Fukushima: Nuclear power's VHS relic?

Summary: The most obvious cause of the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station was the massive wall of tsunami water that swept the site clean of back-up electricity generation on 11 March, removing cooling capacity from reactor cores and resulting in serial meltdown.

By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News Would a newer reactor have fared better? Was the relationship between industry and regulators too close? Perhaps. A question less often discussed, but equally intriguing, is whether decisions made half a century ago for reasons of commercial and geopolitical advantage have left the world with basic designs of nuclear reactor that are inherently less safe than others that have fallen by the wayside. To make an analogy with the world of videotape: have we been guilty of rejecting the nuclear Betamax in favour of an inferior quality VHS? The rise of nuclear energy from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki began in the 1950s, against the ever falling temperatures of the Cold War. Having exploded the first bombs in 1945, the US government believed it would have a 20-year head start on the rest of the world in just about everything nuclear. It passed the McMahon Act, keeping nuclear know-how within US borders - notably the technology for enriching uranium developed during the Manhattan Project. Its lead did not last long, however. The Soviet Union exploded its first A-bomb just four years later, followed soon afterwards by the UK. Washington needed something else. "The Americans suddenly thought 'it's not obvious to the world that we have dominated and won the nuclear race, so we need to make it clear that we are the leaders'," says Robin Cowan, an economist from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. "So they wanted to show they could create civilian power with nuclear generation." Seeing the light An experimental US reactor called EBR-1 generated the first nuclear electricity at its home in Argonne National Laboratory, sending current through a series of lightbulbs in 1951. But the US did not open the world's first civilian nuclear power station; that honour went to the USSR, whose tiny Obninsk reactor opened in 1953. And the world's first commercial-scale nuclear station was the UK's Calder Hall, opened the following year. The race for nuclear power - and with it, political influence - was underway. "[Soviet chief Nikita] Khrushchev... recognised that achievements in nuclear power made it possible to compete with the United States in the world arena - to say 'our system, the socialist system, is the best - look who is first in areas of science and technology'," relates Soviet historian Paul Josephson. "You see a rebirth of hope that there will be a glorious communist future, perhaps a nuclear-powered future." All of these early reactors used different designs, with everyone except US scientists forced to work with natural uranium rather than the enriched variety. "The availability of uranium to the UK was reasonably secure; but what the UK didn't have was enrichment technology, which was in the United States," recalls Laurence Williams, professor of nuclear safety at the University of Central Lancashire. "So the UK had to rely on natural uranium, which needed to be moderated using graphite - so that pushed us down a graphite-moderated gas-cooled reactor programme." The moderator is the material inside a reactor needed to slow neutrons, the particles that travel from nucleus to nucleus - the "chain" of the chain reaction. With enriched uranium, ordinary water - so-called light water - will do. But natural uranium, with a lower density of fissile nuclei, requires either graphite or heavy water, in which the ordinary hydrogen atoms are replaced by atoms of deuterium, a heavier isotope of hydrogen. Obninsk was a different concept again, graphite-moderated but water-cooled. EBR-1 was something yet more exotic - a fast breeder reactor, with the core cooled by liquid sodium, creating more nuclear fuel than it consumed. So fertile was the imagination of nuclear scientists that by the time the United Nations convened its Conference on Peaceful Uses of the Atom in 1955, more than 100 ideas were on the table. Pressurised decision Yet now, the nuclear world is dominated by one - the light water reactor, powered by enriched uranium. The reasons behind this virtual technical monopoly originate underwater. The top US priority was to develop a reactor capable of powering submarines. A naval officer with a reputation for getting things done, Hyman Rickover, was appointed to lead the task. Submarine reactors need to be small and compact, and avoid the use of materials such as hot sodium that could prove an explosive hazard. The light water reactor, with the water under pressure to prevent it from boiling and turning to steam, was Rickover's choice. It quickly entered service powering the Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine. The reputation Rickover gained through the submarine's succesful maiden voyage put him in a powerful position when decisions were being made concerning the first US nuclear power station at Shippingport in Pennsylvania. "When the civilian urgency came - 'we must prove to the world that we are the leaders' - obviously you pick the one that works," says Robin Cowan. "So [Rickover] essentially forced the labs to say 'well, if you have to build a nuclear reactor now, the one you want is light water - not that we think it's the right one, but if you have to make a decision today, light water is the one you want'." The Nautilus reactor was constructed by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, which began to see the pressurised light water reactor (PWR) as a commercial option. Meanwhile, other US government labs worked with the General Electric Corporation to develop a variant, the boiling water reactor (BWR) - the type used at Fukushima. With the US government now actively courting friendly European countries with enriched uranium and other nuclear technology, partly to immunise them against Soviet lures, Westinghouse and General Electric began to market their wares in Europe and the US - and eventually further afield. "They had a huge vested interest in dominating the nuclear power space - they stood to make many times the amount of money building a nuclear plant as they did a comparable coal or natural gas facility," says technology writer Alexis Madrigal. "The combination of those two forces - governmental support combined with the corporate imperatives of these two massive corporations - led to this time period which is known as the 'great bandwagon market'. Essentially, both started selling nuclear plants at way below cost." These lures proved too much for Europe to resist. France, which had been building gas-cooled graphite-moderated reactors similar to the UK's Magnox design, embraced PWRs in the 1970s. In 1980, even the UK abandoned its Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor (AGR) programme, and decided its next reactor - Sizewell B - would be a PWR. Today, only Canada manufactures anything different on a commercial scale - the heavy water-moderated Candu reactors. So light water reactors, BWRs and PWRs, dominate the nuclear world. But are they the best? Back in the 1950s, engineers believed they were not, with research indicating gas-cooled designs would be more efficient, producing cheaper electricity. There is an argument that gas-cooled reactors are inherently safer as well. Because the cores are bigger, the density of heat in them is lower - meaning that in principle, operators would have longer to respond to a developing crisis before meltdown occurred. In addition, if cooling pumps fail, the gas should continue to circulate through natural convection. This is a marked contrast to light water reactors, in which - as the Fukushima disaster demonstrated - loss of power can mean catastrophic loss of cooling. Alvin Weinberg, a physicist who worked on many of the early US reactors and directed research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), said during an interview in the 1980s that the scaling-up of PWRs for commercial use rendered them fundamentally flawed. "As long as the reactor was as small as the submarine intermediate reactor, which was only 60 megawatts (MW), then the containment shell was absolute, it was safe," he said. "But when you went to 600MW reactors and 1,000MW reactors, you could not guarantee this, because you could in some very remote situations conceive of the containment being breached by this molten mass; and that change came about, I would assert, because of the enormous economic pressure to make the reactors as large as possible." At Idaho National Laboratory in the US, Don Miley argues that EBR-2, the successor to EBR-1, showed just how much better sodium-cooled reactors perform under stress than the water-cooled variety at Fukushima. "They ran an experiment in 1986 in which safety systems were taken offline, they were not allowed to function - and then they turned off their coolant pumps, which nobody in the world had dared to do in a reactor yet. "And strictly through reactor design - not through engineered systems or operator action, just reactor designs and two very simple concepts, convection currents and thermal expansion - this reactor shut itself down in 300 seconds without any damage to the fuel - in fact, it was re-started the same day." Closed field Other reactor concepts that offer major theoretical advantages over light water reactors have fallen by the wayside, or remain stuck in the research stage. These include designs that use thorium rather than uranium as fuel, resulting in less long-lived waste and a lower weapons proliferation risk, and travelling wave reactors that burn their waste as they operate. Would any of these, or gas-cooled graphite-moderated designs, have proven superior to light water designs - even the latest ones that proponents claim have learned the lessons of the past and now incorporate more passive safety systems? It is not certain - the British AGRs had their problems, and fast breeders have also seen a number of incidents. Even more provocatively, would any of these lineages have led to reactors that could have survived the Fukushima deluge, averting the need for many thousands of people to leave their homes and for the government to shell out $100bn or so in compensation? John Idris Jones, a physicist who has worked at the Magnox station at Wylfa in Wales for more than 30 years, believes a gas-graphite reactor would have survived. "A plant like that, a plant like Wylfa, then Wylfa would be able to keep on cooling itself, yes," he says. Probably we shall never know whether adopting light water has proved to be nuclear power's VHS moment. Despite continuing research interests in more exotic designs, virtually all commercial reactors being planned and built around the world are PWRs and BWRs. "With technologies that do the same thing, very often one of them comes to dominate," says Robin Cowan. "It's very hard to undo that; we have so much more experience with light water that it would be hard to convince yourself to go back to the beginning and start developing heavy water or gas-graphite. "So if we look today, probably light water looks pretty good; but had they made a different decision in 1955, what would the world be like? "That's a much harder thing to document." But it is, perhaps, a question governments should be contemplating as they consider whether to embark on reactor building programmes that would entrench current designs for further decades to come. You can hear more about the history of nuclear power in Atomic States, broadcast this week on the BBC World Service. Listen to it here. Atomic States is a Freewheel Production.

जापान के फुकुशिमा दाइची परमाणु ऊर्जा केंद्र पर आपदा का सबसे स्पष्ट कारण सुनामी के पानी की विशाल दीवार थी जो 11 मार्च को बैक-अप बिजली उत्पादन से साइट को साफ कर देती थी, रिएक्टर कोर से शीतलन क्षमता को हटा देती थी और जिसके परिणामस्वरूप क्रमिक पिघलना होता था।


In quotes: Edwin Morgan tributes

Summary: The Scots Makar - or national poet - Edwin Morgan has died at the age of 90. Widely regarded as one of the foremost Scottish poets of the 20th Century, his poetry spanned more than 60 years and included celebrated works such as The Second Life (1968) and From Glasgow to Saturn (1973). Here, figures from across Scotland and the UK pay tribute to Mr Morgan's life.

