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Dinosaur extinction: 'Asteroid strike was real culprit' - BBC News
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2020-01-17
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A team of scientists discounts the idea that large-scale volcanism drove the demise of the dinosaurs.
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Science & Environment
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Prof Paul Wilson: "The impact event is exactly contemporaneous with the extinction"
Was it the asteroid or colossal volcanism that initiated the demise of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago?
This has been a bit of a "to and fro" argument of late, but now a group of scientists has weighed in with what they claim is the definitive answer.
"It was the asteroid 'wot dun it'!" Prof Paul Wilson told the BBC.
His team's analysis of ocean sediments shows that huge volcanoes that erupted in India did not change the climate enough to drive the extinction.
Volcanoes can spew enormous volumes of gases into the atmosphere that can both cool and warm the planet.
And the Deccan Traps, as the volcanic terrain in India is known, certainly had massive scale - hundreds of thousands of cubic km of molten rock were erupted onto the land surface over thousands of years.
But the new research from Southampton University's Prof Wilson, and colleagues from elsewhere in Europe and the US, indicates there is a mismatch in both the effect and timing of the volcanism's influence.
The group drilled into the North Atlantic seafloor to retrieve its ancient muds.
"The deep ocean sediments are packed full of these microscopic marine organisms called Foraminifera," Prof Wilson explained.
"You get about a thousand of them in a teaspoon of sediment. And we can use their shells to figure out the chemistry of the ocean and its temperature, so we can study in great detail the environmental changes that are occurring in the run-up to the extinction event.
"And what we discovered is that the only way in which we can get our (climate) model simulations to match the observed temperature changes is to have the volcanic emissions of harmful gases done and dusted a couple of hundred thousand years before the impact event.
"We find the impact event is exactly contemporaneous with the extinction."
Investigations of a 200km-wide crater under the Gulf of Mexico suggest it is the scar left by the culprit asteroid.
When it hit the Earth, the city-sized object would immediately have generated tsunami and wide-scale fires - in addition to hurling billions of tonnes of debris in all directions.
But what scientists have also established recently is that the asteroid struck rocks rich in sulphur. When this material was vaporised and ejected into the high atmosphere, it would have led to a rapid and deep cooling of the climate (albeit over a relatively short period), making life a struggle for all sorts of plant and animal life.
As the fossil record shows, the dinosaurs, apart from birds, couldn't get beyond the stressful environmental changes. In contrast, the mammals could and rose to the prominence they enjoy today.
The new study is published in the journal Science. Its lead author is Dr Pincelli Hull from Yale University.
The impact that changed life on Earth
Today, the asteroid crater is buried under the Gulf of Mexico
Mexico's famous sinkholes (cenotes) have formed in weakened limestone overlying the crater
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51150001
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Labour leadership: Don't just blame 2019 campaign, Starmer warns - BBC News
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2020-01-17
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The leadership hopeful tells the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg he can restore trust in Labour as a "force for good".
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Sir Keir Starmer has warned against blaming Labour's historic election defeat on its 2019 campaign alone.
The leadership candidate said the party had been losing votes in its heartlands for a "long time" and had lost four general elections in a row.
People wanted "fundamental change" but did not trust Labour to deliver it, he told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg.
He vowed to restore trust in Labour "as a force for good and a force for change" and end factional infighting.
But he refused to say whether his politics were closer to Tony Blair or Jeremy Corbyn, saying: "I want to lead a Labour Party that is trusted enough to bring about fundamental change.
"I don't need somebody else's name or badge to do that."
The BBC's political editor is aiming to interview all five Labour leadership hopefuls before the result is announced on 4 April.
Sir Keir, who has been endorsed by Britain's biggest union, Unison, said he could "unify the party" and "forge a path to victory at the next general election".
"We need to unify the party and I think I can do that," he said.
"We spent far too much time fighting ourselves and not fighting the Tories. Factions have been there in the Labour Party - they've got to go."
Some on the left have blamed the election defeat on Sir Keir and others at the top of the party promoting another Brexit referendum.
He said: "We were trying to bring together both sides whether they voted Leave, or they voted Remain.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Sir Keir Starmer: I think I can restore that trust in Labour
"But I think the idea that Brexit was the only issue in this election is wrong, or even that in our heartlands it was the determining factor because actually if you look at what's happened in our heartlands we've been losing votes there for a long time."
Speaking at a pub in Somers Town, in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency, he said he believed Labour could win last year's election, even though the "odds were against us", but added: "In the end people didn't have trust in us.
"Partly that was to do with the leadership, rightly or wrongly, partly it was to do with Brexit, anti-Semitism came up, and the overload of the manifesto."
He said Labour needed to "restore that trust, but if we only look at the 2019 election we're missing the fact that we've lost four in a row".
He said his priority, as a "moral socialist", would be tackling the "gross inequality" in British society and ensuring "equal opportunity for everyone, wherever they come from and whatever their background".
"I don't need someone else's name or badge."
Sir Keir Starmer wouldn't today reveal whether he saw his ideas and his ambitions for the country as closer to Jeremy Corbyn or Tony Blair.
Instead, when we sat down in a north London pub in his constituency, he wanted to make the valid argument that different leaders work in different eras, confronting different problems.
Times change, essentially, and the next leader, he believes, needs to be looking to the next set of issues and try to take the party by the scruff of the neck and make it into an effective opposition straight away - but with an eye on where the political battles will be in 2024.
But his obvious reluctance to plant a flag somewhere on Labour's wide political spectrum is perhaps representative of the problem that he faces in this race.
Sir Keir admitted he does have friends who are Tories, and that he received support from colleagues on the Conservative benches when his father died in 2018.
The shadow Brexit secretary said he judged people "by what they say and who they are, rather than which party they're in".
The five leadership contenders - Sir Keir, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Emily Thornberry, Jess Phillips and Lisa Nandy - are set to take part in a series of hustings around the country, starting in Liverpool on Saturday.
They need the support of 5% of local parties or at least three affiliates - two must be unions - by 14 February to make it on to the final ballot of party members.
The new leader will be announced on 4 April.
It comes as the grassroots pressure group Momentum endorsed Mrs Long-Bailey.
The group, which grew out of Jeremy Corbyn's 2015 leadership campaign, said it would mobilise thousands of supporters to elect Mrs Long-Bailey as the next Labour leader.
Momentum polled members on whether it should officially back Mrs Long-Bailey, with 70% of those who took part endorsing the plan, and 52% backing Angela Rayner as her deputy.
Around 14,700 people applied to register as temporary supporters of Labour to vote in the leadership contest, the party has said.
The 48-hour window to apply to be a temporary supporter closed at 17:00 GMT on Thursday. Applicants who meet the eligibility requirements will be able to vote in the leader and deputy leader elections.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51139619
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Impeachment trial: How Trump lawyers set out their case - BBC News
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2020-01-25
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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In two hours of arguments, the Trump team accused the Democrats of bringing a wafer-thin impeachment case.
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US & Canada
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'Read the transcript' has become a feature at Trump rallies Image caption: 'Read the transcript' has become a feature at Trump rallies
Mike Purpera, Deputy White House Counsel, is making the president's case to the Senate.
So far, he's sticking to the subject of the now-infamous 25 July call between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, President Zelensky.
"Read the transcript" is now a common refrain among Trump and his supporters, and Purpera is making the same argument now.
Purpera says that this call effectively exonerates the president, pinpointing a particularly contentious line, in which Trump asks Zelensky to "do us a favour".
Democrats say the call is damning in itself, as it clearly shows Trump was looking for a personal favour to have Ukraine investigate Joe Biden.
The "us" here refers to the United States, he says, insisting Trump was looking out for US national interests.
Want to know more about the call?
Read the BBC's Anthony Zurcher's analysis on how an overheard phone call could damage Trump.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-51243762
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news_live_world-us-canada-51243762
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Brexit: Boris Johnson signs withdrawal agreement in Downing Street - BBC News
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2020-01-25
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The PM hails a "fantastic moment" for the UK as he signs document paving the way for its EU exit.
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UK Politics
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Boris Johnson has signed the Brexit withdrawal agreement in Downing Street.
The prime minister hailed a "fantastic moment" for the country after he put his name to the historic agreement, which paves the way for the UK's exit from the European Union next Friday.
He said he hoped it would "bring to an end far too many years of argument and division".
Earlier on Friday, European leaders signed the document in Brussels, before it was transported to London by train.
The signings mark another step in the ratification process, following Parliament's approval of the Brexit bill earlier this week. The European Parliament will vote on the agreement on 29 January.
Downing Street officials said the PM marked the document with a Parker fountain pen, as is traditional for ceremonial signings in No 10.
It was witnessed by EU and Foreign Office officials, including the PM's Chief Negotiator David Frost, and Downing Street staff.
"The signing is a fantastic moment, which finally delivers the result of the 2016 referendum and brings to an end far too many years of argument and division," Mr Johnson said.
"We can now move forward as one country - with a government focused upon delivering better public services, greater opportunity and unleashing the potential of every corner of our brilliant UK, while building a strong new relationship with the EU as friends and sovereign equals."
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Earlier on Friday, the document crossed the channel on a Eurostar train, having been signed in Brussels by the European Council's president Charles Michel and the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
The UK will keep a copy of the agreement while the original will return to Brussels, where it will be stored in an archive along with other historic international agreements.
Next week's European Parliament vote is seen as all but a formality, after it was backed by the parliament's constitutional affairs committee on Thursday.
Mrs von der Leyen and other senior EU figures are sceptical about the UK government's plan to negotiate a comprehensive deal on future relations before the end of 2020. They believe the timetable for that is too tight.
But Prime Minister Boris Johnson is upbeat, insisting the UK can now move forward after years of wrangling over Brexit.
Mr Michel, the former Belgian Prime Minister who chairs EU summits, said in a tweet: "Things will inevitably change but our friendship will remain. We start a new chapter as partners and allies."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51244126
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Labour leadership: I can sell 'hope for the future', says Long-Bailey - BBC News
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2020-01-22
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She tells the BBC Labour had "a great set of policies" at the election but got its "messaging" wrong.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Labour needs to sell a message of aspiration to voters, says Long-Bailey
Labour had "a great set of policies" at the general election but got its "messaging" wrong, Rebecca Long-Bailey has told the BBC.
"We should have been talking about aspiration," the Labour leadership contender said, but too often talked about "handouts" instead.
She said she had the ability to sell "a positive vision" and "hope for the future" that wins elections.
The race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn is down to four after Jess Phillips quit.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and Wigan MP Lisa Nandy have made it on the final leadership ballot, after securing the necessary trade union and affiliated group support.
Emily Thornberry and Mrs Long-Bailey have yet to reach the threshold.
Ms Phillips said she would be happy with either Ms Nandy or Sir Keir as leader, but argued that Mrs Long-Bailey would be the wrong choice for Labour at this moment.
Mr Corbyn announced he would be standing down after Labour suffered its worst defeat, in terms of seats, since 1935 in December's election.
But Mrs Long-Bailey - whose campaign is backed by grassroots organisation Momentum - refused to blame the party's manifesto, saying she was "proud" of the policies in it.
Labour's "compromise position" on Brexit "didn't satisfy our communities and meant that we weren't trusted," she told the BBC's political editor, Laura Kuenssberg.
And, she added: "We didn't tackle anti-Semitism and we weren't trusted to deal with that issue within our own party."
The manifesto policies - which included nationalising utilities and a big increase in tax-funded public spending - were not drawn together into an "overarching narrative" that chimed with the electorate, she said.
"Our messaging really didn't resonate with voters. We should have been talking about aspiration and how all of the things within our manifesto would improve your life, would improve the outcome for businesses in our areas, but we didn't say that.
"Quite often we talked about handouts and how we will help people, rather than providing that broad positive vision of the future."
She said Labour had a history of talking "about how bad the Conservatives are" without "showing that real vision and hope for the future".
"That's what wins general elections, showing that real vision and hope for the future. And I know that I can do that and that's why I'm standing to be the leader of the party."
The shadow business secretary said Labour did not do enough to "sell" her flagship policy, the Green Industrial Revolution, which she said "would have transformed our economy and delivered investment in regions and nations".
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"Whoever becomes leader, we have to reunite the party to make sure that we're unified in the message that we're putting forward. But we had many of the right answers to the right questions."
She also hit back at claims she was not forceful enough to be prime minister.
"I'm not shy. I mean, I have spent last four years, you know, locked in a room developing many of the policies that we've been trying to push forward as a party, but I don't think you could ever describe me as shy."
She said she believed her "forensic approach" to politics would be a challenge to Boris Johnson, whom she described as having "a bit of a struggling relationship with the truth and with detail".
On the prospect of being PM herself one day, she said she could picture herself living in 10 Downing Street, "chilling out" in her pyjamas on a Friday night, with "Netflix and a Chinese takeaway".
In a wide-ranging interview, Mrs Long-Bailey was asked whether she had any Conservative friends in Parliament.
"Not really, no," she replied, but added: "I'm friendly to everyone."
She said her non-political friends would not tell her if they supported the Tories "because I'd be angry".
She also reiterated her belief that women had a "right to choose" when it came to abortion and she was not in favour of changing the law, after a row over comments she made to Catholic priests during the general election.
And she backed a change in the law to allow transgender people to self-identify without the need for medical evidence.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Four candidates remain in the race for the Labour leadership
Labour's manifesto committed to reform of the Gender Recognition Act to allow self-identification, but critics warn it will make it easier for someone born as a man but now identifying as a woman to gain access to women-only spaces such as toilets, changing rooms, prisons and domestic violence refuges.
Asked whether she had any concerns about the policy, Mrs Long-Bailey said she understood the arguments, but Labour must "fully support our trans community".
Laura Kuenssberg interviewed Sir Keir last week and is aiming to interview Ms Thornberry and Ms Nandy in the coming weeks.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51208545
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Terry Jones: Monty Python stars pay tribute to comedy great - BBC News
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2020-01-22
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Members of the iconic comedy group lead tributes to their "outrageously funny" co-star, who has died aged 77.
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Entertainment & Arts
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The BBC's David Sillito looks back at the Welsh comic actor, writer and director's life
Monty Python stars have led the tributes to their co-star Terry Jones, who has died at the age of 77.
The Welsh actor and writer played a variety of characters in the iconic comedy group's Flying Circus TV series, and directed several of their films.
He died on Tuesday, four years after contracting a rare form of dementia known as FTD.
David Walliams and Simon Pegg were among other comedians who remembered him.
Fellow Python star Sir Michael Palin described Jones as "one of the funniest writer-performers of his generation".
In a tweet, John Cleese said he was "a man of so many talents and such endless enthusiasm".
Eric Idle, another member of the highly influential comedy troupe, recalled the "many laughs [and] moments of total hilarity" they shared.
"It's too sad if you knew him, but if you didn't you will always smile at the many wonderfully funny moments he gave us," he went on.
Terry Gilliam, with whom Jones directed the group's film The Holy Grail in 1975, described his fellow Python as a "brilliant, constantly questioning, iconoclastic, righteously argumentative and angry but outrageously funny and generous and kind human being".
"One could never hope for a better friend," he said.
Palin added: "Terry was one of my closest, most valued friends. He was kind, generous, supportive and passionate about living life to the full.
"He was far more than one of the funniest writer-performers of his generation, he was the complete Renaissance comedian - writer, director, presenter, historian, brilliant children's author, and the warmest, most wonderful company you could wish to have."
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Screenwriter Charlie Brooker posted: "RIP the actual genius Terry Jones. Far too many brilliant moments to choose from."
David Walliams thanked his comedy hero "for a lifetime of laughter".
Simon Pegg - who acted in Jones' final film as director, 2015's Absolutely Anything - said: "Terry was a sweet, gentle, funny man who was a joy to work with and impossible not to love."
And comedian Eddie Izzard told BBC News: "It's a tragedy - the good go too early. Monty Python changed the face of world comedy. It will live forever. It's a terrible loss."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Michael Palin on Terry Jones: "He was a wonderful companion"
Shane Allen, BBC controller of comedy commissioning, wrote that it was a "sad day to lose an absolute titan of British comedy" and "one of the founding fathers of the most influential and pioneering comedy ensembles of all time".
Jones was born in Colwyn Bay and went on to study at Oxford University, where he met his future Python pal Palin in the Oxford Revue - a student comedy group.
Alongside Palin, Idle and the likes of David Jason, he appeared in the BBC children's satirical sketch show Do Not Adjust Your Set, which would set the template for their work to come with Python.
Jones directed, starred in and co-wrote Monty Python's 1979 film Life of Brian
He wrote and starred in Monty Python's Flying Circus TV show and the comedy collective's films, as a range of much-loved characters. These included Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson, Cardinal Biggles of the Spanish Inquisition and Mr Creosote.
In addition to directing The Holy Grail with Gilliam, Jones took sole directorial charge of 1979's Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life in 1983.
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Cleese said: "Of his many achievements, for me the greatest gift he gave us all was his direction of Life of Brian. Perfection."
Beyond Monty Python, he wrote the screenplay for the 1986 film Labyrinth, starring David Bowie.
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Monty Python's Flying Circus, the groundbreaking comedy series that made Jones and his fellow cast members international stars, first aired on BBC One in October 1969.
Surreal, anarchic and bawdily irreverent, the show's blend of live-action sketches and animated interludes mocked both broadcasting conventions and societal norms.
Jones and Palin had met at Oxford, while Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle studied at Cambridge. After university, they took part in various comedy shows before forming Monty Python with US-born animator Terry Gilliam.
After four series, the troupe moved to the big screen to make Arthurian spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Monty Python's Life of Brian, a controversial parody of Biblical epics.
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, their final film as a collective, returned to the original series' sketch-based format.
The surviving members reunited periodically after Chapman's death in 1989, most notably for a run of live shows at the O2 in London in 2014.
Jones (left) as the store manager and Eric Idle as Chris Quinn in Monty Python's sketch The Department Store-Buying an Ant
The statement from Jones' family noted his "uncompromising individuality, relentless intellect and extraordinary humour [that] has given pleasure to countless millions across six decades".
"Over the past few days his wife, children, extended family and many close friends have been constantly with Terry as he gently slipped away at his home in north London.
"His work with Monty Python, his books, films, television programmes, poems and other work will live on forever, a fitting legacy to a true polymath."
Terry Jones as Mr Creosote, alongside John Cleese, in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life in 1983
The family thanked Jones' "wonderful medical professionals and carers for making the past few years not only bearable but often joyful".
They said: "We hope that this disease will one day be eradicated entirely. We ask that our privacy be respected at this sensitive time and give thanks that we lived in the presence of an extraordinarily talented, playful and happy man living a truly authentic life, in his words 'Lovingly frosted with glucose.'"
Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51209197
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Palin and Cleese remember 'strange and silly moments' with Terry Jones - BBC News
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2020-01-22
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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"He was a remarkable fellow because he had endless energy and enthusiasm," Cleese tells the BBC.
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Entertainment & Arts
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Michael Palin on Terry Jones: "He was a wonderful companion"
Sir Michael Palin and John Cleese have been remembering their "warm" and "remarkable" Monty Python co-star Terry Jones, who has died at the age of 77.
"Terry was first of all an enormous enthusiast," Sir Michael told the BBC.
"He threw himself into things with such passion and such energy, and he really refused to take on things which didn't excite him and which didn't feel different from what else was around.
"Part of his warmth was his love of all sorts of things and comedies - he knew an awful lot about the silent film comedians. There were so many aspects to Terry, but I would say enthusiasm and passion were the two main words that described him best.
"We had some very strange and silly moments together over the years. He was a very keen cook and I remember one time he was shucking oysters at his home. He loved entertaining people, he was the most marvellous entertainer, but unfortunately he nearly cut his finger off. Blood was spurting out of his finger and we were sent down to the nearest hospital.
"Terry had to keep his finger above his head so we entered the hospital, myself and Terry, with his hand up in the air like he was permanently asking for permission to do something. As we walked through casualty everybody laughed, it was wonderful. They couldn't believe the Pythons had visited them in this miserable place.
"I loved writing with Terry because he was very creative. He had some wonderful ideas for characters, he was very funny, he was very good at plot. That was something I was less good at, and when we did the Ripping Yarns, Terry was the one who was very keen to give each story a meaning and a significance.
"He felt everything he did was somehow important and had to be thought about. That was our creative working relationship, and also we both enjoyed a pint - that was very nice and we had lovely times together.
"Another bizarre thing we did [came] when I was first writing with Terry. He lived down in Waterloo and they opened a new men's toilets on Lambeth Walk. Being a local celebrity, Terry was asked to be the first person to use them!
"So Terry and I went down to the new toilets on Lambeth Walk with the band playing behind us. The only other person with us was the Mayor of Lambeth.
"So we enjoyed life together. He was a terrific person to enjoy things with. He really did increase the value of almost everything you did.
Palin and Jones wrote Ripping Yarns and both appeared in the Tomkinson's Schooldays episode
"It was an awful form of dementia for someone who loved debating and cajoling and arguing and playing different characters, to be reduced to being able to say very few words, as he was over the last two or three years.
"I lived fairly nearby and I used to go see him quite a lot, and though his dementia was shutting him down there were little moments you absolutely treasured - maybe just a glance or a touch on the hand or something like that.
"Quite recently I went round with a book we'd written together, Dr Fegg's Encyclopaedia of All World Knowledge. I started reading a few little bits out of it and for the first time for a long time I heard real laughter, that little wispy laughter of Terry's.
"I thought that was a marvellously encouraging thing to happen, but what was best of all was that Terry was only laughing at the bits he'd written. I thought, that's defying dementia for you."
Sir Michael Palin was speaking on BBC Radio Four's The World at One.
Cleese described Jones as "a man of so many talents".
"He was a remarkable fellow because he had endless energy and enthusiasm. We used to laugh at him sometimes. I remember he got up one day when we were shooting on the south coast and he got excited about how green the grass was.
"So there was this hugely lively energy to him that was incredibly attractive.
"He also had a confidence that I rather envied. He'd take things on without any worry he might not do them terribly well. I'd always hold back, but I don't think Terry was ever assailed by those kind of doubts. He was a remarkable chap and had an enormous number of different talents - he was the most multi-talented [member] of the Pythons.
"He wrote a kind of sketch that was unlike what the rest of us wrote - for example, that wonderful sketch about the German joke that killed anyone who heard it. That was not something the rest of us could do.
"He used to [write] Icelandic sagas starting with some man heavily armoured in the tundra, or a long sketch about the Spanish smuggling pornography into Elizabethan England - much more visual, much longer sketches that were quite unlike what for example [Graham] Chapman and I were writing.
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"He was also a very good director. How he shot Life of Brian really was masterful. If I had to give a class in how to shoot comedy, I would show that.
"I would say, 'Just look at how he uses the camera and how economic he is'. Sometimes he would leave the camera there and let the actors be funny, which is the kind of direction you never see now. I think Life of Brian was his masterpiece.
"We had many good times together - we used to go out for dinners and have a little too much wine. He loved reds and we both thought good food was more important than anything else.
"There was also a good atmosphere [though] much of the arguing would go on late into the evening. He didn't back off his arguments easily, but it was all part of this terrific energy and confidence.
"The last time I saw him was at the funeral of [former Play School presenter] Beryl Vosburgh [in 2016]. He sort of recognised me but there wasn't any kind of ordinary communication between us.
"I shall remember him as Mr Creosote. He is so funny in it and it's one of the funniest things we did. So I shall think of him exploding."
Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51209872
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Sian Green-Lord has prosthetic leg made from Louis Vuitton bag - BBC News
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2020-01-22
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It is the first time Sian Green-Lord has been able to wear high heels since she was hit by a taxi.
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A woman who lost part of her leg when she was hit by a taxi in New York has made a prosthetic leg out of a vintage Louis Vuitton bag.
Sian Green-Lord, from Leicester, was walking with a friend in Manhattan on holiday when the vehicle mounted the kerb in 2013.
The aspiring model can now also wear high heels for the first time ever since the crash using her new leg, which was made using a vintage handbag.
Taxi driver, Faysal Himon, who has never faced criminal charges, blames a cyclist with whom he was having an argument just before the crash.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-51181692
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news_uk-england-leicestershire-51181692
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Scottish independence: Johnson rejects Sturgeon's indyref2 demand - BBC News
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2020-01-14
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Boris Johnson confirms he will not agree to Nicola Sturgeon's request for a second independence referendum.
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Scotland politics
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Boris Johnson has rejected the request from Nicola Sturgeon
The UK government has formally rejected a call from Scotland's first minister for a second independence referendum.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a referendum would "continue the political stagnation Scotland has seen for the past decade".
And he said First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had previously pledged that the 2014 referendum would be a "once in a generation" vote.
Ms Sturgeon tweeted that the Tories were attempting to "deny democracy".
She said Mr Johnson's formal refusal of her request for a referendum to be held later this year was "predictable but also unsustainable and self defeating", and insisted that "Scotland will have the right to choose".
The first minister also said the Scottish government would set out its response and "next steps" before the end of the month, and that the devolved Scottish Parliament would again be asked to "back Scotland's right to choose our own future".
Scottish voters backed remaining in the UK by 55% to 45% in the referendum in 2014.
Ms Sturgeon says she wants to hold another vote on independence, and made a formal request last month for the UK government to transfer powers - known as a Section 30 order - to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh that would ensure any referendum is legal.
The request came after Ms Sturgeon's SNP, which forms the Scottish government, won 48 of the 59 seats in Scotland in the UK general election.
In his written response to Ms Sturgeon, the prime minister said he had "carefully considered and noted" her arguments.
But he said: "You and your predecessor (Alex Salmond) made a personal promise that the 2014 independence referendum was a "once in a generation" vote.
"The people of Scotland voted decisively on that promise to keep our United Kingdom together, a result which both the Scottish and UK governments committed to respect in the Edinburgh Agreement."
A large pro-independence march was held in Glasgow at the weekend
Mr Johnson said the UK government would "continue to uphold the democratic decision of the Scottish people and the promise you made to them".
And he said he did not want to see Scotland's schools, hospitals and employment "again left behind because of a campaign to separate the UK".
The prime minister added: "For that reason, I cannot agree to any request for a transfer of power that would lead to further independence referendums".
The formal rejection comes days after the UK government's Scottish secretary, Alister Jack, said another victory in next year's Scottish Parliament election would still not give the SNP a mandate to hold a referendum.
Ms Sturgeon has previously warned that a "flat no" from Mr Johnson to her request would "not be the end of the matter".
But she has made clear that she will not hold an unofficial referendum similar to the disputed one in Catalonia in 2017, arguing that it would not actually deliver independence as the result would not be recognised by the EU or wider international community.
The first minister said: "The Tories are terrified of Scotland having the right to choose our own future. They know that given the choice the overwhelming likelihood is that people will choose the positive option of independence.
"The Tories - and their allies in the leaderships of Labour and the Lib Dems - lack any positive case for the union, so all they can do is try to block democracy.
"It shows utter contempt for the votes, views and interests of the people of Scotland and it is a strategy that is doomed to failure."
The prospect of an independence referendum on Nicola Sturgeon's preferred timetable - the second half of 2020 - now looks very remote.
The first minister is confident that Mr Johnson's refusal will help make the case for independence in the longer term, but for now her options are limited.
In the first instance, she is planning another vote at Holyrood to underline the backing of MSPs for a new referendum. With the SNP and Greens holding a majority between them, this is sure to pass - but this has happened before, to little avail.
She has not ruled out going to court, but this would hardly accelerate matters - constitutional lawyers have warned that "there are no legal short cuts" around the political battlefield.
So the next clear opportunity to break the deadlock may be the 2021 Holyrood elections. Ms Sturgeon clearly has one eye on that poll already, talking about the Tories being on a "road back to political oblivion".
Between now and then, another year of constitutional stalemate beckons.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-51106796
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news_uk-scotland-scotland-politics-51106796
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Boris Johnson: First speech as PM in full - BBC News
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2020-01-14
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Read the full text of Boris Johnson’s first speech in Downing Street as the UK’s prime minister.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Boris Johnson's first speech as prime minister in full
Boris Johnson has delivered his first speech in Downing Street after becoming the UK's new prime minister.
You can read the full text of his speech below.
I have just been to see Her Majesty the Queen who has invited me to form a government and I have accepted.
I pay tribute to the fortitude and patience of my predecessor and her deep sense of public service.
But in spite of all her efforts, it has become clear that there are pessimists at home and abroad who think that after three years of indecision, that this country has become a prisoner to the old arguments of 2016 and that in this home of democracy we are incapable of honouring a basic democratic mandate.
And so I am standing before you today to tell you, the British people, that those critics are wrong.
The doubters, the doomsters, the gloomsters - they are going to get it wrong again.
The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts, because we are going to restore trust in our democracy and we are going to fulfil the repeated promises of Parliament to the people and come out of the EU on October 31, no ifs or buts.
And we will do a new deal, a better deal that will maximise the opportunities of Brexit while allowing us to develop a new and exciting partnership with the rest of Europe, based on free trade and mutual support.
I have every confidence that in 99 days' time we will have cracked it. But you know what - we aren't going to wait 99 days, because the British people have had enough of waiting.
The time has come to act, to take decisions, to give strong leadership and to change this country for the better.
And though the Queen has just honoured me with this extraordinary office of state my job is to serve you, the people.
Because if there is one point we politicians need to remember, it is that the people are our bosses.
My job is to make your streets safer - and we are going to begin with another 20,000 police on the streets and we start recruiting forthwith.
My job is to make sure you don't have to wait 3 weeks to see your GP - and we start work this week, with 20 new hospital upgrades, and ensuring that money for the NHS really does get to the front line.
My job is to protect you or your parents or grandparents from the fear of having to sell your home to pay for the costs of care.
And so I am announcing now - on the steps of Downing Street - that we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve.
My job is to make sure your kids get a superb education, wherever they are in the country - and that's why we have already announced that we are going to level up per pupil funding in primary and secondary schools.
And that is the work that begins immediately behind that black door.
And though I am today building a great team of men and women, I will take personal responsibility for the change I want to see.
Never mind the backstop - the buck stops here.
And I will tell you something else about my job. It is to be prime minister of the whole United Kingdom.
And that means uniting our country, answering at last the plea of the forgotten people and the left-behind towns by physically and literally renewing the ties that bind us together.
So that with safer streets and better education and fantastic new road and rail infrastructure and full fibre broadband we level up across Britain with higher wages, and a higher living wage, and higher productivity.
We close the opportunity gap, giving millions of young people the chance to own their own homes and giving business the confidence to invest across the UK.
Because it is time we unleashed the productive power not just of London and the South East, but of every corner of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The awesome foursome that are incarnated in that red, white, and blue flag - who together are so much more than the sum of their parts, and whose brand and political personality is admired and even loved around the world.
For our inventiveness, for our humour, for our universities, our scientists, our armed forces, our diplomacy for the equalities on which we insist - whether race or gender or LGBT or the right of every girl in the world to 12 years of quality education - and for the values we stand for around the world
Everyone knows the values that flag represents.
It stands for freedom and free speech and habeas corpus and the rule of law, and above all it stands for democracy.
And that is why we will come out of the EU on October 31.
Because in the end, Brexit was a fundamental decision by the British people that they wanted their laws made by people that they can elect and they can remove from office.
And we must now respect that decision, and create a new partnership with our European friends - as warm and as close and as affectionate as possible.
And the first step is to repeat unequivocally our guarantee to the 3.2 million EU nationals now living and working among us, and I say directly to you - thank you for your contribution to our society.
Thank you for your patience, and I can assure you that under this government you will get the absolute certainty of the rights to live and remain.
And next I say to our friends in Ireland, and in Brussels and around the EU: I am convinced that we can do a deal without checks at the Irish border, because we refuse under any circumstances to have such checks and yet without that anti-democratic backstop.
And it is of course vital at the same time that we prepare for the remote possibility that Brussels refuses any further to negotiate, and we are forced to come out with no deal, not because we want that outcome - of course not - but because it is only common sense to prepare.
And let me stress that there is a vital sense in which those preparations cannot be wasted, and that is because under any circumstances we will need to get ready at some point in the near future to come out of the EU customs union and out of regulatory control, fully determined at last to take advantage of Brexit.
Because that is the course on which this country is now set.
With high hearts and growing confidence, we will now accelerate the work of getting ready.
And the ports will be ready and the banks will be ready, and the factories will be ready, and business will be ready, and the hospitals will be ready, and our amazing food and farming sector will be ready and waiting to continue selling ever more, not just here but around the world.
And don't forget that in the event of a no deal outcome, we will have the extra lubrication of the £39 billion, and whatever deal we do we will prepare this autumn for an economic package to boost British business and to lengthen this country's lead as the number one destination in this continent for overseas investment.
And to all those who continue to prophesy disaster, I say yes - there will be difficulties, though I believe that with energy and application they will be far less serious than some have claimed.
But if there is one thing that has really sapped the confidence of business over the last three years, it is not the decisions we have taken - it is our refusal to take decisions.
And to all those who say we cannot be ready, I say do not underestimate this country.
Do not underestimate our powers of organisation and our determination, because we know the enormous strengths of this economy in life sciences, in tech, in academia, in music, the arts, culture, financial services.
It is here in Britain that we are using gene therapy, for the first time, to treat the most common form of blindness.
Here in Britain that we are leading the world in the battery technology that will help cut CO2 and tackle climate change and produce green jobs for the next generation.
And as we prepare for a post-Brexit future, it is time we looked not at the risks but at the opportunities that are upon us.
So let us begin work now to create free ports that will drive growth and thousands of high-skilled jobs in left-behind areas.
Let's start now to liberate the UK's extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules, and let's develop the blight-resistant crops that will feed the world.
Let's get going now on our own position navigation and timing satellite and earth observation systems - UK assets orbiting in space, with all the long term strategic and commercial benefits for this country.
Let's change the tax rules to provide extra incentives to invest in capital and research.
And let's promote the welfare of animals that has always been so close to the hearts of the British people.
And yes, let's start now on those free trade deals - because it is free trade that has done more than anything else to lift billions out of poverty.
All this and more we can do now and only now, at this extraordinary moment in our history.
And after three years of unfounded self-doubt, it is time to change the record.
To recover our natural and historic role as an enterprising, outward-looking and truly global Britain, generous in temper and engaged with the world.
No one in the last few centuries has succeeded in betting against the pluck and nerve and ambition of this country.
They will not succeed today.
We in this government will work flat out to give this country the leadership it deserves, and that work begins now.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49102495
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Samira Ahmed wins BBC equal pay tribunal - BBC News
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2020-01-10
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The judgement said "her work on Newswatch was like Jeremy Vine's work on Points of View".
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Entertainment & Arts
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Presenter Samira Ahmed has won the employment tribunal she brought against the BBC in a dispute over equal pay.
Ahmed claimed she was underpaid by £700,000 for hosting audience feedback show Newswatch compared with Jeremy Vine's salary for Points of View.
The unanimous judgement said her work was like that done by Vine, and the BBC had failed to prove the pay gap wasn't because of sex discrimination.
Ahmed said she was "glad it's been resolved".
"No woman wants to have to take action against their own employer," she said, adding: "I love working for the BBC."
In response, the BBC insisted the pay for Ahmed and Vine "was not determined by their gender".
Describing Ahmed as "an excellent journalist and presenter", the corporation added: "We regret that this case ever had to go to tribunal."
The BBC said it would "work together with Samira to move on in a positive way".
Ahmed (right) was accompanied by BBC Breakfast's Naga Munchetty on the tribunal's first day
Ahmed thanked the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), her legal team and "everyone - all the men and women who've supported me and the issue of equal pay". She added: "I'm now looking forward to continuing to do my job, to report on stories and not being one".
Ahmed had told the tribunal, which ended in November, that she "could not understand how pay for me, a woman, could be so much lower than Jeremy Vine, a man, for presenting very similar programmes and doing very similar work".
Vine got £3,000 per episode for BBC One's Points of View between 2008 and 2018. Ahmed was paid £440 for Newswatch, which is shown on the BBC News Channel and BBC Breakfast.
The tribunal judgement said: "The difference in pay in this case is striking. Jeremy Vine was paid more than six times what the claimant was paid for doing the same work as her."
The BBC had argued that Ahmed and Vine performed "very different roles". But the judgement said the corporation did not produce evidence to prove the different levels of pay were based on differences in the presenters' roles, programmes and profiles.
The judgement did not say whether Ahmed will receive the compensation she said she was owed.
The judgement stated: "We do not accept that the lighter tone of Points of View meant that the claimant's work and that of Mr Vine were not broadly similar."
Jeremy Vine hosted Points of View for a decade until 2018
It added that despite the BBC saying the presenter of Points of View "needed to have 'a glint in the eye' and to be cheeky, we had difficulty in understanding what the respondent meant and how that translated into a 'skill' or 'experience' to do a job.
"The attempts at humour came from the script. Jeremy Vine read the script from the autocue. He read it in the tone in which it was written. If it told him to roll his eyes he did. It did not require any particular skill or experience to do that."
The BBC's legal team said Ahmed was paid the same as her Newswatch predecessor Ray Snoddy, who they said was her pay comparator, rather than Vine.
But Ahmed's closing submissions criticised the corporation's witnesses and evidence.
She also said BBC witnesses were prepared to give evidence "about matters that they had little knowledge of" and that the corporation had "repeatedly sought to make other unfair comments" about her credibility.
This is a complex judgement with potentially huge implications.
The position of the Tribunal is that all the arguments brought by the BBC to justify the difference in pay between Samira Ahmed and Jeremy Vine were insufficient.
In other words, the claim that Vine had greater profile, that Entertainment requires different skills to News, and that Points of View reaches more people didn't persuade the Tribunal that the difference is pay was justified.
The burden of proof fell on the BBC to show that that difference did not amount to sex discrimination. It failed.
The BBC and broadcasters across the globe have long thought it a common sense assertion that profile, fame, or stardust - call it what you will - justifies different pay rates for presenters who do similar work.
This case has exploded that proposition. It will encourage many other women to bring similar cases.
The BBC has made significant progress in recent years on both the gender pay gap across the organisation and some cases of equal pay.
But its journey on this issue, where it has sought to set a national example, is only just beginning.
National Union of Journalists (NUJ) general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said the union would seek the full back pay for Ahmed.
"We will be meeting with the BBC next week and hopefully common sense will prevail, this will be resolved, Samira gets her settlement and she can move on," she said.
It was "an incredibly brave decision on Samira's part" to bring the case to tribunal, Stanistreet told reporters. "You couldn't get a more emphatic win, a resounding victory," she said.
Around 20 similar cases are "in the pipeline of the actual tribunal system", with "as many as 70" unresolved at the time of the hearing, she added.
The BBC said it has been working hard to resolve these, adding the number of cases is significantly lower now.
"Some of them have already been satisfactorily resolved. But there are still more to sort out," she said.
Figures from broadcasting and beyond tweeted their support after the judgement was released.
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Stressing its commitment to equality and equal pay, the BBC said presenters - both female and male - had always been paid more for Points of View than Newswatch.
The corporation said: "We're sorry the tribunal didn't think the BBC provided enough evidence about specific decisions - we weren't able to call people who made decisions as far back as 2008 and have long since left the BBC."
It added that in the past its pay framework "was not transparent and fair enough" and that "we have made significant changes to address that".
"We're glad this satisfied the tribunal that there was sufficient evidence to explain her pay now."
In addition to Newswatch, Ahmed also co-hosts BBC Radio 4 arts show Front Row.
Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-50599080
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news_entertainment-arts-50599080
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Stormzy stokes Wiley row as he hits number one - BBC News
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2020-01-04
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The rapper tells Radio 1 that his fellow British rapper is acting "like a drunk uncle" on Twitter.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Stormzy has scored the first number one of the decade, as his song Own It climbs to the top of the singles chart.
The track is a collaboration with Burna Boy and Ed Sheeran, and earns Stormzy his third UK number one in 12 months, knocking Ellie Goulding off the top.
But it follows a Twitter spat this week between Stormzy and fellow rapper Wiley over the song.
Wiley criticised Stormzy for working with Sheeran, whom he had once said was using grime music to gain "clout".
And he suggested that the only reason Jay-Z wanted to work with Stormzy on a different track was because of his association with Sheeran.
Speaking to Radio 1's Scott Mills about Wiley, Stormzy said: "I don't think we'll be meeting up anytime soon. I think he just gets a bit 'woop' and then he hits the old social media. Obviously, when you get 'wooped' you're not meant to tweet.
"It's like a drunk uncle, it's like 'aw uncle, come on man... get back to bed'."
Stormzy added he felt bad that Sheeran was being dragged into the online argument.
"This is why it's even worse, because Ed's the kindest, nicest soul ever. He's just trying to travel the world and he's probably getting notifications," he explained. "But I said 'don't worry I'll do all the trolling'. I don't mind trolling Wiley, he loves it."
Stormzy's previous number ones in the UK include Vossi Bop and Take Me Back To London, the latter another collaboration with Sheeran,
The last British rapper to score three chart-topping singles in the space of 12 months was Dizzee Rascal more than a decade ago.
He landed a trio of chart-toppers with Holiday, Dirtee Disco and Shout between September 2009 and June 2010.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-50988633
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news_entertainment-arts-50988633
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Sir Rod Stewart charged over Florida hotel 'punch' - BBC News
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2020-01-04
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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A police report says the singer allegedly struck a security guard in a row at a Florida hotel.
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UK
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Sir Rod Stewart has been charged by police after allegedly punching a security guard at a hotel in Florida.
A police report says the altercation occurred after the singer and his companions, including his son Sean, failed to gain access to a private event on New Year's Eve.
Sean allegedly pushed the security guard and Sir Rod struck his chest "with a closed fist", the report says.
Sir Rod and his son were both charged with "simple battery".
The security guard at the Breakers Palm Beach Hotel, named as Jessie Dixon, told officers that he saw a group of people near the check-in table of the private event in the children's area, trying to enter without permission.
Mr Dixon told police that the group "began to get loud and cause a scene", refusing to leave.
Sean Stewart got "nose to nose" with the security guard, according to the affidavit, who told him to back away.
The report then alleges that Sean Stewart, 39, shoved Mr Dixon backwards, before Sir Rod stepped towards the security guard and threw a punch, hitting him in the left ribcage.
The arresting officer says in the report that he made contact with Sir Rod, who said he and his family approached the check-in table to try to gain access to the event for their children.
According to the affidavit, Sir Rod told police that after the family were denied access, Mr Dixon became argumentative with them, causing his family to become "agitated".
Sir Rod, 74, apologised for his role in the incident, the officer's report says.
The officer says the altercation was witnessed by two other hotel employees, who signed witness statements confirming they saw the push by Sean Stewart and the punch by Sir Rod.
Video footage also revealed Sean Stewart and Sir Rod as the "primary aggressors" in the confrontation, according to the report.
Both father and son were charged and are due to appear at the Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Complex on 5 February.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50993128
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news_uk-50993128
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Labour leadership: Contenders set out stalls on leadership and Brexit - BBC News
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2020-01-05
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy question manifesto choices as Jess Phillips does not rule out rejoining EU.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Sir Keir Starmer: "We lost the public's trust in the Labour Party as a force for good"
Candidates hoping to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader have questioned the party's manifesto choices while opening up dividing lines on Brexit.
Sir Keir Starmer said its election offer was "over-loaded" while both Lisa Nandy and Jess Phillips said voters did not trust its free broadband pledge.
Ms Phillips also said she would not rule out rejoining the EU if Brexit turned out not to be a success.
She said she would not change her view that the UK was "better off" in the EU.
Sir Keir and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry - both strong supporters of another referendum before the election - said Labour's focus as an opposition should now be on ensuring Boris Johnson negotiated the best economic and trade partnership with the EU.
Five candidates, also including Clive Lewis, have so far entered the race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.
Labour's ruling body is due to meet on Monday to decide the timetable for the election. Would-be candidates have to be nominated by more than 20 MPs and must also get the backing of at least 5% of constituency parties or three affiliated bodies - two of which must be trade unions.
Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey is also expected to officially declare her candidacy in the coming days.
The contest was called after Mr Corbyn announced he would stand down as leader after Labour's heavy election defeat.
Both Sir Keir and Ms Phillips told the BBC's Andrew Marr the party must learn the lessons of the defeat and why some many previously rock-solid Labour seats in the Midlands and the North of England turned to the Conservatives.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Jess Phillips: "The country didn't trust us to govern"
Sir Keir said the manifesto was one of a number of "cumulative" factors that eroded trust, on top of concerns over the party's Brexit policy, its leadership and its record on tackling anti-Semitism.
"There was a general feeling the manifesto was over-loaded. We lost the public's trust in the Labour Party as a force for good and a force for change," he said. "After four general election losses we have to address that straight away."
But he warned Labour against "unpicking" the last manifesto when it should be focused on its offer to voters in five years time. He also said it would be wrong to "retreat" from Mr Corbyn's focus on reducing inequality and protecting the public services.
While not the sole reason for its defeat, Ms Phillips also identified the manifesto - which pledged to bring rail, mail, water and energy into public ownership and extend the role of the state into new areas - as one of Labour's weak points.
"The fundamental thing is that the country did not trust us to govern," she said. "They did not trust to deliver on the things we were saying."
Rebecca Long-Bailey is expected to join the race
While there was a strong case for nationalising the railways and ending private involvement in the prison and probation services, she suggested tackling deep-seated social problems, such as homelessness and social care, were more important than public control of key utilities.
"We lost them on some of the basics. My son does not go to school five days a week. Lots of people in the country can give you their own example. While that was the case, offering free broadband was just not believable."
The Birmingham Yardley MP said the party must stop obsessing with factionalism and internal positioning and speak honestly to people.
"People have to feel a connection with us again. People have to feel we are on their side."
Ms Nandy also distanced herself from the broadband pledge, telling BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics: "People said to us, 'It's all very well promising free broadband but can you sort out the buses?' and that was the more pressing issue in their lives. It's not about whether you're radical or not it's about whether you're relevant."
Ms Thornberry said Labour had been wrong to allow the Conservatives to fight the election on the "single issue" of Brexit.
She told Sky News that the opposition's focus should now be on ensuring the UK had a relationship with Europe in the coming years that's "going to work for jobs and the economy".
Sir Keir, who like Ms Thornberry was a supporter of another referendum, suggested the issue of EU membership was now closed and the party needed to move on from an argument between Remain and Leave.
Asked whether she would support, as leader, the UK going back into the EU, Ms Phillips said it was sensible to "wait and see".
"If we are living in an absolute paradise of trade and totally safe in the world...then maybe I will be proven wrong. But if the reality is if if our country is safer and more economically viable to be in the EU, I will fight for that regardless of how difficult that argument is to make."
The candidates have also been pressed on the UK's relationship with the US following the killing of Iran's top military leader, Qasem Soleimani, in Iraq.
Ms Phillips said people were "not shedding any tears" over the Iranian general's death and, while she opposed the Iraq War, she would always support the deployment of British forces abroad if there was a "moral case" for it.
"What we have to make sure is that when we take action, it is lawful, proportionate and there is a moral case for it. If those questions can be answered, then I would absolutely take action to protect British lives."
However, Sir Keir said the UK should never find itself in the position of "blindly following the Americans".
If he became prime minister, he said he would pass legislation to circumscribe the ability of governments to take military action. He suggested it would have to pass three tests - if it was lawful, had been supported by Parliament and was part of a viable plan.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-50996799
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Sir Rod Stewart charged over Florida hotel 'punch' - BBC News
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2020-01-05
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A police report says the singer allegedly struck a security guard in a row at a Florida hotel.
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UK
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Sir Rod Stewart has been charged by police after allegedly punching a security guard at a hotel in Florida.
A police report says the altercation occurred after the singer and his companions, including his son Sean, failed to gain access to a private event on New Year's Eve.
Sean allegedly pushed the security guard and Sir Rod struck his chest "with a closed fist", the report says.
Sir Rod and his son were both charged with "simple battery".
The security guard at the Breakers Palm Beach Hotel, named as Jessie Dixon, told officers that he saw a group of people near the check-in table of the private event in the children's area, trying to enter without permission.
Mr Dixon told police that the group "began to get loud and cause a scene", refusing to leave.
Sean Stewart got "nose to nose" with the security guard, according to the affidavit, who told him to back away.
The report then alleges that Sean Stewart, 39, shoved Mr Dixon backwards, before Sir Rod stepped towards the security guard and threw a punch, hitting him in the left ribcage.
The arresting officer says in the report that he made contact with Sir Rod, who said he and his family approached the check-in table to try to gain access to the event for their children.
According to the affidavit, Sir Rod told police that after the family were denied access, Mr Dixon became argumentative with them, causing his family to become "agitated".
Sir Rod, 74, apologised for his role in the incident, the officer's report says.
The officer says the altercation was witnessed by two other hotel employees, who signed witness statements confirming they saw the push by Sean Stewart and the punch by Sir Rod.
Video footage also revealed Sean Stewart and Sir Rod as the "primary aggressors" in the confrontation, according to the report.
Both father and son were charged and are due to appear at the Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Complex on 5 February.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50993128
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Voices from Iran: 'Qasem Soleimani did not deserve such a fate' - BBC News
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2020-01-11
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Iranians share their thoughts on the killing of General Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike.
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Middle East
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The conflicts in Iraq and Syria turned Qasem Soleimani into something of a celebrity in Iran
Iranians have filled the centre of Tehran for the funeral procession of General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq last week.
Soleimani was the commander of the Revolutionary Guards' clandestine overseas operations arm, the Quds Force, and was one of the most powerful figures in Iran.
Iranians have been sharing their thoughts on the killing with BBC Persian.
I believe Soleimani did not deserve such a fate. He did a lot for Iran, protecting this country. He fought Daesh [the jihadist group Islamic State], the Taliban, etc.
Our enemies have been attacking our country for the past four decades and he tried to save the country.
Sadly, I can say many people in Iran are suffering from a paradox.
They blame this regime and the supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] for what is happening inside Iran, and they say the leader is a tyrant. But today they are mourning for Qasem Soleimani, who was the right hand of the same tyrant leader.
How can they call him a hero? The partner and right hand of a dictator cannot be a hero.
I agree that we have some issues in this country. We have economic difficulties, human rights issues, a lack of freedom of speech, etc. But these issues are internal and should be dealt with, within the country.
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The new situation we are facing is external. One of us Iranians was killed by foreigners. Our sense of patriotism would not allow us to side with the foreigners in this matter. We should be uniting against this [US] action.
I do not buy this argument that Qasem Soleimani had only been dealing with foreign affairs [as the commander of the Quds Force], or that he had nothing to do with the repression that ordinary Iranians are suffering from.
Soleimani was one of them [Iran's leadership]. If we are against this repressive regime, we are against every single person who is part of it.
I do not understand those who thank President Trump for this attack and question what Soleimani had been doing in Syria and Iraq.
If Iran should not be allowed to interfere in neighbouring countries, why should Americans be allowed to come to our region all the way from the other side of the Earth?
Qasem Soleimani was not a hero, in my opinion. He was a basic soldier, overrated by the establishments in Iran and the US.
People are being too emotional about his death.
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Samira Ahmed wins BBC equal pay tribunal - BBC News
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2020-01-11
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The judgement said "her work on Newswatch was like Jeremy Vine's work on Points of View".
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Entertainment & Arts
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Presenter Samira Ahmed has won the employment tribunal she brought against the BBC in a dispute over equal pay.
Ahmed claimed she was underpaid by £700,000 for hosting audience feedback show Newswatch compared with Jeremy Vine's salary for Points of View.
The unanimous judgement said her work was like that done by Vine, and the BBC had failed to prove the pay gap wasn't because of sex discrimination.
Ahmed said she was "glad it's been resolved".
"No woman wants to have to take action against their own employer," she said, adding: "I love working for the BBC."
In response, the BBC insisted the pay for Ahmed and Vine "was not determined by their gender".
Describing Ahmed as "an excellent journalist and presenter", the corporation added: "We regret that this case ever had to go to tribunal."
The BBC said it would "work together with Samira to move on in a positive way".
Ahmed (right) was accompanied by BBC Breakfast's Naga Munchetty on the tribunal's first day
Ahmed thanked the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), her legal team and "everyone - all the men and women who've supported me and the issue of equal pay". She added: "I'm now looking forward to continuing to do my job, to report on stories and not being one".
Ahmed had told the tribunal, which ended in November, that she "could not understand how pay for me, a woman, could be so much lower than Jeremy Vine, a man, for presenting very similar programmes and doing very similar work".
Vine got £3,000 per episode for BBC One's Points of View between 2008 and 2018. Ahmed was paid £440 for Newswatch, which is shown on the BBC News Channel and BBC Breakfast.
The tribunal judgement said: "The difference in pay in this case is striking. Jeremy Vine was paid more than six times what the claimant was paid for doing the same work as her."
The BBC had argued that Ahmed and Vine performed "very different roles". But the judgement said the corporation did not produce evidence to prove the different levels of pay were based on differences in the presenters' roles, programmes and profiles.
The judgement did not say whether Ahmed will receive the compensation she said she was owed.
The judgement stated: "We do not accept that the lighter tone of Points of View meant that the claimant's work and that of Mr Vine were not broadly similar."
Jeremy Vine hosted Points of View for a decade until 2018
It added that despite the BBC saying the presenter of Points of View "needed to have 'a glint in the eye' and to be cheeky, we had difficulty in understanding what the respondent meant and how that translated into a 'skill' or 'experience' to do a job.
"The attempts at humour came from the script. Jeremy Vine read the script from the autocue. He read it in the tone in which it was written. If it told him to roll his eyes he did. It did not require any particular skill or experience to do that."
The BBC's legal team said Ahmed was paid the same as her Newswatch predecessor Ray Snoddy, who they said was her pay comparator, rather than Vine.
But Ahmed's closing submissions criticised the corporation's witnesses and evidence.
She also said BBC witnesses were prepared to give evidence "about matters that they had little knowledge of" and that the corporation had "repeatedly sought to make other unfair comments" about her credibility.
This is a complex judgement with potentially huge implications.
The position of the Tribunal is that all the arguments brought by the BBC to justify the difference in pay between Samira Ahmed and Jeremy Vine were insufficient.
In other words, the claim that Vine had greater profile, that Entertainment requires different skills to News, and that Points of View reaches more people didn't persuade the Tribunal that the difference is pay was justified.
The burden of proof fell on the BBC to show that that difference did not amount to sex discrimination. It failed.
The BBC and broadcasters across the globe have long thought it a common sense assertion that profile, fame, or stardust - call it what you will - justifies different pay rates for presenters who do similar work.
This case has exploded that proposition. It will encourage many other women to bring similar cases.
The BBC has made significant progress in recent years on both the gender pay gap across the organisation and some cases of equal pay.
But its journey on this issue, where it has sought to set a national example, is only just beginning.
National Union of Journalists (NUJ) general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said the union would seek the full back pay for Ahmed.
"We will be meeting with the BBC next week and hopefully common sense will prevail, this will be resolved, Samira gets her settlement and she can move on," she said.
It was "an incredibly brave decision on Samira's part" to bring the case to tribunal, Stanistreet told reporters. "You couldn't get a more emphatic win, a resounding victory," she said.
Around 20 similar cases are "in the pipeline of the actual tribunal system", with "as many as 70" unresolved at the time of the hearing, she added.
