September 2011 and 2013, irrespective of the pay freeze". Winsor says this is an example of the kind of old-fashioned thinking about pay that has to end in an era of massive public spending cuts. Overtime and unsocial hours One of the Winsor report's other key recommendations is to change how overtime and unsocial hours work so that chief constables can efficiently plan how to use their resources. In short, the report says the system needs simplifying to differentiate between reasonable expectations of additional hours and the occasions when an officer should be paid much more for losing an agreed rest day or leave. Winsor says officers should get a flat 10% hourly bonus for work between 8pm and 6am - but at the same time they should lose some of the rights they have to various overtime boosts to the pay packet. These include a change to payments for casual overtime - largely meaning short periods of working, such as dealing with an important message on a day off. At present, an officer can theoretically claim a minimum four-hour overtime payment. Winsor says he has not found evidence that the four-hour claim has been abused - but he says it is clear that the system is open to abuse - so officers should only be paid for the overtime they work. What happens next? The Police Federation is clearly worried about its members' terms and conditions - but there is more and possibly worse news to come. Beyond the detailed tables on overtime pay rates, the report's subtext is clear - police practices are stuck in another century. Later this year, part two of Tom Winsor's report will be published - and it is expected to call for yet more radical and far-reaching changes. One idea that he is already floating is whether to allow pay to be cut if an officer - chief or constable - is found wanting. This would be an extremely radical step for any public service organisation to take - and particularly one for the police, who are banned from striking. He is also looking at regular fitness tests for officers amid what he describes as a "dramatic" and unexplainable increase in the number of them on restricted duties. Winsor applauds officers for their extraordinarily willingness to walk towards danger as the rest of us flee. But then, buried in the report's conclusions he attacks some of them for playing the system. "There should be a rebalancing of the needs of the public and police service," he writes. "At present, officers have too great a say on how they are deployed and if, not when, they leave the service. "In the longer-term, there should be an evaluation of the military model of short, medium and long-service commissions, to end the problem of secured indolence and ensure that officers remain in the police for the right reasons."

इंग्लैंड और वेल्स में पुलिस वेतन की समीक्षा के पहले भाग में बड़े बदलावों की सिफारिश की गई है, जिसमें लंबे समय से चली आ रही वृद्धि को खत्म करना भी शामिल है। रिपोर्ट के लेखक टॉम विन्सोर का कहना है कि इन अल्पकालिक प्रस्तावों से पुलिस को वेतन बिल से £ 1.1bn की बचत हो सकती है-जिसमें से आधे से अधिक का उपयोग सबसे कठिन नौकरियों में काम करने वाले अधिकारियों को पुरस्कृत करने के लिए किया जा सकता है।


Bendy buses trial in Isle of Man

Summary: Two bendy busses will take to Manx streets in a month-long trial.

The busses arrived earlier this week and drivers are currently being trained to drive the vehicles along the island's country roads. Transport minister Graham Cregeen said the trial could begin after the half-term break. The buses will be used for school runs can take 135 passengers, compared to 73 on a standard bus.

दो घुमावदार बसें एक महीने के लंबे परीक्षण में मैनक्स सड़कों पर जाएंगी।


Cardiff Central rail disruption for high speed work

Summary: The railway line between Cardiff and Bristol will shut this weekend for high speed upgrade work.

There will also be no direct trains between London Paddington and south Wales, with all services terminating at Bristol Parkway. Buses will run between Bristol and Cardiff Central, and a shuttle train between the Welsh capital and Swansea. It is expected to add up to 70 minutes to journeys between Swansea and Paddington. Network Rail asked people to allow extra time to complete journeys.

कार्डिफ और ब्रिस्टल के बीच रेलवे लाइन इस सप्ताह के अंत में उच्च गति उन्नयन कार्य के लिए बंद हो जाएगी।


Landscape Photographer of the Year 2018

Summary: Shards of ice on a bitterly cold February morning feature in the foreground of Pete Rowbottom's image of Glencoe, in the Highlands of Scotland. The striking shot scooped the top prize in the Landscape Photographer of the Year awards.

