Kashmir polls: Fear and mistrust stalk elections in the valley

Summary: Voting is underway in Indian-administered Kashmir in the region's first elections since Delhi revoked its special status last year. But the polls are unusual even by Kashmir's stormy standards. BBC's Aamir Peerzada reports from Srinagar.

"There is no democracy in Kashmir," declares 32-year-old Rabia Khursheed. Ironically, Ms Khursheed is contesting the first ever direct elections for village councils in 20 districts of Jammu and Kashmir. The region's councils, earlier staffed by lawmakers, will be directly elected for the first time. And their members will be charged with local planning and governance, from roads to schools to hospitals. These councils, at the base of India's democratic pyramid, make up the world's largest exercise in direct elections. But Ms Khursheed is unimpressed. "We don't have any option other than contesting [the polls]. Otherwise what will happen to our future generations?" she asks. This mix of defiance, frustration and resignation is all too familiar in the Muslim-majority valley. It has long had a tense relationship with India - successive governments have failed to fight militancy in the region without giving the Indian army powers that have led to decades-worth of allegations of human rights abuses. The rift only widened in August 2019 when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led federal government unilaterally abrogated Article 370, a constitutional provision that guaranteed Kashmir some autonomy. The move - accompanied by a severe communications and internet blockade, and the detention of MPs, activists, journalists and community leaders - was met with protests and global criticism. It was also seen as part of the BJP's right-wing agenda - the party's divisive rhetoric and politics have long been accused of targeting the country's Muslims. With these elections, the first since the controversial move last year, the BJP hopes to gain a foothold in the valley. "For Delhi, these elections are very significant. For Jammu and Kashmir, not very significant because the election has been instituted under an appointed ruler, not an elected one," says historian Siddiq Wahid. He adds that it's an attempt by the BJP to seek "legitimacy". The party is up against a united opposition and disgruntled population that is sceptical of the elections as a whole. An unusual election For the first time, some seven opposition parties have allied to contest the polls together. And their goal is to fight to restore Kashmir's special status. "The election just a distraction from the real issues that has caused a sense of betrayal and alienation amongst people here," says former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). She was freed by Indian authorities in October, more than a year after her detention. Then there are independent candidates like Ms Khursheed. She says she doesn't wish to associate herself with any political party, but she also says she has campaigned to hard to stem the BJP's rise. Ms Khursheed is among more than 2,000 candidates in the fray for 280 seats in Jammu and Kashmir. The elections are taking place over eight phases, six of which have already concluded. Her seat in north Kashmir's Baramulla district went to the polls on 7 December. Some 5.76 million people are registered to vote but Kashmiris have shown little enthusiasm compared to previous elections. "The BJP has made a big deal about these elections by sending central ministers to campaign in Jammu. These are just village-level elections. And for common people there is little enthusiasm," says Anil Gupta, a journalist based in Jammu. The Hindu-majority Jammu region has seen higher voter turnout, often crossing 60%. In the valley, it has remained below 41%. The lowest single phase turnout so far - 1.9% - has been recorded in south Kashmir's Shopian district, where militancy has always been rife. Campaigning in south Kashmir, which is especially volatile, has been challenging and unusual. Mass campaigns have been difficult not just because of the pandemic but because of a spike in militancy and political violence. At least nine BJP workers were killed by suspected militants this year, prompting officials to guard candidates round the clock. They have been moved to hotels or government guest houses, where they have been living under tight security. "It's not possible to provide security individually to every candidate that's why they have been shifted to such accommodations," an official told the BBC. "I have to give advance notice to police about my visit and when they think it's feasible security-wise then I get the clearance and police escort. I can't blame the police, they are doing this for our safety," says Nazir Ahamad Dar, 46, a BJP candidate in Pulwama, another south Kashmir district that has consistently seen low voter turnout.. He says he has only visited his constituency four times until now and and each time, he only had two hours to campaign. Campaigning happens door-to-door and involves a police escort. And candidates complain that they aren't given enough time on the ground, but officials say they are doing everything they can given the security concerns. But the opposition allege a more sinister agenda. Former chief minister, Omar Abdullah, tweeted that the local administration was "going out of its way to help the BJP" and was "locking up candidates opposed to the BJP, using security as an excuse". "If the security situation isn't conducive to campaigning what was the need to announce elections?" Mr Abdullah said. But authorities denied the allegations, saying no candidate has been stopped from campaigning everyone was given adequate security. Fear and mistrust There is heavy security around polling booths, and voters are being frisked before they cast their ballots. "We have to be alert," says an officer outside a polling booth in Shopian's Keller constituency. A group of young men loitering outside the booth say they were not there to vote, but to "keep an eye on people who are coming to cast their votes". One of them says that only the elderly are voting because "they still believe in the old party cardre, but we don't, so you won't see many youngsters voting". "We know all the elections and parties are same, nothing will change with this," says another of them. They all wished to remain anonymous. Those who did vote said they were hoping for development. "We want development in our area and now we have a local representative contesting and that's why I voted, I think it will be easier for us to reach out to him now," said 20-year-old Mohammad Altaf from Shopian. A group of women in south Kashmir said they were voting for roads because it takes a two-hour walk just to meet the candidates. "We don't have electricity, our kids are not able to read and write in the evenings. Our lives have been ruined but we don't want our children to go through this. I will vote for that," said Fareeda Akhtar. And then there were those who voted so they have someone to call when security forces come knocking on their doors. "If the police or the army picks up anyone here, there is nobody we can go to ask for help. I think I can at least go to the person I voted for to ask for help. That's why I voted today," said a 48-year-old voter who didn't want to be named.

पिछले साल दिल्ली द्वारा अपना विशेष दर्जा रद्द करने के बाद से भारत प्रशासित कश्मीर में इस क्षेत्र के पहले चुनावों में मतदान चल रहा है। लेकिन कश्मीर के तूफानी मानकों के बावजूद चुनाव असामान्य हैं। श्रीनगर से बीबीसी के आमिर पीरजादा की रिपोर्ट।


Queen's Arcade shopping centre in Cardiff for sale for £33m

Summary: A shopping centre in Cardiff has been put up for sale - with a £33m price tag.

Queen's Arcade shopping centre, visited by 10 million shoppers a year, was originally developed in the mid-1990s. Addington Capital bought the 150,000 sq ft (13, 935 sq m) shopping centre, which fronts on to Queen Street, in March 2011 but is now looking to sell. The Post Office and Halifax Bank are based at the centre.

कार्डिफ में एक खरीदारी केंद्र को बिक्री के लिए रखा गया है-जिसकी कीमत 33 मिलियन पाउंड है।


Viewpoint: Did Thai king help stifle democracy?

Summary: After the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thailand is preparing for Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn to succeed him on the throne. The king's declining health seemed to coincide with the beginning of a decade-long political crisis, writes Serhat Uenaldi, and in the end Thai democracy died long before the king.

The king himself helped kill off democracy in the fateful year of 2006, when he endorsed a military coup against the popular Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and gave royal assent to an interim cabinet. Mr Thaksin, a telecommunications billionaire, had been swept to power in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. He managed to get Thailand's economy back on track by introducing mildly redistributive policies that benefitted people in previously neglected provincial areas. As a result, he became the first prime minister to complete a full term in office. His popularity soared, partly at the expense of the monarchy. Previously, King Bhumibol had been regarded as the supreme patron of rural Thailand, initiating hundreds of development projects. With Mr Thaksin's rise many came to realise that an elected leader could improve their lives and lead to real structural change. They no longer felt dependent on a supposedly benevolent monarch who ruled by birthright. But royalists began to fight back, spearheading a movement against Mr Thaksin which they formed in late 2005. Thaksin, however, proved resilient, backed by the majority of Thais. Poll after poll showed his apparently unbeatable popularity. Without Bhumibol's blessing, he could never have been ousted by a coup in September 2006. Its leaders were granted an audience with the king immediately afterwards which was a clear sign of royal support. If due democratic processes had run their course, Mr Thaksin's economic policies may or may not have proven unsustainable, and his negative human rights track record may have become unacceptable to the majority of Thais. That would have been for the voters to decide. But Thailand's royalists appear to have made that decision for them. Seen in this light, it seems easy to conclude, as some have done, that King Bhumibol was the one to blame for the political mess that followed. In the wake of the 2006 coup, criticism directed at him as the country's most potent anti-democratic player mounted. Mr Thaksin's supporters, journalists and academics began to examine his political track-record critically, in spite of the existence of a law against defaming the monarchy which allows for up to 15 years imprisonment for each act deemed insulting to the king or a member of his family. Royal charisma However, the question of whether man makes history or whether history makes a man - a king, in this instance - looms large over the assessment of King Bhumibol's reign. Is it justified to hold him responsible, or was he in actuality a weak king who simply found himself at the centre of forces that were even bigger than the demi-god he was supposed to be? As so often, the truth lies in between. Thailand's turbulent politics can be best explained by the interplay between King Bhumibol as a leadership figure and Thai society at large. The point is that the king could not have become invested with the authority he had if that authority had not served the purposes of broad sections of the Thai people. When King Bhumibol acceded to the throne in 1946, the Thai monarchy was at a low point after a revolution that ended absolute monarchy in 1932. The king's star only rose when military dictators started again to actively cultivate the charisma of the royal institution to promote royalism to fight communism in the 1950s. Royal traditions were invented or revived, the monarch was paraded around the countryside and abroad, old beliefs in Buddhist and Hindu sources of royal strength were nurtured. In the king's name And this is how King Bhumibol's reign worked. The enormous power he seemed to hold was in a way given to him by those Thais who drew on royal charisma as a source of legitimacy. The king's advice was what people made of it and what people made of it depended on their interests. Whenever unionists rallied against privatisation by parading images of the king, whenever slum dwellers on royal land referred to their historical bond with the monarchy to counter threats of eviction, whenever a bureaucrat devised a scheme with reference to the king's guiding words of wisdom, whenever businesses attached a royal emblem to the front of their headquarters, whenever military generals purported to protect the king while carrying out coups against civilian governments, they were at the same time strengthening their own position and entrenching the centrality of the monarchy. An example of this was the king's repeated but failed attempt to instil a so-called "sufficiency" mind-set in his people through his vague concept of a "sufficiency economy" - focus on balanced development that stresses environmental and social responsibilities as much as conventional measures of economic progress. But while environmentalists and opponents of neo-liberalism used the idea to back their calls for a more sustainable and less exploitative economy, nostalgic social conservatives claimed royal sanction for their vision of a country eternally fed by rice farmers who were content with their lot. Opponents of a welfare state and advocates of the free market needed only refer to the king's approval of trade and consumption in the context of sufficiency. In his 1998 birthday speech, King Bhumibol, the nation's biggest capitalist, was quick to clarify that people's frugality should not be excessive and that the consumption of luxurious goods was permissible - a message well-received among Bangkok's middle and upper class. And certainly it was not the king alone who killed Thai democracy. It was the people who profited from his stamp of approval for the coup. They feared that Thaksin was a threat to the monarchy, and therefore to their own source of legitimacy. But coups did not solve their problems. In King Bhumibol's later years, more and more Thais started to question the power of the king because Mr Thaksin had indeed initiated a slow drift away from power based on royal charisma towards leadership based on democratic legitimacy. Consequently, the authority derived from latching on to royal charisma has weakened. It is doubtful that the next Thai monarch will be able to restore the carefully calibrated symbiosis between the monarchy and those sections of the Thai public who had for decades benefitted the most from working towards it. Rumours of the death of that symbiosis might not be exaggerated. Then, Thai democracy might rise again like a phoenix from the ashes. Serhat Uenaldi is the author of Working towards the Monarchy: The Politics of Space in Downtown Bangkok.