The BBC said it has been working hard to resolve these, adding the number of cases is significantly lower now.
"Some of them have already been satisfactorily resolved. But there are still more to sort out," she said.
Figures from broadcasting and beyond tweeted their support after the judgement was released.
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Stressing its commitment to equality and equal pay, the BBC said presenters - both female and male - had always been paid more for Points of View than Newswatch.
The corporation said: "We're sorry the tribunal didn't think the BBC provided enough evidence about specific decisions - we weren't able to call people who made decisions as far back as 2008 and have long since left the BBC."
It added that in the past its pay framework "was not transparent and fair enough" and that "we have made significant changes to address that".
"We're glad this satisfied the tribunal that there was sufficient evidence to explain her pay now."
In addition to Newswatch, Ahmed also co-hosts BBC Radio 4 arts show Front Row.
Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
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Turner and the Thames: Will Gompertz reviews show at the house designed by the artist ★★★★☆ - BBC News
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2020-01-11
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An exhibition of little-known JMW Turner works has opened at the house he built near the Thames.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Apparently, the great British romantic painter JMW Turner (1775-1851) once said if he could have his life again he would have been an architect: a statement that is as good an argument as any I've heard against reincarnation.
That's not to say London's finest landscape artist couldn't have become a decent architect from a technical point of view. He knew his way around a set of plans having been apprenticed to an architect in his early teens, and would regularly include grand buildings in his paintings.
But design is only a small part of the art of architecture.
The real work is done in wooing and cajoling clients, compromising to accommodate their wishes, and working within a budget that is typically about as fit for purpose as an honest thief.
The famously irascible, opinionated, singular genius that was the barber's son from Covent Garden would have fallen out with more customers than the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have with family members. The chances of him running a successful architectural practice would have been zero, added to which we wouldn't have his extraordinary art to enjoy.
There is one place, though, where, for the first time since 1826, we can have a glimpse into a world where Turner the would-be architect and Turner the supreme painter of light and atmosphere, coexist.
It involves a trip to suburban Twickenham in south-west London to visit a small but perfectly formed Georgian house that Turner himself designed between 1807-13 (with a little help from his friend, the renowned architect, Sir John Soane).
The great landscape artist designed this small villa, Sandycombe Lodge, near the Thames at Twickenham between 1807-13
William Daniell's etching of JMW Turner when he was 25 years old, is at the artist's house
Sandycombe Lodge is his one and only realised building - or three-dimensional artwork as those wishing to elevate its status might say - and as such gives us two insights. Firstly, Turner's architectural tastes were as conservative as his paintings were radical. And secondly, he was, at heart, a modest man.
It is a bijou property on what was a sizeable plot, which the 32-year-old Turner bought to build his bolthole from the hurly burly of central London life.
He was already a very successful artist with a pad in Harley Street to which he had attached his own commercial art gallery. He liked the idea of owning a des-res in what the poet James Thomson described as "the matchless vale of the Thames" - the riverside area seen from Richmond Hill taking in Kew, Twickenham, Isleworth and Richmond.
It was the Cotswolds of the day, the trendy place where the rich and famous would "weekend" and fill their palatial houses with glamorous guests. Turner being Turner and a contrary sort of fellow, went tiny where others - such as his old Royal Academy president Sir Joshua Reynolds - went very large.
Turner wasn't interested in impressing anybody, he was interested in the light of the Thames, a river to which he had spent his life living in close proximity.
He'd invite a few mates to stay (including, somewhat surprisingly, the Duc d'Orléans, later Louis Philippe, King of France), take them fishing, ask them to join his "Pic-nic-Academical Club", and discuss poetry.
Turner designed the villa so he could see the river from this bedroom window
There is no evidence he painted with oils there, but he certainly sketched and probably went out on his specially made boat-cum-studio to paint in watercolours.
What is without doubt is his lifelong artistic relationship with the River Thames, an important motif most famously evident in his magnificent masterpiece Rain, Steam and Speed (1844).
It is, along with The Fighting Temeraire (1839), a painting that cements Turner as one of the most popular artists in the UK and beyond. They are both late works but you can see their origins in some earlier oil sketches he produced while living in Isleworth, which have been borrowed from the Tate Gallery and are now presented in a pocket-sized exhibition at Sandycombe Lodge.
Turner's Rain, Steam, and Speed, 1844, isn't in the show (along with The Fighting Temeraire), but you can see how they were influenced by the early sketches
The Fighting Temeraire, 1839 (not in the show), shows the final journey of this important warship, as it's towed along the Thames to Rotherhithe, where it was to be scrapped
It is the first time since the artist sold his Twickenham home nearly 200 years ago that any of his original paintings have hung on its walls. They are displayed in an upstairs guest bedroom, which is not very big, but then nor are the sketches.
There are five paintings in total, all on mahogany, one more warped than a 12 inch vinyl left out in the sun.
They are described as "experimental, private works", which is code for not first-rate. No matter, they are fascinating to see.
The largest, Walton Reach (1805), hangs over the fireplace. It is the least good of those on show, with a vertical clump of black/grey cloud hovering like a spaceship in the middle of the sky.
Walton Reach, 1805, is one of the five rarely shown oil sketches that the Tate has loaned to Turner's House for this exhibition
Constable would have laughed himself silly at his great rival's ham-fisted attempt to paint a meteorological effect. But then his eyes would have glanced to the left of the painting and seen Turner bang in form as river morphs into trees that lead to a heavenly pink sky obscuring a sun behind.
There's a lovely, quickly painted, sketch The Thames near Windsor (1807), which Cézanne would have admired for its palette and abstracted simplicity.
Another, On the Thames (1807), also has a proto-Impressionist feel as Turner captures light effects in real time.
On the Thames c.1807, like the other four works, was selected by Turner's House for depicting scenes close to the artist's house near the river
The two stand-out sketches are Sunset on the River (1805), which is beautiful, and Windsor Castle from the River (1807), which benefits from having been primed with white paint giving it a lustre and luminosity the others don't share. Both are clearly a foretaste of what is to come in Turner's later years.
Sunset on the River is an obvious precursor to Turner's Fighting Temeraire with the sun going down behind thin orange clouds, evoking the romantic nostalgia that makes his later masterpiece such a mesmerising artwork.
Windsor Castle from the River points towards Rain, Steam and Speed: a ghostly structure barely visible in the background, partially hidden behind the atmospheric effects of Thames water merging into hazy cloud.
Bathed in light, Turner's Sunset on the River, 1805, is a forerunner of his Fighting Temeraire
The sketches are not masterpieces, nobody is going to pay millions of pounds to own them or view them (£8 entry to the house and exhibition), but they are well worth seeing: on their own terms and also as a way of understanding how Turner worked and developed as an artist. That they are in the house he designed for himself is an added bonus: there's a lot to be said for quiet modesty in this overwrought, over-excited century.
It was an escape for Turner then. It can be an escape for you now.
• None Nonsense? What Turner would've made of the Turner Prize ★★★★☆
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51039965
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Labour leadership: I can sell 'hope for the future', says Long-Bailey - BBC News
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2020-01-23
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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She tells the BBC Labour had "a great set of policies" at the election but got its "messaging" wrong.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Labour needs to sell a message of aspiration to voters, says Long-Bailey
Labour had "a great set of policies" at the general election but got its "messaging" wrong, Rebecca Long-Bailey has told the BBC.
"We should have been talking about aspiration," the Labour leadership contender said, but too often talked about "handouts" instead.
She said she had the ability to sell "a positive vision" and "hope for the future" that wins elections.
The race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn is down to four after Jess Phillips quit.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and Wigan MP Lisa Nandy have made it on the final leadership ballot, after securing the necessary trade union and affiliated group support.
Emily Thornberry and Mrs Long-Bailey have yet to reach the threshold.
Ms Phillips said she would be happy with either Ms Nandy or Sir Keir as leader, but argued that Mrs Long-Bailey would be the wrong choice for Labour at this moment.
Mr Corbyn announced he would be standing down after Labour suffered its worst defeat, in terms of seats, since 1935 in December's election.
But Mrs Long-Bailey - whose campaign is backed by grassroots organisation Momentum - refused to blame the party's manifesto, saying she was "proud" of the policies in it.
Labour's "compromise position" on Brexit "didn't satisfy our communities and meant that we weren't trusted," she told the BBC's political editor, Laura Kuenssberg.
And, she added: "We didn't tackle anti-Semitism and we weren't trusted to deal with that issue within our own party."
The manifesto policies - which included nationalising utilities and a big increase in tax-funded public spending - were not drawn together into an "overarching narrative" that chimed with the electorate, she said.
"Our messaging really didn't resonate with voters. We should have been talking about aspiration and how all of the things within our manifesto would improve your life, would improve the outcome for businesses in our areas, but we didn't say that.
"Quite often we talked about handouts and how we will help people, rather than providing that broad positive vision of the future."
She said Labour had a history of talking "about how bad the Conservatives are" without "showing that real vision and hope for the future".
"That's what wins general elections, showing that real vision and hope for the future. And I know that I can do that and that's why I'm standing to be the leader of the party."
The shadow business secretary said Labour did not do enough to "sell" her flagship policy, the Green Industrial Revolution, which she said "would have transformed our economy and delivered investment in regions and nations".
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"Whoever becomes leader, we have to reunite the party to make sure that we're unified in the message that we're putting forward. But we had many of the right answers to the right questions."
She also hit back at claims she was not forceful enough to be prime minister.
"I'm not shy. I mean, I have spent last four years, you know, locked in a room developing many of the policies that we've been trying to push forward as a party, but I don't think you could ever describe me as shy."
She said she believed her "forensic approach" to politics would be a challenge to Boris Johnson, whom she described as having "a bit of a struggling relationship with the truth and with detail".
On the prospect of being PM herself one day, she said she could picture herself living in 10 Downing Street, "chilling out" in her pyjamas on a Friday night, with "Netflix and a Chinese takeaway".
In a wide-ranging interview, Mrs Long-Bailey was asked whether she had any Conservative friends in Parliament.
"Not really, no," she replied, but added: "I'm friendly to everyone."
She said her non-political friends would not tell her if they supported the Tories "because I'd be angry".
She also reiterated her belief that women had a "right to choose" when it came to abortion and she was not in favour of changing the law, after a row over comments she made to Catholic priests during the general election.
And she backed a change in the law to allow transgender people to self-identify without the need for medical evidence.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Four candidates remain in the race for the Labour leadership
Labour's manifesto committed to reform of the Gender Recognition Act to allow self-identification, but critics warn it will make it easier for someone born as a man but now identifying as a woman to gain access to women-only spaces such as toilets, changing rooms, prisons and domestic violence refuges.
Asked whether she had any concerns about the policy, Mrs Long-Bailey said she understood the arguments, but Labour must "fully support our trans community".
Laura Kuenssberg interviewed Sir Keir last week and is aiming to interview Ms Thornberry and Ms Nandy in the coming weeks.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51208545
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Terry Jones: Monty Python stars pay tribute to comedy great - BBC News
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2020-01-23
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Members of the iconic comedy group lead tributes to their "outrageously funny" co-star, who has died aged 77.
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Entertainment & Arts
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The BBC's David Sillito looks back at the Welsh comic actor, writer and director's life
Monty Python stars have led the tributes to their co-star Terry Jones, who has died at the age of 77.
The Welsh actor and writer played a variety of characters in the iconic comedy group's Flying Circus TV series, and directed several of their films.
He died on Tuesday, four years after contracting a rare form of dementia known as FTD.
David Walliams and Simon Pegg were among other comedians who remembered him.
Fellow Python star Sir Michael Palin described Jones as "one of the funniest writer-performers of his generation".
In a tweet, John Cleese said he was "a man of so many talents and such endless enthusiasm".
Eric Idle, another member of the highly influential comedy troupe, recalled the "many laughs [and] moments of total hilarity" they shared.
"It's too sad if you knew him, but if you didn't you will always smile at the many wonderfully funny moments he gave us," he went on.
Terry Gilliam, with whom Jones directed the group's film The Holy Grail in 1975, described his fellow Python as a "brilliant, constantly questioning, iconoclastic, righteously argumentative and angry but outrageously funny and generous and kind human being".
"One could never hope for a better friend," he said.
Palin added: "Terry was one of my closest, most valued friends. He was kind, generous, supportive and passionate about living life to the full.
"He was far more than one of the funniest writer-performers of his generation, he was the complete Renaissance comedian - writer, director, presenter, historian, brilliant children's author, and the warmest, most wonderful company you could wish to have."
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Screenwriter Charlie Brooker posted: "RIP the actual genius Terry Jones. Far too many brilliant moments to choose from."
David Walliams thanked his comedy hero "for a lifetime of laughter".
Simon Pegg - who acted in Jones' final film as director, 2015's Absolutely Anything - said: "Terry was a sweet, gentle, funny man who was a joy to work with and impossible not to love."
And comedian Eddie Izzard told BBC News: "It's a tragedy - the good go too early. Monty Python changed the face of world comedy. It will live forever. It's a terrible loss."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Michael Palin on Terry Jones: "He was a wonderful companion"
Shane Allen, BBC controller of comedy commissioning, wrote that it was a "sad day to lose an absolute titan of British comedy" and "one of the founding fathers of the most influential and pioneering comedy ensembles of all time".
Jones was born in Colwyn Bay and went on to study at Oxford University, where he met his future Python pal Palin in the Oxford Revue - a student comedy group.
Alongside Palin, Idle and the likes of David Jason, he appeared in the BBC children's satirical sketch show Do Not Adjust Your Set, which would set the template for their work to come with Python.
Jones directed, starred in and co-wrote Monty Python's 1979 film Life of Brian
He wrote and starred in Monty Python's Flying Circus TV show and the comedy collective's films, as a range of much-loved characters. These included Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson, Cardinal Biggles of the Spanish Inquisition and Mr Creosote.
In addition to directing The Holy Grail with Gilliam, Jones took sole directorial charge of 1979's Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life in 1983.
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Cleese said: "Of his many achievements, for me the greatest gift he gave us all was his direction of Life of Brian. Perfection."
Beyond Monty Python, he wrote the screenplay for the 1986 film Labyrinth, starring David Bowie.
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Monty Python's Flying Circus, the groundbreaking comedy series that made Jones and his fellow cast members international stars, first aired on BBC One in October 1969.
Surreal, anarchic and bawdily irreverent, the show's blend of live-action sketches and animated interludes mocked both broadcasting conventions and societal norms.
Jones and Palin had met at Oxford, while Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle studied at Cambridge. After university, they took part in various comedy shows before forming Monty Python with US-born animator Terry Gilliam.
After four series, the troupe moved to the big screen to make Arthurian spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Monty Python's Life of Brian, a controversial parody of Biblical epics.
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, their final film as a collective, returned to the original series' sketch-based format.
The surviving members reunited periodically after Chapman's death in 1989, most notably for a run of live shows at the O2 in London in 2014.
Jones (left) as the store manager and Eric Idle as Chris Quinn in Monty Python's sketch The Department Store-Buying an Ant
The statement from Jones' family noted his "uncompromising individuality, relentless intellect and extraordinary humour [that] has given pleasure to countless millions across six decades".
"Over the past few days his wife, children, extended family and many close friends have been constantly with Terry as he gently slipped away at his home in north London.
"His work with Monty Python, his books, films, television programmes, poems and other work will live on forever, a fitting legacy to a true polymath."
Terry Jones as Mr Creosote, alongside John Cleese, in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life in 1983
The family thanked Jones' "wonderful medical professionals and carers for making the past few years not only bearable but often joyful".
They said: "We hope that this disease will one day be eradicated entirely. We ask that our privacy be respected at this sensitive time and give thanks that we lived in the presence of an extraordinarily talented, playful and happy man living a truly authentic life, in his words 'Lovingly frosted with glucose.'"
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Louise Tiffney case: Sean Flynn to be retried over mother's murder - BBC News
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2020-01-09
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Prosecutors had applied to re-indict the case against Sean Flynn under double jeopardy laws.
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Edinburgh, Fife & East Scotland
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Louise Tiffney was 43 when she went missing in May 2002
Prosecutors have been given permission for a fresh prosecution of Sean Flynn, who was acquitted in 2005 of murdering his mother, Louise Tiffney.
Ms Tiffney was last seen in Edinburgh's Dean Village in May 2002. Her remains were found in East Lothian in 2017.
Three judges have now set aside the previous verdict in the case.
They had considered arguments from prosecutors for a retrial under double jeopardy laws, which mean someone can be tried again on the same charges.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-51054613
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news_uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-51054613
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Labour leadership: Contenders set out stalls on leadership and Brexit - BBC News
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2020-01-06
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy question manifesto choices as Jess Phillips does not rule out rejoining EU.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Sir Keir Starmer: "We lost the public's trust in the Labour Party as a force for good"
Candidates hoping to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader have questioned the party's manifesto choices while opening up dividing lines on Brexit.
Sir Keir Starmer said its election offer was "over-loaded" while both Lisa Nandy and Jess Phillips said voters did not trust its free broadband pledge.
Ms Phillips also said she would not rule out rejoining the EU if Brexit turned out not to be a success.
She said she would not change her view that the UK was "better off" in the EU.
Sir Keir and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry - both strong supporters of another referendum before the election - said Labour's focus as an opposition should now be on ensuring Boris Johnson negotiated the best economic and trade partnership with the EU.
Five candidates, also including Clive Lewis, have so far entered the race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.
Labour's ruling body is due to meet on Monday to decide the timetable for the election. Would-be candidates have to be nominated by more than 20 MPs and must also get the backing of at least 5% of constituency parties or three affiliated bodies - two of which must be trade unions.
Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey is also expected to officially declare her candidacy in the coming days.
The contest was called after Mr Corbyn announced he would stand down as leader after Labour's heavy election defeat.
Both Sir Keir and Ms Phillips told the BBC's Andrew Marr the party must learn the lessons of the defeat and why some many previously rock-solid Labour seats in the Midlands and the North of England turned to the Conservatives.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Jess Phillips: "The country didn't trust us to govern"
Sir Keir said the manifesto was one of a number of "cumulative" factors that eroded trust, on top of concerns over the party's Brexit policy, its leadership and its record on tackling anti-Semitism.
"There was a general feeling the manifesto was over-loaded. We lost the public's trust in the Labour Party as a force for good and a force for change," he said. "After four general election losses we have to address that straight away."
But he warned Labour against "unpicking" the last manifesto when it should be focused on its offer to voters in five years time. He also said it would be wrong to "retreat" from Mr Corbyn's focus on reducing inequality and protecting the public services.
While not the sole reason for its defeat, Ms Phillips also identified the manifesto - which pledged to bring rail, mail, water and energy into public ownership and extend the role of the state into new areas - as one of Labour's weak points.
"The fundamental thing is that the country did not trust us to govern," she said. "They did not trust to deliver on the things we were saying."
Rebecca Long-Bailey is expected to join the race
While there was a strong case for nationalising the railways and ending private involvement in the prison and probation services, she suggested tackling deep-seated social problems, such as homelessness and social care, were more important than public control of key utilities.
"We lost them on some of the basics. My son does not go to school five days a week. Lots of people in the country can give you their own example. While that was the case, offering free broadband was just not believable."
The Birmingham Yardley MP said the party must stop obsessing with factionalism and internal positioning and speak honestly to people.
"People have to feel a connection with us again. People have to feel we are on their side."
Ms Nandy also distanced herself from the broadband pledge, telling BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics: "People said to us, 'It's all very well promising free broadband but can you sort out the buses?' and that was the more pressing issue in their lives. It's not about whether you're radical or not it's about whether you're relevant."
Ms Thornberry said Labour had been wrong to allow the Conservatives to fight the election on the "single issue" of Brexit.
She told Sky News that the opposition's focus should now be on ensuring the UK had a relationship with Europe in the coming years that's "going to work for jobs and the economy".
Sir Keir, who like Ms Thornberry was a supporter of another referendum, suggested the issue of EU membership was now closed and the party needed to move on from an argument between Remain and Leave.
Asked whether she would support, as leader, the UK going back into the EU, Ms Phillips said it was sensible to "wait and see".
"If we are living in an absolute paradise of trade and totally safe in the world...then maybe I will be proven wrong. But if the reality is if if our country is safer and more economically viable to be in the EU, I will fight for that regardless of how difficult that argument is to make."
The candidates have also been pressed on the UK's relationship with the US following the killing of Iran's top military leader, Qasem Soleimani, in Iraq.
Ms Phillips said people were "not shedding any tears" over the Iranian general's death and, while she opposed the Iraq War, she would always support the deployment of British forces abroad if there was a "moral case" for it.
"What we have to make sure is that when we take action, it is lawful, proportionate and there is a moral case for it. If those questions can be answered, then I would absolutely take action to protect British lives."
However, Sir Keir said the UK should never find itself in the position of "blindly following the Americans".
If he became prime minister, he said he would pass legislation to circumscribe the ability of governments to take military action. He suggested it would have to pass three tests - if it was lawful, had been supported by Parliament and was part of a viable plan.
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Brexit: Boris Johnson signs withdrawal agreement in Downing Street - BBC News
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2020-01-24
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The PM hails a "fantastic moment" for the UK as he signs document paving the way for its EU exit.
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UK Politics
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Boris Johnson has signed the Brexit withdrawal agreement in Downing Street.
The prime minister hailed a "fantastic moment" for the country after he put his name to the historic agreement, which paves the way for the UK's exit from the European Union next Friday.
He said he hoped it would "bring to an end far too many years of argument and division".
Earlier on Friday, European leaders signed the document in Brussels, before it was transported to London by train.
The signings mark another step in the ratification process, following Parliament's approval of the Brexit bill earlier this week. The European Parliament will vote on the agreement on 29 January.
Downing Street officials said the PM marked the document with a Parker fountain pen, as is traditional for ceremonial signings in No 10.
It was witnessed by EU and Foreign Office officials, including the PM's Chief Negotiator David Frost, and Downing Street staff.
"The signing is a fantastic moment, which finally delivers the result of the 2016 referendum and brings to an end far too many years of argument and division," Mr Johnson said.
"We can now move forward as one country - with a government focused upon delivering better public services, greater opportunity and unleashing the potential of every corner of our brilliant UK, while building a strong new relationship with the EU as friends and sovereign equals."
This Twitter post cannot be displayed in your browser. Please enable Javascript or try a different browser. View original content on Twitter The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Skip twitter post by Boris Johnson This article contains content provided by Twitter. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read Twitter’s cookie policy, external and privacy policy, external before accepting. To view this content choose ‘accept and continue’. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
Earlier on Friday, the document crossed the channel on a Eurostar train, having been signed in Brussels by the European Council's president Charles Michel and the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
The UK will keep a copy of the agreement while the original will return to Brussels, where it will be stored in an archive along with other historic international agreements.
Next week's European Parliament vote is seen as all but a formality, after it was backed by the parliament's constitutional affairs committee on Thursday.
Mrs von der Leyen and other senior EU figures are sceptical about the UK government's plan to negotiate a comprehensive deal on future relations before the end of 2020. They believe the timetable for that is too tight.
But Prime Minister Boris Johnson is upbeat, insisting the UK can now move forward after years of wrangling over Brexit.
Mr Michel, the former Belgian Prime Minister who chairs EU summits, said in a tweet: "Things will inevitably change but our friendship will remain. We start a new chapter as partners and allies."
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Trump impeachment: Senators play games and nap during trial - BBC News
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2020-01-24
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Senators have been seen chewing gum, handing out fidget spinners and sleeping during the trial.
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US & Canada
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US senators have been accused of falling asleep, playing games and breaking other rules during President Donald Trump's impeachment trial.
Jim Risch and Jim Inhofe are among members who have apparently nodded off during the lengthy hearings.
Crossword puzzles, fidget spinners and at least one paper plane have been spotted with senators.
The trial has heard that Mr Trump's alleged abuse of power threatens American democracy.
The senators are acting as the jury to decide whether the president should be removed from office.
The upper chamber of US Congress prides itself as a hallowed sanctum of decorum.
But some of its members - Republican and Democrat alike - have this week been accused by US media of acting like bored schoolchildren.
The rules call for senators to remain seated during the impeachment trial.
But at least nine Democrats and 22 Republicans left their seats at various times on Thursday, according to Reuters news agency.
Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, defended herself on Thursday after she was spotted reading a book in the chamber.
She tweeted that the tome - How Trump Haters Are Breaking America, by Kim Strassel - "provides good insights into today's proceedings".
"Busy mamas are the best at multi-tasking," she added. "Try it."
Mr Risch, a Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was seen this week slumped motionless with his eyes closed at his desk during the hearings.
A spokesman for the Idaho senator denied he had been asleep, telling the Wall Street Journal he was just listening closely "with his eyes closed or cast down".
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Mr Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, was spotted on Wednesday by an NBC reporter appearing to briefly doze off before he was nudged by Senator Todd Young, an Indiana Republican who sits next to him.
Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, was observed leaning on his right arm with his hand covering his eyes for 20 minutes.
On Thursday, Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, handed out fidget spinners, a children's toy, to fellow senators to help them while away the hours in the chamber.
"I saw somebody grab up a few of them, so they must have some real anxiety going along with this," said Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican. He said he did not require one of the gizmos.
Phones, laptops and tablets are a regular accessory during normal Senate hearings, but all electronics have been banned in the chamber for this trial, leaving many restless.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. What's Ukraine got to do with the Trump impeachment?
Pat Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, was heard drawling "my precious" as he retrieved his phone from the cupboard outside the chamber.
Some senators have apparently found a way around the strict rules by wearing smart watches.
Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, reportedly worked on a crossword puzzle and made a paper plane as Democratic prosecutors laid out their case on Wednesday.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic front-runner for the 2020 White House nomination, was spotted by an ABC News reporter playing an unspecified game on paper.
Talking is banned on the floor during arguments and senators are daily admonished by the Senate sergeant-at-arms to remain silent during proceedings "on pain of imprisonment".
But on Wednesday, two Republicans - Tim Scott of South Carolina and Ben Sasse of Nebraska - threw caution to the wind and began whispering after hours of passing notes to each other.
There are also strict rules against food, but senators have been spotted munching chocolate and chewing gum.
Press access to the chamber has been heavily restricted during the Senate trial, meaning there are fewer cameras to catch senators' unguarded moments.
But other senators have appeared to pay close attention to the trial with some diligently taking notes.
Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, was observed scribbling away with what appeared to be a quill pen.
Mr Trump is only the third president ever to be impeached, but he is unlikely to be convicted in a chamber that is controlled by his fellow Republicans.
Before Thursday's arguments began, some Republican senators said they had heard nothing new in Democratic prosecutors' arguments and had already made up their mind to clear the president. A two-thirds majority votes is required to remove Mr Trump from office.
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TV cameras to be allowed in Crown Courts in England and Wales - BBC News
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2020-01-16
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Judges' sentencing remarks in high-profile criminal cases in England and Wales are to be filmed.
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UK
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. From inside the Old Bailey, Clive Coleman explains what we can expect once cameras are allowed in
TV cameras are to be allowed to film in Crown Courts in England and Wales for the first time.
New legislation being laid before Parliament will allow judges' sentencing remarks in serious high-profile criminal cases to be seen and heard by TV and online audiences.
However, trials will not be televised as they are in countries such as the US as only the judge will be filmed.
The judiciary, broadcasters and government have welcomed the move.
The legislation will, for the first time, allow TV cameras to film judges passing sentence in murder, sexual offences, terrorism and other serious high-profile criminal cases in Crown Courts in England and Wales, including the Old Bailey.
It marks a radical change and a significant extension to the operation of open justice though whole trials will not be televised.
Filming in the Scottish Courts has been allowed subject to permissions and conditions since 1992 but it does not happen that often and the first filming of a sentencing in Scotland was in 2012.
In the US, cases including the 1995 trial of OJ Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman made gripping television but faced criticism for providing an unedifying spectacle at times.
In England and Wales, the concern has always been that televising trials could deter victims, witnesses and jurors - the vital cogs in the trial process - from taking part.
So, the judge alone will be seen on camera as he or she delivers their sentencing remarks. No-one else involved in the trial - victims, witnesses, jurors, lawyers or the convicted defendant - will be filmed.
Justice Secretary Robert Buckland denied the move would be a "blind stumble" into an "undesirable OJ Simpson-style scenario".
He told TalkRadio it was "about information rather than entertainment" and the plans had the full support of the judiciary.
TV scenes from the 1994 murder trial of OJ Simpson will not be replicated in the UK
The filming can be "live", with a short time delay to avoid breaking any reporting restrictions or any other error.
More often it is envisaged that the judge's sentencing remarks will be filmed for use in later news broadcasts.
All Crown Court staff who will be involved in the cases where filming takes place will receive training and new guidance.
The new rules will allow filming only of the judge - not anyone else involved in a trial
The full sentencing remarks of any case broadcast will also be hosted on a website to which the public has access.
The legislation should take around three months to make its way through Parliament, meaning the first broadcasts should take place in late spring or early summer.
Today's move follows a successful three-month pilot that allowed not-for-broadcast sentencing remarks to be filmed in eight Crown Courts.
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett, said: "It is important that the justice system and what happens in our courts is as transparent as possible.
"My hope is that there will be regular broadcasting of the remarks in high profile cases, and that will improve public understanding."
Criminal Bar Association chairwoman Caroline Goodwin QC said the move would "bring greater transparency and a better public understanding of the criminal justice system".
However, she stressed the importance of restricting filming to sentencing remarks, adding: "Nothing must compromise the interests of justice, the primacy of a fair trial, and respecting the interests of vulnerable witnesses, witnesses generally and defendants."
But not everyone has given the move an unconditional welcome. Bar Council chairwoman Amanda Pinto QC said: "If the public see judges' faces in the living room on television and are able to identify them more readily then unfortunately they are more likely to be personally attacked, and possibly details published about them which should not be."
Since 1925 it has been a criminal offence to film, or even sketch in court - so court artists must go outside and draw those involved in the trial from memory.
Filming has been allowed in the UK Supreme Court since its creation in 2009, and in 2013 cameras were allowed in the Court of Appeal but cases in these courts are appeals, and confined to lawyers' arguments and judges' rulings.
Today's announcement marks the first time cameras will be permitted in Crown Courts in England and Wales where serious crimes are tried.
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Scottish independence: Labour candidate Lisa Nandy criticised for Catalonia remarks - BBC News
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2020-01-16
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Lisa Nandy claims that the UK should "look to Catalonia" for lessons on how to defeat Scottish nationalism.
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Scotland politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Lisa Nandy said socialists across the world had been "beaten over and over" by nationalists
A Labour leadership candidate has claimed that the UK should "look to Catalonia" for lessons on how to defeat Scottish nationalism.
Lisa Nandy made the comments as she argued that a "social justice agenda" could beat "divisive nationalism".
Hundreds of people were hurt when the Spanish authorities used force to try to stop the disputed independence referendum in Catalonia in 2017.
Nicola Sturgeon said people would be "mortified" by Ms Nandy's remarks.
And Scotland's only Labour MP, Ian Murray, warned all of the candidates in the party's leadership contest that they should not "come up to Scotland and talk about things that you're not quite sure what you're talking about."
In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Neil Show, Ms Nandy said that socialists across the world had been "beaten over and over" by nationalists.
She added: "We should look outwards to other countries and other parts of the world where they have had to deal with divisive nationalism and seek to discover the lessons where, in these brief moments in history in places like Catalonia and Quebec, we have managed to go and beat narrow divisive nationalism with a social justice agenda."
The Wigan MP was challenged by Neil, who put it to her that the SNP's brand of nationalism is not "hard right" and instead goes "hand in hand with social justice".
Ms Nandy responded by arguing that it suits the SNP to keep the argument about independence going because it meant no one in Scotland was "paying attention to their record, which is frankly appalling".
And she said she does not want another vote on independence as "I think this country has had enough of referendums".
Hundreds of people were hurt as Spanish police attempted to stop the Catalan referendum in 2017
In a referendum on 1 October 2017, which was declared illegal by Spain's Constitutional Court, about 90% of voters backed Catalan independence - although the vote was boycotted by most opponents of independence, and the turnout was only 43%.
The referendum was marred by violent clashes as police used batons and fired rubber bullets in an attempt to prevent it going ahead.
Nine pro-independence Catalan leaders were subsequently jailed for between nine and 13 years for their role in organising the vote, with the sentences sparking further violent clashes between police and protestors.
In a blog post published after the interview, Ms Nandy said that socialists in Catalonia have "for years been peacefully resisting the advance of separatists there".
And she argued that "recent indications suggest that their democratic efforts may well succeed" and that there are "hopeful signs their approach of socialism and solidarity - which stands in stark contrast to the unjustified violence we saw from the Spanish police operating under the instruction of Spain's then right wing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy - may yet win out."
Ms Nandy's remarks were raised in the Scottish Parliament on Thursday, with Ms Sturgeon saying that she assumed the Labour MP "hasn't paid attention to what has actually happened in Catalonia in recent times".
The first minister added: "If she had, she would surely not have suggested that there are any positive lessons at all to be learned from that.
"Perhaps Lisa Nandy should take the opportunity to clarify exactly what she did mean, recognise the concern that it has caused, and perhaps even apologise for that."
Meanwhile, Mr Murray indicated his displeasure at Ms Nandy's intervention as he formally launched his campaign for the party's deputy leadership.
The Edinburgh South MP told journalists: "I say this to all leadership and deputy leadership candidates: Please don't come up to Scotland and talk about things that you're not quite sure what you're talking about."
Ms Nandy is one of five candidates who remain in the contest to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, with the winner being announced on 4 April.
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news_uk-scotland-scotland-politics-51139519
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Labour leadership: Don't just blame 2019 campaign, Starmer warns - BBC News
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2020-01-16
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The leadership hopeful tells the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg he can restore trust in Labour as a "force for good".
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Sir Keir Starmer has warned against blaming Labour's historic election defeat on its 2019 campaign alone.
The leadership candidate said the party had been losing votes in its heartlands for a "long time" and had lost four general elections in a row.
People wanted "fundamental change" but did not trust Labour to deliver it, he told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg.
He vowed to restore trust in Labour "as a force for good and a force for change" and end factional infighting.
But he refused to say whether his politics were closer to Tony Blair or Jeremy Corbyn, saying: "I want to lead a Labour Party that is trusted enough to bring about fundamental change.
"I don't need somebody else's name or badge to do that."
The BBC's political editor is aiming to interview all five Labour leadership hopefuls before the result is announced on 4 April.
Sir Keir, who has been endorsed by Britain's biggest union, Unison, said he could "unify the party" and "forge a path to victory at the next general election".
"We need to unify the party and I think I can do that," he said.
"We spent far too much time fighting ourselves and not fighting the Tories. Factions have been there in the Labour Party - they've got to go."
Some on the left have blamed the election defeat on Sir Keir and others at the top of the party promoting another Brexit referendum.
He said: "We were trying to bring together both sides whether they voted Leave, or they voted Remain.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Sir Keir Starmer: I think I can restore that trust in Labour
"But I think the idea that Brexit was the only issue in this election is wrong, or even that in our heartlands it was the determining factor because actually if you look at what's happened in our heartlands we've been losing votes there for a long time."
Speaking at a pub in Somers Town, in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency, he said he believed Labour could win last year's election, even though the "odds were against us", but added: "In the end people didn't have trust in us.
"Partly that was to do with the leadership, rightly or wrongly, partly it was to do with Brexit, anti-Semitism came up, and the overload of the manifesto."
He said Labour needed to "restore that trust, but if we only look at the 2019 election we're missing the fact that we've lost four in a row".
He said his priority, as a "moral socialist", would be tackling the "gross inequality" in British society and ensuring "equal opportunity for everyone, wherever they come from and whatever their background".
"I don't need someone else's name or badge."
Sir Keir Starmer wouldn't today reveal whether he saw his ideas and his ambitions for the country as closer to Jeremy Corbyn or Tony Blair.
Instead, when we sat down in a north London pub in his constituency, he wanted to make the valid argument that different leaders work in different eras, confronting different problems.
Times change, essentially, and the next leader, he believes, needs to be looking to the next set of issues and try to take the party by the scruff of the neck and make it into an effective opposition straight away - but with an eye on where the political battles will be in 2024.
But his obvious reluctance to plant a flag somewhere on Labour's wide political spectrum is perhaps representative of the problem that he faces in this race.
Sir Keir admitted he does have friends who are Tories, and that he received support from colleagues on the Conservative benches when his father died in 2018.
The shadow Brexit secretary said he judged people "by what they say and who they are, rather than which party they're in".
The five leadership contenders - Sir Keir, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Emily Thornberry, Jess Phillips and Lisa Nandy - are set to take part in a series of hustings around the country, starting in Liverpool on Saturday.
They need the support of 5% of local parties or at least three affiliates - two must be unions - by 14 February to make it on to the final ballot of party members.
The new leader will be announced on 4 April.
It comes as the grassroots pressure group Momentum endorsed Mrs Long-Bailey.
The group, which grew out of Jeremy Corbyn's 2015 leadership campaign, said it would mobilise thousands of supporters to elect Mrs Long-Bailey as the next Labour leader.
Momentum polled members on whether it should officially back Mrs Long-Bailey, with 70% of those who took part endorsing the plan, and 52% backing Angela Rayner as her deputy.
Around 14,700 people applied to register as temporary supporters of Labour to vote in the leadership contest, the party has said.
The 48-hour window to apply to be a temporary supporter closed at 17:00 GMT on Thursday. Applicants who meet the eligibility requirements will be able to vote in the leader and deputy leader elections.
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Mercenary 'Mad Mike' Hoare dies aged 100 - BBC News
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2020-02-03
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Mike Hoare, a controversial figure, became internationally famous for his campaigns in the Congo.
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Africa
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Mike Hoare, seen here with his bodyguard in 1964, was internationally renowned until his career ended in an embarrassing anti-climax
Michael "Mad Mike" Hoare, widely considered the world's best known mercenary, has died aged 100.
Born in India to Irish parents, he led campaigns in the Congo in the 1960s that earned him fame at the time, and a controversial legacy years later.
His career reached an embarrassing end in 1981, when he was jailed for leading a failed coup in the Seychelles.
Mr Hoare's son, Chris Hoare, said in a statement that his father died in a care facility in Durban, South Africa.
"Mike Hoare lived by the philosophy that you get more out of life by living dangerously, so it is all the more remarkable that he lived more than 100 years," he said.
After serving in the British Army during the Second World War and reaching the rank of major, Mr Hoare began his post-war career as an accountant, running several small businesses in South Africa.
But it was in 1961 that he was introduced to Moïse Tshombe - a Congolese politician and businessman who would go on to become prime minister of the Congo three years later.
In 1964, Mr Tshombe hired Mr Hoare to take on the communist-backed Simba rebellion.
When the campaign was completed 18 months later, Mr Hoare and his unit of mercenaries - which he nicknamed the "Wild Geese" - were internationally known.
His fervent anti-communist beliefs earned him no fans in many nations, with East German radio regularly describing him as "that mad bloodhound Hoare". This led to him being nicknamed "Mad Mike" - a moniker with which he was delighted.
In 1978, a mercenary adventure film called The Wild Geese was released. The film starred Richard Burton as Colonel Allen Faulkner, a character based heavily on Mr Hoare.
Actors Richard Harris, Roger Moore, Richard Burton and Hardy Krüger starred in the 1978 film The Wild Geese, based on Mike Hoare's mercenaries
But following his successful campaigns in the Congo, what came next turned him into an international laughing stock.
Mr Hoare appeared to be retired from military life by the start of the 1980s - but in 1981 he launched a surprise attempt at overthrowing the government of the Seychelles.
It is believed that Mr Hoare knew the Seychelles well, and had a particular hatred of its socialist government under President Albert René.
Having gained the tacit support of the governments of South Africa and Kenya, Mr Hoare began to plot.
In October 1981 he had a cache of weapons delivered to his suburban bungalow in South Africa, which he hid in his cellar. He recruited 46 men, and with them he planned to enter the Seychelles disguised as a charitable drinking club of former rugby players.
Almost all of the men managed to get through customs at Mahe airport. However, one of their group joined the wrong queue, got into an argument with a customs officer, and ended up having his bag searched.
When officers found a dismantled AK-47, the man panicked and revealed that there were more weapons outside.
At this point the entire plan unravelled, and amid the ensuing conflict at the airport the mercenaries commandeered an Air India plane and flew it back to South Africa.
When they arrived the mercenaries were jailed for six days, and Mr Hoare and his plans - dubbed "the package-holiday coup" - were ridiculed in the global press.
A year later they were tried for hijacking the Air India plane. Mr Hoare was sentenced to 20 years, with 10 years suspended. He was released after 33 months.
Mr Hoare spent his final years in South Africa, and published several memoirs - including Mercenary, The Road to Kalamata, and The Seychelles Affair.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-51352075
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news_world-africa-51352075
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Crossbow murder trial: Witness denies sex with accused - BBC News
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2020-02-03
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Terence Whall had claimed they were having sex when Gerald Corrigan was shot with a crossbow.
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Wales
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Gerald Corrigan died three weeks after being shot outside his Anglesey home
A witness has denied having sex with a defendant on the night he is accused of killing a man with a crossbow.
Mr Whall had told police he was having sex with Thomas Barry Williams at the time.
But Mr Williams told Mold Crown Court their friendship had "never" been sexual and denied seeing the defendant that night.
Mr Corrigan suffered two holes in his stomach and organ damage during the attack at his home on 19 April 2019.
He died in hospital three weeks later, after developing sepsis.
Mr Williams told the court he had met Mr Whall, a sports therapist, about five years ago when he was referred for a chest issue, and began receiving weekly massage therapy for a few months.
Both men had a "keen interest in martial arts", and became friends.
"After a while I started helping him with self-defence DVDs," he told prosecutor Peter Rouch QC.
They met to train around once a week and would go out to eat as well as go walking and biking, but Mr Williams said their contact "dwindled" when he began seeing his partner, Susie Holmes.
On the night of the shooting, Mr Williams said he had dropped her at work in Conwy at about 21:50 BST on 18 April before meeting his cannabis dealer in an Anglesey lay-by and smoking with him for half an hour.
He then went to Newborough on Anglesey to his parents' house and talked to his sister until about 01:00 on 19 April, before going to Llanddwyn beach for an hour and travelling back to Conwy.
Asked if he saw Mr Whall during that time, he replied: "No, I didn't."
Mr Williams told the court he had broken his mobile phone during an argument with Ms Holmes that evening and it was just about useable.
Cross-examined by David Elias QC, defending, he said he had thrown the phone away a couple of days later without calling or texting anyone in the meantime.
Mr Williams said he first knew about the suggestion he and Mr Whall were having a sexual relationship about two weeks ago.
However, the court heard in the summer of 2019 he went to seek advice from the legal firm representing Mr Whall.
Mr Elias said Mr Williams had told that firm he had engaged in sexual activity with Mr Whall.
"No, I listened to them telling me," he said.
Asked why he had chosen that firm, Mr Williams said he had heard they were a good firm.
"It wasn't that you had information to give them?" asked Mr Elias.
This image of Gerald Corrigan's house shows where North Wales Police believe the shooter was located
Mr Williams declined to comment at first on whether he had said anything to the solicitors about the allegations he was having a sexual relationship with Mr Whall.
Pressed on the matter, he said he was "not sure what I'd been thinking with all of it" and everything that had gone on "between me and Terry".
Call data taken from Mr Williams' phone, was presented to the court, showing several calls between him and Mr Whall on 18 April.
Asked what they were talking about, he said "when are we training....what are you up to...."
Asked about one four-minute call, Mr Elias asked: "It was about meeting up that night, wasn't it?"
"No," he replied, adding that he could not remember what it was about.
The court heard a text message was sent from Mr Williams's phone at about 12:15 on 19 April. Within half an hour of that message being sent, a new phone was operational.
Mr Elias said it showed the phone he said was damaged was actually working.
Asked by Mr Elias if it would surprise him that Mr Whall's number was the third most popular number called from the mobile phone he got rid of, he said: "It would actually, yeah."
Re-examined by Peter Rouch QC, for the prosecution, Mr Williams said he had no memory of what was said during the meeting with Mr Whall's solicitors.
He said Mr Whall had told him he "just needed an alibi" but did not say what for.
He said the solicitors were "suggesting stuff" and it was easier for him to "just agree".
Asked if he had walked along the coastal path with Mr Whall on 18-19 April for a sexual liaison in front of Gof Du, he said: "No."
Mr Whall also denies a charge of perverting the course of justice, along with three others, amid allegations they conspired together to set fire to a vehicle later found burnt out.
The other three - Martin Roberts, 34, of James Street in Bangor, Darren Jones, 41, of the Bryn Ogwen estate at Penrhosgarnedd and Gavin Jones, 36, of High Street, Bangor - also deny the charges.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51360832
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news_uk-wales-51360832
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Jessica Breeze cleared of father's murder after 'years of violence' - BBC News
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2020-02-03
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Jessica Breeze stabbed her father in the back during a violent row in the family home.
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Tees
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Jessica Breeze said she could not remember stabbing her father
A woman who stabbed her "controlling" father after suffering years of abuse has been found not guilty of his murder and manslaughter.
Jessica Breeze, 20, denied murdering Colin Brady, 49, at the family home in Keith Road, Middlesbrough, in June.
Miss Breeze told Teesside Crown Court her father had frequently injured her in regular bouts of violence.
He had punched and threatened to kill Miss Breeze and her mother before he was stabbed in the back, jurors heard.
The prosecution alleged Miss Breeze had stabbed her father as he was leaving the house.
In evidence, the nursery worker recalled how her father would "kick off" and "smash the place up" if she returned home late.
Asked by her barrister, Simon Russell Flint QC, if she ever reported her father's violent outbursts, she replied: "No. I was scared. I thought it was pointless."
Mr Brady had previous convictions for violence, including causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
He had attacked Miss Breeze's mother, Kelly Breeze, in an assault a police constable said was the worst he had seen.
Colin Brady was stabbed during a violent row at the family's home in Middlesbrough last summer
The trial had heard that an argument broke out after Miss Breeze's parents discovered she had been secretly seeing her boyfriend when she said she had been at work.
During the row, Mr Brady slapped or punched his then 19-year-old daughter several times, before her mother intervened, the court heard.
"He was punching me in the face with his fists," Miss Breeze told the jury. "He said he was going to kill us."
She was one digit away from dialling 999 when he demanded she hand over her phone, the court heard.
The court was told she had "no memory of picking up the knife".
He was taken to hospital with an 18cm-deep wound to his left lung, but could not be saved.
Jessica Breeze and her lawyer Sean Grainger spoke outside the court
Outside court, Miss Breeze's solicitor, Sean Grainger, said in a statement: "The jury accepted she was acting in lawful self-defence of herself and her mother when under a sustained and violent attack by her father.
"Further, whilst Jessica was brought up in a highly toxic home environment where she and her mother were regularly subject to extreme physical and emotional abuse by her father, Jessica wishes to make it clear she loved her father, she still does and wishes he was still here.
"She now wishes to rebuild her life, get back to work and move on from the seven-month ordeal she has endured since her arrest."
Following the acquittal, a CPS spokesperson said: "While there was evidence of a sometimes violent relationship between the victim, Colin Brady, and the defendant, Jessica Breeze, the circumstances of his death made a charge of murder wholly appropriate in this case.
"Regardless of the alleged provocation for the attack, the victim was attacked in the back as he walked away from the defendant.
"He was stabbed with such force that it passed from his back through his entire left lung and into his chest. Despite claims of self-defence by the defendant, the evidence was such that there was a case to answer."
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Shock resignation poses challenge for Javid's successor - BBC News
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2020-02-13
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Relations between Number 10 and Number 11 are the foundation of any stable government.
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Business
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There was no hint of what was to come from the lips of Chancellor Sajid Javid.
He had been reassured of his future in post, when I spoke to him 48 hours ago.
He was planning not just the Budget, but also a Spending Review, and a finance white paper involving negotiations with the EU over the ongoing access of UK finance to the EU.
His team had signalled the Budget was going to be a significant new chapter in UK economic policy. The first Budget of this government and its healthy majority, able to plan its own long term strategy.
However, there had been a strange series of last minute reorganisations regarding the chancellor's traditional round of interviews on the GDP figures.
This was on the same day and in the same place as the Prime Minister's HS2 announcement.
Mr Javid had crossed swords with the prime minister's top adviser Dominic Cummings, and had won those key battles. First and foremost the chancellor won the argument over manifesto costings and looser but still binding limits on public spending ahead of the election. He also won the argument on HS2.
He had begun to establish his credibility as chancellor after an early few months where he was nicknamed "chancellor in name only", after Mr Cummings summarily fired the chancellor's press aide, having earlier boosted spending to health and police.
But he had also made the argument that now was the time to invest more, as the borrowing rates faced by the government were at historic lows.
The question was - just how much.
Relations between Number 10 and Number 11 are the foundation of any stable government. There should be tensions. The Treasury's role as keeper of the purse strings does not always accord with the short-term political needs of Number 10.
But the roots of this are a clash over long term strategy - that austerity was over - and that the Conservatives needed to pour money into the regions where their majority was won, and change politics in the UK forever.
The Prime Minister has the title of "First Lord of the Treasury", but it has not always felt that way in recent history. Demanding the firing of his aides is a rather drastic way to assert that power.
Mr Javid's replacement, the well-regarded chief secretary Rishi Sunak, begins his role with a problem. He arrives as a thirty-something Chancellor of the Exchequer, appointed in part because of a vacancy caused by Number 10 trying to assert itself over Number 11.
Will he stick to Sajid Javid's recently announced new fiscal rules? Or does he open the chequebooks further? The first Budget of any parliament is traditionally the moment to get the bad news out of the way, on for example tax rises.
But it is difficult not to see this development as an attempt to loosen the fiscal straitjacket further, ahead of that Budget.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51492694
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news_business-51492694
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Harvey Weinstein: How a Hollywood giant faced his reckoning - BBC News
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2020-02-25
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The judge said this was not a referendum on #MeToo. But at times, his trial felt like one.
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US & Canada
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As jurors were sworn in for Harvey Weinstein's trial in New York, the judge told them in no uncertain terms that this case was not intended to be a referendum on the #MeToo movement as a whole. But the trial, which ended with him being convicted of rape and sexual assault, at times felt like one.
Weinstein now faces a 23-year sentence which will probably see him spend the rest of his life behind bars. This is the story of the downfall of one of Hollywood's most powerful men.
You may find some of the details in this article upsetting
It was a watershed moment. More than two years after allegations started to emerge about the Hollywood producer, some of his victims finally had their chance to be heard in court.
Twelve jurors were tasked with ruling on sex charges, which Weinstein denied, in a trial that saw complex questions about consent and power dynamics on the stand. Jurors heard harrowing testimony from six women who, at times in tears, recounted their alleged assaults by the producer. At one point a woman, who he was later convicted of raping, had to leave court after suffering a panic attack in the witness box.
Weinstein's high-powered defence team tried to flip the narrative and paint his accusers as the manipulators in the situation: women who used Weinstein for his industry prowess and later regretted and mischaracterised their sexual encounters as non-consensual. During weeks of testimony, jurors heard everything from claims about Weinstein's genitals being deformed to nude photographs of the movie mogul himself.
Every day journalists lined up, often before sunrise, to claim a place on the press benches. Cameras were not allowed inside the Manhattan Supreme Court, but the entrance was always lined with paparazzi scrambling to get daily shots and sound-bites from Weinstein, who had barely been seen in public for two years.
Weinstein was a giant of the movie industry in every sense. Productions in his name became synonymous with success in Hollywood, with hundreds of Oscar nominations and 81 wins across his career. On stage, as he accepted awards, his large frame would often hulk over the stars of his films.
The image of Weinstein at his trial was a very different one: once reportedly 300lb (136kg), he appeared frail and shuffled in to court most days with his back hunched over a metal walking frame.
Weinstein (seen celebrating 1999 film Shakespeare in Love) used private investigators to probe accusers
Weinstein had been investigated in New York in 2015 over a groping claim, but was not prosecuted
The term #MeToo preceded Weinstein, but was propelled across the globe as allegations mounted against him in October 2017. Millions of people from all ages, backgrounds and nationalities used the hashtag to detail their experiences of harassment and abuse. Other celebrities were implicated but it was the scale of claims against Weinstein, then arguably the most powerful man in Hollywood, that proved the most shocking.
More than 100 women came forward with allegations about him - everything from aggressive outbursts to serious sexual assault. Stars at the very top of the industry, like Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, told of unwanted advances and upsetting interactions. Other women described, often in graphic detail, alleged rapes by the producer. Weinstein has consistently denied all allegations of non-consensual sex and his lawyers have vowed to appeal against his conviction.
Despite dozens of allegations against him, these were the first to make it to trial.
In that time Weinstein had all but disappeared from public view. His marriage broke up and he is said to have sought treatment for sex addiction. His business partner brother described his behaviour as "sick and depraved" and their production company filed for bankruptcy.
Weinstein and his former company reached a tentative $25m settlement with some accusers in December
During a rare interview, reportedly given without his lawyer's knowledge in December, Weinstein complained of feeling like a "forgotten man" within Hollywood. Speaking just one day after three-hour surgery to ease compression on his spine, he told the New York Post that he deserved a pat on the back for everything he had done for women in film. He posed for photographs in a medical centre wearing jeans and a T-shirt, which he lifted to reveal a bandage on his back from which a tube drained blood into a container fixed to a metal walking aid.
The walking frame took on a starring role during the trial when an argument broke out when prosecutors labelled it a "prop". Weinstein's lawyers even wanted his surgeon to testify to prove he wasn't faking his injury to gain sympathy.
On the first day, a group of high-profile accusers gathered outside the court to try to face him down. "You brought this upon yourself by hurting so many," actress Rose McGowan said, addressing her alleged rapist through the media. "You have only yourself to blame."
Weinstein's legal team made repeated appeals for the trial to be moved from Manhattan, citing the "carnival-like atmosphere" engulfing it. At one point, the defence complained after a flash-mob of protesters chanting lyrics including "The rapist is you" could be heard from inside the courtroom. At another, one of the world's best-known supermodels, Gigi Hadid, appeared as a potential juror.
A Chilean anti-rape anthem, Un Violador en tu Camino ("A Rapist In Your Path"), was performed outside
About 2,000 people were reportedly summoned during the jury selection process and prosecutors accused Weinstein's team of "systematically eliminating" young white women, resembling his victims, from serving on the jury. After almost two weeks, the group of 12 was finalised with seven men and five women.
Weinstein denied five felony charges relating to allegations of sexual assault and rape. They related to incidents involving Mimi Haleyi, a former production assistant who he forced oral sex on at his Manhattan apartment in 2006, and Jessica Mann, a one-time aspiring actress who he raped in a New York hotel room in 2013.
Another alleged victim, Sopranos star Annabella Sciorra, alleged he had forced his way into her New York apartment and raped her some time in the winter of 1993/4. The amount of time passed since the alleged incident meant it fell outside of New York's statute of limitations and could not be charged separately, but the judge ruled her testimony could be used to support the most serious charges on the indictment: for predatory sexual assault.
Three other women were also permitted by the judge to appear as "prior bad acts" witnesses to help establish a pattern of behaviour and common motive. All were aspiring actresses in their 20s, hoping to break into the industry, when they described being assaulted by him.