Alex Salmond, first minister of Scotland His passion for observing all aspects of Scottish life shone a spotlight on Scotland for the rest of the world. I vividly recall the poem he wrote for the opening of the Scottish Parliament, when he wrote 'Don't let your work and hope be other than great'. That epithet must surely apply to Edwin Morgan himself. Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate A great, generous, gentle genius has gone. He was poetry's true son and blessed by her. He is quite simply irreplaceable. Iain Gray, Scottish Labour leader Edwin Morgan OBE was widely recognised as one of the foremost and best loved poets of the 20th century, the last of a great generation of Scottish poets. Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival As well as being one of the greatest British poets of the last 50 years, Morgan was also the last link to a great generation of Scottish writers than included Sorley MacLean, Norman MacCaig and Hugh MacDiarmid. His work transcended genres, was constantly challenging and inspiring, and encapsulated all that is great about Scottish poetry and writing. Poet Dr David Kinloch, Co-founder of the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition His work remained constantly innovative, from the renowned science fiction, concrete and instamatic poems studied by school pupils across the country to his recent collaboration with the band Idlewild.

द स्कॉट्स मकर-या राष्ट्रीय कवि-एडविन मॉर्गन का 90 वर्ष की आयु में निधन हो गया है। व्यापक रूप से 20वीं शताब्दी के अग्रणी स्कॉटिश कवियों में से एक के रूप में माने जाने वाले, उनकी कविता 60 वर्षों से अधिक समय तक फैली हुई थी और इसमें द सेकंड लाइफ (1968) और फ्रॉम ग्लासगो टू सैटर्न (1973) जैसी प्रसिद्ध कृतियाँ शामिल थीं। यहाँ, स्कॉटलैंड और यूके के आंकड़े श्री मॉर्गन के जीवन को श्रद्धांजलि देते हैं।


Coronavirus: How to exercise while staying at home

Summary: The Green Goddess - the original keep-fit queen of the 80s - is making a comeback on BBC Breakfast. Eighty-year-old Diana Moran will be doing exercises three times a week from self-isolation so viewers can follow along at home.

By Emily Young & Lauren TurnerBBC News So what else can you do to keep fit and healthy while heeding the new advice about staying at home? "There are tonnes of things you can do from your chair or sofa - squats, tricep dips, crunches, body work exercises and so on," says Cardiff-based personal trainer Keris Hopkins. "If you have kids at home, you can get them involved. Make activities fun, like running around or playing hide and seek. Just keep moving," says the 37-year-old, who has started filming workout videos at home for people to follow along. "It's important to plan your day - for example 7am to 8am work out online. It will help people find a focus if they plan. And if you can get outside, try to get your 10,000 steps done." Becky Hill and Kate Williams run Raise the Bar boot camps in Oxfordshire. For now, they continue to take place for whoever is able to attend - with people keeping at least 10 feet apart and equipment being cleaned between each use. But they are also launching an online version for people self-isolating, a move which many gyms and personal trainers are making. Exercise "decreases stress and anxiety," says Becky Hill, who is also a fitness trainer and therapist. Everyone is stressed at the moment and people aren't sleeping she says. "But if you're moving, you're likely to sleep better." But how much you can do, depends on which type of household you fall into says, Dr Charlie Foster, Head of the Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences at Bristol University, who also advises the UK chief medical officers on physical activity. If you are under 70 with no underlying conditions you can still be active outside as long as you stay at least two metres (three paces) away from other people. So walking the dog (or even your neighbour's dog), going for a run or going for a bike ride are all fine - provided you keep your distance. Public spaces such as swimming pools and gyms are not banned - but if you use them, be sure their equipment and surfaces have been thoroughly cleaned. And of course you can do your bit cleaning any equipment you use. Dr Foster says it's preferable to exercise outside. Team sports are not advised for now - but tennis is ok for the moment as long as you wash your hands first, don't shake hands afterwards and keep your distance. If you are over 70 and self-isolating, pregnant or have an underlying health condition, but feel well, you can also go outside with the same caveat of keeping your distance from others. For older people, strength and balance exercises are particularly important, says Jess Kuehne, senior program manager from the Centre for Ageing Better, as muscle strength starts to decline rapidly after our 30s. She recommends yoga, tai chi, resistance training and seated exercises. If you are self-isolating with symptoms, or someone in your household has them, you shouldn't leave home but that doesn't mean you should stop moving. It's really important to use movement and activity as a way of breaking up your routine, if you feel well enough. Cook, play active games, dance, go into the garden if you've got one. If you are unwell - use your energy to get better and don't try to be active. If you can get out of bed, then do so but don't try to do too much. Finally, if you are feeling better after having had the virus, return to your normal routine very gradually. We don't know what the long term effects are but as far as we know, there is no reason why you can't gently return to normal activity. Of course there are many fitness websites and online apps people can use to help find a routine with Daily Yoga workout and fitness and Calm, a meditation and sleep app currently among the most popular downloads in the UK. And while you're at home, tempting as it is, try not to eat everything in sight, Ms Hopkins reminds us. "Aim to minimise stress. And try to use the time wisely - read that book, do an online course, learn a new language, clear out the cupboards. It will all help," she says. Exercises to try at home (as advised by This Girl Can)

ग्रीन गॉडेस-80 के दशक की मूल कीप-फिट क्वीन-बीबीसी ब्रेकफास्ट पर वापसी कर रही है। अस्सी वर्षीय डायना मोरन आत्म-अलगाव से सप्ताह में तीन बार व्यायाम करेंगी ताकि दर्शक घर पर फॉलो कर सकें।


Viewpoint: How a 'breaking' murder has exposed Indian media

Summary: For the last few days, India's media have been riveted by a murder mystery. But the hysterical coverage, full of speculation and innuendoes, is disturbing, writes politician and author Shashi Tharoor.

A burned skeleton has been exhumed that is presumed to be that of a young woman who allegedly was strangled to death by her own mother three years ago. That the mother is a thrice-married socialite who was CEO of a television channel, and that she had told her current husband that her daughter was her sister, has added spice to the rumour mill being relentlessly ground on our 24/7 channels. But is the murder even a mystery? Not if you believe the media, which, fuelled by seemingly authoritative leaks from the police and a bewildering array of disloyal "friends", has already convicted the alleged murderess. Trial by media From the breathless and hysterical coverage inundating the Indian press and TV screens, you would scarcely realise that there isn't even proof that the charred remains are those of the missing woman, nor that evidence that a murder has even been committed rests entirely on hearsay. Welcome to India's extraordinary media environment, in which the Fourth Estate serves simultaneously as witness, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. In ancient times, India put its accused through agni pariksha - a trial by fire; today, we put them through a trial by media. Television news in India, with far too many channels competing 24/7 for the same sets of eyeballs and ratings, has long since given up any pretence of providing a public service, with the "breaking news" story privileging sensation over substance. (Indian TV epitomises the old crack about why television is called a "medium": "Because it is neither rare nor well done.") Sadly, matters are not much better in the print media, which - with its ability to provide context, depth and analysis that television cannot- could have compensated for the limitations of television. Ratings war But newspapers too seem conscious that they have to compete in a tight media environment where it is not they, but TV, that sets the pace: every morning they must reach readers who have watched TV the previous day. So newspapers too feel the need to "break" news in order to be read, to outdo their TV competitors. Most are led by the nose by TV's perennial ratings war, and seek to reach TV-exposed readers each day with a banner headline that stimulates prurience or outrage rather than increase awareness. The result has been, to put it mildly, disturbing. Our media, in its rush to air the story, has fallen prey to the inevitable rush to judgement: it has too often become a willing accomplice of the motivated leak and the malicious allegation, which journalists today have neither the time nor the inclination to check or verify. The damage is done in a blaze of lurid headlines - and rectification, if it comes at all, comes too feebly and too late to undo the irreparable damage to innocent people's reputations. Baseless accusations The distinctions amongst fact, opinion and speculation, reportage and rumour, sourced information and unfounded allegation, that are drummed into journalism students' heads the world over, has blurred into irrelevance in today's Indian media. As one who has been treated to repeated doses of speculation, gossip, accusation and worse in the course of the last year and a half, after the tragic demise of my wife, I have been made intimately conscious of these limitations of the Indian media. Instead of the restraint and caution one might expect from a responsible press where matters of life and death are involved, baseless accusations of murder and suicide have been flung around with abandon. We have had the spectacle of an unnaturally long-drawn-out media trial, fuelled by motivated leaks, with discussion shows on the voyeuristic Indian TV channels debating accusations and imputations with zero evidence or even elementary research behind any of the statements aired. Manipulated and malicious claims are reported uncritically, without editors asking even the most basic questions about their plausibility. Part of the problem is a disinclination to take the trouble to research or verify a story, when so many are willing to feed you their versions of it. Ranting anchors The cavalier attitude to facts is compounded by a reluctance to issue corrections, which are virtually unknown in the media world. The airing of opinions is the cheapest way to fill a broadcast hour; ranting anchors score the highest ratings. As a result, trust in the media is eroding. A friend summarised the problem succinctly for me: "When I was young, my father wouldn't believe anything unless it was printed in the Times of India. Now, he doesn't believe anything if it is printed in the Times of India." This should be a matter of serious concern to all right-thinking Indians, because free media are the lifeblood of our democracy. They provide the information that enables a free citizenry to make the choices of who governs them and how, and ensures that those who govern will remain accountable to those who put them there. It is the media's job to look critically at elected officials' actions (or inaction), rather than at marginalia that have no impact on the public welfare. Instead, the media's obsession with the superficial and the sensational trivialises public discourse, abdicates the watchdog responsibility that must be exercised by free media in a democracy, and distracts the public from the real questions of accountability with which the governed must confront the government. The free press is both the mortar that binds together the bricks of our country's freedom, and the open window embedded in those bricks. No Indian democrat would call for censorship, or for controls on the free press: what we want is not less journalism, but better journalism. Government needs a free and professional media to keep it honest and efficient, to serve as both mirror and scalpel. If instead all we have is a blunt axe, society is not well served. If India wishes to be taken seriously by the rest of the world as a responsible global player and a model 21C democracy, we will have to take ourselves seriously and responsibly as well. Our media would be a good place to start.

