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438_0 | Facebook is finalising plans to launch its own crypto-currency next year. It is planning to set up a digital payments system in about a dozen countries by the first quarter of 2020. The social media giant wants to start testing its crypto-currency, which has been referred to internally as GlobalCoin, by the end of this year. Facebook is expected to outline plans in more detail this summer, and has already spoken to Bank of England governor Mark Carney. Founder Mark Zuckerberg met Mr Carney last month to discuss the opportunities and risks involved in launching a crypto-currency. Facebook has also sought advice on operational and regulatory issues from officials at the US Treasury. The firm is also in talks with money transfer firms including Western Union as it looks for cheaper and faster ways for people without a bank account to send and receive money. Facebook wants to create a digital currency that provides affordable and secure ways of making payments, regardless of whether users have a bank account. The social networking site, which owns WhatsApp and Instagram, is hoping to disrupt existing networks by breaking down financial barriers, competing with banks and reducing consumer costs. Nicknamed Project Libra, Facebook's plans for a digital currency network were first reported last December. The project will see it join forces with banks and brokers that will enable people to change dollars and other international currencies into its digital coins. A small group of co-founders are expected to launch the Swiss-based association in the coming weeks. Facebook is also reportedly in talks with a number of online merchants to accept the currency as payment in return for lower transaction fees. Virtual currencies can be used to pay for things in the real world, such as a hotel room, food or even a house. Digital tokens are held in online wallets, and can be sent anonymously between users. Crypto-currencies run on blockchain technology. A blockchain is a ledger of blocks of information, such as transactions or agreements, that are stored across a network of computers. This information is stored chronologically, can be viewed by a community of users, and is not usually managed by a central authority such as a bank or a government. The concept was designed to ensure security and anonymity for users, by preventing tampering or hijacking of the network. Facebook has come under fire in recent years over its handling of users' personal data, and regulators are likely to examine the launch closely. Earlier this month, the US Senate and Banking committee wrote an open letter to Mr Zuckerberg questioning how the currency will work, what consumer protection will be offered and how data will be secured. Facebook has also discussed the process of identity checks and how to reduce money laundering risks with the US Treasury. It is believed that Facebook and its partners want to prevent wild swings in the coin's value by pegging it to a basket of established currencies, including the US dollar, euro and Japanese yen. It's not the first time Facebook has dabbled in digital currencies. A decade ago, it created Facebook Credits, a virtual currency that enabled people to purchase items in apps on the social networking site. However, Facebook ended the project after less than two years after it failed to gain traction. The company will also have to navigate a myriad of regulations in the countries it wants to launch in. India, a rumoured target for Facebook, has recently clamped down on digital currencies. However, the biggest test is likely to be whether people will trust the social networking giant enough to start changing their cash for the digital coin. Facebook is in the initial phase of engaging with governments, central banks and regulators, and insiders admit that launching any crypto currency network by the start of next year is ambitious. Facebook, Western Union and the Bank of England declined to comment. The biggest attraction of digital currencies to banks and big firms is the technology that underpins them. Blockchain technology can help to slash the time and cost of sending money across borders by bypassing banking networks. Lord King, the former Governor of the Bank of England, warned two decades ago that central banks could become "irrelevant" if people started to use digital currencies as pounds and pennies are used today. Blockchain expert David Gerard said that Facebook would gain access to valuable spending data by creating its own payment system. However, he questioned why the social media giant needed to mint its own crypto-currency to harvest that data. Instead, he said, Facebook could create a platform like PayPal, which allows users to transfer traditional currencies. Crypto-currencies are vulnerable to fluctuations in value, which Gerard said could create a barrier to the success of Facebook's so-called GlobalCoin. "Normal people don't want to deal with a currency that's going up and down all the time," he explained. But Garrick Hileman, a researcher at London School of Economics, said the GlobalCoin project could be one of the most significant events in the short history of crypto-currencies. Conservatively, he estimated that around 30 million people use crypto-currencies today. That compares to Facebook's 2.4 billion monthly users. | How will Facebook's crypto-currency work? | 867 | Facebook wants to create a digital currency that provides affordable and secure ways of making payments, regardless of whether users have a bank account. The social networking site, which owns WhatsApp and Instagram, is hoping to disrupt existing networks by breaking down financial barriers, competing with banks and reducing consumer costs. Nicknamed Project Libra, Facebook's plans for a digital currency network were first reported last December. The project will see it join forces with banks and brokers that will enable people to change dollars and other international currencies into its digital coins. A small group of co-founders are expected to launch the Swiss-based association in the coming weeks. Facebook is also reportedly in talks with a number of online merchants to accept the currency as payment in return for lower transaction fees. | 0.817023 | 0.81918 | 0.818101 |
6458_2 | President Donald Trump says he plans to end "birthright citizenship" in the US by executive order. Can he do that? In an interview with Axios, President Trump claimed that he was working on an end to birthright citizenship, the 150-year-old principle that says anyone born on US soil is an American citizen. "It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't," Mr Trump said. "You can definitely do it with an Act of Congress. But now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order." Mr Trump claimed that such an order was currently in the works, and not long after, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham tweeted: "I plan to introduce legislation along the same lines as the proposed executive order from President @realDonaldTrump." The president's comments have ignited a furious debate about whether or not the president has the unilateral power to do such a thing, and whether the underlying premise - that birthright citizenship is exploited by undocumented immigrants - has any merit. The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US constitution establishes the principle of "birthright citizenship": "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." Immigration hardliners argue that the policy is a "great magnet for illegal immigration", and that it encourages undocumented pregnant women to cross the border in order to give birth, an act that has been pejoratively called "birth tourism" or having an "anchor baby". "The baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all those benefits. It's ridiculous," Mr Trump told Axios. "It has to end." A 2015 Pew Research Center study found that 60% of Americans opposed ending