Actress Rosanna Arquette, among the accusers, vowed "we aren't going anywhere" as the trial opened
This tactic was notably used to help secure a conviction against US comedian Bill Cosby, who was jailed in 2018. Kristen Gibbons Feden was a prosecutor on both his trials and told the BBC that "prior bad act" witnesses' willingness to take the stand, and be open to cross-examination without the hope of direct justice for themselves, can play a "critical" role in undermining defence arguments and establishing the motive of repeat offenders.
"These women who testified, all of the women who testified in Cosby's trial, were willing to put their lives, their public sanctity and character on the line to try and assist the prosecution with putting away a serial rapist - I think that just speaks volumes about the movement," she said.
Physical evidence was never likely to play a part in the trial, given how much time had passed since the alleged incidents took place. The case would therefore rise and fall on the believability of the accusations against Weinstein: a case of he said, she said - or, in this trial, they said. "Obviously, any time you have a criminal trial, the goal of a defence attorney is to question the credibility of the witnesses - but particularly when the only evidence is eyewitness testimony, which it is in this case," Julie Rendelman, a former prosecutor turned criminal defence lawyer, told the BBC.
Sciorra was the first accuser to take the stand against Weinstein. She alleged that he forced his way into her 17th-floor Gramercy Park apartment and raped her, shortly after offering to drive her home from a dinner they attended with others, including Pulp Fiction star Uma Thurman. "I felt very overpowered as he was very big," she told the court, who had heard he was almost three times her weight of about 110-115lb (50kg) at the time.
"Then he grabbed me. He led me into the bedroom and he shoved me on the bed. I was punching him, I was kicking him, I was trying to take him away from me. He took my hands and put my hands over my head," she said, motioning with her arms.
Sciorra said Weinstein, on another occasion, showed up to her Cannes hotel room with baby oil
In turn the defence called witnesses, including Sciorra's apartment's building manager, to try to contradict her claims. During the trial some defence witnesses appeared only once under subpoena, apparently reluctant to appear and contradict the account of accusers, who in some cases were former friends.
The defence quizzed Sciorra on her acting ability and success: playing a 1997 clip from a well-known US talk show where she admitted making-up colourful lies about her life in press interviews. They questioned why she didn't raise the alarm about what happened. "He was someone I knew," she told the court. "I felt at the time that rape was something that happened in a back alleyway in a dark place by someone you didn't know."
They also called Professor Elizabeth Loftus, a false-memory expert, who testified about her research on how recollection can become distorted and contaminated over time.
With the main accusers, the defence tried to upend the narratives of manipulation presented by the prosecution. They said Haleyi and Mann's ongoing, and often friendly, communication with Weinstein after their assaults was evidence the relationships were consensual. Haleyi tearfully told the court how he lunged and physically overpowered her in 2006, removing a tampon and forcing oral sex on her when she was on her period.
"I checked out and decided to endure it," she told the court. "That was the safest thing I could do."
Prosecutors said accusers like Haleyi (pictured) "sacrificed their dignity, their privacy, and their peace" to be heard
His lawyers confronted her with messages she sent to the producer afterwards, including ones signed off "lots of love" and "peace and love". "I asked for jobs from many people, including Harvey Weinstein," she said about contact over career opportunities. She also said she had felt "trapped" by her circumstances, so she decided to "almost pretend [the assault] didn't happen".
Jessica Mann told the court that she had entered in a "degrading relationship" with Weinstein, which included subsequent consensual acts, after her rape.
Psychologist Dr Barbara Ziv was called by the prosecution to try and push back on some of the defence's scrutiny of his victims' behaviour. Dr Ziv, who also testified at Cosby's second trial, spoke about her 20 years of experience with assault survivors and sought to dispel so-called "rape myths".
"A vast majority of sexual assault victims don't report promptly," she told the court. "The time can range from days to months to years to report an assault - to never." She also said it was "extremely common" for victims to remain in contact with their attacker, sometimes in fear of retribution, and pointed out an overwhelming majority of assaults are committed by someone the victim knows.
"The trial was set up to raise some complicated issues around consent and what it looks like," Deborah Tuerkheimer, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law, told Variety. "Jessica Mann in particular has really been a complex witness."
The three-day testimony by Mann, whose identity had not been made public before the trial, provided some of its most powerful moments. Journalists inside the court said that at one point, after being pressed to read an email which alluded to abuse earlier in her life, Mann broke down and started sobbing uncontrollably. The New York Times reported that, after being excused from court, she could be heard screaming in another room.
Mann (pictured) said she wanted to get away but "shut down" during the 2013 rape
When quizzed about their ongoing communication, the 34-year-old told lawyers: "I know the history of my relationship with him... I know it was complicated and difficult but it does not change the fact that he raped me."
The point was seized upon by Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon when she closed the case on Valentine's Day. "Jessica Mann could have been completely head over heels in love with Harvey Weinstein," she said. "She could have had his name tattooed on her arm. She could have been writing him love notes every single day. She could have been married to him. If all of that was true, it still wouldn't make a difference, he still wouldn't be allowed to rape her."
This argument mirrored an earlier one by the defence who told the jury they could dislike Weinstein, but still not believe his guilt had been proven.
"You don't have to like Mr. Weinstein. This is not a popularity contest," lawyer Donna Rotunno said during almost five hours of closing testimony. "In this country it's the unpopular people that need juries the most," Rotunno said. "The unpopular person needs you the most."
Rotunno accused prosecutors of scripting a reality which "strips adult women of common sense, autonomy and responsibility". Illuzzi-Orbon maintained Weinstein was a "predator" who preyed on women he saw as "complete disposables".
Weinstein did not testify at trial, despite a last-minute meeting giving the appearance he wanted to
From her glamorous designer outfits, to her towering heels to the gold "not guilty" pendant she reportedly wore around her neck to court, Rotunno became the public face of the defence team.
The lawyer has built her reputation on defending men in high-profile sexual misconduct cases. During the trial Rotunno came under fire for comments made both inside and outside the courtroom. An interview she gave to the New York Times' The Daily podcast drew particular scorn. When asked if she had ever been sexually assaulted herself, Rotunno responded: "I have not," before pausing and adding: "because I would never put myself in that position".
She also suggested men should get written consent before engaging in sex and asserted societal pressure to "believe all women" meant there was now "zero" risk for accusers to come forward and make claims. Prosecutors repeatedly complained that her interviews violated rules.
Prosecutors accused her of trying to influence the jury with one opinion piece
The defence's arguments were also criticised by survivors and activist groups, who accused them of victim-blaming and perpetuating misconceptions about rape.
In the end the jury, having earlier signalled they were divided on the predatory assault charges factoring in Sciorra, ruled not guilty on those two counts. They took five days to reach their decision, finding Weinstein guilty of the third-degree rape of Jessica Mann and of a criminal sex act in his assault of Mimi Haleyi.
More than two years after dozens of women came out against him, turning public opinion, Weinstein was finally found guilty in a court of law.
The verdict was celebrated as a major victory by alleged victims and women's rights advocates.
Laura Palumbo, communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, told the BBC that while the Weinstein trial was a "significant moment" nationally, it was important to remember that it did not reflect the reality of most rape cases in the US justice system.
The US-based Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) estimates that 995 out of every 1,000 perpetrators of sexual assault, or about 99.5%, will walk free because of low reporting and conviction rates.
Weinstein faced between five and 29 years in prison for the crimes
Immediately after his conviction, Weinstein was taken to hospital and later fitted with a heart stent.
His lawyers had implored leniency from the judge, arguing Weinstein had already been punished with his "historic" fall from grace. They insisted even the five-year minimum term could prove a "de-facto life sentence" for him given his age and declining health.
The judge ignored that plea. There were reportedly gasps around the court as the near-maximum prison term of 23 years was handed down.
All six women who testified at his trial sat together as his punishment was announced. The Silence Breakers, another group of Weinstein accusers, welcomed the sentence but said no amount of jail time could make up for the damage he had caused to lives and careers.
Weinstein appeared for his sentencing in a wheelchair. Before the judge jailed him, Weinstein spoke in court for the first time to express remorse for the situation but insisted he had "wonderful times" and "friendships" with his victims. He also admitted feeling "totally confused" about what was happening to him.
"Thousands of men are losing due process. I'm worried about this country," he said, in comments seen as critical of #MeToo. Despite his apparent confusion, Weinstein's legal troubles are far from over. The 67-year-old still faces further assault charges in Los Angeles.
Victims and campaigners hope his trial will set a wider precedent where other offenders, no matter how powerful, will also be held to account.
"This case - and the national reckoning about the pervasiveness of sexual violence it sparked - will have a lasting legacy," RAINN president Scott Berkowitz said in a statement. "We hope that survivors will feel encouraged to come forward, knowing that it can truly make a difference in bringing perpetrators to justice."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51451977
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news_world-us-canada-51451977
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Jessica Breeze cleared of father's murder after 'years of violence' - BBC News
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2020-02-04
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Jessica Breeze stabbed her father in the back during a violent row in the family home.
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Tees
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Jessica Breeze said she could not remember stabbing her father
A woman who stabbed her "controlling" father after suffering years of abuse has been found not guilty of his murder and manslaughter.
Jessica Breeze, 20, denied murdering Colin Brady, 49, at the family home in Keith Road, Middlesbrough, in June.
Miss Breeze told Teesside Crown Court her father had frequently injured her in regular bouts of violence.
He had punched and threatened to kill Miss Breeze and her mother before he was stabbed in the back, jurors heard.
The prosecution alleged Miss Breeze had stabbed her father as he was leaving the house.
In evidence, the nursery worker recalled how her father would "kick off" and "smash the place up" if she returned home late.
Asked by her barrister, Simon Russell Flint QC, if she ever reported her father's violent outbursts, she replied: "No. I was scared. I thought it was pointless."
Mr Brady had previous convictions for violence, including causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
He had attacked Miss Breeze's mother, Kelly Breeze, in an assault a police constable said was the worst he had seen.
Colin Brady was stabbed during a violent row at the family's home in Middlesbrough last summer
The trial had heard that an argument broke out after Miss Breeze's parents discovered she had been secretly seeing her boyfriend when she said she had been at work.
During the row, Mr Brady slapped or punched his then 19-year-old daughter several times, before her mother intervened, the court heard.
"He was punching me in the face with his fists," Miss Breeze told the jury. "He said he was going to kill us."
She was one digit away from dialling 999 when he demanded she hand over her phone, the court heard.
The court was told she had "no memory of picking up the knife".
He was taken to hospital with an 18cm-deep wound to his left lung, but could not be saved.
Jessica Breeze and her lawyer Sean Grainger spoke outside the court
Outside court, Miss Breeze's solicitor, Sean Grainger, said in a statement: "The jury accepted she was acting in lawful self-defence of herself and her mother when under a sustained and violent attack by her father.
"Further, whilst Jessica was brought up in a highly toxic home environment where she and her mother were regularly subject to extreme physical and emotional abuse by her father, Jessica wishes to make it clear she loved her father, she still does and wishes he was still here.
"She now wishes to rebuild her life, get back to work and move on from the seven-month ordeal she has endured since her arrest."
Following the acquittal, a CPS spokesperson said: "While there was evidence of a sometimes violent relationship between the victim, Colin Brady, and the defendant, Jessica Breeze, the circumstances of his death made a charge of murder wholly appropriate in this case.
"Regardless of the alleged provocation for the attack, the victim was attacked in the back as he walked away from the defendant.
"He was stabbed with such force that it passed from his back through his entire left lung and into his chest. Despite claims of self-defence by the defendant, the evidence was such that there was a case to answer."
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news_uk-england-tees-51362733
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Michel Barnier: UK can't have Canada trade deal with EU - BBC News
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2020-02-18
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The chief negotiator says the UK's "particular proximity" to the bloc rules out a similar agreement.
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UK Politics
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Michel Barnier is the EU's chief negotiator for Brexit
The UK cannot have the same trade deal with the EU as Canada, according to the bloc's chief negotiator.
Michel Barnier said the EU was ready to offer an "ambitious partnership" with the UK post-Brexit, but its "particular proximity" meant it would be different.
It comes after the UK's chief negotiator, David Frost, made a speech in Brussels calling for a "Canada-Free Trade Agreement-type relationship".
The two sides are due to start negotiations next month.
The UK left the EU on 31 January and is now in a transition period - following the majority of the bloc's rules - while a post-Brexit trade deal is hammered out.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has put a deadline of 31 December on agreeing a plan, saying he will not extend the transition period beyond then.
On his first speech about the trade deal since his general election win, Mr Johnson said he wanted to pursue a model similar to that of Canada's, which took seven years to negotiate.
Under the agreement, import tariffs on most goods have been eliminated between the two countries, though there are still customs and VAT checks.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. PM: We want a Canada-style deal with the EU
But speaking to reporters as he arrived at the European Parliament, Mr Barnier cast doubt on the possibility.
"We remain ready to offer the UK an ambitious partnership," he said.
"A trade agreement that includes in particular fishing and includes a level playing field, with a country that has a very particular proximity - a unique territorial and economic closeness - which is why it can't be compared to Canada or South Korea or Japan."
Mr Barnier said the EU remained "ready to work very quickly with the UK" on the basis of the agreement with Mr Johnson ahead of Brexit, adding: "We remain ready to propose this partnership if the UK wants it."
This is all about what's known as the level playing field.
The UK and the EU will become economic competitors, as well as partners, and level playing field rules are about how fair that competition is going to be.
Almost all trade agreements include them to some degree, but the EU is demanding particularly strict rules because the UK is a major economy right on its doorstep - therefore a bigger potential competitor than a country like Canada.
The EU wants a common set of rules on things like workers' rights, the environmental regulations that businesses have to follow, and, in particular, state aid (or support, including subsidies) for business.
It says it will refuse to give British companies tariff-free access to its single market if those companies also have the ability to undercut their rivals based in the EU.
But the British response, as articulated by David Frost on Thursday, is that the freedom to diverge from EU rules is the whole point of Brexit.
We're going to have high standards, the UK insists, but they won't be your standards.
The EU says a promise isn't good enough, and that's the argument we're going to see playing out over the coming months.
Speaking in Brussels on Thursday, Mr Frost said the UK "must have the ability to set laws that suit us" and not be subject to rulings from European courts.
He reiterated Mr Johnson's desire for a Canada-type agreement and said if it could not be agreed, the UK would trade on the basic international terms it currently follows with Australia.
Mr Frost said the UK will set out more details of its vision for the future relationship with the EU next week.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51549662
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news_uk-politics-51549662
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Huawei: Senior Tories want Huawei 'ruled out' of 5G plans - BBC News
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2020-02-08
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They say there are alternatives to the Chinese firm and want Tory MPs to raise their concerns.
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UK
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Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith wants the UK to rethink its decision
Senior Conservatives have written to Tory MPs to raise concerns about the government's decision to allow Huawei to play a role in the UK's 5G network.
In a letter, the group - which includes four ex-cabinet ministers - said there were alternatives to the Chinese firm.
They want "high-risk" vendors to be ruled out now, or phased out over time.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the decision followed a "rigorous" review by security experts and that Huawei's involvement would be restricted.
The letter comes as US vice-president Mike Pence said the US was "profoundly disappointed" with the UK's decision.
The letter from Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Owen Paterson, David Davis, Damian Green, Tobias Ellwood and Bob Seely, which has been seen by the BBC, says some MPs were "working to find a better solution".
"We are seeking to identify a means by which we ensure that only trusted vendors are allowed as primary contractors into our critical national infrastructure," it says.
"Trusted vendors would be companies from countries that have fair market competition, rule of law, respect human rights, data privacy and non-coercive government agencies."
The men say they want the government to "rule out hi-tech from untrusted, high-risk vendors" in the UK's infrastructure, or to ensure future legislation includes "sunset clauses" to limit the length of time such companies can be used.
The UK government has said restrictions would be in place on Huawei's role in the 5G network.
These include: banning Huawei from supplying kit to "sensitive parts" of the network, only allowing it to account for 35% of the kit in a network's periphery, and excluding the firm's equipment from areas near military bases and nuclear sites.
But Sir Iain told the BBC giving Huawei any stake at all was too much of a risk.
He said: "You have an organisation from a country that is an aggressor in terms of cyber warfare and a company that is clearly totally and utterly in the hands of the Chinese government who demand absolute obedience on these matters."
He added it is "simply not manageable to have an organisation like that inside your important network" and Huawei's involvement should therefore be "zero".
Sir Iain and the other men behind the letter have also cited examples of other countries which they said had already rejected using Huawei in their 5G networks at all, including Australia, the US and Japan.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. How will the Huawei 5G deal affect me?
Mr Pence told CNBC that the US did not believe that using Huawei's technology was "consistent with the security or privacy interests of the UK, of the United States and it remains a real issue between our two countries".
He said he had told Prime Minister Boris Johnson in September that they were willing to begin to negotiate a free trade arrangement after Brexit but, when asked if the Huawei decision could be a problem, he replied: "We'll see. We'll see if it is."
He added: "We're anxious to build our economic ties, but we have made it clear to Prime Minister Johnson and to officials in the UK, that as we expand opportunities to build out 5G across this country... we want to see our companies meet the needs in the United States and UK and among all our allies without the compromise of privacy and the compromise of security that necessarily comes with Huawei and control by the Chinese Communist Party."
And speaking at an event in London last week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his country considered that using the Huawei's technology was "very difficult to mitigate".
Huawei has always denied that it would help the Chinese government attack one of its clients. The firm's founder has said he would "shut the company down" rather than aid "any spying activities".
These are not the first MPs to raise worries about Huawei's involvement in the 5G network.
And the arguments they make were well-aired before the government decided to give the Chinese company up to a 35% share of the infrastructure project.
But the fact the six politicians - including four former cabinet ministers and the chair of the Commons defence committee - are continuing to battle against the plan, underscores that this remains a live issue.
So does the comment from the US vice president, Mike Pence, who told a US broadcaster he is "profoundly" disappointed with the decision to proceed with Huawei.
His "we'll see" answer to questioning on whether a UK-US trade deal will be jeopardised will also not go unnoticed by British officials.
But Downing Street doesn't wish to respond to the letter, save only to remind that Boris Johnson said on Wednesday he does want to reduce Huawei's involvement.
He didn't say by how much - and the government looks somewhat hamstrung by what it says is a lack of other companies able to step in to the breach.
The letter-writing MPs think other firms could be brought in and, in part, that's why they've written this letter, to get other parliamentarians on board and coming up with ideas on how to proceed.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51424133
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news_uk-51424133
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Trump impeachment trial: What you might have missed - BBC News
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2020-02-05
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As senators prepare for the big vote on removing the president from office, here's how we got here.
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US & Canada
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The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump is hurtling towards its conclusion as senators prepare to cast their final vote on Wednesday, with acquittal almost certain.
Democratic hopes were dealt a blow last Friday when senators voted against introducing new witnesses to the trial.
As prosecutors in the trial, Democrats had laid out meticulous evidence over three days that they said proved Mr Trump had abused his power and obstructed Congress.
They alleged that he pressured Ukraine to dig up political dirt on Joe Biden, a domestic rival, and that he sought to hide the evidence from Congress, another impeachable offence.
The White House lawyers, on the other hand, argued Mr Trump had done "nothing wrong" and that the president has not committed offences that would warrant his removal.
President Trump and senior Republicans claim Mr Biden and his son Hunter were involved in a corrupt business scheme in Ukraine.
Here's a look back at what happened over the course of two weeks.
Proceedings began on 21 January with a tussle between Democrats and Republicans over the rules of the trial.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed a tight two-day limit for opening arguments by both sides, before extending it to three after protests from Democrats.
Mr McConnell delayed debate over motions from Democrats to allow new witnesses to be called and fresh evidence submitted.
Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, the head of seven impeachment managers who serve as prosecutors, opened oral arguments to a packed Senate chamber on 22 January.
Mr Schiff said the president's actions were exactly what the Founding Fathers feared when they came up with impeachment - "a remedy as powerful as the evil it was meant to combat", Mr Schiff said.
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The impeachment managers walked the senators through testimony gathered during depositions and committee hearings last year that they say points to a scheme by Mr Trump and his advisers to lean on Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.
The managers interspersed their oral arguments with audio and video tape, using the president's own words - including a now-infamous call with the president of Ukraine - in their effort to portray him as guilty.
They directly addressed the claims against the Bidens - a purposeful attempt to get on the front foot ahead of the president's defence.
The managers then tackled the obstruction of Congress charge.
The managers argued that Mr Trump's refusal to allow certain members of his administration to answer questions from the House of Representatives was akin to hiding information from a grand jury investigation.
During opening arguments, Mr Trump's team took barely two hours to argue that the president had done nothing wrong.
His team insisted that Mr Trump had acted in the national interests in his phone call with the Ukrainian president, with Deputy White House Counsel Mike Purpura pinpointing a line from the transcript in which Mr Trump asked Volodymyr Zelensky to "do us a favour", rather than "me".
Mr Purpura also insisted there was no quid pro quo, saying Mr Zelensky "says he felt no pressure".
The defence accused the Democrats of trying to remove Mr Trump from the ballot this year, and said the American electorate should be allowed to decide for themselves.
Resuming arguments on 27 January, attorney Kenneth Starr warned senators that impeachment could become "normalised" and used as a weapon against future administrations.
Mr Starr came to prominence in 1998, when he led an investigation into Democratic President Bill Clinton that laid the foundation for his impeachment.
"Like war, impeachment is hell," Mr Starr said on Monday. "It's filled with acrimony and divides the country like nothing else. Those of us who lived through the Clinton impeachment understand that in a deep and personal way."
Following Mr Starr, Trump defence lawyer Jane Raskin addressed Rudy Giuliani - Mr Trump's personal attorney and a central character in the impeachment case.
"Mr Giuliani was not on a political errand," she said, referring to his investigations in Ukraine.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Sondland was involved in a "domestic political errand" for Trump
"Rudy Giuliani is the House managers' colourful distraction," Ms Raskin said - a way for the Democratic impeachment managers, who act as prosecutors, to divert attention from weaknesses in their case.
On 29 January, senators began a period of questioning after opening arguments concluded.
Over two days and 16 hours on the floor, they submitted over 100 queries written on cards to Chief Justice John Roberts, who read them to the House managers and defence.
The justice was firm about keeping time, limiting answers to five minutes.
Questions alternated between Republicans and Democrats as lawmakers had their first chance to push back against claims made by both sides. A few queries were bipartisan.
Senators were not, however, allowed to address each other in their questioning.
The queries came amid a contentious debate over whether or not witnesses should be allowed in the trial - a matter that comes to a vote on Friday.
One submission was blocked by the Chief Justice: Republican Rand Paul's question that included the name of a person believed to be the whistleblower that sparked the entire impeachment inquiry was rejected.
Other questions, including when the president ordered the aid hold on Ukraine and whether Mr Trump ever mentioned the Bidens prior to Joe Biden entering the 2020 race, were not fully answered.
On Friday, the trial moves into four hours of debate over whether new witnesses and documents should be permitted.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51229748
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news_world-us-canada-51229748
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Drug consumption rooms are a 'distraction' says UK minister - BBC News
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2020-02-27
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UK government minister Kit Malthouse dismisses calls for pilot scheme to take users off the streets.
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Scotland
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. 'We're not convinced' on drug consumption rooms
Plans for drug consumption rooms to get addicts off the streets have been called a "distraction" by the UK government minister for crime.
Kit Malthouse said the drug deaths crisis gripping Scotland demanded "a more assertive approach".
Glasgow's plan for a special facility to allow users to take their own drugs under medical supervision are backed by the Scottish government.
But drug legislation is reserved to the Westminster government.
It has refused to allow Glasgow City Council to pilot the scheme, which the council says would encourage the hundreds of users who inject heroin or cocaine on the city's streets to enter a safe and clean environment.
It is hoped the special room would encourage addicts into treatment, cut down on heroin needles on city streets and counter the spread of diseases such as HIV.
However, ahead of a UK-wide summit on drug deaths being held at Glasgow's SEC, Mr Malthouse told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland: "We have to recognise this is a complicated problem and there is no silver bullet solution.
"To me, drug consumption rooms are a bit of a distraction."
He said research from around the world showed "mixed" results for consumption rooms.
"They are quite small scale and the scale of the problem demands a much more assertive approach," he said.
Mr Malthouse called for more drug treatment alongside education and support.
He also said that more needed to be done to disrupt drug supplies, especially online and social media, using "intelligent enforcement".
Almost 4,300 people died from drug misuse across the UK in 2018, a record figure, and the numbers for last year are expected to be just as high.
Deaths in England and Wales increased significantly but the rate remains much lower than in Scotland.
Scotland accounted for more than a quarter of UK drug deaths, which was far higher than its share of the population.
The latest figures showed an average of more than three people a day dying of drug overdoses in Scotland.
Scotland's Public Health Minister Joe FitzPatrick told the summit in Glasgow that an extra £20m in government funding would be made available for drug rehabilitation and mental health support for addicts.
He said he remained convinced that "a public health approach to this emergency is the right way forward" rather than trying to punish users for breaking the law.
The minister added: "The UK government has made it clear at their summit that they are not willing to consider the bold, innovative approaches to this problem that I feel are needed.
"However, that doesn't mean we will stop fighting for what we believe is right and this extra investment will help us in our efforts to save lives."
It is more than three years since Glasgow City Council first proposed drug consumption rooms.
The leader of Glasgow City Council, Susan Aitken, said her city had the most drug deaths in the UK, 280 in 2018.
"This is a critical situation for our entire city - we are in the throes of a crisis and an emergency response is required," she said.
Ms Aitken called on the UK government to support new approaches, such as safe consumption rooms, in an attempt to get addicts off the streets.
Dr Saket Priyadarshi, from Glasgow Alcohol and Drug Recovery Services, said a drug consumption facility would be a good way to reach people with whom they have no contact to begin recovery.
He said it was urgently needed and could not see an argument against it.
Glasgow wants to open a safe consumption room to get users of the streets
Both the UK and Scottish governments agree that tackling addiction and rising drug death levels should be a priority.
However, both remain at odds over how best to help some of the country's most vulnerable addicts.
At the heart of the Scottish government agenda is a public health approach, exemplified by the drastic reduction in drug deaths in Portugal.
It involves decriminalising possession of small amounts of drugs, wrap-around services and potentially the introduction of so-called "fix rooms" - facilities where addicts can inject drugs safely under supervision.
But to do this, says the Scottish government, it requires devolution of drug policy and changes to the Misuse of Drugs Act. The UK government's Home Office are reluctant.
As well as Tory unwillingness to appear "soft" on drugs, Home Office policing minister Kit Malthouse has already said divergence in drug policy north of the border would be encouraging for English gangs seeking more opportunity to flood Scottish towns with illegal drugs.
Recovery charities have expressed fears that these two summits could end up being another political point-scoring exercise. If that's the case, the ones losing out are the ones dying.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51644786
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news_uk-scotland-51644786
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Nicola Sturgeon: I have support to remain first minister - BBC News
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2020-02-23
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The SNP leader also defended her plans for a Scottish visa system on The Andrew Marr Show.
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Scotland politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Nicola Sturgeon told the BBC's Andrew Marr she had the support of "party and of country" to hold her post
Nicola Sturgeon has said she "emphatically" wants to remain as first minister for at least a few years.
Appearing on The Andrew Marr Show, the SNP leader said she believed she had the support of "party and of country" to hold her post.
It comes after party figures told BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley Ms Sturgeon may be in trouble.
She also defended a proposal for a "Scottish visa" system after the UK government unveiled immigration plans.
MSPs would decide the criteria for this new visa, and the Scottish government would receive and assess applications before sending them to the UK government for security checks.
The UK's post-Brexit system, which was announced earlier this week, means that low-skilled workers would not get visas.
However Ms Sturgeon's position is that this would cause "devastation" for Scotland's economy as it would reduce the number of people entering the country with "restrictive" border controls.
There are concerns about Scotland's ageing population and shrinking workforce, with the National Records of Scotland projecting that deaths could outweigh births over the next 25 years.
Scottish ministers say this means greater inward migration is needed to boost Scotland's working-age population in particular, and that an end to freedom of movement could threaten this.
In a letter to Number 10 published on Sunday, Ms Sturgeon has called for a meeting with Boris Johnson to discuss immigration policy.
She told Andrew Marr she hopes to take a delegation of sectoral and business leaders to Downing Street to set out arguments for a different Scottish system.
She said: "You have a UK government that has as an expressed objective - reducing the number of people who come into the UK from other countries.
"My point is that that objective - in and of itself - is deeply damaging to Scotland's economy and our future prosperity.
"It will make us poorer and that is why I really want to see this change and for Scotland's interests to be recognised."
The UK government, however, has urged employers to "move away" from relying on "cheap labour" from Europe and invest in retaining staff and developing automation technology.
And the Migration Advisory Committee has said Scotland's needs are "not sufficiently different" from the rest of the UK to justify a "very different" system, with the north of England facing similar issues.
Ms Sturgeon said there was "not a shred of evidence" to support the idea that Scottish jobs had been undercut and called for more powers over employment law to ensure fair working conditions.
She said: "There is much evidence to the contrary including the views of the migration advisory committee - that immigration and EU immigration in particular does not drive down wages, either in the Scottish economy or in the UK economy.
"Migrants make a net contribution to our economy. If we have a problem of low wages or working conditions not being what they should be, that's about poor regulation in the UK economy."
A UK government spokesman said: "Our new points-based immigration system will work in the interests of the whole of the United Kingdom.
"We will continue to work with stakeholders and industry in Scotland to ensure the new proposals work for all sectors."
Earlier this week Nick Eardley wrote that a number of SNP figures said Ms Sturgeon may have to "fall on her sword" amid increasing discussions over her future.
When asked if she would remain in her position as leader of Scotland, Ms Sturgeon said there were two conditions to consider.
She said: "Firstly you have to have the support, not just of party but of country, and I would say humbly that I've just led my party to another landslide election victory.
"Secondly I have to be sure that I want to do this job, think I'm the best person to to this job, have the drive and energy - and that is emphatically the case."
Marr also pushed Ms Sturgeon on whether she would look to hold another referendum on Scottish independence this year, despite the prime minister's flat refusal.
She reiterated her call for independence supporters to "be patient" but said it was important to continue arguing for another vote as the UK government negotiates its "future relationship with Europe".
"I think it's important that Scotland decides whether or not it wants to go down that road and if it doesn't we start to plot a better route forward," she said.
Ms Sturgeon added that she does not rule out "testing the limit of the power of the Scottish Parliament" in court - but it was not an option she was "actively looking at".
She has previously ruled out the possibility of holding an unofficial referendum similar to the one in Catalonia in 2017.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-51600062
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news_uk-scotland-scotland-politics-51600062
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Brexit's happened... so what now? - BBC News
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2020-02-01
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After the celebrations, the UK will start to find out what life outside the EU will really mean.
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UK Politics
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A dreary night didn't discourage those celebrating in Parliament Square. We wake this morning out of the European Union. But we follow their rules until the end of the year, without a say.
We are separate after more than 40 years, but remember much of the status quo will hold for now - the UK and the EU, the awkward couple, finally divorced - but still sharing a house and the bills.
But what the prime minister hails as a new era, a bright new dawn, starts months of hard bargaining with our neighbours across the Channel.
The UK's requests: a free trade agreement, cooperation on security, and new arrangements for fishing are just some of the vital arguments that lie ahead.
Within days, Boris Johnson - and the EU too - will set out their opening positions. And at home, the government must hurry to adapt many of our systems that are plumbed into the EU. The prime minister is adamant that process must not run beyond the end of the year.
It's a deadline that focuses minds, but raises eyebrows. Getting meaningful agreements in place at that pace is not impossible, but hard to do.
That means while the biggest question is settled, particularly for business, uncertainty still hangs around.
But the prime minister believes the opportunity of Brexit is seeing beyond the framework of the EU. He hopes for more ability for the government to pursue its priorities at home. More freedom to act abroad - a smaller, but perhaps nimbler, partner.
And there will be fewer excuses for a British government if it fails to keep its huge promises.
Departure has been so controversial there will be plenty of rival politicians looking for early proof of failure.
In truth, the merits or mistakes of this decision will take years to show. The economy is expected to grow more slowly, but a country's value is not just measured in pounds and pence.
Brexit in a complete sense has always been hard to define. Today we will start to find out what it will really mean.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51336075
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news_uk-politics-51336075
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Brexit: UK begins new chapter outside European Union - BBC News
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2020-02-01
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France's Emmanuel Macron says he is deeply sad but David Davis says everybody will win from Brexit.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Pre-recorded bongs from Big Ben played out as the UK left the European Union
European leaders have expressed sadness at the UK leaving the EU, with France's Emmanuel Macron emphasising Britain's "unrivalled ties" with the French.
Mr Macron said he was "deeply sad" while the EU's Guy Verhofstadt pledged to try and "ensure the EU is a project you'll want to be a part of again".
Celebrations and anti-Brexit protests were held on Friday night to mark the UK's departure.
Ex-Brexit Secretary David Davis said everyone would be a winner in the end.
The UK officially left the European Union on Friday at 23:00 GMT after 47 years of membership, and more than three years after it voted to do so in a referendum.
Brexit parties were held in some pubs and social clubs as well as in London's Parliament Square, as the country counted down to its official departure.
In Scotland, which voted to stay in the EU, candlelit vigils and anti-Brexit rallies were held.
Pro-EU campaigners take part in a "Missing EU Already" rally outside the Scottish Parliament
In a message released on social media an hour before the UK left, Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed to bring the country together and "take us forward".
"For many people this is an astonishing moment of hope, a moment they thought would never come," he said. "And there are many of course who feel a sense of anxiety and loss."
In an open letter to the British public, French President Mr Macron said he was thinking of the millions of Britons "who still feel deeply attached to the European Union".
"You are leaving the European Union but you are not leaving Europe," he said. "Nor are you becoming detached from France or the friendship of its people.
"The Channel has never managed to separate our destinies; Brexit will not do so, either."
Mr Macron also said the EU must learn lessons from the "shock" of Brexit, adding: "I am convinced therefore that Europe needs new momentum."
And he defended the way France acted in the Brexit negotiations, saying neither the French nor anyone else in the EU was "driven by a desire for revenge or punishment".
Mr Macron called on Mr Johnson to "deepen our defence, security and intelligence cooperation"
A pro-EU group earlier projected a message onto the White Cliffs of Dover
Meanwhile, the EU Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator Mr Verhofstadt responded to a message which had been projected onto the White Cliffs of Dover by a pro-EU group.
"We will look after your star and work to ensure the EU is a project you'll want to be a part of again soon," he said.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Davis - who quit as Brexit secretary in protest at former prime minister Theresa May's Brexit plan - said it would be a "fair race" to reach a trade deal with the EU by the end of 2020 but "it can be done".
The UK is aiming to sign a permanent free trade agreement with the EU, along the lines of the one the EU has with Canada, by the end of the transition period in December.
Mr Davis said reaching a deal was "not a charitable exercise, this is an exercise of both sides recognising their own best interests".
European leaders have warned that the UK faces a tough battle to get a deal by that deadline.
Mairead McGuinness, the vice president of the European Parliament, said progress to agree a trade deal "might be left to the very last minute".
"Normally in trade negotiations we're trying to come together," she told BBC Breakfast. "For the first time we're going try and negotiate a trade agreement where somebody wants to pull away from us. I can't get my head around that and I think it's going to be quite complicated."
We are separate after more than 40 years, but remember much of the status quo will hold for now - the UK and the EU, the awkward couple, finally divorced - but still sharing a house and the bills.
But what the prime minister hails as a new era, a bright new dawn, starts months of hard bargaining with our neighbours across the Channel.
Labour leadership hopeful Emily Thornberry said the exit talks were unlikely to go smoothly and said she expected the country would be "back in no-deal territory by the summer".
The shadow foreign secretary, speaking at an event in Bristol featuring the four Labour leadership candidates, said her party would need a Remain-backing leader who had been "on the right side of the argument all along".
However, the other three candidates - Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy - said the party needed to move on from debates over Brexit.
Shadow business secretary Ms Long-Bailey said that Labour needed to make sure Boris Johnson negotiated the "best possible trade deal" that could help "rebuild our communities".
Whilst never the most enthusiastic member, the UK was part of the European project for almost half a century.
On a personal level, EU leaders tell me they'll miss having the British sense of humour and no-nonsense attitude at their table.
If they were to be brutally honest they'd have admitted they'll mourn the loss of our not-insignificant contribution to the EU budget too.
But now we've left the "European family" (as Brussels insiders sometimes like to call the EU) and as trade talks begin, how long will it take for warm words to turn into gritted teeth?
UK citizens will notice few immediate changes now that the country is no longer in the European Union.
Most EU laws will continue to be in force - including the free movement of people - until 31 December, when the transition period comes to an end.
Thousands gathered in Parliament Square to celebrate Brexit on Friday night, singing patriotic songs and cheering speeches from leading Brexiteers, including Nigel Farage.
The Brexit Party leader said: "This is the greatest moment in the modern history of our great nation."
Pro-EU demonstrators earlier staged a march in Whitehall to bid a "fond farewell" to the union.
Police in Whitehall arrested four men and also charged one man with criminal damage and being drunk and disorderly, while in Glasgow one man was arrested.
Meanwhile, other symbolic moments on a day of mixed emotions included:
The government's EU delegation has changed its name from "representation" to "mission"
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51340945
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news_uk-politics-51340945
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Brexit day: The story of the UK leaving the EU in key quotes - BBC News
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2020-02-01
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The journey to leaving the EU, tracked by what people said at the time.
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UK
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Britain has left the EU, more than three years and three prime ministers after it voted out.
It's been a political rollercoaster full of twists and turns, and a journey which can be tracked by what people said at the time.
Some have aged better than others, but here are a few of the key quotes from before the referendum until Brexit day.
When your neighbour's house is on fire, your first impulse should be to help them to put out the flames - not least to stop the flames reaching your own house
Then-PM David Cameron was speaking about Britain's response to Europe's debt crisis. MPs in Parliament had just voted against holding an EU referendum, after 100,000 people signed a petition calling for one.
But back then, the word Brexit had not even been invented. In the summer of 2012, as London readied itself for hosting the Olympics, the "B" word emerged, albeit with a different spelling to what we know today:
Meanwhile, the PM faced more pressure to hold a EU referendum. Nearly 100 Tory MPs signed a letter to him calling for one.
There is a consistent majority in this country who believe that the European Union meddles too much in our everyday lives
The following year, Mr Cameron agreed, promising a referendum on Britain staying in the EU.
It is time for the British people to have their say. It is time for us to settle this question about Britain and Europe
He planned to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU before giving people a "simple choice" of in or out. In Europe, politicians reacted:
You can't do Europe a la carte... Imagine Europe is a football club and you join, once you're in it you can't say 'Let's play rugby'
Meanwhile UKIP was becoming a force in British politics. Leader Nigel Farage said he wanted a referendum to happen quickly.
A full, free and fair referendum with some proper sensible rules - particularly on spending - on both sides of the debate
By December 2013 the party claimed that a record year of growth had taken its membership above 30,000 for the first time.
Back in Brussels, the time had come for an EU summit, with Mr Cameron pledging to deliver a strong message to EU leaders.
Brussels has got too big, too bossy, too interfering
During the next year, his plans to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU were discussed.
I don't understand how it is possible to say: 'We, the UK, have all the positive aspects of Europe but don't want to share any of the risk'
Mr Cameron, fresh from a general election victory, went on to strike a deal on a new UK-EU relationship. He promised "We'll be out of the parts of Europe that don't work for us" and "never be part of a European super-state".
He then announced a date for the referendum - 23 June 2016.
The choice is in your hands
Most other parties - except the DUP and UKIP - backed Remain, including Labour.
Among those warning against Brexit was the then-US president. The UK, he said, would not be seen as a priority for trade deals.
The UK is going to be in the back of the queue
And a group of nearly 300 actors, musicians, writers and artists signed a letter urging people to vote Remain.
Our global creative success would be severely weakened by walking away
Meanwhile, it was during the campaign that the then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson famously, and wrongly, echoed Vote Leave's claim that the UK pays the EU £350m a week - higher than the actual amount at the time.
If we vote Leave on June 23 we can take back control of £350m a week and spend on our priorities here in this country including on the NHS
A computer glitch meant thousands of people were unable to register to vote in time. The government blamed the snag on record demand and extended the deadline, allowing another 430,000 more people to register.
With just over a week to go, polling expert Prof John Curtice said Remain was no longer the frontrunner.
We no longer have a favourite in this referendum
Nevertheless, there was surprise for many when, on referendum night, the results started to show a lead for Leave.
Dare to dream that the dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom
Later, the full result was in: Britain had voted to leave the EU and Europe was in shock.
Across the continent and beyond, front pages reacted to the "24 hours in which the world has changed".
The following day, Mr Cameron - who fronted the Remain campaign - quit, saying he had fought the campaign "head, heart and soul".
It sparked a race for the next Conservative Party leader. Boris Johnson was immediately installed as the bookies' favourite to win and was backed by his fellow Leave campaigner, Michael Gove.
But, in a shock twist, Mr Gove announced that instead of backing his friend and colleague, he himself would run for the top job. Mr Johnson pulled out of the contest.
I came... to the conclusion that while Boris has great attributes he was not capable of leading the party and the country in the way that I would have hoped
Theresa May became the frontrunner, and set out her ambitions to win.
I know I'm not a showy politician... I don't gossip about people over lunch, I don't often wear my heart on my sleeve, I just get on with the job in front of me
She took over the following month and with a new UK prime minister came a new slogan:
Brexit means Brexit - and we're going to make a success of it
A year later, she called a snap election which saw the Conservative Party lose their majority, while Labour made gains.
Meanwhile, negotiations had begun - with leading EU figures making their opinions clear. Donald Tusk quoted John Lennon to suggest the door remained open to the UK staying.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
We have to be grateful for so many things Britain has brought to Europe - during the war, before the war, after the war. But now they have to pay
After months of talks, Theresa May announced that her top team had backed her Brexit deal. Jean-Claude Juncker later insisted: "I'm never changing my mind.
The best and only deal possible
Abba star Bjorn Ulvaeus shared his thoughts on Theresa May dancing on to the stage to the sound of Dancing Queen at the Conservative Party conference.
A lady with not a lot of rhythm in her
Meanwhile, as Theresa May struggled to get her deal through Parliament, Mr Tusk was criticised for taking aim at Brexiteers.
I've been wondering what the special place in hell looks like... for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it safely
Brexit was postponed to 31 October, after MPs rejected the Brexit deal and voted against leaving without a deal. Mr Tusk said the extension was "enough" to get a solution.
Please do not waste this time
Amid a backlash from her own MPs against her Brexit plan - and after the deal was rejected three times - Mrs May quit as prime minister after three years.
I have done everything I can to convince MPs to back that deal... I tried three times
Two months later, and the UK had a new PM, after Mr Johnson won the Conservative leadership vote against Jeremy Hunt. He referred to Brexit in his maiden speech, saying "the buck stops here".
I will take personal responsibility for the change I want to see
Early on, Mr Johnson faced criticism after suspending Parliament just days after MPs returned to work.
A smash and grab on our democracy
But pressing on with his "get Brexit done" message, Mr Johnson was adamant Brexit would not be postponed again.
I'd rather be dead in a ditch [than delay Brexit]
Then, at the end of September, Mr Johnson suffered a blow when his decision to suspend Parliament was ruled to be unlawful by the UK's top court.
It is impossible for us to conclude... that there was any reason - let alone a good reason - to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament for five weeks
MPs returned to work straight away - and the mood in the Commons was angry. Mr Johnson became embroiled in a row about the language used, and was criticised for one comment in particular:
The best way to honour the memory of Jo Cox, and indeed to bring this country together, would be, I think, to get Brexit done
Meanwhile, for the PM's adviser, Dominic Cummings - who also ran the Vote Leave campaign - being in government was less pressure than the Brexit campaign.
This is a walk in the park compared to the referendum
Finally, Mr Johnson sent a request to the EU asking for a delay to Brexit - but without his signature - and accompanied by a second letter, which he did sign, saying he believed a delay would be a mistake.
And despite his "do or die" pledge, he agreed to an extension until 31 January.
I am happy that decision has been taken
After several attempts to get a general election, Mr Johnson finally succeeded - the UK's first December election for 96 years.
He won with a big majority, meaning the path to "get Brexit done" suddenly became a lot smoother.
We pulled it off, we broke the deadlock, we ended the gridlock, we smashed the roadblock
Last week, the PM signed the Brexit withdrawal agreement, saying he hoped it would "bring to an end far too many years of argument and division".
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Trump impeachment trial: What you might have missed - BBC News
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2020-02-01
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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As senators prepare for the big vote on removing the president from office, here's how we got here.
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US & Canada
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The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump is hurtling towards its conclusion as senators prepare to cast their final vote on Wednesday, with acquittal almost certain.
Democratic hopes were dealt a blow last Friday when senators voted against introducing new witnesses to the trial.
As prosecutors in the trial, Democrats had laid out meticulous evidence over three days that they said proved Mr Trump had abused his power and obstructed Congress.
They alleged that he pressured Ukraine to dig up political dirt on Joe Biden, a domestic rival, and that he sought to hide the evidence from Congress, another impeachable offence.
The White House lawyers, on the other hand, argued Mr Trump had done "nothing wrong" and that the president has not committed offences that would warrant his removal.
President Trump and senior Republicans claim Mr Biden and his son Hunter were involved in a corrupt business scheme in Ukraine.
Here's a look back at what happened over the course of two weeks.
Proceedings began on 21 January with a tussle between Democrats and Republicans over the rules of the trial.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed a tight two-day limit for opening arguments by both sides, before extending it to three after protests from Democrats.
Mr McConnell delayed debate over motions from Democrats to allow new witnesses to be called and fresh evidence submitted.
Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, the head of seven impeachment managers who serve as prosecutors, opened oral arguments to a packed Senate chamber on 22 January.
Mr Schiff said the president's actions were exactly what the Founding Fathers feared when they came up with impeachment - "a remedy as powerful as the evil it was meant to combat", Mr Schiff said.
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The impeachment managers walked the senators through testimony gathered during depositions and committee hearings last year that they say points to a scheme by Mr Trump and his advisers to lean on Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.
The managers interspersed their oral arguments with audio and video tape, using the president's own words - including a now-infamous call with the president of Ukraine - in their effort to portray him as guilty.
They directly addressed the claims against the Bidens - a purposeful attempt to get on the front foot ahead of the president's defence.
The managers then tackled the obstruction of Congress charge.
The managers argued that Mr Trump's refusal to allow certain members of his administration to answer questions from the House of Representatives was akin to hiding information from a grand jury investigation.
During opening arguments, Mr Trump's team took barely two hours to argue that the president had done nothing wrong.
His team insisted that Mr Trump had acted in the national interests in his phone call with the Ukrainian president, with Deputy White House Counsel Mike Purpura pinpointing a line from the transcript in which Mr Trump asked Volodymyr Zelensky to "do us a favour", rather than "me".
Mr Purpura also insisted there was no quid pro quo, saying Mr Zelensky "says he felt no pressure".
The defence accused the Democrats of trying to remove Mr Trump from the ballot this year, and said the American electorate should be allowed to decide for themselves.
Resuming arguments on 27 January, attorney Kenneth Starr warned senators that impeachment could become "normalised" and used as a weapon against future administrations.
Mr Starr came to prominence in 1998, when he led an investigation into Democratic President Bill Clinton that laid the foundation for his impeachment.
"Like war, impeachment is hell," Mr Starr said on Monday. "It's filled with acrimony and divides the country like nothing else. Those of us who lived through the Clinton impeachment understand that in a deep and personal way."
Following Mr Starr, Trump defence lawyer Jane Raskin addressed Rudy Giuliani - Mr Trump's personal attorney and a central character in the impeachment case.
"Mr Giuliani was not on a political errand," she said, referring to his investigations in Ukraine.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Sondland was involved in a "domestic political errand" for Trump
"Rudy Giuliani is the House managers' colourful distraction," Ms Raskin said - a way for the Democratic impeachment managers, who act as prosecutors, to divert attention from weaknesses in their case.
On 29 January, senators began a period of questioning after opening arguments concluded.
Over two days and 16 hours on the floor, they submitted over 100 queries written on cards to Chief Justice John Roberts, who read them to the House managers and defence.
The justice was firm about keeping time, limiting answers to five minutes.
Questions alternated between Republicans and Democrats as lawmakers had their first chance to push back against claims made by both sides. A few queries were bipartisan.
Senators were not, however, allowed to address each other in their questioning.
The queries came amid a contentious debate over whether or not witnesses should be allowed in the trial - a matter that comes to a vote on Friday.
One submission was blocked by the Chief Justice: Republican Rand Paul's question that included the name of a person believed to be the whistleblower that sparked the entire impeachment inquiry was rejected.
Other questions, including when the president ordered the aid hold on Ukraine and whether Mr Trump ever mentioned the Bidens prior to Joe Biden entering the 2020 race, were not fully answered.
On Friday, the trial moves into four hours of debate over whether new witnesses and documents should be permitted.
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What does healing the Brexit divide mean? - BBC News
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2020-02-01
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The moment of Brexit is a time for healing, says the PM. But what does that mean?
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UK
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The moment of Brexit is a time to "find closure and let the healing begin", according to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But what does "healing" involve?
If there is one thing that people on both sides of the referendum debate agree on it is that, at times, the argument became far too hostile. In the House of Commons, on social media and in the streets, passions became inflamed.
An official statement from the prime minister earlier this month said now was "a moment to heal divisions". It was also announced that Brexit would be marked with a Downing Street light display, the hoisting of flags, a countdown clock and the minting of a commemorative coin.
While many of his supporters want to celebrate leaving the European Union, there's little sign that these events have healed political divisions.
On the other hand, it's not clear how the decision of the SNP to fly an EU flag outside the Scottish Parliament building was going to bring people together.
To heal, we need to understand the nature of the divide. Why do people feel so strongly about Brexit? What are the values that lie behind the slogans and insults?
There is a danger in trying to characterise the Leave/Remain split too rigidly. The practice of describing people, places, regions and nations as "Leave" or "Remain" risks polarising the argument with a binary description that fails to reflect the nuance behind the choice and the result.
For instance, London is often described as a "Remain city". But more Londoners voted to leave the EU than voted for Remain-supporting Sadiq Khan as mayor. Meanwhile, even in that most pro-Brexit town of Boston in Lincolnshire, a quarter of those who took part opted to remain.
Voters had a whole list of reasons for choosing to support one side or the other, often weighing up different arguments. No place was 100% for leaving or remaining in the EU.
But new opinion polling, commissioned by the BBC and the Campaign for Social Science, helps us understand the core beliefs associated with the way people voted.
The survey, conducted by Ipsos MORI, asked people to say which propositions came closest to their view.
The phrase "influences from other countries and other cultures make Britain a better place to live" was supported by a majority of Remain voters (56%), but just a quarter (23%) of Leave voters.
The alternative proposition - "influences from other countries and cultures threaten the British way of life" - was supported by just 18% of Remain voters but 52% of Leave voters.
A similar result was found with a slightly different proposition. The phrase "Britain will be stronger if it is open to changes and influences from other countries and other cultures" was supported by 58% of Remain voters but just 22% of Leave voters.
The alternative - "Britain will be stronger in the future if it sticks to its traditions and way of life" - was supported by 56% of Leave voters and just 14% of Remain voters.
Along with other polling data, Remain voters emerge as significantly more likely to celebrate Britain's diversity and say they feel European. Leave voters are more likely to say Britain's history, heritage, pageantry and Christian tradition are important to their national identity.
Leave voters appeared more patriotic, proud of their nationality and more likely to suggest their country was better than others. Remain voters placed more importance on being part of the international community.
What is suggested by the survey is two visions of Britain - one which seeks to protect tradition, heritage, culture and familiar way of life, another which is happy to embrace change and keen to be part of a global conversation.
They are not mutually exclusive ideas - there is always a balance to be found between continuity and change. We can all feel that we want to protect tradition and be open to new ideas. It is a matter of emphasis.
But the reason that this debate has inspired such passions is that it goes to the kind of country we want to live in, its priorities and values.
In that context, what does healing look like?
Culturally, British politics and public discourse tend to be adversarial. The House of Commons is designed to pit one side against the other. Compromise is often portrayed as weakness. Consensus-building seen as alien to our political tradition.
But conflict-resolution experts say healing doesn't mean conceding the argument. It is about understanding and valuing the views of people with whom you don't agree.
It is not about trying to change people's minds or prove them wrong. It is about "respectful disagreement".
Part of the problem is that it's increasingly easy to live our lives in echo chambers, surrounding ourselves with those who endorse our personal view of the world. On Facebook and Twitter, we naturally exclude those whose views we don't like.
The newspapers and websites we choose, the books we read, the pubs and cafes we frequent, the films we watch - all of them are to some extent selected because they bolster our views and values rather than challenging them.
Indeed, when we do find ourselves hearing opinions at odds with our own core beliefs, it can feel quite upsetting. The views of people we disagree with have a much bigger psychological effect on us than the voices of those who think like us.
Healing the divide, it seems, is going to require us to get out of our comfort zone, out of our bubble.
"More in Common" is the name of more than one body trying to understand this situation. A foundation set up in memory of the murdered MP Jo Cox organises community events which encourage people with different views to come together and explore what unites rather than divides them.
A separate research organisation operating in the UK, US, Germany and France, describes its mission as working to "address the underlying drivers of fracturing and polarisation, and build more united, resilient and inclusive societies".
This year they will be teaming up with organisations and institutions to see what role they can play in "bridging divides" in Britain. One charity they already work with is the Roots Programme which takes people from different walks of life and gets them to "meet and eat, talk and debate", physically removing them from their "bubble".
The first pair to take part were Ben Lane, 31, a Remain-supporting, north-London-dwelling former business strategy consultant, and Peter Curtis, 47, a community football coach from Sunderland who voted to leave.
Both men acknowledge their exchange visits could have been better.
"It was quite depressing going down to London and seeing the money flying about," said Peter, a former construction worker who now earns less than £10,000 a year in Sunderland.
For Ben, the experience made him embarrassed that he played no role in his community, despite his prestigious job as a charity chief executive.
But they now both feel optimistic about the healing of the nation after Brexit.
Ben said: "One of the worst ingredients for healing is uncertainty, and now we've got more certainty.
"It definitely means we can try and galvanise around something."
Helpfully, the phrase "more in common" has some truth to it in the UK. Compared with the US where the liberal/conservative divide runs along almost every area of policy, here there is still broad national consensus on many key issues - taxation, welfare, the NHS, abortion, gun control or homosexuality.
That is not to say that everyone agrees on everything, but it is more likely there will be some common ground where people can gather to explore the aspirations and values they share.
Healing the Brexit divide, though, needs to be more than a group hug. It also means dealing with the consequences of a very fractious and unpleasant period in our politics, a time when many questioned the effectiveness of our system of governance and when confidence in our democracy was shaken.
A season of stories about bringing people together in a fragmented world.
Tellingly, all the big political parties included proposals for democratic renewal in their manifestos. There was consensus, at least, on the need to take a close look at how power works.