राजा भूमिबोल अदुल्यादेज की मृत्यु के बाद, थाईलैंड क्राउन प्रिंस महा वजीरालोंगकोर्न के सिंहासन पर बैठने की तैयारी कर रहा है। राजा का बिगड़ता स्वास्थ्य एक दशक लंबे राजनीतिक संकट की शुरुआत के साथ मेल खाता था, सेरहत उनालदी लिखते हैं, और अंत में थाई लोकतंत्र राजा से बहुत पहले ही मर गया।


George Floyd death: A city pledged to abolish its police. Then what?

Summary: At the end of January Ade Alabi made a big investment. He bought a four-storey building with two ballrooms, three restaurants, a night club and a radio station, just down the road from Minneapolis's Third Precinct police headquarters.

By Barbara Plett UsherBBC News, Minneapolis By the end of May it was gone, a heap of rubble and ashes, consumed by the inferno that destroyed the police station and many of the businesses around it. The image of the burning precinct, abandoned by police in the face of angry and violent protesters, signalled for him that something different was happening in Minneapolis. This was the station where the four policemen charged in the killing of George Floyd worked. The explosive reaction to his slow and gruesome death, his neck pinned to the ground by an officer's knee, created momentum to change the way not only the city, but the country, is policed. Nearly five months on, however, ambitious policy efforts to address police violence in Minneapolis have slammed into bureaucratic roadblocks and public opposition. In the charged atmosphere after the Floyd killing, city counsellor Alondra Cano says she "knew in my gut that we had to do something different… to send a message nationally that would rupture through the traditional approach", to police misconduct. Reform hadn't worked, she said. It was time now to transform. So in early June a majority of city council members took a step that shook Minneapolis and drew national and international attention. They pledged to dismantle a policing system long accused of racism, and build something new - "to end policing as we know it". They then proposed an amendment to the city's charter to put on the November ballot. It called for replacing the police department with a new entity of community safety and violence prevention. The proposal was short on detail but council members said there would be a public engagement process to fill in the blanks. Instead, they faced public opposition, most vocally from North Minneapolis, a largely black neighbourhood, which saw a dramatic rise in gun crime and robberies after Floyd's death. Residents have become so alarmed they are suing the city. "We have historically had victims of violence by police," said Cathy Spann, a community organiser, at a recent neighbourhood gathering. "But we are under siege right now with gunfire every single night. The council has to bring in extra force to stop this from happening!" The consensus at the backyard gathering was that the council's declaration had emboldened criminals and demoralised the police department. Whatever the case, dozens of officers have left the force, quitting or claiming medical leave. "We want to reimagine community policing, desperately, to save the lives of our young black and brown men and women," said Jon Lundberg, whose house was hit by random gunfire last week. "But what we need now is to reinstitute some systems of control. Because right now it's off the hook, it's off the chain." Some city counsellors have begun to backtrack given the backlash. Cano is not one of them. She says the proposal was meant to set the direction for a complex and lengthy process. "Now is where we should be digging deeper and tackling those very important questions around why are we seeing an increase in gun violence and robberies and we shouldn't shy away from that," she says. "That doesn't mean what we did on 7 June doesn't work. What that means is that we're in it and that we need to stay committed and dedicated to solving long-term problems that even our police officers can't solve." But those efforts have been set back by the city's charter commission, an appointed state body, which determined that the police amendment was too vague, and put off any vote for another year. In the meantime the council has taken some steps. It diverted $1.1m from the police budget to newly formed community patrols. And Minneapolis has instituted some incremental reforms, such as banning police chokeholds. But Dave Bicking, a veteran activist against police violence, says the council's radical move has done more harm than good. "The diversion of that pledge and the city charter amendment I think are steps that took away from the chance to make short-term changes to the behaviour of the police department that would have made a difference," he says, citing in particular investigation of and discipline for incidents of misconduct and excessive force. In South Minneapolis, another community caught in the line of fire is trying to make its own sense of the city's upheavals. Ade Alabi has banded together with others in the neighbourhood to try to preserve the diverse and distinctive character of the commercial district around the Third Precinct. In the face of enormous rebuilding costs, they are fighting to keep it in the hands of the community rather than lose it to a handful of corporate property developers. They too, talk about transformation, hoping to bring more minority business owners into their corner of the city, and create more cultural and social space. It's something that lawyer Daniel Kennedy, who's part of the collective, calls "an opportunity that nobody wanted". The battered police station sits abandoned on this block of destruction. One option being discussed is to hand it over to the community. If nothing else, the killing of George Floyd has shifted the conversation about the function of a police force, even as it has starkly exposed how difficult that is to change. "I don't want to go back to normal," says Meena Natarajan, the owner of a theatre company and another member of the group, "because normal was racist."

जनवरी के अंत में एडे अलाबी ने एक बड़ा निवेश किया। उन्होंने मिनियापोलिस के थर्ड प्रिसिन्ट पुलिस मुख्यालय से सड़क के ठीक नीचे दो बॉलरूम, तीन रेस्तरां, एक नाइट क्लब और एक रेडियो स्टेशन के साथ एक चार मंजिला इमारत खरीदी।


Alderney 'Fly-in': More than 100 aircraft booked in

Summary: More than 100 private aircraft are booked to land at Alderney airport for this year's Fly-in, organisers have confirmed.

The event had been running for 20 years before it was cancelled in 2004 because of a lack of entries. The Fly-in, which involves light aircraft enthusiasts congregating on the island, starts on 28 June. The Alderney Flying Club has appealed to islanders for accommodation because hotels and B&Bs are fully booked.

आयोजकों ने पुष्टि की है कि इस साल के फ्लाई-इन के लिए एल्डर्नी हवाई अड्डे पर उतरने के लिए 100 से अधिक निजी विमान बुक किए गए हैं।


Should homeless people be expected to live in a box?

Summary: Single people in need of a home are the least likely to be prioritised by local authorities. But could one-person micro-homes be an answer - or is expecting people to live in a box, and be grateful about it, a step too far?