राजनेता और लेखक शशि थरूर लिखते हैं कि पिछले कुछ दिनों से भारतीय मीडिया एक हत्या के रहस्य से घिरा हुआ है। लेकिन अटकलों और तर्कों से भरा उन्मादपूर्ण कवरेज परेशान करने वाला है।


Straight Life: India's recovering drug addicts

Summary: Drug and alcohol abuse is fast becoming an area of concern in India, which according to UN data has 2 million people who use opiates.

The Indian state of West Bengal has been identified in the National Health Survey as one of the pockets with the highest use in India. Although there are treatment centres dotted around the country, there is a gap between the number of centres and the prevalence of drug abuse. Many who seek treatment end up lapsing back into addiction. Photographer Ronny Sen documents the struggles of some recovering addicts in the city of Kolkata (Calcutta) in West Bengal. All images and stories have been used with the permission of the subjects.

भारत में नशीली दवाओं और शराब का दुरुपयोग तेजी से चिंता का विषय बनता जा रहा है, जहां संयुक्त राष्ट्र के आंकड़ों के अनुसार 20 लाख लोग अफीम का उपयोग करते हैं।


Shyamala Gopalan: The woman who inspired Kamala Harris

Summary: Shyamala Gopalan was a pioneering woman of colour in America, a scientist and an activist. She was also Vice-President Kamala Harris's mother and her "greatest influence". Geeta Pandey in Delhi and Vineet Khare in Washington DC look at her life.

Just hours before her inauguration last week, Vice-President Harris paid tribute to the women who had aided her journey to the second highest position in the US government. In a video posted to Twitter, she began with "the woman most responsible for my presence here today, my mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris". "When she came here from India at the age of 19, maybe she didn't quite imagine this moment," she said. "But she believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible." Ms Harris has made history - she's the first woman and first black and South Asian American to become the US vice-president. But the story of her rise couldn't be written if it wasn't for an audacious journey her mother made in 1958 when she travelled to the US from India to pursue her own dreams. The oldest of the four children of a civil servant father and a homemaker mother, Ms Gopalan wanted to study biochemistry. But hard sciences were not on offer at Delhi's Lady Irwin College for women, founded by India's British colonial rulers, and she had to settle for an undergraduate degree in home science, where she would have studied subjects like nutrition and homemaking skills. "My father and I would tease her about it," Gopalan Balachandran, her brother, told the BBC. "We'd ask her, 'What do they teach you there? How to lay the table? Where to place the spoon?' She'd get very angry with us," he laughs. Prof R Rajaraman, emeritus professor of theoretical physics at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University and a classmate of Ms Gopalan's when they were teenagers, describes her as "unusual". In their class of 40 students, girls and boys sat on separate sides of the classroom and there was little interaction between genders. "But she wasn't shy about speaking to boys. She was confident," he remembers. Prof Rajaraman says it's a mystery why she chose to go to Lady Irwin College since in those days it was known "as a place that specialised in preparing girls for marriage, to be good wives". But Ms Gopalan had other ambitions. She applied - and was accepted - to University of California at Berkeley. "She did it on her own. No one at home knew," says her brother. "Father had no problems with her going abroad, but he was worried because we didn't know anyone in the US. But he believed in the importance of education so he let her go. She had received some scholarship and he agreed to support her for the first year." So, at the age of 19, Ms Gopalan left India for a country she'd never visited and where she didn't know anyone to eventually pursue a PhD in nutrition and endocrinology. Ms Harris has written about her mother's journey in The Truths We Hold, her 2019 memoir. "It's hard for me to imagine how difficult it must have been for her parents to let her go," she writes. "Commercial jet travel was only just starting to spread globally. It wouldn't be a simple matter to stay in touch. Yet, when my mother asked permission to move to California, my grandparents didn't stay in the way." It was an interesting time to be in the US. The civil rights movement was at its peak and Berkeley was at the centre of protests against racial discrimination. Like many other foreign students, Ms Gopalan too joined in the fight to make the US - and the world - a better place. Still, participating in the civil rights movement was an unusual thing for a student from India to do in that era. Margot Dashiell, who first met her in 1961 at a café on campus, told the BBC: "I had a sense that she could personally identify with the struggles that African-American students were processing and confronting because she came from a society where she understood the oppression of colonialism. "This is going back many decades, but I do remember her saying to me once, and shaking her head, that white people - outsiders - just didn't understand the struggles, the taking of privileges. She didn't go into detail, and I took it that it was something that she experienced as a person of colour." Friends describe her as "a tiny petite person" who stood out in her sari and the red dot (bindi) that she wore on her forehead. They say she was "a bright student" who was "articulate, assertive, and intellectually sharp". Ms Dashiell recalls "her ease in holding her own with the intellectually confident and assertive men… going toe-to-toe in discussions". "Only a few women in our social circle had that level of ease in that male-dominated environment." She remembers her as "the only Indian, the only non-African American, in the Afro-American Association" - a study group black students formed in 1962 to educate African-American students about their history. No-one ever questioned her presence in a group that was almost exclusively black, says Aubrey LaBrie, who met Ms Gopalan in 1962 when he was studying law at Berkeley, and formed a lifelong friendship with her. "We all were interested in the developments in civil rights movement in this country. Of course, we saw it as being part of the Third World liberation movements and I guess that was the basis of her participation in this group. We all saw ourselves as part of the same kind of brothers and sisters intellectually supportive of those kinds of movements. "Nobody made any issue out of her background, although people were concerned internally that it was a black group and they wouldn't have welcomed a European student. But I never recall it being any issue that was discussed whether she should participate or not." It was her tryst with activism, her participation in the civil rights movement, that changed the course of her life. Ms Harris writes that her mother was expected to return home after completing her education and to have an arranged marriage just like her parents "but fate had other plans". In 1962, she met Donald Harris, who had come from Jamaica to study economics at Berkeley, and they fell in love. The couple met at a gathering of black students when Ms Gopalan went up to him to introduce herself. She was, he recently told New York Times, "a standout in appearance relative to everybody else in the group of both men and women". As Ms Harris says, her parents "fell in love in that most American way while marching together for justice and the civil rights movement". They married in 1963 and a year later, at age 25, Ms Gopalan both earned her PhD and gave birth to Kamala. Two years later came Maya, the couple's second child. The wedding with a foreigner apparently didn't go down well with Ms Gopalan's Tamil Brahmin family. In an interview in 2003, Shyamala Gopalan said that by marrying an American, she had broken the "Gopalan bloodline that goes back more than 1,000 years". Mr Balachandran says "she didn't tell us that she was getting married", although he insists their parents "had no serious problems and their only concern was that they hadn't met the groom". One time, he says, he overheard "Kamala and Maya asking their grandfather if he didn't like their father." "He told them: 'Your mother liked him and he had no bad habits, so what's there not to like'?" The first time Ms Gopalan's parents met their son-in-law was in 1966 - three years after her marriage - and on the neutral grounds of Zambia, where her father was posted at the time. The marriage didn't last long. The couple split when Ms Harris was five, and although she and her sister Maya visited their father during the holidays, their mother raised them mostly on her own. Last year, while accepting her nomination as vice-president, Ms Harris said her mother's life as a single parent wasn't easy and that she worked around-the-clock - doing cutting-edge cancer research while caring for her daughters. Ms Gopalan, who died in February 2009 at 70 from colon cancer, is known around the world for making significant discoveries about the role of hormones in breast cancer. She started her career doing research at Berkeley's Department of Zoology and its Cancer Research Laboratory, went on to work in France, Italy and Canada, before returning to the Lawrence Berkeley Lab at California for the last decade of her work. Joe Gray, a scientist and Ms Gopalan's boss at the Lawrence Berkley Laboratory, described her as "a very serious scientist, quite willing to engage in scientific give-and-take during discussions". Ms Gopalan, he told the BBC, was very open about her own cancer diagnosis. "She was one of those that just said 'this is what it is and I am going to press on as long as I can'," he said. As her cancer spread, Mr Balachandran says, his sister decided to return to India, to spend the end of her life in the comforting company of her mother and sister. But it was a trip she was never able to make. Mr LaBrie remembers his last conversation with his good friend, knowing she had plans to return to her country of birth. "I thought it was like a romantic notion of being in touch with her heritage at that stage of her life," he said. "Among other things, I said, 'Shyamala, I'm glad to hear you are going back to India.' She said, 'Aubrey I am not going any place.' She died shortly after that."

श्यामला गोपालन अमेरिका में एक अग्रणी अश्वेत महिला, एक वैज्ञानिक और एक कार्यकर्ता थीं। वह उपराष्ट्रपति कमला हैरिस की मां भी थीं और उनका "सबसे बड़ा प्रभाव" था। दिल्ली में गीता पांडे और वाशिंगटन डी. सी. में विनीत खरे उनके जीवन पर नज़र डालते हैं।


Eastbourne conferences bring £11m local economy boost

Summary: Conferences being held in a seaside town this year are expected to boost the local economy by an estimated £11m.

Eastbourne has 21 conferences and exhibitions booked in the Devonshire Park Centre - the highest number in 10 years, the borough council said. The local authority said 15,000 delegates would stay in the East Sussex town's hotels and guest houses this spring and autumn. Tourism chiefs said they had been targeting the conference industry. Councillor Carolyn Heaps, cabinet spokesman for tourism and leisure, said the council-run Eastbourne Conference Bureau worked closely with hotels and guest houses to provide a strong message throughout the industry that the town provided a "stunning location".

इस वर्ष एक समुद्र तटीय शहर में आयोजित होने वाले सम्मेलनों से स्थानीय अर्थव्यवस्था को अनुमानित 11 मिलियन पाउंड का बढ़ावा मिलने की उम्मीद है।


Charlotte Dujardin gets gold postbox in Newent

Summary: Olympic dressage gold medallist Charlotte Dujardin is having a postbox painted gold in her honour in her Gloucestershire home town.

Royal Mail staff were painting the postbox in Church Street in Newent, on Friday morning following her triumph at London 2012. It is also producing a Gold Medal stamp to celebrate the 27-year-old's win, which will go on sale on Friday. "I wanted to enjoy it, go out and not regret anything," Dujardin said. The Olympian also helped Britain to team victory in Greenwich Park on Tuesday.