The competition, now in its 12th year, aims to highlight the splendour of Britain's rural and urban landscapes. The judges chose Rowbottom's dramatic composition from thousands of entries celebrating the richly diverse landscape of the UK. "The numerous strong diagonal lines of the ice fractures in Pete's image echo the shape of Buachaille Etive Mor in the background and have peaks of their own," said awards founder Charlie Waite. "The cold of the mountain and ice together contrast well with the amber of their surroundings. "This is an image where you can hear and feel the landscape as well as see it, so it is emotionally strong and involves the viewer on multiple levels." Top spot in the adult Classic View category went to John Finney for this image taken during a blizzard in the High Peak, Derbyshire. The runner-up spot in the same category went to Mario D'Onofrio for this stunning shot of the Milky Way over St Michael's Mount in Cornwall. "The 'teapot' of Sagittarius can also be clearly seen to the left of the Mount, along with Saturn, the brightest point in the sky here, just above the clouds creeping in from the right," says D'Onofrio. "I must have taken hundreds of shots - but it was this single exposure that I ended up being most satisfied with to tell the story of that night." Cornwall was also the location for the winning image in the adult Living the View category. This dramatic image of a fisherman braving the windy conditions at Porth Nanven was made by Mick Blakey. "I was happy to just sit on the rocks and photograph the waves and spray - but then some magic happened... a fisherman appeared on the rocks in frame - I could not believe my luck," says Blakey. Rod Ireland took the runner-up spot with this picture of the Cairngorms in the Highlands. "I'd decided to make the most of the stunning winter conditions and have a couple of days skiing at Glenshee in the Cairngorms. I couldn't quite resist taking my camera with me though and decided to go off-piste and grab some shots between runs," says Ireland. "The lighting was sublime, and I loved the textures and contrasts on the slopes facing me across the valley. It was only when I got home that I spotted the two mountaineers/skiers high up on the broad ridge, utterly dwarfed by their surroundings." First place in the adult Your View category went to Brain Kerr for this image of windswept trees in Leadhills, South Lanarkshire. Rachel Talibart's photo of fog at Beachy Head Lighthouse, East Sussex, was highly commended in the same category. Alex Wolfe-Warman won the adult Urban View category with this picture of houses in Bristol, taken during a hot-air balloon ride over the city. "I made a variety of photographs on the flight. This is one of my favourites. Visibility was excellent. And the light was beautiful at 20:00 on a warm July evening," says Wolfe-Warman. The runner-up spot went to Andrew Midgley for a picture taken in Norfolk. "I am always excited by the prospect of snow. I think this image is influenced by Nordic noir cinema, and a winter trip to Russia a few years ago," says Midgley. The Young Landscape Photographer of the Year title went to Josef FitzGerald-Patrick for his image of a mountain biker in action at Land's End, Cornwall. "Last year I met up with friend and fellow mountain biker Russ Pierre for a brilliant photo shoot but there was one image that, although stunning, had so much room for improvement," says FitzGerald-Patrick. "We went back in the spring of 2018 to set about capturing the dream image. I found a good composition featuring a nice rocky drop for Russ to jump, with the Armed Knight and setting Sun behind it. And there I had it, our dream shot." All the shortlisted and winning entries are published in the Landscape Photographer of the Year: Collection 12 book'.

स्कॉटलैंड के हाइलैंड्स में पीट रॉबॉटम की ग्लेनको की छवि के अग्रभूमि में कड़ाके की ठंड फरवरी की सुबह बर्फ के टुकड़े दिखाई देते हैं। हड़ताली शॉट ने लैंडस्केप फोटोग्राफर ऑफ द ईयर पुरस्कारों में शीर्ष पुरस्कार जीता।


Portsmouth Pyramids leisure centre to reopen after storms

Summary: A seafront leisure centre that was badly damaged by sea water in the winter storms will reopen in August, its operators say.

Over 50cm (19in) of water flooded Portsmouth's Pyramids in February, causing extensive damage to the swimming pool's plant room. The water also severely damaged the building's fabric and mains power was lost. BH Live, which runs the centre, said repair costs were covered by insurance. The company said planned improvement works at the centre had also been brought forward during the closure to "limit further disruption in the future". The leisure centre, owned by Portsmouth City Council, was taken over by the company last year after it came under threat of demolition by the authority amid spending cuts.