birthright citizenship, while 37% were in favour. The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868, after the close of the Civil War. The Thirteenth Amendment had abolished slavery in 1865, while the Fourteenth settled the question of the citizenship of freed, American-born former slaves. Previous Supreme Court decisions, like Dred Scott v Sandford in 1857, had decided that African Americans could never be US citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment overrode that. In 1898, the US Supreme Court affirmed that birthright citizenship applies to the children of immigrants in the case of Wong Kim Ark v United States. Wong was a 24-year-old child of Chinese immigrants who was born in the US, but denied re-entry when he returned from a visit to China. Wong successfully argued that because he was born in the US, his parent's immigration status did not impact the application of the Fourteenth Amendment. "Wong Kim Ark vs United States affirmed that regardless of race or the immigration status of one's parents, all persons born in the United States were entitled to all of the rights that citizenship offered," writes Erika Lee, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. "The court has not re-examined this issue since then." Most legal scholars agree that President Trump cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order. "He's doing something that's going to upset a lot of people, but ultimately this will be decided by the courts," says Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional expert and University of Virginia Law School professor. "This is not something he can decide on his own." Mr Prakash says that while the president can order the employees of federal agencies to interpret citizenship more narrowly - agents with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for example - that will inevitably invite legal challenges from people whose citizenship is being denied. That could lead to a lengthy court battle that could ultimately wind up at the US Supreme Court. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan was blunt in rejecting the president's claim he could act unilaterally. "You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order," he told Kentucky radio station WVLK. However, Martha S Jones, author of Birthright Citizens, wrote on Twitter that the Supreme Court has not directly addressed whether or not the children of non-citizens or undocumented immigrants should automatically become citizens at birth. "Scotus [Supreme Court of the United States] could distinguish from Wong Kim Ark on the facts," Ms Jones writes. "Wong's parents were authorised or we might say legal immigrants. Their presence in the US was authorised." Mr Prakash agrees. "People who are on a tourist visa or here without permission... their children are automatically given birthright citizenship," he says. "That's the way it's been read in modern times even though there's been no definitive Supreme Court pronouncement on that." A constitutional amendment could do away with birthright citizenship, but that would require a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and approval by three quarters of US states. Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Washington Donald Trump's decision to once again push for an end to birthright citizenship - which he now says can be done with a stroke of his presidential pen - should be seen in the context of next week's mid-term elections. As with the White House announcement of more than 5,000 troops dispatched to the US border, this appears to be another effort to focus American attention on the immigration issue. Mr Trump made a hard-line immigration stance a central part of his 2016 presidential campaign and views it as one of the reasons he prevailed. Now, in the electoral home stretch that could determine the success of the second half of his four-year presidential term, Mr Trump is reaching again for a familiar handhold. A poll conducted in 2017 shows a majority of the public supported birthright citizenship, including for undocumented migrants, but 30% were opposed. Even if those numbers haven't changed, convincing that third of the American public that the president is fighting for them - and could get what they want if Republicans hold the Congress - might be enough to tip the balance the president's way in key races next Tuesday. "This has nothing to do with elections," Mr Trump said in a recent interview. The timing of these efforts, however, is hard to ignore. In his remarks to Axios, Trump falsely claimed that the United States is the only country that has birthright citizenship. In fact, more than 30 countries - including Canada, Mexico, Malaysia and Lesotho - practise automatic "jus soli", or "right of the soil" without restriction. Other countries, like the UK and Australia, allow for a modified version where citizenship is automatically granted if one parent is a citizen or permanent resident. Nor is the United States the only country where the practice has come under fire. In August, delegates at the national convention for Canada's centre-right federal Conservatives voted to end birthright citizenship for children unless one parent is either Canadian or a permanent resident. Following the vote by the grassroots membership, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said the party would look into developing a more targeted policy addressing the issue of so-called "birth tourism". According to the Pew Research Center, there were 275,000 babies born to unauthorised immigrant parents in the US in 2014, and 4.7 million US-born children under the age of 18 living with at least one parent who is undocumented. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, births to unauthorised immigrant parents steadily rose before peaking in 2006, and have declined since then. Although Pew does not have exact numbers on the countries of origin of these parents, Mark Lopez, Director of Global Migration and Demography, says that three-quarters of unauthorised immigrants in the US are from countries in Latin America. "Hispanics will make up the majority of these children born to unauthorized immigrant parents," he says. However, he adds that since we do not know how Mr Trump might write his executive order, the children of visa-holders or other temporary residents may also be impacted. Reporting by Jessica Lussenhop | Can Trump end birthright citizenship by executive order? | 3,094 | Most legal scholars agree that President Trump cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order. "He's doing something that's going to upset a lot of people, but ultimately this will be decided by the courts," says Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional expert and University of Virginia Law School professor. "This is not something he can decide on his own." Mr Prakash says that while the president can order the employees of federal agencies to interpret citizenship more narrowly - agents with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for example - that will inevitably invite legal challenges from people whose citizenship is being denied. That could lead to a lengthy court battle that could ultimately wind up at the US Supreme Court. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan was blunt in rejecting the president's claim he could act unilaterally. "You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order," he told Kentucky radio station WVLK. However, Martha S Jones, author of Birthright Citizens, wrote on Twitter that the Supreme Court has not directly addressed whether or not the children of non-citizens or undocumented immigrants should automatically become citizens at birth. "Scotus [Supreme Court of the United States] could distinguish from Wong Kim Ark on the facts," Ms Jones writes. "Wong's parents were authorised or we might say legal immigrants. Their presence in the US was authorised." Mr Prakash agrees. "People who are on a tourist visa or here without permission... their children are automatically given birthright citizenship," he says. "That's the way it's been read in modern times even though there's been no definitive Supreme Court pronouncement on that." A constitutional amendment could do away with birthright citizenship, but that would require a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and approval by three quarters of US states. | 0.816725 | 0.794364 | 0.805544 |