The Brexit vote itself has been interpreted as a cry of pain from communities which felt that their voice was being ignored, that decisions affecting their lives were being taken without consultation or discussion in anonymous offices in Westminster or behind mirrored glass in Brussels.
Politicians of all stripes appear to accept the need to listen to and respond to those concerns, finding ways to help people feel they have a genuine connection to power.
The government intends to create a Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission that will be instructed to come up with proposals to "restore trust in our institutions and in how our democracy operates".
No details have been given on the terms of reference or make-up of this new body, although there have been suggestions that it may be asked to look at the balance of power between government, MPs and the judiciary after the Supreme Court ruled that Boris Johnson's suspension of Parliament last autumn was unlawful.
Already, some have argued that might be interpreted as Brexiteer vengeance rather than a sincere attempt to heal a wounded democracy.
Such speculation helps explain why constitutional or democratic reform is tricky for government or even for Parliament. Any adjustment to the architecture is likely to have implications for the power of ministers and MPs.
That is why civil society has stepped into this space, looking at ways to involve citizens directly in any redesign of the British constitution - trying to take party politics out of the process and give power to the people.
Citizens' assemblies are increasingly used by governments around the world to find answers to the trickiest of problems - abortion in Ireland, nuclear power in South Korea, energy policy in Texas, waste recycling in South Australia.
A randomly selected cross-section of the public is recruited to consider a policy question through rational, respectful and reasoned discussion. They engage with information and arguments around a topic before agreeing on a proposal for consideration by lawmakers.
UK parliamentary committees have held citizens' assemblies on climate change and social care to help understand what really matters to informed voters. In Scotland, a randomly selected assembly is currently considering the nation's governance, with its recommendations to be considered by the Scottish Parliament.
Over the next two years, the Citizens' Convention on UK Democracy will attempt to engage 10 million people in what it describes as a "UK conversation". Thousands will receive a formal invitation to participate in a convention, their names selected by civic lottery.
Among the issues that will be considered are the voting system, the future of the House of Lords, devolving power to local and regional bodies, how politics should be paid for and whether the UK should have a written constitution.
A number of senior MPs from across the political spectrum have agreed to help ensure that the conclusions of the convention are considered by Parliament.
There are other initiatives working in the same area, all convinced that the divide exposed by the Brexit debate can be healed only by getting under the bonnet of the UK's democracy, examining its inner workings and looking at ways to improve the performance.
The Hansard Society's most recent annual Audit of Political Engagement suggested 72% of voters think Britain's system of governance needs significant improvement and almost half (47%) say they feel they have no influence at all over national decision-making.
With the arguments and campaigns over Brexit now over, this does seem to be a good moment to consider the lessons of what has been an uncomfortable and at times painful process. It has knocked the confidence and pride Britain once had in its democracy.
If healing is to happen, it will require the nation to ask some searching questions of itself and what kind of country we want to be.
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Caroline Flack's unpublished Instagram post released by family - BBC News
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2020-02-19
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In a post released ahead of her inquest, the TV host said her "future was swept from under my feet".
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Entertainment & Arts
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Caroline Flack's family have released an unpublished Instagram post that they say she wrote shortly before she died.
It came ahead of the inquest into the death of the former Love Island host, which opened on Wednesday.
The inquest heard that the 40-year-old presenter was apparently found hanged in her London flat on Saturday.
The unpublished post said her "whole world and future was swept from under my feet" when she had been arrested for assaulting her boyfriend in December.
Her mother said Flack had been advised not to publish the message, which has now been shared through the Eastern Daily Press.
The TV presenter was found dead in her home weeks before she was due to stand trial on charges of assaulting her boyfriend Lewis Burton.
Flack pleaded not guilty to the alleged assault at a court hearing in December and was released on bail.
She was ordered to stop any contact with Mr Burton ahead of the trial, which was due to begin in March.
Flack's mother Chris told the Norfolk newspaper that her daughter showed her the wording of the post in January, but was told not to post it by advisers.
She added that the family wanted people to read it. "Carrie sent me this message at the end of January but was told not to post it by advisers but she so wanted to have her little voice heard," she said, according to the paper.
"So many untruths were out there but this is how she felt and my family and I would like people to read her own words.
"Carrie was surrounded by love and friends but this was just too much for her."
If you or someone you know needs support for issues about emotional distress, these organisations may be able to help.
"For a lot of people, being arrested for common assault is an extreme way to have some sort of spiritual awakening but for me it's become the normal.
"I've been pressing the snooze button on many stresses in my life - for my whole life. I've accepted shame and toxic opinions on my life for over 10 years and yet told myself it's all part of my job. No complaining.
"The problem with brushing things under the carpet is they are still there and one day someone is going to lift that carpet up and all you are going to feel is shame and embarrassment.
"On December the 12th 2019 I was arrested for common assault on my boyfriend. Within 24 hours my whole world and future was swept from under my feet and all the walls that I had taken so long to build around me collapsed. I am suddenly on a different kind of stage and everyone is watching it happen.
"I have always taken responsibility for what happened that night. Even on the night. But the truth is... It was an accident.
"I've been having some sort of emotional breakdown for a very long time.
"But I am NOT a domestic abuser. We had an argument and an accident happened. An accident. The blood that someone SOLD to a newspaper was MY blood and that was something very sad and very personal.
"The reason I am talking today is because my family can't take anymore. I've lost my job. My home. My ability to speak. And the truth has been taken out of my hands and used as entertainment.
"I can't spend every day hidden away being told not to say or speak to anyone.
"I'm so sorry to my family for what I have brought upon them and for what my friends have had to go through.
"I'm not thinking about 'how I'm going to get my career back.' I'm thinking about how I'm going to get mine and my family's life back."
After her death, Flack's management company said she had been "under huge pressure" since her arrest and criticised the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for refusing to drop the charge, even though Mr Burton said he did not want the case to go ahead.
The CPS said it would not comment on the specifics of the case, but it outlined how it reached decisions over whether or not to charge someone.
Guidelines say domestic abuse prosecutions do not automatically stop if the complainant withdraws their support.
The guidance also says police officers must draw evidence of the suspect's mental health issues to the attention of the prosecutor.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51557180
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Emergency law aims to stop next terror release - BBC News
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2020-02-06
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Mohammed Zahir Khan is due to be freed in three weeks' time after having served half of his sentence.
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UK
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Mohammed Zahir Khan is due to be freed at the end of this month
Ministers are aiming to pass emergency legislation to block the automatic early release of convicted terror offenders before the next one is due to be freed in three weeks' time.
Sunderland shopkeeper Mohammed Zahir Khan, 42, is expected to be released on 28 February after serving half of his sentence for encouraging terrorism.
An official said legislation would be introduced to the Commons on Tuesday.
It follows attacks in recent months by men convicted of terror offences.
Khan was arrested in 2017 and given a four-and-a-half year sentence in May 2018 after pleading guilty.
He had posted a statement on a Twitter account from the Islamic State group calling for attacks. He also admitted a charge of distributing material designed to incite religious hatred after calling for Shia Muslims to be burnt alive.
The government's emergency measures, which require backing from Parliament, would postpone his release until the Parole Board has given its approval.
Ministers have admitted they are likely to face a legal challenge over the plans and an ex-independent reviewer of terror legislation, Lord Carlile, said blocking early release "may be in breach of the law".
But Justice Secretary Robert Buckland maintained the government was taking the right action, adding: "This is about public protection - it's the first job of government to get that right."
In December, following the London Bridge attack, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had told the BBC's Andrew Marr show that "you can't go back retrospectively" when it comes to sentencing.
Offenders are told they are being sentenced for a fixed period and will be automatically released at the half-way point, to serve the remainder of their sentence on licence in the community.
Some offenders will have pleaded guilty on the basis that they will be given a sentence with automatic early release at the half-way point.
Their release is an automatic process and does not involve oversight of the Parole Board.
The measures are being introduced after three recent incidents involving men who had been convicted of terror offences.
On Wednesday, the head of UK counter-terror policing Neil Basu warned the threat from terrorism was not diminishing and that the number of subjects of interest and convicted terrorists due for release meant "we cannot watch all of them, all [of] the time".
The first requirement for any government wishing to pass emergency legislation is to show there is an emergency - a set of events which has come about suddenly, could not be foreseen and carries a wider threat.
Ministers have certainly been rocked, and the public alarmed, by three similar terror attacks in two months - at Streatham, Fishmongers' Hall and Whitemoor Prison - and are aware of the the risk of further "copycat" incidents.
But the dangers posed by terrorist prisoners have been known for years while the authorities will have been aware of the release dates of particular inmates from the moment they were sentenced.
To obtain Parliament's approval for emergency action, and win any legal challenge on the need for applying the measures retrospectively, the government will have to make a convincing argument that there has been a fundamental change in national security that couldn't have been dealt with before.
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Harvey Weinstein: How a Hollywood giant faced his reckoning - BBC News
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2020-02-24
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The judge said this was not a referendum on #MeToo. But at times, his trial felt like one.
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US & Canada
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As jurors were sworn in for Harvey Weinstein's trial in New York, the judge told them in no uncertain terms that this case was not intended to be a referendum on the #MeToo movement as a whole. But the trial, which ended with him being convicted of rape and sexual assault, at times felt like one.
Weinstein now faces a 23-year sentence which will probably see him spend the rest of his life behind bars. This is the story of the downfall of one of Hollywood's most powerful men.
You may find some of the details in this article upsetting
It was a watershed moment. More than two years after allegations started to emerge about the Hollywood producer, some of his victims finally had their chance to be heard in court.
Twelve jurors were tasked with ruling on sex charges, which Weinstein denied, in a trial that saw complex questions about consent and power dynamics on the stand. Jurors heard harrowing testimony from six women who, at times in tears, recounted their alleged assaults by the producer. At one point a woman, who he was later convicted of raping, had to leave court after suffering a panic attack in the witness box.
Weinstein's high-powered defence team tried to flip the narrative and paint his accusers as the manipulators in the situation: women who used Weinstein for his industry prowess and later regretted and mischaracterised their sexual encounters as non-consensual. During weeks of testimony, jurors heard everything from claims about Weinstein's genitals being deformed to nude photographs of the movie mogul himself.
Every day journalists lined up, often before sunrise, to claim a place on the press benches. Cameras were not allowed inside the Manhattan Supreme Court, but the entrance was always lined with paparazzi scrambling to get daily shots and sound-bites from Weinstein, who had barely been seen in public for two years.
Weinstein was a giant of the movie industry in every sense. Productions in his name became synonymous with success in Hollywood, with hundreds of Oscar nominations and 81 wins across his career. On stage, as he accepted awards, his large frame would often hulk over the stars of his films.
The image of Weinstein at his trial was a very different one: once reportedly 300lb (136kg), he appeared frail and shuffled in to court most days with his back hunched over a metal walking frame.
Weinstein (seen celebrating 1999 film Shakespeare in Love) used private investigators to probe accusers
Weinstein had been investigated in New York in 2015 over a groping claim, but was not prosecuted
The term #MeToo preceded Weinstein, but was propelled across the globe as allegations mounted against him in October 2017. Millions of people from all ages, backgrounds and nationalities used the hashtag to detail their experiences of harassment and abuse. Other celebrities were implicated but it was the scale of claims against Weinstein, then arguably the most powerful man in Hollywood, that proved the most shocking.
More than 100 women came forward with allegations about him - everything from aggressive outbursts to serious sexual assault. Stars at the very top of the industry, like Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, told of unwanted advances and upsetting interactions. Other women described, often in graphic detail, alleged rapes by the producer. Weinstein has consistently denied all allegations of non-consensual sex and his lawyers have vowed to appeal against his conviction.
Despite dozens of allegations against him, these were the first to make it to trial.
In that time Weinstein had all but disappeared from public view. His marriage broke up and he is said to have sought treatment for sex addiction. His business partner brother described his behaviour as "sick and depraved" and their production company filed for bankruptcy.
Weinstein and his former company reached a tentative $25m settlement with some accusers in December
During a rare interview, reportedly given without his lawyer's knowledge in December, Weinstein complained of feeling like a "forgotten man" within Hollywood. Speaking just one day after three-hour surgery to ease compression on his spine, he told the New York Post that he deserved a pat on the back for everything he had done for women in film. He posed for photographs in a medical centre wearing jeans and a T-shirt, which he lifted to reveal a bandage on his back from which a tube drained blood into a container fixed to a metal walking aid.
The walking frame took on a starring role during the trial when an argument broke out when prosecutors labelled it a "prop". Weinstein's lawyers even wanted his surgeon to testify to prove he wasn't faking his injury to gain sympathy.
On the first day, a group of high-profile accusers gathered outside the court to try to face him down. "You brought this upon yourself by hurting so many," actress Rose McGowan said, addressing her alleged rapist through the media. "You have only yourself to blame."
Weinstein's legal team made repeated appeals for the trial to be moved from Manhattan, citing the "carnival-like atmosphere" engulfing it. At one point, the defence complained after a flash-mob of protesters chanting lyrics including "The rapist is you" could be heard from inside the courtroom. At another, one of the world's best-known supermodels, Gigi Hadid, appeared as a potential juror.
A Chilean anti-rape anthem, Un Violador en tu Camino ("A Rapist In Your Path"), was performed outside
About 2,000 people were reportedly summoned during the jury selection process and prosecutors accused Weinstein's team of "systematically eliminating" young white women, resembling his victims, from serving on the jury. After almost two weeks, the group of 12 was finalised with seven men and five women.
Weinstein denied five felony charges relating to allegations of sexual assault and rape. They related to incidents involving Mimi Haleyi, a former production assistant who he forced oral sex on at his Manhattan apartment in 2006, and Jessica Mann, a one-time aspiring actress who he raped in a New York hotel room in 2013.
Another alleged victim, Sopranos star Annabella Sciorra, alleged he had forced his way into her New York apartment and raped her some time in the winter of 1993/4. The amount of time passed since the alleged incident meant it fell outside of New York's statute of limitations and could not be charged separately, but the judge ruled her testimony could be used to support the most serious charges on the indictment: for predatory sexual assault.
Three other women were also permitted by the judge to appear as "prior bad acts" witnesses to help establish a pattern of behaviour and common motive. All were aspiring actresses in their 20s, hoping to break into the industry, when they described being assaulted by him.
Actress Rosanna Arquette, among the accusers, vowed "we aren't going anywhere" as the trial opened
This tactic was notably used to help secure a conviction against US comedian Bill Cosby, who was jailed in 2018. Kristen Gibbons Feden was a prosecutor on both his trials and told the BBC that "prior bad act" witnesses' willingness to take the stand, and be open to cross-examination without the hope of direct justice for themselves, can play a "critical" role in undermining defence arguments and establishing the motive of repeat offenders.
"These women who testified, all of the women who testified in Cosby's trial, were willing to put their lives, their public sanctity and character on the line to try and assist the prosecution with putting away a serial rapist - I think that just speaks volumes about the movement," she said.
Physical evidence was never likely to play a part in the trial, given how much time had passed since the alleged incidents took place. The case would therefore rise and fall on the believability of the accusations against Weinstein: a case of he said, she said - or, in this trial, they said. "Obviously, any time you have a criminal trial, the goal of a defence attorney is to question the credibility of the witnesses - but particularly when the only evidence is eyewitness testimony, which it is in this case," Julie Rendelman, a former prosecutor turned criminal defence lawyer, told the BBC.
Sciorra was the first accuser to take the stand against Weinstein. She alleged that he forced his way into her 17th-floor Gramercy Park apartment and raped her, shortly after offering to drive her home from a dinner they attended with others, including Pulp Fiction star Uma Thurman. "I felt very overpowered as he was very big," she told the court, who had heard he was almost three times her weight of about 110-115lb (50kg) at the time.
"Then he grabbed me. He led me into the bedroom and he shoved me on the bed. I was punching him, I was kicking him, I was trying to take him away from me. He took my hands and put my hands over my head," she said, motioning with her arms.
Sciorra said Weinstein, on another occasion, showed up to her Cannes hotel room with baby oil
In turn the defence called witnesses, including Sciorra's apartment's building manager, to try to contradict her claims. During the trial some defence witnesses appeared only once under subpoena, apparently reluctant to appear and contradict the account of accusers, who in some cases were former friends.
The defence quizzed Sciorra on her acting ability and success: playing a 1997 clip from a well-known US talk show where she admitted making-up colourful lies about her life in press interviews. They questioned why she didn't raise the alarm about what happened. "He was someone I knew," she told the court. "I felt at the time that rape was something that happened in a back alleyway in a dark place by someone you didn't know."
They also called Professor Elizabeth Loftus, a false-memory expert, who testified about her research on how recollection can become distorted and contaminated over time.
With the main accusers, the defence tried to upend the narratives of manipulation presented by the prosecution. They said Haleyi and Mann's ongoing, and often friendly, communication with Weinstein after their assaults was evidence the relationships were consensual. Haleyi tearfully told the court how he lunged and physically overpowered her in 2006, removing a tampon and forcing oral sex on her when she was on her period.
"I checked out and decided to endure it," she told the court. "That was the safest thing I could do."
Prosecutors said accusers like Haleyi (pictured) "sacrificed their dignity, their privacy, and their peace" to be heard
His lawyers confronted her with messages she sent to the producer afterwards, including ones signed off "lots of love" and "peace and love". "I asked for jobs from many people, including Harvey Weinstein," she said about contact over career opportunities. She also said she had felt "trapped" by her circumstances, so she decided to "almost pretend [the assault] didn't happen".
Jessica Mann told the court that she had entered in a "degrading relationship" with Weinstein, which included subsequent consensual acts, after her rape.
Psychologist Dr Barbara Ziv was called by the prosecution to try and push back on some of the defence's scrutiny of his victims' behaviour. Dr Ziv, who also testified at Cosby's second trial, spoke about her 20 years of experience with assault survivors and sought to dispel so-called "rape myths".
"A vast majority of sexual assault victims don't report promptly," she told the court. "The time can range from days to months to years to report an assault - to never." She also said it was "extremely common" for victims to remain in contact with their attacker, sometimes in fear of retribution, and pointed out an overwhelming majority of assaults are committed by someone the victim knows.
"The trial was set up to raise some complicated issues around consent and what it looks like," Deborah Tuerkheimer, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law, told Variety. "Jessica Mann in particular has really been a complex witness."
The three-day testimony by Mann, whose identity had not been made public before the trial, provided some of its most powerful moments. Journalists inside the court said that at one point, after being pressed to read an email which alluded to abuse earlier in her life, Mann broke down and started sobbing uncontrollably. The New York Times reported that, after being excused from court, she could be heard screaming in another room.
Mann (pictured) said she wanted to get away but "shut down" during the 2013 rape
When quizzed about their ongoing communication, the 34-year-old told lawyers: "I know the history of my relationship with him... I know it was complicated and difficult but it does not change the fact that he raped me."
The point was seized upon by Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon when she closed the case on Valentine's Day. "Jessica Mann could have been completely head over heels in love with Harvey Weinstein," she said. "She could have had his name tattooed on her arm. She could have been writing him love notes every single day. She could have been married to him. If all of that was true, it still wouldn't make a difference, he still wouldn't be allowed to rape her."
This argument mirrored an earlier one by the defence who told the jury they could dislike Weinstein, but still not believe his guilt had been proven.
"You don't have to like Mr. Weinstein. This is not a popularity contest," lawyer Donna Rotunno said during almost five hours of closing testimony. "In this country it's the unpopular people that need juries the most," Rotunno said. "The unpopular person needs you the most."
Rotunno accused prosecutors of scripting a reality which "strips adult women of common sense, autonomy and responsibility". Illuzzi-Orbon maintained Weinstein was a "predator" who preyed on women he saw as "complete disposables".
Weinstein did not testify at trial, despite a last-minute meeting giving the appearance he wanted to
From her glamorous designer outfits, to her towering heels to the gold "not guilty" pendant she reportedly wore around her neck to court, Rotunno became the public face of the defence team.
The lawyer has built her reputation on defending men in high-profile sexual misconduct cases. During the trial Rotunno came under fire for comments made both inside and outside the courtroom. An interview she gave to the New York Times' The Daily podcast drew particular scorn. When asked if she had ever been sexually assaulted herself, Rotunno responded: "I have not," before pausing and adding: "because I would never put myself in that position".
She also suggested men should get written consent before engaging in sex and asserted societal pressure to "believe all women" meant there was now "zero" risk for accusers to come forward and make claims. Prosecutors repeatedly complained that her interviews violated rules.
Prosecutors accused her of trying to influence the jury with one opinion piece
The defence's arguments were also criticised by survivors and activist groups, who accused them of victim-blaming and perpetuating misconceptions about rape.
In the end the jury, having earlier signalled they were divided on the predatory assault charges factoring in Sciorra, ruled not guilty on those two counts. They took five days to reach their decision, finding Weinstein guilty of the third-degree rape of Jessica Mann and of a criminal sex act in his assault of Mimi Haleyi.
More than two years after dozens of women came out against him, turning public opinion, Weinstein was finally found guilty in a court of law.
The verdict was celebrated as a major victory by alleged victims and women's rights advocates.
Laura Palumbo, communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, told the BBC that while the Weinstein trial was a "significant moment" nationally, it was important to remember that it did not reflect the reality of most rape cases in the US justice system.
The US-based Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) estimates that 995 out of every 1,000 perpetrators of sexual assault, or about 99.5%, will walk free because of low reporting and conviction rates.
Weinstein faced between five and 29 years in prison for the crimes
Immediately after his conviction, Weinstein was taken to hospital and later fitted with a heart stent.
His lawyers had implored leniency from the judge, arguing Weinstein had already been punished with his "historic" fall from grace. They insisted even the five-year minimum term could prove a "de-facto life sentence" for him given his age and declining health.
The judge ignored that plea. There were reportedly gasps around the court as the near-maximum prison term of 23 years was handed down.
All six women who testified at his trial sat together as his punishment was announced. The Silence Breakers, another group of Weinstein accusers, welcomed the sentence but said no amount of jail time could make up for the damage he had caused to lives and careers.
Weinstein appeared for his sentencing in a wheelchair. Before the judge jailed him, Weinstein spoke in court for the first time to express remorse for the situation but insisted he had "wonderful times" and "friendships" with his victims. He also admitted feeling "totally confused" about what was happening to him.
"Thousands of men are losing due process. I'm worried about this country," he said, in comments seen as critical of #MeToo. Despite his apparent confusion, Weinstein's legal troubles are far from over. The 67-year-old still faces further assault charges in Los Angeles.
Victims and campaigners hope his trial will set a wider precedent where other offenders, no matter how powerful, will also be held to account.
"This case - and the national reckoning about the pervasiveness of sexual violence it sparked - will have a lasting legacy," RAINN president Scott Berkowitz said in a statement. "We hope that survivors will feel encouraged to come forward, knowing that it can truly make a difference in bringing perpetrators to justice."
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Julian Assange 'put lives at risk' by sharing unredacted files - BBC News
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2020-02-24
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The Wikileaks co-founder appears at a court in London on the opening day of his extradition hearing.
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Mr Assange addressed the court during proceedings, saying he couldn't concentrate because of the noise coming from his supporters outside
Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange revealed the names of sources who subsequently "disappeared" after he put them at risk, a court has heard.
A lawyer for the US government made the claim on the first day of Mr Assange's extradition hearing in London.
Woolwich Crown Court was told Mr Assange was guilty of "straightforward" criminality for hacking into and publishing US military databases.
Mr Assange's lawyer said the charges were politically motivated by the US.
Edward Fitzgerald QC, representing the Australian, said the 48-year-old would be denied a fair trial in the US and would be a suicide risk.
Mr Assange has been held in Belmarsh prison since last September after a judge said there were "substantial grounds" for believing he would abscond ahead of the hearing.
He was jailed for 50 weeks in May 2019 for breaching his bail conditions after going into hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for nearly seven years.
He sought asylum at the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden on a rape allegation that he denied - and the investigation was subsequently dropped.
Demonstrators gather outside the gates of Woolwich Crown Court for the start of the hearing
Opening the extradition hearing, James Lewis QC, representing the US, said the majority of the 18 charges related to "straightforward criminal" activity.
He denied Mr Assange was facing the charges because he had published "embarrassing" information the US would rather was not disclosed.
Mr Lewis said Mr Assange has been involved in a "conspiracy to steal from and hack into" the department of defence computer system along with former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
"These are ordinary criminal charges and any person, journalist or source who hacks or attempts to gain unauthorised access to a secure system or aids and abets others to do so is guilty of computer misuse," Mr Lewis said.
"Reporting or journalism is not an excuse for criminal activities or a licence to break ordinary criminal laws."
He also described claims that Mr Assange would face up to 175 years in jail if found guilty of the charges as "hyperbole".
Mr Lewis said the dissemination of specific classified documents unredacted put dissidents in Afghanistan and Iraq at "risk of serious harm, torture or even death".
The US identified hundreds of "at risk and potentially at risk people" around the world, he said, and made efforts to warn them.
"The US is aware of sources, whose redacted names and other identifying information was contained in classified documents published by Wikileaks, who subsequently disappeared, although the US can't prove at this point that their disappearance was the result of being outed by Wikileaks."
Julian Assange's brother and father - Gabriel and John Shipton - arrive at court
Outlining Mr Assange's defence, Mr Fitzgerald said the extradition should be barred because "the prosecution is being pursued for political motives and not in good faith".
He said the delay in making the extradition request showed the political nature of the case.
"President Trump came into power with a new approach for freedom of the press... amounting effectively to declaring war on investigative journalists," he said.
"It's against that background Julian Assange has been made an example of."
He added the extradition attempt was directed at Mr Assange "because of the political opinions he holds", and said he would be denied a fair trial in the United States.
Mr Fitzgerald also told the court that Mr Assange had not assisted whistleblower Chelsea Manning in accessing the documents, as had been claimed.
He added: "It's completely misleading to suggest it was Julian Assange and Wikileaks to blame for the disclosure of unredacted names.
"Wikileaks only published the unredacted material after they had been published by others who have never faced prosecution."
He said that it would be" unjust and oppressive" to extradite Mr Assange - who has suffered from clinical depression "that dates back many years" - because he would be a high suicide risk.
Mr Assange's mental health problems had been aggravated by his treatment in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, he said, claiming the 48-year-old and his visitors had been placed under surveillance and recorded with video and audio equipment.
Mr Fitzgerald, referring to a statement from a whistleblower, said that spies also considered "more extreme measures" such as kidnapping or poisoning Mr Assange while he was inside the embassy.
Asked by the judge whether Mr Assange was intending to give evidence, Mr Fitzgerald replied that it was "very unlikely".
Some of his supporters gathered outside the gates of the court and their protests - which included a siren, chanting and singing - could be heard inside the courtroom.
That prompted Mr Assange to address the court before the lunch break, saying: "I'm having difficulty concentrating. All this noise is not helpful either."
"I understand and am very grateful of the public support and understand they must be disgusted..."
But District Judge Vanessa Baraitser then stopped him from speaking and asked his lawyer to address her instead.
Mr Fitzgerald said: "What Mr Assange is saying is he can't hear and can't concentrate because of the noise outside.
The extradition hearing will be adjourned at the end of this week of legal argument and continue with three weeks of evidence scheduled to begin on 18 May.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51616077
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Panorama: Fresh questions over Mo Farah's relationship with Alberto Salazar - BBC Sport
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2020-02-24
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Fresh questions over Mo Farah's relationship with his disgraced former coach Alberto Salazar are raised in a new BBC Panorama investigation.
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Last updated on .From the section Athletics
Fresh questions over Mo Farah's relationship with his banned former coach Alberto Salazar have been raised in a new BBC Panorama investigation.
Documents show Farah repeatedly denied to US Anti-Doping (Usada) investigators he had received injections of the controversial supplement L-carnitine before the 2014 London Marathon.
Farah later changed his account to Usada investigators, saying he had forgotten.
The documents also reveal how a UK Athletics official was dispatched to Switzerland to collect the legal supplement from a contact of Salazar's.
Emails obtained by Panorama show how UKA officials had initially expressed concern about whether the injection was safe and within the "spirit of the sport".
The Panorama programme Mo Farah and the Salazar Scandal will be screened on Monday, 24 February. It also reveals new allegations about Salazar.
Salazar ran the Nike Oregon Project - home to British four-time Olympic champion Farah from 2011 until 2017.
In 2015 a Panorama investigation, in collaboration with US website ProPublica, first revealed allegations of doping by Salazar, the coach widely credited with helping turn Farah into Britain's greatest athlete. The programme sparked a Usada investigation, resulting in Salazar being given a four-year ban from the sport by a panel of US arbitrators in October 2019.
Salazar rejects the findings and is appealing against the ban.
In a statement he said: "The panel made clear that I had acted in 'good faith' and without 'any bad intention to commit the violations'."
Two of Salazar's violations relate to using a banned method to administer an infusion of L-carnitine, a legal supplement.
L-carnitine is a naturally occurring amino acid, which, if injected straight into the bloodstream, some research suggests could help speed metabolism and boost athletic performance.
Infusions or injections were permitted within World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) rules provided the volume was below 50ml every six hours.
In 2014, Farah finished eighth in his first London Marathon. Three years later, when the Sunday Times reported that he had received an infusion of L-carnitine, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee inquiry Combatting Doping in Sport called Farah's team before it to explain.
Dr Robin Chakraverty, then UKA's chief medical officer, said "an injection" of L-carnitine had been a joint decision between him and UKA's head of distance running Barry Fudge, taken after research, considering the risks and possible side-effects.
The committee was assured the volume was 13.5ml, well within the allowable limit, though Dr Charaverty failed to record it. There is no evidence any rules were broken.
Panorama's evidence sheds new light on the situation and raises questions about Salazar's influence.
Emails between UKA officials in the days leading up to the marathon reveal their concerns about giving the injection.
On 6 April 2014, Fudge wrote: "Whilst this process is completely within the Wada code there is a philosophical argument about whether this is within the 'spirit of the sport…'."
He added: "Although Alberto and Mo have expectations about doing this, we are not at a point where we… can't pull out."
He wrote "… should we really be trialling this process so close to the London Marathon? ... That's before we even think about the spirit of sport."
Dr Chakraverty seemed concerned about possible "side-effects."
He wrote "… it would have been better to have trialled it in someone first."
"I understand [Salazar] is keen but… we should be asking him to follow this advice."
A decision was taken to go ahead. But there was a problem: the concentrated form of the L-carnitine supplement they wanted could not be sourced in the UK. That is where Salazar comes in.
Salazar introduced Fudge to a contact of his in Switzerland who was able to order batch-tested L-carnitine in the form needed.
And so Fudge jumped on a plane to Switzerland, met Salazar's contact and collected a package of injectable L-carnitine and brought it back to London.
There was not time to trial it on anyone to make sure it had no side-effects. Just two days before the race, on 11 April, in Farah's room within The Tower - the official London Marathon hotel - the L-carnitine was injected into the arm of Farah by Dr Chakraverty.
At the DCMS select committee, Dr Chakraverty referred to "an injection". In fact four injections were given to Farah, spaced over two hours through a butterfly needle, with Salazar, Fudge and Black looking on.
Panorama understands other elite British athletes racing that day were not offered the same treatment.
Toni Minichiello, who coached Olympic heptathlon gold medallist Jessica Ennis Hill and sits on the UKA members' council, told Panorama: "That's pretty damning. I'm shocked. Barry Fudge in that instance has to explain… what was your logic for doing that?
"And you're an employee of UK Athletics, so UK Athletics, why would you allow one of your staff to do that?"
Damian Collins MP, then chair of the DCMS select committee, said there has been no mention of this level of concern, or trips to Switzerland, when Dr Chakraverty and Fudge appeared before his committee.
"I don't think we did get the full picture because what, I think, comes out of those emails is that this wasn't a routine thing," Collins said.
Asked if Salazar had been directing all of this, Travis Tygart of Usada told Panorama: "[UKA] were absolutely in concert [with Salazar], there's no doubt about that.
"I think it's the lengths that people who want to win and are incentivised to win will go, if they have the money and the resources to do it."
When athletes are drug-tested, they are required to list all medications and supplements they have taken within the past seven days. Farah was tested six days after the injection - 17 April 2014. Despite listing a number of other products and medicines, he failed to record L-carnitine on his doping control form.
A year later, as part of their probe into Salazar, investigators with Usada flew to London to interview UKA officials - and Farah.
Farah was questioned by Usada officials for nearly five hours - and Panorama has obtained a transcript of that interview.
Asked specifically and multiple times whether he had an L-carnitine injection before the London Marathon, Farah repeatedly denied it.
He was asked: "If someone said that you were taking L-carnitine injections, are they not telling the truth?"
Farah said: "Definitely not telling the truth, 100%. I've never taken L-carnitine injections at all."
He is then asked: "Are you sure that Alberto Salazar hasn't recommended that you take L-carnitine injections?"
Farah responds: "No, I've never taken L-carnitine injections."
He is asked again: "You're absolutely sure that you didn't have a doctor put a butterfly needle… into your arm… and inject L-carnitine a few days before the London marathon?"
Farah says: "No. No chance."
We have learned that minutes after the interview, Farah then met Fudge, who had been interviewed by Usada the day before.
Farah then rushed back in as the investigators were packing up. He changed his account.
Farah tells Usada: "So I just wanted to come clear, sorry guys, and I did take it at the time and I thought I didn't…"
He is asked: "So you received L-carnitine… before the London marathon?"
He adds: "There was a lot of talk before… and Alberto's always thinking about 'What's the best thing?' 'What's the best thing?'"
The Usada investigator says "… a few days before the race… with… Alberto present and your doctor and Barry Fudge and you're telling us all about that now but you didn't remember any of that when I… kept asking you about this?"
Farah responds: "It all comes back for me, but at the time I didn't remember."
Mo Farah declined to be interviewed by Panorama.
In a letter, Farah's lawyers said: "It is not against [Wada rules] rules to take [L-carnitine] as a supplement within the right quantities.
"The fact some people might hold views as to whether this is within the 'spirit' of the sport is irrelevant.
"Mr Farah… is one of the most tested athletes in the UK, if not the world, and has been required to fill in numerous doping forms. He is a human being and not robot.
"Interviews are not memory tests. Mr Farah understood the question one way and as soon as he left the room he asked Mr Fudge and immediately returned… to clarify and it is plain the investigators were comfortable with this explanation."
The documents also reveal that Fudge did not initially disclose his trip to Switzerland to obtain the L carnitine.
When asked by Usada investigators how he obtained the L-carnitine, he said: "It is a prescription-based product in the UK, so we provided it."
He was then asked if he got it from Pete Julian, a coach at the Oregon Project. He answered: "No, it was a prescription-based product."
However, he returned to the interview room the next day, having been asked by Usada to provide relevant emails. Fudge told them: "I don't think I told you guys enough… I don't think I told you anything that wasn't correct, I just feel I probably should expand on it a bit more."
Fudge then told Usada that batch-tested L-carnitine hadn't been available in the UK, and that he had travelled to Switzerland to collect the product from Salazar's contact.
'This should be looked at in some seriousness'
Collins added: "This very specific medicine was required, sourced at great difficulty, given against the initial advice of the doctor. But yet, no-one keeps any records of it and everyone decides to keep quiet about it.
"I think this is something that should be looked at in some seriousness."
In a statement Dr Chakraverty said: "I have not contravened any [world anti-doping] rules, and have always acted in the best interests of those I treat.
"The evidence I provided to [MPs] was an honest account - including an acknowledgement that my usual standard of record keeping slipped due to heavy work commitments and travel.
"The GMC reviewed this and concluded that the case required no further action."
In a statement, UKA said: "A small number of British athletes have used L-carnitine and, to our knowledge, all doses and methods of administration have been fully in accordance with Wada protocol.
"The dosage provided to Mo Farah was well within the 50ml limit permitted.
"Full and honest accounts of the process were given in all forums. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and misleading."
Salazar said: "No Oregon Project athlete used a medication against the spirit of the sport. Any medication taken was done so on the advice and under the supervision of registered medical professionals."
In 2015, UK Athletics carried out a review into Panorama's allegations. Despite former UKA chairman Ed Warner telling the BBC this week he strongly advised Farah to split from Salazar, the review found "no reason to be concerned" about Salazar continuing to coach Farah.
A fresh UKA review is under way to establish whether any mistakes were made in its handling of the Salazar episode.
Collins added: "I think it leaves UK Athletics in a very difficult position. And this seems, to me, that UK Athletics effectively… gave Alberto Salazar… sort of total control over the preparation and training of some of our most celebrated athletes with not very much oversight from people at UK Athletics as to what they were doing and whether they were acting in the best interests of either the sport or that individual athlete and that's a failing on their part."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/51591701
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Caroline Flack's unpublished Instagram post released by family - BBC News
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2020-02-20
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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In a post released ahead of her inquest, the TV host said her "future was swept from under my feet".
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Entertainment & Arts
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Caroline Flack's family have released an unpublished Instagram post that they say she wrote shortly before she died.
It came ahead of the inquest into the death of the former Love Island host, which opened on Wednesday.
The inquest heard that the 40-year-old presenter was apparently found hanged in her London flat on Saturday.
The unpublished post said her "whole world and future was swept from under my feet" when she had been arrested for assaulting her boyfriend in December.
Her mother said Flack had been advised not to publish the message, which has now been shared through the Eastern Daily Press.
The TV presenter was found dead in her home weeks before she was due to stand trial on charges of assaulting her boyfriend Lewis Burton.
Flack pleaded not guilty to the alleged assault at a court hearing in December and was released on bail.
She was ordered to stop any contact with Mr Burton ahead of the trial, which was due to begin in March.
Flack's mother Chris told the Norfolk newspaper that her daughter showed her the wording of the post in January, but was told not to post it by advisers.
She added that the family wanted people to read it. "Carrie sent me this message at the end of January but was told not to post it by advisers but she so wanted to have her little voice heard," she said, according to the paper.
"So many untruths were out there but this is how she felt and my family and I would like people to read her own words.
"Carrie was surrounded by love and friends but this was just too much for her."
If you or someone you know needs support for issues about emotional distress, these organisations may be able to help.
"For a lot of people, being arrested for common assault is an extreme way to have some sort of spiritual awakening but for me it's become the normal.
"I've been pressing the snooze button on many stresses in my life - for my whole life. I've accepted shame and toxic opinions on my life for over 10 years and yet told myself it's all part of my job. No complaining.
"The problem with brushing things under the carpet is they are still there and one day someone is going to lift that carpet up and all you are going to feel is shame and embarrassment.
"On December the 12th 2019 I was arrested for common assault on my boyfriend. Within 24 hours my whole world and future was swept from under my feet and all the walls that I had taken so long to build around me collapsed. I am suddenly on a different kind of stage and everyone is watching it happen.
"I have always taken responsibility for what happened that night. Even on the night. But the truth is... It was an accident.
"I've been having some sort of emotional breakdown for a very long time.
"But I am NOT a domestic abuser. We had an argument and an accident happened. An accident. The blood that someone SOLD to a newspaper was MY blood and that was something very sad and very personal.
"The reason I am talking today is because my family can't take anymore. I've lost my job. My home. My ability to speak. And the truth has been taken out of my hands and used as entertainment.
"I can't spend every day hidden away being told not to say or speak to anyone.
"I'm so sorry to my family for what I have brought upon them and for what my friends have had to go through.
"I'm not thinking about 'how I'm going to get my career back.' I'm thinking about how I'm going to get mine and my family's life back."
After her death, Flack's management company said she had been "under huge pressure" since her arrest and criticised the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for refusing to drop the charge, even though Mr Burton said he did not want the case to go ahead.
The CPS said it would not comment on the specifics of the case, but it outlined how it reached decisions over whether or not to charge someone.
Guidelines say domestic abuse prosecutions do not automatically stop if the complainant withdraws their support.
The guidance also says police officers must draw evidence of the suspect's mental health issues to the attention of the prosecutor.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51557180
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news_entertainment-arts-51557180
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Brexit: UK begins new chapter outside European Union - BBC News
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2020-02-02
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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France's Emmanuel Macron says he is deeply sad but David Davis says everybody will win from Brexit.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Pre-recorded bongs from Big Ben played out as the UK left the European Union
European leaders have expressed sadness at the UK leaving the EU, with France's Emmanuel Macron emphasising Britain's "unrivalled ties" with the French.
Mr Macron said he was "deeply sad" while the EU's Guy Verhofstadt pledged to try and "ensure the EU is a project you'll want to be a part of again".
Celebrations and anti-Brexit protests were held on Friday night to mark the UK's departure.
Ex-Brexit Secretary David Davis said everyone would be a winner in the end.
The UK officially left the European Union on Friday at 23:00 GMT after 47 years of membership, and more than three years after it voted to do so in a referendum.
Brexit parties were held in some pubs and social clubs as well as in London's Parliament Square, as the country counted down to its official departure.
In Scotland, which voted to stay in the EU, candlelit vigils and anti-Brexit rallies were held.
Pro-EU campaigners take part in a "Missing EU Already" rally outside the Scottish Parliament
In a message released on social media an hour before the UK left, Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed to bring the country together and "take us forward".
"For many people this is an astonishing moment of hope, a moment they thought would never come," he said. "And there are many of course who feel a sense of anxiety and loss."
In an open letter to the British public, French President Mr Macron said he was thinking of the millions of Britons "who still feel deeply attached to the European Union".
"You are leaving the European Union but you are not leaving Europe," he said. "Nor are you becoming detached from France or the friendship of its people.
"The Channel has never managed to separate our destinies; Brexit will not do so, either."
Mr Macron also said the EU must learn lessons from the "shock" of Brexit, adding: "I am convinced therefore that Europe needs new momentum."
And he defended the way France acted in the Brexit negotiations, saying neither the French nor anyone else in the EU was "driven by a desire for revenge or punishment".
Mr Macron called on Mr Johnson to "deepen our defence, security and intelligence cooperation"
A pro-EU group earlier projected a message onto the White Cliffs of Dover
Meanwhile, the EU Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator Mr Verhofstadt responded to a message which had been projected onto the White Cliffs of Dover by a pro-EU group.
"We will look after your star and work to ensure the EU is a project you'll want to be a part of again soon," he said.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Davis - who quit as Brexit secretary in protest at former prime minister Theresa May's Brexit plan - said it would be a "fair race" to reach a trade deal with the EU by the end of 2020 but "it can be done".
The UK is aiming to sign a permanent free trade agreement with the EU, along the lines of the one the EU has with Canada, by the end of the transition period in December.
Mr Davis said reaching a deal was "not a charitable exercise, this is an exercise of both sides recognising their own best interests".
European leaders have warned that the UK faces a tough battle to get a deal by that deadline.
Mairead McGuinness, the vice president of the European Parliament, said progress to agree a trade deal "might be left to the very last minute".
"Normally in trade negotiations we're trying to come together," she told BBC Breakfast. "For the first time we're going try and negotiate a trade agreement where somebody wants to pull away from us. I can't get my head around that and I think it's going to be quite complicated."
We are separate after more than 40 years, but remember much of the status quo will hold for now - the UK and the EU, the awkward couple, finally divorced - but still sharing a house and the bills.
But what the prime minister hails as a new era, a bright new dawn, starts months of hard bargaining with our neighbours across the Channel.
Labour leadership hopeful Emily Thornberry said the exit talks were unlikely to go smoothly and said she expected the country would be "back in no-deal territory by the summer".
The shadow foreign secretary, speaking at an event in Bristol featuring the four Labour leadership candidates, said her party would need a Remain-backing leader who had been "on the right side of the argument all along".
However, the other three candidates - Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy - said the party needed to move on from debates over Brexit.
Shadow business secretary Ms Long-Bailey said that Labour needed to make sure Boris Johnson negotiated the "best possible trade deal" that could help "rebuild our communities".
Whilst never the most enthusiastic member, the UK was part of the European project for almost half a century.
On a personal level, EU leaders tell me they'll miss having the British sense of humour and no-nonsense attitude at their table.
If they were to be brutally honest they'd have admitted they'll mourn the loss of our not-insignificant contribution to the EU budget too.
But now we've left the "European family" (as Brussels insiders sometimes like to call the EU) and as trade talks begin, how long will it take for warm words to turn into gritted teeth?
UK citizens will notice few immediate changes now that the country is no longer in the European Union.
Most EU laws will continue to be in force - including the free movement of people - until 31 December, when the transition period comes to an end.
Thousands gathered in Parliament Square to celebrate Brexit on Friday night, singing patriotic songs and cheering speeches from leading Brexiteers, including Nigel Farage.
The Brexit Party leader said: "This is the greatest moment in the modern history of our great nation."
Pro-EU demonstrators earlier staged a march in Whitehall to bid a "fond farewell" to the union.
Police in Whitehall arrested four men and also charged one man with criminal damage and being drunk and disorderly, while in Glasgow one man was arrested.
Meanwhile, other symbolic moments on a day of mixed emotions included:
The government's EU delegation has changed its name from "representation" to "mission"
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51340945
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news_uk-politics-51340945
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Coronavirus: Some scientists say UK virus strategy is 'risking lives' - BBC News
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2020-03-14
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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More than 200 scientists write to the government calling for tougher measures to tackle Covid-19.
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Science & Environment
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Architects of the UK's nuanced approach: Sir Patrick Vallance (left) and Prof Chris Whitty (right)
More than 200 scientists have written to the government urging them to introduce tougher measures to tackle the spread of Covid-19.
In an open letter, the 229 specialists in disciplines ranging from mathematics to genetics - though no leading experts in the science of the spread of diseases - say the UK's current approach will put the NHS under additional stress and "risk many more lives than necessary".
The signatories also criticised comments made by Sir Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientific adviser, about managing the spread of the infection to make the population immune.
The Department of Health said Sir Patrick's comments had been misinterpreted.
The scientists - all from UK universities - also questioned the government's view that people would become fed up with restrictions if they were imposed too soon.
Their letter was published on the day it was announced 10 more people in the UK have died after testing positive for coronavirus, bringing the total number of deaths to 21.
Meanwhile the government's scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage) advised that measures to protect vulnerable people - including household isolation - "will need to be instituted soon".
Sir Patrick and the UK's chief medical adviser, Prof Chris Whitty, have said they intend to publish the computer models on which their strategy is based.
The UK's approach to coping with the coronavirus pandemic has been in stark contrast to other countries. The whole of Italy has been on lockdown since Tuesday, while Poland is set to close its borders for two weeks.
On Saturday the French government ordered the closure of all non-essential public locations from midnight (23:00 GMT Saturday).
And Spain has declared a 15-day national lockdown on Monday to battle the virus,
In the open letter the group of scientists argue that stronger "social distancing measures" would "dramatically" slow the rate of growth of the disease in the UK, and would spare "thousands of lives".
The group, specialising in a range of disciplines, ranging from mathematics to genetics said the current measures are "insufficient" and "additional and more restrictive measures should be taken immediately", as is happening in other countries.
On Friday, Sir Patrick suggested managing the spread of the disease so that the population gains some immunity to the disease was a part of the government strategy.
This idea, known as "herd immunity", means at-risk individuals are protected from infection because they are surrounded by people who are resistant to the disease.
Rough estimates indicate that herd immunity to Covid-19 would be reached when approximately 60% of the population has had the disease.
But in the open letter, the scientists said: "Going for 'herd immunity' at this point does not seem a viable option."
The major downside of herd immunity, according to Birmingham University's Prof Willem van Schaik, is that this will mean that in the UK alone at least 36 million people will need to be infected and recover.
"It is almost impossible to predict what that will mean in terms of human costs, but we are conservatively looking at tens of thousands of deaths, and possibly at hundreds of thousands of deaths," he said.
"The only way to make this work would be to spread out these millions of cases over a relatively long period of time so that the NHS does not get overwhelmed."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Willem van Schaik, professor of microbiology and infection at the University of Birmingham, was one of the signatories
Prof van Schaik noted that the UK is the only country in Europe that is following what he described as its "laissez-faire attitude to the virus".
But a Department of Health and Social care spokesperson said that Sir Patrick's comments had been misinterpreted.
"Herd immunity is not part of our action plan, but is a natural by-product of an epidemic. Our aims are to save lives, protect the most vulnerable, and relieve pressure on our NHS," he said.
"We have now moved out of the contain phase and into delay, and we have experts working round the clock. Every measure that we have or will introduce will be based on the best scientific evidence.
"Our awareness of the likely levels of immunity in the country over the coming months will ensure our planning and response is as accurate and effective as possible."
In a separate letter to the government, more than 200 behavioural scientists have questioned the government's argument that starting tougher measures too soon would lead to people not sticking to them just at the point that the epidemic is at its height.
"While we fully support an evidence-based approach to policy that draws on behavioural science, we are not convinced that enough is known about 'behavioural fatigue' or to what extent these insights apply to the current exceptional circumstances," the letter said.
"Such evidence is necessary if we are to base a high-risk public health strategy on it."
"In fact, it seems likely that even those essential behaviour changes that are presently required (e.g., handwashing) will receive far greater uptake the more urgent the situation is perceived to be. Carrying on as normal for as long as possible undercuts that urgency," it added.
The scientists said "radical behaviour change" could have a "much better" effect and could "save very large numbers of lives".
"Experience in China and South Korea is sufficiently encouraging to suggest that this possibility should at least be attempted," it added.
The second letter called on the government to reconsider its stance on "behavioural fatigue" and to share the evidence on which it based this stance.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51892402
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news_science-environment-51892402
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Grace Millane's killer to appeal against conviction and sentence - BBC News
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2020-03-18
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The 28-year-old, who cannot be named, was jailed for at least 17 years last month for her murder.
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Essex
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University of Lincoln graduate Grace Millane was on a round-the-world trip at the time of her death
The killer of British backpacker Grace Millane has begun the process of appealing against his murder conviction and jail sentence, his barrister said.
Auckland-based Rachael Reed QC confirmed that an appeal had been filed in the New Zealand Court of Appeal.
The 28-year-old, who cannot be named, was jailed for at least 17 years for the murder last month.
He strangled Ms Millane in a hotel in Auckland, hid her body in a suitcase and buried it in bushland.
The man claimed the 21-year-old had died accidentally after the pair engaged in rough sex that went too far.
A jury in November rejected that argument and found the man guilty.
The killer's identity is suppressed under New Zealand law
Murder typically comes with a life sentence in New Zealand. Prosecutors successfully argued that the man must serve 17 years before becoming eligible for parole.
Lawyers Ian Brookie and Ron Mansfield who led the defence during his trial, had asked for their then-client to serve 12 years, later indicating he would appeal.
In sentencing, Justice Simon Moore told the defendant his actions amounted to "conduct that underscores a lack of empathy and sense of self-entitlement and objectification".
After the sentencing, Grace's mother Gillian Millane, spoke to the court via a video-link and told the man: "Grace wasn't just my daughter. She was my friend. My very best friend.
"I am absolutely heartbroken that you have taken my daughter's future and robbed us of so many memories that we were going to create."
Det Insp Scott Beard of Auckland City Police said the death was "senseless and needless".
Ms Millane was last seen alive on the eve of her 22nd birthday
Ms Millane, from Wickford in Essex, met her killer on a dating app while travelling in Auckland in December 2018.
The pair spent the evening drinking before returning to the man's room in the CityLife hotel in central Auckland where he killed her.
He then disposed of her body by burying it in a suitcase in the Waitākere Ranges, a mountainous area outside the city.
He was found guilty of murder last year.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-51939561
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news_uk-england-essex-51939561
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Coronavirus: Keep it simple, stick to facts - how parents should tell kids - BBC News
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2020-03-18
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Keep the message calm, understandable and try not to overemphasise the risks, experts suggest.
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UK
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With the number of coronavirus patients rising around the world, children are being exposed to information and misinformation from many sources. How can parents best keep them up to date without terrifying them?
Coronavirus is dominating the news and children, as always, are asking direct, difficult questions about what's going to happen.
While the risk of young people being seriously affected by the virus appears low, doom-laden social media posts and playground rumours can induce panic.
Stories of deaths, possible food shortages and school closures, and the circulation of phrases like "pandemic potential" can add to a sense of alarm.
So tone is vital when discussing coronavirus with a child, advises Angharad Rudkin, clinical psychologist and consultant on the parenting book What's My Child Thinking?
"We all enjoy scare stories to a degree, but we don't like to hear them quite so much when they're a bit closer to home," she says. "Help your child put some distance between them and the threat by giving information about how coronavirus is spread and what we can do to help minimise the risk such as using loads of lovely bubbles when washing our hands."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Covid-19 is a respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus which seems to start with a fever, followed by a dry cough. After about a week, it leads to shortness of breath and some patients require hospital treatment.
Medics aren't sure exactly how it spreads from person to person, but similar viruses do so via droplets, such as those produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
It's essential to talk to a child about things he or she can control, such as disposing of tissues and personal hygiene, Dr Rudkin says, rather than those they cannot.
Once the explanation is over, the conversation should move on to something that "isn't threatening, such as what they had for lunch or who do they think is going to win the football match this evening", she adds.
The virus could affect millions of people around the world soon. The UK government says, in its latest plans, that up to a fifth of workers could be off sick at the peak of an epidemic, with school closures possible.
One problem in explaining the virus is that it's difficult to predict what will happen, though early, albeit limited, evidence suggests children with Covid-19 have tended to show mild symptoms.
While parents have long experience in explaining global threats - war, terrorism and climate change - pre-adolescent children are still developing their ability to assess risk, says Dr Rudkin. So it's important to find out what their level of worry over coronavirus is.
"Be clear that you don't know all of the answers but that there are people making decisions for us who have all the information they need."
Parents, in turn, should be as informed as possible before explaining issues to children, including keeping up with official advice, Dr Rudkin says.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. How to wash your hands: 30-second guide
In the event that a boy or girl catches coronavirus, parents are advised not to overplay any risk to their health.
"You could tell them it's 'a bit like feeling sore', so they get to see it's not as dreadful as they might believe," Jon Gilmartin, a speech language therapist at the children's communication charity I Can, says.
Older people and those with existing health conditions are thought to be most at risk of death or serious sickness from catching coronavirus. This could lead children to worry about older friends and relatives.
Dr Rudkin advises honesty over the argument "we will all die eventually but chances are not until we are really, really old".
"But we can talk about it with a smile and use humour, or at least a lightness of touch, that doesn't then plummet our children into an existential pit they really don't need to be in, until they're 13 at least," she adds. "Reassure your child that you and granddad are really fit and strong and that you will continue to do all you can to keep yourself/granddad healthy and safe."
Children's capacity to deal with complex and worrying information increases with age, so the way a parent speaks to a three-year-old is very different to dealing with a teenager - and it involves a personal judgement.
But Mr Gilmartin suggests the use of "simple language" for all age groups and allowing children to ask "lots of questions" to show they're being listened to.
Parents who themselves are looking for the right language to use, could start with the BBC's Newsround coverage.
Children, like the rest of the population, are exposed to myths and misinformation about coronavirus, via playground gossip and, particularly among pre-teens and teenagers, on social media.
The best way to combat this is providing "age-appropriate information and reassurance", says Dr Rudkin, as the source young people trust best is a parent.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51734855
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news_uk-51734855
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Coronavirus: Keep it simple, stick to facts - how parents should tell kids - BBC News
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2020-03-05
|
['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Keep the message calm, understandable and try not to overemphasise the risks, experts suggest.
|
UK
|
With the number of coronavirus patients rising around the world, children are being exposed to information and misinformation from many sources. How can parents best keep them up to date without terrifying them?