By Bethan BellBBC News Nearly a quarter of a million single people have experienced homelessness in the past 12 months. These include the most visible sector of homeless people, the rough sleepers; as well as those living in temporary accommodation, like shelters or hostels, provided by the voluntary homelessness sector. Then we have the "hidden homeless" who stay on the floor of friends and family, the "sofa surfers" and the squatters. Perhaps communities of micro-homes such as one recently granted planning permission in Worcester - where each unit has a floor space of just 17.25 sq metres - could offer a solution. According to the British Property Federation, micro-homes can be defined as "not conforming to current minimum space standards". But the charity Homeless Link says "the main aspiration of people who are homeless is to have a home of their own". So should we start to think inside the box? Accommodating single people in small spaces is not new - shipping containers have been used to house homeless people for decades. But shipping containers are not purpose-built, are often cold, poorly ventilated and - crucially - are storage crates, not homes. Benjamin Clayton, head of strategy at Homes England, the government's "housing accelerator" and formerly a fellow at Harvard University, says micro-homes are "clearly not the solution to the housing crisis, but they might be a handy resource in the meantime. "Tiny houses could be particularly helpful in getting homeless people into safety. Housing charity Crisis estimates that the cost of a single homeless person sleeping rough in the UK is £20,128 per year, which is depressing money down the drain." It makes financial sense to help homeless people, or, ideally, prevent their plight in the first place. In an illustrative report At what cost? commissioned by Crisis, that annual price tag of £20,128 includes interaction with the criminal justice system (about £7,000), visits to A&E and stays in hospital (about £8,000), and support from homelessness agencies. And that's before the human cost. Lacking a settled home can cause or increase social isolation, create barriers to education, training and paid work and undermine mental and physical health. Mr Clayton suggests Britain should experiment along the lines of some communities in the US, where charitable groups have supplied micro-homes to help homeless people. "Around 8,000 people slept rough on the streets of London in 2016-17, a number which has doubled since 2010," Mr Clayton says. "Surely units in homelessness hotspots in London, Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere could provide a real, albeit temporary, alternative. "Of course Britain needs more and better real houses. In the meantime, though, we should take tiny houses seriously, especially for those who have no house at all." Not everybody is happy with the idea though. One of the newest developments to receive planning permission is a set of 16 iKozie units, which will be erected in Worcester some time next year. The original plans for the site were more ambitious, but vigorous opposition from residents worried about infrastructure, parking and antisocial behaviour led to the proposal for 30 units being trimmed down to 16. Objections lodged with the council ranged from allegations that the iKozie residents would not be in paid employment and therefore a drain on the public purse, to concerns about space for charging points for hypothetical electric cars in the future. Of the 16 units, five will be in the control of the city council's housing department, and it would be up to the council to decide who on the housing list should be allocated a unit. Single adults with no children or specific vulnerabilities tend to fall between the cracks when it comes to finding them somewhere to live. There will always be someone considered a higher priority. But these homes for one, loosely based on the cabin of a luxury yacht, could fill a gap. Each £40,000 home will be 17.25 sq metres and have a fully-equipped bedroom, shower room, living area and kitchen. The floor space of the units is half that set out in government guidance, but the company behind iKozie argues that the design, and the fact the units are not meant to be long-term homes, means their size is not a problem. "A lot of affordable homes don't come with a cooker or flooring, and lots of people aren't brilliant at interior design," says the director of iKozie, Kieran O'Donnell, who is also a trustee of the housing charity The Homeless Foundation. "With the iKozie, everything is fitted in. There are distinct 'zones' for living, eating and sleeping, and there is no wasted space." Mr O'Donnell says the units would not be used to house the "street homeless", but would be for those moving on from supported living or "trapped in an HMO [home of multiple occupation]". The iKozie would provide transition accommodation for someone before they moved into the open market. "It's not meant to be a long-term fix. I see the timeframe for people living there to be about two years-ish - perhaps giving people time to save for a deposit or even a mortgage," he says. "At the same time, they're building up a track record of paying rent and for utilities, which can be shown to housing associations or whoever when they move on to the next stage." The businessman is open about the fact that this project is likely to prove a financial success for his company - and he's currently looking for more sites on which to put more iKozies. "We also think these will be in high demand for students or maybe older people who are downsizing." The five affordable units would be rented at the local housing allowance rate - about £99 a week - while the remaining ones would be available for rent at the market rate of about £125 a week. People living there would be subject to a strict set of conditions, Mr O'Donnell says. The units would be for single occupancy only and iKozie would monitor the site. This in turn could free up space in a hostel or supported living accommodation. So in concrete terms of helping the homeless, the effect will be modest - but could pave the way for further projects. Stephen Robertson, CEO of the Big Issue Foundation, says spiralling private rent has led to "a rough sleeping crisis, a humanitarian crisis" and even small initiatives like the iKozie development are valuable because of the lessons of the experience. "There has been a massive increase in tented accommodation - people simply have nowhere to go," he says. "The iKozies are small but they look fairly well designed and nobody is forced to live in one. They're not in themselves the answer - social housing is. "If you look at the scale of the problem, this is just a drop in the ocean. But it is self-sufficient living, not being abandoned in a shed. Taking action where the environment is hostile is important - especially the learning that comes from it. "We can find out from the development whether the project is scalable and replicable. I see it as an innovation; not more than that, but it is an innovation. "It will be an improvement on many people's current situation. "It is an alternative for people who don't have an alternative."

घर की आवश्यकता वाले एकल लोगों को स्थानीय अधिकारियों द्वारा प्राथमिकता दिए जाने की संभावना कम है। लेकिन क्या एक-व्यक्ति सूक्ष्म-घर एक जवाब हो सकता है-या लोगों से एक डिब्बे में रहने की उम्मीद कर रहा है, और इसके बारे में आभारी होना, एक कदम बहुत दूर है?


Mladic trial: Haunting testimony bridges two-decade gap

Summary: Elvedin Pasic was the first witness to give evidence in the war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb army chief Gen Ratko Mladic at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. The BBC's Anna Holligan heard his testimony.

The events he was describing happened two decades ago. Elvedin Pasic was a schoolboy at the time. But he spoke as though it were yesterday. Initially, the smartly dressed survivor made valiant efforts to suppress his tears: conscious that the man accused of being responsible for his suffering - the deaths of his father and uncle - was sitting just metres away. But his voice betrayed the emotional agony he was reliving in court. As he recounted returning to his village, after the bombings and shellings that had forced his family to flee, Mr Pasic spoke in staccato bursts. Homes had been burnt down; old people too frail to leave had been burnt to death; his pet dog had been shot by Serb soldiers. The memory of finding his dog was too much. The witness, now 34, could no longer hide his anguish or the trauma of being forced to remember and relive that moment. Throughout his testimony he never once looked to his left where the accused sat silently, watching. Rare smile Before this first witness was led into courtroom one, Ratko Mladic had at first appeared to be in a rather jovial mood. Glancing out at the journalists watching him from the public gallery, he seemed surprised to see such a large audience. He appeared pleased, sharing a joke and a rare smile with his defence team. When Elvedin Pasic entered, the former Bosnian Serb commander sat forward on his chair, as though trying to get a closer look. Elbows on the desk, chin in his hands, there was no obvious emotion. But he was paying attention. Occasionally, he wiped his eyes and mouth with a tissue: a gesture that could be interpreted as an emotional reaction but was probably more physical, related to his poor health. The survivor's testimony is significant insofar as it relates to one of the first massacres committed by Serb forces in Bosnia. The prosecution aims to use personal recollections provided by the witnesses to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Ratko Mladic was involved in the planning and implementation of these crimes. They have to show that he was responsible for the forces engaged in trying to ethnically cleanse - through evacuation or murder - an entire Muslim population from huge swathes of lands that the Bosnian Serbs wished to turn into an ethnically pure Greater Serbian Republic. Today, the tears of one survivor showed that time has done little to numb the pain.

एल्वेडिन पासिक हेग में अंतर्राष्ट्रीय आपराधिक न्यायालय में पूर्व बोस्नियाई सर्ब सेना प्रमुख जनरल रात्को म्लादिक के युद्ध अपराध मुकदमे में साक्ष्य देने वाले पहले गवाह थे। बीबीसी की एना हॉलिगन ने उनकी गवाही सुनी।


How a secret manuscript became a global bestseller

Summary: Nelson Mandela's biography The Long Walk to Freedom became an international bestseller and is being made into a film. But the famous book may never have seen the light of day if it wasn't for the bravery and persistence of another Robben Island inmate.

By Karen AllenBBC News, Johannesburg "We were housed in individual cells, each cell had a window looking out into the corridor. Warders patrolled day and night, lights were on 24 hours a day." Mac Maharaj was one of four long-term prisoners on Robben Island secretly collaborating on the first draft of the autobiography of Nelson Mandela - along with other Africa National Congress activists Ahmed Kathrada and Walter Sisulu. "Mandela had to write every night. He wrote on average 10-15 pages with very little reference material - he wrote by discussion and recollection," says the 76-year-old. "The next morning it would circulate to Kathrada and Sisulu for their comments, which would come back to me to transcribe. And the next night he would write another 10-15 pages." Both men would sometimes feign illness so they could stay in the grounds and spend their time working alone in the prison quadrangle. Writing was strictly a night time affair, but this was their opportunity to discuss the copy and the edits. Their determination to write overcame the fear of being caught. "We were living in a society where the history of our struggle was not covered anywhere - not even in academia. Everything in history was the history about the white man. "So that in itself was an exciting exercise to put down on paper the life of one man who was so central [to the struggle], and whose autobiography was really a political autobiography. One had a sense that Mandela had already become a national and international figure and that it would be an inspiration to read our history." They used thin sheets of lined A4 paper from a stash of stationery available to prisoners, many of whom were studying for degrees - Mr Maharaj included. "I had to transcribe it into a form that I could hide. We used both sides of [the paper], and we used tiny handwriting." Mr Maharaj's painstakingly scribbled transcriptions were hidden amongst his study materials - 60 sheets of paper concealed in the covers of a handmade file that was used to carry statistical maps. Meanwhile, Mr Mandela's handwritten copy - the original draft of the book - was put into tin containers and buried in a vegetable patch. One October afternoon Mac Maharaj was unexpectedly called to the prison offices and told he wouldn't be returning to his cell. He would be moving on - leaving without his belongings. After a moment of panic, he began arguing with the guards - demanding to return to pack up his books and study materials, which contained the all-important transcriptions. Still apparently oblivious of his clandestine work with Mandela, the guards allowed him to leave with some books, which contained some of the writings. And thinking on his feet, he hatched another plan. "I had the presence of mind to say, 'My books are lent out, exchanged with people and there are books in my cell that don't belong to me. So go to Kathrada, go to Sisulu. Ask them to help to pack my books.'" Mr Maharaj was not allowed back to his cell, and was shipped off Robben Island, but his fellow inmates managed to get the rest of the transcripts out, still undiscovered in his books and his file. Out of prison but under house arrest, he was reunited with his boxes two months later in December 1976. Soon after he left prison, the guards began to build a wall at the spot in the prison garden where Mandela's own papers were hidden. The tins were found, and the handwriting on the manuscript was tested - implicating all four men, although only the three still incarcerated could be punished. After six months of house arrest, Mr Maharaj slipped out of the country and headed for the UK. The secret file had been sent on ahead, to be delivered into the safekeeping of a trusted friend, anti-apartheid activist Rusty Bernstein. In the summer of 1977, the men met in central London along with another close cohort, Yusef Dadoo. The file was hidden in the Communist Party offices where Rusty worked. After a cup of coffee in a tearoom on nearby Goodge Street, Mr Maharaj finally had the file in his hands. "I ripped the covers and out came all these pages. Rusty and Dadoo - both their mouths were agape. It was mission accomplished. We had successfully smuggled it out. It had come out intact." This affirmed the wisdom of having two copies of the manuscript. The original script handwritten by Mr Mandela had been discovered in Robben Island and now forms part of the Nelson Mandela Foundation's archives in Johannesburg. But Mr Maharaj's transcript had survived. It had to wait another 18 years before being read by millions around the world, because the ANC were firm in their belief that the precious transcript had to wait until after Mr Mandela's release from jail, to see the light of day. But it formed the framework for his hugely successful autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom published in 1995. On page 572, Mr Mandela himself pays tribute to the importance of Mr Maharaj's transcript in forming the template of his bestseller. "Although it was not published while I was in prison, it forms the basis of this memoir." Mac Maharaj told his story to the BBC World Service history programme, Witness. Listen to this episode via iPlayer or download the podcast.

