Will China shake the world again?

Summary: Unless you are an aficionado of the great moments of Chinese Communist history, you probably won't have heard of Wuhan ( it is the site of Chairman Mao's legendary swim across the Yangtze ).

Robert PestonEconomics editor But perhaps more than any other Chinese city, it tells the story of how China's remarkable three decades of modernisation and enrichment, its economic miracle, is apparently drawing to a close, and why there is a serious risk of a calamitous crash. In Wuhan I interviewed a mayor, Tang Liangzhi, whose funds and power would make London's mayor, Boris Johnson, feel sick with envy. He is spending £200bn over five years on a redevelopment plan whose aim is to make Wuhan - which already has a population of 10 million - into a world mega city and a serious challenger to Shanghai as China's second city. The rate of infrastructure spending in Wuhan alone is comparable to the UK's entire expenditure on renewing and improving the fabric of the country. In this single city, hundreds of apartment blocks, ring roads, bridges, railways, a complete subway system and a second international airport are all being constructed. The middle of town is being demolished to create a high tech commercial centre. It will include a £3bn skyscraper that will be more than 600m high (roughly double the height of London's Shard) and either the second or third tallest in the world (I met executives of the state owned developers, Greenland, who were coy about precisely how tall it would finally be). And, of course, the point of my visit to Wuhan was to tell a broader story. Over the past few years, China has built a new skyscraper every five days, more than 30 airports, metros in 25 cities, the three longest bridges in the world, more than 6,000 miles of high speed railway lines, 26,000 miles of motorway, and both commercial and residential property developments on a mind-boggling scale. Third wave Now there are two ways of looking at a remaking of the landscape that would have daunted Egypt's pharaohs and the Romans. It is, of course, a necessary modernisation of a rapidly urbanising country. But it is also symptomatic of an unbalanced economy whose recent sources of growth are not sustainable. Perhaps the big point of the film I have made, to be screened on Tuesday (How China Fooled the World, BBC2, 9pm) is that the economic slowdown evident in China, coupled with recent manifestations of tension in its financial markets, can be seen as the third wave of the global financial crisis which began in 2007-08 (the first wave was the Wall Street and City debacle of 2007-08; the second was the eurozone crisis). Why do I say that? Well in the autumn of 2008, after the collapse of Lehman, there was a sudden and dramatic shrinkage of world trade. And that was catastrophic for China, whose growth was largely generated by exporting to the rich West all that stuff we craved. When our economies went bust, we stopped buying - and almost overnight, factories turned off the power, all over China. I visited China at the time and witnessed mobs of poor migrant workers packing all their possessions, including infants, on their backs and heading back to their villages. It was alarming for the government, and threatened to smash the implicit contract between the ruling Communist Party and Chinese people - namely, that they give up their democratic rights in order to become richer. So with encouragement from the US government (we interviewed the then US Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson), the Chinese government unleashed a stimulus programme of mammoth scale: £400bn of direct government spending, and an instruction to the state-owned banks to "open their wallets" and lend as if there were no tomorrow. Which, in one sense, worked. While the economies of much of the rich West and Japan stagnated, boom times returned to China - growth accelerated back to the remarkable 10% annual rate that the country had enjoyed for 30 years. But the sources of growth changed in an important way, and would always have a limited life. Toxic investment There are two ways of seeing this. First, even before the great stimulus, China was investing at a faster rate than almost any big country in history. Before the crash, investment was the equivalent of about 40% of GDP, around three times the rate in most developed countries and significantly greater even than what Japan invested during its development phase - which preceded its bust of the early 1990s. After the crash, thanks to the stimulus and the unleashing of all that construction, investment surged to an unprecedented 50% of GDP, where it has more or less stayed. Here is the thing: when a big economy is investing at that pace to generate wealth and jobs, it is a racing certainty that much of it will never generate an economic return, that the investment is way beyond what rational decision-making would have produced. That is why in China, there are vast residential developments and even a whole city where the lights are never on and why there are gleaming motorways barely tickled by traffic. But what makes much of the spending and investment toxic is the way it was financed: there has been an explosion of lending. China's debts as a share of GDP have been rising at a very rapid rate of around 15% of GDP, or national output, annually and have increased since 2008 from around 125% of GDP to 200%. The analyst Charlene Chu, late of Fitch, gave a resonant synoptic description of this credit binge: "Most people are aware we've had a credit boom in China but they don't know the scale. At the beginning of all of this in 2008, the Chinese banking sector was roughly $10 trillion in size. Right now it's in the order of $24 to $25 trillion. "That incremental increase of $14 to $15 trillion is the equivalent of the entire size of the US commercial banking sector, which took more than a century to build. So that means China will have replicated the entire US system in the span of half a decade." Anyone living in the rich West does not need a lecture on the perils of a financial system that creates too much credit too quickly. And in China's case, as was dangerously true in ours, a good deal of the debt is hidden, in specially created, opaque and largely financial institutions which we've come to call "shadow" banks. There are no exceptions to the lessons of financial history: lending at that rate leads to debtors unable to meet their obligations, and to large losses for creditors; the question is not whether this will happen but when, and on what scale. Which is why we've seen a couple of episodes of stress and tension in China's banking markets over the past nine months, as a possible augury of worse to come. Slowing growth More broadly, for the economy as a whole, when growth is generated over a longish period by debt-fuelled investment or spending, there can be one of two outcomes. If the boom is deflated early enough and in a controlled way, and measures are taken to reconstruct the economy so that growth can be generated in a sustainable way, the consequence would be an economic slowdown, but disaster would be averted. But if lending continues at breakneck pace, then a crash becomes inevitable. So what will happen to China's economic miracle? Well, the Chinese government has announced economic reforms, which - in theory - would over a period of years rebalance the economy away from debt-fuelled investment towards consumption by Chinese people. Charles Liu, a prominent Chinese investor, with close links to the government in Beijing, explained to me how far China's growth rate is likely to fall from the current 7-8%: "I think China could do very well if the quality of the growth is transformed to higher value add." He said. "You're really looking at 4% is fine." But as yet the reforms are at a very early stage of implementation, and the lending boom goes on. What is more, the current building splurge so enriches many thousands of communist officials, from a system of institutionalised kickbacks, that there are concerns about the ability of the central government to force the changes through. Also, the social and political consequences of Charles Liu's 4% growth could be profound: it is unclear whether that is a fast enough rate to satisfy the people's hunger for jobs and higher living standards, whether it is fast enough to prevent widespread protest and unrest. And what if the lending and investing bonanza can't be staunched? Then we would be looking at the kind of crash that would shake not just China, but the globe. The biggest story of my career has been the rise and rise of China. Hungry, fast-growing China has shaped our lives, sometimes but not always to our benefit. It boosted our living standards, by selling us all those material things we simply had to have, cheaper and cheaper. But its exporters killed many of our manufacturers. And the financial surpluses it generated translated into our dangerous deficits, the secular and risky rise of indebtedness in much of the West. Also its appetite has led to huge increases in the price we all pay for food, for energy, for commodities. What's more, China's influence in Asia and Africa has profoundly shifted the global balance of power. So would an economically weakened China be good for us in the West? Well, it wouldn't necessarily be all bad. But a China suddenly incapable of providing the rising living standards its people now see as their destiny would be less confident, less stable, and - perhaps for the world - more dangerous. Watch This World: How China Fooled the World - with Robert Peston on BBC Two at 21:00 on Tuesday, 18 February. Or catch it later on the BBC iPlayer.

जब तक आप चीनी साम्यवादी इतिहास के महान क्षणों के शौकीन नहीं हैं, तब तक आपने शायद वूहान के बारे में नहीं सुना होगा (यह यांग्त्ज़ी के पार अध्यक्ष माओ की पौराणिक तैराकी का स्थल है)।


BBC Micro Bit mini-computer faces further delay

Summary: The BBC has again delayed its release plan for the Micro Bit.

By Leo Kelion and Jane WakefieldTechnology reporters The tiny computer was originally supposed to have been given to one million schoolchildren last October. The corporation said it now planned to start giving teachers their own units just after the half-term holidays, to help them plan classes. It added it was "pushing to deliver as many as possible" to pupils before the term's end but could not be more specific about how many or when. The idea behind the project has been widely praised, but some teachers are concerned they will no longer have enough time to do it justice this school year. Digital skills The Micro Bit is designed to run code written by children that will let them display text and patterns on its 25 LEDs and make use of its built-in sensors. The idea is that they will be able to create simple games they can play on the device. In addition, they can physically connect it to other hardware or link it up to a smartphone via Bluetooth to carry out more complex functions. The BBC has promised to give one to every child in Year 7 or equivalent. Last September, it revealed a problem with the power supply had caused a delay, adding teachers would receive the device before the end of 2015 and children "early in the new year". But on Wednesday, at the Bett education trade show in London, the BBC said its timetable had slipped again. "The main issue has been some fine-tuning," BBC Learning executive Cerys Griffiths said. "We have created hardware, it's very complex, it's very sophisticated, it's very new. "What we were really hoping for was that the teachers would get their devices before Christmas. "But our commitment to teachers has always been that we would get them the devices first to give them time to play and get familiar with them." Smiley faces Some schools have been given prototype Micro Bits. Emily Rowland, a teacher at Manchester's Fairfield High School for Girls, said even the least able of her pupils had been able to use them to show smiley-face graphics. But she added the delay to the proper rollout was causing concern. "Some teachers get panicked by the idea that they can only use them for six weeks of the summer term and haven't even seen one yet," she said. "Quite a lot of schools will struggle to put them in place this summer, and some will have to put it off until the next school year, and then the issue is who do you give the freebies to?" Another computing teacher, Steve Richards, from Eastlea Community School, in London, had a more positive view of events. "I understand the frustration of other teachers, because it is this wonderful thing that is slightly out of reach," he said. "But judging by the kind of things we have been able to do with [the prototypes], it will be worth the wait." Android app Although the hardware may be delayed, there is already software available to give children a chance to start coding in advance of receiving their micro-computers: To help offset any disappointment, the BBC has also promised to release more copies of the device than it had originally planned, meaning some children in other school years should also receive one. Ms Griffiths also stressed that just because the Year 7 pupils would receive the Micro Bits later than had originally been hoped, that would not mean their time with the devices needed to be more limited. "This device was never intended for just for one year," she said. "Each child will own their own device, so we are hoping they will use them during the summer holidays. "And we will have loads of activities and stimulus for them to use into Year 8, so it won't be just for one term."