Coronavirus is dominating the news and children, as always, are asking direct, difficult questions about what's going to happen.
While the risk of young people being seriously affected by the virus appears low, doom-laden social media posts and playground rumours can induce panic.
Stories of deaths, possible food shortages and school closures, and the circulation of phrases like "pandemic potential" can add to a sense of alarm.
So tone is vital when discussing coronavirus with a child, advises Angharad Rudkin, clinical psychologist and consultant on the parenting book What's My Child Thinking?
"We all enjoy scare stories to a degree, but we don't like to hear them quite so much when they're a bit closer to home," she says. "Help your child put some distance between them and the threat by giving information about how coronavirus is spread and what we can do to help minimise the risk such as using loads of lovely bubbles when washing our hands."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Covid-19 is a respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus which seems to start with a fever, followed by a dry cough. After about a week, it leads to shortness of breath and some patients require hospital treatment.
Medics aren't sure exactly how it spreads from person to person, but similar viruses do so via droplets, such as those produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
It's essential to talk to a child about things he or she can control, such as disposing of tissues and personal hygiene, Dr Rudkin says, rather than those they cannot.
Once the explanation is over, the conversation should move on to something that "isn't threatening, such as what they had for lunch or who do they think is going to win the football match this evening", she adds.
The virus could affect millions of people around the world soon. The UK government says, in its latest plans, that up to a fifth of workers could be off sick at the peak of an epidemic, with school closures possible.
One problem in explaining the virus is that it's difficult to predict what will happen, though early, albeit limited, evidence suggests children with Covid-19 have tended to show mild symptoms.
While parents have long experience in explaining global threats - war, terrorism and climate change - pre-adolescent children are still developing their ability to assess risk, says Dr Rudkin. So it's important to find out what their level of worry over coronavirus is.
"Be clear that you don't know all of the answers but that there are people making decisions for us who have all the information they need."
Parents, in turn, should be as informed as possible before explaining issues to children, including keeping up with official advice, Dr Rudkin says.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. How to wash your hands: 30-second guide
In the event that a boy or girl catches coronavirus, parents are advised not to overplay any risk to their health.
"You could tell them it's 'a bit like feeling sore', so they get to see it's not as dreadful as they might believe," Jon Gilmartin, a speech language therapist at the children's communication charity I Can, says.
Older people and those with existing health conditions are thought to be most at risk of death or serious sickness from catching coronavirus. This could lead children to worry about older friends and relatives.
Dr Rudkin advises honesty over the argument "we will all die eventually but chances are not until we are really, really old".
"But we can talk about it with a smile and use humour, or at least a lightness of touch, that doesn't then plummet our children into an existential pit they really don't need to be in, until they're 13 at least," she adds. "Reassure your child that you and granddad are really fit and strong and that you will continue to do all you can to keep yourself/granddad healthy and safe."
Children's capacity to deal with complex and worrying information increases with age, so the way a parent speaks to a three-year-old is very different to dealing with a teenager - and it involves a personal judgement.
But Mr Gilmartin suggests the use of "simple language" for all age groups and allowing children to ask "lots of questions" to show they're being listened to.
Parents who themselves are looking for the right language to use, could start with the BBC's Newsround coverage.
Children, like the rest of the population, are exposed to myths and misinformation about coronavirus, via playground gossip and, particularly among pre-teens and teenagers, on social media.
The best way to combat this is providing "age-appropriate information and reassurance", says Dr Rudkin, as the source young people trust best is a parent.
|
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51734855
|
news_uk-51734855
|
|
Coronavirus: Some scientists say UK virus strategy is 'risking lives' - BBC News
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2020-03-15
|
['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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More than 200 scientists write to the government calling for tougher measures to tackle Covid-19.
|
Science & Environment
|
Architects of the UK's nuanced approach: Sir Patrick Vallance (left) and Prof Chris Whitty (right)
More than 200 scientists have written to the government urging them to introduce tougher measures to tackle the spread of Covid-19.
In an open letter, the 229 specialists in disciplines ranging from mathematics to genetics - though no leading experts in the science of the spread of diseases - say the UK's current approach will put the NHS under additional stress and "risk many more lives than necessary".
The signatories also criticised comments made by Sir Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientific adviser, about managing the spread of the infection to make the population immune.
The Department of Health said Sir Patrick's comments had been misinterpreted.
The scientists - all from UK universities - also questioned the government's view that people would become fed up with restrictions if they were imposed too soon.
Their letter was published on the day it was announced 10 more people in the UK have died after testing positive for coronavirus, bringing the total number of deaths to 21.
Meanwhile the government's scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage) advised that measures to protect vulnerable people - including household isolation - "will need to be instituted soon".
Sir Patrick and the UK's chief medical adviser, Prof Chris Whitty, have said they intend to publish the computer models on which their strategy is based.
The UK's approach to coping with the coronavirus pandemic has been in stark contrast to other countries. The whole of Italy has been on lockdown since Tuesday, while Poland is set to close its borders for two weeks.
On Saturday the French government ordered the closure of all non-essential public locations from midnight (23:00 GMT Saturday).
And Spain has declared a 15-day national lockdown on Monday to battle the virus,
In the open letter the group of scientists argue that stronger "social distancing measures" would "dramatically" slow the rate of growth of the disease in the UK, and would spare "thousands of lives".
The group, specialising in a range of disciplines, ranging from mathematics to genetics said the current measures are "insufficient" and "additional and more restrictive measures should be taken immediately", as is happening in other countries.
On Friday, Sir Patrick suggested managing the spread of the disease so that the population gains some immunity to the disease was a part of the government strategy.
This idea, known as "herd immunity", means at-risk individuals are protected from infection because they are surrounded by people who are resistant to the disease.
Rough estimates indicate that herd immunity to Covid-19 would be reached when approximately 60% of the population has had the disease.
But in the open letter, the scientists said: "Going for 'herd immunity' at this point does not seem a viable option."
The major downside of herd immunity, according to Birmingham University's Prof Willem van Schaik, is that this will mean that in the UK alone at least 36 million people will need to be infected and recover.
"It is almost impossible to predict what that will mean in terms of human costs, but we are conservatively looking at tens of thousands of deaths, and possibly at hundreds of thousands of deaths," he said.
"The only way to make this work would be to spread out these millions of cases over a relatively long period of time so that the NHS does not get overwhelmed."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Willem van Schaik, professor of microbiology and infection at the University of Birmingham, was one of the signatories
Prof van Schaik noted that the UK is the only country in Europe that is following what he described as its "laissez-faire attitude to the virus".
But a Department of Health and Social care spokesperson said that Sir Patrick's comments had been misinterpreted.
"Herd immunity is not part of our action plan, but is a natural by-product of an epidemic. Our aims are to save lives, protect the most vulnerable, and relieve pressure on our NHS," he said.
"We have now moved out of the contain phase and into delay, and we have experts working round the clock. Every measure that we have or will introduce will be based on the best scientific evidence.
"Our awareness of the likely levels of immunity in the country over the coming months will ensure our planning and response is as accurate and effective as possible."
In a separate letter to the government, more than 200 behavioural scientists have questioned the government's argument that starting tougher measures too soon would lead to people not sticking to them just at the point that the epidemic is at its height.
"While we fully support an evidence-based approach to policy that draws on behavioural science, we are not convinced that enough is known about 'behavioural fatigue' or to what extent these insights apply to the current exceptional circumstances," the letter said.
"Such evidence is necessary if we are to base a high-risk public health strategy on it."
"In fact, it seems likely that even those essential behaviour changes that are presently required (e.g., handwashing) will receive far greater uptake the more urgent the situation is perceived to be. Carrying on as normal for as long as possible undercuts that urgency," it added.
The scientists said "radical behaviour change" could have a "much better" effect and could "save very large numbers of lives".
"Experience in China and South Korea is sufficiently encouraging to suggest that this possibility should at least be attempted," it added.
The second letter called on the government to reconsider its stance on "behavioural fatigue" and to share the evidence on which it based this stance.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51892402
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news_science-environment-51892402
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Behind the scenes of the Alex Salmond trial - BBC News
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2020-03-23
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When the jury announced that he had been cleared, Mr Salmond reacted the way he had throughout the trial - by not reacting.
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Scotland
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Mr Salmond walked free from the court after being cleared of all of the allegations against him
After a political career spanning 30 years, Alex Salmond will be more familiar than most with the feeling of sitting waiting for a result to come in. But never one quite like this.
This time, the constituency passing judgement on the former first minister was a jury of the High Court in Edinburgh.
And rather than a seat in parliament or the outcome of a referendum, his very freedom was on the line.
It wasn't just Mr Salmond waiting for a result.
Nine women also sat nervously awaiting the outcome, to see if their accounts of sexual assault would be believed beyond all reasonable doubt.
When the foreman of the jury stood up and announced that Mr Salmond had been cleared of all charges, the former first minister reacted the way he had throughout the trial - by not reacting.
He calmly thanked the judge as she told him he was free to go, and walked from the courtroom.
The trial was presided over by Lady Dorrian, Scotland's second most senior judge
The jury's six total hours of deliberation were preceded by nine days of evidence, with witnesses being questioned by prosecution and defence lawyers amid intense media scrutiny.
All of it was presided over by Lady Dorrian, Scotland's second most senior judge.
While always fair, she was also scrupulously firm. Lawyers who pushed at the boundaries of what could reasonably be relevant to the case were steered firmly back into line. Witnesses who strayed into hearsay or speculation were stopped dead in their tracks.
The lawyers leading the two opposing sides were both titans of the court, vastly experienced operators - but could scarcely have been more different in style.
Prosecutor Alex Prentice, the advocate depute, was all precision, referring to a huge stack of notes and delivering clipped, precise questions.
There was a noticeable pattern to his approach - each woman was asked the exact same things about whether they consented to or invited the former first minister's alleged advances - as Mr Prentice painstakingly built his case.
Defence lawyer Gordon Jackson, meanwhile, barked out his questions gruffly, darting from one subject to the next; "let's move on" he would growl, leaving his scepticism about the answers hanging heavy in the air.
"The Dean", as many including Lady Dorrian called him in reference to his position atop the Faculty of Advocates, was loath to stand still behind a lectern as he pursued his quarry.
He ranged around the courtroom, wig askew, as he mused on the quality of evidence.
This wandering was apparent even when the Crown was taking the lead - at one point he popped up at the back of the press room, watching Alex Prentice's questions on a monitor amid a pack of slightly startled journalists.
Mr Salmost and Mr Jackson observed social distancing protocol sa they congratulated each other outside court
For his part, Mr Salmond sat placidly in the dock throughout. He occasionally called Mr Jackson over to suggest a certain question, but for the most part seemed content to watch.
At the end of each day's evidence he would share a joke and some hand sanitiser with one of the security officers before walking out with a calm smile carefully fixed on his face.
The assembly of journalists seated directly behind him peered through the plexiglass screen, seeking in vain for some flicker of emotion.
But at most you would occasionally catch him rocking gently from side to side during particularly difficult moments, like when he was waiting for the jury to troop back in with their verdict.
When he came to give evidence, there was little of the showmanship which characterised his approach to politics. This was a more reserved Alex Salmond, acutely aware of the difficulty of his position.
He did deploy the old politician's trick of turning his opponents own quotes back on them, reading back his own notes of evidence from the complainers as Mr Jackson guided him along, but he rarely strayed into speechifying.
Mr Salmond's wife, Moira, accompanied him to court on
Alex Prentice borrowed a trick from politics himself with a Paxman-style opening to cross examination, posing the same question four or five times - had Mr Salmond considered the feelings of one of the complainers? - in increasingly icy tones.
But for all the former FM was irritated, heaving a sigh into his microphone, his composure did not crack.
The nine women named in the charges gave evidence in a closed court, a screen separating them from Mr Salmond and the media decamped to a neighbouring room with a video feed.
Their testimony was picked over in occasionally excruciating detail, by both prosecution and defence.
Shelagh McCall QC - in theory the defence's junior counsel, but one so senior in her field that the title seems laughable - led the cross-examination of several, but both she and Mr Jackson found themselves well matched.
Often, their attempts to pull apart the stories of the complainers only brought out even more eye-catching testimony. For example the much-discussed system where female civil servants were supposedly not allowed to work alone with Mr Salmond in the evening first came out in cross examination.
This, combined with the limits placed on the questioning of complainers in sex offences trials, meant cross-examination often seemed to fly by in a trial which ended up lasting for only half as long as it was originally scheduled for.
It felt slightly odd to be inside the bubble of the court as the coronavirus story took off outside. At first, a bottle of hand sanitiser appearing in the media room was as much acknowledgement as it got, but as breaking news alerts popped up on everyone's phones the shadow of the virus steadily grew over the court.
Every morning we would nervously count the jurors in, to make sure there were still 15. Eventually their number would drop to 13, although Lady Dorrian stressed there were "various reasons" for that.
Mr Jackson spent the better part of the trial coughing and spluttering; at one point he paused to reassure the jury that he had had his cough for "about six weeks" so there was no need for him to go into self-isolation.
One of his witnesses did, however, and was unable to attend court.
Lady Dorrian spoke about these being "difficult times", but was apparently absolutely determined to see the trial through. She was even rumoured to have been contemplating a Saturday sitting at one point.
Ultimately it feels like there is little room for analysis or evaluation of the arguments actually made in court. In general, we accept the verdict of the jury in absolute terms; they pronounce an accused guilty because he is guilty, not because of the particular skill of the prosecution. They pronounce him innocent because his guilt has not been proved, not because his defence team have yanked him from the fire.
This trial is no different. This does not mean there will be no debate or discussion off the back of it all - far from it, and even Mr Salmond spoke outside court of there being more to say once the coronavirus crisis has eased.
Testimony heard in the court has raised questions for the Scottish government, for the SNP, and for Nicola Sturgeon.
But those will be addressed in the political arena, not the legal one. As far as the court is concerned, the Alex Salmond trial is over.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52010117
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news_uk-scotland-52010117
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Coronavirus: Keep it simple, stick to facts - how parents should tell kids - BBC News
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2020-03-19
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Keep the message calm, understandable and try not to overemphasise the risks, experts suggest.
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UK
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With the number of coronavirus patients rising around the world, children are being exposed to information and misinformation from many sources. How can parents best keep them up to date without terrifying them?
Coronavirus is dominating the news and children, as always, are asking direct, difficult questions about what's going to happen.
While the risk of young people being seriously affected by the virus appears low, doom-laden social media posts and playground rumours can induce panic.
Stories of deaths, possible food shortages and school closures, and the circulation of phrases like "pandemic potential" can add to a sense of alarm.
So tone is vital when discussing coronavirus with a child, advises Angharad Rudkin, clinical psychologist and consultant on the parenting book What's My Child Thinking?
"We all enjoy scare stories to a degree, but we don't like to hear them quite so much when they're a bit closer to home," she says. "Help your child put some distance between them and the threat by giving information about how coronavirus is spread and what we can do to help minimise the risk such as using loads of lovely bubbles when washing our hands."
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Covid-19 is a respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus which seems to start with a fever, followed by a dry cough. After about a week, it leads to shortness of breath and some patients require hospital treatment.
Medics aren't sure exactly how it spreads from person to person, but similar viruses do so via droplets, such as those produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
It's essential to talk to a child about things he or she can control, such as disposing of tissues and personal hygiene, Dr Rudkin says, rather than those they cannot.
Once the explanation is over, the conversation should move on to something that "isn't threatening, such as what they had for lunch or who do they think is going to win the football match this evening", she adds.
The virus could affect millions of people around the world soon. The UK government says, in its latest plans, that up to a fifth of workers could be off sick at the peak of an epidemic, with school closures possible.
One problem in explaining the virus is that it's difficult to predict what will happen, though early, albeit limited, evidence suggests children with Covid-19 have tended to show mild symptoms.
While parents have long experience in explaining global threats - war, terrorism and climate change - pre-adolescent children are still developing their ability to assess risk, says Dr Rudkin. So it's important to find out what their level of worry over coronavirus is.
"Be clear that you don't know all of the answers but that there are people making decisions for us who have all the information they need."
Parents, in turn, should be as informed as possible before explaining issues to children, including keeping up with official advice, Dr Rudkin says.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. How to wash your hands: 30-second guide
In the event that a boy or girl catches coronavirus, parents are advised not to overplay any risk to their health.
"You could tell them it's 'a bit like feeling sore', so they get to see it's not as dreadful as they might believe," Jon Gilmartin, a speech language therapist at the children's communication charity I Can, says.
Older people and those with existing health conditions are thought to be most at risk of death or serious sickness from catching coronavirus. This could lead children to worry about older friends and relatives.
Dr Rudkin advises honesty over the argument "we will all die eventually but chances are not until we are really, really old".
"But we can talk about it with a smile and use humour, or at least a lightness of touch, that doesn't then plummet our children into an existential pit they really don't need to be in, until they're 13 at least," she adds. "Reassure your child that you and granddad are really fit and strong and that you will continue to do all you can to keep yourself/granddad healthy and safe."
Children's capacity to deal with complex and worrying information increases with age, so the way a parent speaks to a three-year-old is very different to dealing with a teenager - and it involves a personal judgement.
But Mr Gilmartin suggests the use of "simple language" for all age groups and allowing children to ask "lots of questions" to show they're being listened to.
Parents who themselves are looking for the right language to use, could start with the BBC's Newsround coverage.
Children, like the rest of the population, are exposed to myths and misinformation about coronavirus, via playground gossip and, particularly among pre-teens and teenagers, on social media.
The best way to combat this is providing "age-appropriate information and reassurance", says Dr Rudkin, as the source young people trust best is a parent.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51734855
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news_uk-51734855
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Labour leadership: Corbyn's team wanted faction fight, says Lisa Nandy - BBC News
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2020-03-06
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Labour leadership contender Lisa Nandy tells the BBC senior figures wanted to "crush" internal opposition.
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UK Politics
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Labour leadership contender Lisa Nandy has spoken out against "faction fighting" under Jeremy Corbyn.
Ms Nandy said she raised her concerns with the Labour leader before she quit his shadow cabinet in 2016.
She said some members of his team "made it very, very clear they were going to continue to wage that factional war until the other side had been crushed".
Allies of Mr Corbyn say it is "nonsense" to suggest he wanted to wage "war" on another part of the party.
Ms Nandy was speaking to the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg.
The Wigan MP joined a mass walkout of so-called "moderate" shadow ministers in 2016, triggered by Labour's poor European election performance and Mr Corbyn's decision to sack Hilary Benn.
She insisted that she had tried, with a group of "soft left" MPs, to hold the team together at a meeting with Mr Corbyn and other senior figures.
But the attitude of those around Mr Corbyn made her decide to quit as shadow energy secretary, she told the BBC's political editor.
"Some senior politicians in his own team, they made it very, very clear that they were going to continue to wage that factional war until the other side had been crushed," she said.
She said it was "one thing" to have backbenchers waging factional wars with colleagues but "quite another thing to hear the leadership of the Labour Party state a commitment to doing that".
She added: "It wasn't Jeremy but there was no point at all at which he contradicted that."
Allies of Mr Corbyn have acknowledged that the meeting did take place just after the referendum in 2016.
But they dispute Ms Nandy's version of events, citing the fact that Mr Corbyn later invited some of those who opposed his leadership back into the shadow Cabinet.
Sources say it is "nonsense" to suggest that Mr Corbyn wanted to wage a "war" on another part of the party, the BBC's political editor says.
Laura Kuenssberg has previously interviewed Ms Nandy's leadership rivals Rebecca Long-Bailey and Sir Keir Starmer. The winner of the contest will be announced on 4 April.
Long known in Labour circles as a straightforward politician and an interesting thinker, she has been the most willing to speak out about the mistakes the party made in recent years.
That's been easier for her as she quit the party's leadership team.
The others have tiptoed around what went wrong, in part because they, as members of the shadow cabinet, were part of the group (at least in theory), that made the errors that led to the defeat and also because they have been afraid to trash Jeremy Corbyn's reputation when many members still believe in him and only a couple of months ago were standing on doorsteps, trying to pitch his message.
In our interview with Lisa Nandy she didn't hold back, not just her analysis of how Labour has drifted away from many communities it used to represent, but also on how both sides of the party went into what she describes as a "factional war"
Ms Nandy co-chaired Owen Smith's unsuccessful attempt to unseat Mr Corbyn as leader, after quitting the shadow cabinet.
But she insisted she was a "non-factional" and "collegiate" politician who had worked with both Blairite and left-wing MPs before being elected to Parliament in 2010.
And she said the internal wars between the party's left and right wings had contributed to Labour's heavy defeat in December's general election.
"We've had four years, not just of infighting within the Labour Party and a factional war, waged from the frontbenches and the backbenches that showed the public we were more interested in ourselves, than we were in them, but we'd also had Brexit which was really, really devastating."
She said most voters had no idea what Labour was proposing at the election because "I don't think people were even listening when we launched the manifesto".
But she said she would "ditch anything where we didn't know how we're going to pay for it", from the party's next manifesto, if she is elected leader.
One example of this would be the party's plan to "scrap tuition fees without a plan to pay for it".
Lisa Nandy (centre): I feel like my only friends in the world at the moment are Becky and Keir
She said she was opposed to tuition fees and had worked with trade unions on a plan to introduce a tax on business to "fund free tuition fees for everybody in England and Wales".
"But you can't just go into an election saying that you're going to spend money, because it's their money. And, as one woman said to me in Wigan in 2017: 'It's our money, love, and we haven't got a lot of it'."
She also expressed doubts about Labour's commitment to nationalising six major industries.
"I'd bring them into public ownership but I wouldn't nationalise them all," she told the BBC's political editor.
"I don't see why we would give huge subsidies to the major big six energy companies in order to buy them back into public control. That's simply taking taxpayers' money and handing it over to shareholders."
Instead, Labour should be "much more radical" and "invest in local councils and local communities being able to set up their own energy companies" to disrupt the market and bring down bills.
"That seems to me a sort of 21st Century socialism that people are really receptive to. But we've got to go out and win the argument," she said.
Asked - like the other contenders interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg - if she had any "Tory friends", she said she "had friends who vote Tory".
She added: "I feel like my only friends in the world at the moment are Becky and Keir. We just go round and round conference centres shouting slogans at each other.
"Occasionally, when I'm not doing this I do get out and go for a pint and have a chat to my actual mates, Tory or otherwise."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51752969
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news_uk-politics-51752969
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UK coronavirus app 'must respect privacy rights' - BBC News
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2020-03-24
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Health chiefs are asked to be more open about plans for an app to tackle the spread of coronavirus.
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Technology
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UK health chiefs are being urged to safeguard people's privacy ahead of the expected release of an app to help tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
An open letter published by a group of "responsible technologists" warns that if corners are cut, the public's trust in the NHS will be undermined.
And it urges those in charge to be more open about their data-collection plans.
The BBC asked both NHSX - the health service's tech leadership unit - and the Department of Health to respond.
South Korea, Singapore and Israel are among countries that have already deployed apps that can help the authorities track who users have come into contact with, to help model the spread of the virus.
Taiwan has also introduced what it calls an "electronic fence" system that alerts the local police if a quarantined user leaves their home or switches off their handset for too long.
And in Europe, a number of mobile network operators have offered to provide anonymised data about users' movements to help identify potential "hot zones" where the virus might be at most risk of spreading.
The Prime Minister's advisor Dominic Cummings hosted a meeting at Downing Street on 11 March at which dozens of tech industry leaders were asked how they could help develop an app to tackle Covid-19 in the UK. But there has been no formal announcement about what it will do or when it will launch.
"It is not yet clear how data will be collected or used... nor what technical safeguards will be used," says the open letter.
"We are also concerned that data collected to fight coronavirus could be stored indefinitely or for a disproportionate amount of time, or will be used for unrelated purposes.
"These are testing times, but they do not call for untested new technologies."
The letter makes calls on Health Secretary Matt Hancock and NHSX's leaders to make three commitments, asking them to:
The letter highlights Singapore's TraceTogether app as an example of good practice.
It uses Bluetooth to identify when users are within 2m (6.6ft) of another person for more than 30 minutes.
The information is stored in an encrypted form on each person's phone, and Singapore's Ministry of Health must get their consent to upload it for contact-tracing.
In addition, the government says third-parties are unable to use the information to identify individuals.
When the app launched last week, it was accompanied by a plain-language and brief privacy FAQ.
The letter's authors also warn that becoming over-reliant on smartphone surveillance tech could backfire, since many older and younger users do not own handsets that can install apps. In addition, they warn that current cellphone technologies are not good enough to distinguish between people in the same flat and those living in surrounding residences.
"This is not a time to innovate in haste and repent at leisure," lead author Rachel Coldicutt told the BBC.
"At a time when people both in and out of the NHS are under stress, it's important that any solutions driven by digital technologies are easy to understand and, most importantly, useful."
The data scientists and privacy campaigners behind this letter have seen what has happened in other countries fighting the virus - and they don't like it.
South Korea's self-quarantine app allowed users to communicate with health workers but also used GPS to monitor them, making sure they did not leave home. In China a range of apps use personal health information to alert people that they may have come into contact with someone who has been infected.
The argument is that we are in danger of allowing our huge concern in the short-term about stopping the spread of the virus to blind us to the long-term danger of ushering in a surveillance state.
But this may be a hard argument to sell to the public.
Right now, there is pressure on the government to do more, not less, and pressure on technology firms to lend their vast resources to what amounts to a war effort. And just as in wartime, people may be willing to accept the erosion of all sorts of freedoms they previously considered essential in pursuit of victory against the virus.
Having accepted that they can no longer go to the pub, many may now think submitting to some temporary tracking via their mobile phones is a smaller price to pay.
The key word, of course, is temporary.
The writer Yuval Noah Harari, who is quoted in the open letter by the data campaigners, warns that such measures have a nasty habit of becoming permanent. But he also says this: "When people are given a choice between privacy and health, they will usually choose health."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52003984
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news_technology-52003984
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David Beckham's Inter Miami lose first MLS game at Los Angeles FC - BBC Sport
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2020-03-02
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David Beckham watches on as his Inter Miami team are beaten by Los Angeles FC in their inaugural Major League Soccer game.
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Last updated on .From the section Football
David Beckham watched from the directors' box as his Inter Miami team were beaten by Los Angeles FC in their inaugural Major League Soccer game.
Former England captain Beckham had a big role in setting up the new MLS team and is one of the owners as well as president of soccer operations.
They had the toughest debut possible, over 2,700 miles away at last year's regular-season table toppers LAFC.
Carlos Vela scored the only goal with a wonderful chip from 20 yards.
Rodolfo Pizarro was inches away from scoring Inter's first ever competitive goal but he shot just wide - and Scotland international Lewis Morgan had an effort blocked.
Beckham watched along with wife Victoria and son Brooklyn.
Inter brought plenty of fans to the game, which was the most in-demand opening MLS match in terms of ticket resale prices in 10 years.
Writing on social media after the match Beckham said: "Very proud moment for our club today and the team did us proud. It's been a long journey but this is only the beginning. We should be very proud how far we have come and what the future holds. Exciting times ahead."
Fellow new side Nashville SC lost 2-1 to Atlanta United on Friday night.
Why does Beckham own an MLS team?
When Beckham joined LA Galaxy from Real Madrid in 2007, part of his contract gave him the option to buy an MLS franchise at a reduced rate in the future.
Beckham exercised that option six years ago but it took several years to get the team up and running because of arguments over a stadium site. The club will have to play 30 miles from Miami until they relocate in 2022.
"There was never a moment when I said I would walk away but there were moments when I thought this might not happen," Beckham said in a news conference in New York in the past week.
"I have always loved a challenge. I didn't realise how big a challenge this was going to be, even down to putting tiles in the showers."
Inter Miami - whose full name is Club Internacional de Futbol Miami - will hope to succeed where more than 30 Florida teams have failed including Miami Fusion, who only lasted in MLS from 1998 to 2001.
However, they have already built a big fanbase before even playing a game. Fans eager for a Miami team to support turned up in numbers - with banners, flags and drums - to Inter's under-13 and under-14 games last season.
The club are not expected to challenge for the title this season after failing to sign any big-name European players in time for the start of the season.
They have signed two of their three permitted designated players - Argentine teenager Matias Pellegrini and Mexico international midfielder Pizarro. Scotland winger Morgan joined from Celtic in January.
Head coach Diego Alonso has won two Concacaf Champions Leagues with Mexican sides.
• None Read more about the new club here
They played six friendlies, although only two were open to the public, losing 2-1 to Philadelphia Union and beating second-tier Tampa Bay Rowdies 1-0.
• None Attempt saved. Lee Nguyen (Inter Miami CF) left footed shot from outside the box is saved in the centre of the goal. Assisted by Román Torres.
• None Rodolfo Pizarro (Inter Miami CF) wins a free kick on the right wing.
• None Offside, Inter Miami CF. Juan Agudelo tries a through ball, but Robbie Robinson is caught offside.
• None Offside, Los Angeles Football Club. Eduard Atuesta tries a through ball, but Diego Rossi is caught offside.
• None Tristan Blackmon (Los Angeles Football Club) wins a free kick on the right wing.
• None Substitution, Los Angeles Football Club. Bryce Duke replaces Latif Blessing because of an injury.
• None Attempt saved. Ben Sweat (Inter Miami CF) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the top right corner.
• None Attempt saved. Diego Rossi (Los Angeles Football Club) right footed shot from the left side of the box is saved in the bottom right corner. Assisted by Latif Blessing with a through ball.
• None Offside, Los Angeles Football Club. Brian Rodríguez tries a through ball, but Carlos Vela is caught offside. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/51690278
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Seafarers in limbo as coronavirus hits shipping - BBC News
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2020-04-21
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The shipping industry is already feeling the impact of Covid-19 as the world heads for recession.
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Business
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Shipping firms have halted crew changes to protect their seafarers
With the world in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the shipping industry is already feeling the impact as the global economy heads into a deep recession.
Hundreds of ship sailings have been cancelled as first ports in China, and then across the globe, have seen trade fall away - with millions of workers and consumers in lockdown.
Caught in the centre of this have been the world's 1.6 million seafarers, on 50,000 tankers and cargo carriers. Many of them are unable to leave their ships, or find themselves stuck in hotels without pay and unable to get flights home.
Every month, 100,000 merchant mariners come to the end of their contracts on their ships and need to be flown home. But the pandemic has halted this.
Since the coronavirus outbreak Chinese border guards have been checking the health of crews
"Working at sea is often described as similar to being in prison, except there is no TV," says former ship's navigator Nick Chubb.
"Though my experience was usually positive, a feeling of deep fatigue sets in towards the end of a contract. I once had a four-month contract on an oil tanker extended by three weeks, and found it incredibly difficult to deal with.
"Some of these seafarers have spent nine months away from their families already. And it's not looking particularly likely they'll be able to go home any time soon," adds Mr Chubb, who is now a director for the maritime technology intelligence platform Thetius.
The world's biggest shipping firm, AP Moller-Maersk, is one of those which has halted its crew changes, and says its done so to protect them, by lessening the number of social interactions they need to have.
It adds that "the rapid changes to global travel poses a risk of stranding seafarers in locations from where they are unable to leave, or get sufficient assistance".
The cost of shipping an item around the world is just a fraction of its final retail price
Yet even before the coronavirus outbreak, the industry was grappling with major issues.
First, the need to move to cleaner fuels because of the introduction of the 2020 sulphur emissions cap by the International Maritime Organization.
Second, the fallout from the US-China trade war, and the failure of Washington and Beijing to implement the first phase of their trade agreement.
"Shipping lines have had a very hard time making money in the past ten years," says Alan Murphy, chief executive of analysts Sea-Intelligence in Copenhagen.
For example, for a $100 (£80) pair of trainers, the cost of ocean transport will be a fraction of that - just 10c. This makes the distance that goods travel to market irrelevant in cost terms. And it is why China, with its low labour costs, has become the world's main manufacturer.
China accounts for seven of the world's 10 busiest container ports
Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst with Bimco, the world's largest international shipping association, warned at a recent webinar that 2020 could become increasingly harsh for the industry.
"We need to make sure that local ports and terminals are kept open, to make sure that food and goods are kept flowing to where it's needed - because that's where shipping hands a lifeline to the global public."
Faced with the rippling disruptions to supply and demand around the globe, shipping firms have been scaling back operations. So far, 384 sailings have been cancelled, and the first half of 2020 could see a 25% fall in shipping, with a 10% drop for the year overall, says Sea-Intelligence.
Chinese ports have resumed sailings in April, but many ports serving key consumer markets are still operating well below capacity.
The industry has not yet had to lower prices, but if shipping firms are forced to do so, and freight rates fall by 20% - as they did after the 2008 financial crisis - and were shipping volumes to remain 10% lower, "we could see operating losses of some $20-23bn", says Mr Murphy.
"That would wipe out the shipping firms' last eight years' worth of profits," he adds.
Oil tankers are now in big demand, as the major fall in the price of crude has led to stockpiling
There are a lot of unknowns in the preceding sentences, and Sea-Intelligence stresses it is not yet clear how long it will take for fractured global supply chains to get back to normal once lockdowns are ended.
For consumers, there could well be periodic shortages to come, says Jody Cleworth, of consultants Marine Transport International.
"In developing nations like South Africa there's an almost complete shutdown in exports, whereby only critical goods are moving through ports. So the seasonal goods we expect in Europe in summer would be limited from such countries.
"For example, charcoal for your summer barbecue. At the moment those containers are not being moved out of South Africa, so they will not be arriving in the UK for their intended dates," he says.
But there is one exception to this gloom: the oil tanker sector. Demand for oil tankers has been rising following the oil price falls, which have sent the tanker sector "sky-high", says Nick Chubb of Thetius.
"There are ships that are being chartered now for $230,000 a day as offshore floating storage for when the oil prices recover. It's almost a tale of two industries," he says.
But given the impact of Covid-19 on economic activity, energy demand in 2020 is likely to be substantially lower, and it is possible these tankers may be storing oil for a while to come.
More from the BBC's series taking an international perspective on trade:
So what will be the effect of Covid-19 on the shipping industry beyond 2020?
With virtually no cargo moving by air, shipping could become even more crucial. Already 90% of world trade by volume goes by sea. Yet many analysts expect the drop in demand across Europe and North America to have a longer-term impact.
"We could be talking a decade, at least, of difficulty," suggests Nick Chubb of Thetius.
Alan Murphy says the pandemic will trigger questions about the shape and sustainability of world trade - and globalisation. "A lot of protectionist arguments are going to be made against outsourcing.
"It will have a very profound impact on how global supply chains are organised. It is going to be a political topic in coming years."
Are you a sailor stranded away from home because of coronavirus? You can share your experience by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52289303
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Coronavirus: UK confirms plan for its own contact tracing app - BBC News
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2020-04-13
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App will send yellow and red alerts to those who have come into contact with a suspected carrier.
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Technology
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The UK has confirmed plans for an app that will warn users if they have recently been in close proximity to someone suspected to be infected with the coronavirus.
The health secretary Matt Hancock announced the move at the government's daily pandemic press briefing.
He said the NHS was "working closely with the world's leading tech companies" on the initiative.
But one expert who has advised the effort has raised doubts about it.
The BBC has learned that NHSX - the health service's digital innovation unit - will test a pre-release version of the software with families at a secure location in the North of England next week.
At present, the idea is that people who have self-diagnosed as having coronavirus will be able to declare their status in the app.
The software will then send the equivalent of a yellow alert to any other users who they have recently been close to for an extended period of time.
If a medical test confirms that the original user is indeed infected, then a stronger warning - effectively a red alert - will be sent instead, signalling that the other users should go into quarantine.
To report testing positive, the user would have to enter a verification code, which they would have received alongside their Covid-19 status.
Mr Hancock signalled that using the app would be voluntary, in the brief comments he made about it.
"If you become unwell with the symptoms of coronavirus, you can securely tell this new NHS app," he explained.
"And the app will then send an alert anonymously to other app users that you've been in significant contact with over the past few days, even before you had symptoms, so that they know and can act accordingly.
"All data will be handled according to the highest ethical and security standards, and would only be used for NHS care and research.
"And we won't hold it any longer than is needed."
His reference to a tie-up with tech companies was a nod to Apple and Google, which announced on Friday that they were working on a software building block, known as an API, to make it easier for others to build contact tracing apps.
NHSX was not aware of this project beforehand, but now plans to integrate the technology into its own product.
Its system will keep track of handsets that came close to each other by recording when they detected each others' Bluetooth signals.
One benefit of using Apple and Google's API is that the NHS app will not have to employ workarounds to keep monitoring the signals even when the app is not active.
Part of the reason Apple and Google say they developed their own idea was to ensure that iOS and Android users' privacy would not be compromised.
Their method is designed so that citizens can trigger and receive alerts without the authorities being notified of who was involved.
But one cyber-security expert who has been consulted about the app listed a series of worries about the project in a blog.
"I recognise the overwhelming force of the public-health arguments for a centralised system, but I also have 25 years' experience of the NHS being incompetent at developing systems and repeatedly breaking their privacy promises when they do manage to collect some data of value to somebody else," added the professor of security engineering.
"I'm really uneasy about collecting lots of lightly-anonymised data in a system that becomes integrated into a whole-of-government response to the pandemic. We might never get rid of it."
The Behavioural Insights Team - a private company also known as the Nudge Unit - is advising the government on how to encourage as many people to download and use the app as possible.
NHSX believes more than half the population going outside needs to be using it for automated contact tracing to be effective.
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Coronavirus warship row: Acting US Navy secretary resigns - BBC News
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2020-04-07
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The acting Navy chief was under fire for ousting a captain who pleaded for help fighting Covid-19.
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US & Canada
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Acting US Navy Secretary Thomas Modly has submitted his resignation
The acting secretary of the US Navy has resigned amid uproar over his handling of a coronavirus outbreak on an aircraft carrier.
Thomas Modly fired the USS Theodore Roosevelt's captain after he pleaded for help in a letter leaked to media.
Mr Modly apologised on Monday after it emerged he had called Captain Brett Crozier's actions "naive" and "stupid".
The secretary's exit comes a day after US President Donald Trump signalled he might get involved in the dispute.
Defence secretary Mark Esper said Mr Modly had "resigned of his own accord".
The Pentagon chief said the crew's health and safety were a priority for the department.
Capt Crozier was fired last week, and footage of his crew sending him off the warship with applause went viral.
Mr Modly flew 8,000 miles on Monday to the Pacific island of Guam, where the USS Theodore Roosevelt is docked, and berated the crew for having cheered the captain as he left the ship.
Mr Modly told the crew what their former captain did "was very, very wrong" and amounted to "a betrayal of trust with me, with his chain of command", according to recordings leaked to US media.
"If he didn't think that information was going to get out into the public... then he was a) too naive or too stupid to be the commanding officer of a ship like this," Mr Modly said. "The alternative is he did it on purpose."
Amid rebukes from members of Congress, Mr Modly issued an apology the same day, saying: "I do not think Captain Brett Crozier is naive nor stupid. I think and always believed him to be the opposite."
Capt Crozier sent a letter to defence officials on 30 March begging for assistance with a coronavirus outbreak on his vessel, which has more than 4,000 crew.
"We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die," he wrote, requesting the quarantine of nearly the entire crew.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump said he had no role in Mr Modly's departure, which he described as a "really unselfish" decision.
At the same time, the president emphasised Capt Crozier "made a mistake" with the letter, saying: "He didn't have to be Ernest Hemingway."
When asked about the controversy on Monday, President Trump told reporters: "You have two good gentlemen and they're arguing. I'm good at resolving arguments."
The president said he "heard very good things" about Capt Crozier and did not want his career to be ruined "for having a bad day", but added that "the letter should not have been sent to many people unclassified".
The US Navy is investigating Capt Crozier's actions.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress have called for an inquiry into the decision to fire the captain.
Former Vice-President and current Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden also spoke out.
He said Capt Crozier's firing was "close to criminal" and he should have been commended for saying "what had to be said".
Over 155 of the aircraft carrier's crew have tested positive for Covid-19.
More than 1,000 sailors who have tested negative for the virus are ashore in Guam, quarantining in hotels.
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Frank Skinner: Will Gompertz reviews the comedian's poetry podcast on Absolute Radio ★★★★☆ - BBC News
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2020-04-25
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It's a simple idea presented by someone who brings insight to an art form that is enjoying a resurgence.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Odd combinations have long been a staple of the entertainment industry. For those old enough to have seen it (still available on YouTube), who can forget Prince Edward's cringe-inducing toe-dip into television production with the culture-clash that was It's A Royal knockout? Not the Queen, that's for sure, who went on to show her youngest son how to play the incongruous card with her winning James Bond spoof at the London Olympics.
The Royal Family's infamous day out at Alton Towers was in 1987, 30 years after the comedian Frank Skinner was born, a fact I learnt from listening to his new podcast, which is another example of the light-entertainment-meets-highfalutin genre.
Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast is knowingly tapping into the surprising-juxtaposition game, following the likes of Lenny Henry who has successfully evolved from kids' show clown to serious Shakespearian actor.
"Yes, yes, poetry" Skinner says in his introduction, acknowledging it might seem an unlikely subject for a man still shaking off a '90s laddish image.
The comedian and actor, Frank Skinner says he developed his love of poetry while studying English at Birmingham Polytechnic
Actually, it's not in the least bit strange that he should be drawn to poetry or Lenny Henry to Shakespeare.
There are two common attributes shared by the majority of successful comedians: the first being an intellectual curiosity, and the second, an understanding and appreciation of language and its use.
It is a mark of how the Arts have allowed themselves to become segregated - broadly along class lines - between what is seen as cheap entertainment and classy culture.
It is a perception, not a reality.
Rock, pop, and rap are as worthy an art form as classical music, and stand-up comedy could justifiably be considered performance art. The division between the different artistic forms of human expression is a nonsense.
Frank Skinner shouldn't have to defend his love of poetry, nor the fact that he is approaching it as a fan and not as an academic.
Poetry and comedy are natural bedfellows - a fact that Skinner demonstrates in this one-man-no-guests podcast peppered with amusing asides and left-of-field references - from the absurdist dramatist Eugène Ionesco to a whippet dog called Frank Skinner.
First up on the first episode of the first series (I hope there are plenty more) is the 20th Century British poet and artist Stevie Smith (1902 - 1971) and her 1957 classic Not Waving but Drowning, a three-verse meditation on someone with a jolly public persona hiding a desperate soul:
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Skinner's approach is to personalise the poems he discusses, arguing, not unreasonably, that his response is a coming together of his viewpoint with that of the poet.
It's a familiar argument made particularly well in an essay called the Creative Act, written by Marcel Duchamp in the same year as Smith produced Not Waving but Drowning.
Stevie Smith's Not Waving but Drowning was first published in 1957, and was voted Britain's fourth favourite poem in a poll in 1995
It is a very good poem, the title of which has become part of our everyday lexicon. I remember sitting on the beach at Bude in Cornwall, keeping half an eye on my kids bodyboarding while staring out at sea and contemplating what flavour of ice-cream I fancied. I saw a woman waving from her surf board and mentioned the friendly gesture to my wife, who, paraphrasing Smith, said "she's not waving, she's drowning".
And so she was. Two guys in red swimming trunks, neither of whom looked remotely like David Hasselhoff, surfed out and rescued her. It was very dramatic, but not, Skinner speculates, the real subject of Smith's poem.
It is not literally about drowning at sea but a distant character who stands outside the swim of daily life: a man who - to all appearances - is waving enthusiastically when in reality he is drowning in obscurity ("I was much further out than you thought" the dead man reports). This Skinner can relate to, and tells us the thing he most enjoyed about being famous, was neither the money nor the trappings, but being noticed, being "heard":
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
It is not easy to relay the meaning and rhythm of poem while retaining a voice that doesn't sound like a cliche of a worthy 1970s round-table poetry group.
Skinner nails the task, bringing the poet's words to life before veering off on an anecdote or explaining that poetry is broken up into lumps known as verses (fancy language is banished, which is why, perhaps, he chose Smith who used simple language to communicate ideas and feelings of great complexity).
The show is not perfect, but then it is only one episode old.
Having got our attention and established his chatty approach, there's scope for Skinner to go a little deeper into the text.
Not Waving but Drowning is a timely poem to study, not just because it speaks to our current anxieties, but also that in 12 short lines Smith introduces three separate voices who tell us the ambiguous story in words chosen specifically for their weaselly slipperiness.
There is also room for a bit more biographical detail. Obviously, this is Skinner's informal take on poetry, with the way it touches him a large part of the show's structure, but it could be rebalanced to allow the poet to share some the limelight.
We learn very little about Smith, and almost nothing about William Carlos Williams (1883 - 1963), the American modernist poet who wrote Skinner's second choice of the week, Danse Russe (1916).
The American poet, William Carlos Williams once wrote "The purpose of an artist, whatever it is, is to take the life, whatever he sees, and to raise it up to an elevated position where it has dignity"
It is another terrific selection.
A little longer than Smith's, but not by much. It shares the subject of loneliness, but from the other side of the desolate coin. This time our male protagonist is watching the sun rise as his wife and children sleep. He is enjoying a moment of sensual euphoria, suppressed from full expression perhaps, to keep the genie of his genius in the bottle:
If I admire my arms, my face,
the happy genius of my household?
It would have helped to have some biographical detail; to have known that Williams was a paediatrician by day and a poet by night (the genius of the household?): that he was searching for a new American idiom that established a language independent from European influences, and that the poem was indebted to the French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé's L'après-midi d'un faune (Williams spent time living in France).
Claude Debussy then wrote a piece of music in response to Mallarmé, which was subsequently turned into a dance for the Ballets Russes (hence the title of Williams's poem) by Vaslav Nijinsky, which Williams saw performed in New York having known it'd caused a furore in Paris years earlier when Nijinsky started writhing in ecstasy, alone on the stage, to howls of derision and gasps of delight.
The influence of Stéphane Mallarmé's poem L'après-midi d'un faune can be seen in William Carlos Williams' Danse Russe
Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed and danced in L'Aprés-midi d'un faune for the Ballets Russes in 1912, which William Carlos Williams saw years later
Skinner only touches on this back story and isn't entirely accurate on all his factual details (I don't think Williams lived in New York, he was a man of Rutherford, New Jersey). To an extent that's forgivable, our host says he doesn't go much for background info because he wants to have a relationship with the work of art not the person who made it or what might have influenced it. He then humbly adds, "that might be an error on my part".
I suspect it is. The more you repeat read a poem, which Skinner rightly encourages us to do, the more you want to comprehend, and that usually means going beyond the page to the person holding the pen. That's the way into the rest of the writer's work, and the discovering of little jewels like Williams's This is Just to Say, which for some reason reminds me of a Cezanne still life:
First-episode teething troubles are to be expected and should not detract from a very welcome new addition to the cultural landscape: a simple idea without any fancy production presented by someone who brings insight and enthusiasm to an art form that is enjoying a resurgence in popularity.
Roll on Monday for the second instalment.
I think it's going to get better and better.
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Coronavirus: Trump berates media at jaw-dropping briefing - BBC News
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2020-04-14
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Donald Trump is clearly aggrieved that the media has been critical of his handling of the pandemic.
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US & Canada
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On Monday morning I had a delivery to my apartment from the nearby off-licence - or liquor store, as they say over here.
And I put a jokey picture on Twitter of a bottle of gin and eight bottles of tonic, with the caption that at least I had the next week sorted.
After leaving the White House Briefing Room on Monday evening following a marathon two-hour 24-minute press conference, I felt I could have knocked off the whole lot in one sitting.
This has been the most dizzying, jaw-dropping, eyeball-popping, head-spinning news conference I have ever attended. And I was at Bill Clinton's news conference in 1998 when he faced the press for the first time over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
I was at this president's first White House gathering when he called me "another beauty". I was in Helsinki when he had his first news conference with Vladimir Putin, and seemed to prefer to believe the Russian leader over his own security and intelligence chiefs on interference in the 2016 election.
I was in Vietnam when Mr Trump gave a news conference after his talks with Kim Jong-un had unceremoniously collapsed. So I've sat in on some corkers.
What made last night's encounter unique was the context. And secondly, this was, if you like, a distillation - all the talk of gin, I think, forced me to use that word - in one news conference of what three and a half years of Donald Trump has been like to cover.
There are more than 23,000 Americans dead because of coronavirus and more than half a million infected - and remember that, in early March, Donald Trump was saying there were a handful of cases, but that would soon be down to zero.
Yet Donald Trump walked into the briefing room with scores to settle with the media. This wasn't about the dead, the desperately sick, the people fearful of catching the virus. This was about him. And more particularly his profound sense of grievance that the media has been critical of his handling of Covid-19.
Refrigerator lorries are being used as makeshift mortuaries in New York
If you think that is an unfair exaggeration, after a few moments he said he was going to play a video. It had been produced by White House staff, even though it bore all the hallmarks of a campaign video. If it was a movie, it would have been called "Coronavirus: Why Donald Trump is Great - and the Media Awful".
One of the reporters quoted in the film would complain immediately afterwards that her words had been taken out of context.
If you were watching the news conference on TV, you would have seen the film. But in the briefing room, where I had my vantage point, Donald Trump was alternately scowling at us, then pointing and smiling derisively and then smirking, as if to say, "Look at all you losers - I've nailed you with this".
Contempt seemed to ooze out of every pore. Central to the president's argument is that at the end of January he stopped a lot of flights coming from China and that had saved countless thousands of American lives.
Paula Reid from CBS pushed back forcefully, arguing that, bold move though that was, it wasn't followed through with any meaningful action in February, when testing was minimal and precious time was lost.
The president was enraged. You could see the fury coursing through him as he was extremely rude to her (he didn't answer the detail of her arguments, though). He called her a "fake" and "disgraceful".
So here we have a president who apparently hates us. But. But. But. He stuck around and answered questions for a full hour and a half. It was like a band on their farewell tour wanting to do one more encore. He loves it. He is in his element. And he hates us too.
Going back to my previous experience of news conferences, I always think you are lucky if you get to ask one question. Most often you don't get to ask one - particularly if you are from a foreign news organisation. I think I asked five questions of the president (and one of them got a "that's a very good question" - 10 points for me). He loves to engage.
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This president is more accessible than any senior politician I have ever known. And who can complain about that? He stood there and took all questions for an age, knowing full well this was playing out across all the US networks - and around the world, given the range of messages I got from all and sundry. But it is also confounding. You feel he wants to be loved, and can't understand it when love is not forthcoming.
Then there is power. Coronavirus is unlike any enemy he has faced before. It's unlike any enemy that any of us have come up against, as it doesn't have a face. And Donald Trump is great when there's a name and a face. "Lyin' Ted", "Sleepy Joe", "Crooked Hillary", "Little Marco" - and on and on and on. But there really isn't much point insulting a virus. It doesn't respond and seems utterly indifferent to what names it is called.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. How Trump's attitude toward coronavirus has shifted
Before the White House, the president ran a family business where everyone answered to him. At Monday night's news conference he gave every impression of wanting to run America like that.
He has said he wants to reopen the US for business as quickly as possible - if you're interested, my Q&A with him concerned the feasibility of that, a laudable ambition. But is that his prerogative, or that of the 50 state governors? Remember, the US has a federal constitution.
Donald Trump was in no doubt last night that it was up to him to decide when America lifted the shutters and changed the sign on the door from "closed" to "open".
But if it was down to the individual states to decide on when it was appropriate to issue "shelter in place" orders - and the president said he couldn't order six states controlled by Republican governors to enforce social distancing - how can it be his prerogative to order the reverse?
After listening to the president, Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York state, said this: "The constitution says we don't have a king. To say, 'I have total authority over the country because I'm the president', it's absolute, that is a king. We didn't have a king. We didn't have King George Washington - we had President George Washington."
That is not how the guy who ran the family firm sees it.
At the end of this rollercoaster of a ride of a news conference, I tried to make sense of it as I left the White House.
Like so much in this divided country, I suspect it is entirely a question of where you stand. His supporters will probably have loved him sticking it to the media the moment he walked into the briefing room.
His opponents will have been appalled that he could put the coverage of his own handling of the crisis above the suffering of the American people.
Before I made it into the briefing room last night, I had to have my temperature taken in a tent that's been erected just outside the White House estate on Pennsylvania Avenue. And I had to have it taken again before I would be allowed to enter the briefing room.
Good thing they didn't do blood pressure. I'm sure a fair few people - participants and observers - would have had very different before and after readings.
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Coronavirus at Smithfield pork plant: The untold story of America's biggest outbreak - BBC News
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2020-04-18
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Infections spread like wildfire through a pork factory in South Dakota. Here's how it happened.
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US & Canada
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How did the biggest cluster in the US emerge in a corner of South Dakota? Infections spread like wildfire through a pork factory and questions remain about what the company did to protect staff.
On the afternoon of 25 March, Julia sat down at her laptop and logged into a phony Facebook account. She'd opened it in middle school, to surreptitiously monitor boys she had crushes on. But now, many years later, it was about to serve a much more serious purpose.
"Can you please look into Smithfield," she typed in a message to an account called Argus911, the Facebook-based tip line for the local newspaper, the Argus Leader. "They do have a positive [Covid-19] case and are planning to stay open." By "Smithfield", she was referring to the Smithfield Foods pork-processing plant located in her town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The factory - a massive, eight-story white box perched on the banks of the Big Sioux River - is the ninth-largest hog-processing facility in the US. When running at full capacity, it processes 19,500 freshly-slaughtered hogs per day, slicing, grinding and smoking them into millions of pounds of bacon, hot dogs and spiral-cut hams. With 3,700 workers, it is also the fourth-largest employer in the city.
"Thank you for the tip," the Argus911 account responded. "What job did the worker who tested positive have?"
"We are not exactly sure," Julia wrote back.
"OK, thanks," Argus911 replied. "We'll be in touch."
The next day, at 7:35am, the Argus Leader published the story on its website: "Smithfield Foods employee tests positive for coronavirus". The reporter confirmed through a company spokeswoman that, indeed, an employee had tested positive, was in a 14-day quarantine, and that his or her work area and other common spaces had been "thoroughly sanitised". But the plant, deemed part of a "critical infrastructure industry" by the Trump administration, would remain fully operational.
"Food is an essential part of all our lives, and our more than 40,000 US team members, thousands of American family farmers and our many other supply chain partners are a crucial part of our nation's response to Covid-19," Smithfield CEO Kenneth Sullivan said in an online video statement released 19 March to explain the decision to keep factories open. "We are taking the utmost precautions to ensure the health and well-being of our employees and consumers."
"There had been rumours there were cases even before that," she recalled. "I heard about people getting hospitalised from Smithfield specifically. They only know from word of mouth."
Julia does not work at the factory. She is a graduate student in her 20s, stuck back at home after her university shut in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Her parents, two long-time Smithfield employees with whom she is especially close, told her what was happening at the factory that day. She is just one of several adult children of factory workers - many the first-generation children of immigrants, some calling themselves Children of Smithfield - who have taken it upon themselves to speak out about the outbreak.
"My parents don't know English. They can't advocate for themselves," said Julia. "Someone has to talk for them."