नेल्सन मंडेलाक जीवनी 'द लॉन्ग वॉक टू फ्रीडम' एकटा अन्तर्राष्ट्रीय बेस्टसेलर बनि गेल आ एकरा एकटा फिल्म बनाओल जा रहल अछि। मुदा ई प्रसिद्ध पुस्तक रोबेन द्वीपक दोसर कैदीक बहादुरी आ दृढ़ता के बिना कहियो प्रकाशमे नहि आयल होयत।


The Facebook smugglers selling the dream of Europe

Summary: Across the Mediterranean, people smugglers are advertising their services on Facebook, promising safe passage to migrants desperate to reach Europe. Their pages offer a glimpse into a smuggling network that spans three continents, generates hundreds of millions of dollars, and has become, in effect, an alternative asylum service for the EU.

By Daniel Adamson and Mamdouh AkbiekBBC World Service "With the beginning of the new season we have a range of journeys on offer. Turkey Libya Italy, $3,800. Algeria Libya Italy, $2,500. Sudan Libya Italy, $2,500… The boats are all wood… If you have questions, contact me on Viber or WhatsApp." This is not an ad from a travel brochure. It's a Facebook update posted by a people smuggler, Abdul Aziz, from the Libyan port of Zuwara on 21 April. Abdul Aziz is just one of hundreds of smugglers now using social media to promote their services to migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe. Their pages advertise everything from fake documents to safe passage by land, air, or sea. Many are illustrated with photos of luxury cruise liners or crisp new passports, and include package deals - "Kids go free" is a popular offer - as well as glowing testimonies that purport to be from migrants who have made the journey. But behind the glib promises and the slick online communications is a ruthless real-world web of smugglers and con men who thrive on the vulnerability of the migrants. This web extends not only across the Mediterranean and the Middle East but deep into sub-Saharan Africa. Abdul Aziz alone claims to have agents in "almost every Arab state" and says "if people can't get here to Libya, I have legal and illegal ways to get them into the country." The network that links a boat-runner like Abdul Aziz to a passport forger in Istanbul or a truck driver in Eritrea is an underground, ever-shifting configuration of personal contacts, criminal gangs, and one-off business deals that runs across national borders and is almost impossible to police. The adaptability of this system only makes it more efficient: last year some 220,000 migrants crossed the Mediterranean, most leaving Libya in smugglers' boats before being rescued at sea by the Italian coastguard or navy. Since the start of 2015, another 35,000 have reached Italy. More than 1,800 have drowned in the attempt. There is nothing new in this. African migrants have been sailing from Zuwara for at least 30 years. But the proliferation of Arabic-language smuggling pages on Facebook reflects a surge in demand from Syrian and other Arab migrants since the uprisings of 2011, as well as a growing confidence among the smugglers themselves, many of whom post their mobile phone numbers online or field enquiries via online messaging apps. Abdul Aziz, who spoke to the BBC via Skype, said that between 10 and 20 people contact him through his Facebook page every day. "Until 2012 we didn't use social media at all," he said. "Now, it accounts for between 30% and 40% of my business." The collapse of the Libyan state has also emboldened the smugglers, allowing them to promote themselves online without fear of arrest. Abdul Aziz laughed at the suggestion that his Facebook page might attract the attention of the authorities. "What authorities? There aren't any authorities. There isn't even a regime. There's nothing." Giampaolo Musumeci, an Italian journalist who has written a book about North Africa's smuggling gangs, sees their growing social media presence as "part of the marketing operation for the biggest illegal travel company in the world." According to Musumeci, this "company" made something between 300m and 600m euros (£235m-£470m; $215m-$430m) last year from those trying to get into Europe, and now constitutes an unofficial asylum service for people whose lives have been derailed by poverty, chaos, and war. "What I'm selling," a Pakistani smuggler in Italy told Musumeci, "is the dream of Europe." For many of those who arrived in the EU last year, it's a dream that could not be realized through legal channels. Take Ayham al Faris, a Syrian translator and anti-Assad campaigner who fled his country in fear for his life in October 2011. Before he left, Ayham tried to apply for a visa from the French and Austrian embassies in Damascus. He got nowhere. Later, after he had reached Turkey, Ayham approached the German, Australian, and Bosnian embassies with the same request. "They didn't even say, 'We don't have programmes for you, we can't give you a visa now,' or something like that… They just say, 'Send us an email,' but when I send them my email they just throw it away." Faced with this wall of bureaucratic indifference, Ayham made his own way into Greece, where he used Facebook to contact a Syrian smuggler called Hafez. "He said he can take me wherever I want, no problem, it's easy for him. The most important thing is that you have your money in your pocket." Despite the sales patter, Hafez failed to get Ayham out of Greece. Eventually, Ayham bought a fake passport from another smuggler and, at the 11th attempt, got on a flight to Paris. He has now been granted asylum in the Netherlands. It's a case that illustrates the crux of the problem: people smugglers are responding to a demand for asylum that Europe's politicians are unwilling to meet. As long as this situation persists, says Musumeci, the smugglers will always find a way into the fortress. "They're thinking about how to get into Europe 24 hours a day… They communicate. They stay in touch. They change routes… one of these guys told me, "We study Europe, we study the laws, and the more you close the borders the more money we're going to make.'" New EU proposals to distribute migrants across member states and break up clandestine networks might help to reduce people smuggling within Europe. But Musumeci says it will do nothing to stop the boats coming across the Mediterranean. Dealing with that, he argues, will require a whole new level of engagement with the political turmoil in parts of Africa and the Middle East. "Migration is going to force us to deal with these international issues… We need to focus on Libya, Eritrea, Somalia, Syria. It may sound naive, but it's the only way to stop the influx… We'll never stop this just by closing the doors. I've talked to dozens of migrants, and these people are willing to die to get into Europe." Despite the obvious difficulties, European countries are still trying to solve the problem at the level of policing. Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency, recently launched an intelligence program, JOT Mare, which is supposed to disrupt or dismantle the smuggling networks that are bringing so many migrants across the Mediterranean. A spokesperson for Europol confirmed that their agents will look at the online presence of the smugglers: "JOT Mare is focussing on all modi operandi used by facilitators of irregular migration in the Mediterranean Sea, including the use of social media." He conceded, though, that "Europol has no operational cooperation agreement with Libya" - the point of departure for the vast majority of migrants. In Zuwara, Abdul Aziz hadn't heard of JOT Mare, but didn't sound too worried. "It's just words on paper. I'm not afraid, because it's meaningless. How are they going to follow me? Are they going to come to Libya? If they try, it would be considered an invasion. Are they going to catch me outside Libya? I don't go outside Libya. And if I do go, they won't know about it." Facebook: a window into the people smuggling business

भूमध्य सागर के पार, मानव तस्कर फेसबुक पर अपनी सेवाओं का विज्ञापन कर रहे हैं, यूरोप पहुंचने के लिए बेताब प्रवासियों को सुरक्षित मार्ग का वादा कर रहे हैं। उनके पृष्ठ एक तस्करी नेटवर्क की एक झलक पेश करते हैं जो तीन महाद्वीपों में फैला हुआ है, सैकड़ों मिलियन डॉलर उत्पन्न करता है, और वास्तव में, यूरोपीय संघ के लिए एक वैकल्पिक शरण सेवा बन गया है।


Will Gompertz reviews Stormzy's new book Rise Up: The #Merky Story So Far ★★★★☆

Summary: When Stormzy stood on stage at the BRIT Awards in February this year and delivered his stinging rap criticising the government's handling of the Grenfell Tower Fire, the then 24-year-old grime artist from Thornton Heath, south London, achieved something that is almost unheard of for a working-class, young black man from "a place where success doesn't happen."