बी. बी. सी. ने माइक्रो बिट के लिए अपनी रिलीज़ योजना में फिर से देरी की है।


Teen shop worker goes ‘above and beyond’ for autistic girl

Summary: A mother's praise for a teenager on his Saturday job - who patiently helped her daughter, who has autism - has reached hundreds of thousands of people on social media, thanks in part to his father's pride.

By Sherie RyderBBC UGC hub and social news James Tayler, from Bicester, Oxfordshire, posted on Twitter he had a very good reason to be "ridiculously" proud of his 18-year-old son, Jacob. When Jacob finished his Saturday job at a Clarks shoe shop, he was handed a "celebration alert" from the store. The alert was prompted by an email from a shopper to say Jacob had gone "above and beyond" their expectations back in March, when helping the customer's daughter. "I might be a little choked up," said James in his tweet. Sensory overload Jacob told BBC News: "I was asked to measure a little girl's feet. "I didn't know she had autism but she wasn't responding very well. "She was having sensory overload in the shop environment." The customer emailed the company, describing how Jacob had sat patiently while her daughter had cried and had carried on when she had been ready, without any fuss, adding: "He didn't once make us feel like we were taking too long or being a nuisance." Loves kindness More than 90,000 people have "liked" James's sharing of the story on Twitter on Sunday, including 69,000 in the first day, and retweeted it to thousands more. It has also been picked up on social media forum Reddit, where the story was upvoted more than 52,000 times within nine hours of being posted. Among those to see the tweet was Dawn Brown, the customer who had emailed Clarks. "Everyone loves a little bit of kindness," she responded to James's tweet. "I am so happy that Jacob got his recognition," Dawn tweeted in a conversation with James. "Teens today are given bad press, not enough praise." "Most people only email/phone to complain these days," said Dawn. "I like to go the other way and spread the praise." She also joked she would ask Jacob for his autograph when they next bought shoes, to which Jacob said to let him know when so he could be there. Jacob, who is finishing his A-levels this year, is no stranger to helping children with disabilities. He has been working with the charity Barnardo's since he was 16 years old. Calming people James said the work had "taught him a huge amount about autism, sign language and other non-verbal communication". "I spend all my holidays working with children of various abilities, I really enjoy it," said Jacob, who has also picked up the sign language Makaton, which he finds very useful. This coming summer holiday he plans to work overseas, helping children in need, before he comes back to apply for a firefighter apprenticeship. "I like to help people and I'm very good at calming people down when they're stressed," said Jacob. However, he may get an opportunity to continue working with children, as Dawn could recommend Jacob for a job working with children with special needs. Unite people IT worker James is still bursting with pride and is amazed at the responses he has had on social media. "My phone hasn't stopped buzzing since I posted the note," James told BBC News. "I thought it would be nice to share good news, amid all the misery at the moment. "It's nice to unite people with some positivity."

शनिवार की नौकरी पर एक किशोर के लिए एक माँ की प्रशंसा-जिसने धैर्यपूर्वक अपनी बेटी की मदद की, जिसे ऑटिज्म है-सोशल मीडिया पर सैकड़ों हजारों लोगों तक पहुंच गई है, आंशिक रूप से अपने पिता के गौरव के लिए धन्यवाद।


Manchester Arena bombing: Key points from the official report

Summary: Ariana Grande had finished her set at the Manchester Arena last May and concert-goers - many of them children - were streaming out of the main performance area and into the lobby of the building. Parents waiting to collect young fans had gathered there; others were buying memorabilia or making their way to the nearby railway station.

Also in the foyer at that busy time was a man with a home-made bomb. He detonated it at 22:31, murdering 22 people and injuring more than 700. Members of the audience said it sounded like a balloon bursting. British Transport Police, running toward the sound, assumed they had heard a train crash. The emergency service response has now been assessed in an independent report, the Kerslake Review. Here are six things we have learned. Assumptions, confusion and delays hampered the response Poor communication was at the heart of many of the problems identified in the Kerslake report. Some firefighters heard the explosion from their base at Manchester Central fire station, which is about half a mile from the concert venue, but they were ordered to drive to another station, three miles north of the city centre. Because the fire service could not communicate directly with the police duty inspector - whose phone was in constant use - due to a lack of a radio link, it could not confirm the true situation and prepared for an escalating terrorist firearms attack - similar to those seen in Paris. As a result fire crews stuck to national guidance, which say personnel should keep 500m (1,600ft) away from any zone of danger in such situations. Meanwhile, the police duty inspector had declared the incident Operation Plato, the code name for the protocols meant to be followed in situations where there is a belief semi-automatic weapons are being used indiscriminately. Because of communication difficulties neither the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) nor the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) were informed or updated of the status of the operation. GMFRS did not arrive at the scene for nearly two hours, meaning a valuable resource was not available to assist on the scene, particularly with the movement of those who were injured from the foyer to a casualty clearing station that had been set up on the railway station concourse. A dedicated and regularly tested radio, operating between the control rooms of the police, ambulance and fire services, has now been established. Kerslake recommendation: While not criticising the GMP force duty officer, the service should review its protocols to identify ways to reduce the load placed on the force duty officer during major incidents. This could include providing the force duty officer with a dedicated incident management support team as soon as possible. 'Crucial decisions' saved lives The area where the supposed shooting is going on is called a "hot zone", a safe area is called a "cold zone". A "warm zone" is an area where active terrorist activity has stopped, but cannot be guaranteed safe. Within minutes the force duty officer had to make a life-or-death decision: should unprotected emergency responders be left in what was considered at that time to be a hot zone? One of the rules under Operation Plato is that only suitably trained and equipped firearms officers should be in a hot zone. All other personnel should be evacuated. The force duty officer decided that to tell the responders to evacuate would be "unconscionable". So they remained, treating patients and saving lives. "In terms of protecting saveable lives," the Kerslake Review said, "this was one of the most crucial decisions taken on the night. "The force duty officer should be congratulated for this dynamic decision making in an extremely stressful, chaotic and dangerous environment". Kerslake recommendation:Sticking rigidly to the Operation Plato protocol may introduce the real risk that responders will be focused on written instructions when they should be trusting their own judgement and training...when protocols become too constraining there is immense value in empowering and enabling responders to deal with incidents using situationally aware, informed and risk-assessed initiative. The emergency communication system failed After an event such as the bombing, a casualty bureau is usually set up for concerned families to call and find out if their relatives were missing or injured. This is done by something called The National Mutual Aid Telephony Service, which provides an 0800 number for worried members of the public and call handling for police forces. This would have enabled other police forces to help call handlers in Greater Manchester and should have also allowed the local force to set up a bureau to coordinate information about missing and injured people. The system could not be activated on the night of the Manchester attack because one of the servers was full. This meant a new message could not be recorded, and instead callers received a message from a previous incident. Communication with the families caught up in the attack was badly affected. A restricted local telephone contact service was not up and running until about 03:00. The report found: "This failure was a cause of significant stress and upset on the night to the families involved, who were seeking to find out more about the situation of their loved ones. A number were reduced to a frantic search around the hospitals of Greater Manchester to find out more". Vodafone, which has held the contract since 2009, has said: "This was clearly unacceptable and we sincerely apologise for the distress caused to those affected by this terrible attack. "We have since undertaken a major upgrade of the system in question and it is being tested on a daily basis." The Kerslake report also said there was an inadequate level of knowledge or expertise within Vodafone or its sub-contractor Content Guru. Kerslake recommendation: The Home Office should urgently secure appropriate guarantees from Vodafone that the necessary fall-back and disaster recovery arrangements are in place to address the failures which occurred. Families felt 'hounded' by the media Most participants of the Kerslake review who commented on their experience of the media in the attack aftermath were negative. People talked about feeling "hounded" and "bombarded". Some described being put under pressure to participate in TV programmes. One member of staff at a hospital said a tin of biscuits given to staff contained a note offering £2,000 for information about the injured. At least two examples of impersonation were also reported - one respondent said they spoke to someone on the telephone who claimed to be a bereavement nurse, while another described talking to someone who claimed to be from the police. Specific mention was made of photos being taken through glass windows of family being given news of bereavement. There were descriptions of people having to run to cars with coats over their heads to escape. Someone described having to be taken into hospital to see their injured child via a staff entrance because of the behaviour of some media representatives at the main entrance. Several people told of news crews outside their homes. One mentioned the forceful attempt by a reporter to gain access through their front door by ramming a foot in the doorway. The child of one family was given condolences on the doorstep before official notification of the death of her mother. Another family told how their child was stopped by journalists whilst making their way to school. In the case of one family, which has subsequently been reported, the daughter was visited by a reporter at their home and given condolences on the death of her brother whilst her parents were at the family centre that had been set up at the Etihad Stadium. This took place on the morning following the attack. The family were not told that their son was likely to be among the fatalities until later that day. In response Matt Tee, chief executive of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), said: "It is clear that the behaviour of some, but by no means all, of the media added to the distress experienced by some families of victims. "The editors' code - the set of rules that IPSO members must follow - requires journalists to approach bereaved family members with sympathy and discretion, to ensure their reports are accurate and to respect people's privacy and stop their approaches when asked to do so. "We will be looking at what more we can do to support victims, families and the agencies that work with them as well as making sure that IPSO-regulated publishers are aware of their obligations and responsibilities under the Editors' Code of Practice." Kerslake recommendation: IPSO should review its code of conduct and consider developing a new code specifically to cover such events. How survivors and the bereaved were treated The Kerslake Review promised to "put the experience of bereaved families" at the heart of the report, and spoke to many of the people affected. Some talked about the arrangements made for them to see their deceased loved one. "Our expectations were that he'd be pulled out of a freezer … the reality was that he was actually lying in a room set up like a hospital room, he was in a bed, his head was on a pillow and he was covered up with a duvet. The room had a pleasant temperature and he looked as if he was in a deep coma rather than dead. The nurse gave me a little cuddly toy telling me it was with him throughout the whole time he entered the building. We were given time alone with him and were allowed to hug and kiss him. The nurses were available to comfort us before and after." Many praised a vigil staged at the station before it re-opened. "We went to the vigil that was in the train station … and they made it so beautiful... there was a stand with their names on, everybody was there for that reason," said one relative. How the public helped those affected The Kerslake panel praised a number of people for their courage, including staff from Northern rail who were asked to leave the arena for their own safety by police officers but refused, choosing to stay with the casualties. In addition to members of the public who ran to help, staff with no formal remit in this role "selflessly and bravely did their best to provide care and support and undoubtedly made an important contribution to the response. "Others also played a part away from the Arena whether providing shelter in local hotels or donating food and drink. Every one of them is owed a debt of gratitude".