Her family, like many others in Sioux Falls, did everything they could to avoid falling ill. Julia's parents used up all their remaining vacation time to stay home. After work, they took off their shoes outside and headed straight into the shower. Julia bought them cloth headbands at Walmart to pull over their mouths and noses while on the line.
For Julia, alerting the media was just the next logical step in trying to keep them all healthy, by creating public pressure to close the plant down and keep her parents home. Instead, it marked the beginning of nearly three anxiety-filled weeks during which her mother and father continued to report to a factory they knew could be contaminated, to jobs they could not afford to lose. They stood side-by-side less than a foot away from their colleagues on production lines, they passed in and out of crowded locker rooms, walkways and cafeterias.
During that time, the number of confirmed cases among Smithfield employees slowly mounted, from 80 to 190 to 238.
By 15 April, when Smithfield finally closed under pressure from the South Dakota governor's office, the plant had become the number one hotspot in the US, with a cluster of 644 confirmed cases among Smithfield employees and people who contracted it from them. In total, Smithfield-related infections account for 55% of the caseload in the state, which is far outpacing its far more populous Midwestern neighbour states in cases per capita. According to the New York Times, the Smithfield Foods case numbers have surpassed the USS Theodore Roosevelt naval ship and the Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois.
Those figures were released one day after the first Smithfield employee died in hospital.
"He got that virus there. He was very healthy before," his wife, Angelita, told the BBC in Spanish. "My husband will not be the only one to die."
The Smithfield pork plant, located in a Republican-led state that is one of five in the US that has not issued any kind of shelter-in-place order, has become a microcosm illustrating the socioeconomic disparities laid bare by the global pandemic. While many white-collar workers around the country are sheltering in place and working from home, food industry workers like the employees at Smithfield are deemed "essential" and must remain on the front lines.
"These jobs for essential workers are lower paying than the average job across America, in some cases by significant margins. So home health aides, cashiers - absolutely essential, on the front lines, have to physically report to work," said Adie Tomer, a fellow at the Brookings Institute. "They are more predominantly African American or Hispanic than the overall working populations."
The workforce at Smithfield is made up largely of immigrants and refugees from places like Myanmar, Ethiopia, Nepal, Congo and El Salvador. There are 80 different languages spoken in the plant. Estimates of the mean hourly wage range from $14-16 an hour. Those hours are long, the work is gruelling, and standing on a production line often means being less than a foot away from your co-workers on either side.
The BBC spoke to half a dozen current and former Smithfield employees who say that while they were afraid to continue going to work, deciding between employment and their health has been an impossible choice.
"I have a lot of bills. My baby's coming soon - I have to work," said one 25-year-old employee whose wife is eight months pregnant. "If I get a positive, I'm really worried I can't save my wife."
Food processing plants throughout the country are experiencing coronavirus outbreaks which have the potential to disrupt the country's food supply chain. A JBS meatpacking plant in Colorado has shut after five deaths and 103 infections among its employees. Two workers at a Tyson Foods plant in Iowa also died, while 148 others were sickened.
The closure of a large meat processing facility like the one in Sioux Falls causes massive upstream disruption, stranding farmers without a place to sell their livestock. About 550 independent farms send their pigs to the Sioux Falls plant.
When announcing the shutdown, Smithfield CEO Sullivan warned of "severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions" for the supply of meat.
But according to Smithfield employees, their union representatives, and advocates for the immigrant community in Sioux Falls, the outbreak that led to the plant closure was avoidable. They allege early requests for personal protective equipment were ignored, that sick workers were incentivised to continue working, and that information regarding the spread of the virus was kept from them, even when they were at risk of exposing family and the broader public.
"If the federal government wants the company to stay open, then whose responsibility is it to make sure these companies are doing what they have to do to keep them safe?" said Nancy Reynoza, founder of Que Pasa Sioux Falls, a Spanish-language news source who said she's been hearing from distraught Smithfield workers for weeks.
The BBC submitted a detailed list of questions and worker allegations to Smithfield, and they did not comment on the allegations put to them on individual cases.
"First and foremost, the health and safety of our employees and communities is our top priority each and every day," the statement said. "Beginning in February, we instituted a series of stringent and detailed processes and protocols in early March that follow the strict guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to effectively manage any potential Covid-19 cases in our operations."
The outbreak left people like Julia, whose mother has underlying, chronic health conditions, overwhelmed by the fear that her parents were putting their lives at risk in an attempt to keep their jobs.
"My parents are all I have. I have to think about potentially not having them in my life," she said, her voice breaking. "I want to share what's going on so there's an actual track record of what the company isn't doing."
Ahmed first saw Neela on the Smithfield floor during one of their shifts. He liked her skin, she liked his laugh. When he started asking around about her, Ahmed learned that they were both from the same village in Ethiopia and they both spoke the same language, Oromo.
"Wow, I'm so excited. In my breaktime, I keep searching where she work," Ahmed recalled. "Right away, I stop by her line. I say, 'Hey, what's up.' I tell her she's beautiful."
Ahmed took Neela to a trendy New American restaurant. They went on a week-long vacation to Wisconsin Dells, a campy Midwest vacation destination known for its water slides and hot springs. They fell in love and got married.
Now Neela is eight months pregnant with their first child. Although she quit Smithfield back in December, Ahmed continued going to work during the outbreak even though he was terrified that he would infect his wife and their unborn baby with the virus. Because Neela started having difficulty walking in her third trimester, Ahmed needed to help her - they can't isolate from one another.
Ahmed says two of his friends in the plant have tested positive. Then he began exhibiting symptoms himself.
"Smithfield - they don't care about employees," said Neela. "They only care about their money."
According to Kooper Caraway, president of the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO, union officials approached management at Smithfield in early March to request multiple measures to increase worker safety, including staggering shifts and lunch schedules, which can pack 500 workers into the factory cafeteria at once. He said they also requested personal protective gear like masks and overcoats, temperature-checking at the doors and sanitation stations.
"This was before anyone at the plant tested positive," said Caraway. "Management dragged their feet, didn't take worker demands seriously."
Tim was a new employee going through orientation when he heard about the first case from someone sitting next to him. But he says after that initial announcement, the company got very quiet.
"We didn't really hear nothing more about the coronavirus outbreak," he said. "We thought it was good." Then, on 8 April, the South Dakota State Health Department confirmed there were 80 cases at the plant. Multiple employees told the BBC that they found out from media reports, not from management at Smithfield.
"I've found out about some people having the virus in my department, but other co-workers told me," said Julia's mother, Helen.
A temperature checking station was erected under a white tent at the main entrance to the factory, but Reynoza and Caraway both said that they were told workers with running elevated temperatures were allowed to come into the factory anyway. According to Helen, if workers wanted to avoid the temperature check, they could enter a side door.
Smithfield instituted other changes, like building cardboard cubicles around lunch table seats to create a barrier between workers, staggering shifts, and putting out hand sanitiser stations. But multiple workers said - and photos sent to the BBC seem to confirm - that personal protective equipment came in the form of beard nets to wear over their faces, which do not protect from airborne particles like a surgical or N95 mask would.
"I haven't read anything from the CDC that says a hair net over your face will do much good," said Caraway.
Smithfield did not respond to questions about the beard nets or provide details about what PPE they made available to workers, writing instead that, "given the stress on supply chains, we have been working around the clock to procure thermal scanning equipment and masks, both of which are in short supply".
At a JBS Plant in Worthington, Minnesota, 30 minutes away from Sioux Falls, union representatives said their company provided workers with "gloves, surgical masks, face shields, overcoats", according to the Star Tribune.(On Friday, it emerged that the JBS Plant has 19 confirmed cases). A spokesman for Tyson Foods told the New York Times that their policy is to notify employees if they have been in contact with anyone who is confirmed to have the virus.
In response, some employees started bringing their own masks to the plant. Others began quarantining themselves from family.
Kaleb, who has been with Smithfield for 12 years, told the BBC that for the past two weeks, he's been sealing himself in a room away from his wife, his six-month-old daughter and his three-year-old son because he can't be sure he isn't bringing the virus home with him everyday.
"My little boy you know, I lock the door - he knock on the door. 'Hey, daddy you wanna come out?' I say, 'Go with your mom,'" he says. "I don't have a choice. What can I do? I want to try to save my family."
If employees like Kaleb were to quit, they would be ineligible for unemployment. Advocates are hearing from visa-holders who fret that even if they were to apply for unemployment, they might be considered "public charges" which could render them ineligible for permanent residency under a new rule enacted by the Trump administration last year. (According to a spokeswoman for the Ways and Means Committee, unemployment compensation is an "earned benefit" that would not disqualify visa-holders from residency.)" The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (Cares) Act excludes anyone living in a mixed-status household with an undocumented family member.
"They do not qualify for anything," said Taneeza Islam, the executive director of South Dakota Voices for Peace and an immigration lawyer. "Their choice is between putting food on the table, and going to work and getting exposed."
On 9 April, with 80 cases confirmed, Smithfield released a statement saying that the plant would close for three days over the Easter weekend for deep cleaning, and return to full capacity that Tuesday. "The company will suspend operations in a large section of the plant on April 11 and completely shutter on April 12 and April 13," a statement from the company read.
But the BBC learned through interviews with workers and advocates that Smithfield employees were still being called into work on all three days. Reynoza took videos showing the company parking lot filled with cars, and employees entering the plant. Caraway said he learned subsequently that the plant was running at about 60-65% capacity, meaning hundreds of workers were still coming in.
"I haven't stopped working yet. I worked Friday, Saturday, Sunday and they want me to come back today," Tim told the BBC on the Monday after Easter weekend. "I'm terrified. Terrified. Like I'm at a loss for words. [But] I got four kids to take care of. That income is what provides a roof over my head."
Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken, who said he was impressed and satisfied by the mitigation efforts taking place at Smithfield, admitted he felt surprised when he learned that the plant was still partially open.
"There could have been more transparency by them on the measures they were taking," he said. "The message to the public didn't match the actual plan."
Smithfield began offering employees a $500 "responsibility bonus" if they finished their shifts through the end of the month, which Islam characterised as a "bribe" to work in unsafe conditions.
Sara Telahun Birhe, an organiser with Children of Smithfield, said her mother had previously decided she would not return, but changed her mind when she heard about the bonus. "We're devastated by the idea that she's going to go in just for $500," Telahun Birhe said.
In its statement, Smithfield wrote that the bonus is part of Smithfield's #ThankAFoodWorker initiative, adding: "Employees who miss work due to Covid-19 exposure or diagnosis will receive the Responsibility Bonus."
In part due to the incomplete shutdown and in part due to the rising number of cases coming out of the plant, on 11 April both South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and TenHaken sent a joint letter to Smithfield calling for a 14-day "pause" in operations. The next day, Smithfield leadership announced that they would comply - on 15 April, meaning there was still one more day of work in a building.
Caraway said workers who went in on the final Tuesday received roughly double their normal wages but there had been no deep clean. "They're still going into a dirty building."
Smithfield did not respond to questions about when its Sioux Falls factory underwent deep cleaning, writing that "our facilities are thoroughly cleaned and sanitized every single day".
Both of Julia's parents were scheduled to work at Smithfield on Tuesday 14 April, its final day in business before the 14-day shutdown. Then, on Saturday, Helen started to cough. The next day, as fluffy white snow flew over Sioux Falls, Julia insisted that her mother get tested. Helen tried to put it off, saying it was nothing.
"My mom just really hates going to the doctor," said Julia, who eventually won the argument and Helen went to a drive-in testing centre at the local hospital. They stuck a swab into the back of each nostril and sent her home.
"If I were to have Covid-19, I clearly would have gotten it at the factory," she said. "This week I have worked on three different floors. I've eaten in two different cafeterias. Just imagine every place I've been in, touched inside that factory. I've been walking through the whole place."
On the Tuesday they were scheduled to return to work, Julia's parents woke up at 4am like they normally do and called into Smithfield to explain that they couldn't come while awaiting Helen's test result.
The call finally came later that afternoon.
Julia spoke to the medical technician on her mother's mobile phone, while her parents sat watching her face for a reaction. When Julia heard the words "positive for Covid-19" she gave them a thumbs up, which she meant to indicate "positive". Helen and Juan misunderstood, and reached out for one another, a gesture of celebration that horrified Julia as she scrambled to explain that, no, Helen does have the virus. Her father retreated into the kitchen, where Julia glimpsed him trying to hold back tears.
On the same day that Helen received her results, the issue of the Smithfield plant had turned fully political. Mayor TenHaken formally requested that Governor Noem issue a shelter-in-place order for Sioux Falls' surrounding counties as well as an isolation centre. She denied both requests. Despite the steep increase in cases, Noem also continued to decline to issue a shelter-in-place order in South Dakota, specifically saying that such an order would not have prevented the Smithfield outbreak.
"That is absolutely false," she said.
Instead, she approved the first state test of hydroxychloroquine, a drug that President Donald Trump has frequently cited as a possible treatment for coronavirus.
It was also the same day that Agustin Rodriguez Martinez, a quiet, deeply religious man originally from El Salvador, died from the illness, alone in hospital. He was 64, the first known death connected to the outbreak at Smithfield Foods. Reynoza, a friend of his for the past decade, said that he rarely complained about his gruelling job sawing the legs off pig carcasses and that he doted on his wife Angelita, whom he knew for only a month before they married. They were together for 24 years.
Angelita says she noticed something was off when her husband started coming home with the lunch she had packed him untouched. He began experiencing symptoms on 1 April, seven days after the first case of coronavirus was reported publicly at the factory. First there were the headaches, then aches and chills. Next came the shortness of breath. According to Angelita, on his final day of work at the factory, he was mopping the floors with a fever.
By that Sunday, he could no longer breathe.
Angelita brought him to hospital, but was not allowed to go with him. She learned through her pastor that he was put on a ventilator almost immediately. He was on it for 10 days before he died on 14 April. "I took him to the hospital and left with nothing," she said. "Now I have nothing."
Alongside her grief, Angelita is also angry at Smithfield Food for not closing the factory earlier. "They care more about their money than our lives," she said in tears. "The owners don't care about our pain. Mothers are crying for their children. Wives are crying for their husbands. There are so many cases of the virus there."
The 73-year-old widow also shared that she has developed a cough.
Two days after her mother's positive coronavirus diagnosis, Julia woke up on the couch with a headache, a cough and a dry throat. For the first time since the pandemic arrived in her life, she had slept through the night but awoke feeling more exhausted than ever.
After calling the Covid hotline and informing them she was the daughter of a Smithfield worker, Julia pulled on her faux fur-trimmed parka, disinfected the steering wheel and gear shift in her mom's car, and set out towards the drive-thru testing site.
She was in relatively good spirits, despite the fact that almost everything she had attempted to prevent when she tipped off the local newspaper nearly a month ago had come to pass. The factory had remained open. Her mother had the virus and her father was exposed. Her city had become the epicentre of the pandemic in the state of South Dakota. People died.
And now, she might be sick, too.
"I just wanna cry," she said, as she steered towards the hospital.
All over the city, Smithfield workers and their families were going through a similar experience. The same day Julia's mother got her diagnosis, Sara Telahun Birhe was relieved to find out that her mother's Covid-19 test was negative. Neela and Ahmed got the call that he was infected, and the couple sealed themselves away from one another in separate bedrooms. They communicate via text. She makes him ginger tea and leaves it for him on the counter. He obsessively disinfects everything he touches.
Tim said he worked his final shift at Smithfield while experiencing symptoms on Tuesday 14 April, and went in for a test the following day. He is still awaiting results. He said 20 people on his crew have tested positive.
At about the same time that Julia set off to get her test, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were entering the Smithfield plant, along with representatives for the state and local health departments. According to the South Dakota governor's office, CDC officials were flown in from Washington DC to "assess" what it would take to safely reopen the plant. Meanwhile, Smithfield announced the closure of two more of its facilities in Missouri and Wisconsin, where "a small number of employees… have tested positive for Covid-19".
Although she arrived just 20 minutes after the testing site opened, Julia was greeted by a line of 15 cars ahead of her. "I hate waiting in line," she muttered, sipping from her water bottle, every now and then emitting a soft cough.
After 30 minutes, she pulled up to what looked like a huge garage and a sign that instructed, "have ID and insurance card ready".
"OK, now I'm anxious," she said. "I don't want to do this."
She and the car ahead of her pulled into the bay, and a healthcare worker in a full protective suit, mask, gloves and face shield plunged a long swab into Julia's right nostril and then her left. She grimaced and shuddered.
"Do you need a Kleenex?" the tester asked. "Yes, please," said Julia.
With instructions to "go home, stay home, don't go anywhere," the bay doors opened and Julia pulled back out into the sunlight. "That was so uncomfortable that I actually am crying," she said, pulling into a parking spot to collect herself.
Julia sat at the steering wheel watching cars go in and out of the parking lot. She lamented the fact that now their household had a new potential infection, the clock on their quarantine had to restart. "I just want to go to TJ Maxx," she said, smiling.
After a few minutes, it was time to turn towards home, her parents, and the house Helen and Juan worked so many hours in the plant in order to afford, where they would all quarantine together for at least the next 14 days.
"Now it's just a waiting game," said Julia. "I guess I can't get too in my head about it. But I will."
She should have her results in five days.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52311877
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Coronavirus warship row: Acting US Navy secretary resigns - BBC News
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2020-04-08
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The acting Navy chief was under fire for ousting a captain who pleaded for help fighting Covid-19.
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US & Canada
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Acting US Navy Secretary Thomas Modly has submitted his resignation
The acting secretary of the US Navy has resigned amid uproar over his handling of a coronavirus outbreak on an aircraft carrier.
Thomas Modly fired the USS Theodore Roosevelt's captain after he pleaded for help in a letter leaked to media.
Mr Modly apologised on Monday after it emerged he had called Captain Brett Crozier's actions "naive" and "stupid".
The secretary's exit comes a day after US President Donald Trump signalled he might get involved in the dispute.
Defence secretary Mark Esper said Mr Modly had "resigned of his own accord".
The Pentagon chief said the crew's health and safety were a priority for the department.
Capt Crozier was fired last week, and footage of his crew sending him off the warship with applause went viral.
Mr Modly flew 8,000 miles on Monday to the Pacific island of Guam, where the USS Theodore Roosevelt is docked, and berated the crew for having cheered the captain as he left the ship.
Mr Modly told the crew what their former captain did "was very, very wrong" and amounted to "a betrayal of trust with me, with his chain of command", according to recordings leaked to US media.
"If he didn't think that information was going to get out into the public... then he was a) too naive or too stupid to be the commanding officer of a ship like this," Mr Modly said. "The alternative is he did it on purpose."
Amid rebukes from members of Congress, Mr Modly issued an apology the same day, saying: "I do not think Captain Brett Crozier is naive nor stupid. I think and always believed him to be the opposite."
Capt Crozier sent a letter to defence officials on 30 March begging for assistance with a coronavirus outbreak on his vessel, which has more than 4,000 crew.
"We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die," he wrote, requesting the quarantine of nearly the entire crew.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump said he had no role in Mr Modly's departure, which he described as a "really unselfish" decision.
At the same time, the president emphasised Capt Crozier "made a mistake" with the letter, saying: "He didn't have to be Ernest Hemingway."
When asked about the controversy on Monday, President Trump told reporters: "You have two good gentlemen and they're arguing. I'm good at resolving arguments."
The president said he "heard very good things" about Capt Crozier and did not want his career to be ruined "for having a bad day", but added that "the letter should not have been sent to many people unclassified".
The US Navy is investigating Capt Crozier's actions.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress have called for an inquiry into the decision to fire the captain.
Former Vice-President and current Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden also spoke out.
He said Capt Crozier's firing was "close to criminal" and he should have been commended for saying "what had to be said".
Over 155 of the aircraft carrier's crew have tested positive for Covid-19.
More than 1,000 sailors who have tested negative for the virus are ashore in Guam, quarantining in hotels.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52209105
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news_world-us-canada-52209105
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PFA says Premier League 30% pay cut plans would harm NHS - BBC Sport
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2020-04-05
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The Professional Footballers' Association warns that proposals for a 30% pay cut in the Premier League would be "detrimental to our NHS".
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The Professional Footballers' Association says proposals for a 30% pay cut for Premier League players would be "detrimental to our NHS".
The PFA also called on the league to increase its own £20m charity pledge.
The government has said it is "concerned" by what it called "infighting".
The league wants players to take a 30% salary cut in order to "protect employment throughout the professional game", amid the coronavirus pandemic.
But the union says that equates to more than £500m in wage reductions over 12 months, and a loss in tax contributions of more than £200m to the UK government.
The union also questioned Health Secretary Matt Hancock's public criticism of footballers' salaries during a news conference on Thursday.
"What effect does this loss of earning to the government mean for the NHS?" the statement read. "Was this considered in the Premier League proposal and did the Health Secretary factor this in when asking players to take a salary cut?"
Oliver Dowden, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, tweeted: "Concerned about the turn football talks have taken... people do not want to see infighting in our national sport at a time of crisis.
"Football must play its part to show that the sport understands the pressures its lower paid staff, communities and fans face."
• None What is each Premier League club doing on pay?
The PFA said all Premier League players "will play their part in making significant financial contributions in these unprecedented times".
England manager Gareth Southgate is reported to have made such a gesture by agreeing a 30% pay cut, although the Football Association declined to confirm when asked by BBC Sport.
Top-flight professionals have been coming under increasing pressure to take a drop in pay, especially with five Premier League clubs - Liverpool, Newcastle, Tottenham, Bournemouth and Norwich - now placing some non-playing staff on furlough leave under the Government's coronavirus job retention scheme.
However, clubs themselves are understood to have financial concerns, with Burnley saying on Saturday they faced a shortfall of £50m if the Premier League season was not completed.
Brighton chief executive Paul Barber, meanwhile, said the Premier League was not ignoring the plight of the general population during the coronavirus pandemic.
The PFA statement came hours after a conference call with the Premier League and the League Managers' Association (LMA), the managers' union, to discuss the wage cut plans.
Saturday's call, which featured a Premier League presentation of the wage cut plans to around 65 participants, was concluded in less than an hour with no agreement reached.
The Premier League is not mandated to make a decision on wage cuts, as it has to be agreed by the players and coaches. Clubs and players are now set to discuss the plan, with talks set to go into next week.
As part of the proposals, the Premier League would advance £125m to the English Football League (EFL) and National League, and give £20m towards the NHS.
The PFA says it is happy to continue talks with the Premier League, although it added: "£20m is welcome, but we believe it could be far bigger.
"The EFL money is an advance. Importantly, it will aid cashflow in the immediate, but football needs to find a way to increase funding to the EFL and non-league clubs in the long-term.
"Many clubs require an increase in funding just to survive. We believe in our football pyramid and again stress the need for solidarity between all clubs.
"Going forward, we are working together to find a solution which will be continually reviewed in order to assess the circumstance of the Covid-19 crisis.
"The players are mindful that as PAYE employees, the combined tax on their salaries is a significant contribution to funding essential public services - which are especially critical at this time."
During Saturday's conference call, the Premier League warned that it faces a £762m financial penalty if the season does not resume, and broadcasters demanded refunds on games they could not show.
It added that hundreds of millions of pounds could be lost in sponsorship and matchday revenue because the season has been suspended, and that the campaign will almost certainly be played behind closed doors if it resumes.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, England defender Danny Rose - on loan at Newcastle from Tottenham - said that Premier League players were keen to give up a portion of their wages to help good causes, but felt their "backs are against the wall" regarding the pressure they had faced to accept cuts.
Captains of Premier League clubs, led by Liverpool's Jordan Henderson, have been in talks over a plan to make charitable donations.
"We sort of feel that our backs are against the wall. Conversations were being had before people outside of football were commenting," Rose told the Friday Football Social.
"I've been on the phone to Jordan Henderson and he's working so hard to come up with something.
"It was just not needed for people who are not involved in football to tell footballers what they should do with their money. I found that so bizarre."
The Premier League declined to comment on the PFA statement.
Rarely has the relationship between the Premier League's stars and their employers been so fragile. In an unprecedented crisis, the country's top footballers have found their voice like never before, exacerbating an unseemly row over money, and fracturing the unity of the sport in a way not seen since the threatened players' strike of 2001.
Saturday's remarkable statement represents an attempt by the players and the PFA to go on the offensive against not only their own clubs, but also their critics, including even the government.
They argue that the clubs' proposed 30% cut in wages would be counter-productive and detrimental to the NHS because of the loss in tax revenue it would result in. Privately, some Government officials accept the validity of this argument, but are dismayed that the sport is embroiled in such a squabble when Premier League players earn on average £3.5m a year.
The Premier League had hoped Saturday's conference call would convince the players of the need to accept the cut in pay that many politicians and members of the public have been calling for.
It seems that hope has proved naive however, and with clear tensions between the two sides, negotiations are now set to extend into next week.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52168692
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Coronavirus: The US resistance to a continued lockdown - BBC News
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2020-04-27
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The protesters have made global headlines but it's ideology not economics driving them.
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US & Canada
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In these times, the sight of a public gathering of hundreds of people mostly without face masks is alarming.
But that is what happened at a demonstration against the shutdown measures in Washington State.
"We believe that the state governor has gone beyond his constitutional authority in shutting down businesses and ordering people to stay at home," organiser Tyler Miller says from the grounds of the state capitol.
In mid-March, Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced an emergency proclamation mirroring many issued around the world; closing restaurants and bars and banning large gatherings.
But protesters say that was unconstitutional.
"The state constitution says that the right of the people to peaceably assemble shall never be abridged. We believe that the (emergency coronavirus) proclamations that the governor here ordered violate that," Mr Miller says.
Mr Miller said he was not protesting against the recommendations from the public health bodies and respected the need to 'flatten the curve'.
"I even self-quarantined for 14 days back at the very beginning of this myself, when I had an illness that mirrored some of the symptoms," he says.
"The fact I am protesting does not mean I think it is a good idea to have gatherings, I just believe that the government has no authority to prohibit them."
Throughout the crisis, Mr Miller has also been able to continue his work as an engineering technician with the US Navy.
He says the thing that has angered him is what he feels is an un-American overreach of power by the Democratic governor.
The restrictions differ from state to state, and about 20 states have had protests against the measures. These demonstrations vary in size from a few dozen people to thousands.
They come as the US finds itself still very much in the grip of this crisis.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. 'We want our lives back now,' say protesters
There has not yet been a sustained drop in the numbers of US deaths linked to Covid-19 and yet the clamour to lift restrictions is coming not just from those taking to the streets but from politicians too.
"The hysteria that surrounded the coronavirus from the beginning was disproportionate," says Rick Becker, of North Dakota.
"There was an overreaction by state governments with regard to mandatory shut downs, shelter in place, and so forth," he says.
When it is put to the state representative that tens of thousands of people have died across the country and that it could have been many more if restrictions were not in place, he dismisses the notion.
"That is something that you're going to be able to say no matter what; that there may have been more deaths," says Mr Becker, who is also a qualified doctor.
"You're taking the 'if it saves just one life' argument, and I would say that if I would drive 20mph instead of 50mph, it's possible that I might not kill somebody, and you can look at all aspects of our lives that way. But our whole way of life in this country would collapse and we can't live life that way."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
In neighbouring South Dakota, one of those who died with the coronavirus was Bob Glanzer, a state representative.
"He was a very caring, giving, listening type of individual and certainly faith was a big part of his life. He's going to be sorely missed in the legislature," says party colleague Jean Hunhoff.
Representative Hunhoff describes how she and other legislative members lined the route of Mr Glanzer's funeral procession waving American and South Dakota flags.
There were social distancing measures in place for the commemorations, even though South Dakota is one of a handful of states where a state-wide stay at home order has never been imposed.
"I support the decisions of our governor. She laid out guidelines and then really left the decisions up to local communities," says Jean Hunhoff, who also has a public health background.
"I am a registered nurse and I believe it is data that should drive decision making and I think we have done that here. It is easy to stand on the outside and post judgment."
There has been criticism of states like South Dakota that have refused to issue state-wide shut down directives in spite of coronavirus outbreaks there.
Polls show the majority of Americans are still in favour of measures imposed to try to curb the spread of the virus. And some are vehemently opposed to the protests.
Mary Turner, a nurse leader in an intensive care unit in Minnesota, describes them as a "kick in the teeth" because of the risks she and her colleagues are taking.
"These protests here are so discouraging. With no one doing social distancing or wearing masks, and they all say they are outraged. I don't know if this is a problem anywhere else in the world."
But the placards at the demonstrations decrying government interference suggest those involved feel there are bigger issues at stake than public health.
"Scepticism of the government is a deep strain in America. It waxes and wanes - though we're in a period where it's been waxing for quite a while," says Theda Skocpol, author and professor of government and sociology at Harvard University.
With regard to the anti-shutdown protests, Professor Skocpol says it is political beliefs and not economics that have definitely been the driving force.
She cautions against the notion that they are an organic reaction to the crisis, feeling instead that there is a level of national organisation.
"You don't see the US Chamber of Commerce in the vanguard here. These are ideological forces at play, with some professionally run conservative advocacy groups behind the protests," Professor Skocpol says.
"Their cause is to make sure Americans don't become too trusting of government. They don't worry whether the motives of the people on the ground are exactly the same as theirs. They're probably not. I think most of the people at the protests are just passionate Donald Trump supporters."
While some at the protests say they are there because they are losing money during the shutdown, Trump 2020 flags, hats and shirts have been very evident, particularly at the large demonstrations in states run by Democratic governors. They have taken on the look of small Trump rallies.
The politicians most vocally calling for the shutdown to be lifted now, like Dr Rick Becker of North Dakota, are mainly Republicans. All of the governors who did not impose stay at home orders, like the governor of South Dakota, also belong to the president's party.
While the GOP does have its libertarian streak, Professor Skocpol feels that there is more to it than that, and that many of the people and politicians protesting are taking their cues from the president.
Protesters outside the Minnesota governor's mansion show their opposition to the lockdowns
"Donald Trump is really not all that secretive about what he's thinking, he sort of says it. I think that there's a lot of evidence that he's worried that this terrible pandemic and his handling of the early stages, combined with the economic impact, could sink his presidency," she says.
"You can't expect him, his party and those who support him to sit back and take that lightly, so what is plan B or C? It is to go from blaming Obama, the Chinese, the WHO, to now blaming those who are leaving restrictions in place."
Indeed, over recent weeks, Donald Trump has openly supported the protesters.
But mixed messages from the White House have been a feature of this crisis. After signalling that he wanted some Democratic-run states "liberated" and opened up, the president then said he was "unhappy" when the Republican governor of Georgia made the decision to reopen the economy.
With many hundreds still dying of the virus here each day, state governors are in the tough position of trying to make the right decisions to keep people safe.
But it is the face of a deadly virus on the one hand and massive economic and political pressure on the other.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52417610
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news_world-us-canada-52417610
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UK drivers win first round in VW 'dieselgate' case - BBC News
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2020-04-06
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The High Court rules that the German firm installed 'defeat devices' in vehicles to cheat emissions tests.
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Business
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Thousands of UK motorists have won the first stage of a High Court action against Volkswagen over the installation of emissions cheating devices in its diesel vehicles.
It follows a preliminary hearing in December, when the court was asked whether software installed in the cars was a "defeat device" under EU rules.
In a judgement on Monday, Mr Justice Waksman ruled that it was.
Volkswagen said it was "disappointed" and said it may appeal.
A spokesperson for the German carmaker said: "To be clear, today's decision does not determine liability or any issues of causation or loss for any of the causes of action claimed. These remain to be determined by the court as the case continues."
The case being heard at the High Court is the latest in a global storm of litigation facing VW.
So far, the group has paid out €30bn (£26bn) worldwide.
About 90,000 motorists in England and Wales have brought action against VW as well as Audi, Seat and Skoda, which are also owned by Volkswagen Group.
They are seeking compensation in a case which could be the largest consumer action in English legal history.
The use of defeat devices meant that Volkswagen's cars were certified as conforming to EU pollution standards. But, in reality, the vehicles were emitting up to 40 times the legally permitted amount of nitrogen dioxide.
Volkswagen has been dogged by the diesel vehicle emissions testing scandal since 2015
The German carmaker admitted that 11 million vehicles worldwide, including almost 1.2 million in the UK, were affected.
Since then, senior bosses including chief executive Martin Winterkorn have stepped down, while some have been charged with criminal offences in Germany and the US.
The High Court ruling applies not only to VW cars, but also to those manufactured by Audi, Seat and Skoda.
Mr Justice Waksman described some of Volkswagen’s arguments that the vehicles did not contain defeat devices as “completely irrelevant”, “hopeless” and “highly flawed”.
Depending on who you speak to, this is either a ruling that confirms wrongdoing by Volkswagen and puts huge pressure on the company to reach a settlement - or one that changes absolutely nothing.
The reality is that the judge has settled a couple of specific points, and in doing so has been scathing about the arguments the car giant put forward.
But the litigation still has a very long way to go.
The background, of course, is a worldwide scandal that has already cost VW tens of billions of pounds in fines and compensation payments, left blood on the boardroom floor, tarnished its reputation and led to a senior executive being jailed in the US.
But here in the UK, Volkswagen has consistently denied using prohibited defeat devices - and insists its customers have not suffered any losses, so there is no need for any compensation.
And despite Monday's ruling, the signs are it plans to stick to its guns.
Gareth Pope, who leads the legal team at Slater and Gordon, which represents 70,000 claimants, said: “This damning judgment confirms what our clients have known for a long time, but which VW has refused to accept: namely that VW fitted defeat devices into millions of vehicles in the UK in order to cheat emissions tests.
He added: “VW’s utter failure to convince the court of the merits of its case means that now is surely time for it to settle these claims and put this shameful episode behind it.”
A spokesperson for VW said: "Volkswagen remains confident in our case that we are not liable to the claimants as alleged and the claimants did not suffer any loss. We will continue to defend our position robustly.
"Nothing in this decision today changes this."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52184229
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news_business-52184229
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Owen Harding: The teen who disappeared during lockdown - BBC News
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2020-04-24
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The story of the 16-year-old who went missing, and the community who tried to find him.
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UK
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As Britain scrambled to adjust to the first week of a life of lockdown in late March, Owen Harding and his mum Stella were arguing.
The 16-year-old was frustrated that his girlfriend Meg Wells Rhodes was 280 miles away in York, where she lives. It had been an emotional few days. Meg had only just left after a short visit to Owen's home in Saltdean, East Sussex. Restrictions on travel had been imposed and it was unlikely the couple would be able to get together again in the near future.
The teenagers didn't see each other regularly because of the distance, but Owen found the new uncertainty unsettling.
"I know that I myself was very anxious," says his mum Stella. "And I know that a lot of my friends were very anxious as well, and feeling a lot of grief about not being able to spend time with each other."
Owen lives with his mum and five-year-old sister in the art deco-era village of Saltdean set on top of the cliffs on the eastern edge of Brighton.
Stella describes herself as "typical Brighton" - a swimming and diving teacher who travelled the world with a backpack and met Owen's father on an Indian beach. He died at home in Geneva two years ago after a sudden illness.
On a video call from the teenager's bedroom, Stella describes her son as "an articulate and wise and mature, emotionally intelligent young man". Going missing was out of character.
Owen's GCSE artwork lines the bedroom walls, along with photos of friends. There are football trophies from his three-year career with Woodingdean Wanderers.
Owen and Meg's families became friends through Britain's burgeoning community of parents who choose to home school their children. Meg is taught at home, and Owen had previously attended Brighton Waldorf School, one of the Steiner School network of providers of alternative education, before beginning art and film studies A-levels at a sixth form college.
The pair had known each other since they were 11 but had only become a couple two years ago.
Owen wanted to spend the lockdown with Meg, and had joked with her and his friends that he might make the journey north. But his mum was adamant that this was not going to happen.
"It was like this ongoing discussion all week. That was really, really tricky between us," she says.
On Thursday 26 March, the argument flared again, and as the evening sun illuminated the South Downs, Owen left the house without saying a word to his mother. CCTV pictures show the teenager walking south, down Bannings Vale in Saltdean, towards the cliff top at 18:13.
The distance to the cliffs is less than half a mile. The eastern edge of Saltdean sits next to Telscombe Tye, a scrubby expanse of grass popular with walkers that marks the meeting of Brighton's eastern suburbs and the South Downs. There are only a few hundred yards of grass beyond the coast road before the Tye stops at the Sussex chalk.
He made a phone call to Meg after he left the house. "He said that he'd just had a big argument with his mum," she says. "And I was upset as well because I had just had an argument with my mum about the same thing. And then we just sort of cheered up and and he said he was just going to watch the sunset."
It was the last time anyone has reported having spoken to Owen.
Cell site records show that Owen's phone was connected to the mast at the top of Longridge Avenue, which runs from the downland behind Saltdean to the coast road and the cliff top. At 18:23 it was disconnected.
Meg made a further call to her boyfriend at 18:32, but it went straight to voicemail. Unaware of this, Stella was not concerned. "We live by the sea, we live next to the Downs. We go walking a lot. He just went out, off he went and I just thought: 'Well, good, go and get your allocated daily exercise.
"'Go and stomp it off, go and get it off your chest and then you'll come back.'" But by late evening she had become worried. She contacted friends in Saltdean and Meg's family in York. Around 23:00 she contacted the police.
Meg and her parents rushed back to the south coast the following day and the families began searching on the Downs behind Saltdean, and along the coast as far as Newhaven. They called in at abandoned farmhouses, shouting Owen's name.
A huge police operation was quickly organised. About 80 officers visited homes and businesses near the Hardings' bungalow. But the lockdown made the operation more difficult. Police were occasionally frustrated by people not answering doors, and shops that might have been able to provide CCTV pictures had closed because of the lockdown.
But police did give residents who owned security cameras police memory sticks. They were left in packages outside houses and later collected by officers.
Before long, a huge support campaign had sprung up - one that continued to honour social distancing rules.
"Saltdean is an amazing community," says Stella. "We don't all know each other, of course, but it's an amazing community.
"So as soon as the people in Saltdean heard that there was a teenager missing, everybody was talking about it. People started putting up posters on [the] Friday. And everybody was on board."
A social media operation found volunteers to create a website and Facebook pages. Celebrities including BBC Radio 2 breakfast presenter Zoe Ball and YouTuber PewDiePie, who both live in Brighton and Hove, posted appeals online.
Simon Watson, a retired Metropolitan police sergeant trained in search techniques, who lives on the Hardings' road, offered to organise a methodical search. Teams of between 10 and 20 people, working in household groups where possible, combed the grassy cliff-top area at Telscombe Tye, and the scrubby countryside behind the houses in Saltdean.
Watson had drawn up full risk assessments and briefed the volunteers before each search - with a strict reminder to maintain a social distance. Acknowledging the difficulties of the case because of the current situation, he said the community had remained resolute.
"I know from experience you can have hunches. But it's quite tricky, this one, because of the real lack of information."
Stella set up a small camp in the front garden of her 1930s bungalow, including a small statue of Buddha. She says this is a space for her to rest and reflect.
Neighbours talk to her from the path, offering words of comfort and support. And friends gave her a wood-burning oven so she could keep warm on the nights she spent sleeping outside waiting for her son.
"Fire and sleeping on the ground, and deep breathing and lots of walking and being outside. They are all things that sort of nourish me and comfort me, so that's why I'm doing that.
"And I also had this thing in my head, 'If I light a fire and I just keep it going, it's like a kind of beacon and Owen will come home.'"
But she misses human contact. "Everybody just wants to hug me. That's what they want to do. And I want that. So that that is really, really hard right now."
If you or someone you know needs support for issues about emotional distress, these organisations may be able to help.
Det Insp Mark Rosser of Sussex police has conceded that the searches have found no evidence of Owen alive. "Pretty much all that we can do has been done," he says.
His last hope is that combing through CCTV from buses travelling on the coast road might show the teenager at the time he disappeared.
When Owen was last seen, the tide below the cliffs at Saltdean was low at sunset, and the wind a strong north-easterly.
Police enlisted an oceanographer, Dr Simon Boxall of the University of Southampton, who concluded that the conditions at the time would have carried a body out to sea rather than carrying it east or west along the seafront. DI Rosser's officers have been searching the coast as far east as Dungeness in Kent, and have alerted colleagues in mainland Europe.
Stella says she doesn't know whether her son is alive or dead, but she and Owen's girlfriend Meg were prepared for the possibility there had been a tragedy on the cliffs.
"I think that we've all been prepared for that since the moment he went missing," she says.
"He has a five-year-old sister who adores him, and is aware of his absence. She keeps asking when is Owen coming back, and my heart is aching at the possible thought of having to tell her that he is not ever coming back.
"What it feels like is that I'm kind of teetering on the edge of the precipice above a massive bottomless canyon of grief.
"And I don't know if I can actually allow myself to jump into it, you know, like, I want to."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52386283
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news_uk-52386283
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Frank Skinner: Will Gompertz reviews the comedian's poetry podcast on Absolute Radio ★★★★☆ - BBC News
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2020-04-24
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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It's a simple idea presented by someone who brings insight to an art form that is enjoying a resurgence.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Odd combinations have long been a staple of the entertainment industry. For those old enough to have seen it (still available on YouTube), who can forget Prince Edward's cringe-inducing toe-dip into television production with the culture-clash that was It's A Royal knockout? Not the Queen, that's for sure, who went on to show her youngest son how to play the incongruous card with her winning James Bond spoof at the London Olympics.
The Royal Family's infamous day out at Alton Towers was in 1987, 30 years after the comedian Frank Skinner was born, a fact I learnt from listening to his new podcast, which is another example of the light-entertainment-meets-highfalutin genre.
Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast is knowingly tapping into the surprising-juxtaposition game, following the likes of Lenny Henry who has successfully evolved from kids' show clown to serious Shakespearian actor.
"Yes, yes, poetry" Skinner says in his introduction, acknowledging it might seem an unlikely subject for a man still shaking off a '90s laddish image.
The comedian and actor, Frank Skinner says he developed his love of poetry while studying English at Birmingham Polytechnic
Actually, it's not in the least bit strange that he should be drawn to poetry or Lenny Henry to Shakespeare.
There are two common attributes shared by the majority of successful comedians: the first being an intellectual curiosity, and the second, an understanding and appreciation of language and its use.
It is a mark of how the Arts have allowed themselves to become segregated - broadly along class lines - between what is seen as cheap entertainment and classy culture.
It is a perception, not a reality.
Rock, pop, and rap are as worthy an art form as classical music, and stand-up comedy could justifiably be considered performance art. The division between the different artistic forms of human expression is a nonsense.
Frank Skinner shouldn't have to defend his love of poetry, nor the fact that he is approaching it as a fan and not as an academic.
Poetry and comedy are natural bedfellows - a fact that Skinner demonstrates in this one-man-no-guests podcast peppered with amusing asides and left-of-field references - from the absurdist dramatist Eugène Ionesco to a whippet dog called Frank Skinner.
First up on the first episode of the first series (I hope there are plenty more) is the 20th Century British poet and artist Stevie Smith (1902 - 1971) and her 1957 classic Not Waving but Drowning, a three-verse meditation on someone with a jolly public persona hiding a desperate soul:
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Skinner's approach is to personalise the poems he discusses, arguing, not unreasonably, that his response is a coming together of his viewpoint with that of the poet.
It's a familiar argument made particularly well in an essay called the Creative Act, written by Marcel Duchamp in the same year as Smith produced Not Waving but Drowning.
Stevie Smith's Not Waving but Drowning was first published in 1957, and was voted Britain's fourth favourite poem in a poll in 1995
It is a very good poem, the title of which has become part of our everyday lexicon. I remember sitting on the beach at Bude in Cornwall, keeping half an eye on my kids bodyboarding while staring out at sea and contemplating what flavour of ice-cream I fancied. I saw a woman waving from her surf board and mentioned the friendly gesture to my wife, who, paraphrasing Smith, said "she's not waving, she's drowning".
And so she was. Two guys in red swimming trunks, neither of whom looked remotely like David Hasselhoff, surfed out and rescued her. It was very dramatic, but not, Skinner speculates, the real subject of Smith's poem.
It is not literally about drowning at sea but a distant character who stands outside the swim of daily life: a man who - to all appearances - is waving enthusiastically when in reality he is drowning in obscurity ("I was much further out than you thought" the dead man reports). This Skinner can relate to, and tells us the thing he most enjoyed about being famous, was neither the money nor the trappings, but being noticed, being "heard":
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
It is not easy to relay the meaning and rhythm of poem while retaining a voice that doesn't sound like a cliche of a worthy 1970s round-table poetry group.
Skinner nails the task, bringing the poet's words to life before veering off on an anecdote or explaining that poetry is broken up into lumps known as verses (fancy language is banished, which is why, perhaps, he chose Smith who used simple language to communicate ideas and feelings of great complexity).
The show is not perfect, but then it is only one episode old.
Having got our attention and established his chatty approach, there's scope for Skinner to go a little deeper into the text.
Not Waving but Drowning is a timely poem to study, not just because it speaks to our current anxieties, but also that in 12 short lines Smith introduces three separate voices who tell us the ambiguous story in words chosen specifically for their weaselly slipperiness.
There is also room for a bit more biographical detail. Obviously, this is Skinner's informal take on poetry, with the way it touches him a large part of the show's structure, but it could be rebalanced to allow the poet to share some the limelight.
We learn very little about Smith, and almost nothing about William Carlos Williams (1883 - 1963), the American modernist poet who wrote Skinner's second choice of the week, Danse Russe (1916).
The American poet, William Carlos Williams once wrote "The purpose of an artist, whatever it is, is to take the life, whatever he sees, and to raise it up to an elevated position where it has dignity"
It is another terrific selection.
A little longer than Smith's, but not by much. It shares the subject of loneliness, but from the other side of the desolate coin. This time our male protagonist is watching the sun rise as his wife and children sleep. He is enjoying a moment of sensual euphoria, suppressed from full expression perhaps, to keep the genie of his genius in the bottle:
If I admire my arms, my face,
the happy genius of my household?
It would have helped to have some biographical detail; to have known that Williams was a paediatrician by day and a poet by night (the genius of the household?): that he was searching for a new American idiom that established a language independent from European influences, and that the poem was indebted to the French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé's L'après-midi d'un faune (Williams spent time living in France).
Claude Debussy then wrote a piece of music in response to Mallarmé, which was subsequently turned into a dance for the Ballets Russes (hence the title of Williams's poem) by Vaslav Nijinsky, which Williams saw performed in New York having known it'd caused a furore in Paris years earlier when Nijinsky started writhing in ecstasy, alone on the stage, to howls of derision and gasps of delight.
The influence of Stéphane Mallarmé's poem L'après-midi d'un faune can be seen in William Carlos Williams' Danse Russe
Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed and danced in L'Aprés-midi d'un faune for the Ballets Russes in 1912, which William Carlos Williams saw years later
Skinner only touches on this back story and isn't entirely accurate on all his factual details (I don't think Williams lived in New York, he was a man of Rutherford, New Jersey). To an extent that's forgivable, our host says he doesn't go much for background info because he wants to have a relationship with the work of art not the person who made it or what might have influenced it. He then humbly adds, "that might be an error on my part".
I suspect it is. The more you repeat read a poem, which Skinner rightly encourages us to do, the more you want to comprehend, and that usually means going beyond the page to the person holding the pen. That's the way into the rest of the writer's work, and the discovering of little jewels like Williams's This is Just to Say, which for some reason reminds me of a Cezanne still life:
First-episode teething troubles are to be expected and should not detract from a very welcome new addition to the cultural landscape: a simple idea without any fancy production presented by someone who brings insight and enthusiasm to an art form that is enjoying a resurgence in popularity.
Roll on Monday for the second instalment.
I think it's going to get better and better.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52403782
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news_entertainment-arts-52403782
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Owen Harding: The teen who disappeared during lockdown - BBC News
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2020-04-24
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The story of the 16-year-old who went missing, and the community who tried to find him.
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UK
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As Britain scrambled to adjust to the first week of a life of lockdown in late March, Owen Harding and his mum Stella were arguing.
The 16-year-old was frustrated that his girlfriend Meg Wells Rhodes was 280 miles away in York, where she lives. It had been an emotional few days. Meg had only just left after a short visit to Owen's home in Saltdean, East Sussex. Restrictions on travel had been imposed and it was unlikely the couple would be able to get together again in the near future.
The teenagers didn't see each other regularly because of the distance, but Owen found the new uncertainty unsettling.
"I know that I myself was very anxious," says his mum Stella. "And I know that a lot of my friends were very anxious as well, and feeling a lot of grief about not being able to spend time with each other."
Owen lives with his mum and five-year-old sister in the art deco-era village of Saltdean set on top of the cliffs on the eastern edge of Brighton.
Stella describes herself as "typical Brighton" - a swimming and diving teacher who travelled the world with a backpack and met Owen's father on an Indian beach. He died at home in Geneva two years ago after a sudden illness.
On a video call from the teenager's bedroom, Stella describes her son as "an articulate and wise and mature, emotionally intelligent young man". Going missing was out of character.
Owen's GCSE artwork lines the bedroom walls, along with photos of friends. There are football trophies from his three-year career with Woodingdean Wanderers.
Owen and Meg's families became friends through Britain's burgeoning community of parents who choose to home school their children. Meg is taught at home, and Owen had previously attended Brighton Waldorf School, one of the Steiner School network of providers of alternative education, before beginning art and film studies A-levels at a sixth form college.
The pair had known each other since they were 11 but had only become a couple two years ago.
Owen wanted to spend the lockdown with Meg, and had joked with her and his friends that he might make the journey north. But his mum was adamant that this was not going to happen.
"It was like this ongoing discussion all week. That was really, really tricky between us," she says.
On Thursday 26 March, the argument flared again, and as the evening sun illuminated the South Downs, Owen left the house without saying a word to his mother. CCTV pictures show the teenager walking south, down Bannings Vale in Saltdean, towards the cliff top at 18:13.
The distance to the cliffs is less than half a mile. The eastern edge of Saltdean sits next to Telscombe Tye, a scrubby expanse of grass popular with walkers that marks the meeting of Brighton's eastern suburbs and the South Downs. There are only a few hundred yards of grass beyond the coast road before the Tye stops at the Sussex chalk.
He made a phone call to Meg after he left the house. "He said that he'd just had a big argument with his mum," she says. "And I was upset as well because I had just had an argument with my mum about the same thing. And then we just sort of cheered up and and he said he was just going to watch the sunset."
It was the last time anyone has reported having spoken to Owen.
Cell site records show that Owen's phone was connected to the mast at the top of Longridge Avenue, which runs from the downland behind Saltdean to the coast road and the cliff top. At 18:23 it was disconnected.
Meg made a further call to her boyfriend at 18:32, but it went straight to voicemail. Unaware of this, Stella was not concerned. "We live by the sea, we live next to the Downs. We go walking a lot. He just went out, off he went and I just thought: 'Well, good, go and get your allocated daily exercise.
"'Go and stomp it off, go and get it off your chest and then you'll come back.'" But by late evening she had become worried. She contacted friends in Saltdean and Meg's family in York. Around 23:00 she contacted the police.
Meg and her parents rushed back to the south coast the following day and the families began searching on the Downs behind Saltdean, and along the coast as far as Newhaven. They called in at abandoned farmhouses, shouting Owen's name.
A huge police operation was quickly organised. About 80 officers visited homes and businesses near the Hardings' bungalow. But the lockdown made the operation more difficult. Police were occasionally frustrated by people not answering doors, and shops that might have been able to provide CCTV pictures had closed because of the lockdown.
But police did give residents who owned security cameras police memory sticks. They were left in packages outside houses and later collected by officers.
Before long, a huge support campaign had sprung up - one that continued to honour social distancing rules.
"Saltdean is an amazing community," says Stella. "We don't all know each other, of course, but it's an amazing community.
"So as soon as the people in Saltdean heard that there was a teenager missing, everybody was talking about it. People started putting up posters on [the] Friday. And everybody was on board."
A social media operation found volunteers to create a website and Facebook pages. Celebrities including BBC Radio 2 breakfast presenter Zoe Ball and YouTuber PewDiePie, who both live in Brighton and Hove, posted appeals online.
Simon Watson, a retired Metropolitan police sergeant trained in search techniques, who lives on the Hardings' road, offered to organise a methodical search. Teams of between 10 and 20 people, working in household groups where possible, combed the grassy cliff-top area at Telscombe Tye, and the scrubby countryside behind the houses in Saltdean.
Watson had drawn up full risk assessments and briefed the volunteers before each search - with a strict reminder to maintain a social distance. Acknowledging the difficulties of the case because of the current situation, he said the community had remained resolute.
"I know from experience you can have hunches. But it's quite tricky, this one, because of the real lack of information."
Stella set up a small camp in the front garden of her 1930s bungalow, including a small statue of Buddha. She says this is a space for her to rest and reflect.
Neighbours talk to her from the path, offering words of comfort and support. And friends gave her a wood-burning oven so she could keep warm on the nights she spent sleeping outside waiting for her son.
"Fire and sleeping on the ground, and deep breathing and lots of walking and being outside. They are all things that sort of nourish me and comfort me, so that's why I'm doing that.
"And I also had this thing in my head, 'If I light a fire and I just keep it going, it's like a kind of beacon and Owen will come home.'"
But she misses human contact. "Everybody just wants to hug me. That's what they want to do. And I want that. So that that is really, really hard right now."
If you or someone you know needs support for issues about emotional distress, these organisations may be able to help.
Det Insp Mark Rosser of Sussex police has conceded that the searches have found no evidence of Owen alive. "Pretty much all that we can do has been done," he says.
His last hope is that combing through CCTV from buses travelling on the coast road might show the teenager at the time he disappeared.
When Owen was last seen, the tide below the cliffs at Saltdean was low at sunset, and the wind a strong north-easterly.
Police enlisted an oceanographer, Dr Simon Boxall of the University of Southampton, who concluded that the conditions at the time would have carried a body out to sea rather than carrying it east or west along the seafront. DI Rosser's officers have been searching the coast as far east as Dungeness in Kent, and have alerted colleagues in mainland Europe.
Stella says she doesn't know whether her son is alive or dead, but she and Owen's girlfriend Meg were prepared for the possibility there had been a tragedy on the cliffs.
"I think that we've all been prepared for that since the moment he went missing," she says.
"He has a five-year-old sister who adores him, and is aware of his absence. She keeps asking when is Owen coming back, and my heart is aching at the possible thought of having to tell her that he is not ever coming back.
"What it feels like is that I'm kind of teetering on the edge of the precipice above a massive bottomless canyon of grief.
"And I don't know if I can actually allow myself to jump into it, you know, like, I want to."
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52386283
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news_uk-52386283
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Coronavirus: UK confirms plan for its own contact tracing app - BBC News
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2020-04-12
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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App will send yellow and red alerts to those who have come into contact with a suspected carrier.
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Technology
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The UK has confirmed plans for an app that will warn users if they have recently been in close proximity to someone suspected to be infected with the coronavirus.
The health secretary Matt Hancock announced the move at the government's daily pandemic press briefing.
He said the NHS was "working closely with the world's leading tech companies" on the initiative.
But one expert who has advised the effort has raised doubts about it.
The BBC has learned that NHSX - the health service's digital innovation unit - will test a pre-release version of the software with families at a secure location in the North of England next week.