ओलंपिक ड्रेसेज स्वर्ण पदक विजेता शार्लोट डुजार्डिन अपने ग्लूस्टरशायर गृह नगर में उनके सम्मान में एक पोस्टबॉक्स पेंट किया हुआ सोना ले रही हैं।


Murder arrests after man found dead in Dover cemetery

Summary: Two people have been arrested after a man was found dead in a cemetery.

The victim's body was found in Cowgate Cemetery in Dover at about 07:00 BST, and the area has been cordoned off. Kent Police said a 47-year-old woman and a 37-year-old man have been arrested. Det Insp Neil Kimber said: "We are working to establish the circumstances surrounding the incident and are treating the man's death as suspicious." Related Internet Links Kent Police

एक व्यक्ति के कब्रिस्तान में मृत पाए जाने के बाद दो लोगों को गिरफ्तार किया गया है।


Coleraine: Three people rescued from arson attack at flats

Summary: Three people have rescued from a fire at a block of flats in County Londonderry which is being treated as arson.

Emergency services were called to the property at Drummard Drive, Coleraine, at about 04:00 BST on Tuesday. Police said they had received a report that a bin had been placed against the door of the flats and set on fire. An investigation is under way and police have appealed for anyone with information to come forward. Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service group commander Karen McDowell said crews were quickly on the scene and got the fire extinguished.

काउंटी लंदनडेरी में फ्लैटों के एक ब्लॉक में लगी आग से तीन लोगों को बचाया गया है, जिसे आगजनी माना जा रहा है।


Hundreds of homes in Wiltshire still without power after storms

Summary: More than 350 properties in Wiltshire are still without power following storms on Friday night.

Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution said homes in rural areas of Salisbury and Swindon were affected. A spokesman said engineers would continue repairing damage and restoring power to those affected throughout Sunday. At one stage more than 10,000 homes in the county were without electricity.

शुक्रवार की रात को तूफान के बाद विल्टशायर में 350 से अधिक संपत्तियों में अभी भी बिजली नहीं है।


Man dies two days after Norwich lorry collision

Summary: A pedestrian, in his 80s, who was hit by a lorry in Norwich earlier this week, has died.

The collision, involving a Renault, happened on the A140 Farrow Road near the Earlham Road roundabout at about 12:00 BST on Monday. Police say the man was taken to the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital and died on Wednesday. Officers said the lorry stopped at the scene and they are appealing for witnesses. They want to speak to people who saw the manner in which the lorry was being driven, and the actions of the pedestrian, prior to the collision. No-one has been arrested. Related Internet Links Norfolk Police

80 के दशक में एक पैदल यात्री, जिसे इस सप्ताह की शुरुआत में नॉर्विच में एक लॉरी ने टक्कर मार दी थी, की मौत हो गई है।


River Great Ouse: Hunt for person missing while swimming

Summary: The search for a man who went missing while swimming in a river in Bedfordshire is ongoing.

Emergency services were called to the River Great Ouse in Harrold shortly after 16:00 BST. Several crews attended the scene near the Old Mill following reports of an individual being in difficulty in the water. Teams from all three emergency services are currently in attendance, together with a police helicopter. Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service also tweeted that its water rescue boat had been sent to the scene.

बेडफोर्डशायर में एक नदी में तैरते हुए लापता हुए व्यक्ति की तलाश जारी है।


The Shard: What’s it like to live near a skyscraper?

Summary: London has a spiky new steel and glass steeple - the Shard. This elongated pyramid is currently the tallest building in the European Union at 310m, but how does it feel to live in the shadow of such a giant?

Skyscrapers have been the symbol of the modern city for over a century. In the past 50 years, buildings have been rising ever higher, majestically reaching for the sky and making the most of land values in crowded city centres. But while tall buildings can be adored or reviled from afar, it is in their own neighbourhoods and at their own feet that their effects are most acutely felt. And their height can cause big problems, such as strong winds at their base, casting long shadows and, when grouped together, creating noisy canyons. And then there's the matter of looks. Not the all-too-obvious matter of the skyline, but the subtler one of how the building touches the ground. Wind creates several kinds of problems for tall buildings, says building engineer Max Fordham. In general, the higher you go, the faster the wind speed. And as wind speed doubles, the pressure exerted on a building quadruples. When fast winds hit a tall building, the building can vibrate and sway from side to side. Engineers have to design buildings to cope with this level of loading. But there's something else that happens - strong winds that would normally stay well above street-level can be forced groundwards, travelling at 20m a second. A good example of this is Centre Point in central London. It's set perpendicular to the prevailing westerly wind that blows along the length of Oxford Street until it bangs into the monolithic facade of the 1960s tower. In Leeds, the effect has even been connected to the death of a man crushed by a lorry in strong winds. He died near the city's tallest building, Bridgewater Place, and coroner Melanie Williamson heard complaints about a "wind tunnel" effect since its completion . The wind flows down the front of tall building, causing gusty conditions at its base. "I should know," says Adrian Campbell, one of the structural engineers who designed 30 St Mary Axe (aka the Gherkin). "It's always windy when I am cycling past the building." It's colder too. The high winds at the foot of many tall buildings produce micro-climates that feel considerably cooler than surrounding areas. There are, however, ways to cope with the wind. Campbell says that the curved surfaces of the Gherkin help wind to flow around the building without being forced downwards. Although not curved, the Shard's faceted, tapering silhouette aims for a similar effect. Buildings can also be designed with canopies near the ground to protect pedestrians from wind gusts. Tall buildings also cast substantial shadows. In hot climates, people exploit this, as in the old city of Sanaa in Yemen - a Unesco World Heritage Site of 10m-high clay walled buildings. But in the UK, we welcome the sun. To sit outside on a rare sunny day and find you are shaded by a tower block some distance away can be annoying. The Shard, however, is sited on the south bank of the Thames and so throws its shadow mostly across open water. "It is a very cleverly sited building," says architect Steve Johnson , who has designed skyscrapers in the US Midwest. "The people most affected by the shadow will be in offices in the City." According to Fordham, it is when tall buildings are grouped together to form canyons - as happens on Manhattan's Wall Street or 5th Avenue in Midtown - that the problems of shadow and noise become acute. The more gaps there are in the canyon-wall, the easier it is for sound waves to escape and for the street to seem quieter. Skyscrapers are often thought of in their relation to the sky - the Shard's architect Renzo Piano talks of how his building is "a mirror tilted at the sky" and "flirts continuously with the weather, with the clouds". Yet the point at which a building joins the earth is just as important. Gillian Horn, a partner of the award-winning architectural practice Penoyre and Prasad , stresses the need "to build humanity into a tower". This is especially so at ground level, where passers-by are in a position to judge the material with which a building is draped (glass or stone or brick or concrete) and how that is treated. "What does the tower give to the city? What is it like to approach it at street level? Those are the interesting challenges," says Horn. Pedestrians deserve more than a blank facade, or a cluster of air vents and driveways for vehicle access. Careless designers of tall buildings can end up being dismissive of what Horn calls "the human level". In order to encourage walking and street life, buildings need to interact with what is at ground level. Car parks, for instance, can sever a building's connection to its city. Campbell notes that the Gherkin only has about 20 parking spaces in the basement. The final appearance of the Shard's ground levels isn't entirely clear yet, as work continues on the perimeter of the building. But for such a tall building, it seems to come to earth surprisingly lightly. It is approached through small streets, and the white metal pillars of its support structure penetrate London Bridge Station, making the crystalline tower almost hover above the station below. Piano and the building's developer Irvine Sellar both stress that this will be an accessible monument, with the public able to ascend to viewing platforms from which to gaze all the way across London. "I will never be an advocate for tall buildings, in the sense that I don't believe that tall buildings are necessarily the only interesting thing, that's for sure," says Piano. "But if the tower gives back to the city more than what it gets from the city, then why not?" Piano says that we should be building cities this way, not "creating a planet of suburbia". But perhaps the future lies between these extremes, for as Fordham points out, both bungalow and mega-structure ignore the real and pressing demands of the environment. Renzo Piano was speaking to the BBC World Service and took part in the first of the BBC World Service's Dream Builders series which was recorded at the Riba. All images in slideshow subject to copyright - click bottom right for details. Some images courtesy Getty Images, PA, Sellar Group and Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Audio from BBC World Service. Music by Carly Rae Jepsen, Nell Bryden and KPM Music.Slideshow production by Paul Kerley. Publication date 15 June 2012.

लंदन में एक तीखा नया स्टील और कांच का गुंबद है-शार्ड। यह लंबा पिरामिड वर्तमान में 310 मीटर की ऊँचाई पर यूरोपीय संघ की सबसे ऊँची इमारत है, लेकिन इतने विशालकाय की छाया में रहना कैसा लगता है?


Gulf states divided over Iran sanctions

Summary: Dubai wants sanctions on Iran lifted. This is hardly surprising given that nearly half a million Iranians live in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and that Dubai already benefits from a flourishing trade with its neighbour across the Gulf.