एरियाना ग्रांडे ने पिछले मई में मैनचेस्टर एरिना में अपना सेट पूरा कर लिया था और संगीत कार्यक्रम में जाने वाले लोग-जिनमें से कई बच्चे थे-मुख्य प्रदर्शन क्षेत्र से बाहर और इमारत की लॉबी में आ रहे थे। माता-पिता युवा प्रशंसकों को इकट्ठा करने की प्रतीक्षा कर रहे थे; अन्य लोग स्मृति चिन्ह खरीद रहे थे या पास के रेलवे स्टेशन पर अपना रास्ता बना रहे थे।


Rishi Sunak's post-furlough plan: At-a-glance

Summary: Chancellor Rishi Sunak has delivered a statement setting out plans to help workers and businesses hit by new coronavirus restrictions.

It includes plans for a job support scheme to replace furlough, help for the self employed, business loans and VAT cuts. Here is a summary of the main points. Job Support Scheme How could the new Job Support Scheme work? If an employee works reduced hours the employer pays for that. And in addition the employer and government pay one third of the lost pay each (up to the cap). So for someone on £2,000 a month working 50% hours, they would get £1,000 normal pay plus £333 extra from their employer and £333 from the government. Support for the self-employed Business loans Taxes

चांसलर ऋषि सुनक ने नए कोरोनावायरस प्रतिबंधों से प्रभावित श्रमिकों और व्यवसायों की मदद करने के लिए एक बयान दिया है।


Cashpoint raid leaves huge hole in Co-op at Wells-next-the-Sea

Summary: A raid on a cashpoint machine by thieves using a JCB telehandler has left a 6ft (2m) wide hole in the side of a Co-op store.

The ram raid on Polka Road, Wells-next-the-Sea, happened between 02:50 and 03:00 GMT on Monday. The suspects used the telehandler to remove the cash machine before loading it on to a 4x4 truck, said police. Officers believe a dark-coloured hatchback was also used. Witnesses are asked to call Norfolk Police. Police have cordoned off the scene and there is a hand-written note at the store saying it is closed.

जे. सी. बी. टेलीहैंडलर का उपयोग करके कैशप्वाइंट मशीन पर चोरों द्वारा की गई छापेमारी ने एक सहकारी दुकान के किनारे 6 फीट (2 मीटर) चौड़ा छेद छोड़ दिया है।


Mpeketoni attacks: Four possibilities

Summary: The style and scale of the attacks in and around the Kenyan town of Mpeketoni have left many questions unanswered. Who carried out the violence? Why kill only men? President Uhuru Kenyatta has blamed a "local political network", but Somali militant Islamist group al-Shabab says it was behind the killings. However, for the moment, most Kenyans remain unclear as to who the perpetrators are.

By Dennis OkariBBC News, Nairobi Possibility 1: Al-Shabab Al-Shabab has said it carried out the attack in order to take revenge on Kenya for the presence of its troops in Somalia, where they are battling the militants, as well as for the killing of radical clerics linked to al-Shabab in the port city of Mombasa. If the Somali group is to be believed, then it may have changed tactics for fear of losing support. Many women and children, including Muslims, were among the 67 people killed during the siege of the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi last September. The indiscriminate attack angered some al-Shabab sympathisers, and the Mpeketoni attack could have been a way of sanitising the group's image: kill the men, spare the women and children. Sowing terror among ordinary Kenyans could be a strategy to increase pressure on the government to withdraw its forces from Somalia. Who are al-Shabab? Possibility 2: Local dispute Mpeketoni is a farming area, not a popular tourist resort like the nearby Lamu island, and the attack took the country and security agencies by surprise. In the past, terror groups have concentrated on Kenya's major towns and cities, or targeted foreign tourists in order to gain maximum international publicity. According to reliable accounts, the attackers were well organised, and as soon as they finished their mission, they disappeared, supporting the theory that they may be locals. "This... was not an al-Shabab attack. Evidence indicates that local political networks were involved in the planning and execution of a heinous crime," said President Kenyatta. "The attack in Lamu was well planned, orchestrated and politically motivated ethnic violence against a Kenyan community, with the intention of profiling and evicting them for political reasons," he said. Many of those who died in the attack came from Mr Kenyatta's Kikuyu community. There are long-standing political and ethnic divisions in this area. It could be that local Somalis and Oromos who claim the area as their ancestral home are trying to drive out Kikuyus, who they see as interlopers. The president's father, independent Kenya's founding President Jomo Kenyatta, gave the area to ethnic Kikuyus in the 1960s. Such disputes over land ownership were behind much of the ethnic violence which broke out across Kenya after the disputed 2007 elections. A group of Kenyan Somalis or Oromos could easily wave al-Shabab flags and shout slogans such as Allahu Akbar (God is great) in order to divert blame. But opposition politicians have dismissed the president's statement as a "joke". Kenya violence: Survivors' tales Possibility 3: Separatist rebels President Kenyatta did not name the local political group he was accusing. In recent years, the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) has been campaigning for autonomy for Kenya's largely Muslim coastal region, arguing that local people see little economic benefit from the region's trading ports and tourist industry. It has been accused of carrying out small-scale attacks in and around Mombasa, which it has strongly denied. But it might be that it has launched an armed insurrection. The MRC has denied any links to the attacks. Possibility 4: An alliance Of course, it could be that one of the Kenyan groups has decided to work with al-Shabab, which would explain some of the confusion. President Kenyatta would want to downplay the al-Shabab angle in order to try and protect Kenya's embattled tourist industry, so if there were an alliance, he would focus on the local group. This would also enable him to send Kenya's security services after some of his political enemies. While if some al-Shabab fighters were involved, it would enable the group's spokesman to say they were behind the attack, even if it was not solely their idea. They have never previously said they carried out an attack which later proved to be untrue. And al-Shabab might like to target ethnic Kikuyus in order to take their battle right to the president's doorstep.

केन्याई शहर मेपेकेटोनी और उसके आसपास हमलों की शैली और पैमाने ने कई सवालों को अनुत्तरित छोड़ दिया है। हिंसा को किसने अंजाम दिया? केवल पुरुषों को क्यों मारा? राष्ट्रपति उहुरू केन्याटा ने एक "स्थानीय राजनीतिक नेटवर्क" को दोषी ठहराया है, लेकिन सोमाली आतंकवादी इस्लामी समूह अल-शबाब का कहना है कि हत्याओं के पीछे उसका हाथ था। हालाँकि, अभी तक, अधिकांश केन्याई स्पष्ट नहीं हैं कि अपराधी कौन हैं।


Did King John actually 'sign' Magna Carta?

Summary: The Royal Mint has been criticised for featuring a picture of King John signing Magna Carta with a quill on a coin celebrating its 800th anniversary. A wax seal was actually used, but does the mistake really matter, asks Justin Parkinson?

Magazine MonitorA collection of cultural artefacts The £2 coin shows King John holding Magna Carta in one hand and a large quill in another. The meaning is obvious - he signed it. Actually, he didn't. John, like other medieval monarchs, used the Great Seal to put his name to the document, making concessions to England's barons in 1215, following years of arguments over royal power. The Royal Mint has been accused of making a "schoolboy error". Historian Marc Morris stated that medieval kings "did not authenticate documents by signing them" but "by sealing them". The Mint has defended itself by saying the scene shown on the coin is not meant to give a "literal account of what actually occurred". No quill was used, but was the Magna Carta still "signed" in a sense? The Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb "to sign" in this way: "To put a seal upon (a letter or document) as a means of identification or authentication; to stamp with a seal or signet; to cover with a seal." The first use the OED records of the verb used in this way was by King John's son Henry III, saying a document was "sened wiþ vre seel (signed with our seal)". So, the idea of signing something predated our more narrow modern sense of a person writing their name or something else to denote their consent - the autograph signature. Is criticism of the Royal Mint fair? "I think it's pretty harsh," says Jane Caplan, professor of modern history at Oxford University. "The story is pretty complicated and it's not surprising that people make mistakes." The wording of Magna Carta, a verbal agreement between the king and the barons, was written down later and the seal added by officials. So he didn't seal it himself either. The contents of the copies made were to be read out in public in what was still more of an oral official culture than our own. The wax seal helped validate the understanding that Magna Carta was the King's true will. "The seal was the conventional way of authenticating a document at that time," says Claire Breay, medieval manuscripts curator at the British Library. It was not "signed" according to the conventional modern usage of the word, but 1215 was not the modern world. Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

रॉयल मिंट की आलोचना इस बात के लिए की गई है कि राजा जॉन मैग्ना कार्टा की 800वीं वर्षगांठ मनाते हुए एक सिक्के पर रजाई के साथ हस्ताक्षर कर रहे हैं। जस्टिन पार्किंसन पूछते हैं कि वास्तव में मोम की मुहर का उपयोग किया गया था, लेकिन क्या गलती वास्तव में मायने रखती है?