At present, the idea is that people who have self-diagnosed as having coronavirus will be able to declare their status in the app.
The software will then send the equivalent of a yellow alert to any other users who they have recently been close to for an extended period of time.
If a medical test confirms that the original user is indeed infected, then a stronger warning - effectively a red alert - will be sent instead, signalling that the other users should go into quarantine.
To report testing positive, the user would have to enter a verification code, which they would have received alongside their Covid-19 status.
Mr Hancock signalled that using the app would be voluntary, in the brief comments he made about it.
"If you become unwell with the symptoms of coronavirus, you can securely tell this new NHS app," he explained.
"And the app will then send an alert anonymously to other app users that you've been in significant contact with over the past few days, even before you had symptoms, so that they know and can act accordingly.
"All data will be handled according to the highest ethical and security standards, and would only be used for NHS care and research.
"And we won't hold it any longer than is needed."
His reference to a tie-up with tech companies was a nod to Apple and Google, which announced on Friday that they were working on a software building block, known as an API, to make it easier for others to build contact tracing apps.
NHSX was not aware of this project beforehand, but now plans to integrate the technology into its own product.
Its system will keep track of handsets that came close to each other by recording when they detected each others' Bluetooth signals.
One benefit of using Apple and Google's API is that the NHS app will not have to employ workarounds to keep monitoring the signals even when the app is not active.
Part of the reason Apple and Google say they developed their own idea was to ensure that iOS and Android users' privacy would not be compromised.
Their method is designed so that citizens can trigger and receive alerts without the authorities being notified of who was involved.
But one cyber-security expert who has been consulted about the app listed a series of worries about the project in a blog.
"I recognise the overwhelming force of the public-health arguments for a centralised system, but I also have 25 years' experience of the NHS being incompetent at developing systems and repeatedly breaking their privacy promises when they do manage to collect some data of value to somebody else," added the professor of security engineering.
"I'm really uneasy about collecting lots of lightly-anonymised data in a system that becomes integrated into a whole-of-government response to the pandemic. We might never get rid of it."
The Behavioural Insights Team - a private company also known as the Nudge Unit - is advising the government on how to encourage as many people to download and use the app as possible.
NHSX believes more than half the population going outside needs to be using it for automated contact tracing to be effective.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52263244
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news_technology-52263244
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Coronavirus lockdown: Police guidelines give 'reasonable excuses' to go out - BBC News
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2020-04-16
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Long stays on benches should not be allowed but shopping for luxuries is okay, policing advice says.
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England
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Police have been told to stop people "home-working" in parks or sitting on a public bench for long periods of time.
Guidance to officers in England says neither activity is likely to be a "reasonable excuse" for someone to leave their home in the lockdown.
But the advice from police leaders and trainers says that people can move to a friend's address for a cooling-off period "following arguments at home".
It says such moves must be "genuine" and "measured in days, not hours".
The three-page document, entitled "what constitutes a reasonable excuse to leave the place where you live", is designed to help police enforce the emergency restrictions that came into effect three weeks ago and are set to be extended.
It has been produced by the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing, and appears to be drawn from guidelines issued by the Crown Prosecution Service.
But it has not been made public before - and suggests that some police have been applying the rules in the wrong way.
The regulations say householders can go outside if there's a "reasonable excuse", such as shopping for essential items, providing medical help and for exercise.
The guidance spells out what is "likely to be reasonable" for each of the key categories.
It says buying food for several days, including "luxury items and alcohol", is likely to be reasonable.
"There is no need for all of a person's shopping to be basic food supplies; the purchase of snacks and luxuries is still permitted," it says.
Last week, Northamptonshire Police Chief Constable Nick Adderley backtracked after threatening that his officers would start to look in people's shopping trolleys and baskets if they continued to flout the rules.
It also says people are not allowed to buy paint and brushes "simply to redecorate a kitchen" but can purchase tools and supplies to repair a fence "damaged in recent bad weather".
On exercise, the guidance lists driving to the countryside for a walk as "reasonable" if "far more time" is spent walking than driving.
But it adds that driving for a "prolonged period with only brief exercise" is not reasonable.
That would appear to indicate that someone who drove for an hour to a beauty spot for a walk would not be contravening the rules.
Under the guidance, police are advised not to intervene if people stop to rest or eat lunch while on a long walk, but short walks to sit on a park bench are not allowed.
"A very short period of 'exercise' to excuse a long period of inactivity may mean that the person is not engaged in 'exercise' but in fact something else," the guidance says.
The document also clarifies that anyone can travel to work if it is not "reasonably possible" to work from home. However, it says it is not allowed for home-workers to "choose" to work in a park.
The College of Policing said the information was published for forces before the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.
"It was designed to help officers remain consistent with criminal justice colleagues," a spokesman added.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-52312560
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news_uk-england-52312560
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Seafarers in limbo as coronavirus hits shipping - BBC News
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2020-04-20
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The shipping industry is already feeling the impact of Covid-19 as the world heads for recession.
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Business
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Shipping firms have halted crew changes to protect their seafarers
With the world in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the shipping industry is already feeling the impact as the global economy heads into a deep recession.
Hundreds of ship sailings have been cancelled as first ports in China, and then across the globe, have seen trade fall away - with millions of workers and consumers in lockdown.
Caught in the centre of this have been the world's 1.6 million seafarers, on 50,000 tankers and cargo carriers. Many of them are unable to leave their ships, or find themselves stuck in hotels without pay and unable to get flights home.
Every month, 100,000 merchant mariners come to the end of their contracts on their ships and need to be flown home. But the pandemic has halted this.
Since the coronavirus outbreak Chinese border guards have been checking the health of crews
"Working at sea is often described as similar to being in prison, except there is no TV," says former ship's navigator Nick Chubb.
"Though my experience was usually positive, a feeling of deep fatigue sets in towards the end of a contract. I once had a four-month contract on an oil tanker extended by three weeks, and found it incredibly difficult to deal with.
"Some of these seafarers have spent nine months away from their families already. And it's not looking particularly likely they'll be able to go home any time soon," adds Mr Chubb, who is now a director for the maritime technology intelligence platform Thetius.
The world's biggest shipping firm, AP Moller-Maersk, is one of those which has halted its crew changes, and says its done so to protect them, by lessening the number of social interactions they need to have.
It adds that "the rapid changes to global travel poses a risk of stranding seafarers in locations from where they are unable to leave, or get sufficient assistance".
The cost of shipping an item around the world is just a fraction of its final retail price
Yet even before the coronavirus outbreak, the industry was grappling with major issues.
First, the need to move to cleaner fuels because of the introduction of the 2020 sulphur emissions cap by the International Maritime Organization.
Second, the fallout from the US-China trade war, and the failure of Washington and Beijing to implement the first phase of their trade agreement.
"Shipping lines have had a very hard time making money in the past ten years," says Alan Murphy, chief executive of analysts Sea-Intelligence in Copenhagen.
For example, for a $100 (£80) pair of trainers, the cost of ocean transport will be a fraction of that - just 10c. This makes the distance that goods travel to market irrelevant in cost terms. And it is why China, with its low labour costs, has become the world's main manufacturer.
China accounts for seven of the world's 10 busiest container ports
Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst with Bimco, the world's largest international shipping association, warned at a recent webinar that 2020 could become increasingly harsh for the industry.
"We need to make sure that local ports and terminals are kept open, to make sure that food and goods are kept flowing to where it's needed - because that's where shipping hands a lifeline to the global public."
Faced with the rippling disruptions to supply and demand around the globe, shipping firms have been scaling back operations. So far, 384 sailings have been cancelled, and the first half of 2020 could see a 25% fall in shipping, with a 10% drop for the year overall, says Sea-Intelligence.
Chinese ports have resumed sailings in April, but many ports serving key consumer markets are still operating well below capacity.
The industry has not yet had to lower prices, but if shipping firms are forced to do so, and freight rates fall by 20% - as they did after the 2008 financial crisis - and were shipping volumes to remain 10% lower, "we could see operating losses of some $20-23bn", says Mr Murphy.
"That would wipe out the shipping firms' last eight years' worth of profits," he adds.
Oil tankers are now in big demand, as the major fall in the price of crude has led to stockpiling
There are a lot of unknowns in the preceding sentences, and Sea-Intelligence stresses it is not yet clear how long it will take for fractured global supply chains to get back to normal once lockdowns are ended.
For consumers, there could well be periodic shortages to come, says Jody Cleworth, of consultants Marine Transport International.
"In developing nations like South Africa there's an almost complete shutdown in exports, whereby only critical goods are moving through ports. So the seasonal goods we expect in Europe in summer would be limited from such countries.
"For example, charcoal for your summer barbecue. At the moment those containers are not being moved out of South Africa, so they will not be arriving in the UK for their intended dates," he says.
But there is one exception to this gloom: the oil tanker sector. Demand for oil tankers has been rising following the oil price falls, which have sent the tanker sector "sky-high", says Nick Chubb of Thetius.
"There are ships that are being chartered now for $230,000 a day as offshore floating storage for when the oil prices recover. It's almost a tale of two industries," he says.
But given the impact of Covid-19 on economic activity, energy demand in 2020 is likely to be substantially lower, and it is possible these tankers may be storing oil for a while to come.
More from the BBC's series taking an international perspective on trade:
So what will be the effect of Covid-19 on the shipping industry beyond 2020?
With virtually no cargo moving by air, shipping could become even more crucial. Already 90% of world trade by volume goes by sea. Yet many analysts expect the drop in demand across Europe and North America to have a longer-term impact.
"We could be talking a decade, at least, of difficulty," suggests Nick Chubb of Thetius.
Alan Murphy says the pandemic will trigger questions about the shape and sustainability of world trade - and globalisation. "A lot of protectionist arguments are going to be made against outsourcing.
"It will have a very profound impact on how global supply chains are organised. It is going to be a political topic in coming years."
Are you a sailor stranded away from home because of coronavirus? You can share your experience by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52289303
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news_business-52289303
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Daniel Pearl: Pakistan overturns convicted man's death sentence - BBC News
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2020-04-02
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was convicted of beheading Daniel Pearl in 2002.
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Asia
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Pearl went missing in Karachi in 2002 while researching extremism
Pakistan has overturned the death sentence of the man convicted of killing US journalist Daniel Pearl, defence lawyers have told reporters.
British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, imprisoned since 2002, has had his sentence reduced to seven years for kidnapping, said lawyer Khawaja Naveed.
Three other men given life sentences over the killing have been acquitted by the Sindh High Court and released.
The Sindh chief prosecutor says he will lodge an appeal in the Sheikh case.
The province's prosecutor general Fiaz Shah told the BBC he expected Sheikh to remain in jail pending the appeal, which would be heard by the Supreme Court.
A group of US journalists, including former colleagues of Pearl, said in 2011 that they believed Sheikh had not carried out the beheading. The Pearl Project alleged the killer was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is being held in Guantanamo Bay, accused of being behind the 9/11 attacks.
Mr Naveed said he expected his client to be released "in a few days".
Pearl, who worked for the Wall Street Journal, went missing in January 2002.
He had been researching links between Islamist militant activity in Karachi and Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a passenger plane using bombs hidden in his shoes.
According to prosecutors, Omar Saeed Sheikh lured him to a meeting with an Islamic cleric. The two had built a relationship discussing concerns about their wives, who were both pregnant at the time.
Almost a month later, a video showing the 38-year-old's beheading was sent to the US consulate in Karachi.
Pearl's son, Adam, was born in May 2002.
Sheikh was convicted of Pearl's murder in July 2002 by an anti-terrorism court, and has been on death row since.
Sheikh was born in London in 1973, where he attended public school before going on to study at the London School of Economics. He did not graduate, failing to return after driving aid to Bosnia after his first year.
He was arrested for being involved in the kidnapping of four tourists - three British and one American - in Delhi in 1994.
He was released from prison as part of demands by militants who hijacked a plane in 1999.
According to news agency Reuters, police in India later accused him of transferring money to one of the militants who flew a plane into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
The main argument of the defence lawyers was that the prosecution had failed to prove their case beyond doubt. They may have a point. There have been questions over whether the four had any direct role in Daniel Pearl's murder, though there was some evidence to show Sheikh's involvement in his kidnapping.
Sheikh was widely seen as having links to Pakistan's top intelligence service, the ISI, as well as al-Qaeda, and had a role in forming the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group that carried out attacks in Indian Kashmir during the 1990s.
His arrest and conviction in 2002 came in quick succession, at a time when Pakistan was under severe pressure from the United States to eliminate terror networks operating on its soil.
But the Pakistani judiciary has sat on his appeal for nearly two decades, and some observers believe the present ruling has come at a time when the mood in the US and the rest of the world has changed and nobody seems to be worried about the terrorists of the past.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52130557
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news_world-asia-52130557
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Coronavirus: Holiday park booking requests surge - BBC News
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2020-05-13
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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It says the rise follows the easing of restrictions in England, which do not apply in Wales.
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Wales
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A holiday park said it had been inundated with requests for bookings after it was announced that lockdown measures would be eased in England.
People living in England are allowed to travel for their exercise, but that is not allowed in Wales where people are restricted to staying near homes.
Laurie Clark, general manager of Golden Sands in Rhyl, said some callers did not believe the different rules.
He said the resort had had about 40 requests since Sunday's announcement.
Regulations against going on holiday or staying overnight at a holiday home or second home, however, still apply in both England and Wales.
The differences in lockdown rules between the English approach, and those of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have already created confusion.
"It has been a mixture of caravan owners and holidaymakers getting in touch, who are confused about the statement from Boris Johnson on Sunday," Mr Clark said.
"We are surrounded by Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham catchment areas; people here assume we are going to be open.
"When we turned on our phone system on Monday morning, we were inundated from a mixture of holidaymakers enquiring if we would be open in the week, or are they able to visit their holiday homes?
"When we try to give clarity, saying the lockdown measures are different in Wales, some people were fine, some were more argumentative.
"They were saying, 'Why is this? Boris is PM for UK; why is it a different rule for Wales?'
"They didn't understand that the Welsh government were involved, or it was different in Scotland as well.
"They felt entitled to visit their holiday home, which they pay thousands for."
Mr Clark said as well as the 40 calls on Monday there were also about 30 or 40 emails.
North Wales police and crime commissioner Arfon Jones said the confusion over lockdown easing was a "total shambles" and could cause an influx of visitors to north Wales.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-52634192
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news_uk-wales-52634192
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Lana Del Rey responds to accusations of racism - BBC News
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2020-05-22
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The singer named several women of colour while making a point about music industry double standards.
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Entertainment & Arts
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The star was accused of dragging other female artists into an argument with her critics
Lana Del Rey has defended herself against accusations of racism, arising from a statement she made about double standards in the music industry.
In a long Instagram post this week, the singer claimed she had been branded as anti-feminist, despite singing about similar themes as other female artists.
But some fans said the examples she chose - including Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé - were mainly black women.
Responding on Instagram, Del Rey said: "Don't ever ever ever call me racist."
She added: "The singers I mentioned are my favourite singers so if you want to try and make a bone to pick out of that, like you always do be my guest.
"It doesn't change the fact that I haven't had the same opportunity to express what I wanted to express without being completely decimated.
"If you want to say that that has something to do with race that's your opinion but that's not what I was saying."
In her original post, Del Rey claimed she had been branded an anti-feminist pariah while "Doja Cat, Ariana, Camila, Cardi B, Kehlani and Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé" had all sung about "being sexy, wearing no clothes... cheating, etc" without facing similar criticism.
Many people suggested the comments were tone deaf, with many wondering why the star had mostly cited women of colour.
"Think Lana's post would have been fine if she hadn't compared herself to a group of mostly black women with the clear tone that she thinks she's been treated worse by the media when that's observably untrue," wrote Shon Faye on Twitter.
"Lana blatantly ignoring the criticism Beyoncé, Nicki, and other black women have received (and continue to) for being confident in their sexuality doesn't sit right with me," added another user, simply calling themselves C.
"Commercial success hasn't made them exempt from misogynistic attacks masked as constructive criticism."
"Even if she made a point, the inclusion of other women was so unnecessary and the fact the women were mostly black has left a bad taste," added journalist Toni Tone.
"The lines and adjectives also read like she's implying those women aren't as graceful, delicate or feminine as her. It's a messy statement."
The Guardian's Laura Snapes also responded with a column in which she said Del Rey's "swipes at her peers of colour undermine her feminist argument".
Yet Del Rey was unrepentant and suggested her comments were being wilfully misinterpreted.
"This is sad to make it about a WOC [women of colour] issue when I'm talking about my favourite singers," she wrote.
"I could've literally said anyone but I picked my favourite people. And this is the problem with society today, not everything is about whatever you want it to be.
"It's exactly the point of my post - there are certain women that culture doesn't want to have a voice.
"It may not have to do with race. I don't know what it has to do with. I don't care anymore but don't ever, ever, ever, ever bro - call me racist because that is bull."
Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52767934
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news_entertainment-arts-52767934
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Coronavirus: What do we know about lockdown easing? - BBC News
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2020-05-04
|
['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
|
Restarting the economy - and our lives - will not be a straightforward task.
|
UK Politics
|
We are, declared the prime minister at the end of last week, past the peak of the coronavirus pandemic in the UK.
But he said we'd have to wait until this week to learn more about how we'll start to move out of the lockdown that has changed the country so dramatically in the past six weeks.
Given that the crisis has affected pretty much everyone in one way or another, there is a fevered guessing game well under way about what moving out of the lockdown might look like - and it involves huge dilemmas for the government.
With another six days to go before the prime minister is expected to spell out those choices, some things are clear.
First and foremost, the government is not about to throw the country's doors open.
Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, admitted today that this Thursday - when UK ministers have to review the restrictions - she is likely to ask people to stick with the lockdown for a while longer.
That's likely to be the case across the UK.
So while you can pencil in a big political moment for Sunday, when Boris Johnson makes his statement, he is not going to be saying that on Monday morning you will wake up and the world will have got back to normal.
The first thing the government is trying to do is to prod some things back to life in the economy that didn't necessarily need to close to in the first place.
Some ministers are already gently trying to make this happen - by encouraging businesses like DIY stores or takeaways to open safely.
The impact of the government's "Stay at Home" message surprised Whitehall, with more of the country's business closing down than they had expected.
But workplaces will be prompted to come back to life, as long as they can follow the principle of keeping people apart.
As leaked draft guidance for business seen by my colleague Simon Jack shows, this is far from straightforward, and if it's possible to do your job from home, that is likely still to be the expectation.
The return of schools is equally, if not more, fraught.
There's a hope in government that schools in England, at least, can start to reopen at the beginning of June, with some kind of staggered return, or rota system for different year groups.
The social and economic consequences of school gates staying shut are obviously profound, but with a still limited amount of information about the disease, and about how children do or do not transmit it, there are nerves about exactly what to do.
And while it might be politically deeply tricky, it is possible that the government, with what it hopes will be the benefit of a sophisticated tracing mechanism for the virus, could flex restrictions at different times in different parts of the country.
Several cabinet ministers have expressed private reservations about regional variations, saying that they prefer a "sectoral" approach.
But others in government make the argument for targeted approaches to easing lockdown - experimenting, then monitoring, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
Trying out changes in a limited way has some appeal but would be tricky politically.
What is more likely, perhaps, is that the whole country starts to come out of lockdown at the same kind of gradual rate, but if the infection re-emerges in one particular area, limits are restored in that specific place.
That of course only works, if the government manages to dramatically improve the amount and quality of data that is available.
The much-vaunted app that is meant to be critical to all of this, starts its test phase on the Isle of Wight on Tuesday.
So much has to be decided - on schools, businesses, geography, PPE - and individual government departments are each making plans about how they might proceed.
But in the hunt for the detail, don't miss the bigger point.
Lockdown, when it came, changed the country almost overnight. Recreating our lives in a changed world will be long and difficult undertaking.
Figures from the Treasury show just how many people have been affected, not by the disease itself, but by the lockdown shock - more than six million people are having their wages paid for the first time by the Treasury, on the furlough scheme.
Exit will bring complicated policy choices and economic pain too.
As one senior government figure said: "Work will be different, shopping with be different, transport will be different - we need to create a whole different way of how society can work."
A cabinet minister described it as "turning up the dimmer switch".
And it will be a long time before we can be sure what we'll really see.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52536216
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news_uk-politics-52536216
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Sally Challen: Abused wife entitled to killed husband's estate - BBC News
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2020-05-27
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Sally Challen, who killed her husband Richard with a hammer, can inherit his estate, a judge rules.
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Surrey
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Speaking to reporters during a press conference, Sally Challen said: "I still love Richard and miss him dreadfully"
An abused woman who won an appeal after killing her controlling husband with a hammer can inherit his estate, a judge has ruled.
Sally Challen, 65, was found guilty of murdering 61-year-old Richard in Surrey and jailed for life in 2011.
She was freed after her conviction was quashed in February last year and prosecutors later accepted her manslaughter plea.
Judge Paul Matthews has now ruled that Mrs Challen can inherit his estate.
He concluded that a rule barring people who kill from inheriting their victim's estate should be waived in Mrs Challen's case.
Sally Challen had never denied killing her husband in 2010
The judge analysed arguments about Mrs Challen's inheritance claim at a High Court hearing in Bristol earlier this month before announcing his decision.
Mr Challen had left no will and a major asset, the home the Challens shared, had been jointly owned.
Judge Matthews said his decision would mean that Mrs Challen, not the couple's sons, would inherit the estate.
He added: "I emphasise that the facts of this terrible case are so extraordinary, with such a fatal combination of conditions and events, that I would not expect them easily to be replicated in any other."
Sally and Richard Challen had two sons and had been married for 31 years
Mrs Challen, of Claygate in Surrey, was given a life term after being convicted of murder at a trial at Guildford Crown Court in summer 2011.
Appeal judges quashed that murder conviction in February last year and ordered a new trial.
A judge had been due to oversee a new trial but Mrs Challen was released following a preliminary hearing at the Old Bailey, after prosecutors accepted her plea to manslaughter.
The lesser charge was accepted on the grounds of diminished responsibility after a psychiatric report concluded Mrs Challen was suffering from an "adjustment disorder".
Mr Justice Edis said the killing came after "years of controlling, isolating and humiliating conduct" with the added provocation of her husband's "serial multiple infidelity".
He imposed a new sentence of nine years and four months for manslaughter, but concluded that she had already served her time.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-52823867
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news_uk-england-surrey-52823867
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Coronavirus: What do we know about lockdown easing? - BBC News
|
2020-05-06
|
['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
|
Restarting the economy - and our lives - will not be a straightforward task.
|
UK Politics
|
We are, declared the prime minister at the end of last week, past the peak of the coronavirus pandemic in the UK.
But he said we'd have to wait until this week to learn more about how we'll start to move out of the lockdown that has changed the country so dramatically in the past six weeks.
Given that the crisis has affected pretty much everyone in one way or another, there is a fevered guessing game well under way about what moving out of the lockdown might look like - and it involves huge dilemmas for the government.
With another six days to go before the prime minister is expected to spell out those choices, some things are clear.
First and foremost, the government is not about to throw the country's doors open.
Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, admitted today that this Thursday - when UK ministers have to review the restrictions - she is likely to ask people to stick with the lockdown for a while longer.
That's likely to be the case across the UK.
So while you can pencil in a big political moment for Sunday, when Boris Johnson makes his statement, he is not going to be saying that on Monday morning you will wake up and the world will have got back to normal.
The first thing the government is trying to do is to prod some things back to life in the economy that didn't necessarily need to close to in the first place.
Some ministers are already gently trying to make this happen - by encouraging businesses like DIY stores or takeaways to open safely.
The impact of the government's "Stay at Home" message surprised Whitehall, with more of the country's business closing down than they had expected.
But workplaces will be prompted to come back to life, as long as they can follow the principle of keeping people apart.
As leaked draft guidance for business seen by my colleague Simon Jack shows, this is far from straightforward, and if it's possible to do your job from home, that is likely still to be the expectation.
The return of schools is equally, if not more, fraught.
There's a hope in government that schools in England, at least, can start to reopen at the beginning of June, with some kind of staggered return, or rota system for different year groups.
The social and economic consequences of school gates staying shut are obviously profound, but with a still limited amount of information about the disease, and about how children do or do not transmit it, there are nerves about exactly what to do.
And while it might be politically deeply tricky, it is possible that the government, with what it hopes will be the benefit of a sophisticated tracing mechanism for the virus, could flex restrictions at different times in different parts of the country.
Several cabinet ministers have expressed private reservations about regional variations, saying that they prefer a "sectoral" approach.
But others in government make the argument for targeted approaches to easing lockdown - experimenting, then monitoring, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
Trying out changes in a limited way has some appeal but would be tricky politically.
What is more likely, perhaps, is that the whole country starts to come out of lockdown at the same kind of gradual rate, but if the infection re-emerges in one particular area, limits are restored in that specific place.
That of course only works, if the government manages to dramatically improve the amount and quality of data that is available.
The much-vaunted app that is meant to be critical to all of this, starts its test phase on the Isle of Wight on Tuesday.
So much has to be decided - on schools, businesses, geography, PPE - and individual government departments are each making plans about how they might proceed.
But in the hunt for the detail, don't miss the bigger point.
Lockdown, when it came, changed the country almost overnight. Recreating our lives in a changed world will be long and difficult undertaking.
Figures from the Treasury show just how many people have been affected, not by the disease itself, but by the lockdown shock - more than six million people are having their wages paid for the first time by the Treasury, on the furlough scheme.
Exit will bring complicated policy choices and economic pain too.
As one senior government figure said: "Work will be different, shopping with be different, transport will be different - we need to create a whole different way of how society can work."
A cabinet minister described it as "turning up the dimmer switch".
And it will be a long time before we can be sure what we'll really see.
|
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52536216
|
news_uk-politics-52536216
|
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Coronavirus: Holiday park booking requests surge - BBC News
|
2020-05-12
|
['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
|
It says the rise follows the easing of restrictions in England, which do not apply in Wales.
|
Wales
|
A holiday park said it had been inundated with requests for bookings after it was announced that lockdown measures would be eased in England.
People living in England are allowed to travel for their exercise, but that is not allowed in Wales where people are restricted to staying near homes.
Laurie Clark, general manager of Golden Sands in Rhyl, said some callers did not believe the different rules.
He said the resort had had about 40 requests since Sunday's announcement.
Regulations against going on holiday or staying overnight at a holiday home or second home, however, still apply in both England and Wales.
The differences in lockdown rules between the English approach, and those of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have already created confusion.
"It has been a mixture of caravan owners and holidaymakers getting in touch, who are confused about the statement from Boris Johnson on Sunday," Mr Clark said.
"We are surrounded by Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham catchment areas; people here assume we are going to be open.
"When we turned on our phone system on Monday morning, we were inundated from a mixture of holidaymakers enquiring if we would be open in the week, or are they able to visit their holiday homes?
"When we try to give clarity, saying the lockdown measures are different in Wales, some people were fine, some were more argumentative.
"They were saying, 'Why is this? Boris is PM for UK; why is it a different rule for Wales?'
"They didn't understand that the Welsh government were involved, or it was different in Scotland as well.
"They felt entitled to visit their holiday home, which they pay thousands for."
Mr Clark said as well as the 40 calls on Monday there were also about 30 or 40 emails.
North Wales police and crime commissioner Arfon Jones said the confusion over lockdown easing was a "total shambles" and could cause an influx of visitors to north Wales.
|
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-52634192
|
news_uk-wales-52634192
|
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Glastonbury 5G report 'hijacked by conspiracy theorists' - BBC News
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2020-05-16
|
['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Expertise was ignored in favour of conspiracy, Glastonbury town council committee members say.
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Technology
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Last month, the town council of Glastonbury in Somerset published a report calling for a government inquiry into the safety of 5G.
It promised to oppose the rollout of the next-generation mobile networks in the town.
Now, three members of the group that produced the report have told the BBC they resigned because it was taken over by anti-5G activists and "spiritual healers".
They fear it could lend credibility to conspiracy theories, such as 5G being linked to the spread of coronavirus.
"The whole thing was completely biased from the beginning," says Mark Swann, one of those who resigned.
"Genuine scientific expertise has been scorned in favour of conspiracy and hearsay," wrote David Swain in his letter of resignation.
5G is the next generation of mobile phone technology. It promises faster downloads and increased capacity.
The radio waves involved in 5G - and the previous generation networks - sit on the low frequency end of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Less powerful than visible light, they are not energetic enough to damage cells - unlike radiation at the higher frequency end of the spectrum, which includes the sun's rays and medical x-rays.
The report, published after a six-month inquiry, said the council would oppose the rollout of 5G, while accepting it had no power to halt it.
Glastonbury's 5G Advisory Committee was made up of nine councillors, and nine local residents who responded to adverts calling for people with relevant experience to help decide whether 5G was safe.
Among the volunteers were:
All four ended up resigning before the report was completed.
"I joined the working group in good faith, expecting to take part in a sensible discussion about 5G," says Mr Swann. "Sadly the whole thing turned out to be a clueless pantomime driven by conspiracy theorists and sceptics."
Mr Cooper reached the same conclusion: "I worked out there were only four of us who were neutral. And the others were all absolutely against 5G, either strongly or weakly."
Most of the evidence the committee heard was from witnesses who had stated their support for a moratorium on the rollout of 5G.
They included retired American professor Martin Pall, who in 2019 claimed that wireless networks would make all human beings sterile if they were not switched off within two years.
Another witness was Dr Andrew Tresidder, a former GP whose website offers flower remedies and emotional healing. His presentation focused on people claiming to suffer from "electromagnetic stress", which he said was often not taken seriously by mainstream doctors.
Committee member Roy Procter, a spiritual healer who claims dowsing can heal "sick houses", also gave a presentation. In the report, he speculates about a link between the coronavirus and 5G, and recommends that the council eliminate all wi-fi connections.
The committee's chairman, Councillor Jon Cousins, told the BBC he strongly disagrees with the suggestion that the meetings were biased towards pseudo-science.
"Equal weight was given to all contributions," he says, adding that councillors "were able to take into account the prejudice, predetermination and bias displayed on all sides of the argument".
In the report, Mr Cousins said Glastonbury had punched above its weight, and other councils had been in touch about its recommendations.
But both Mr Swann and Mr Cooper were particularly concerned about the role of an external member of the committee.
Christopher Baker was instrumental in choosing witnesses to appear before the committee. He also gave his own presentation in which he attacked the credibility of ICNIRP, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, the body which sets the safety standards for mobile network emissions.
Mr Baker has campaigned against 5G across the south-west. Before the committee was formed, he had been lobbying Glastonbury councillors to ban the technology. In a Facebook post in May 2019, he outlined his campaigning activities and bemoaned the lack of support from residents.
"The only thing that is missing is the support from the community! I can't do this for you on my own, this is about you and for you," he said.
But in a YouTube video posted in July, he tells another anti-5G activist how he helped convince Glastonbury Town Council to get the investigation underway. He encouraged others to organise local petitions.
He has also appeared in videos alongside Mark Steele, another anti-5G conspiracy theorist. Mr Steele claims the coronavirus is a hoax, and has posted videos of himself harassing telecoms engineers.
Mr Cooper says the committee was supposed to be made up of people who lived in the area or had a business there. He complained that Christopher Baker did not meet those requirements because he lived in Hampshire, which does not even border Somerset.
One contributor asked the council to switch off its wi-fi
He resigned after the complaint was ignored, describing Mr Baker as a "semi-professional anti-5G activist". He highlighted a video in which Mr Baker admitted some of his fuel costs were paid by a benefactor.
Mr Baker told the BBC it was true that he lived in Hampshire, but said he had long-term connections to Glastonbury, and in any case other members of the committee were from outside the town. He admitted that he did receive some funding from a benefactor he refused to name.
"I don't have a lot of money, and if I travel half-way up the country to give a presentation, the least I expect is someone to contribute something towards my fuel bill."
He said those who resigned from the committee were dismissive of the evidence, rude to witnesses such as Prof Pall, and a disruptive force at the meetings.
Committee chair Jon Cousins agreed: "Some of the behaviours displayed by non-councillor members when they could not debate by 'reason' broke Glastonbury Town Council's code of conduct."
This is strongly denied by Mark Swann and his colleagues.
The committee did hear evidence from Mobile UK, the mobile operators' trade body.
Its presentation was criticised by one member for being "glossy", and others alleged there was no attempt to answer questions.
Gareth Elliott of Mobile UK denied that: "We answered everything that was asked of us." However, he said it was a cordial meeting and his organisation respected the views of the committee.
He recounts an incident where one committee member arrived late to a meeting. She said that although she was hyper-sensitive to electromagnetic emissions, she deemed the meeting room to be safe.
"It was then noted that a wi-fi router was operating and was in the room," he says.
Those who resigned from the committee say they are concerned about the reputation of Glastonbury.
Last month, Piers Corbyn - the brother of the former Labour leader - led an anti-lockdown protest in the town, where slogans against 5G were shouted.
Piers Corbyn (pictured in 2019) has shared 5G conspiracy theories on Twitter
Mr Swann says the atmosphere in the town has been tense lately and he is worried about the impact of the 5G report.
"This fallacious report severely damages Glastonbury's credibility," he says. "It undermines years of good work by well-meaning councillors and leaves a dark shadow over the town's reputation."
But Councillor Jon Cousins rejects the idea that the report may have served to encourage the conspiracy theorists.
"Glastonbury Town Council's position and resolutions around 5G do not - and have never - suggested a link between 5G and Covid-19 or indeed that coronavirus is a hoax."
He says the council worked closely with Avon and Somerset Police to deal with last month's demonstration and breaches of social distancing legislation.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52674949
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Coronavirus: How will airlines get flying again? - BBC News
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2020-05-20
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When passenger planes start flying again, the world of air travel will be very different.
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Business
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Airlines around the world have had to park up their planes
Aviation is the most global of global industries. It employs millions of people, underpins the livelihoods of tens of millions more, and acts as part of the central nervous system of international business and leisure.
Yet now vast parts of the network have been shut down as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The number of daily flights has fallen by 80% since the start of the year, and in some regions nearly all passenger traffic has been suspended.
The industry is in survival mode, with airlines, airports and ground-handling firms all desperate to conserve their cash reserves, while their normal revenue streams have dried up.
Widespread job losses are now expected, with British Airways' parent company IAG announcing on Tuesday that it is set to cut up to 12,000 positions from the airline's 42,000-strong workforce. IAG said it did not expect BA to see passenger demand return to 2019 levels for "several years".
Elsewhere, Easyjet has laid off its 4,000 UK-based cabin crew for two months, Qantas has put 20,000 staff on leave, and 700 pilots at American Airlines have agreed to take early retirement.
Even so, attention is now gradually turning to the future, and how airlines around the world can hope to slowly return to something approaching normality.
It remains to be seen how and when currently empty airports can return to normal
There are obvious logistical challenges. Aircraft need to be prepared for flight, and airports made ready to receive them. Schedules need to be drawn up, and staff made available.
But there are also less predictable issues to contend with. No-one can be quite sure yet where aircraft will be allowed to fly to, or what conditions might be imposed on staff and passengers by national authorities.
There are currently around 17,000 aircraft parked up at airports around the world, according to consultants Ascend by Cirium. That represents about two-thirds of the global fleet.
BA, for example, has aeroplanes stored at London Heathrow, at its maintenance base in Cardiff, on taxiways at regional airports such as Bournemouth, and at Chateauroux airport in France.
Even while parked, these aircraft require regular maintenance. Some will have been kept ready for immediate use. Many airlines have been carrying out repatriation flights, for example, or ad-hoc cargo services. But others will take a week or longer to prepare for flight, according to people within the industry.
If all those aircraft were needed at once, getting them ready would be a formidable challenge. However, analysts say in practice this is unlikely to be the case - because most airlines will start off by operating relatively limited schedules, and many aircraft will not actually be needed for months to come.
A further significant issue is the raft of human qualifications needed to allow the industry to function.
Pilots, for example, need time in the air, or in the simulator, to maintain their "ratings", or permits to fly specific aircraft. They also need regular medical checks. Other critical staff, such as air traffic control personnel and engineers, have time-limited qualifications as well.
Some pilots may need to spend some time in a simulator before then can fly again
Although many airlines and airports are trying to ensure they still have a core of staff available with up-to-date certificates - those who are involved in dealing with repatriation and cargo flights, for example - others have been unable to continue working.
In the UK, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has already taken steps to prevent a backlog of expired credentials from undermining attempts to get planes back in the air as quickly as possible.
"Due to the extraordinary current circumstances, an exemption has been put in place," a spokesperson said.
"Where possible, we expect pilots to remain current through normal methods. If the exemption is being deployed, an airline must illustrate to us how this is being done safely."
Similar measures have been put in place for other key staff.
Airports rely on passenger shopping for much of their income
But while there are clear logistical problems involved with getting thousands of aircraft back into service, and ensuring there are enough pilots and technicians to go around, these are not the main issues keeping aviation executives awake at night.
The real problem, executives say, is the number of different countries that have introduced travel restrictions, and the lack of certainty over when those restrictions will be removed.
"What we are trying to do is have a global restart plan," explains Alexandre de Juniac, director general of the International Air Transport Association. "The main challenge is how and when the different states will lift restrictions to travel."
He believes curbs on travel will clearly last beyond the middle of the year, and some may remain at least partially in force until the end of 2020.
He thinks domestic routes within individual countries will open up first, followed by short-haul international services. Intercontinental travel would probably follow after that, although he admits "that is a point we haven't resolved yet".
One area causing a great deal of uncertainty is the extent to which social distancing will be required when regular flying resumes.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Will thermal cameras help to end the lockdown?
How will people be separated in airport lounges, in security queues, or in the airports themselves? What tests will be required, and how will they be carried out?
This is a commercial issue for both airports and airlines. For example, retail outlets and restaurants provide a lucrative source of revenues for airport operators.
"Non-aeronautical revenues are really important to airports," says Karen Dee, chief executive of the Airport Operators Association.
"They enable us to keep down the charges we make to airlines, and ultimately that affects the ticket prices they can offer their customers.
"We don't want to reconfigure everything in our airports, only to find out in six months' time there's a vaccine and the new measures aren't needed any more."
IATA's argument is that whatever measures are introduced need to be the same and implemented in a co-ordinated fashion.
"We need to avoid the kind of situation that followed 9/11," says Mr de Juniac. "Back then we saw a piling up of different kinds of security measures, and it took a very long time to put it together again in a more consistent way. And we still have different measures."
Airlines too could be squeezed. Lufthansa is already operating services where middle seats are left unoccupied in order to allow a certain degree of social distancing on board. EasyJet - which has grounded its entire fleet - says it will do the same when it resumes flying.
On the Lufthansa flights that are flying, it is trying to keep passengers isolated by not using its middle seats
As a short-term measure, this might help passengers fly with a little more confidence. But it comes at a serious cost.
In order to make money, airlines need as many seats as possible to be filled on every flight. "Load factors" are particularly important for budget carriers, which typically fly with more than 90% of seats occupied.
But if middle seats are left unoccupied, aircraft will have to fly just 65% full. This might be acceptable for a short period, but according to Mr De Juniac, if it went on for long, "it would certainly change the way in which the industry operates".
Ryanair's CEO Michael O"Leary has put it more succinctly, describing the idea as "idiotic".
In the UK the government is considering forcing all passengers arriving in the country to spend two weeks in quarantine.
The industry association Airlines UK says such a plan would "effectively kill international travel to and from the UK, and cause immeasurable damage to the aviation industry and wider UK economy".
More from the BBC's series taking an international perspective on trade:
Getting aircraft back in the air may prove to be the easy part. Finding people to fly in them could prove more difficult - and some long-term changes to the aviation market are highly likely.
"It may not be too bad for firms which specialise in holiday travel," explains one tourism industry executive.
"People still want to go on holiday, and there's definitely still interest in going to short-haul destinations later in the year."
But analysts say business travel could be a different matter.
High-paying business and first class travellers usually account for a little under a third of the revenues for the industry as a whole. For long-haul carriers, it can be as much as 70%.
But there are now serious threats to that traffic.
How quickly lucrative business class travel gets back to normal could be key
The predicted global recession, the cancellation of major trade fairs and other set-piece events - and even the new willingness of businesses to use online tools as a substitute for face-to-face meetings - could all delay the recovery.
"I think we'll see a fusing of business models, and airlines trying different things," says analyst John Strickland of JLS Consulting.
"So you could see a sort of business class-lite, where people get a business class seat and meals, but no access to lounges. So at least the seat is occupied. There's room for a lot of creative pricing."
But the biggest problem for the entire industry, as it prepares to get back in the air, is that no-one - at any level - can really be sure what its future looks like.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52441652
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Supreme Court challenge to 'paedophile hunters' - BBC News
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2020-06-03
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Lawyers for a convicted paedophile argue his human rights were breached by vigilantes.
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Scotland
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Mark Sutherland was previously jailed for sending explicit pictures and messages to a 12-year-old
Police and prosecutors give "tacit encouragement" to so-called "paedophile hunter" groups, the UK's highest court has heard.
The Supreme Court was told "huge numbers" of cases were prosecuted based on information from such organisations.
The judges are being asked to consider whether prosecutions based on these operations breach human rights.
The case has been brought by Mark Sutherland who was caught by a group called Groom Resisters Scotland.
In 2018, Sutherland, 37, matched up on Grindr with someone who, when he communicated with them, claimed to be a 13-year-old boy.
He sent sexual messages and images to the person and they later arranged to meet at Partick Bus Station in Glasgow.
In reality, the person Sutherland was communicating with was not a child, but a "decoy" - a member of Groom Resisters Scotland.
The group confronted Sutherland at the arranged meeting, broadcasted the encounter on social media and handed the evidence to the police.
He was convicted in August 2018 of attempting to communicate indecently with an older child, and related offences, and jailed for two years.
He had previously been jailed for sending explicit pictures to a 12-year-old boy.
Sutherland went to meet someone he thought was a young boy at Partick Station
Sutherland argues that his right to a private life, enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, had been breached.
At Wednesday's hearing, his lawyer Gordon Jackson QC, said: "The police are aware that there a number of hunter organisations operating in Scotland and the UK and evidence submitted from these organisations has led to a number of criminal investigations and convictions."
There is "disquiet" about the work of such groups, he said.
Mr Jackson argued that "a huge number" of cases were prosecuted on the basis of information from these organisations.
"What we have is tacit encouragement of these groups," he said.
Alison di Rollo QC, Solicitor General for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Scotland's prosecution service, which is opposing the appeal, argued that the criminal prosecution of sexual conduct between an adult and a child "does not engage" someone's rights to privacy.
"There is no right to respect for such behaviour in a democratic society," she said.
Ms di Rollo said it was clear the "overriding duty" of the police was "to respond to any report of any identified person who may pose a sexual risk to children".
She said there was guidance which set out "the risks, the activities, the undesirability of the activities of these groups" but regardless of the source of evidence, the usual high standards of investigation were required.
She also said members of paedophile hunter groups were themselves liable to criminal prosecution if they broke the law.
The Supreme Court judges are expected to deliver their ruling at a later date.
The case before the Supreme Court justices is very important as the law surrounding the activities of "paedophile hunters" is currently unclear.
Yet according to HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) almost half of online grooming cases result from the activities of vigilante groups.
The inspectorate said these groups are unregulated and untrained, and in its report in February 2020 said: "A more robust proactive capability on the part of Police Scotland would reduce the opportunities for these groups to operate."
Although Mark Sutherland was convicted by a jury at Glasgow Sheriff Court, a later case in Dundee was thrown out because evidence gained by a vigilante group was ruled "inadmissible."
In that case the sheriff said the means used to induce the accused, known only as PHP, into engaging in an exchange of messages amounted to "fraud".
PHP's lawyers said the vigilantes' activities interfered with his rights under ECHR Article 8 and using their evidence in any trial would mean the court was acting "incompatibly" with those rights.
They also argued the use of information gathered covertly was unlawful under legislation designed to ensure the surveillance of a person was properly regulated.
Those arguments were rejected by the sheriff, but he said by pretending falsely to be young children, the vigilantes had acted unlawfully.
The case at the Supreme Court is being watched carefully by England's Director of Public Prosecutions who has been granted "intervener" status.
The judgement, which will be issued later, will provide a definitive answer to the question of whether undercover vigilante activity is legal, and compatible with human rights, even of those who seek to abuse children.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52896427
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Harry Dunn: Anne Sacoolas immunity 'absurd' says diplomacy expert - BBC News
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2020-06-22
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One of the UK's top experts on diplomacy pours scorn on claims suspect in Harry Dunn death had immunity.
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Northampton
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Harry Dunn, 19, died in hospital after his motorbike was in a crash near RAF Croughton
Did Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US intelligence officer in Britain, have diplomatic immunity when she allegedly killed Harry Dunn in a road accident in Northamptonshire last August?
Harry's parents insist that she didn't, and that she can be tried for causing his death.
The Foreign Office and the US embassy in London argue that she did.
Now one of Britain's top experts on diplomacy has poured scorn on the British and American argument.
The Dunns' lawyers, headed by Geoffrey Robertson QC, asked Sir Ivor Roberts, a former British ambassador in Serbia, Ireland and Italy, for his opinion. After retiring from the diplomatic service Sir Ivor was head of Trinity College, Oxford.
His report on the arguments produced by the British and US governments, which I have read, is remarkably strongly worded.
Anne Sacoolas, pictured on her wedding day in 2003, cited diplomatic immunity after the crash outside RAF Croughton
Mrs Sacoolas's husband was an American intelligence officer based at RAF Croughton. That gave him a certain level of diplomatic immunity. The British and US governments maintain that this meant that, as his wife, Mrs Sacoolas had immunity too.
Sir Ivor says this is "a palpable absurdity".
He quotes a letter of agreement between the Foreign Office and the US ambassador to Britain in August 1995 about the American personnel at RAF Croughton. This says explicitly that diplomatic immunity for people like Mr Sacoolas would not apply for "acts performed outside the course of their duties".
If Mr Sacoolas wasn't covered for acts outside his duties, Sir Ivor says, it would be absurd for Mrs Sacoolas, who had no official position, to be immune from prosecution when her husband wasn't.
He doesn't mince his words. "It was clearly not anticipated that this agreement might be dishonourably challenged by the US government through their embassy in London," he says.
Tim Dunn and Charlotte Charles are going through "torture", says their son Niall
In Sir Ivor's view both the British and US sides knew that back in 1995 they had agreed that "both agents and their dependants" were subject to British criminal law in their non-work activities at RAF Croughton.
For the Americans to argue the opposite would, he said, be regarded by professional diplomats as a breach of good faith.
Words and expressions like "palpable absurdity", "dishonourably" and "breach of good faith" are rare from a top expert on diplomacy.
Although the judges at the High Court agreed that Sir Ivor was a leading figure in the study of diplomacy, they did not accept his report on the technical grounds that he was not a practising lawyer.
They rejected an application by the Dunns to force the Foreign Office to disclose evidence relating to a "secret agreement" between the US and British governments.
But this was a preliminary hearing, and it seems reasonable to assume that Sir Ivor's scathing opinion of the case presented by the Foreign Office and the US embassy will have an influence on the case as it continues.
In a statement, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "Anne Sacoolas held diplomatic immunity on arrival in the UK on 24 July until her departure from the UK.
"Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, any waiver of immunity must be express.
"The historic arrangements covering Croughton contained no such waiver for family members.
"We are committed to revising this anomaly in the arrangements at Croughton so they cannot be used in this way again."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-53132168
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news_uk-england-northamptonshire-53132168
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William Gladstone: University of Liverpool to rename building over slavery links - BBC News
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2020-06-10
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A University of Liverpool building was named after William Gladstone who benefited from slavery.
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Liverpool
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William Ewart Gladstone argued against the abolition of slavery
The University of Liverpool has agreed to rename a building named after former prime minister William Gladstone due to his links to the slave trade.
Gladstone spoke out against abolition in Parliament because his family had slaves on plantations in the Caribbean.
Students wrote an open letter saying the move would "show solidarity in the rejection of Black oppression".
The university said it will work with students and staff "to agree an appropriate alternative name".
Gladstone Hall in the Greenbank Student Village was recently rebuilt but the name was kept
Students have been campaigning over the issue for several years, arguing that the university should not be honouring people who benefited from slavery.
The move follows Black Lives Matter protests in the city in response to the death of American George Floyd and the tearing down of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol.
Thousands of people have also been demanding a statue of imperialist Cecil Rhodes be removed from Oxford University's Oriel College.
Liberal politician William Ewart Gladstone was born in Liverpool in 1809 and is the only person to have been prime minister on four separate occasions.
He is described as having "ultra-conservative" views and used his maiden speech in the House of Commons to support his father's interests, arguing against abolition.
While that argument failed, his finances did not - when slavery was abolished in the 1830s, the Gladstones received more than £90,000, about £9.5m in today's terms, as compensation for the slaves they were forced to free.
Campaigners said William Gladstone shared the views on slavery of his father, "who was one of the largest slave owners in the British West Indies"
In an open letter to university vice chancellor Professor Janet Beer, student campaigners urged the university to "qualify your words" about combating racism on campus "with some real action".
The letter said Liverpool is "entrenched in the history of Black oppression" with buildings "built with bricks that were bartered for by slaves".
It said Gladstone "used his position to defend the interest of those who, like his father, owned West Indian slave-ran plantations."
"Whilst we cannot possibly expect that the entire architecture of Liverpool is torn down and replaced, renaming Gladstone Hall and removing this reminder of William Gladstone is one small and simple act that the university can enact to show solidarity in the rejection of Black oppression.
"We can not facilitate normalising people like William Gladstone by naming our campus after them."
A University of Liverpool spokeswoman said: "We share in the shame that our city feels because its prosperity was significantly based upon a slave economy."
She said the institution has "an important opportunity to send a clear message about the commitments we have made to our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff and student community" and "will work with the Guild of Students and with staff and student groups to agree an appropriate alternative name for the hall."
• None How Britain is facing up to its hidden slavery history - BBC Culture
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Labour’s Rebecca Long-Bailey sacked in anti-Semitism row - BBC News
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2020-06-26
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Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says his "first priority" is tackling anti-Semitism after firing shadow minister.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Starmer: "I've made it my first priority to tackle anti-Semitism"
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey, saying she shared an article containing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Mrs Long-Bailey retweeted an interview with actor and Labour supporter Maxine Peake.
The shadow education secretary - who was beaten to the party leadership by Sir Keir - later said she had not meant to endorse all aspects of the article.
But Sir Keir said his "first priority" was tackling anti-Semitism.
The Labour leader said: "The sharing of that article was wrong… because the article contained anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and I have therefore stood Rebecca Long-Bailey down from the shadow cabinet.
"I've made it my first priority to tackle anti-Semitism and rebuilding trust with the Jewish community is a number one priority for me."
A spokesman for the Labour leader added: "Anti-Semitism takes many different forms and it is important that we all are vigilant against it."
In the article, Ms Peake discussed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
She said: "The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd's neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services."
The Independent article also quoted the Israeli police denying Ms Peake's claim saying: "There is no tactic or protocol that calls to put pressure on the neck or airway."
Later on Thursday, Ms Peake tweeted that she had been "inaccurate in my assumption of American police training and its sources".
She added: "I find racism and anti-Semitism abhorrent and I in no way wished, nor intended, to add fodder to any views of the contrary."
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There are political consequences to Keir Starmer's sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey.
On becoming leader, Sir Keir said he wanted to bring unity to the party where previously there have been factional fighting.
His decision may re-open divisions, with one former shadow minister on the party's left telling me that this was "a dangerous moment for the party" - with the new leader 'purging' those with whom he disagreed.
Others in the party note that Sir Keir has done quite a lot in a short space of time to install people close to him in key positions.
Leadership sources, though, insist the sacking was not part of some grand plan.
They say Mrs Long-Bailey had to go because she repeatedly refused to remove her retweet of Maxine Peake's article when asked to do so.
And for Sir Keir, this is all about tackling the toxic perception of anti-Semitism in the Labour party ahead of a potentially damning report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
His allies say he promised actions not words to the Jewish community and he is following through.
He wants to make sure that under his leadership he sends out a signal that those who are accused of anti-Semitism have no place at his top table.
The new shadow education secretary won't be announced today.
Those formerly close to Jeremy Corbyn say that the appointee must come from the left of the party if Labour's leader is concerned about maintaining unity.
But he is proving that he won't duck difficult decisions.
The Jewish Labour Movement - which has led calls for a crackdown on anti-Semitism in Labour's ranks - welcomed Sir Keir's decision to sack Mrs Long-Bailey.
National chairman Mike Katz said: "We have consistently maintained that the pervasive culture of anti-Semitism, bullying and intimidation can only be tackled by strong and decisive leadership.
"The culture of any organisation is determined by the values and behaviours of those who lead them."
And the Board of Deputies of British Jews President Marie Van der Zyl called Mrs Long-Bailey's initial response "pathetic" and thanked the Labour leader for his "swift action".
But Mrs Long-Bailey's allies on the left of the party have criticised the decision.
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who supported her leadership bid, said: "Throughout discussion of anti-Semitism it's always been said criticism of practices of Israeli state is not anti-Semitic.
"I don't believe therefore that this article is or Rebecca Long-Bailey should've been sacked. I stand in solidarity with her."
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, whose union supported Mrs Long-Bailey in her leadership bid, said her sacking was "an unnecessary overreaction to a confected row".
"Unity is too important to be risked like this," he said.
The row erupted when Mrs Long-Bailey tweeted "Maxine Peake is an absolute diamond" with a link to the article on the Independent website.
The Salford and Eccles MP said she had retweeted the article because of Ms Peake's "significant achievements and because the thrust of her argument is to stay in the Labour Party" but she did not endorse "all aspects of it".
After she was sacked, Mrs Long-Bailey said she had issued a clarification of her retweet of the article "agreed in advance by the Labour Party Leader's Office".
She added that she was "subsequently instructed to take both this agreed clarification and my original retweet of Maxine Peake's interview down".
"I could not do this in good conscience without the issuing of a press statement of clarification.
"I had asked to discuss these matters with Keir before agreeing what further action to take, but sadly he had already made his decision."
Rebecca Long-Bailey was a contender in the this year's Labour leadership race along with Lisa Nandy and, eventual winner, Sir Keir Starmer
Mrs Long-Bailey became a Labour MP in 2015. She was a supporter of former leader Jeremy Corbyn and was quickly promoted to his frontbench team, serving as shadow chief secretary of the Treasury and later shadow business secretary.
Following Labour's defeat in the 2019 election, Mrs Long-Bailey entered the leadership contest to replace Mr Corbyn and was supported by many on the left of the party.
She came second in the contest securing 26.6% of the vote, while Sir Keir won 56.2%.
• None Starmer warns of up to three million job losses
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53183085
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We'll Meet Again: The story of Dame Vera Lynn's wartime classic - BBC News
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2020-06-18
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The song was one of the first to feature a synth, was accused of being too "slushy" for the troops.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Dame Vera recorded the song several times, with the most famous version coming from the 1943 film of the same name
We'll Meet Again became Dame Vera Lynn's signature song. It was also one of the first singles to use a synth, was accused of being too "slushy" for the troops, and has featured in Dr Strangelove and Stranger Things.
No song captured the heartbreak and optimism of Britain at war better than We'll Meet Again.