इसके संचालकों का कहना है कि सर्दियों के तूफानों में समुद्र के पानी से बुरी तरह क्षतिग्रस्त एक समुद्र तट अवकाश केंद्र अगस्त में फिर से खुल जाएगा।


Stork Inn fire: Blaze at 17th Century Conder Green pub

Summary: Fire crews are battling a blaze at a 17th Century pub near Lancaster.

The fire began to engulf the roof at the Stork Inn, on Corricks Lane in Conder Green, at about 05:20 GMT. Plumes of thick, black smoke can be seen billowing from the building. Ten fire engines are in attendance and the roof is "well-alight", Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service said. The A588 is currently closed and vehicles are unable to travel through the area towards Lancaster or Thurnham.

अग्निशमन दल लैंकेस्टर के पास 17वीं शताब्दी के एक पब में लगी आग से जूझ रहे हैं।


How much bigger can container ships get?

Summary: The world's cargo ships are getting big, really big. No surprise, perhaps, given the volume of goods produced in Asia and consumed in Europe and the US. But are these giant symbols of the world's trade imbalance growing beyond all reason?

By William KremerBBC World Service What is blue, a quarter of a mile long, and taller than London's Olympic stadium? The answer - this year's new class of container ship, the Triple E. When it goes into service this June, it will be the largest vessel ploughing the sea. Each will contain as much steel as eight Eiffel Towers and have a capacity equivalent to 18,000 20-foot containers (TEU). If those containers were placed in Times Square in New York, they would rise above billboards, streetlights and some buildings. Or, to put it another way, they would fill more than 30 trains, each a mile long and stacked two containers high. Inside those containers, you could fit 36,000 cars or 863 million tins of baked beans. The Triple E will not be the largest ship ever built. That accolade goes to an "ultra-large crude carrier" (ULCC) built in the 1970s, but all supertankers more than 400m (440 yards) long were scrapped years ago, some after less than a decade of service. Only a couple of shorter ULCCs are still in use. But giant container ships are still being built in large numbers - and they are still growing. It's 25 years since the biggest became too wide for the Panama Canal. These first "post-Panamax" ships, carrying 4,300 TEU, had roughly quarter of the capacity of the current record holder - the 16,020 TEU Marco Polo, launched in November by CMA CGM. In the shipping industry there is already talk of a class of ship that would run aground in the Suez canal, but would just pass through another bottleneck of international trade - the Strait of Malacca, between Malaysia and Indonesia. The "Malaccamax" would carry 30,000 containers. The current crop of ultra-large container vessels can navigate the Suez - just - but they are only able to dock at a handful of the world's ports. No American harbour is equipped to handle them. The sole purpose of the soon-to-be-launched Triple E ships will be to run what's called a pendulum service for Maersk - the largest shipping company in the world - between Asia and Europe. They arrive in Europe full, and when they leave a significant proportion of containers carry nothing but air. (At any given moment about 20% of all containers on the world's seas are empty.) "Ships have been getting bigger for many years," says Paul Davey from Hutchison Ports, which operates Felixstowe in the UK, one of the likely ports of call of the Triple E. "The challenge for ports is to invest ahead of the shipping capacity coming on-stream, and to try and be one step ahead of the game." Overcapacity in the world's ports means there is huge competition for business. Operators cannot afford to get left behind, says Marc Levinson, author of The Box - How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. "The ports are placed in a difficult competitive position here because the carriers are basically saying to them, 'If you don't expand - if you don't build new wharves and deepen the harbours and get high speed cranes, we'll take our business someplace else.'" These big beasts of the sea present ports with other challenges too. Ship owners also want vessels to be unloaded and loaded within 24 hours, which has various knock-on effects. More space is needed to store the containers in the harbour, and onward connections by road, rail and ship need to be strengthened to cope with the huge surge in traffic. Felixstowe, which handles 42% of the UK's container trade, has 58 train movements