Queen opens new Queensferry Crossing

Summary: The Queen has officially opened the new Queensferry Crossing.

She was accompanied by Prince Philip as she cut the ribbon on the £1.35bn road bridge - exactly 53 years after she opened the Forth Road Bridge. The Queen said the structure, the UK's tallest bridge, was a "breathtaking sight" and one of three "magnificent structures" across the Forth. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said people would "marvel" at the bridge in 100 years. The Queen met children and officials at the south end of the bridge and was given a floral posy by Elizabeth Martin, grand-daughter of crossing project director Michael Martin. After cutting the ribbon to cheers from the watching crowd, the Queen then travelled by car across the bridge. She then made a speech and unveiled a plaque to declare the crossing formally open. There was also a fly-past by the Red Arrows and a flotilla of boats travelled under the bridge as the national anthem was played. The bridge was blessed by the Church of Scotland's Moderator, The Right Rev Dr Derek Browning. The Queen said the bridge, which sits beside the Forth Road Bridge and the Forth Rail Bridge, would be an "important link" between the Lothians and Fife. "The three magnificent structures we see here span three centuries, are all feats of modern engineering and a tribute to the vision and remarkable skill of those who designed and built them," she added. In her speech, Ms Sturgeon told the workers who built the bridge that in 100 years people would "gaze at the towers and marvel and what you have created". Ms Sturgeon said the creation of the bridge was an "outstanding achievement" as she thanked those involved in the project. She told them: "The nation's heart is bursting with pride at what you have achieved." The bridge opened to traffic last Wednesday. It then shut at the weekend to allow 50,000 members of the public to walk across it . They were selected in a ballot. Local schools and community groups will be allowed to walk over the bridge on Tuesday before it closes to pedestrians for good. It will then reopen to traffic on Thursday. The crossing is essentially an extension of the M90 motorway across the Forth with a 70mph speed limit, although operators said an initial 40mph limit would be in place to take account of "driver distraction". The new bridge will take most of the traffic that currently uses the 53-year-old Forth Road Bridge. The old one will remain open for cyclists, pedestrians and buses. Construction of the Queensferry Crossing began in 2011, with a variety of milestones marked along the way. More than 10,000 people have worked on the site at some point, clocking up over 13 million hours of work. About 24 million vehicles are expected to use the crossing each year, reducing the strain on the older road bridge. The new bridge has a projected life of 120 years but could last for longer than that, experts believe.

रानी ने आधिकारिक तौर पर नए क्वींसफ़ेरी क्रॉसिंग का उद्घाटन किया है।


Inside Out returns for a new series in 2015

Summary: Inside Out is returning to your screens for another series in 2015.

Chris JacksonPresenter, Inside Out, North East & Cumbria We'll be back on 12 January, 2015 in our usual Monday night slot of 19:30 GMT on BBC One. We're already working on the stories we'll be covering and have done quite a bit of filming already. Needless to say I can't give the game away just yet on the nature of those topics, but as always we hope to be revealing things about the North East & Cumbria that you never knew before. One change we're having to make however is the blog. It's become increasingly difficult to sustain a weekly blog alongside making films and presenting the programme. So even though I've enjoyed it immensely this will be the last blog from me. It's been a terrific way to give you more details about each week's stories and it has been a quick way for you to give us your comments. The good news is it's still easy to get in touch with me by social media and email. You can email me chrisjackson@bbc.co.uk and I'd be thrilled if you'd like to follow me on twitter. Don't forget that you can send me your feedback on the programme via my email address. Just look for @insideoutcj Alternatively, you can read more of our North East and Cumbria stories on the BBC Inside Out website which also hosts our iPlayer offer.

इनसाइड आउट 2015 में एक और श्रृंखला के लिए आपकी स्क्रीन पर लौट रहा है।


Antifa: Left-wing militants on the rise

Summary: The violence and murder of a protester in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend has been attributed to far-right elements that descended on the city to demonstrate against the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate war hero Robert E Lee.

By Brenna CammeronBBC News President Donald Trump drew widespread criticism on Saturday when he said that there was violence on "many sides" in Charlottesville and initially neglected to explicitly censure the white supremacists who organised the rally. On Monday, he bowed to pressure to castigate the KKK, white supremacists and neo-nazis. But many conservatives say blame should be shared by Antifa, a loosely affiliated group of far-left protesters. Critics argue the media tends to excuse violence by Antifa militants just because they are fighting white supremacists and their odious ideology. What exactly is Antifa? The social causes of Antifa (short for anti-fascist or Anti-Fascist action) are easily identifiable as left-leaning. Most members oppose all forms of racism and sexism, and strongly oppose what they see as the nationalist, anti-immigration and anti-Muslim policies that Mr Trump has enacted. However, as their name indicates, Antifa focuses more on fighting far-right ideology than encouraging pro-left policy. Unlike the mainstream left, they do not seek to gain power through traditional channels - winning elections and passing bills into law. Antifa is anti-government and anti-capitalist, and their methodologies are often perceived as more closely aligned with anarchists than the mainstream left. Antifa does not shy away from militant protest methods, including the destruction of property and sometimes physical violence. They were present at the 2017 Berkeley protests of right wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and at violent protests against Donald Trump's inauguration; they were also present at Charlottesville. Antifa's roots go back almost as far as Nazis Much like the far-right, Antifa members around the world comprise a patchwork of groups, though the most active appear to be based in the US, the UK (under the name Anti-Fascist Action) and Germany (Antifaschistische Aktion). The German movement was founded in 1932 to provide a militant far-left group to counter the fast-rising Nazi party. They were disbanded in 1933 after Hitler took control of parliament and resurrected in the 1980s as a response to neo-Nazism after the fall of the Berlin Wall. President Trump's election seems to have been something of a touchstone for the Antifa movement, which has links with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and various anarchist groups. According to James Anderson, one of a group of people who run the popular anti-fascist and anarchist news site, It's Going Down, interest has spiked since Mr Trump's election. The It's Going Down website, which received around 300 hits daily in 2015, now garners between 10-20,000 hits a day. Since the events in Charlottesville on Saturday, the It's Going Down Twitter handle has gained 2,000 new followers. While interest may have spiked since Mr Trump's election, it is all but impossible to quantify how many people are active members of Antifa. Much like the far-right, chapters of Antifa are loosely connected and highly secretive, and organise mostly on message boards such as Reddit and over social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Calls to label Antifa a terror organisation Antifa has become a popular topic for right-leaning websites and among conservative pundits. Fox News commentator and conservative speaker Erick Erickson says in The Resurgent, a conservative blog, that "Antifa and the white supremacists are two sides of a common coin. The people dead in Charlottesville died because of one neo-Nazi, but there were dozen [sic] of people left bleeding in the streets because of Antifa". Meanwhile, a change.org petition lobbying Mr Trump to declare Antifa a domestic terror organisation has garnered nearly 100,000 supporters. While Antifa has gained relatively little attention in the mainstream media, that may soon change. According to Mr Anderson, the events in Charlottesville over the weekend represent a "sea change" in how Antifa is perceived. "This is a huge turning point and vindication for our movement," he said. "We are working with Black Lives Matter, local clergy, this is not a movement that wants to be a lone group of militants," he said. "This is about popular power. Sometimes that looks controversial - but this is a broad movement, and we are looking to engage a wide variety of people."

सप्ताहांत में वर्जीनिया के शार्लोट्सविले में एक प्रदर्शनकारी की हिंसा और हत्या के लिए दूर-दराज़ तत्वों को जिम्मेदार ठहराया गया है जो संघ के युद्ध नायक रॉबर्ट ई ली की प्रतिमा को प्रस्तावित रूप से हटाने के खिलाफ प्रदर्शन करने के लिए शहर में उतरे थे।


Luke Jobson death: Pair change pleas to guilty of affray

Summary: Two men have pleaded guilty to affray in connection with the death of a man from Teesside whose body was recovered from the River Tees.

Luke Jobson, 22, went missing following a night out in Yarm in January, 2019. Edwin Taha, 20, of Lavender Way, Norton, and Ali Abdulmajieed, 19, of Corvus Drive, Stockton, pleaded guilty earlier ahead of their trial. Taha and Abdulmajieed are due to be sentenced next month at Teesside Crown Court. Charges of affray against Ryan Alpay, 19, of Duneside, Elm Tree, Stockton, and Hammad Asif, 18, of Osborne Road, Stockton, were ordered to remain on file. Mr Jobson's body was recovered from the river on 28 January 2019.

टीसाइड के एक व्यक्ति की मौत के संबंध में दो लोगों ने झगड़ा करने का अपराध स्वीकार किया है, जिसका शव टीज़ नदी से बरामद किया गया था।


South Wales valleys boosted by £10m grant scheme

Summary: Some of the poorest communities in the south Wales valleys are revitalising themselves through social enterprises, officials have said, as a £10m European grant scheme comes to an end.