7116_3 | Seven months and nine days ago, 1.4 million people in Ireland voted to remove its anti-abortion laws. What (Taoiseach) Irish PM Leo Varadkar called a "quiet revolution", had culminated with a day when the Eighth Amendment was repealed. Irish Health Minister Simon Harris hailed the passing of the legislation as a "new era for Irish women". This new era began on Tuesday, when abortion services in Ireland were opened for the first time. But this new era is not without its challenges, as many Irish medical groups have warned. As of 1 January 2019, Irish abortion services are being provided by Ireland's health service through GPs, family planning services, maternity units and hospitals across the country. Since last year's referendum, the law in Ireland now allows for abortion in the following cases: - Up to 12 weeks of pregnancy - Where there is a risk to the life or of serious harm to the health of the pregnant person - Where there is a condition likely to lead to the death of the foetus before or shortly after birth Abortion care is being provided free of charge for people normally living in Ireland. There are no official details on how many abortions have taken place since the introduction of the new services on Tuesday. A spokesperson for Ireland's Health Service Executive (HSE) said that its new unplanned pregnancy support service My Options had received "a steady stream of calls" since opening at 09:00 local time on 1 January. Not yet. Ireland has 19 maternity units, but only nine are currently providing abortion services. These are: - National Maternity Hospital in Dublin - Midland Regional Hospital in Westmeath - Rotunda Hospital in Dublin - Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Meath - University Hospital, Galway - Mayo University Hospital - University Maternity Hospital in Limerick - Cork University Maternity Hospital - University Hospital Waterford It is expected that other hospitals will begin to provide abortion care in the near future. The HSE will provide information to women and to healthcare professionals about where and how services are available as they start providing the service. Some medical groups in Ireland have voiced concerns over the January deadline. Dr Maitiu O'Tuathail, president of the National Association of General Practitioners (NAGP), told BBC News NI about 3 to 5% of GPs had signed up to deliver abortion services. "There remains a lot of uncertainty for GPs around the provision of abortion services in Ireland," he said. "GPs are being asked to operate without updated Medical Council guidelines, which is problematic. "The access to ultrasonography is patchy across the country and will remain so for the foreseeable future. "Finally, the services and medical back-up that maternity hospitals will be able to provide on a site-by-site basis remains unclear. "It would have been preferable, if these uncertainties had been resolved prior to, and not during the roll out of abortion services. "We should strive for the best and safest service possible, anything less simply isn't good enough." A spokesperson for the HSE said it had agreed an approach with GPs whereby details of GPs taking part in providing abortion care will not be published. Details are provided directly to people who need them, through the executive's new My Options helpline. "We are satisfied that there is already a good geographic spread of GPs taking part, enough to meet the needs of people who may need to access the service," said the spokesperson. "Currently 179 GPs have signed the contract and each day more GPs are signing up." The Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is to hold an emergency general meeting on the implementation of the new abortion services, particularly on the safety and readiness of these services. A date for this meeting is yet to be set. In October, the masters of the three Dublin maternity hospitals wrote to Mr Harris expressing concerns about the suggested commencement date, which has now passed. The masters of the Rotunda Hospital, Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital and the National Maternity Hospital said the date was "unrealistic" for the full range of abortion services. Both the Rotunda and National Maternity Hospital are now listed as abortion service providers. | Can you access abortion services in all of Ireland's maternity units? | 1,453 | Not yet. Ireland has 19 maternity units, but only nine are currently providing abortion services. These are: - National Maternity Hospital in Dublin - Midland Regional Hospital in Westmeath - Rotunda Hospital in Dublin - Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Meath - University Hospital, Galway - Mayo University Hospital - University Maternity Hospital in Limerick - Cork University Maternity Hospital - University Hospital Waterford It is expected that other hospitals will begin to provide abortion care in the near future. The HSE will provide information to women and to healthcare professionals about where and how services are available as they start providing the service. | 0.784241 | 0.82297 | 0.803605 |
5115_0 | The drug-resistant fungus, Candida auris, was only discovered 10 years ago, but is now one of the world's most feared hospital microbes. There have been outbreaks across the world, and new research shows higher temperatures may have led to an increase in infections. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called for better understanding of who is most vulnerable to reduce risk. Here is everything you need to know about this new superbug. Candida auris (C. auris) is a yeast, a type of fungus, which can cause infections in humans. It is related to the very common Candida albicans, which causes thrush. It was first discovered in the ear canal of a Japanese patient in Tokyo Metropolitan Geriatric Hospital in 2009. Most of the time, Candida yeasts live on our skin without causing problems, but they can cause infections if we are unwell or they get into the wrong place, like the bloodstream or lungs. C. auris most frequently causes bloodstream infections, but can also infect the respiratory system, the central nervous system and internal organs, as well as the skin. These infections are usually quite serious. Around the world, up to 60% of patients who get a C. auris infection have died. The fungus is often resistant to the usual drugs, which makes infections difficult to treat. Also, C. auris is often mistaken for a different infection, leading to the wrong treatment being given. This means that the patient might be ill for longer or get worse. "A number of UK hospitals have already experienced outbreaks requiring support from Public Health England," said Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green, infection control practitioner and UCL clinical lecturer. She added: "C. auris survives in hospital environments and so cleaning is key to control. Detection can be serious for both individual patients and for the hospital, as control can prove difficult." Dr Colin Brown, consultant medical microbiologist for Public Health England's national infection service, said: "NHS hospitals that have experienced outbreaks of C. auris have not found it to be the cause of death in any patients. "PHE is working closely with the NHS to provide expert support and advice on infection control measures to limit the spread of C. auris." It is unlikely that you will pick up a C. auris infection. However, the risk is higher if you are in a hospital for a long time or if you are in a nursing home, and patients who are in intensive