Will GompertzArts editor@WillGompertzBBCon Twitter He had won. And not just the Album of the Year award for Gang Signs & Prayer. He had won something much more elusive. He had won the Establishment's respect (the government quickly issued a statement about the actions it had taken in response to the Grenfell tragedy), the right to speak and be heard: a seat at the table where the national conversation takes place. In that moment Michael Omari, or just plain Mike to his friends and Stormzy to you and me, became a significant player in British culture. It was the latest chapter in his remarkable story, which you can read all about in his lyrics, or in the many interviews he has given. But not, I can report, in his new book, Rise Up: The #Merky Story So far. Rise Up is not an autobiography, or a revelation-filled memoir. There are no stories about outrageous pop star extravagances, or torrid tales from his teenage years. There is the briefest of mentions of being stabbed, of the police kicking in his front door, of a friend's suicide, of mental health issues, "I was mad depressed for a while… I'd just be sitting in my house. No-one would see me for days, or weeks …I was so broken-spirited." But these are fleeting asides that are neither explored nor explained. A frank outpouring of the soul it is not. In fact, it's more like a business book charting the rise of #Merky, the lifestyle/entertainment brand Stormzy has created with a close band of brothers and sisters. We hear from many of them in first-person extracts taken from interviews by co-author Jude Yawson, who has structured their reminiscences into chronological order, starting in the late noughties when an ambitious yet unfocussed Mike is about to leave school. Given that all involved in the publication are friends or acquaintances it will not surprise you to learn that at times it can come across more like a piece of brand communications than a warts-and-all account into the trials and tribulations of setting-up a company. In many instances such an approach would result in an extremely dull piece of vanity publishing. But that is emphatically not the case here. Rise Up is not only a decent read; it is a very important book. The voices we hear from - young, gifted and largely black - are all too rarely heard. These are people who typically have to listen to a daily diet of media negativity about their communities without the opportunities to respond. Stormzy's success, and the choices he is making (such as the #Merky Books collaboration with Penguin to publish new writers), is providing a much-needed platform for those from working-class, inner-city backgrounds to speak out and give vent to their talents. Rise Up is #Merky Books's first publication, and a fitting one too. It is not simply about great achievements against the odds. More importantly, perhaps, it provides a detailed roadmap, and possibly the confidence, to readers not blessed with resources and contacts, who, like the #Merky founders, want to get on and make a contribution: to fulfil their talents and ambitions. It is truly inspiring to read about the accomplishments of Team Stormzy, realised largely without money or expertise, but with bucket loads of intelligence and hard work. Trust, friendship, instinct, vision, discipline, networks, empathy, resilience, courage, risk, and humility are all ingredients in the making of their business. The uncompromising pursuit of excellence and a relentless desire to "grow" professionally is what has driven it forward. Stormzy is clearly the leader; he is the one setting the standards: "I demand high standards from myself, and from everyone I'm working with… If someone is bringing me down, or getting in the way of me doing something the way I need it to be done, I won't have it. Some of them have a name for me, 'Smoky Mike', when I get vexed and I tell them off." We hear a tiny bit more about 'Smoky Mike' towards the end of the book from his close friend Flipz: "He's [Stormzy] a good guy, and he's a smart guy, and he knows what he wants. And he puts energy and ambition into all of us. It might not be in a nice way sometimes, but we know what he's trying to do." And that's it. There is no further talk of what "might not be nice" about Stormzy's management style. Why not? We know it can't all be light, there has to be some shade. It would be instructive to understand how he operates when things are not going to plan. I'm guessing there's a bit of Sir Alex Ferguson's infamous "hairdryer treatment" going on: a slightly less glowing account would negate the need to speculate. Stormzy's plan is clear. He wants to emulate Jay-Z's success both as a musician and an entrepreneur ("I'm Not A Businessman, I'm A Business, Man"). He also wants to make a difference, using his money and position to help others. This philanthropic agenda was evident in the announcement this summer that he's funding two scholarships for black British students at Cambridge University. He is still only 25 years old, there will be plenty of bumps along the road, but if anyone can deliver on Stormzy's ambitions it is the man himself. His confidence is unshakable, his vision is clear, and his pioneering attitude deserves support and respect: "I am 100 per cent sure that I'm a world-class artist. I've always had a mad point to prove, because getting that respect as a black musician in this country is not easy. Where's our Kanye? Where's our Kendrick? Where's our Prince? It's not to say we need that, but where is the spectrum of talented black British musicians who can really stand up against the rest of the world."

जब स्टॉर्मज़ी इस साल फरवरी में ब्रिट अवार्ड्स में मंच पर खड़े हुए और ग्रेनफेल टॉवर फायर से सरकार के निपटने की आलोचना करते हुए अपना तीखा रैप दिया, तो दक्षिण लंदन के थॉर्नटन हीथ के तत्कालीन 24 वर्षीय ग्राइम कलाकार ने कुछ ऐसा हासिल किया जो एक मजदूर वर्ग, युवा अश्वेत व्यक्ति के लिए लगभग अनसुना है, "एक ऐसी जगह जहां सफलता नहीं होती है"।


Castlemorton Common: The rave that changed the law

Summary: On a hot bank holiday weekend 25 years ago, 20,000 people descended on land in the shadow of the Malvern Hills. The word was spread by an answering machine message: "Right, listen up revellers. It's happening now and for the rest of the weekend, so get yourself out of the house and on to Castlemorton Common... Be there, all weekend, hardcore."

By Jerry ChesterBBC News To say the event spiralled out of control is an understatement. What started out as a small free festival for travellers not only went down in history as the biggest illegal rave ever held in the UK, but resulted in a trial costing £4m and the passing of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. The resulting publicity also had drastic consequences for the "alternative" lifestyle of the so-called New Age Travellers who started the event and for the underground rave movement who gate-crashed it. The travelling community had been intent on holding the latest in a series of small events, having successfully held the so-called Avon Free Festival at Inglestone Common in Gloucestershire in the 1980s and early 90s. In the weeks leading up to that fateful May bank holiday in 1992, they had tried and failed to stage festivals in both counties and in Somerset, where the police had repeatedly moved them on. Retreating, they considered their options in a lay-by on the A38 in Gloucestershire, where it was decided to take their 10-mile long convoy out of the county, into Worcestershire and on to Castlemorton Common, near Malvern. Libby Spragg was in one of the first vehicles to arrive at the site on the 22 May. The 24-year-old joined the New Age Travellers in 1987 and had been to previous events across the West Country, including Inglestone. She said the festivals were a chance "for networking, finding new work opportunities and just meeting friends that you couldn't really see at any other time", after a winter spent living and working on farms. "Ingleston Common [had] one small stage, no dance music, and was part of the small free festival scene that had been bubbling along since the 60s." Castlemorton should have continued that theme, she said, a low-key gathering for roughly 400 travellers. What they hadn't banked on was the thousands of people who had heard about the event through word-of-mouth, media coverage and the infamous telephone message. Carl Hendrickse, whose band Back to the Planet played at the festival, said a large number of people had been regularly travelling up and down the M25 to raves. "People were not being given the right to gather," he explained. "There were no facilities for people to come and dance, gather with like-minded people, and that is why they started happening illegally, because there were no proper facilities for people to have these kind of events." Carl Loben, editor of DJ magazine, said in a world before mobile phones, the answering machine messages were key to spreading word about the raves. "There was often just a message left on a party [phone] line that people could call after a certain time in the evening," he said. "And it would say the rave is at [some location], meet at [this] junction of the motorway, or meet in the service station, and you'd go in convoy." Mrs Spragg believes the combination of a gloriously sunny bank holiday and the promise of a ready-made party was what drew ravers to Castlemorton. "You were getting [sound system collectives like] Spiral Tribe and the big [underground] DJs of the time latching onto the idea to take it out doors and the free festival scene was a real "no brain" way to do that," she said. "They could see what was happening with the travellers and [knew] they could turn up. "[It wasn't] helped by the media to be honest - if they hadn't said anything it would have just stopped as it was. "But as soon as you start putting it out on the television that there's this huge party everyone jumps in their car and just turns up." And so the underground warehouse rave scene arrived, with its big sound systems in tow. Mrs Spragg says there was "some resentment" among the travellers who felt their event had been "taken over" and part of the festival was declared a "raver free zone". But while the travellers felt surrounded, so did those living on the common, such as Mary Weaver. "On the bank below the hills it was tightly compacted, and as you went down by our [farm] pond there were double-decker buses lined up all along there," she remembered. "It was very disruptive because no-one could get in or out - not with a vehicle. "They had some very loud sound systems and they played very loud music, but in actual fact the music didn't worry me that much, because I like music. "But it did other people, it drove [them] mad. It stopped about five o'clock in the morning and it started up about midday." News of the festival spread locally, helped by the volume of the music, which could easily be heard in Malvern 10 miles (16km) away - a fact former resident, Tim Holloway, can attest. "I was coming back from an all-night party in Malvern and walking back at about five in the morning I could hear this booming beat - I had no idea what it could be," he said. "Later someone told me there was this massive rave on Castlemorton Common. "We rode through on motorbikes and I was stunned, it was just enormous. We took it all in, soaked up the atmosphere - it was just an enormous party - a gift when you're 21." Clare Buchanan, who was on a gap year, heard about the festival when some of those en route stopped at the supermarket in Malvern where she worked. "They looked like full-on hippies, which is what I wanted to be," she recalled. "My and a friend went along to investigate what was going on. We were dropped off and there were two policemen at the end of the road across the common. "There was a very chilled atmosphere." But by Saturday night, West Mercia Police had arrived and put up a cordon. Officers were stationed with Ms Weaver and fellow resident Audrey Street who said she "never went out once" the whole week. She described how the single track road across the common was completely blocked in places by the encampment and the complete absence of toilets had another unwanted effect. "Every time I went out there were people in the field toileting - every time you looked out there were men with their trousers down," she said. The ravers drifted off once the weekend was over but the travellers remained at Castlemorton until the Friday, partly to try and clear up, Mrs Spragg claims. "I think a lot of people were depressed about the mess and the waste, that's why so many [of us] stayed behind and tried to clear up. "Although people don't think it, the traveller ethos at free festivals was "leave no trace" - you went there, you had a party you cleaned up. "In fact I was one of the many people who used to take wild flower seeds, and that would be the only thing I left - that sounds like I'm a real hippy but that was the vibe," she said. But there was no chance revellers would ever again have the opportunity to "leave no trace". As the festival wound down, police faced angry questions at a public meeting in Castlemorton village about how they had responded. In a press conference on the Friday after the common had been cleared, then Chief Constable, David Blakey, defended his "softly softly" approach. "Faced with... the number of people that were there, there was no way I'm going in with riot shields, with public order gear, to move them off," he said at the time. Officers arrested about 50 people over the course of the festival - mainly for drug offences - and 10 were taken to court for public order offences. The case cost millions and saw all the defendants acquitted, though one other person did plead guilty to the same offence. The force later admitted they had been "caught off guard" by the sudden arrival of so many people. Determined not to have history repeat itself, the following year they set up roadblocks across the area, with 300 officers being fed from a special kitchen set up in the village hall. The Malvern Hills Conservators - the charity set up to look after the hills and commons - obtained an injunction which enforced a five-mile "exclusion zone" for convoys of vehicles around Castlemorton during the bank holiday weekend. Others called for long-term powers to stop raves and free festivals, including Castlemorton's then-Conservative MP Sir Michael Spicer, who even raised the matter in Parliament. Then in 1994, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was passed, giving police the powers to stop vehicles anywhere within five miles (8km) of a rave and turn them away. It also included rules targeting gatherings of more than 100 people listening to music at night and even went as far as delving into genres, said Prof Robert Lee from Birmingham Law School. "One of the most bizarre things is that they tried to define what music was, including wholly or mainly repetitive beats played time and time again," he added. Mrs Spragg, who gave up travelling in 1995, says what happened at Castlemorton had an adverse effect on the community she belonged to. "The travelling scene did carry on but it was a very different change of lifestyle for people - they moved onto farms instead of living on free sites so much, and people were a lot more scared. "If it had been a big event, [which] had been staged [and] had cost thousands of pounds it would have been all right. "But because it was poor people, with no money, doing something they haven't been granted permission for, suddenly it was the crime of the century. "It did mean the end of the travelling scene in a lot of respects."