Nearly 150 groups have been backed by the South East Wales Community Economic Development (SEWCED) programme. They range from furniture recycling and youth training to homelessness support. Programme manager Ian Evans said the scheme helped projects which found it hard to raise cash from banks. It has also created more than 140 jobs and 27 social enterprises since 2010 in Bridgend, Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda Cynon Taf and Torfaen. Mr Evans said SEWCED money helped projects win match funding from other sources, and eventually generate their own income. "The majority of our projects would not have received the same support elsewhere," he said. "We are proud of what we have achieved and look back over five years of helping Valleys communities to help themselves."

अधिकारियों ने कहा है कि दक्षिण वेल्स की घाटियों में कुछ सबसे गरीब समुदाय सामाजिक उद्यमों के माध्यम से खुद को पुनर्जीवित कर रहे हैं, क्योंकि 10 मिलियन पाउंड की यूरोपीय अनुदान योजना समाप्त हो गई है।


Man arrested in Crescent Close Wrexham murder probe

Summary: A 25-year-old man has been arrested after a disabled man's body was found at a house in Wrexham.

Nicholas Anthony Churton, 67, was found dead at his home in Crescent Close at about 08:20 BST on Monday. North Wales Police said Mr Churton, former owner of Churtons wine bar in Rossett, lived alone at the property and was a "vulnerable man". Three other people have also been arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender.

रेक्सम में एक घर में एक विकलांग व्यक्ति का शव मिलने के बाद एक 25 वर्षीय व्यक्ति को गिरफ्तार किया गया है।


The woman who dares to run a feminist radio station in Afghanistan

Summary: The northern Afghan city of Kunduz is not the kind of place you'd expect to find a radio station run by women, promoting women's rights. But this is precisely what Radio Roshani is, and it's broadcasting today despite several attempts by the Taliban to kill its founder and editor, Sediqa Sherzai.

By Mike ThomsonBBC News Radio Roshani broadcasts to a man's world. In most of Afghanistan, tradition has long dictated that women and girls are rarely seen or heard outside the home. Amazingly, many men actually consider them their property. In 2008, Sediqa set up Radio Roshani to challenge such attitudes but quickly found herself at loggerheads with the Taliban. Although no longer in government, it has remained a force to be reckoned with in many parts of the country. At first it warned Sediqa to stop broadcasting. Then, in 2009, rockets were fired at the station. Briefly Sediqa halted broadcasts. She asked the Afghan government for protection, but it became clear that none was forthcoming. So after a few days she went back on air, "because we just couldn't give in to threats". There has continued to be much local resistance. Men have often told Sediqa that she is leading local women astray, and promoting conflict between men and women in the home. "These actions are so bad that you deserve to be killed - even more than an American does," they told her. Find out more So it was with particular horror that Sediqa watched Taliban sweep into Kunduz in September 2015, taking complete control of the city. Very soon her phone rang. "Someone speaking in the Pashtu language asked me where I was, wanting me to give my exact location," says Sediqa, who mostly speaks Dari (an Afghan version of Persian). "I wasn't sure who this person was and was suspicious. After that I turned off my phone and did my best to get away." This was a wise precaution. After finding the radio station's staff had fled, Taliban fighters destroyed the station's archives, stole its equipment and planted mines in the building. Even though they were eventually driven out of the city, the station remained closed for two months while explosives experts defused the mines and staff replaced the missing equipment. But death threats against Sediqa and her team have continued ever since. Radio Roshani promotes womens' rights largely via phone-in programmes. One of the commonest concerns among women in Kunduz, Sediqa Sherzai says, are disputes that sometimes arise between wives in polygamous marriages. "A lot of men, as soon as they have some money, go for a second or third wife, and so on," Sediqa explains. According to Islamic convention, this is acceptable in cases where the first wife cannot bear children, she says, but in practice it's mainly done "for sex life purposes". The husband is supposed to promote justice and harmony among his wives at all times, but Sediqa says they often don't. Most disputes between wives arise because the husband shows favouritism to one over another, she says. "When the second wife brings more children, she's being treated more favourably than the first. And if the first or second wife are illiterate and the man then gets an educated wife, again she is treated more favourably because she is more educated," Sediqa says. Often the wives who have the hardest time are those who did not consent to the marriage, having either been sold to the man by their parents or given to him in lieu of a relative's debt. She adds that it's very rare for the women to support one another, and to apply collective pressure on the husband to behave well. "There is little understanding or sympathy between them, because of the tensions in the marriage. Some are jealous of other wives because they are closer to the husband, while they [themselves] are more distant. So there is often hardly any co-operation between them." While Radio Roshani is now the only radio station in Kunduz run by a woman, there are three others that were launched by women, and which still broadcast some programmes for women even though they are now mainly run by men. Zohal Noori, who works both for Radio Roshani and one of the other stations, says that some men tune in to women's programmes, and that this is helping to change attitudes. More are now willing to allow their wives to go to work and become active in the local economy, she says. A growing number are also permitting their wives and daughters to be examined in hospitals, Zohal says, thanks largely to an influx of women doctors. There are still men, though, who regard this as unacceptable. "They take [their wives and daughters] to clerics, who just tell them to read specified parts of the Koran. These women have no option but to just put up with the situation. Some get very depressed and some have even taken their own lives," Zohal says. But if in general the situation for women in Kunduz has been improving, there have also been setbacks, partly because of a shaky security situation - underlined by a new major Taliban incursion on 31 August, which led to battles across the city. "There are lots of assassinations, kidnappings and crime," Zohal says. "Kidnappings are very common at night and things are just getting worse and worse." As a result, some families that had begun to allow girls to go to school with their brothers are now changing their minds. It's also feared that talks now being held between US and Taliban representatives, could end up unravelling the progress made on women's rights that Radio Roshani and the other women broadcasters have fought for for so long. The worry is that in the haste to pull its forces out of Afghanistan, the US will let the Taliban bring back Sharia (Islamic law). "We're hoping that the peace negotiations will become a real peace," Sediqa says. "And not at the cost of women sitting back at home all day, and that all our achievements are not reversed." You may also be interested in: When Rumisa Lakhani and Rashida Shabbir Hussain created a placard for an International Women's Day march in Pakistan, they had no idea just how much it would place them at the centre of a fierce national debate. The 'womanspreading' placard that caused fury in Pakistan

उत्तरी अफ़ग़ान शहर कुंदुज उस तरह का स्थान नहीं है जहाँ आप महिलाओं द्वारा संचालित एक रेडियो स्टेशन खोजने की उम्मीद करेंगे, जो महिलाओं के अधिकारों को बढ़ावा देता है। लेकिन ठीक यही रेडियो रोशनी है, और तालिबान द्वारा अपने संस्थापक और संपादक, सेदिका शेरज़ई को मारने के कई प्रयासों के बावजूद यह आज प्रसारित हो रहा है।


N Korea 'execution' highlights Kim's insecurity

Summary: North Korea's Defence Minister Hyon Yong-chol has been executed, South Korea's spy agency has told parliament, apparently for not obeying instructions, and falling asleep at an event attended by Kim Jong-un. Expert Michael Madden looks at what this tells us about the country's young leader.

Hyon Yong-chol's reported execution was a surprise to analysts but looking back at the history of the people who have held this position, he was probably not long for the post. Four years, four defence ministers In four years, the position of defence minister has been held by four people. Mr Hyon is the only one to have been purged in such a brutal fashion - reportedly executed by anti-aircraft guns in front of an audience. Here's a rundown of the people to have held this position and their fates. April 2012 - November 2012: Vice Marshal Kim Jong-gak held the position for just seven months. He is now the dean of a military university. November 2012- April 2013: General Kim Kyok-sik is known to have passed away recently. May 2013 to June 2014: General Jang Jong-nam occupied the post for just over a year and is still seen at military parades. June 2014 to May 2015: General Hyon Yong-chol replaced him and has now reportedly been executed. The context is that there have been multiple personnel shuffles in North Korea's senior military leadership. For example, the director of military operations, the post that controls all conventional military forces and links to special forces, has changed hands six times since Kim Jong-un's ascension. Quiet military man with a lot of knowledge There is little in Hyon Yong-chol's profile that tells us why Kim Jong-un may have wanted to eliminate him. It was in 2010 that he was promoted to the rank of four-star general and on exactly the same day as Kim Jong-Un was promoted. That military promotion list was the North Korean leader's major public debut, a sign that he was the anointed one. His fellow general, Hyon, remained a relatively obscure figure. But Mr Hyon is a man who would have had a lot of knowledge of North Korea's military situation. He supervised training schools and was the commander of the 8th army corps, stationed in the north-west near the border with China. This is an area in which the Yongbyon nuclear research facility is located and where two missile launches have taken place. Mr Hyon will have had a detailed knowledge of this region. He was also in a senior position at some very critical points in the development of North Korea's arsenal: he had a lot of knowledge of weapons programmes and the army. A demonstration of power and authority This execution is likely to be entirely a demonstration of power and authority. This is indicative of Kim Jong-un's impulsive decision-making and a sign that he is not feeling secure. It is unclear whether we are dealing with a personal issue of emotional security or basically the insecurity he feels in discharging the job of North Korean leader. There is the question of whether this is a clear and present danger to his ultimate authority or simply a power play. But ultimately, this is not the sign of a man confident in his job. However with all these reshuffles, there is the persistent risk of instability. And there are all kinds of interesting contexts to his reported death. First of all, it comes at about the time of the reported passing of former Defence Minister Gen Kim Kyok-sik, probably due to natural causes. So we are in a situation in North Korea where we have the death of two senior officials. One is being buried as a state hero and the other met his demise with ignominy. But balancing power is not easy Like his father Kim Jong-un is in a balancing act between the many of entrenched interests in North Korea. Many of these are military interests and Kim Jong-un - whatever might be said about him - does know about military affairs. He is educated in the military and not just to a cosmetic degree. More than 50% of his time is spent doing military field inspections. There are signs that North Korea is not getting much foreign direct investment and some people coming out of North Korea have indicated big problems with maintaining power supply. Others may have fallen too But perhaps most interesting is the suggestion from some sources I have been in contact with - as yet unverified - that others may have been eliminated too. We know about the report from NK News about images - which could not be confirmed - showing large weaponry facing a very close target, a viewing area and several passenger vehicles. They believe it could be a "gruesome public execution" by anti-aircraft fire, the way that Mr Hyon appears to have gone.