care are much more likely to get a C. auris infection. The risk of picking up an infection is also higher if you have been on antibiotics a lot, because the drugs also destroy good bacteria that can stop C. auris getting in. In the UK, about 60 patients have been infected by C. auris since 2013. The Centers for Disease Control in the US has reported that globally, more and more countries are reporting cases of C. auris infections. Most European countries have now reported some, with Greece being the last - in April this year. Resistance to the common antifungal drugs, like fluconazole, has been found in the majority of C. auris strains found in patients. This means that these drugs do not work on C. auris. Because of this, less common antifungal drugs have been used to treat these infections, but C. auris has now developed resistance to these, too. DNA evidence shows that the antifungal resistance genes in C. auris are very similar to those found in the very common C. albicans. This suggests that the resistance genes have passed from one species to the other. A study suggests that the reason C. auris infections have become so common may be because this species has been forced to live at higher temperatures because of climate change. Most fungi prefer the cooler temperatures found in soil. But, as global temperatures have risen, C. auris has been forced to adapt to higher temperatures. This may have made it easier for the fungus to thrive in the human body, which is warm at 36C to 37C. A better understanding of who is most at risk of contracting a C. auris infection is the first step to reducing the number of infections. Healthcare professionals need to know that people who spend a long time in hospitals, nursing homes or are immunocompromised are at high risk. Not all hospitals identify C. auris in the same way. They are sometimes mistaken for other fungal infections, like thrush, and the wrong treatment is given. Improving diagnosis will help to identify patients with C. auris earlier, which will mean that the right treatment is given - preventing the spread of infection to other patients. C. auris is very tough and can survive on surfaces for a long time. It also cannot be killed using most common detergents and disinfectants. Using the right cleaning chemicals is important to eliminate it from hospitals, especially if there is an outbreak. | What is Candida auris? | 462 | Candida auris (C. auris) is a yeast, a type of fungus, which can cause infections in humans. It is related to the very common Candida albicans, which causes thrush. It was first discovered in the ear canal of a Japanese patient in Tokyo Metropolitan Geriatric Hospital in 2009. Most of the time, Candida yeasts live on our skin without causing problems, but they can cause infections if we are unwell or they get into the wrong place, like the bloodstream or lungs. | 0.755406 | 0.848326 | 0.801866 |
8669_0 | The demand for on-demand TV has never been higher. Disney has announced its rival to the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime - and they're calling it Disney+. In March, Apple announced its own streaming service: Apple TV+. But in a market that's getting more and more crowded, can they all survive? Disney has a big advantage because it has decades of filmmaking experience already, according to Shona Ghosh, senior tech reporter at Business Insider. "It costs a lot of money to make popular shows and Disney is an expert in offering really well-known film and TV franchises," she says. Disney can draw on its classic movies, as well as Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars - and now Fox films. It's thought that as contracts expire with other streaming services, Disney will slowly take its films off the likes of Netflix and make them exclusive to Disney+. Netflix has already axed its remaining Marvel shows. There will also be shows just for the streaming service - including a new Star Wars spin-off, expected to debut when the service goes live in North America in November. For Apple, the incentive is slightly different: iPhone sales have been slowing down. It's why Shona thinks they are looking at new ways to stay at the top. "Apple knows it has a lot of people that buy iPhones, iPads and Macs. Also there's Apple Music," Shona tells Radio 1 Newsbeat. "So because it knows it has trust as a provider of that stuff, it's branching out into shows and thinking it can really add something for the people that buy their devices." Shona thinks Apple is already realising how difficult that task will be. "It's ambitious for a tech company that isn't really known for providing content itself to try and commission shows," she says. "I'm not sure it's going all that smoothly - they still haven't announced the full roster of shows that will be available. "Apple being Apple I'm sure it will go smoothly eventually, but it's possible it won't work out." "There has probably been a golden period where Netflix was the predominant, very popular streaming service. But now with so much choice, a lot will be splintered up," Shona thinks. So does that mean we'll have to spend more? "If Netflix is no longer top dog it can't suddenly turn around and raise its prices. It has to think about the competition. "On the flip side you won't have one platform where you can find everything. You may have to have multiple subscriptions." With Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Apple, and even the BBC and ITV getting involved, there will soon be loads of streaming options. But Shona thinks the future of how we watch TV might actually end up looking familiar. "With all these different companies offering streaming, you may eventually end up paying for something that looks a bit like your parents' Sky or cable service from 10 or 15 years ago." That could mean streaming services will get bundled together into packages. "People don't have the money to pay PS10 or PS15 a month for Netflix, then another PS10 for the combined streaming service being offered by the BBC and ITV, then Amazon Prime as well - that would get very expensive." And TV content could be used as an incentive for firms trying to get you to buy other products. It's a technique we've already started to see - with the likes of BT offering BT Sport for free to its mobile and internet customers when it launched. "There's a rumour that if you're already an Apple device owner, you may not have to pay extra for some of, if not all of, Apple's streaming services," says Shona. "So if you're already paying for the expensive device, Apple is making it more worth your while by giving you some content for free on top of that." Amazon Prime does similar, offering TV content alongside free delivery on its massive online shop. It's a technique that could be key for streaming services that want to be successful. Apple and Disney are big names and some of its rivals are already feeling the pressure. "I think there will be some companies that do fall by the wayside," adds Shona. "Netflix is spending a lot of money producing great content - whether it can keep it up remains to be seen. "Businesses like Amazon have many other elements it can rely on, not just content, whereas something like Netflix will be under a lot of pressure. "You'll have to wait to see whether consumers buy into this idea that Apple is akin to something like a Disney. "But people have bought in to Netflix, a brand new service that's evolved from being a DVD service to being this content powerhouse. "Companies are capable of pulling it off, but it's possible that not everyone will survive." Follow Newsbeat on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 every weekday on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra - if you miss us you can listen back here. | Why are Disney and Apple getting into streaming TV? | 297 | Disney has a big advantage because it has decades of filmmaking experience already, according to Shona Ghosh, senior tech reporter at Business Insider. "It costs a lot of