a day, but plans to double that after it opens a third rail terminal later this year. Bigger vessels also behave differently in the water. The wash created by a large ship can be enough to cause other ships moored in a harbour to break free - just as the passenger liner SS City of New York did in 1912 when the Titanic set out on her maiden voyage. "These days with the increase in traffic, we experience this more and more often," says Marco Pluijm, a port engineer working for Bechtel. "A simple thing you can do is just slow ships down and add some tug boats for better manoeuvring - but that all has cost implications." There are currently 163 ships on the world's seas with a capacity over 10,000 TEU - but 120 more are on order, including Maersk's fleet of 20 Triple Es. Bearing in mind that the carbon footprint of international shipping is roughly equivalent to that of aviation - some 2.7% of the world's man-made CO2 emissions in the year 2000, according to the International Maritime Organization - the prospect of these leviathans carving up the oceans in ever greater numbers is likely to be a source of concern for green consumers. Maersk, however, argues that the Triple E is the most environmentally friendly container ship yet. (The three Es in the name stand for economy of scale, energy efficiency and environmentally improved.) Although it will only be three metres longer and three metres wider than the 15,500-TEU Emma Maersk, its squarer profile allows it to carry 16% more cargo. Re-designed engines, an improved waste-heat recovery system, and a speed cap at 23 knots - down from 25 - will produce 50% less carbon dioxide per container shipped than average on the Asia-Europe route, Maersk calculates. "When you get bigger ships, you can more efficiently carry more cargo, so the carbon footprint you get per tonne of cargo is smaller," says Unni Einemo from the online trade publication Sustainable Shipping. "So on that basis, big is beautiful." To achieve maximum fuel efficiency, however, a ship has to be fully loaded. "They are massive ships, and a really big ship running half-full is probably less energy-efficient overall than a smaller ship running with a full set of containers," says Einemo. Maersk's Triple Es will be going into service at a time when growth in the volume of goods to be shipped is comparatively low - some experts don't expect it to pick up until 2015. But the world's container fleet capacity is expected to grow by 9.5% this year alone, as Maersk and others receive the ships they ordered years ago. Some of the extra capacity will be absorbed in the new practice of slow steaming - industry-speak for sailing more slowly. Sailing at 12-15 knots instead of 20-24 knots brings enormous savings on fuel - but it does mean that extra ships are required to transport the same volume of goods in the same timescale. Maersk are counting on container trade continuing to grow at 5-6% - less than half the growth rate of seven years ago, but enough to recoup the company's investment in the Triple Es, which cost $190m (£123m) each. "The history of container shipping involves ship lines taking huge gambles," says Marc Levinson, who points to a trend for some American and European companies to move manufacturing back from Asia. "There are a lot of people in the shipping industry who aren't sure that Maersk is on the right track," he says. Jean-Paul Rodrigue at Hofstra University believes that big container ships like the Triple E will prove their value on specific trade routes, nonetheless. "Each time a new generation comes along, there's the argument 'Oh is this going a little too far this time - is there enough port trade to justify this?'" he says. "But each time the ship class was able to put itself in the system and provide a pretty good service." Marco Pluijm was interviewed on the BBC World Service programme The Forum. You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook.

दुनिया के मालवाहक जहाज बड़े हो रहे हैं, वास्तव में बड़े हो रहे हैं। एशिया में उत्पादित और यूरोप और अमेरिका में खपत होने वाली वस्तुओं की मात्रा को देखते हुए शायद कोई आश्चर्य की बात नहीं है। लेकिन क्या दुनिया के व्यापार असंतुलन के ये विशाल प्रतीक सभी कारणों से बढ़ रहे हैं?


100 Women: Are journeys safer with women-only carriages?

Summary: Loud, brightly coloured and speedy, matatus are an unmistakeable sight on Nairobi's streets. Many of the city's three million inhabitants rely on these minibuses, but for many women they are the setting for harassment and abuse.