उत्तर कोरिया के रक्षा मंत्री ह्योन योंग-चोल को फांसी दे दी गई है, दक्षिण कोरिया की जासूसी एजेंसी ने संसद को बताया है, जाहिरा तौर पर निर्देशों का पालन नहीं करने और किम जोंग-उन द्वारा भाग लिए गए एक कार्यक्रम में सो जाने के लिए। विशेषज्ञ माइकल मैडेन देखते हैं कि यह हमें देश के युवा नेता के बारे में क्या बताता है।


Is Shinzo Abe fanning nationalist flames?

Summary: Tensions between China and Japan are at their highest level for decades as Tokyo defies pressure from Beijing over disputed East China Sea islands. As US President Barack Obama tours the region, Charles Scanlon asks whether Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is deliberately fanning the flames of nationalism in his drive to make Japan a more assertive and self-confident power.

By Charles ScanlonBBC News The forlorn elderly couple handing out leaflets on a street corner on the outskirts of Tokyo had a bizarre and scarcely credible story to tell. They said that their 13-year-old daughter had been kidnapped by North Korean secret agents while returning from badminton practice. The couple told anyone who would listen that she was probably grabbed by frogmen emerging from the ocean near their home and bundled off to North Korea on a submarine. To some passers-by, 14 years ago, it sounded as if the couple's grief had turned to paranoid fantasy. That was also the view of the police and much of Japan's diplomatic and political establishment. But there was one ambitious politician, from a famous political family, who did take them seriously. Shinzo Abe took up the cause of the Yokota family, and their missing daughter, Megumi, and helped drive it to the top of the political agenda. He and the then prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, went to Pyongyang and secured a stunning confession from the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. Their visit led to the return of five abducted Japanese citizens - but not several others, including Megumi, who the North Koreans claimed had committed suicide. The Yokotas still count on support from Mr Abe, whose government recently negotiated a first-ever meeting with their 26-year-old grand-daughter, born to Megumi and an abducted South Korean who she married during her years of captivity. Revisionist circle? Mr Abe's career received such a boost from his championing of the abduction issue that he is now serving his second term as prime minister. He was able to present himself as a rare beast among Japanese leaders - someone who cared about ordinary people and was prepared to stand up to hostile neighbouring countries. For many Japanese, frustrated by long years of economic stagnation and a succession of weak prime ministers, Mr Abe brings hope. He has a plan to revive the economy with aggressive stimulus measures, dubbed Abenomics. He is also admired for standing firm in the face of what is seen by many as bullying by China and the two Koreas. For anyone reading newspapers or watching television in China or the Korean peninsula, however, Mr Abe appears in a more sinister light. He is portrayed as a hard-line nationalist and militarist bent on rearming Japan and asserting its dominance in the region. Shinzo Abe remains an ambiguous figure. He tries to cultivate the image of a well-meaning patriot, set on restoring the self-esteem of a country down on its luck. But some on the left of Japanese politics suspect a grander strategy - to undermine Japan's post-war pacifist culture and rebuild the military against a resurgent China. "Shinzo Abe has shown he can be cautious and pragmatic," says Garren Mulloy, who specialises in the Japanese military at Daito Bunka university. "He may be a nationalist, but it's really some of those around him who are the real problem - some are revisionists who are seeking to challenge the established post-war order." The threat from China, with its fast-growing naval power and direct challenge to Japanese sovereignty over the disputed Senkaku or Diaoyu islands, has boosted Mr Abe's popularity despite the instinctive suspicion of nationalistic rhetoric felt by many in Japan. Mr Abe has sent out signals that encourage rightists, who contest Japanese war guilt and favour a more authoritarian country with the emperor at its core. His visit late last year to the Yasukuni war shrine was a clear sign of his growing confidence. The shrine honours the country's war dead including convicted war criminals, and symbolises Japan's old martial spirit. The government has also flirted with revisionist views of Japan's war-time aggression without firmly committing itself either way. The cabinet's suggestion it was reconsidering the evidence behind a 1993 apology for the sexual enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Asian women sparked such an outcry at home and abroad that Mr Abe intervened to say that the apology would stand. It is a touchstone issue for nationalists, who insist that Japan's image has been deliberately smeared by ill-intentioned foreigners. Some influential conservatives in Japan also deny that the Nanjing massacre of 1937 took place and want the government to withdraw its central apology for wartime aggression. Mr Abe has been more cautious. But his language is carefully calibrated to evoke nostalgia for the past with references to the "beautiful country", an image of a mythical pure Japan free of contamination from western liberalism and individualism. The nationalist world view portrays Japan as an innocent victim of rapacious and hypocritical foreigners. Right-wing academics, politicians and commentators believe that Japan was forced into a defensive war in the Pacific and was obliged to accept victors' justice after its defeat. Denying Japanese guilt for the war is seen as a key step in rebuilding national pride, and establishing independence from the United States. Naval power Some see a clear connection between such revisionism and Mr Abe's move to reinterpret a key article in the constitution that restricts the activities of Japan's military But Prof Mulloy says this concern is overblown. "The idea that Japan is being militarised is fanciful. Military spending has actually fallen until recently," he said. "The Japanese navy is one of the best in the world after the United States. But its capabilities are front-loaded, with very little in support. The navy probably couldn't sustain effective combat operations against China for more than two weeks." Others agree that China is deliberately making a false link between Mr Abe's policies and the militarism of the past to try to weaken Japan internationally. "Whatever the views, often objectionable, of these revisionists, there is absolutely no evidence that Japan is returning to any form of expansionist military policy. Indeed... recent changes in Japanese defence policy bind Japan in to its allies and partner countries, and further reduce any possibility of an aggressive military posture," says Simon Chelton, a former British defence attache in Tokyo. The present government, however, is increasing military spending and deploying forces to the south and west to meet the threat from China. Japan is also working to strengthen its alliance with the United States and forge military ties with other Asian countries that feel threatened by a rising China. Some in the Japanese foreign ministry worry that Mr Abe's ties with revisionists and war-guilt deniers could be counter-productive. He has already upset Washington by ignoring advice not to go to the Yasukuni shrine. Opinion polls also indicate that anti-Chinese sentiment has surged to new levels in Japan. Many Japanese are infuriated by continuing demands for apologies from Chinese communists who make no attempt to address the reality of their own history. They see the constant references to past crimes as an attempt to weaken Japan's standing in the world and shake its hold on disputed islands and offshore resources. The fear is that Mr Abe, or those around him, could exploit such sentiment for their own ends. What is clear is that angry nationalism is on the rise in China and Japan, and the two feed on each other in a dangerous spiral. Whatever Mr Abe's true intentions, he has shown little inclination, as he attempted in his first term, to ease the dangerous tension with China and refocus on economic co-operation between the world's second and third largest economies.

चीन और जापान के बीच तनाव दशकों से अपने उच्चतम स्तर पर है क्योंकि टोक्यो विवादित पूर्वी चीन सागर द्वीपों पर बीजिंग के दबाव की अवहेलना करता है। जैसे ही अमेरिकी राष्ट्रपति बराक ओबामा इस क्षेत्र का दौरा कर रहे हैं, चार्ल्स स्कैनलॉन पूछते हैं कि क्या प्रधानमंत्री शिंजो आबे जापान को अधिक मुखर और आत्मविश्वासी शक्ति बनाने के अपने अभियान में जानबूझकर राष्ट्रवाद की लपटों को हवा दे रहे हैं।


'Man on the Moon' moment - the year's big breakthroughs

Summary: It has been a remarkable year of promise in medical science - from inventing ways of treating the untreatable to reversing paralysis and keeping the brain alive after death.