Recorded in 1939 by Vera Lynn, who has died at the age of 103, its lyrics provided comfort to all those who were apart from their loved ones.
"We'll met again, don't know where, don't know when / But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day."
The song has since been quoted by the Queen and covered by Johnny Cash. It even entered the UK chart earlier this year, offering a message of hope during the coronavirus lockdown.
"Its lyric seemed to me to be a perfect example of what you might call the 'greetings card song,'" Dame Vera wrote in her 1975 autobiography Vocal Refrain.
"A very basic human message of the sort that people want to say to each other but find embarrassing actually to put into words."
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The singer was only 22 when she first recorded the song. It was in the first year of the conflict - during the so-called "phoney war", when troops were conscripted but very little fighting took place - that Lynn found the song while shopping around music publishing companies in London's Denmark Street for new material.
One of the leading lights at the time was Hughie Charles, who had turned down the opportunity to open the batting for Lancashire County Cricket Club to seek his fortune as a composer.
Having appraised Lynn as "a very nice kid", he encouraged her to record two patriotic songs he'd written with Ross Parker in anticipation of the coming hostilities - the strident, optimistic There'll Always Be An England and the more wistful We'll Meet Again.
She first performed We'll Meet Again in the summer with Bert Ambrose and his orchestra. "Looking back on the reviews, I notice the newspapers picked up on it right away," she told The Guardian in 1995.
"It was the perfect song to sign off with, and I started to use it more and more."
With a melody loosely based on Anton Rubinstein's Melody in F, it was the singer's performance that touched people's hearts - her characteristically low tone and emotional delivery chiming with the prevailing mood of the times.
A polyphonic synthesizer was first heard at the 1939 New York World's Fair
Her first recording of the song took place later that year, accompanied by Arthur Young on a new instrument called the Hammond Novachord, the world's first commercially-available polyphonic synthesizer.
The "instrument that reproduces the tone of a dozen instruments" had only made its debut at the New York World Fair that April, making Lynn's single one of the first pop records (perhaps the very first) to feature a synth.
However it was a later recording, backed by a full orchestra, that became more famous.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The story behind Vera Lynn's We'll Meet Again
By that time, she had become a fixture on forces' radio with her programme Sincerely Yours.
More than 20% of the British public tuned in to the show every Sunday night, as Lynn performed songs of hope amid hardship and read out letters from people separated by the war.
"Although we did the programme from a studio, I always tried to imagine myself singing and talking from my own home," said the singer. "Addressing myself not to an audience in the conventional sense, but to scattered individuals - an intimate conversation, but to a couple of million people."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Dame Vera Lynn speaks to the troops in 'Sincerely Yours'
Each episode closed with a rendition of We'll Meet Again. "Keep smiling through / Just like you always do," she urged listeners. But not everyone was happy.
Following a series of British military defeats in northern Africa, a small but vocal campaign argued that "radio crooners" and "sloppy sentimental rubbish" were affecting the forces' morale.
"If our Armed Forces really like this sort of thing, it should be the duty of the BBC to hide the fact from the world," wrote a typical correspondent to the Daily Telegraph in 1942. Instead, he argued, the troops should be listening to "something more virile".
In response, the BBC formed a Dance Music Policy Committee, known colloquially as the "anti-slush" committee, to review the music it was broadcasting.
"We have recently adopted a policy of excluding sickly sentimentality which, particularly when sung by certain vocalists, can become nauseating and not at all in keeping with what we feel to be the need of the public in this country," said one ruling from 1942.
Among the victims were Bing Crosby's standard I'll Be Home For Christmas, which the committee felt would make troops homesick and despondent. Similarly, The Mills Brothers' Paper Doll was banned as "we did not think it desirable to broadcast the song's theme of feminine faithlessness".
The star was not swayed by the arguments, writing a column in the Sunday Dispatch saying the forces personnel and their "wives and sweethearts" valued the sentiment of her weekly radio show.
"During my two series of Sincerely Yours, I received letters from the boys in the forces at the rate of 1,000 a week. By the end, I received 18,000 and they have been coming ever since," she wrote.
"As I saw it," she later reflected, a song like We'll Meet Again "was reminding the boys of what they were really fighting for, the precious, personal things rather than the ideologies and theories."
As the "anti-slush" debate raged, one of the star's "middle-aged listeners" wrote to the Radio Times, voicing his support for Lynn in particular.
"The words of her songs may have been so much sentimental twaddle. But she treated them with as much tenderness as though they were precious old folk, as though they meant something, something that she believed in and assumed that her audience believed in too," he wrote.
"By some magic she contrived to persuade you that neither she nor anybody else had ever sung or heard the songs before, that she had only just discovered their peculiar delights… and was generously passing them on."
Sadly, the BBC bowed to pressure and cancelled Lynn's show, but her popularity persisted.
In 1943, she starred in a film loosely based on her own life, in which a beautiful young dancer discovers a gift for singing, and turns her talents to entertaining the British Army in Europe.
Titled We'll Meet Again, the finale featured a re-recording of the title track, which became the best-known version of the song.
Soon afterwards, Sincerely Yours was reinstated by the BBC, and Lynn continued to travel the world, performing to "the boys" in uniform.
Dame Vera appeared with Petula Clark and Bruce Forsyth on the 60th anniversary of the end World War Two in 2005
But while the bittersweet lyrics of We'll Meet Again were perfectly suited to the uncertainty of war, the song endured and adapted after 1945.
It has been covered by Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Rod Stewart and Sammy Davis Jr. It was referenced by Pink Floyd in their song Vera, and used to haunting effect in the closing scenes of Stanley Kubrick's apocalyptic satire Dr Strangelove.
During the Cold War, it was chosen by the BBC's Wartime Broadcasting Service as one of the tracks that would be played to comfort and reassure survivors of a nuclear Armageddon.
More recently, it has featured in TV shows like Stranger Things and The Simpsons, and films including Hellboy and Trainspotting 2; while it also provides an eerie backdrop to the Tower of Terror ride at Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland Paris.
As the coronavirus hit the UK earlier this year, the song's message of cheerful resilience was invoked by the Queen who, in a rare televised address, told the nation: "We will be with our friends again. We will be with our families again. We will meet again."
Her message helped the song enter the singles chart for the first time in its 81-year history (the original recording pre-dated the charts, although Charles and Parker's sheet music was a best-seller in the 1940s).
In all that time, Dame Vera said she "never tired of singing" it.
"I had no idea that that particular song would become the tune people most associated with the war era," she wrote in her autobiography. "Or that my voice would become the one that most reminded people of the hope for the future that we needed to have at that time.
"I'm told that schoolchildren today still learn the words to We'll Meet Again. That thrills me."
Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53079190
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news_entertainment-arts-53079190
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Election 2019: New leader not enough to win again, Labour warned - BBC News
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2020-06-18
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Labour has a "mountain to climb" to regain power, a major review of its 2019 election defeat says.
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UK Politics
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A new leader and the end of Brexit as an election issue will not be enough for Labour to win back power, a review of the party's 2019 defeat has warned.
The Labour Together project says the party has a "mountain to climb" after slumping to its lowest number of seats since 1935 in December's poll.
It says the historic defeat had been a "long time coming" and deep-seated changes were needed.
Labour will have been out of power for 14 years by the next election in 2024.
The Conservatives won December's election with a majority of 80, while Labour lost 59 seats and saw its vote share fall by eight points.
Labour's defeat led to the resignation of Jeremy Corbyn as party leader. He was replaced in April by Sir Keir Starmer.
The Labour Together report, which was largely compiled before the coronavirus pandemic, warned that "disunity and division within our party over time has badly damaged our electoral fortunes".
And the commissioners of the review agreed it would "be a mistake to believe that a different leader, with Brexit no longer the defining issue, would in itself be sufficient to change Labour's electoral fortunes".
The organisation, which describes itself as a network of activists from all Labour traditions, surveyed 11,000 members, held in-depth interviews with former MPs and party candidates, and spoke to polling experts and academics.
It identified a manifesto viewed as "undeliverable" by many voters, concerns about Mr Corbyn's leadership and the party's position on Brexit as the "interlinked and indivisible" factors behind the 2019 defeat.
But it says the party's problems run far deeper and its failure to properly analyse previous defeats "sowed the seeds for our failure in 2019".
Mr Corbyn has said Labour "won the argument" at last year's election but blamed media bias for the party's defeat and the fact that the campaign was dominated by Brexit.
The report paints a portrait of a party riven by "factionalism", "internal arguments" and "division".
But it issues a stark warning to those who believe that a change in both the party leadership and in the political landscape will necessarily bring Labour much closer to power.
The report says: "It would be a mistake to believe that a different leader, with Brexit no longer the defining issue, would in itself be sufficient to change Labour's electoral fortunes."
And this is perhaps the true value of the report for the new leadership - it serves as both a reality check for activists and an opportunity for the new regime to argue that a break for the past is necessary.
It declares that Labour has "a mountain to climb" - and the authors are clearly thinking of K2 rather than a Scottish munro.
The Labour Together review was headed by MP Lucy Powell - who ran Ed Miliband's unsuccessful 2015 election campaign, leading the party to win more seats than Mr Corbyn in 2019, but with a slightly lower vote share.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, she said Labour needed to address a long-standing "disconnect" with working-class voters to win again.
The "red wall" of seats in the party's traditional strongholds, she said, had "been crumbling for twenty years".
She said there was "no sign yet that long-term decline is in any way abating," adding it could put a number of Labour MPs in formerly safe seats at risk in future.
Mr Miliband, who has returned to the shadow cabinet under Sir Keir and was a member of the Labour Together panel, said winning the next election would be a "Herculean task".
Writing for the Guardian, he said the party's "new core vote" of younger graduates in big cities are "not enough on their own to win us the election".
But he said the party needed to maintain a commitment for "economic transformation," adding this was desired by both Leave and Remain voters.
Jeremy Corbyn said he would stand down after the 2019 election loss
The report said responsibility for the defeat did not rest "wholly with one side or part of our movement".
But it said Mr Corbyn's low poll ratings going into the election could not "easily be disentangled from the handling of issues like Brexit, party disunity and anti-Semitism".
Momentum, the campaign group formed out of Mr Corbyn's successful 2015 leadership bid, called the report a "much needed contribution" to the debate over Labour's future election strategy.
A spokesperson said the party needed to "professionalise the party machine," and better engage party members through "community organising".
They added the group was happy to offer its "expertise" in digital campaigning to help the party reach more voters online.
Other issues highlighted in the report included:
In its recommendations, the report warned Labour could "could fall further, unless it faces up to the disconnect between the party and the public and is realistic about the scale of the political and organisational task ahead".
It said the party needed to "build a winning coalition of voters which spans generations, geographies and outlooks", while holding onto Labour's existing supporters and "inspiring more younger voters".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53096233
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news_uk-politics-53096233
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The Premier League, but not as we know it - BBC Sport
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2020-06-18
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Powerful statements, an eerie atmosphere and unexpected controversy - BBC Sport chief football writer Phil McNulty reflects on a surreal return to action at Villa Park.
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As the Premier League returned after its enforced 100-day hiatus, some things stayed the same but others were symbolic of the new world those who play the game and those who watch it must now occupy.
The eyes of the world were trained on the vast empty spaces of a stadium situated just off the M6 in Birmingham as a sliver of normality returned with the resumption of a season halted by the coronavirus pandemic.
At Aston Villa, old arguments resurfaced within 45 minutes as a gross failure of goalline technology served huge injustice on visitors Sheffield United. Referee Michael Oliver's watch failed to activate as Aston Villa goalkeeper Orjan Nyland tumbled well behind his line clutching Oliver Norwood's free-kick.
It gave a layer of controversy to a game that held a strange fascination as "Project Restart" finally came to fruition.
The stadium may have been shrouded in silence as this fixture took place behind closed doors but there was true volume, power and emotion behind the statement made by players and officials at kick-off.
At the blast of referee Michael Oliver's whistle, the players took the knee with perfect choreography for 10 seconds in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
It was the enduring image of a few hours that offered us a glimpse into how it will be for the foreseeable future. It was preceded by a minute's silence for those who have lost their lives to coronavirus.
This was a very different experience and environment - but we are living in a very different world to the one the Premier League left behind when Aston Villa lost 4-0 at Leicester City on 9 March.
As you pulled off the M6 and headed towards Villa Park, you could see old haunts and gathering places were not the usual seething mass of claret and blue. The Holte hostelry, tucked in a corner near the stadium's famous Holte End, was locked and silent, just a few lights on inside.
Instead of the usual hubbub there was calm, although that was shattered by a huge thunder and lightning storm just after the Sheffield United team coach pulled into the car park behind the Witton Lane Stand.
As Villa Park's floodlights took full effect, it provided a spectacular backdrop to the big relaunch, as the media went through high security checks, including hi-tech temperature testing before being allowed in.
Just below the media area, the sound of thumping music emerged from the dressing rooms as the players tried to create their own atmosphere.
Zones were divided into green, amber and red with strict sanitisation and a one-way walking system in operation - all superbly efficient and well-organised by Aston Villa, the first club off the block in this context.
Among the empty seats, there was a poignant sight - an Aston Villa steward's jacket placed in memory of manager Dean Smith's father Ron, who used to perform that role and who died aged 79 after contracting coronavirus.
As players warmed up and those of us on the margins looked on, Villa at least tried to inject some atmosphere with a heavy metal soundtrack over the public address system before the players filed out separately.
It was somewhat incongruous as Villa's announcer revved up the team announcements, brashly welcoming back John McGinn after his long injury absence, the stadium itself festooned with flags, banners (one from as far away as Prague) and coverings to at least add a dash of colour to an anaesthetised occasion.
I have attended one behind closed doors game before, when England drew 0-0 with Croatia in Rijeka in October 2018 but there was arguably an even greater sense of dislocation here. As had to happen, even those of us fortunate enough to be inside were socially distanced, taking the now customary precautions of wearing masks.
The countdown to kick-off clock and the faces of fans watching at home flickering on the big screens were all eye-catching attempts to fire up the adrenalin but the sight of the teams filing out separately, no handshakes and only the odd elbow bump on the sidelines, brought this new reality into sharp relief.
The game itself was not a classic and it would be delusional to talk it up, ignoring the fact this this will be an unsatisfactory experience for many traditionalists. Football needs fans but for now this is the Premier League as it has to be.
There was no holding back from the players, either physically or in terms of verbal encouragement, although those expecting a blizzard of after-the-watershed bad language would have been disappointed.
The shouts were mainly of encouragement, with Blades manager Chris Wilder the more vocal and visible manager, spending far more time out on the touchline with assistant Alan Knill than his Villa counterpart Smith.
There were cries of pain as Jack Grealish felt the full force of a couple of challenges, while Villa took advantage of the new rules by using four second-half substitutes.
So much was new. So much felt strange. Let's say it - it all seemed very odd at times.
What must also be said is that every precaution and step is necessary in the current climate when sport is not the top priority in this pandemic, but the Premier League needed to get going again.
The tepid nature of the game will undoubtedly raise eyebrows among those who are not in favour of football without fans but it should also be said this game could have played out exactly the same in front of a packed Villa Park.
Muscle memory still kicks in with the players and make no mistake they were committed - as proved by loud shouts and groans of frustration from players of both sides when Oliver blew the final whistle on this game after six minutes of stoppage time.
There was almost a sense of relief among all of us inside Villa Park that this, with all its surreal and unaccustomed elements, was out of the way - although the Blades will nurse that sense of sporting injustice.
It was not a thriller at the Villa but it was a start and that is something many have been waiting 100 days for.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53087253
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Iraq war: All but one war crimes claim against British soldiers dropped - BBC News
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2020-06-01
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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There were more than 3,000 war crimes allegations made against British troops relating to the conflict.
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UK
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British soldiers who have been accused of committing war crimes in Iraq are unlikely to face criminal prosecution.
Independent investigators were asked to look at thousands of allegations made against the British military after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
But the director of the Service Prosecution Authority (SPA) said just one remaining case was being examined.
Andrew Cayley said the "low level" of offending and lack of credible evidence had led most cases to be dismissed.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Law in Action programme, Mr Cayley said most of those cases were sifted out at a very early stage because of the lack of credible evidence or because the offending was "at such a very low level".
More than 1,000 cases were made by former lawyer Phil Shiner and his firm Public Interest Lawyers (PIL). In 2017 he was struck off as a solicitor after a tribunal found him guilty of misconduct and dishonesty, including false accounts about the actions of UK soldiers.
Mr Cayley said seven remaining cases had been referred to the SPA, but in six of those cases it was concluded that no charges should be brought.
One case is still being considered, but Mr Cayley admitted that it is now "quite possible" that none of the original allegations will lead to a prosecution.
Mr Cayley also said he is confident a separate investigation being conducted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague will conclude this year without further action being taken.
In 2014, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda re-opened a preliminary examination of cases involving alleged British abuses in Iraq.
Mr Cayley said he was "convinced" that examination would soon be completed without any further action.
He said: "My sense is these matters are coming to a conclusion; she will close the preliminary examination this year in respect of Iraq and the United Kingdom."
The cloud hanging over British service personnel accused of wrongdoing has already left a bitter taste and contributed to political pressure to do more to protect soldiers on the battlefield from criminal and civil prosecution for alleged actions which took place years ago.
Earlier this year the government presented a bill promising to curb historic allegations and tackle what it calls "vexatious claims" against armed forces deployed overseas.
The bill proposes a five-year time limit on any criminal prosecution unless compelling new evidence is brought to light.
In a statement, the Ministry of Defence said it was strongly opposed to service personnel and veterans being subjected to the threat of repeated investigations and potential prosecutions.
Veterans minister Johnny Mercer said the bill was introduced "to reduce the uncertainty currently faced by service personnel and veterans in relation to historic allegations" - and aimed to make sure "that we never end up in a situation like this again".
But human rights groups and some lawyers have already expressed concern - saying the legislation could place the military above the law, and undermine existing international conventions.
David Greene, vice-president of the Law Society, said a balance must be struck to ensure charges are only brought when warranted.
But he added: "The argument behind time limits for British service personnel deployed overseas is that there has been a rise in historic prosecutions. Based on Andrew Cayley's comments the evidence for such an assertion is lacking."
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52885615
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news_uk-52885615
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Election 2019: New leader not enough to win again, Labour warned - BBC News
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2020-06-19
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Labour has a "mountain to climb" to regain power, a major review of its 2019 election defeat says.
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UK Politics
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A new leader and the end of Brexit as an election issue will not be enough for Labour to win back power, a review of the party's 2019 defeat has warned.
The Labour Together project says the party has a "mountain to climb" after slumping to its lowest number of seats since 1935 in December's poll.
It says the historic defeat had been a "long time coming" and deep-seated changes were needed.
Labour will have been out of power for 14 years by the next election in 2024.
The Conservatives won December's election with a majority of 80, while Labour lost 59 seats and saw its vote share fall by eight points.
Labour's defeat led to the resignation of Jeremy Corbyn as party leader. He was replaced in April by Sir Keir Starmer.
The Labour Together report, which was largely compiled before the coronavirus pandemic, warned that "disunity and division within our party over time has badly damaged our electoral fortunes".
And the commissioners of the review agreed it would "be a mistake to believe that a different leader, with Brexit no longer the defining issue, would in itself be sufficient to change Labour's electoral fortunes".
The organisation, which describes itself as a network of activists from all Labour traditions, surveyed 11,000 members, held in-depth interviews with former MPs and party candidates, and spoke to polling experts and academics.
It identified a manifesto viewed as "undeliverable" by many voters, concerns about Mr Corbyn's leadership and the party's position on Brexit as the "interlinked and indivisible" factors behind the 2019 defeat.
But it says the party's problems run far deeper and its failure to properly analyse previous defeats "sowed the seeds for our failure in 2019".
Mr Corbyn has said Labour "won the argument" at last year's election but blamed media bias for the party's defeat and the fact that the campaign was dominated by Brexit.
The report paints a portrait of a party riven by "factionalism", "internal arguments" and "division".
But it issues a stark warning to those who believe that a change in both the party leadership and in the political landscape will necessarily bring Labour much closer to power.
The report says: "It would be a mistake to believe that a different leader, with Brexit no longer the defining issue, would in itself be sufficient to change Labour's electoral fortunes."
And this is perhaps the true value of the report for the new leadership - it serves as both a reality check for activists and an opportunity for the new regime to argue that a break for the past is necessary.
It declares that Labour has "a mountain to climb" - and the authors are clearly thinking of K2 rather than a Scottish munro.
The Labour Together review was headed by MP Lucy Powell - who ran Ed Miliband's unsuccessful 2015 election campaign, leading the party to win more seats than Mr Corbyn in 2019, but with a slightly lower vote share.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, she said Labour needed to address a long-standing "disconnect" with working-class voters to win again.
The "red wall" of seats in the party's traditional strongholds, she said, had "been crumbling for twenty years".
She said there was "no sign yet that long-term decline is in any way abating," adding it could put a number of Labour MPs in formerly safe seats at risk in future.
Mr Miliband, who has returned to the shadow cabinet under Sir Keir and was a member of the Labour Together panel, said winning the next election would be a "Herculean task".
Writing for the Guardian, he said the party's "new core vote" of younger graduates in big cities are "not enough on their own to win us the election".
But he said the party needed to maintain a commitment for "economic transformation," adding this was desired by both Leave and Remain voters.
Jeremy Corbyn said he would stand down after the 2019 election loss
The report said responsibility for the defeat did not rest "wholly with one side or part of our movement".
But it said Mr Corbyn's low poll ratings going into the election could not "easily be disentangled from the handling of issues like Brexit, party disunity and anti-Semitism".
Momentum, the campaign group formed out of Mr Corbyn's successful 2015 leadership bid, called the report a "much needed contribution" to the debate over Labour's future election strategy.
A spokesperson said the party needed to "professionalise the party machine," and better engage party members through "community organising".
They added the group was happy to offer its "expertise" in digital campaigning to help the party reach more voters online.
Other issues highlighted in the report included:
In its recommendations, the report warned Labour could "could fall further, unless it faces up to the disconnect between the party and the public and is realistic about the scale of the political and organisational task ahead".
It said the party needed to "build a winning coalition of voters which spans generations, geographies and outlooks", while holding onto Labour's existing supporters and "inspiring more younger voters".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53096233
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news_uk-politics-53096233
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Coronavirus: What went wrong with the UK's contact tracing app? - BBC News
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2020-06-19
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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After months of work the UK has ditched the way its current coronavirus-tracing app works. So what went wrong?
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Technology
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After months of work, the UK has ditched the way its coronavirus-tracing app works, prompting a blame game between the government and two of the world's biggest tech firms. So what went wrong?
At the end of March, I got a text from a senior figure in the UK's technology industry. This person said they were helping the NHS "on a very substantial project that will launch in days and potentially save hundreds of thousands of British lives."
That was the first I knew of the plan to build a contact tracing app, a project that soon appeared to be at the very centre of the government's strategy to beat coronavirus and help us all emerge from lockdown.
The tech luminary had somehow assumed that I could be an adviser to the project - I made it clear that could not be my role but I was very interested in following its progress.
Now, nearly three months on, after missing deadline after deadline, there has been a radical change in direction. The app that has been developed so far is being scrapped, and a new approach will be tried based on a system created by Apple and Google.
But there is no guarantee when, if ever, this will be rolled out. So what went wrong?
When the team from the NHSX digital division was assembled they were told they were engaged on a vital mission. According to a presentation the team was shown the Covid-19 app would have four aims:
Once installed on a user's phone, the app would use Bluetooth to keep a record of other people with whom they came into close contact - as long as they too had installed the app. Then when someone tested positive for the virus, alerts would be sent to their close contacts of recent days telling them to go into quarantine.
The epidemiological expertise was provided by a team of Oxford scientists who had argued that there was an urgent need to identify people who were spreading the virus without knowing. "Very fast contact tracing was likely to be essential," says one of the Oxford team, Dr David Bonsall. "And smartphones have the technological capability to speed up that process."
But using the Bluetooth connection on smartphones to detect contacts was untested technology. Still, the team was inspired by Singapore, which had released its Trace Together app using that system.
Heath Secretary Matt Hancock announces the development of "a new NHS app for contact tracing". The app is launched on the Isle of Wight. It is downloaded by 60,000 people, under half the population of the island, over the following 10 days. Mr Hancock tells BBC Breakfast that if the trial on the Isle of Wight is successful, the app will be rolled out nationwide by the middle of May. He also says the public would have a "duty" to download the app and that 60% of people in the country would have to do so for the system to function. PM says test, track and trace will be ‘world-beating’ Boris Johnson says the system will be in place by 1 June Prime Minister Boris Johnson tells Parliament: "We will have a test, track and trace operation that will be world-beating and yes it will be in place by 1 June." He also says there will be 25,000 trackers who "will be able to cope with 10,000 new cases a day". Contact-tracing system is launched without a nationwide app. Anybody who has been in close contact with someone who has tested positive will have to self-isolate for 14 days. According to government figures, in the first week tracers contact 5,407 people with the virus. Business Minister Nadhim Zahawi says the app tested on the Isle of Wight will "be running as soon as we think it is robust". Speaking on BBC Question Time, the minister says: "I can't give you an exact date, it would be wrong for me to do so." Asked to confirm it would be rolled out nationwide this month, he says: "I'd like to think we'd be able to manage by this month, yes." Minister says the app ‘isn’t the priority’ Lord Bethell, the Minister for Innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care, says the app "isn’t the priority". Answering a question about the app from the Science and Technology Committee, the minister says: "We are seeking to get something going for the winter, but it isn't the priority for us at the moment." He declines to offer a launch date for the app. In a major U-turn, the UK ditches its version and shifts to a model based on technology provided by Apple and Google. The Apple-Google design is promoted as being more privacy-focused. However, it means epidemiologists will have access to less data.
But it soon became clear that using Bluetooth was tricky. Reports from Singapore suggested people were reluctant to download the app because it had to be kept open on the phone all the time, draining the battery.
Then on 10 April came a surprising announcement from Google and Apple. The two tech giants - on whose software virtually all the world's smartphones depend - said they were going to develop a system that would help Bluetooth contact-tracing apps work smoothly. But there was a catch - only privacy-focused apps would be allowed to use the platform.
Apple and Google favoured decentralised apps, where the matching between infected people and their list of contacts happened between their phones. The alternative was for the matching to be done on a central computer, owned by a health authority, which would end up storing lots of very sensitive information.
The app the NHS was developing was based on a centralised model, which the Oxford scientists felt was vital if the health service was to be able to monitor virus outbreaks properly.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Matt Hancock said Isle of Wight residents using the app "will be saving lives"
Two days later, with quite a fanfare, Health Secretary Matt Hancock unveiled the plans for the Covid-19 app, promising "all data will be handled according to the highest ethical and security standards, and would only be used for NHS care and research".
But immediately privacy campaigners, politicians and technology experts raised concerns. "I recognise the overwhelming force of the public health arguments for a centralised system, but I also have 25 years' experience of the NHS being incompetent at developing systems and repeatedly breaking their privacy promises," said Cambridge University's Prof Ross Anderson.
Yet the project was still gathering pace with the first trial of the app at RAF Leeming, in Yorkshire. The trial was held under artificial conditions, with servicemen and women placing phones adjacent to each other on tables to see what happened.
Meanwhile, privacy-conscious Germany became the latest country to switch its app to the decentralised model, using the Apple and Google system. It seemed that Apple had made it clear that it would not cooperate with a centralised app.
Michael Veale, a British academic working with a consortium developing decentralised apps, warned that the NHS app was on the wrong path, asking on Twitter "will the UK push ahead with an app that will not work on iPhones - which has devastated adoption in Singapore?"
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: What is contact tracing and how does it work?
But the UK pushed ahead with a trial in the Isle of Wight. As it got underway Mr Hancock told the public they had a "duty" to download the app when it became available and that it would be crucial in getting "our liberty back" as the lockdown was eased.
First sight of the app showed it was very simple, asking users whether they had a fever or a continuous cough. But any symptom alerts sent out to contacts merely echoed the standard "stay alert" advice - test results couldn't be entered into the app at this stage. It left many residents confused.
Still, the fact that the app was quickly downloaded by more than half of the island's smartphone users saw the government branding the trial a success.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times revealed that the government had hired a Swiss software developer to build a second app, using the Apple and Google technology. NHS insiders were quick to downplay the significance of this move - although one admitted "Downing Street is getting nervous".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Johnson: "Test, track and trace system in place in the UK by June 1"
Work continued on a second, more sophisticated version of the original app, which was again going to be tested in the Isle of Wight before a national rollout - though the original deadline of mid-May had been missed.
On 20 May, however, it became clear that the government's focus was switching to manual-contact tracing. The prime minister announced that a "world beating" tracing system would be in place by the beginning of June, though Number 10 stressed that the app's contribution to the system would come a bit later.
As May drew to a close the boss of the wider test and trace programme, Baroness Dido Harding, said the app would be the "cherry on the cake" of the project. It was no longer the cake itself.
By early June, more deadlines for the national release of the app had come and gone. Three weeks into the Isle of Wight trial residents were getting restless, with very little information on how it was going or when an updated version of the app was coming.
France launched its centralised Stop-Covid app, which had drawn heavy criticism from privacy campaigners, and digital minister Cedric O said 600,000 downloads in the first few hours was "a good start".
On 4 June, Business Minister Nadhim Zadhawi was coaxed into saying the app should be ready by the end of the month, but that was the last firm deadline that would be promised.
Singapore, which had continued to struggle to make its contact tracing app work, announced plans to give all citizens a wearable device in the hope that this would do a better job than a smartphone.
On 14 June, Germany became the biggest country to launch a decentralised app on the Apple/Google platform. It quickly outstripped France in terms of downloads with something approaching 10% of the population installing it.
By now the silence from the UK government about the NHS app was deafening. What was going on?
Around lunchtime on 18 June all became clear. The BBC broke the story that the government was abandoning the centralised app and moving to something based on Google and Apple's technology. Despite all the spin, the Isle of Wight trial had highlighted a disastrous flaw in the app - it failed to detect 96% of contacts with Apple iPhones.
The blame game has already begun. Mr Hancock and some of the scientists working with the NHS believe Apple should have been more cooperative. Technology experts and privacy campaigners say they warned months ago how this story would end.
Apple says it did not know the UK was working on a "hybrid" version of the NHS coronavirus contact-tracing app using tech it developed with Google.
Meanwhile, there is scant proof from anywhere around the world that smartphone apps using Bluetooth are an effective method of contact tracing. Back in March, it seemed that the hugely powerful devices most of us carry with us might help us emerge from this health crisis. Now it looks as though a human being on the end of a phone is a far better option.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53114251
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news_technology-53114251
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Coronavirus: First official analysis finds PPE failings - BBC News
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2020-06-12
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The National Audit Office identified shortcomings in PPE provision for health and care staff.
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Health
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The availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health and care staff both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic has become one of the most intensely debated issues of the crisis.
Doctors, nurses and care staff in many settings warned that supplies were running low and they were concerned about their safety.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has now published the first official assessment of the supply and distribution of PPE in England by government organisations.
It highlights shortcomings in the system, though the Department of Health and Social Care has said that parts of the report are "misleading".
The NAO report, on the preparedness of the NHS and social care in England, states that the only stockpile available to meet increased demand for PPE in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak was the one built up in anticipation of a pandemic flu crisis.
Crucially it did not contain gowns or visors. According to the NAO, the government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) recommended stockpiling gowns in June 2019.
The Department of Health told the NAO that "procurement of gowns was planned for early 2020".
The NAO report looks at the assumptions in Whitehall modelling for PPE requirements in a "worst case scenario".
Between mid March and early May, it says, the amount of face masks and clinical waste bags for use in health settings distributed from central stocks exceeded the modelled requirement but for all other items such as gowns, eye protectors and aprons it was lower.
For social care, the items distributed were all less than the modelled requirement, and with gloves and eye protectors it was below 10%.
The NAO adds that feedback from local providers revealed a large majority reporting that the PPE issue was having "a high or significant disruptive impact in their area across health and social care services".
The Department of Health's argument to the NAO was that NHS and social care organisations could purchase their own PPE to top up what was sent out from central stocks.
A spokesperson said: "We have delivered over 1.7 billion pieces of PPE and we continue to ensure supplies reach the frontline.
"The modelled PPE requirements presented in this report are theoretical worst case estimates - it is misleading to compare them to figures on centrally procured PPE which do not account for equipment supplied through other routes or existing local stocks."
The report paints a picture of confusion over the extent to which local NHS and care organisations were responsible for securing their own supplies of PPE at a time of global shortages in an unprecedented pandemic.
Central government opened up a dedicated central supply route in early April but for a while officials struggled to secure adequate stocks.
On May 1, the Department of Health wrote to NHS trusts saying PPE was being centrally managed and that hospitals should only do their own sourcing from new local suppliers.
By the middle of that month, says the NAO, central supplies of PPE were meeting demand from the health and care sectors.
Public Accounts Committee chair Meg Hiller said the government had "squandered the last opportunity to add to the central PPE stockpile, even after the NHS had gone to the highest level of alert."
She added: "Care homes were at the back of the queue for both PPE and testing so only got a small fraction of what they needed from central government. Residents and staff were an afterthought yet again: out of sight and out of mind, with devastating consequences."
The PPE debate wont go away.
The BBC's recent Panorama investigation highlighted some of the issues considered in the NAO report.
It may take a while for the full story to emerge including an assessment of how the UK authorities handled PPE procurement at a time when every leading healthcare system was struggling to acquire supplies. The NAO report is certainly an interesting early contribution to that debate.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53028509
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news_health-53028509
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Penny Lane signs defaced in Liverpool over slavery claims - BBC News
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2020-06-12
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The signs on the street immortalised in a Beatles song in 1967 were attacked overnight.
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Liverpool
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The road signs on Penny Lane were attacked overnight on Thursday
Road signs on Penny Lane in Liverpool have been defaced over claims they are linked to slave merchant James Penny.
The markers had the word Penny blacked out and the word racist written above them on Thursday night.
The city's International Slavery Museum said it was not certain whether the street, which was immortalised in a song by The Beatles in 1967, was named after the 18th Century slave merchant.
A spokeswoman said "more research is needed" to clarify the name's origin.
City tour guide Jackie Spencer, who runs Blue Badge Tour Guides, said she was "absolutely livid".
"It's pure ignorance," she said.
"We've researched it and it has nothing to do with slavery. James Penny was a slave trader, but he had nothing to do with the Penny Lane area."
Local resident Emmett O'Neill, who has helped clean the paint from the signs, said he thought it was "an idiotic act".
"If you want something removed, there's ways and means," he said.
"Defacing Penny Lane signs isn't going to change a lot [and] it's the wrong way to go about things."
Several of the road's signs already had a large amount of graffiti on them, much of it Beatles-related, with one even bearing the signature of Sir Paul McCartney.
Liverpool's International Slavery Museum said the link to James Penny was "not conclusive"
Liverpool City Council was criticised by historian Laurence Westgaph on Monday for "not doing enough" to acknowledge the city's links with slavery.
Mr Westgaph said he understood the actions, but added residents should "talk to the council and demand certain things that should have been changed years ago".
The city's mayor, Joe Anderson, said he was "frustrated" by the "defacement of our street signs".
"[It] does nothing to further advance the argument and the debate around Black Lives Matter here in Liverpool," he said.
"It isn't just about the artefacts and street names, it's also about how we change the fundamental things that are causing disadvantage and inequality within our city."
Liverpool was Europe's most used slave port by 1740 and many of its streets have names linked to slavery.
However, the International Slavery Museum, which includes Penny Lane in its display of street names linked to slavery, said the evidence linking Penny Lane to James Penny was "not conclusive".
"We are actively carrying out research on this particular question and will re-evaluate our display and change if required," a spokeswoman added.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-52992669
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news_uk-england-merseyside-52992669
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Coronavirus: What went wrong with the UK's contact tracing app? - BBC News
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2020-06-20
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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After months of work the UK has ditched the way its current coronavirus-tracing app works. So what went wrong?
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Technology
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After months of work, the UK has ditched the way its coronavirus-tracing app works, prompting a blame game between the government and two of the world's biggest tech firms. So what went wrong?
At the end of March, I got a text from a senior figure in the UK's technology industry. This person said they were helping the NHS "on a very substantial project that will launch in days and potentially save hundreds of thousands of British lives."
That was the first I knew of the plan to build a contact tracing app, a project that soon appeared to be at the very centre of the government's strategy to beat coronavirus and help us all emerge from lockdown.
The tech luminary had somehow assumed that I could be an adviser to the project - I made it clear that could not be my role but I was very interested in following its progress.
Now, nearly three months on, after missing deadline after deadline, there has been a radical change in direction. The app that has been developed so far is being scrapped, and a new approach will be tried based on a system created by Apple and Google.
But there is no guarantee when, if ever, this will be rolled out. So what went wrong?
When the team from the NHSX digital division was assembled they were told they were engaged on a vital mission. According to a presentation the team was shown the Covid-19 app would have four aims:
Once installed on a user's phone, the app would use Bluetooth to keep a record of other people with whom they came into close contact - as long as they too had installed the app. Then when someone tested positive for the virus, alerts would be sent to their close contacts of recent days telling them to go into quarantine.
The epidemiological expertise was provided by a team of Oxford scientists who had argued that there was an urgent need to identify people who were spreading the virus without knowing. "Very fast contact tracing was likely to be essential," says one of the Oxford team, Dr David Bonsall. "And smartphones have the technological capability to speed up that process."
But using the Bluetooth connection on smartphones to detect contacts was untested technology. Still, the team was inspired by Singapore, which had released its Trace Together app using that system.
Heath Secretary Matt Hancock announces the development of "a new NHS app for contact tracing". The app is launched on the Isle of Wight. It is downloaded by 60,000 people, under half the population of the island, over the following 10 days. Mr Hancock tells BBC Breakfast that if the trial on the Isle of Wight is successful, the app will be rolled out nationwide by the middle of May. He also says the public would have a "duty" to download the app and that 60% of people in the country would have to do so for the system to function. PM says test, track and trace will be ‘world-beating’ Boris Johnson says the system will be in place by 1 June Prime Minister Boris Johnson tells Parliament: "We will have a test, track and trace operation that will be world-beating and yes it will be in place by 1 June." He also says there will be 25,000 trackers who "will be able to cope with 10,000 new cases a day". Contact-tracing system is launched without a nationwide app. Anybody who has been in close contact with someone who has tested positive will have to self-isolate for 14 days. According to government figures, in the first week tracers contact 5,407 people with the virus. Business Minister Nadhim Zahawi says the app tested on the Isle of Wight will "be running as soon as we think it is robust". Speaking on BBC Question Time, the minister says: "I can't give you an exact date, it would be wrong for me to do so." Asked to confirm it would be rolled out nationwide this month, he says: "I'd like to think we'd be able to manage by this month, yes." Minister says the app ‘isn’t the priority’ Lord Bethell, the Minister for Innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care, says the app "isn’t the priority". Answering a question about the app from the Science and Technology Committee, the minister says: "We are seeking to get something going for the winter, but it isn't the priority for us at the moment." He declines to offer a launch date for the app. In a major U-turn, the UK ditches its version and shifts to a model based on technology provided by Apple and Google. The Apple-Google design is promoted as being more privacy-focused. However, it means epidemiologists will have access to less data.
But it soon became clear that using Bluetooth was tricky. Reports from Singapore suggested people were reluctant to download the app because it had to be kept open on the phone all the time, draining the battery.
Then on 10 April came a surprising announcement from Google and Apple. The two tech giants - on whose software virtually all the world's smartphones depend - said they were going to develop a system that would help Bluetooth contact-tracing apps work smoothly. But there was a catch - only privacy-focused apps would be allowed to use the platform.
Apple and Google favoured decentralised apps, where the matching between infected people and their list of contacts happened between their phones. The alternative was for the matching to be done on a central computer, owned by a health authority, which would end up storing lots of very sensitive information.
The app the NHS was developing was based on a centralised model, which the Oxford scientists felt was vital if the health service was to be able to monitor virus outbreaks properly.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Matt Hancock said Isle of Wight residents using the app "will be saving lives"
Two days later, with quite a fanfare, Health Secretary Matt Hancock unveiled the plans for the Covid-19 app, promising "all data will be handled according to the highest ethical and security standards, and would only be used for NHS care and research".
But immediately privacy campaigners, politicians and technology experts raised concerns. "I recognise the overwhelming force of the public health arguments for a centralised system, but I also have 25 years' experience of the NHS being incompetent at developing systems and repeatedly breaking their privacy promises," said Cambridge University's Prof Ross Anderson.
Yet the project was still gathering pace with the first trial of the app at RAF Leeming, in Yorkshire. The trial was held under artificial conditions, with servicemen and women placing phones adjacent to each other on tables to see what happened.
Meanwhile, privacy-conscious Germany became the latest country to switch its app to the decentralised model, using the Apple and Google system. It seemed that Apple had made it clear that it would not cooperate with a centralised app.
Michael Veale, a British academic working with a consortium developing decentralised apps, warned that the NHS app was on the wrong path, asking on Twitter "will the UK push ahead with an app that will not work on iPhones - which has devastated adoption in Singapore?"
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: What is contact tracing and how does it work?
But the UK pushed ahead with a trial in the Isle of Wight. As it got underway Mr Hancock told the public they had a "duty" to download the app when it became available and that it would be crucial in getting "our liberty back" as the lockdown was eased.
First sight of the app showed it was very simple, asking users whether they had a fever or a continuous cough. But any symptom alerts sent out to contacts merely echoed the standard "stay alert" advice - test results couldn't be entered into the app at this stage. It left many residents confused.
Still, the fact that the app was quickly downloaded by more than half of the island's smartphone users saw the government branding the trial a success.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times revealed that the government had hired a Swiss software developer to build a second app, using the Apple and Google technology. NHS insiders were quick to downplay the significance of this move - although one admitted "Downing Street is getting nervous".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Johnson: "Test, track and trace system in place in the UK by June 1"
Work continued on a second, more sophisticated version of the original app, which was again going to be tested in the Isle of Wight before a national rollout - though the original deadline of mid-May had been missed.
On 20 May, however, it became clear that the government's focus was switching to manual-contact tracing. The prime minister announced that a "world beating" tracing system would be in place by the beginning of June, though Number 10 stressed that the app's contribution to the system would come a bit later.
As May drew to a close the boss of the wider test and trace programme, Baroness Dido Harding, said the app would be the "cherry on the cake" of the project. It was no longer the cake itself.
By early June, more deadlines for the national release of the app had come and gone. Three weeks into the Isle of Wight trial residents were getting restless, with very little information on how it was going or when an updated version of the app was coming.
France launched its centralised Stop-Covid app, which had drawn heavy criticism from privacy campaigners, and digital minister Cedric O said 600,000 downloads in the first few hours was "a good start".
On 4 June, Business Minister Nadhim Zadhawi was coaxed into saying the app should be ready by the end of the month, but that was the last firm deadline that would be promised.
Singapore, which had continued to struggle to make its contact tracing app work, announced plans to give all citizens a wearable device in the hope that this would do a better job than a smartphone.
On 14 June, Germany became the biggest country to launch a decentralised app on the Apple/Google platform. It quickly outstripped France in terms of downloads with something approaching 10% of the population installing it.
By now the silence from the UK government about the NHS app was deafening. What was going on?
Around lunchtime on 18 June all became clear. The BBC broke the story that the government was abandoning the centralised app and moving to something based on Google and Apple's technology. Despite all the spin, the Isle of Wight trial had highlighted a disastrous flaw in the app - it failed to detect 96% of contacts with Apple iPhones.
The blame game has already begun. Mr Hancock and some of the scientists working with the NHS believe Apple should have been more cooperative. Technology experts and privacy campaigners say they warned months ago how this story would end.
Apple says it did not know the UK was working on a "hybrid" version of the NHS coronavirus contact-tracing app using tech it developed with Google.
Meanwhile, there is scant proof from anywhere around the world that smartphone apps using Bluetooth are an effective method of contact tracing. Back in March, it seemed that the hugely powerful devices most of us carry with us might help us emerge from this health crisis. Now it looks as though a human being on the end of a phone is a far better option.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53114251
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news_technology-53114251
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Iraq war: All but one war crimes claim against British soldiers dropped - BBC News
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2020-06-02
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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There were more than 3,000 war crimes allegations made against British troops relating to the conflict.
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UK
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British soldiers who have been accused of committing war crimes in Iraq are unlikely to face criminal prosecution.
Independent investigators were asked to look at thousands of allegations made against the British military after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
But the director of the Service Prosecution Authority (SPA) said just one remaining case was being examined.
Andrew Cayley said the "low level" of offending and lack of credible evidence had led most cases to be dismissed.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Law in Action programme, Mr Cayley said most of those cases were sifted out at a very early stage because of the lack of credible evidence or because the offending was "at such a very low level".
More than 1,000 cases were made by former lawyer Phil Shiner and his firm Public Interest Lawyers (PIL). In 2017 he was struck off as a solicitor after a tribunal found him guilty of misconduct and dishonesty, including false accounts about the actions of UK soldiers.
Mr Cayley said seven remaining cases had been referred to the SPA, but in six of those cases it was concluded that no charges should be brought.
One case is still being considered, but Mr Cayley admitted that it is now "quite possible" that none of the original allegations will lead to a prosecution.
Mr Cayley also said he is confident a separate investigation being conducted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague will conclude this year without further action being taken.
In 2014, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda re-opened a preliminary examination of cases involving alleged British abuses in Iraq.
Mr Cayley said he was "convinced" that examination would soon be completed without any further action.
He said: "My sense is these matters are coming to a conclusion; she will close the preliminary examination this year in respect of Iraq and the United Kingdom."
The cloud hanging over British service personnel accused of wrongdoing has already left a bitter taste and contributed to political pressure to do more to protect soldiers on the battlefield from criminal and civil prosecution for alleged actions which took place years ago.
Earlier this year the government presented a bill promising to curb historic allegations and tackle what it calls "vexatious claims" against armed forces deployed overseas.
The bill proposes a five-year time limit on any criminal prosecution unless compelling new evidence is brought to light.
In a statement, the Ministry of Defence said it was strongly opposed to service personnel and veterans being subjected to the threat of repeated investigations and potential prosecutions.
Veterans minister Johnny Mercer said the bill was introduced "to reduce the uncertainty currently faced by service personnel and veterans in relation to historic allegations" - and aimed to make sure "that we never end up in a situation like this again".
But human rights groups and some lawyers have already expressed concern - saying the legislation could place the military above the law, and undermine existing international conventions.
David Greene, vice-president of the Law Society, said a balance must be struck to ensure charges are only brought when warranted.
But he added: "The argument behind time limits for British service personnel deployed overseas is that there has been a rise in historic prosecutions. Based on Andrew Cayley's comments the evidence for such an assertion is lacking."
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52885615
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news_uk-52885615
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Amber Heard: Johnny Depp 'threatened to kill me many times' - BBC News
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2020-07-21
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Amber Heard claims ex-husband Johnny Depp "was pressing so hard on my neck I couldn't breathe".
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UK
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Amber Heard and Johnny Depp were at London's High Court for day 10 of the case
Actor Johnny Depp "threatened to kill" ex-wife Amber Heard "many times", the US actress has claimed.
She described a "three-day hostage situation" during which she claimed Mr Depp was on a "drug and alcohol binge".
Mr Depp, 57, is suing the publisher of the Sun over an article that referred to him as a "wife beater" - but the newspaper maintains it was accurate.
He denies 14 allegations of domestic violence on which News Group Newspapers is relying for its defence.
Ms Heard took to the witness stand at London's High Court on the 10th day of the case, and her written witness statement was also submitted to the court.
In it, she accused Mr Depp of verbal and physical abuse including screaming, swearing, issuing threats, punching, slapping, kicking, head-butting and choking her, as well as "extremely controlling and intimidating behaviour".
"Some incidents were so severe that I was afraid he was going to kill me, either intentionally, or just by losing control and going too far," she said.
Under cross-examination, Ms Heard later said that although there were times when she "lost her cool" with Mr Depp, it was only in self-defence.
Ms Heard, 34, claimed Mr Depp had a "unique ability to use his charisma to convey a certain impression of reality" and "he is very good at manipulating people".
"He would blame all his actions on a self-created third party instead of himself, which he often called 'the monster'.
A court artist sketch shows Amber Heard giving evidence, as ex-husband Johnny Depp looks on
She said at the beginning of their relationship, he would be "intensely affectionate, warm and charming" and it felt like she was "dating a king".
Ms Heard, who was married to the film star from 2015 to 2017, said Mr Depp had pursued her romantically while they were filming The Rum Diary in 2009 but nothing happened between them then because she was in a relationship.
She said they next saw each other whilst promoting the same film in 2011, which was when their "romantic relationship" began.
Ms Heard said the pre-nuptial agreement was left on Mr Depp's team's desk and "no-one did anything"
Her witness statement added: "When Johnny puts his attention on you, with all his intensity and darkness, it is unlike anything I've ever experienced.
"When I say he was dark, he had a violent and dark way of speaking: the way he talked about our relationship being 'dead or alive' and telling me that death was the only way out of the relationship."
In her statement, Ms Heard also described visiting Mr Depp in Australia in March 2015, while he was filming Pirates of the Caribbean, and described the trip as "like a three-day hostage situation".
She said during this time, there were "extreme acts" of "psychological, physical, emotional and other forms of violence".
"It is the worst thing I have ever been through. I was left with an injured lip and nose, and cuts on my arms."
She claimed Mr Depp grabbed her neck, shoved her against the fridge, tore off her nightgown and pushed her against a bar.
"He was pressing so hard on my neck I couldn't breathe. I was trying to tell him that I couldn't breathe. I remember thinking he was going to kill me in that moment," she said.
Johnny Depp is bringing the case against the Sun over an article published in 2018
She added that she later found her nightgown, saying: "There were pieces of it wrapped round something and I realised it was the steak I had planned to cook.
"He had also gone around and painted on all my clothes in the closet," she said.
The court previously heard from Mr Depp, who said the top of his finger was severed when Ms Heard threw a vodka bottle at him during the trip to Australia.
In her statement, Ms Heard said: "I didn't actually see the finger being cut off, but I was worried that it had happened the night before.
"I figured it might have happened when he was smashing the phone on the wall by the fridge."
Ms Heard also said Mr Depp accused her of having affairs with fellow actors, and claimed she had to justify to him why she accepted film roles.
"He accused me of having affairs with each of my co-stars, movie after movie: Eddie Redmayne, James Franco, Jim Sturgess, Kevin Costner, Liam Hemsworth, Billy-Bob Thornton, Channing Tatum; even women co-stars like Kelly Garner.
"He also accused me of having affairs with stars I auditioned with, like Leonardo DiCaprio. He would taunt me about it - especially when he was drunk or high - and had derogatory nicknames for every one of my male co-stars he considered a sexual threat.
"For example, Leonardo DiCaprio was 'pumpkin-head'. Channing Tatum was 'potato-head'."
Earlier, from the witness stand, Ms Heard told the court that she had been subjected to repeated and regular physical violence by the time of the couple's marriage in 2015.
Mr Depp's lawyer, Eleanor Laws QC, asked her about her allegations regarding an argument in January 2015, and suggested it was over discussions with lawyers about a pre-nuptial agreement between herself and Mr Depp.
"There was an argument in a hotel room in Tokyo that resulted in Johnny kneeling on my back and hitting me on the back of the head," Ms Heard told the court.
She added: "But then Johnny was also accusing me of having an affair with a co-star and that is what led to the actual argument."
Ms Heard said Mr Depp had told her he did not want a pre-nuptial agreement but it was his sister, Christi Dembrowski, who wanted the couple to get one.
Ms Heard added that she had hired a lawyer who worked on a draft pre-nuptial agreement and it was sent to Mr Depp's team but never signed.
She denied that she was interested in Mr Depp's money, saying: "I never had been, I never was."
She said she did not have a "problem" with controlling her temper, when challenged by Mr Depp's lawyer, who also suggested that Ms Heard would have "outbursts of rage and anger".
Ms Heard said "there were times when, yes, I lost my cool with Johnny in our fights..."
Ms Laws referred to a medical note written by a nurse, Erin Boerum, who wrote that Ms Heard had reported "experiencing increased anxiety and agitation and has had several outbursts of anger and rage", and also that she was "nervous about being alone while husband is working on movie set in London (and) dealing with feelings of insecurity and jealousy".
Asked by Ms Laws if she felt "insecure and jealous" when she wasn't in Mr Depp's presence, Ms Heard said she had expressed "concerns" about his travel because it was a "trigger" for him, when they were apart.
Ms Laws asked Ms Heard if she ever "got violent" with Mr Depp, to which the actress replied "no", adding that he put her in situations where she was faced with "unimaginable frustrations and difficulties, often that were life-threatening to me".
She added that she would "try to defend myself when he got serious and when I thought my life was threatened, but I was never violent towards him".
Ms Heard said it was "years into the relationship" before she tried to defend herself; adding "before that" she had "just checked out".
Ms Heard was then played a recording of a conversation between her and Mr Depp, in which Mr Depp can be heard to say that he is not the one who "throws pots".
In the recording, she can be heard saying that she has "thrown pots and pans". When questioned by Ms Laws on this admission, she said she threw things "only to escape" Mr Depp.
The lawyer put it to Ms Heard that she was "not injured at all" as a result of anything that happened on the night of 21 May 2016.
Ms Heard had alleged that Mr Depp had thrown her mobile phone at her face, hit her in the eye, pulled her hair and grabbed her face.
Ms Laws suggested that Mr Depp "didn't cause any damage whatsoever in that penthouse", to which Ms Heard said the actor had "caused damage to multiple apartments and my face... he did a significant amount of damage to the property".
Ms Laws showed Ms Heard a photograph taken days after the 21 May incident, and after Ms Heard was said to have had "a four-hour meeting with your legal team".
The lawyer said: "It doesn't appear as if you have got any marks on your face at all there".
Ms Heard said the photo was a "paparazzi shot with long lenses", adding: "If I went out in Los Angeles, I would wear makeup, except for my court appearance."
Ms Laws then suggested that, in earlier photos which are said to show injuries, she had put bruises on "yourself through makeup or lighting or any other means - it wasn't any injury from Mr Depp".
Ms Heard said she disagreed "wholeheartedly" with this, adding that she had been forced to "cover up many bruises" as it was "embarrassing" to be seen with them.
The lawyer added that "far from being petrified of Mr Depp", Ms Heard had, between 21 May and 27 May, contacted Mr Depp on the phone.
Ms Heard she had been "attempting to", and Ms Laws said: "You were not displaying any signs of being fearful of him in those texts." Ms Heard replied: "No."
Ms Laws suggested that, by the time Ms Heard and Mr Depp met in July 2016 in San Francisco, "you were no longer petrified of him".
Ms Heard denied this. She alluded to her earlier statement that it was "the monster" in the relationship that she was "terrified of" and not "Johnny" whom she "loved".
The libel case centres on an article published on the Sun's website in April 2018 headlined: "Gone Potty: How can JK Rowling be 'genuinely happy' casting wife beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film?".
The article related to allegations made by Ms Heard. The hearing is expected to last for three weeks.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53472114
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news_uk-53472114
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