Lynn Baraza had escorted her sister to a bus stop when a group of matatu drivers tried to force them both into a vehicle. She says: "They started pushing us and pulling my sister's arm, even though she had her baby strapped to her chest. "They were saying sexist and sexually derogative things to us. "I told them to leave us alone, and when I realised nobody was going to help us I started crying. "My sister was really scared." Fortunately Lynn and her sister weren't physically harmed, but their experience is far from unique. Most of the 381 Kenyan women surveyed by Nairobi advocacy group Women's Empowerment Link said they had been victims of gender-based violence on public transport. Studies collated by the Stop Street Harassment organisation have similarly gloomy findings, with research suggesting 100% of female passengers in Paris have experienced harassment at least once on public transport. Would women-only carriages help? Some politicians - including Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn - have proposed separate carriages for women could be the solution. They have been trialled in many countries, from Mexico to Japan to India, in various forms on buses, trains and taxis. But is there any evidence they make women's lives safer? This is hard to measure for many reasons. Public transport attacks often go unreported, and even when they are logged, many countries don't publish that data. And while segregation can be for cultural reasons, most countries with women-only carriages introduced them because they had a problem with sexual harassment in the first place. It could be that these cities were even more dangerous before they introduced separate carriages. The only way of knowing is to compare conditions before and after women-only carriages were introduced, and there is very little data to go on. One place where this data is available is Tokyo. In 2004, a number of train lines introduced women-only carriages. A year later, reports of lewd behaviour against women in the city had fallen by 3%, but reports of harassment rose by 15-20% on two of the lines where women-only carriages had been introduced. However, this could be down to incidents in the mixed carriages going up, or higher levels of reporting. We do know that many women feel safer travelling without men around. A 2014 Reuters poll, which surveyed 6,300 women around the world, found 70% said they would feel safer travelling in a separate carriage. The results varied hugely from country to country, with 94% of women in Manila attesting to this compared with 35% in New York City. The same survey ranked 16 of the world's biggest cities in order of most dangerous for women travellers. Four of the top five - Bogota, Mexico City, Delhi and Jakarta - already operated some form of women-only transport. So, it could be that while women perceive their journeys to be safer, that isn't the case. A quick fix If separate carriages offer women peace of mind, aren't they worth introducing? Despite her experience, Lynn doesn't think so. Instead, she thinks the key to changing Kenya's societal expectations would be for the whole community to apply zero tolerance to harassment. She also points out that while women might be safer on their journey, the harassment when they get off the bus would be the same, or even worse. Lynn is not the only person who thinks the policy is misguided. Many academics and policy experts have argued that segregating transport is just a quick fix that normalises attacks on women. They say it places an expectation on women to avoid harassment, rather than on the perpetrators to change their behaviour or for more effective law enforcement. An FIA Foundation report examining different policy approaches to women's safety on public transport concludes gender separation "does not address the underlying issue that this is unacceptable behaviour" and is "confirming that women should not be allowed to travel freely and need special attention". Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, agrees that it equates to a tacit acceptance of assaults on women. She told BBC Radio 4: "A perpetrator-focused approach that tackles the issue is the right one… women-only carriages sends a wider message that these kinds of assaults are inevitable and we should just coop women up to try and avoid them." The data we have to go on suggests women feel safer travelling in a separate carriage, and that it could indeed make them safer for the duration of their journey. But segregated transport fails to address the root causes of harassment: social acceptance, unbalanced power dynamics and the lack of repercussions for offenders. Read more from Reality Check

नैरोबी की सड़कों पर ज़ोर से, चमकीले रंगों में और तेज़, मैटाटस एक अचूक दृश्य है। शहर के तीस लाख निवासियों में से कई इन मिनी बसों पर भरोसा करते हैं, लेकिन कई महिलाओं के लिए वे उत्पीड़न और दुर्व्यवहार के लिए सेटिंग हैं।


Thousands expected at Bristol Harbour Festival

Summary: The Bristol Harbour Festival is under way, with more than 200,000 people expected to attend.

The annual festival, described as one of the biggest free city centre events in the South West, started on Friday night with music in Queen Square. It includes dance, market stalls, tall ships and fireworks. The festival has expanded from the harbourside into Castle Park this year. Penny Brohn Cancer Care is the event's official charity. The three-day event also features the Bristol village fayre for the first time.

ब्रिस्टल हार्बर महोत्सव चल रहा है, जिसमें 200,000 से अधिक लोगों के भाग लेने की उम्मीद है।