By James GallagherHealth and science correspondent "It was like [being the] first man on the Moon," said 30-year-old Thibault. He was describing the moment he was able to take his first steps since being paralysed in a fall two years ago. He can now move all four of his paralysed limbs with a mind-controlled exoskeleton suit. His movements, particularly walking, are far from perfect and the robo-suit is being used only in the lab. But researchers say the approach could one day improve patients' quality of life. Meanwhile, nerves inside paralysed people's bodies have been "rewired" to give movement to their arms and hands. Patients in Australia can now feed themselves, put on make-up, turn a key, handle money and type at a computer. A unique drug made for just one girl with unprecedented speed Mila Makovec's doctors have performed a seemingly impossible feat - a girl with a deadly brain disease has been given a unique drug that was invented from scratch just for her and all in less than a year. She was diagnosed with fatal and untreatable Batten disease. The eight-year-old's medical team in Boston performed whole-genome sequencing - a detailed interrogation - on Mila's DNA, her genetic code, and uncovered a unique mutation that was causing her disease. Having seen the fault, the researchers thought it might be possible to treat it. They designed a drug, tested it on Mila's cells and on animals in the laboratory and won approval to use it from the US Food and Drug Administration. Drugs normally take about a decade and a half to get from the laboratory, go through clinical trials and get to patients. The US team got there in a year. Mila is now having far fewer seizures, although she is not cured. Gene-silencing drugs arrive A new class of medicine - called gene silencing - has shown its ability to reverse previously untreatable diseases. A gene is part of our DNA that contains the blueprint for making proteins, such as hormones, enzymes or raw building materials. But our DNA is locked away inside a cell's nucleus and kept apart from a cell's protein-making factories. So our bodies use a short strand of genetic code, called messenger RNA, to bridge the gap and carry the instructions. Gene-silencing drugs kill the messenger. Sue Burrell no longer has bouts of severe pain caused by her acute intermittent porphyria. And Vincent and Neil Nicholas are both taking gene silencing medicines for a disease called amyloidosis. Viruses to the rescue Isabelle Carnell Holdaway's life was saved by an experimental cocktail of viruses. The teenager's body was being attacked by deadly and seemingly untreatable bacteria and she was given less than a 1% chance of survival. She had big, black, festering lesions forming on her skin where the infection was taking hold. And she ended up in intensive care when her liver started failing, with large colonies of bacteria forming in her body. But doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital attempted an untested "phage therapy", which uses viruses to infect and kill bacteria. Phage-therapy never became mainstream medicine and the field was eclipsed by the discovery of antibiotics, which are much easier to use. But now phage-therapy is having a resurgence due to the rise of superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics. Isabelle's case could be the first of many. A new approach to cancer Charlotte Stevenson, a two-year-old from Belfast, was one of the first patients to benefit from a "revolutionary" new class of cancer drugs. Tumour-agnostic drugs do not care where the cancer is growing in the body as long as it has a specific genetic abnormality inside. The first, called larotrectinib, has been approved for use across Europe. It is designed to target tumours with a genetic abnormality known as an NTRK gene fusion. They can be found in Charlotte's sarcoma as well as some brain, kidney, thyroid and other cancers. Meanwhile... Cancer immunotherapy has reached a huge milestone. The medicine uses a patient's own immune system to fight cancer and is a story we have followed closely. Now more than half of patients are surviving a deadly skin cancer (melanoma) that was considered untreatable just a decade ago. Ten years ago just one in 20 patients would live for five years after being diagnosed with late-stage melanoma. Most would die in months. It has been an extraordinary and rapid transformation in care. A first drug to slow dementia? A US pharmaceutical company says it has developed the first drug to slow Alzheimer's disease. The drug, called aducanumab, is an antibody that clears toxic proteins that build up in the brain. The announcement in October was a massive surprise, as the firm Biogen had written off the drug in only March this year. Then it reviewed the evidence to show that those taking the highest dose did benefit and retained more memory and language ability and were better at day-to-day tasks such as cleaning, shopping and doing laundry. If the drug is approved, which is not guaranteed, it would be one of the most significant moments in modern medicine. A new type of dementia Meanwhile, experts think they have found a new form of dementia and millions may have been wrongly diagnosed. Dementia is a symptom found in many diseases of the brain and memory loss is the most common feature. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia and others include vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, fronto-temporal dementia, Parkinson's disease dementia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Now "limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy" or more simply "Late" has been added to the list. Separating twins One of our most followed stories of the year was the separation of two conjoined twins. Safa and Marwa were born joined at the skull and they had never been able to see each other's faces. There are no official figures for how often this happens, but one estimate says craniopagus conjoined twins are born once in every 2.5 million births. Most do not live longer than a day. To separate them required multiple surgeries, months of hard work and the expertise of hundreds of hospital workers. Pig brains partially revived four hours after death The line between life and death became fuzzy in 2019. Pig brains were partially revived four hours after the animals were slaughtered. The study showed the death of brain cells could be halted and that some connections in the brain were restored. The feat was performed by rhythmically pumping a synthetic blood around the decapitated brains. The surprise findings challenge the idea that the brain goes into irreversible decline within minutes of the blood supply being cut off and could lead to new treatments for brain damage and disorders. However, there were no signals from the brain that would indicate awareness or consciousness. A new tool to manipulate DNA A new way of editing the code of life could correct 89% of the errors in DNA that cause disease. The technology, called prime editing, has been described as a "genetic word processor" able to accurately re-write the genetic code. It is a bit like pressing Ctrl-F to find the bit of text you want to change, then pressing Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy over the new text (or the command key if you're a Mac user). There are some 75,000 different mutations that can cause disease in people and the researchers say prime editing can fix nearly nine in 10 of them. It has already been used to correct damaging mutations in the lab, including those that cause sickle cell anaemia and Tay-Sachs disease (a rare and fatal nerve condition). Giving people a voice again Scientists have developed a brain implant that can read people's minds and turn their thoughts to speech. First an electrode is implanted in the brain to pick up the electrical signals that manoeuvre the lips, tongue, voice box and jaw. Then powerful computing is used to simulate how the movements in the mouth and throat would form different sounds. This results in synthesised speech coming out of a "virtual vocal tract". It is not perfect. If you listen to this recording of synthesised speech: You can tell it is not crystal clear (the recording says "the proof you are seeking is not available in books"). The team at the University of California, San Francisco says the technology could help people when disease robs them of their ability to talk. E cigarettes do help smokers quit Vaping has been under intense scrutiny this year. More than 2,400 people have needed hospital treatment, and there have been 50 deaths, in the US from "e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury". Meanwhile, a teenage boy nearly died after vaping caused a catastrophic reaction in his lungs. But experts have continued to stress vaping is safer than smoking tobacco and this year came proof that vaping helps smokers quit. A trial, in the New England Journal of Medicine, found 18% of smokers who used them to quit remained smoke-free after a year, compared with 9.9% of those using traditional nicotine-replacements. Other things that caught our eye: * Researchers have produced unprecedented images of a baby's heart while it is still inside the womb. * Measles has a devastating impact on the body's immune system that could make it harder to fight infections for years. * The origins of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa are in both the mind and the body, with changes hardwired into some people's DNA altering the way they processed fats and sugars. * The ultimate limit of human endurance has been worked out by scientists analysing a 3,000-mile run, the Tour de France and other elite events. * A diet rich in bananas, chickpeas and peanuts can boost good gut bacteria to help malnourished children grow. * People keep making new brain cells throughout their lives (well at least until the age of 97), according to a study on human brains. * A "pumping" patch containing millions of living, beating stem cells could help repair the damage caused by a heart attack. * A fungus - genetically enhanced to produce spider toxin - can rapidly kill huge numbers of the mosquitoes that spread malaria. * Supercooling human livers to -4C triples the time they can be kept before transplant compared with putting them on ice. * It may not come as a surprise, but the food we eat is putting 11 million of us into an early grave each year. * Scientists have taken cancer apart piece by piece to reveal its weaknesses, and come up with new ideas for treatment. * Nearly everyone can lower their risk of dementia by up to a third, even if it runs in the family, by living a healthy lifestyle. Follow James on Twitter.

यह चिकित्सा विज्ञान में एक उल्लेखनीय वर्ष रहा है-अनुपचारित के इलाज के तरीकों का आविष्कार करने से लेकर पक्षाघात को उलटने और मृत्यु के बाद मस्तिष्क को जीवित रखने तक।


Josephine Bowes: The forgotten 'pioneer' of the art world

Summary: More than a century ago, a French actress-turned-aristocrat achieved her dream of building a world class museum in the north of England. But Josephine Bowes's impact on the art world was almost expunged from the history books by her widower's jealous second wife.