money to make popular shows and Disney is an expert in offering really well-known film and TV franchises," she says. Disney can draw on its classic movies, as well as Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars - and now Fox films. It's thought that as contracts expire with other streaming services, Disney will slowly take its films off the likes of Netflix and make them exclusive to Disney+. Netflix has already axed its remaining Marvel shows. There will also be shows just for the streaming service - including a new Star Wars spin-off, expected to debut when the service goes live in North America in November. For Apple, the incentive is slightly different: iPhone sales have been slowing down. It's why Shona thinks they are looking at new ways to stay at the top. "Apple knows it has a lot of people that buy iPhones, iPads and Macs. Also there's Apple Music," Shona tells Radio 1 Newsbeat. "So because it knows it has trust as a provider of that stuff, it's branching out into shows and thinking it can really add something for the people that buy their devices." Shona thinks Apple is already realising how difficult that task will be. "It's ambitious for a tech company that isn't really known for providing content itself to try and commission shows," she says. "I'm not sure it's going all that smoothly - they still haven't announced the full roster of shows that will be available. "Apple being Apple I'm sure it will go smoothly eventually, but it's possible it won't work out." | 0.815088 | 0.787178 | 0.801133 |
4406_0 | Cheap steel from China has been blamed for distorting global markets and putting other countries' steelmakers under pressure. How have we got here and why does it all matter? Chinese steel production has expanded hugely. Over the past 25 years, output has grown more than 12-fold. By comparison, the EU's output fell by 12% while the US's remained largely flat. The drive behind that stellar increase has been China's double-digit economic growth over the past decades. That led to ever more domestic demand for steel and the government invested heavily in the industry during the boom years. But that demand has been severely hit by the current slowdown, leaving China with more steel than it needs. It produced more than 822 million tonnes of steel in 2014 and is expected to produce even more this year, yet projected demand for its steel in 2016 is only 672 million tonnes. Chinese steel is therefore sold on the international market at extremely low prices - critics say it's sold at a loss. As a consequence, other countries' steel plants find it increasingly hard to compete. China dismisses claims that its steel is sold at a loss and says it has done what it can to curb overproduction. Beijing's official news agency said that blaming the country for the global steel industry's problems was a "lame and lazy excuse for protectionism". In a commentary piece, Xinhua warned against the imposition of protective import tariffs (a tax on the product which ultimately makes the finished goods more expensive for the consumer). "Blaming other countries is always an easy, sure-fire way for politicians to whip up a storm over domestic economic woes, but finger-pointing and protectionism are counter-productive," it said. Very little. While other countries complain that cheaper Chinese steel is forcing their producers out of business, China is itself faced with severe problems in the industry. The boom of past years means any substantial output cuts would lead to huge job losses, and potential social instability. It is unlikely that China will cut output by a lot and unless domestic demand picks up, cheap exports will continue to affect global markets. A simple response would be setting up higher import tariffs. So if a Chinese manufacturer offers a tonne of steel at a cheap price, the importing country charges a tax on top of the original price, which makes it more expensive for the importing company. That would make Chinese steel more expensive in the importing country and would therefore make domestic producers more competitive again. Steel-producing countries India, the US and Indonesia have already raised their import tariffs on steel from China. But for European countries that is a tricky path to embark on as China is a much bigger trading partner. Introducing higher tariffs could risk triggering a trade war of tit-for-tat import tariffs on all kinds of goods. Yes. Steel is a vital ingredient to countless producing industries in every country around the globe. That's anything from cars to construction and toys to bottle caps. So for those industries, cheap steel is good - regardless of whether it's from China or their own domestic producers. However, if you work in the steel industry in, say, Europe or the US, then of course cheap Chinese steel can drive your company out of business - and you out of a job. But if you're a steel worker in China, then of course you don't want Beijing to cut production and curb exports. Because while that might save European jobs, it might cost you yours. Steel is crucial for the defence industry - just think ships, planes or tanks. So there's the question of whether it is wise to shut down domestic production and import all steel. Even if it is cheaper to do so, there is the question of whether you want to depend entirely on imports when it comes to one of the ingredients you need for national defence. Any intentional or unintentional cut in supply could quickly leave you in a vulnerable position. | China's steel industry - what's the problem? | 176 | Chinese steel production has expanded hugely. Over the past 25 years, output has grown more than 12-fold. By comparison, the EU's output fell by 12% while the US's remained largely flat. The drive behind that stellar increase has been China's double-digit economic growth over the past decades. That led to ever more domestic demand for steel and the government invested heavily in the industry during the boom years. But that demand has been severely hit by the current slowdown, leaving China with more steel than it needs. It produced more than 822 million tonnes of steel in 2014 and is expected to produce even more this year, yet projected demand for its steel in 2016 is only 672 million tonnes. Chinese steel is therefore sold on the international market at extremely low prices - critics say it's sold at a loss. As a consequence, other countries' steel plants find it increasingly hard to compete. | 0.795909 | 0.80401 | 0.799959 |
2148_0 | The people charged with protecting the world's economy are meeting in Washington this week. The decisions made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) affect people around the world. But what is the IMF, why is it important, and what criticism does it face? The IMF is an international organisation with 189 member countries. They work together to try to stabilise the global economy. Any country can apply to join, as long as it meets a few requirements. These include providing information about its economy and paying in a sum of money called a quota subscription. The richer the country, the higher its quota. The IMF does three main things to monitor and support the economy: - Tracking economic and financial events. It monitors how countries are performing and potential risks, like trade fights or Brexit uncertainty - Advising its members on how to improve their economies - Issuing short-term loans and assistance to countries who are struggling These loans are mainly funded by quota subscriptions. In 2018, Argentina received the largest loan in the IMF's history at $57bn (PS44.5bn). The IMF can lend its members a total amount of $1tn. Bankers, government officials and company bosses discuss the most important economic issues of the day at the IMF's meetings. Members then try to make sure their plans are co-ordinated. It's expected that trade tensions, weak economic growth, a slowdown in manufacturing and companies' debts will be big topics this year. The IMF is often