By Frank GardnerBBC security correspondent In a BBC interview aired on Monday, the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, said that with Iran as a neighbour, everyone would benefit if a deal with the US resulted in sanctions being lifted. "You see, Iran is our neighbour and we don't want any problem and they didn't have any problem," said the sheikh. "But if they agree with the Americans and the Americans agree and lift their sanctions, everybody will benefit." Sharply different view But this is not a view shared by all of Dubai's Arab neighbours in the Gulf, many of whom continue to view Iran as a strategic threat. The Saudis have let it be known they are opposed to "bringing Iran in from the cold" as part of the recently-brokered deal to curb Iran's nuclear activities. They see sanctions as one way of curtailing any Iranian expansion and Riyadh has vowed to step up its support for Syria's rebel forces fighting Iran's ally, President Bashar al-Assad. Bahrain accuses Iran of fuelling violent protests in its villages. It is currently investigating what it says is an Iranian plot to import weapons and explosives into the country after intercepting a boat laden with arms in late December. Even Abu Dhabi, which alongside Dubai is one of the seven emirates making up the UAE, has a sharply different view on Iran from its more commercially minded neighbour, Dubai. As the capital of the UAE, it has been pushing for years to resolve the issue of three disputed islands in the Gulf, claimed by both the UAE and Iran but occupied by Iranian forces. "Dubai and Abu Dhabi have always had differences of opinion on Iran," says a former British diplomat who worked in the Gulf. "There is a huge Iranian community in Dubai, and huge trade there, so they take a different approach." Thaw in relations But further south, Oman will welcome the Dubai ruler's warm words towards Iran. As the country that hosted the secret talks between Iran and the US that led to the tentative breakthrough agreement in Geneva, Oman would like to see a thaw in Gulf Arab-Iranian relations. Without the clout backed by huge oil reserves enjoyed by Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, Oman has often steered a middle course on foreign policy and was recently instrumental in securing the release of US citizens held by Iran. All of this goes to show one thing: when it comes to Iran, the Gulf Arab states are very far from united. Saudi Arabia has recently been pressing for a closer union of all six states that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), with talk of a common foreign policy and a shared defence force. Behind this lies Riyadh's fears of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps looking to export their Islamic Revolution across the Gulf and fomenting sectarian unrest between Sunni and Shia. Kuwait, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi are open to the idea of a closer union but Qatar is wary and Oman has let it be known that if pressed, it will go its own way. As for Dubai, the ruler's views on Iran are a reminder that what makes Dubai tick is not politics, it is trade, business and opportunity.

दुबई ईरान पर लगे प्रतिबंधों को हटाना चाहता है। यह कोई आश्चर्य की बात नहीं है क्योंकि लगभग पाँच लाख ईरानी संयुक्त अरब अमीरात (यू. ए. ई.) में रहते हैं और दुबई पहले से ही खाड़ी के पार अपने पड़ोसी के साथ एक समृद्ध व्यापार से लाभान्वित होता है।


Welsh gold wedding ring continues royal tradition

Summary: When Prince William places a Welsh gold wedding ring onto Kate Middleton's finger, he'll be replicating an 88-year-old tradition dating back to the marriage of his great-grandparents, Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and the future George Vi.

By Neil PriorBBC Wales News In 1923, the royal ring was fashioned from a gift of Clogau gold with enough left over for the weddings of The Queen in 1947 as well as those of the late Princess Margaret, the Princess Royal and the 1981 marriage of Prince Charles and Diana. The stock of the original Clogau gift is believed to be almost exhausted, having been replenished over the years with donations from several other Welsh mines. Clarence House is remaining tight lipped over the precise source of the Welsh gold for Kate's wedding band. In a statement to dispel speculation and confusing merchandising, the palace announced: "The wedding ring that Catherine Middleton will wear will be made of Welsh gold. The gold was given to Prince William by The Queen shortly after the couple were engaged." "It has been in the family's possession for some years and has been in the care of the royal jewellers. There are no further details on which mine the gold was mined from." Yet that hasn't stopped people jumping on the Welsh gold bandwagon; with four shopping channels listing Welsh gold sales for the royal wedding period, and airlines and duty-free shops stocking up for an anticipated holiday rush. Although Ms Middleton's ring is made of Welsh gold, it's not clear from source it has been made, with at least three gifts to the royal family over the last century. But just how similar to Kate's ring is the Welsh gold on offer to the public? And what's so special about Welsh gold anyway? Dr Mike Bassett, expert in minerals and mining, said: "From its discovery by the Romans, up until when the colonial gold rushes of the 19th Century opened up new sources, the gold produced in Wales played a reasonable part in the British economy; though it was never regarded as anything distinct from gold in general." "Welsh gold only became fashionable when the Queen Mother chose it for her wedding ring in 1923. "But it's really an 'Emperor's new clothes' vanity, as it's visually and very nearly chemically indistinguishable; gold is gold is gold." Same Welsh gold Indeed, how royal and how Welsh the gold products currently being marketed are, is a tangled web of claim and counter-claim. Last week, the Clogau gold company, which now owns the trading name and a quantity of gold from the defunct Clogau St David's mine, retracted a press release after an over-enthusiastic press officer claimed the company were to create Kate's wedding ring. But whilst Clogau Gold moved quickly to scotch any confusion, they stand by what they say is their unique selling-point, that their rings are made from "the same Welsh gold as Kate's". Dr Bassett says whilst this could well be the case, would-be Kate Middletons still ought to be careful, as the only way of proving it for definite could be costly. "The royal stocks of Welsh gold have become so mixed up over the years, that I don't think even they themselves can have much degree of certainty over its precise origins any more," he said. "If Kate, and the other brides would like to give up their wedding rings for melting down and isotopic analysis of the numbers of neutrons per atom, we'd be able to get to the bottom of whether they came from the same Clogau mine. "However I suspect that it's likely to remain a fascinating debate for the pub." But the questions remains as to how to guarantee the Welshness of the gold. The last working gold mine in north Wales, Gwynfynydd, closed in 1998; although extractions on anything close to a commercial basis ceased with the closure of Clogau near Dolgellau in 1911. And with the world supply of Welsh gold ingots now believed to leave room to spare in an overnight bag, managing director of Clogau Gold Ben Roberts explains that they have to ration it to just "a touch" in each item of jewellery. "We make no apologies about the small amount of Welsh gold that we put into each and every piece of our jewellery," he said. "The precise amount is a common question but one that we try not to stipulate because it puts us on the hook to continue using the same percentage and it's one which might be subject to change in the future depending on supplies (although at present we have no plans to change the mix)." Mr Roberts added: "We do however put a guarantee that all of our jewellery does contain our own gold and indeed we keep a very clear and concise audit trail to prove this."

जब प्रिंस विलियम केट मिडलटन की उंगली पर वेल्श सोने की शादी की अंगूठी रखते हैं, तो वह अपने परदादा-परदादा, एलिजाबेथ बोव्स लियोन और भविष्य के जॉर्ज VI की शादी से जुड़ी 88 साल पुरानी परंपरा को दोहराएंगे।


Khashoggi mystery puts Saudi ties with West at risk

Summary: CCTV on 2 October at 13:14 shows a man in a black jacket and grey trousers approaching the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul. A brief nod to another man in a blue jacket standing outside and he enters. It is the last image of Jamal Khashoggi alive.

By Mark LowenBBC Turkey correspondent, Istanbul What happened in the hours that followed is the subject of a mystery that has not only engulfed both countries, but threatens the reputation of the new Saudi Crown Prince, Mohamed bin Salman, and his country's relationships across the world. The trail began at Istanbul airport in the early hours of that morning. A private jet landed, registered to Sky Prime Aviation Services, a Saudi company. CCTV captured the jet and its nine Saudi passengers. Six others arrived shortly after. They checked into two hotels - the Movenpick and Wyndham Grand - both near the Saudi consulate. Turkey alleges they were a Saudi hit squad sent to murder the high-profile journalist, who had been living in self-imposed exile in the US as his criticism of the Saudi government mounted. A Turkish newspaper published photos and the names of the 15, a government source confirming to me that they were legitimate. I've been told that one of the men, Maher Mutreb, was a colonel in the Saudi intelligence agency based at the kingdom's embassy in London. Another, Muhammad Almadani, is thought to be a forensics specialist. All are reported to be Saudi government employees. Their hotel reservations were for a few days but they stayed only for a few hours, their planes returning to Riyadh that night - one via Cairo and the other via Dubai. The allegation from Turkey is that they lay in wait in the Saudi consulate for Jamal Khashoggi's appointment, during which he would receive papers for his forthcoming marriage to Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz. She waited outside the consulate and was told to alert the Turkish authorities if he didn't emerge. At 16:30 she sounded the alarm. Just after 15:00, CCTV shows black vehicles moving between the consulate and the consul general's residence, about 200m (650ft) away. Could they have contained Jamal Khashoggi's body? Saudi authorities have flatly denied all allegations and insist that Mr Khashoggi left the consulate the same day. They have provided no footage to back that up. Individual details of the investigation have been gradually drip-fed to the Turkish media over the past week: Turkish investigators have begun to search the consulate and have requested access to the residence. Reports are emerging that the Saudis limited the Turkish team, who requested access to the garden and sewerage system. Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been much more cautious. He hasn't directly echoed the accusations of murder but has reiterated his concern and demands for the Saudis to provide CCTV footage. A government source tells me that if he were to pile in too hard at this stage, Turkey would already have been forced to expel the Saudi ambassador and consul general. Ankara is giving Riyadh a little breathing room to co-operate and put forward their version of events, while turning the screw with ever more incriminating leaks through the media. For Jamal Khashoggi's friends and loved ones, hope is fading fast. "He was the kindest person I knew," says Abdulrahman Elshayyal, a journalist and friend who spoke to Mr Khashoggi two days before he disappeared. "What's killing me is that there's one part in all of this who's keeping quiet. Until they say something, you can only think the worst has happened." Blind eye Given Mr Khashoggi's criticism of Riyadh and the crown prince's record of clamping down hard on dissent, why, I ask, did he make the dangerous move of entering the Saudi consulate here? "He believed in his countrymen," says Mr Elshayyal. "He was making a stand, as if to say: 'If something happens, people will know that I put my faith in my people - and they won't harm me.'" The question is, if this is all confirmed, how much will Western policy towards Saudi Arabia change? Critics of Riyadh say the West has long turned a blind eye to Saudi abuses. US President Donald Trump has finally voiced concern over the "serious situation" and British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt says Britain expects "urgent answers" from Riyadh - London could hardly keep quiet after the alleged attempted poisoning of the Skripals by the Russian government in Salisbury. Turkey doesn't want to see its vital relationship with Saudi Arabia blown apart at this stage - but if Riyadh and, more specifically, the crown prince himself are proven to have ordered a state-sponsored assassination of this high-profile dissident on foreign soil, it could be a turning point. Perhaps the bitter irony will be that Jamal Khashoggi's impact on the perception of Saudi Arabia and Western relations with it might be more in death than in life.