25 साल पहले एक गर्म तट छुट्टी सप्ताहांत पर, 20,000 लोग मालवर्न पहाड़ियों की छाया में भूमि पर उतरे थे। यह बात एक उत्तर देने वाली मशीन संदेश द्वारा फैलाई गई थीः "ठीक है, मनोरंजन करने वालों को सुनो। यह अभी और बाकी सप्ताहांत के लिए हो रहा है, इसलिए खुद को घर से बाहर निकालें और कैसलमॉर्टन कॉमन पर जाएं... पूरे सप्ताहांत, कट्टर रहें।"


Govt. launches workshops on talks

Summary: The President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has stressed the importance of different parties maintaining a clear policy towards the betterment of the country.

He said the parties should approach talks with the Tamil Tigers armed with experience from others and respecting others’ opinion. The president made these remarks after launching a series of workshops to discuss the forthcoming talks with the Tigers in Geneva, Switzerland. Senior ministers from ruling SLFP, Minister Ferial Ashroff, EPDP leader Douglas Devananda, JVP and JHU representatives, senior officials of the government and the commanders of the security forces attended the workshop. A statement issued by Chandrapala Liyanage, Co-ordinating Secretary to the President said the president is to meet professionals, entrepreneurs, religious leaders, civil society leaders and representatives from the north east before January 22 talks.

श्रीलंका के राष्ट्रपति महिंदा राजपक्षे ने देश की बेहतरी के लिए एक स्पष्ट नीति बनाए रखने के लिए विभिन्न दलों के महत्व पर जोर दिया है।


Jenson Button criticises claims that F1 too 'physical' for women

Summary: Is Formula 1 too physical for women to be able to compete?

By Tom GerkenBBC UGC & Social News Carmen Jorda from the Women in Motorsport Commission has come under fire after she told ESPN that a "physical issue" was the barrier preventing women from competing in Formula 1 or Formula 2. The former F1 development driver's comments have been derided by people in motorsport, including 2009 F1 world champion Jenson Button who said she was "not helping proper female racing drivers". You may also like: The 'proper female racing drivers' Button was talking about may have included stockcar racers Pippa Mann and Leilani Muenter, who both thanked him for "standing up for female racers". Christina Nielsen, the first woman to win a major full-season sportscar championship in North America, wondered about Jorda's credentials in Formula 1 and Formula 2 as she didn't "recall her competing in either classes, which seems relevant to make a judgement". And Supercars Australia racer Simona De Silvestro said she "never felt physically disadvantaged" in a Formula 1 car. Some people on social media agreed with Jorda, with one calling for an end to "virtue-signalling" and asking "who can judge the physical barrier better, Carmen Jorda a female driver, or Jenson Button a male driver?". While another said he wasn't "into supporting a process that sets women up for failure in order to cultivate some sort of equality illusion". But Susie Wolff, who became the first woman in 22 years to take part in a Formula 1 race weekend in 2014, shared the message that "motorsport doesn't care about gender". Wolff's photo in the post show her with Michele Mouton, the president of the Women in Motorsport Commission, and GP3 driver Tatiana Calderon, who was announced as Sauber's F1 test driver for this season on Tuesday. And Lee McKenzie, who presented Inside F1 for BBC News, was disappointed that Jorda's comments were overshadowing Calderon's achievement. Additional reporting by Chris Browning.

क्या फॉर्मूला 1 महिलाओं के लिए प्रतिस्पर्धा करने में सक्षम होने के लिए बहुत अधिक शारीरिक है?


Is Afghanistan really impossible to conquer?

Summary: It's 25 years since the Soviet Union pulled its troops out of Afghanistan. The US is due to remove most of its forces at the end of the year. So what have these and other Afghan campaigns taught us?

By William DalrympleKandahar, Afghanistan Last Ramadan I drove through the badlands outside Kandahar to see the house where President Karzai grew up. I was the guest of the president's brother, Mahmoud Karzai. "It has changed beyond all recognition," he said as we drove into the village of Karz. "This mosque I remember. I used to play with Hamid over there. But where is our house?" The driver pulled up. "This is it?" asked Mahmoud. "It cannot be." We got out in a flat field of dried mud, surrounded by mud-brick houses. Mahmoud's bodyguards fanned out while Mahmoud climbed on a small eminence. "The driver's right," he said. "This is our home." He gestured at the empty space. "What happened?" I asked. "The Russians," he replied. "Why?" "Any clan prominent in the mujahideen had their property demolished. These houses were where my cousins lived. The night the Soviet governor demolished our house, they were all lined up. Then they were shot. Every last one of them." It is now the 25th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and it is perhaps a good moment to compare the Soviet and American interventions. On the surface, the two invasions are quite different - the Soviets came to extend the Soviet Empire while the West, we are told, intervened after 9/11 to root out the terrorism and bring democracy. Yet there are many uncomfortable similarities. Both the Russians and the Americans thought they could walk in, set up a friendly government and be out within a year. Both nations got bogged down in a long and costly war of attrition that in the end both chose to walk away from. The Soviet war was more bloody - it left 1.5 million dead compared to an estimated 100,000 casualties this time around, but this current war has been far more expensive. The Soviets spent only $2bn (£1.2bn) a year in Afghanistan while the US has already spent more than $700bn (£418bn). Moreover this time arguably less has been gained. Twenty-five years ago the Soviets withdrew leaving a relatively stable pro-Soviet regime in place - Najibullah's government collapsed only when the Soviets cut off supplies of weapons a full four years later. But 13 years after the West went in to Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda and oust the Taliban, America and its Allies find themselves about to withdraw with neither objective wholly achieved. What remains of al-Qaeda has moved to the Pakistani borderlands, and elsewhere, while the Taliban have a major influence over maybe 70% of southern Afghanistan. That share can only increase later this year when the British and the Americans withdraw most of their troops. There is another precedent to this war. For the last five years, I have been writing a history of the First Anglo-Afghan War which took place from 1839-1842. The book tells the tale of arguably the greatest military humiliation ever suffered by the West in the East. The entire army of what was then the most powerful nation in the world was utterly destroyed by poorly-equipped tribesmen. On the retreat from Kabul, of the 18,500 who left the British cantonment on 6 January 1842, only one British citizen, the assistant surgeon Dr Brydon, made it through to Jalalabad six days later. The parallels between the current war and that of the 1840s are striking. The same cities are being garrisoned by foreign troops speaking the same languages, and they are being attacked from the same hills and passes. Not only was our then puppet, Shah Shuja, from the same Popalzai sub-tribe as President Karzai, but his principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the Taliban's foot soldiers. It is clearly not true, as is sometimes said, that its impossible to conquer Afghanistan -many Empires have done so, from the ancient Persians, through Alexander the Great to the Mongols, the Mughals and the Qajars. But the economics means that it is impossible to get Afghanistan to pay for its own occupation - it is, as the the then Emir said as he surrendered to the British in 1839, "a land of only stones and men". Any occupying army here will haemorrage money and blood to little gain, and in the end most throw in the towel, as the British did in 1842, as the Russians did in 1988 and as Nato will do later this year. In October 1963, when Harold Macmillan was handing over the prime ministership to Alec Douglas-Home, he is supposed to have passed on some advice. "My dear boy, as long as you do not invade Afghanistan you will be absolutely fine," he said. Sadly, no one gave the same advice to Tony Blair. It just seems to prove Hegel's old adage that the only thing you learn from history is that sadly no one ever learns anything from history. How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent: BBC Radio 4: Saturdays at 11:30 and some Thursdays at 11:00 Listen online or download the podcast. BBC World Service: Short editions Monday-Friday - see World Service programme schedule. Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook

सोवियत संघ द्वारा अफगानिस्तान से अपने सैनिकों को वापस बुलाए हुए 25 साल हो गए हैं। अमेरिका वर्ष के अंत में अपनी अधिकांश सेनाओं को हटाने वाला है। तो इन और अन्य अफगान अभियानों ने हमें क्या सिखाया है?


Gallantry medal for man who saved woman from car blaze

Summary: A tree surgeon who pulled a woman from the wreckage of a burning car has been awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal at Buckingham Palace.

Luke Ridley, 30, from Amesbury, Wiltshire, climbed through the boot then used his pick axe and handsaw to free the woman and drag her to safety. Mr Ridley said he remembered being afraid the car might explode. After receiving his award from the Prince of Wales, he said the experience at the palace had been "surreal". Mr Ridley recalled seeing the car, which had flipped onto its side, on fire on the A303, near his home town in November 2018. "It was a huge blaze... luckily she was able to stand up on her own and I just grabbed her and dragged her out," he said. He joked that the fire service had tried to recruit him as a volunteer firefighter, but said he is going to stick with his day job.

जलती हुई कार के मलबे से एक महिला को निकालने वाले एक वृक्ष शल्य चिकित्सक को बकिंघम पैलेस में रानी के वीरता पदक से सम्मानित किया गया है।


The tourists held by Greek police as illegal migrants

Summary: Greek police have stepped up efforts to catch illegal immigrants in recent months, launching a new operation to check the papers of people who look foreign. But tourists have also been picked up in the sweeps - and at least two have been badly beaten.