described as a "lender of last resort". In times of crisis, countries look to it for financial assistance. Economists like Harvard University's Benjamin Friedman have said it's difficult to measure the organisation's success because we can't know if its policies are "worse than whatever the alternative would have been". However, some praised the Fund's role in supporting Mexico after it declared it would be unable to repay its debts in the early 1980s. More recently, Brazil obtained IMF loans in 2002 to avoid defaulting on its debts. The government was able to turn the economy around relatively quickly, and pay off its entire debt two years ahead of schedule. The conditions the IMF imposes on countries it lends money to have sometimes been described as "harsh". In the past, these have included lower government borrowing, cutting corporate taxes and opening up their economies to foreign investment. Greece was where the eurozone financial crisis started back in 2009, and the hardest-hit economy. After it received bailout loans from the IMF, Greece had to make some changes. Critics said the austerity - intended to get government borrowing needs down - was excessive and did damage to the economy and society. The unemployment rate in Greece still remains high at 17%, down from a peak of over 27% in 2013. Kristalina Georgieva has recently taken on the top job at the IMF - managing director. The economist was previously chief executive of the World Bank, and has succeeded Christine Lagarde. Ms Georgieva is the first person from Bulgaria to lead the IMF, one of the poorest members of the European Union (EU). Since the organisation was created, a European has traditionally been in charge, with a US national taking on the presidency of the World Bank. Ahead of her first annual conference in her new role, Ms Georgieva warned that Brexit will be "painful" for the UK and the EU, whatever form it takes. The IMF was created out of the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 in the United States. It was attended by delegates from 44 countries during World War Two, including the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union. They discussed financial arrangements for the expected end of the war, including how to set up a stable system of exchange rates and how to pay for rebuilding damaged European economies. Two organisations were later set up to meet these aims: the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Members of the newly-founded IMF agreed to a system of fixed exchange rates, which would stay in place until the early 1970s. | What is the IMF? | 259 | The IMF is an international organisation with 189 member countries. They work together to try to stabilise the global economy. Any country can apply to join, as long as it meets a few requirements. These include providing information about its economy and paying in a sum of money called a quota subscription. The richer the country, the higher its quota. The IMF does three main things to monitor and support the economy: - Tracking economic and financial events. It monitors how countries are performing and potential risks, like trade fights or Brexit uncertainty - Advising its members on how to improve their economies - Issuing short-term loans and assistance to countries who are struggling These loans are mainly funded by quota subscriptions. In 2018, Argentina received the largest loan in the IMF's history at $57bn (PS44.5bn). The IMF can lend its members a total amount of $1tn. | 0.787098 | 0.811734 | 0.799416 |
4726_0 | The company behind infidelity dating website Ashley Madison has denied that hardly any women used the service. Its rebuttal followed an article by Gizmodo which suggested that only around 12,000 of the site's 36 million members were real women. Gizmodo had analysed the data stolen from Ashley Madison by hackers called the Impact Team. But Ashley Madison said the analysis was based on "incorrect assumptions" and Gizmodo now acknowledges it "misunderstood" the data. There are suggestions from the leaked data, which included thousands of chief executive Noel Biderman's emails, that Ashley Madison did deploy fake profiles. One email written to Mr Biderman described a contractor building profiles, known as angels or engagers, "en masse". It even suggested staff were getting "writer's block" trying to invent believable profiles. Ashley Madison's terms and conditions state some of the site's features "are intended to provide entertainment", but do not explicitly mention fake profiles. The BBC understands fake profiles were deliberately deployed in areas where there were few female profiles. In 2013, the ratio of males to females in one Japanese city was 88:1. The leak suggests engagers brought this ratio down to 5:1. According to Gizmodo, the engagers messaged real users - almost exclusively men - with greetings such as: "hows it going?" and "anybody home? lol". The news site estimated that there were more than 70,000 engager profiles among the leaked data. Ashley Madison charges men to reply to messages from women, including fake ones, so creating fake profiles would have been financially beneficial for the company. Although the details of millions of accounts were leaked by the hackers, the dump did not contain the full database. That makes it difficult to determine how many real women used the site. One woman told the BBC she had used it to find a lesbian relationship. On Monday, Avid Life Media which owns the website released a statement insisting it had an active community of female users. "In the first half of this year the ratio of male members who paid to communicate with women... versus the number of female members who actively used their account... was 1.2 to 1," it said. Without knowing how many of the site's 31 million men paid to reply to messages, it is not possible to work out how many women were active on Ashley Madison. The company insists that despite the enormous data leak it has still managed to attract new members. It says 87,596 women joined the website in the last week. Of course, many of those are likely to be journalists, or people signing up to nose around a secretive website that has had its dirty laundry aired quite publicly. | Did Ashley Madison use fake profiles? | 469 | There are suggestions from the leaked data, which included thousands of chief executive Noel Biderman's emails, that Ashley Madison did deploy fake profiles. One email written to Mr Biderman described a contractor building profiles, known as angels or engagers, "en masse". It even suggested staff were getting "writer's block" trying to invent believable profiles. Ashley Madison's terms and conditions state some of the site's features "are intended to provide entertainment", but do not explicitly mention fake profiles. | 0.74917 | 0.840667 | 0.794918 |