By Duncan LeatherdaleBBC News For 125 years, the sleepy town of Barnard Castle has been a surprising pit-stop for art aficionados. The Bowes Museum, most famous for its silver swan automaton which periodically preens itself from its bed of twisted glass rods and sparkling fish, is filled with fine furniture, paintings by El Greco and Canaletto, and attracts 120,000 visitors a year. But its beginnings can be traced back to the vision of Josephine Benoite Coffin-Chevalie - a woman described as a "philanthropist" and "pioneer" of the art world, but who at the time of writing does not even have a Wikipedia page. Her journey from Parisian clockmaker's daughter to wealthy wife of a British aristocrat began in 1847, when she was introduced to John Bowes, the illegitimate son of the 10th Earl of Strathmore and a distant ancestor to the Queen Mother. He was part of what was known as the demi-monde, a scene in Paris consisting of artists and courtesans, aristocrats and decadence, prostitutes and absinthe drinkers. To please one of his paramours he purchased the Theatre des Varietes playhouse in the city's second arrondissement - the very place he would first see his future wife - then 22 - take the stage. John, 14 years her senior, was captivated. And Josephine, like many young Parisian women of her set, was keen to climb the social ladder. "The way to get power as a woman in Paris was to become the mistress of a powerful man," said Judith Phillips, archivist at the Bowes Museum. "You would get bought a house and be well looked after and even respected. "Having a mistress was a common thing, but marrying them was rarely heard of." Josephine's allure clearly had an impact on her smitten lover because after a five-year fling, the pair bucked the trend and wed. As a wedding present, he bought her the extravagant Chateau du Barry near Paris, the former home of a mistress of King Louis XV, which Josephine later went on to immortalise on canvas. Though they had their home in France, the pair regularly visited John's family estates in County Durham, where the couple decided to leave their legacy - the Bowes Museum. They had a vision - to improve people's lives through art - and believed that what the farmers and coal-miners of the region needed was a place of cultural refinement. Because of the John's illegitimate status - his parents having married just 16 hours before his father died - and the stigma attached to not inheriting the title, he was keen to leave a legacy in his own name. "They didn't have children and they always knew John's estates would pass back to the family," Ms Phillips said. "They wanted to leave something behind, but it was more than that. "They were part of the industrial age, people were becoming better educated and Josephine and John wanted to introduce the people of the area to art and culture. "At that time art was viewed as a refining agent, exposure to it would just make people better. "They were philanthropists." Josephine was a keen artist and it was her Parisian connections and ability to find the next big thing which was key, Ms Phillips said. "She knew what was going to be popular before everyone else. "She had great contacts and knew a lot of the artists when they were young and before they were famous. "She was buying impressionist-type paintings before Impressionism was even a thing. She was very much a pioneer." However, museum curator Joanna Hashagen said Josephine's husband is the more remembered of the two for his contribution to the site. It is just one of the reasons the museum is marking its 125th anniversary with an exhibition to remind the world of the pivotal role the actress played in its creation. "Josephine was absolutely crucial," said Ms Hashagen. "John gets the main billing, he is remembered, but that's not really fair. "It is fair to say that without his money Josephine would not have been able to do this, but without her he would never have done it either. "About 90% of the bills and letters from art dealers were addressed to Josephine, she made it happen." As construction work got under way, there were plans to build an apartment for Josephine to live in at the museum - the assumption being that she would outlive her husband and would spend her widow years organising the collection. But neither lived to see it. Josephine had always suffered from regular bouts of illness and it is believed her conditions included asthma and bronchitis, not to mention more scandalous afflictions rife in their raffish circles. "We know John had venereal disease," Ms Hashagen said. "We think Josephine probably had it too, lots of people did, it was a very racy time. That could be why they never had children." Josephine died on 9 February 1874, five years after she had laid the museum's foundation stone. She was 48 years old. But it is because of what John did next that so little is actually known about her. The art collector had amassed more than 15,000 objects for the museum but, thanks to the jealousy of her husband's next wife, few of Josephine's personal possessions actually remain. Alphonsine de-Saint-Amand launched a ruthless campaign to expunge the memory of her predecessor in new husband's life, for example destroying all but one of the hundreds of letters Josephine had written to her husband. Realising his error, John was in the process of divorcing her when the stresses of the ill-fated relationship and funding the museum took their toll. He died on 9 October 1885 aged 74, seven years before the museum opened. "In fairness to John he was probably lonely and believed his new wife would help complete the museum," Ms Phillips said. "Sadly that was not the case." The museum opened on 10 June 1892, about 25 years after Josephine laid the foundation stone. Though she could dispose of Josephine's things, the second Mrs Bowes could do nothing to stop the museum's creation and success. More than 100 years later, it has cemented its place in the art world as a highly regarded and respected outlet, which in recent years has hosted international exhibitions from Yves Saint Lauren and Vivienne Westwood. The exhibition pays homage to both Josephine's vision and life, which is far more than the tale of a rich aristocrat being seduced by a racy artist, according to Ms Hashagen. "When they were apart they wrote to each other every other day and we know from the way John talked about her in letters to other people that he cared for her deeply, he was very thin-skinned and protective of her. "It is clear they did genuinely love each other," she said. Josephine Bowes: A Woman of Taste and Influence is on at the Bowes Museum until 16 July. The museum will celebrate its 125th anniversary on 10 June with a day of festivities.

एक सदी से भी पहले, एक फ्रांसीसी अभिनेत्री से अभिजात वर्ग बनने वाली अभिनेत्री ने इंग्लैंड के उत्तर में एक विश्व स्तरीय संग्रहालय बनाने का अपना सपना पूरा किया। लेकिन कला की दुनिया पर जोसेफिन बोवेस के प्रभाव को उनकी विधवा की ईर्ष्यालु दूसरी पत्नी ने इतिहास की किताबों से लगभग हटा दिया था।


Gay minister Scott Rennie says marriage is evolving

Summary: Scotland's first openly gay minister has questioned claims that legalising gay marriage would have huge social implications.

Reverend Scott Rennie, of Aberdeen's Queen's Cross Church, told the BBC that in 100 years no-one would see what the fuss was about. The Scottish government is currently holding a consultation on whether same sex marriage should be legalised. However, Mr Rennie said marriage had always been an evolving institution. He said he failed to see how two people of the same gender sharing love was any different from a man and a woman sharing the same. Mr Rennie was appointed at Queen's Cross Church in 2009. The Kirk's General Assembly voted in May to allow the induction of some gay ministers.

स्कॉटलैंड के पहले खुले तौर पर समलैंगिक मंत्री ने उन दावों पर सवाल उठाया है कि समलैंगिक विवाह को वैध बनाने से बड़े सामाजिक निहितार्थ होंगे।


Facebook: The challenges on the next page

Summary: Even now the Facebook story seems barely believable.

By Russell HottenBusiness reporter, BBC News A 21-year-old geek starts a social media phenomenon in his bedroom; transforms the way we use the internet; is feted as a visionary by world leaders; has the globe's biggest investors and advertisers queuing at his door; clashes with privacy regulators and strikes fear into parents; is the subject of a film that wins three Oscars; and, err... makes billions along the way. And Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has done it all in about eight years. No wonder the stuffed shirts of Wall Street and the T-shirts of Silicon Valley call the company "hot". Can this remarkable story continue? We are about to find out. Facebook's decision to float on the stock market is a watershed moment that will force the brash young business into adulthood. The private company - private in both the legal and cultural sense - will be exposed to scrutiny like never before; its business model dissected by investors looking for a quick buck, and its executives made to endure the demands of Wall Street. "The transition to being a publicly listed company will inevitably change the dynamic of Facebook, despite Mark Zuckerberg's insistence that his focus will remain on users and not shareholders," said Andrew Tonks, a social media expert at the online marketing agency Koozai. Mr Zuckerberg is said to have initially resisted a stock market launch, and investors will be watching to see how the "brains" behind Facebook deals with the new pressures. 'Big Kahuna' The company's size, and the breadth of shareholder base - many of whom, no doubt, want to cash in some of their investment - meant that a stock market listing became inevitable. Facebook's IPO will be big. As a Wall Street Journal headline put it last week, it will be the Big Kahuna Of Stock Listings. However, the decision to raise just $5bn from the flotation (via the sale of just a small percentage of the available shares) is about half what analysts expected the company would seek. The final figure to be raised will be determined over the coming months once Facebook's financial advisers have assessed demand for the shares. Many analysts still think Facebook will achieve a valuation of some $100bn, putting it above Ford, at $47bn, and Citigroup, at $89bn, but way behind Apple, at $425bn. Sceptics argue that there is a lot of hype priced into Facebook's valuation, and legendary investor Jim Rogers has already said that he is unlikely to be a 'buyer'. Facebook's shares can be privately traded on the SharesPost secondary market. There, the company's valuation is about $74bn. Facebook supporters, however, point to its money-spinning track record, and potential to refine its advertising model and add to the 845 million active users of the site. The bulk of Facebook's revenues come from online display advertising, the big banner-style ads that typically include text, logos or videos. Facebook's revenues in 2011 almost doubled to $3.7bn, and research firm eMarketer believes the figure could reach almost $5.8bn in 2012. In data published this week analysts at another research group, comScore, estimated that Facebook's share of the US online display ad market grew to 27.9% in 2011, up from 21% a year earlier. This compares with Yahoo's 11%, and Google and Microsoft, which have less than 5%, comScore said. In short, say the Facebook bulls, the company is growing fast and smashing the competition - success that will continue as ever-more advertisers are persuaded that online marketing is the way to reach an audience. Not convinced? But advertising prices for online are far lower than for the rates traditional media - well under half, say analysts - because many ad companies remain unconvinced about the return on their investment. Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer's principal analyst, said: "Even though Facebook has spent several years wooing marketers, many of them still believe the ads are not effective at driving clicks and other actions. "Facebook must either work to improve its clickthrough rate or show advertisers that advertising on the site is effective even without a click or other action," she said. Key to Facebook's continued growth will be rolling out new and improved services, such as music and movies, that will get users spending more time on the site. So-called 'user fatigue' presents a real challenge to a company that must remain fresh. There are, of course, hundreds of millions of more potential users that Facebook has yet to enlist, although it has been pointed out that many of these are in countries without infrastructure or run by governments hostile to social networking sites. Facebook's user growth is certainly not flatlining, but it may slow over the next few years. This could be especially true as Twitter and the Google+ service evolve in new directions. Even Amazon is adding more social features to its site with reviews and interaction. Slower user growth may not matter if Facebook can extract a bigger financial value from its existing users through improved data mining and more sophisticated targeting by advertisers. Martin Pyykkonen, analyst at Wedge Partners, said that Facebook's 'like' button, which when clicked by users can allow advertisers to target promotions more directly, is ripe for expansion. 'Holy grail' "It is likely that advertisers will be able to even better target their audiences as Facebook goes deeper with integrating apps, games, movies, music," he said. What is important is not necessarily the way in which users view ads and click them, but the way in which consumers talk about brands with their Facebook friends. Koozai's Andrew Tonks believes Facebook has achieved "the holy grail of advertising platforms... by weaving brand messages into the fabric of people's social lives. "It can deliver advertising to people without them realising they are being sold to," he said. But many marketers believe firms can engage consumers on Facebook without spending a great deal on advertising. Ms Williamson said: "Having amassed a large quantity of 'likes', some brands feel that they can continue to market to these people directly through their pages rather than by buying advertising on Facebook. "This may especially be the case for companies that market to Facebook's younger users, because they tend to be more willing to 'like' or comment on brand pages." She expects advertising will continue to decrease as a proportion of total revenues as Facebook diversifies its revenue streams. Already we are seeing the importance of other parts of the business. Facebook supports a network of app developers, such as the hugely popular gaming group Zynga. And app firms must take payments from customers via Facebook Credits, the company's online payment system. EMarketer estimated that revenues from Facebook Credits doubled last year to $470m - and is set to grow. Facebook's headline figures are undeniably impressive. And given that the full potential of its business model appears untapped, the omens look good. But there are two financial maxims worth considering: that past performance is no guarantee of future success; and that the only reason a company floats on the stock market is to sell its shares for more than they are worth. We are about to see whether the most anticipated stock market debut in history holds them to be true.

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