सी. सी. टी. वी. पर 2 अक्टूबर को 13:14 पर दिखाया गया है कि काली जैकेट और भूरे रंग की पतलून पहने एक व्यक्ति इस्तांबुल में सऊदी अरब के वाणिज्य दूतावास की ओर बढ़ रहा है। नीले रंग की जैकेट पहने एक अन्य व्यक्ति बाहर खड़ा है और वह प्रवेश करता है। यह जमाल खशोगी की जीवित आखिरी तस्वीर है।


Coronavirus: I'm using my pizza oven to toss masks for nurses

Summary: Coronavirus hospital admissions are expected to peak in Chicago, Illinois, at some point in the next two weeks. In an attempt to prevent the kind of medical supply shortages seen in New York City, average Chicagoans are racing to fulfil the need.

By Jessica LussenhopBBC News, Washington On 16 March, in accordance with the state governor's order that all bars and restaurants stop serving customers in-house, Dimo's Pizza closed its dining room doors. "We can no longer serve by the slice," says owner Dimitri Syrkin-Nikolau. "There goes 70% of our revenue." Still, he agreed that the measures were necessary. He'd been following news about the coronavirus outbreak for weeks and on the same weekend that Illinois shuttered its restaurants, New York City experienced the beginning of a terrifying surge in cases. From 15 March to 16 March, the numbers of cases more than doubled overnight. Nurses and doctors reported shortages of essential pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) like N95 face masks, gowns and gloves. Some were having to wash and re-use masks. Watching from 800 miles away, in a major metropolitan city that had not yet - but certainly would - feel the full force of the pandemic, Syrkin-Nikolau wanted to help prevent a similar shortage of supplies in Chicago. "It seems unlikely that a pizza shop is going to be able to produce PPE, but the more I talked to people…" he recalls. "It seems far-fetched but it's not." After consulting with a couple of his engineer friends and procuring large sheets of acrylic, Syrkin-Nikolau and his staff have started making face shields for healthcare workers. The industrial pizza oven heats the acrylic up until it's soft enough to bend into the right shape, and then it is attached to a foam strip and straps. "It really is a very quick process," he says. "Whether it's slinging slices or slinging acrylic, it's similar principles." All over the city, Chicagoans are racing to take advantage of the lag time between the surge in New York City and the expected surge in Chicago, which at this point may have already begun. On Thursday, Governor JB Pritzker announced the largest single-day increase in Covid-19 deaths so far in the state: 82. As of 9 April, there have been 6,619 cases in the city of Chicago and 196 deaths. While none of the largest Chicago-area hospitals have reported a shortage of supplies, Illinois officials have described the marketplace for those supplies as "the wild west". In one instance, a state employee had to race to a bank with a cheque for $3.4m (£2.7m) in order to purchase 1.5m N95 masks from a supplier in China before other bidders could snap them up. Smaller hospitals that serve low-income Chicagoans, like Loretto Hospital on the West Side, have said their stock of masks and gowns is low. Those concerns have inspired Chicagoans like Jacqueline Morano, a member of the Masks for Chicago campaign, to do everything possible to collect, make or buy PPE. "There's the potential for things to get scary. We are a metropolis," she says. "The texts I get from my friends in New York City hospitals are things you'd never want to read in your lifetime." The campaign Morano has been raising money for, Masks for Chicago, is attempting to source and purchase 1 million N95 masks using one of its founders' manufacturing contacts in Shenzhen, China. They estimate that should be enough to cover five Chicago hospitals for two weeks. They've already received 44,150 masks and have placed orders for over 75,000 more, jostling alongside other cities and even countries as they try to secure orders. These efforts are happening on both large and small scales throughout the city. Michael Clifford, a former patent lawyer who recently went full-time with his DIY home improvement YouTube channel, began using his 3-D printer to produce plastic browbands for face shields. He got the plans from others in the global maker community who are sharing them for free. When the Masks for Chicago campaign received 500 N95 masks with broken straps, Clifford printed a batch of S-hooks to easily re-attach them. He just purchased a second 3-D printer to try to increase production. "Beyond Chicago, there's people doing this all over the world right now," he says. In some cases, hospitals are reaching out directly. Haven Allen is the CEO and co-founder of MHub, a non-profit manufacturing firm that after shutting down its 63,000-square-foot facility last month, is now using its equipment, materials and idle engineers to help Chicago-area hospitals get supplies. Their first project - build a cheap, easy-to-manufacture ventilator from materials one could buy off the shelf. "We wanted to drive down the price point to about $350 a unit," he says. Then Northwestern Memorial Hospital called. They were concerned about a shortage of face shields. A few volunteer engineers quickly switched gears. "Within just a few hours, they created a few prototypes with the materials they had on site," says Megan McCann, a spokeswoman for Northwestern. "The first batch of face shields was delivered to Northwestern Memorial Hospital the week of March 30; these will go directly to the doctors, nurses and staff caring for patients with Covid-19." Allen says prototypes for the ventilators will be ready this week, and that he wants to make the plans free and available to anyone who wants to replicate them. Using PPE from volunteers, DIY makers and from unvetted suppliers in China, as opposed to through approved vendors, can be tricky for hospitals. Certain products have to be approved by the Centers for Disease Control or the Food and Drug Administration before a hospital can accept them. But with products as simple as face shields - and with fear of infection so high - some healthcare workers seem to be willing to use whatever is provided to them in lieu of nothing. "Can I make something that's 95% as good as what 3M would make? It's not perfect, but it's still 95% better than nothing," says Clifford. "We can't argue about the little things. We have to make sure we have the best protection we can because of the shortage." Tricia Rae Pendergrast is a first-year medical student and a leader of a group of 400 Chicago-area medical students who are spending their time calling local businesses and soliciting donations of N95 masks, protective suits and other PPE. She says they have the most success with area labs and construction companies, but that they can't donate to hospitals. Instead, they put them directly into the hands of healthcare workers who ask for them. "They're making the decision to use them. They understand they're not the normal protective equipment," she says. "In times of crisis, in scarce limited resources, there's ethical and legal precedent to do the most good for the most people and that's what we're doing here." At Dimo's Pizza, Syrkin-Nikolau says they've been able to fulfil a few orders for smaller organisations, like a home for elderly homeless people and a small pediatrics practice. He estimates they can make 3,000 shields a week. And while he says he can't afford to give the shields away, by selling them for $3 a piece he can keep his workers employed and make supplies available during the Chicago coronavirus case surge. "Everywhere I look, across every segment, everyone is pitching in to do whatever they can any way they can as soon as they possibly can," he says. "I think that's the one thing I'm holding on to."

अगले दो हफ्तों में शिकागो, इलिनोइस में कोरोनावायरस अस्पताल में भर्ती होने वालों की संख्या चरम पर होने की उम्मीद है। न्यूयॉर्क शहर में देखी गई चिकित्सा आपूर्ति की कमी को रोकने के प्रयास में, औसत शिकागोवासी इस आवश्यकता को पूरा करने के लिए दौड़ लगा रहे हैं।


Have English universities been graded harshly?

Summary: Universities in England have learned this week about the results of a big new attempt to force them to care more about their undergraduates. The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) has split them into groups depending on their teaching quality - gold, silver or bronze. And the results are a major source of controversy.

Chris CookPolicy editor, Newsnight Universities must get silver or gold if they are to be allowed to raise fees in line with inflation in future. Southampton and the LSE have both received bronzes. York got a silver. There was local trouble, too. In Liverpool, the grand old Russell Group university got a bronze. But Liverpool Hope and Liverpool John Moores got gold and silver respectively. Some of that shock, though, is by design. The British university system is built around research - not teaching. We already have a "Research Excellence Framework" used for distributing grants. The TEF is supposed to apply some pressure to redress that balance of interests - and a few bigger names were expected to struggle. What do they say is being measured? Half of the key measures that made up the TEF grades were drawn from surveys of students: their satisfaction with teaching, academic support and assessment. Others, though, were based on data on student retention and what the students went on to do. Universities got marks for their graduates' employability. Crucially, they were not all compared crudely. These figures were all adjusted to account for the intake of the university, and the balance of courses on offer. So Southampton Solent and Southampton needed to achieve very different outcomes for their students, in the eyes of the judges. The idea was to identify universities doing well by their own students. Universities could also make submissions to a judging panel, to explain why they believed the raw data might be misleading or unfair. But the blushes of some big names were not spared. The LSE's measures, for example, show that it seriously underperformed, against the average hypothetical university with a similar subject and student mix, when it came to "the teaching on my course", "assessment and feedback" and "academic support". Gold-rated Northampton, meanwhile, is beating the spread on all those things. There are edge cases: Southampton (bronze) and Bristol (silver) are very similar - but one fell short and one did not. (There are more cases here.) It is, though, hard to have too much sympathy for university leaders complaining about cliff-edges resulting from the use of a marking structure based around sorting people into a few big categories. So what should you make of all this? But what is really being measured? These are all bigger questions for another day - but, for now, I thought it was worth checking a few things. First, is the TEF actually mostly rewarding the usual suspects? We can look at the extent to which it is a simple measure of the traditional research hierarchy. Do universities who make higher shares of income from research do better on teaching? Here is a graph showing how the universities in each grade bracket fit together. The dotted line shows the mean for each category. You can see the gold category universities are, on average, more research-intensive. The mean is higher (further to the right). You can also see the super-research-intensive universities are all in the gold bracket: the institutions whose research income is above 40% of total income. But also look at the distribution. The TEF is measuring is not a simple proxy for research-intensity. There is more variation within groups than between them on this measure. There is, though, a clearer link to average UCAS tariff points - a rough measure of the academic achievements of students before they enter the institutions. It does seem that, if you are recruiting higher-attainment students, it is easier to get a gold or silver. There was also a concern that the exercise would simply reward universities which took in more prosperous undergraduates - although the TEF was supposed to attempt to account for that through a "benchmarking" process. That is a bigger concern given that higher-prior-attainment institutions are doing better. So how have they done? Here are similar frequency distributions on two widely used measures of the prosperity of university student populations. The first measure is the proportion of the student body from a "low-participation neighbourhood". That is to say: a poor area where fewer-than-average people go to higher education. The gold universities, on average, have fewer poor students than the silver, which have fewer than the bronze. But the variation within TEF groups dwarfs the gaps between them. The TEF benchmarking has done a lot to avoid marking down universities that take poorer students. But that choice of measure is very similar to the ones actually used in the TEF for benchmarking student populations. What, though, if you change your measure of poverty? All the universities where the share of state-educated students is under 70% are gold or silver institutions. None is bronze. So what this means is that it appears to be easier to get a gold if you have more privately educated pupils. And so it is possible it is showing up that the benchmarking is not working. In effect, some gold universities' achievements may be inflated because we did not take sufficient account of their students' background. If that is the case, it would mean some very grand universities have ratings that might need taking down a notch or two.