By Chloe HadjimatheouBBC News, Athens When Korean backpacker Hyun Young Jung was stopped by a tall scruffy looking man speaking Greek on the street in central Athens he thought it might be some kind of scam, so he dismissed the man politely and continued on his way. A few moments later he was stopped again, this time by a man in uniform who asked for his documents. But as a hardened traveller he was cautious. Greece was the 16th stop in his two-year-long round-the-world trip and he'd often been warned about people dressing in fake uniforms to extract money from backpackers, so while he handed over his passport he also asked the man to show him his police ID. Instead, Jung says, he received a punch in the face. Within seconds, the uniformed man and his plainclothes partner - the man who had first approached Jung - had him down on the ground and were kicking him, according to the Korean. In shock, Jung was by now convinced he was being mugged by criminals and began shouting for help from passers-by. "I was very scared," he says. It was only when he was handcuffed and dragged 500m (500 yards) up the road to the nearest police station that he realised he was actually under arrest. Jung says that outside the station the uniformed officer, without any kind of warning, turned on him again, hitting him in the face. "There were members of the public who saw what happened, like the man who works in the shop opposite the police station, but they were too afraid to help me," he says. Inside the police station, Jung says he was attacked a third time in the stairwell where there were no people or cameras. "I can understand them asking me for ID and I even understand that there may have been a case to justify them hitting me in the first instance. But why did they continue beating me after I was handcuffed?" he asks. Jung was held with a number of migrants from Africa and Asia who had also been rounded up as part of the police's anti-immigration operation Xenios Zeus - named, strangely, after the ancient Greek god of hospitality. The operation aims to tackle the wave of illegal immigration which over the last decade has changed the face of Athens's city centre. It is thought that up to 95% of undocumented migrants entering the European Union arrive via Greece, and because border controls make it hard to continue into the rest of Europe many end up stuck in the country. According to some estimates, immigrants could now make up as much as 10% of the population. This has been an enormous shock for the country which, until recently, was more familiar with outward rather than inward migration. Now, in the grip of a crippling economic crisis and with a welfare system in meltdown, the government lacks the resources to support this new growing population. Few people are in any doubt that Greece needs an effective programme to manage its undocumented migrants. Lt Col Christos Manouras of the Hellenic police force says operation Xenios Zeus, launched last August, has slowed down the flow of illegal immigrants. Anyone who looks foreign, or who has aroused suspicion, may be stopped, he says. "If someone is stopped by the police and they do not have a valid means of identification we will accompany them to the station until their nationality can be determined," he explains. "I think that is normal and I would expect Greeks to be subjected to the same treatment abroad." But while more than 60,000 people have been detained on the streets of Athens since it was launched in August 2012, there have been fewer than 4,200 arrests. And some visitors to Greece have been detained despite having shown police their passports. Last summer, a Nigerian-born American, Christian Ukwuorji, visited Greece on a family holiday with his wife and three children. When police stopped him in central Athens he showed them his US passport, but they handcuffed him anyway and took him to the central police station. They gave no reason for holding him, but after a few hours in custody Ukwuorji says he was so badly beaten that he passed out. He woke up in hospital. "I went there to spend my money but they stopped me just because of my colour," he says. "They are racist." It is impossible to determine how many people have had a similar experience - but enough Americans for the US State Department to issue a warning to its citizens travelling to the country. It updated its website on 15 November to warn of "confirmed reports of US African-American citizens detained by police conducting sweeps for illegal immigrants in Athens", as well as a wider problem in Greek cities of "unprovoked harassment and violent attacks against persons who, because of their complexion, are perceived to be foreign migrants". Tourism is a major source of revenue in Greece, especially important at a time when many other businesses are going bust. Anything that deterred visitors in large numbers would be a disaster for the economy. The Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman Grigoris Delavekouras responded to the State Department warning by issuing a statement that "isolated incidents of racist violence which have occurred are foreign to Greeks, our civilization and the long tradition of Greek hospitality." It is not only tourists who have been affected. In May last year a visiting academic from India, Dr Shailendra Kumar Rai was arrested outside the Athens University of Economics and Business, where he was working as a visiting lecturer. He had popped out for lunch, and forgotten to take his passport with him. "The police thought I was Pakistani and since they didn't speak English they couldn't understand me when I tried to explain that I am from India," he says. When passing students saw their lecturer being held by police and lined up against a wall with a group of immigrants they were horrified and rushed inside to tell his colleagues. Despite protests from university staff who insisted they could vouch for him, the police handcuffed him and marched him down to the police station. "Some of my Greek colleagues were almost crying with embarrassment," Rai recalls. "I understand why the police need to ask for identity documents, they are just doing their job. But I think they are too aggressive - in my country only criminals are handcuffed." He was eventually released but there was an outcry in the Greek media which asked why an esteemed academic invited to the country to share his knowledge should be humiliated in such a way. Rai says he experienced no racial prejudice during his time in Greece, and does not accuse the police who arrested him of racism. But in a report for 2012, the Racist Violence Recording Network, a group consisting of 23 NGOs and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, called on the Greek government to "explicitly prevent police officers from racially motivated violent practices" referring to 15 incidents where "illegal acts" had taken place. There have been a number of reports alleging strong support among the police for Golden Dawn, the ultra-right party that soared in popularity last year, winning 18 seats in June parliamentary elections. But police spokesman Lt Col Manouras insists that voting preferences are a personal issue. "Whatever a police officer may feel in their private life, when they come to work and put on the uniform they assume the values of the force," he says. Greek police have absolute respect for human rights and treat people of all colour and ethnicity as fellow human beings, he says. "Of course I cannot rule out the possibility that a police officer may have acted improperly," he adds, "but this would be an isolated incident." He said he could not comment on the cases of Hyun Young Jung and Christian Ukwuorji, as they are under investigation. The Greek Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests to discuss the cases. When Jung was released from police custody without charge just a few hours after being detained, he says one officer shouted after him, "Hey Korean, go home!" Instead Jung went straight to the Korean Embassy in Athens and returned with the consul to confront the men who he said hit him. It took five further visits to the police station, an official complaint from the embassy to the chief of police and 10 days of waiting before the officers involved in Jung's case were named. Meanwhile the backpacker had published his story on a travellers' blog read by more than 60,000 people. The case turned into a full-scale diplomatic incident with the Korean ambassador to Greece requesting a meeting with the minister of Public Order, and the Greek Chief of Police, to insist on a fair investigation and just punishment for the officers involved. Jung, who is now on the last leg of his travels in the US, is still waiting for the police verdict but says that whatever the outcome he will never go back to Greece. "I travelled through Azerbaijan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Armenia but I never felt in as much danger as in Athens," he says. "Whenever people ask me if they should visit Greece I tell them to go to Turkey instead." Christian Ukwuorji, who also lodged an official complaint against the police with the help of the American Embassy, has now been waiting for more than six months for an outcome. He would like to see the men who hit him prosecuted, but says he holds out little hope of any justice. "The police there are very corrupt and nothing will be done about it," he says. "I have learned that this is how Greece is." You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook

ग्रीक पुलिस ने हाल के महीनों में अवैध प्रवासियों को पकड़ने के प्रयास तेज कर दिए हैं, विदेशी दिखने वाले लोगों के कागजात की जांच के लिए एक नया अभियान शुरू किया है। लेकिन पर्यटकों को भी झाड़ू में उठाया गया है-और कम से कम दो को बुरी तरह पीटा गया है।


Osama's death: What next for al-Qaeda?

Summary: The killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is a huge blow to the organisation but as guest columnist Ahmed Rashid reports, its decentralised nature means it has the potential to carry out attacks on any number of targets.

There have been cheers and jubilation in the US and elsewhere in the West, but capital cities around the world are already bracing for the repercussions of Bin Laden's killing. Hundreds of dedicated and would-be jihadis will be mourning and swearing to give their lives in revenge for his death at the hands of US special forces in the city of Abbottabad. There is little doubt that the death of Bin Laden is a huge blow to al-Qaeda. But at the same time the network has moved over the years from a highly centralised hierarchy - with recruiting, training and orders all scrutinised by its top leaders - to something much more loose and amorphous. Franchise Today al-Qaeda's philosophy is one man, one bomb. It does not need another 9/11 to make its mark. One bomb in Times Square in New York placed by a dedicated suicide bomber or a bomb in a New York subway - both attacks were attempted in in recent years - are big enough indicators that al-Qaeda is alive and kicking. Al-Qaeda has been a franchise for many years. Anyone can join it by planting a bomb somewhere. Almost anyone can come to Pakistan or Afghanistan and be offered training with key al-Qaeda allies such as the Pakistani Taliban or the Afghan group headed by Jalaluddin Haqqani. The facilitator in Pakistan's cities has been Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) - a banned militant group which previously fought in Kashmir but now attacks many different targets and helps al-Qaeda. After 9/11 it helped hide many senior al-Qaeda figures and it may well have played a major role in hiding Bin Laden. Pakistan has refused to go up against al-Qaeda allies like Haqqani because they were operating in Afghanistan not Pakistan. Likewise, allies like LeT are close to Pakistan's intelligence services because their main target is Kashmir and India. Thus the threat is there. Before 9/11 there were no known al-Qaeda cells in Europe except for the one in Hamburg which launched those attacks. Sleeper cells However, today every single European country has an al-Qaeda cell. Hundreds of Muslims with European passports have travelled to Pakistan's tribal areas for training and returned to Europe. After the arrest of three Moroccans in Germany last week for planning to plant bombs in public places, German authorities admit that over 200 German citizens have had training in the tribal areas and many of them have returned to Germany. The same is the case in Britain, Scandinavia, France, Spain and Italy. The fear now of random suicide bombings in subway or train stations in the US or Europe is particularly high. So is the threat of plane hijackings and bombings of Western military targets and embassies in the Middle East, where they are already a frequent target. There is also the possibility of the amateur jihadi placing a bomb in a supermarket. Other kinds of attacks are also likely. Some may be carried out by dedicated long-term jihadis who have been placed amid Western societies and who now may spring into action with a plot and target that they have been working on for years. Such lone attackers have been found in the US before, with individuals travelling to the tribal areas for training and then returning to a major US city and trying to carry out an attack. These have usually been foiled by law enforcement agencies at the last moment. South Asia risk Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are also particularly at risk from more organised attacks. In the former, the al-Qaeda influence among dedicated jihadis like the Haqqani group is still strong. Pakistan is also extremely vulnerable to attack. Despite a constant spate of denials from the Pakistani authorities - which have now been proven wrong - al-Qaeda recently had its base in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda and its affiliated Pakistani groups will be determined to launch a bombing campaign in Pakistan in memory of Bin Laden. This will heighten tensions in a country that is already beset with power shortages and an economic crisis. Finally al-Qaeda and its allies may find this the right moment to create major divisions between India and Pakistan by launching another Mumbai-style attack on Indian territory. This would aim to take the heat off the hunt for al-Qaeda members in Pakistan. The Middle East also remains a big vacuum for al-Qaeda because of the ongoing Arab revolt. It is still a prime target for al-Qaeda as it seeks to gain influence and clout among the new generation of leaders who have emerged in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and the Gulf states. But this task will be much more difficult after Bin Laden's death. Clearly Bin Laden's death will give intelligence agencies around the world many clues and leads to catch other leaders, but al-Qaeda will not disappear overnight. Ahmed Rashid's book, Taliban, was updated and reissued recently on the 10th anniversary of its publication. His latest book is Descent into Chaos - The US and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