इंग्लैंड के विश्वविद्यालयों ने इस सप्ताह अपने स्नातकों की अधिक परवाह करने के लिए मजबूर करने के एक बड़े नए प्रयास के परिणामों के बारे में सीखा है। शिक्षण उत्कृष्टता ढांचे (टीईएफ) ने उन्हें उनकी शिक्षण गुणवत्ता के आधार पर समूहों में विभाजित किया है-सोना, चांदी या कांस्य। और परिणाम विवाद का एक प्रमुख स्रोत हैं।


Leslie Cheung: Asia's gay icon lives on 15 years after his death

Summary: For the past 15 years fans of tormented superstar Leslie Cheung, one of the first celebrities to come out as gay in Asia, have gathered at Hong Kong's Mandarin Oriental Hotel to mourn the day he took his own life.

By Gwyneth HoBBC Chinese It's a poignant sign of why the daring and troubled star is still important today. One of Hong Kong's most popular male singers and actors of the mid-1980s, Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing was not afraid of provoking controversy with his overt sexuality and provocative performances during a more socially conservative era. And 15 years after his death, Cheung is still attracting new fans, including teenagers and millennials. Lam, a 15-year-old who attended 1 April's vigil, was only a few months old when Cheung died. She told BBC Chinese she had "discovered him on YouTube". "He was charismatic; especially when he went androgynous...it's gorgeous," she said. Meanwhile, 25-year-old Wu travelled from Hunan province on mainland China with his boyfriend to mourn the icon. Wu told BBC Chinese he drew strength from Cheung's "spirit of being true to oneself". "He showed the [Chinese-speaking] world that gay people can be positive, bright and worthy of respect." Born in 1956, Leslie Cheung was one of Hong Kong's most famous stars during the golden era of Cantopop in the 1980s. He was dashing, stylish and fitted the public idea of a perfect heterosexual male lover. But in reality, he was in a long-term relationship with his childhood friend, Daffy Tong. It was not an easy time to be gay. At that time, homosexuality was still viewed by many as an illness and abnormality in Hong Kong, especially after the emergence of the first local case of Aids in 1984. It was not until 1991 that adult gay sex was decriminalised in the territory. "The LGBT movement in Hong Kong took off in the 1990s, when the community finally became visible to the public," Travis Kong, an associate professor of sociology researching gay culture at The University of Hong Kong, told BBC Chinese. And it was at this point that Cheung became more daring in his work. He first came to international attention with his portrayal of Cheng Dieyi, the androgynous Peking Opera star, for the film Farewell My Concubine, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1993. He went on to star in Happy Together directed by Wong Kar Wai - a gay cinema classic about a couple who struggle to find a peaceful co-existence. "Happy Together is different. It is a stereotypical heterosexual romance, but played by two men," said Kit Hung, a Hong Kong director. Meanwhile, Christopher Doyle, the renowned cinematographer who worked with Cheung on various Wong Kar Wai films, told BBC Chinese: "He was so beautiful. We both wanted to convey through my lens the most beautiful, sincerest side of him. "He enters our imagination audaciously... always showing us better possibilities." On stage, Cheung unleashed a sexually fluid charm. His defining queer performance came in a 1997 concert where he danced intimately with a male dancer to his song Red. He wore a black suit with a pair of sparkling crimson high-heels. At that concert he dedicated a classic love song to the two "loves of his life", his mother and his partner Daffy Tong. This is seen as the moment he came out of the closet. Cheung did not proclaim his sexuality as such, but confessed his love for a man. "In the 1990s, at times a gay man was still called 'Aids man' and 'pervert'," says Mr Kong. "In a society so oppressive to the LGBT community, the coming out of such a renowned superstar had a huge effect on the general public." Despite his success across Asia, there were many who did not appreciate this side of Cheung. At the 1998 Hong Kong Film Awards, Happy Together was mocked by comedians, who described it as a film that would make the audience vomit. A music video he directed, featuring him topless with a male ballet dancer, was also censored by major local TV channel TVB. In 2000 Leslie became the first Asian star to wear a tailor-made costume by French fashion master Jean-Paul Gaultier in a concert. With waist-length hair, clearly visible stubble and a muscular build, Cheung also wore tight transparent trousers and a short skirt. He ended the concert with his self-revealing ballad I. "The theme of my performance is this: The most important thing in life, apart from love, is to appreciate your own self," he explained. "I won't hide, I will live my life the way I like under the bright light" he sang. "I am what I am, firelight of a different colour." But he was dismissed as a "transvestite", "perverted" or "haunted by a female ghost" in local media. He would dismiss that criticism as superficial and short-sighted. He remains such an iconic figure in Hong Kong's awakening to LGBT issues that the Mandarin Oriental Hotel is even the first stop of a walking tour on the city's LGBT history. It was from here that he jumped to his death on 1 April 2003 after a long struggle with depression. It was a shocking moment for the city, and a devastating moment for fans. Tens of thousands turned out to bid him farewell and at the funeral, his partner Daffy Tong assumed the role traditionally preserved for the surviving spouse, a profound, public recognition of their relationship. Never legally married, Mr Tong's was the first name listed on the family's announcement of Cheung's death, credited "Love of His Life". Same-sex marriage or civil unions are still not legal in Hong Kong, but in the city's collective memory, Cheung and Tong are fondly remembered as an iconic, loving couple. Hong Kong still lacks anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBT communities but queer identity and sexual fluidity are no longer so taboo and are part of the social landscape. Last year a museum in Hong Kong held an exhibition "Ambiguously Yours: Gender in Hong Kong Popular Culture". The first exhibit visitors encountered upon entering the venue was a pair of sparkling crimson high-heels - the pair Cheung wore performing Red in 1997. "The highest achievement for a performer is to embody both genders at the same time," Cheung once proclaimed: "For art itself is genderless." If you are feeling emotionally distressed and would like details of organisations which offer advice and support, click here. In the UK you can call for free, at any time, to hear recorded information on 0800 066 066. In Hong Kong you can get help here.

पिछले 15 वर्षों से पीड़ित सुपरस्टार लेस्ली चेउंग के प्रशंसक, जो एशिया में समलैंगिक के रूप में सामने आने वाली पहली हस्तियों में से एक हैं, हांगकांग के मंदारिन ओरिएंटल होटल में उस दिन शोक व्यक्त करने के लिए एकत्र हुए हैं जब उन्होंने अपनी जान ले ली थी।


Scotland At Home: Hunkered down

Summary: Scotland's homes market has not seen anything like the highs and lows of the English one, and prices are far below those of London. The decade since the property boom turned to crash has seen relatively steady average prices, but a big fall in the number of transactions. BBC Scotland News is starting a series of reports which will look at the market, the role of house builders and of private landlords, and the quality of design.

Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland A roof over your head probably and rightly ranks among your top priorities. Securing it in the right place, at an affordable price, and with enough space are high priorities for all of us. And if you're a resident of Scotland, facing temperatures down to minus 10 degrees in the next day or so, it matters that your home has a sound roof, and the rest of it is reasonably well insulated. Homes and housing can help to define a nation, through communitarian shared space or individual asset ownership. They can symbolise what is wrong with a city, as was long the case with Glasgow. They carry the culture of communities; through shared tenement stairs and back greens; rural clusters of cottages, some dependent on a laird; behind security gates and at the end of long driveways: or suffering loneliness behind the door of an ill-designed city block. BBC Scotland's business and economy editor Douglas Fraser is looking at the state of the housing market on radio, TV and online Our housing is shaped by choices we make, but also very strongly by public policy and choices made in passing legislation. MSPs choose the standards of insulation for new buildings, and determine the planning laws. Yet in a series of reports on which I've been working for some months, I've been struck by how much the the private sector determines the shape, location, the quality and price of our homes. I've been asking whether that relationship is right in Scotland - between public and private, between house builder and home buyer. Should it be re-balanced? Do we get the homes we need? And the homes we desire? Do house builders put up the homes they know they can sell - which is almost any home - with an explicit commitment to shareholders that they maximise profit in doing so? Or does profit maximising for a few very large companies happen to coincide with the best outcome for home owners? First, for TV, radio and here online, I've sought to track where we've been in the past 10 or so years, for which new-builds are only a small part of the big picture. The start of last decade saw runaway house price inflation, fuelled by reckless lending. That story is branded on our memories. The banks got a lot of the blame, but home buyers were eager to join in the party and the spoils of home valuations that rose faster than people earned money. The banks were told to rein in their lending. Regulators want them to hold bigger balances to protect against another downturn in the market, and to ask for bigger deposits. The rules for ensuring mortgage applicants could afford to pay were overhauled. Banks and other lenders now have to take so long in assessing an applicant's finances that they are reluctant to do so until the transaction is a done deal. That has slowed up the conveyancing process and introduced more uncertainty into it until a late stage. That might have been expected to soften prices. But 10 years ago, politicians and regulators were faced with a difficult choice - to let the market fall, and to allow it to adjust with many repossessions by lenders, or to prop up the market as a vital part of the confidence that the British economy desperately needed. They chose the latter. Banks were told to go easy on those failing to make mortgage payments. Interest rates were taken down to record low levels. They have barely begun to recover. And while much of southern England suffered the roller-coaster of boom turning to bust, Scottish prices remained calm. Average prices didn't move much. Last year saw a slight uptick in the value of completed transactions. Some areas have fared much better than others - as is always the case. But house price inflation in Scotland has been very subdued. Valuations have been eroded. Equity in one's home has not been the leverage with which to borrow that it was before the crash. There has been no dramatic change, and no panic. Putting some numbers to that, the average price of a home transaction in 2007 had risen steeply to £155,000. It stayed close to that until 2014, when it rose to around £166,000. In 2017-18, it rose to £175,000 - a rise of 13% in a decade - and the most recent figure, for the end of 2018, was £182,000.* For rent For first-time buyers, most of them young, there has not been the rebalancing that the market required to help them get on that first rung - needing a bigger deposit, tighter controls on affordability, burdened also by student loans, with pay stuck in the doldrums, and for many, career progression likewise becalmed. That generation of millennials has become Generation Rent. The size of the private rental market has nearly doubled, to around 15% of all homes. Rents have gone up in many places and cases. And the state of repair of private rental homes has become a major concern of policy-makers. Twenty years ago and more, their primary concern was in the damp, crowded squalor of too much council housing and the social rented sector. With billions spent on that, and billions of debt written off, that sector has been transformed. Property churn What did fall in the private property market, and sharply, has been the number of transactions - down by more than half with the crash, and recovering only slightly. At its peak, more than 150,000 transactions took place in 2007-08. Three years later, only 70,500 did so. Last year, the number scraped over the 100,000 mark. It is the churn of properties that makes money for estate agency and legal conveyancing. The value of the market went from £23bn at peak to less than £11bn at its trough, only two years later. Last year, it was just below £18bn. Inevitably, there have been harsh job consequences in the property sector, though in small numbers, they have rarely made headlines. That sales rate remains the key problem for the sector. Not enough homes are coming to market. People are wary of buying before they sell. And they are wary of selling, if they can't see a big choice, and a clear path to their next home. We've found a tendency for people to stay put, where they are, and to meet their need for extra space by building an extension. Reform of stamp duty, now devolved to Holyrood and known as Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT), has skewed the tax burden towards buyers of more expensive properties. It's explicitly progressive. For anything you pay over £325,000 - and that included around 8% of transactions last year - you pay 10% of that tranche, and 12% for amounts over £750,000. Those 8% of transactions represent 55% of tax take from LBTT. Property professionals say that, too, has put a chill on the upper end of the market, which has knock-on effects further down. One consequence is that Edinburgh home-buyers contribute a very high share of the total. Part of the story of Scotland At Home in the 21st century is the growth of the Edinburgh economy and its sprawl into neighbouring council areas, including the Lothians, Fife and Forth Valley. As one example, the finance was signed off last week on a rapid expansion of the village of Winchburgh, near Linlithgow, which will have nearly 3,500 new homes. The story of the London property market, which wildly skews any averaging of the UK market, has an echo in the Scottish capital when compared with the rest of the country. The slow pace of sales is now meeting Brexit uncertainty. House builders warn that investment is being frozen not only by industry but also by prospective home-buyers. The prices aren't moving much, but property experts last month responded to the regular questions from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors with the message that the sales outlook is the worst for 20 years, including the great credit crunch crash. In brief, a note about these house price averages: for simplicity, we've used a simple average of transactions filed with the Registers of Scotland. But there is an alternative number, the House Price Index, or HPI, compiled with the Office for National Statistics and comparable with the rest of the UK. It irons out the statistical quirks that grow out of averages, and of disproportionate shares of the type or value band of homes being bought and sold. The HPI suggests the average value of a Scottish home is much lower than the average value of transactions. In November 2018, it was put at £151,000. In Wales, the HPI put the average at £161,000, in Northern Ireland, it was £135,000 in November, after a much bigger bust and recovery than other parts of the UK over the past ten years. In England, the comparable HPI figure was £247,000. Much of that is explained by the London effect, at an eye-watering £473,000 per home.

स्कॉटलैंड के घरों के बाजार में अंग्रेजी की तरह उतार-चढ़ाव नहीं देखा गया है, और कीमतें लंदन की तुलना में बहुत कम हैं। संपत्ति में उछाल के बाद के दशक में अपेक्षाकृत स्थिर औसत कीमतें देखी गई हैं, लेकिन लेनदेन की संख्या में बड़ी गिरावट आई है। बीबीसी स्कॉटलैंड न्यूज रिपोर्टों की एक श्रृंखला शुरू कर रहा है जो बाजार, घर बनाने वालों और निजी मकान मालिकों की भूमिका और डिजाइन की गुणवत्ता को देखेगी।


How Swansea's tidal lagoon would help the economy

Summary: An independent review into tidal lagoon energy in the UK has been completed - and now the UK Government is expected to decide by the end of the year whether the industry has a future, including a crucial first step in Swansea Bay.

By Sarah DickinsBBC Wales economics correspondent If this form of renewable energy is supported, it could signal the dawn of a new industrial era, worth £15bn to Wales and the UK. Those behind the new manufacturing and energy sector believe it can deliver sustainable, locally-produced electricity for about a hundred years. Alongside this, a wealth of knowledge would build-up that could be exported around the world. The plan would be for the first lagoon in Swansea Bay to be a prototype and the smallest. That would then be followed by lagoons in Cardiff - east of where Cardiff Bay is now - Newport, Bridgwater Bay, Colwyn Bay and west Cumbria, north of Workington. That is Tidal Lagoon Power (TLP's) dream. Former UK Energy Minister Charles Hendry has been gathering evidence for nine months for his inquiry, including visits to all the potential sites and discussions with industry. Now the wait for his conclusions is intensifying. The Swansea Bay lagoon would cost about £1.3bn; the company has promised that half that money would be spent in Wales. So what sorts of Welsh businesses would be involved? The most obvious are civil engineering companies. Monmouthshire construction firm Alun Griffiths Construction is already contracted to work delivering some of the roadways, while Andrew Scott Civil Engineering of Port Talbot is watching keenly. They plan to bid for some of the marine work contracts that would be put to tender if the conclusion of the Hendry review marks the go-ahead. General Electric and Andritz Hydro have between them a £300m contract for the 16 turbines that would be used in Swansea Bay. The plan is that the final turbine assembly would be carried out locally. Alongside that there will be work for companies involved in fabricated metals, steel casting and forging, and power electronics. The chief executive of TLP Mark Shorrock said: "We certainly think we'll be creating direct employment of 1,900 in Swansea. That ignores the supply chain. "As we go through that, we see carpenters, electrical engineers and then there's an awful lot of steel in generators and turbines." If the Swansea Bay project gets the go ahead, TLP will then speed up its preparatory work on larger tidal lagoons in Cardiff, Newport and Colwyn Bay. Each site will also need the same skills but on a greater scale. The estimate is that four tidal lagoons in Wales could support 33,500 jobs during the construction and more than 3,000 when they are in operation. They could be worth £1.3bn a year in Gross Value Added (GVA), the measure of just how much a contribution sector or industry makes to the economy. Mr Shorrock said there was the potential for Wales to become the industry base for exporting mass-produced turbines, generators and engineering around the world. Cost of power The other side of the coin is the cost of the electricity generated by tidal lagoons. It has been described by politicians as "expensive" referring to the guaranteed price - or strike price - that TLP is asking from the UK government. TLP forecasts that its lagoons would generate power for 120 years and is seeking a 90 years contract at £89.90 per mega watt hour (MWh) That would be below the £92.50 per MWh agreed for the new Hinkley C nuclear power station. Swansea is the test lagoon but it is small. TLP argues that lagoons after that will be bigger and more cost-efficient - and they are designed to last 120 years, 30 years beyond the subsidy and longer than nuclear power plants and offshore wind generators. Comparing costs of electricity is complicated and can be controversial. The wholesale electricity market in the UK can be volatile. It can change in the hour and day. For instance according to the energy brokers Energy Solutions during the day on 21 October, the wholesale electricity price in the UK was £77.84 Mwh. Within two days it was down to £44.57 and another day later it had reached £107.11. The price being asked for by TLP is not linked to the consumer price index and so in real terms reduces with inflation. In practice its very difficult to compare the costs of varying energy sources and different generations of power stations. For instance, the pricing of electricity from both Hinkley C and tidal lagoons also includes building costs. Whereas the price of electricity from older power stations is more like housing costs after the mortgage has been paid off. In other words, operators of these do not have to worry about paying any interest. There is also the thorny question of the comparative ongoing cost of dealing with waste. Consumers' bills? So what do politicians and others mean when they say that it is an expensive form of low carbon electricity generation? Citizens Advice gave evidence to Hendry's review. It says electricity bills to households will not go up from tidal energy but the organisation is concerned that subsidising lagoons could be take away help to other more established, renewable energy projects. In simple terms, Citizens Advice believes that if the argument for tidal lagoons is an economic one, concentrating on job creation, then it could be paid for by taxation or a government loan, rather than through energy bills. Andy Regan, Citizens Advice Cymru's energy specialist, said: "The subsidies are paid for with a levy on energy bills - it's a fixed pot and you want to get as much decarbonisation as you can for what consumers are paying." The Hendry review is completed and due to be handed to the UK government. While Mark Shorrock of TLP is feeling "pretty good about it", it is not known what Hendry's conclusions are or whether ministers will agree. Ultimately the UK Government will have to decide whether generating electricity from the tides is an economically and environmentally sustainable way to produce low carbon energy for the future. Tidal lagoons - the environmental arguments

यू. के. में ज्वारीय लैगून ऊर्जा की एक स्वतंत्र समीक्षा पूरी हो गई है-और अब यू. के. सरकार से साल के अंत तक यह तय करने की उम्मीद है कि स्वानसी खाड़ी में एक महत्वपूर्ण पहला कदम सहित उद्योग का कोई भविष्य है या नहीं।


Coventry's £7m Broadgate redesign plans approved

Summary: Proposals to redesign part of Coventry city centre ahead of the 2012 Olympics have been approved.

More trees will be planted in Broadgate and a traffic-free zone will be introduced as part of a £7m redesign which will also alter some subways. The changes were approved at a city council meeting on Tuesday following consultations with residents. Coventry is due to host some of the Olympic football games at the Ricoh Arena.

2012 ओलंपिक से पहले कोवेंट्री शहर के केंद्र के हिस्से को फिर से डिजाइन करने के प्रस्तावों को मंजूरी दे दी गई है।