अल-कायदा नेता ओसामा बिन लादेन की हत्या संगठन के लिए एक बड़ा झटका है, लेकिन जैसा कि अतिथि स्तंभकार अहमद राशिद बताते हैं, इसकी विकेंद्रीकृत प्रकृति का मतलब है कि इसमें किसी भी संख्या में लक्ष्यों पर हमले करने की क्षमता है।


Bloodhound Diary: Practice for heavy lifting

Summary: A British team is developing a car that will be capable of reaching 1,000mph (1,610km/h). Powered by a rocket bolted to a Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine, the vehicle will first mount an assault on the world land speed record (763mph; 1,228km/h). Bloodhound should start running on Hakskeen Pan in Northern Cape, South Africa, in 2017.

By Andy GreenWorld Land Speed Record Holder As Project Bloodhound starts its preparations to run the car in South Africa next year, the many complex pieces of our "Engineering Adventure" are gradually coming together. This month, at the Farnborough International Airshow, we did our first "test load" of the full-size show car into the 747 freighter aircraft that will take the car, and all of its support equipment, to South Africa next year. We're very lucky to have the support of the new British cargo airline, CargoLogicAir, and their brand new 747-8F. This is the biggest 747 ever, and can carry an amazing 138 tonnes of cargo in a loading bay 60m long (think the length of a tennis court, then double it, then add another 12 metres. It's huge). As discussed in last month's diary, getting Bloodhound SSC and all its support equipment out to South Africa is a massive challenge. We will be surface-shipping about 15 container loads (around 100 tonnes) in advance, while we start to do our "slow speed" (200+ mph) UK runway testing at Newquay Aerohub. Then we will fly the car, its road trailer, and the rest of the support equipment out to South Africa. That's 100 tonnes to move 9,000km by air, so that we can crack on with getting the car up to around 800mph (and a new outright World Land Speed Record, of course) next year. CargoLogicAir's 747 freighter is just what we need to make all of this happen. Having tried it at Farnborough, the good news is that Bloodhound SSC fits nicely! Now that we have sponsorship secured and a target date for record runs of next October, the engineering plan is starting to show the detail that will get us to South Africa. The first order of business is for us to split the "dry build" car down to its component sub-assemblies. Every part will then be assessed for any remaining work (including final machining, painting, etc.), before being put into our stores at the Bloodhound Technical Centre down in Bristol. The dry build process is very useful for checking that everything fits together as planned (it's amazing how things never quite look the same when they jump off the screen and become a solid part). It also allows us to check the things that are almost impossible to measure on a computer screen, like the space available to fit, service and (if necessary) replace a component. For example, the car's jet fuel tank fits well, but we can't remove the access hatch on top once it's installed. Inside the carbon fibre tank there is a flexible fuel bladder and, if this starts to leak for any reason, it will be a nightmare to fix. It's an easy job to modify the tank lid now, so that's what we'll do, just in case we need to access the bladder out on the desert. When everything is off the car, finished and painted, we'll start the reassembly process, getting the car ready to run for the first time. If you want to see this process in action then join our 1K Supporters' Club and come down for one of our open days. As well as the strip down of all the existing components, we still have a few bits left to manufacture. Major items are the big (and highly stressed) composite components, including the airbrakes and winglets. As these are safety-critical items, they will be given plenty of attention to make sure we get them right. The airbrake function sounds fairly obvious - put a couple of large flat plates out into the airflow to slow the car down. They just need to be enormously strong to cope with five tonnes of aerodynamic load. To make sure we can control the airflow, including the turbulence at supersonic speeds, the airbrakes are a fairly complicated shape, with a slightly curved surface and lots of holes to manage the frequency of the supersonic "buffet", or turbulent flow, behind them. If you want to see how they are intended to work, have a look at our simple airbrake animation. The winglets also sound like simple devices to make, with a fairly flat shape and straight edges. However, if we need to trim out any residual aerodynamic loads, they may have to take several tonnes of force at some point. Add a big safety margin and these carbon-fibre "mini-wings" need to be immensely strong. Now add to the complexity by building in some surface pressure tappings (sensors), so that we can measure the air pressure distribution over the winglets. This is a very good way to measure precisely where the shockwaves are forming, and moving, as we go supersonic. A shockwave is literally a "shock" change in the air pressure (it's this sudden change in pressure that your ear detects as a loud bang - the so-called "sonic boom"), so the pressure changes on each winglet show us where the shockwaves are sitting. We're not quite done with the winglet design yet, though. There are a number of areas where Bloodhound's mission statement has a direct impact on the engineering, and this is one of them. We are going to "Create a unique, high-technology project, focused around a 1,000mph World Land Speed Record, share this Engineering Adventure with a global audience and inspire the next generation by bringing science, technology, engineering and mathematics to life in the most exciting way possible". A big part of sharing our Engineering Adventure with a global audience will involve video, including live streaming every time we run. This means cameras, and lots of them. Bloodhound SSC will be carrying 12 different on-board video cameras, including cameras on the tips of the winglets. This is where the "Adventure" adds to the engineering task, as the cameras have to be built into the winglet structure. With all these cameras on board, we aim to make BLOODHOUND SSC the world's fastest ever outside broadcast studio. We've already tested the desert comms system (which made for an amazing piece of video footage), but we still need to beam the signals off the car. A South African company called Poynting has made us some very special aerials to broadcast the signal. These will be mounted on either side of the fin, broadcasting the video and data sideways to the 70m-tall Bloodhound mast that MTN has installed at Klipkolk, some 14km away. The aerodynamic fairings for these aerials will need to be "transparent" to the high-frequency transmission signal, so they are made from a quartz fibre composite. Although not as strong as carbon fibre, for instance, the quartz fibre will allow the video and data signals to pass through it. The leading edge of the "strake" (the bit at the front of the fin, where it joins on to the top of the car) will also need to be transparent to radio, as this is where the car's VHF radio aerial will sit. Another major work package for next year's runs is the testing and installation of the car's rocket system. With the 12 miles available on Hakskeen Pan, the EJ200 jet engine will get us up to around 700mph before we need to slow down again, so getting to supersonic (760+ mph) speeds next year will require a bit more thrust. To keep it simple for our first year of testing, we'll be using a "monopropellant" rocket system. This is essentially leaving the hybrid fuel grain (i.e. the rocket fuel) out of the motor, and just using the energy contained in our high test peroxide (HTP) oxidiser. HTP is amazing stuff, used mostly for the chemical industry, as it is a very powerful oxidiser. Chemically, it's a water molecule (H2O) with an extra oxygen atom stuck on to make H2O2. Forcing the HTP through a catalyst (we're using 80 layers of silver oxide mesh) will break down the bonds to release some (very hot) oxygen and lots of H2O (in the form of steam - it comes out at about 600C). The hybrid rocket then uses this super-heated oxygen to burn the synthetic rubber fuel, generating the thrust needed for Bloodhound to reach 1,000mph. Even without the fuel grain fitted, the HTP alone will generate nearly 50% of the thrust, which should be more than enough to get us supersonic. We're aiming for around 800mph next year. Of course, it's not quite as simple as just leaving the fuel grain out. Next year's "mono" rocket will need specialist parts, and lots of testing, to make sure that it works as advertised. After all, this really is rocket science. That is something the thousand of students who took part in the Bloodhound Model Rocket Car Competition will understand. Over 5,000 teams took part and our congratulations go to the Littlehampton Academy team, who clinched the national title with an impressive 48.4mph from their car "Slim Jim" (even the name sounds aerodynamic). If you want to take part in the 2016/2017 competition, then you've got until October to register here. Each team will get a free rocket car kit, and the excitement of doing their own science experiment, complete with electronic data recording, powered by a solid rocket. I don't know about you, but that sounds more fun than any science lesson I ever did.

एक ब्रिटिश दल एक ऐसी कार विकसित कर रहा है जो 1,000 मील प्रति घंटे (1,610 किमी/घंटा) तक पहुंचने में सक्षम होगी। एक यूरोफाइटर-टाइफून जेट इंजन को बोल्ट किए गए रॉकेट द्वारा संचालित, वाहन पहले विश्व भूमि गति रिकॉर्ड (763 मील प्रति घंटे; 1,228 किमी/घंटा) पर हमला करेगा। ब्लडहाउंड को 2017 में उत्तरी केप, दक्षिण अफ्रीका में हक्सकीन पैन पर चलना शुरू करना चाहिए।


Pig trailer overturns on M1 motorway

Summary: A trailer loaded with pigs has overturned after a tyre blowout on the M1 motorway.

The trailer, being towed by a Land Rover, ended up on its side after the incident near junction 44 of the motorway on Monday morning. West Yorkshire Roads Policing Unit said the driver of the vehicle and the pigs in the trailer were all safe. The carriageway of the road was blocked for a short time between Stourton and Rothwell on the south side of Leeds.

एम1 मोटरवे पर टायर फटने के बाद सूअरों से भरा एक ट्रेलर पलट गया।