7952_0 | Russian state TV is working on its own version of Chernobyl, a series based on the worst nuclear accident in history. The NTV drama will deviate from the acclaimed HBO series - and from historical reality - by claiming that the CIA was involved in the disaster. Director Aleksey Muradov claims it will show "what really happened back then". HBO's miniseries, which concluded on Monday, received the highest ever score for a TV show on IMdB, as well as a 9.1 rating on Russian equivalent Kinopoisk. But in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russia's most widely-read tabloid, Mr Muradov said his version of the show "proposes an alternative view on the tragedy in Pripyat". "There is a theory that Americans infiltrated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant," he told the paper. "Many historians do not rule out the possibility that on the day of the explosion, an agent of the enemy's intelligence services was working at the station." The Hollywood Reporter reports that the Russian culture ministry has contributed 30 million rubles ($463,000; PS363,000) to the show. The No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded on 26 April 1986 in the Ukrainian city of Pripyat. At least 31 people were killed in the immediate aftermath, and the effects continue to be felt to this day. There has been plenty of praise in Russia for the authenticity of Chernobyl. Izvestia newspaper declared it a more 'realistic' portrayal of the era than most Russian films manage. There's also admiration of how the series conveys the heroism of ordinary people. But there's been a crescendo of criticism, too. One columnist declared the show a plot to undermine Russia's current atomic agency. Others called it American 'propaganda', blackening the image of the USSR and exaggerating the callousness of the Soviet response. No-one disputes that it's got people talking. They're been busy sharing their own Chernobyl stories on social media, with younger Russians often hearing them for the first time. So one Twitter user thanked the series for 'giving us back our history.' In the end, as one commentator concludes, the main reason for the backlash is likely a feeling of shame that it was the US that told the tale of Chernobyl, not Russia itself. The show has been particularly unpopular with Russian state TV and the country's tabloid newspapers. Speaking to TV website Teleprogramma, columnist Anatoly Wasserman said: "If Anglo-Saxons film something about Russians, it definitely will not correspond to the truth." This, he continued, was not because "they don't like us" but because "they simply cannot understand us". Komsomolskaya Pravda published several negative articles about the show - including one floating a conspiracy theory that it was produced by competitors of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear company, to ruin the country's reputation as a nuclear power. But reviewers in independent media outlets praised its writer Craig Mazin for his minute attention to detail. Slava Malamud, a US-based journalist who grew up during the Soviet era in what is now Moldova, wrote on the independent Russian news site Meduza that "the respect and meticulousness the show's creators brought to their work is breathtaking". "Like I see the license plate for a car in one scene has the real numbers for the [Kiev] region," he said. "Who's going to notice that in America or England?" Adam Robinson, BBC Monitoring - The world through its media For the Kremlin, the topic of history is a highly sensitive one - especially about the Soviet Union. Official media now tend to paint a sanitised, idealised vision of the USSR, and portray Putin's Russia as its spiritual heir. This makes it easy to see any critical view of the Soviet past as an attack on the Kremlin's ideological power base. It's a narrative it seeks to completely control and guard from outside influences - particularly from a West it sees as hostile. Some Russians feel the version of reality offered by Kremlin-controlled media is not entirely unlike the lies told by the Soviet state. As a result, perhaps the most dangerous idea was the key question running though Chernobyl - what is the cost of lies? BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook. | What did Russia think of HBO's Chernobyl? | 1,288 | There has been plenty of praise in Russia for the authenticity of Chernobyl. Izvestia newspaper declared it a more 'realistic' portrayal of the era than most Russian films manage. There's also admiration of how the series conveys the heroism of ordinary people. But there's been a crescendo of criticism, too. One columnist declared the show a plot to undermine Russia's current atomic agency. Others called it American 'propaganda', blackening the image of the USSR and exaggerating the callousness of the Soviet response. No-one disputes that it's got people talking. They're been busy sharing their own Chernobyl stories on social media, with younger Russians often hearing them for the first time. So one Twitter user thanked the series for 'giving us back our history.' In the end, as one commentator concludes, the main reason for the backlash is likely a feeling of shame that it was the US that told the tale of Chernobyl, not Russia itself. | 0.778854 | 0.799858 | 0.789356 |
7519_0 | President Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw the US from the World Trade Organization (WTO), claiming it treats his country unfairly. "If they don't shape up, I would withdraw from the WTO," Mr Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg News. The WTO was established to provide rules for global trade and resolve disputes between countries. Mr Trump says the body too often rules against the US, although he concedes it has won some recent judgments. He claimed on Fox News earlier this year that the WTO was set up "to benefit everybody but us", adding: "We lose the lawsuits, almost all of the lawsuits in the WTO." However, some analysis shows the US wins about 90% when it is the complainant and loses about the same percentage when it is complained against. Mr Trump's warning about a possible US pull-out from the WTO highlights the conflict between his protectionist trade policies and the open trade system that the WTO oversees. Washington has recently blocked the appointment of new judges to the WTO's Geneva-based dispute settlement body, which could potentially paralyse its ability to issue judgments. US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has also accused the WTO of interfering with US sovereignty. It comes as President Trump set a Friday deadline for Canada to sign a new agreement with the US and Mexico. He has threatened to tax the country's automotive sector or cut it out entirely. The US president has been sounding off about unfair trade since even before he became president. Mr Trump said on Thursday that the 1994 agreement to establish the WTO "was the single worst trade deal ever made". The US has been embroiled in a tit-for-tat trade battle on several fronts in recent months. The one creating the most interest is with China, as the world's two largest economies wrangle for global influence. Mr Trump has introduced tariffs on a number of goods imported into the US. A third round of tariffs on $200bn (PS154bn) of Chinese goods could come as soon as a public-comment period concludes next week, according to a Bloomberg report citing various sources. Asked to confirm this during the Bloomberg interview, President Trump said that it was "not totally wrong". China has responded to US tariffs by imposing retaliatory taxes on the same value of US products and has filed complaints against the tariffs at the WTO. China's commerce ministry has said it "clearly suspects" the US of violating WTO rules. An initial complaint at the WTO was filed by China in July after Mr Trump imposed his first round of tariffs. The WTO is at the heart of the system of rules for international trade. It is the forum for sorting disputes between countries about breaches of global trade rules and for negotiating new trade liberalisation. The EU, meanwhile, is trying to steer the US towards reforming the WTO rather than abandoning it. Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament's trade committee, told Politico magazine that it would submit plans to overhaul the organisation in September. He said it would test whether the US was really interested in reform. "This is certainly about calling [America's] bluff," he said. Mr Trump has not been a fan of multilateral trade agreements. In a 2016 presidential debate with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, Mr Trump described the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) with Mexico and Canada as "the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere" and a "killer" of US jobs. Once in office he said he wanted to renegotiate - not scrap - the accord, triggering a year of talks. On Monday, Mr Trump announced that the US and Mexico had agreed to revamp Nafta, calling it a "really good deal" that was "much more fair" for both countries. Canada is yet to agree to the new terms. On Thursday, Mr Lighthizer held talks in Washington with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland aimed at reaching a new deal. Following four separate meetings, which continued late into the night, Ms Freeland told reporters that a deal could not be reached, adding that talks would resume on Friday. Also during his election campaign Mr Trump railed against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation trade deal that was a linchpin of former President Barack Obama's Asia policy. Mr Trump said the deal was a "potential disaster for our country". One of his first acts as president was to withdraw the US from the TTP, although he has since said he might consider rejoining if the terms were "substantially better". | What's Trump's issue with the WTO? | 1,413 | The US president has been sounding off about unfair trade since even before he became president. Mr Trump said on Thursday that the 1994 agreement to establish the WTO "was the single worst trade deal ever made". The US has been embroiled in a tit-for-tat trade battle on several fronts in recent months. The one creating the most interest is with China, as the world's two largest economies wrangle for global influence. Mr Trump has introduced tariffs on a number of goods imported into the US. A third round of tariffs on $200bn (PS154bn) of Chinese goods could come as soon as a public-comment period concludes next week, according to a Bloomberg report citing various sources. Asked to confirm this during the Bloomberg interview, President Trump said that it was "not totally wrong". China has responded to US tariffs by imposing retaliatory taxes on the same value of US products and has filed complaints against the tariffs at the WTO. China's commerce ministry has said it "clearly suspects" the US of violating WTO rules. An initial complaint at the WTO was filed by China in July after Mr Trump imposed his first round of tariffs. The WTO is at the heart of the system of rules for international trade. It is the forum for sorting disputes between countries about breaches of global trade rules and for negotiating new trade liberalisation. The EU, meanwhile, is trying to steer the US towards reforming the WTO rather than abandoning it. Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament's trade committee, told Politico magazine that it would submit plans to overhaul the organisation in September. He said it would test whether the US was really interested in reform. "This is certainly about calling [America's] bluff," he said. | 0.795501 | 0.782593 | 0.789047 |
7567_0 | President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the Central Bank of Nigeria to block food importers' requests for foreign currency in a bid to boost local agriculture in Africa's most populous country. It is a continuation of a policy that the president began after coming to office in 2015, when he banned the use of foreign exchange to import dozens of items including the staple food, rice. Since then, domestic rice production has increased, but the policy has been criticised for not taking the low capacity of local farmers into consideration. The policy has also coincided with a rise in food prices, which has been blamed on insecurity in some of the country's main food producing areas. According to data from Nigeria's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the amount of money the country has been spending on importing food and drink increased from 2015 to 2017, dipped in 2018 and if the trend from the first quarter of this year continues, the bill will go up again for this year. In 2015, Nigeria spent nearly $2.9bn (PS2.4bn) and by 2017 that had risen to $4.1bn, the NBS says. But the data picture is confusing as leading figures have quoted other figures. Last December, central bank governor Godwin Emefiele said the annual food import bill was $1.9bn and had fallen from $7.9bn in 2015, the Punch newspaper reported. But in September 2018, the agriculture minister at the time, Audu Ogbeh, said Nigeria spent $22bn importing food every year. Nigeria does produce the basic food commodities such as sugar, wheat flour, fish, milk, palm oil, pork, beef and poultry but up to now domestic farmers have not been able to satisfy demand of the country's 200 million people, hence the need for imports. With the foreign exchange ban Nigerian farmers will now have to increase production. Official figures show that domestic rice production has gone up since 2015. According to figures from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, rice production has increased from an annual average of 7.1 million tonnes between 2013 and 2017 to 8.9 million tonnes in 2018. However, there are also reports that rice smuggling has increased - as customs officials continue to seize large quantities of the grain at the borders. This suggests that Nigerian rice farmers are still not producing enough. Many experts believe that the policy of restricting food imports does have some merits, but the policy cannot be introduced in isolation. Agricultural economist Idris Ayinde argues that restricting food imports should be a gradual process since the country cannot yet meet domestic demand for most food commodities, and the policy risks increasing food price inflation further. Local rice production has increased, but the foreign exchange ban was coupled with policies aimed at supporting farmers through subsidies and loans. For instance, last November, the government spent $165m subsidising rice production. Despite this, people continue to buy rice that has been smuggled into the country. Attempts to boost local production of palm oil have also been hit by smuggling. Foreign exchange to import palm oil was also restricted in 2015, but local producers have not been able to fill the gap. The government now hopes that investing up to $500m in the industry can boost production from 600,000 tonnes a year to five million tonnes. In addition to questions over local capacity, there is also a concern that the government's policy threatens the independence of the central bank. Former deputy governor of the bank Kingsley Moghalu said the president's directive contradicts the law, adding that the central bank's economic policy should not be "imposed by a political authority". Economic theory suggests that reducing the supply of something will increase the price. There is a general belief therefore that if domestic supply cannot immediately replace what was once imported, Nigerians will end up paying more for their food. Between 2015, when the foreign exchange restrictions for rice came into effect, and early 2017, the price of a 50kg bag of rice went from $24 to $82. It later fell in mid-2017 to $34. But in June this year, the price stood at $49. The agricultural sector, which remains a major employer, has suffered years of neglect as Nigeria has spent decades relying on oil to provide much-needed foreign exchange and government revenue. There may be lots of people working on farms but a lack of investment has led to low productivity. In addition, not all available agricultural land is being used. It is estimated that just over a third of available land is being cultivated. But following a big drop in the oil price five years ago, the country has renewed its interest in agriculture. If this enthusiasm can be converted into greater investment then the country should be able to produce more food. | How much is Nigeria spending on importing food? | 688 | According to data from Nigeria's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the amount of money the country has been spending on importing food and drink increased from 2015 to 2017, dipped in 2018 and if the trend from the first quarter of this year continues, the bill will go up again for this year. In 2015, Nigeria spent nearly $2.9bn (PS2.4bn) and by 2017 that had risen to $4.1bn, the NBS says. But the data picture is confusing as leading figures have quoted other figures. Last December, central bank governor Godwin Emefiele said the annual food import bill was $1.9bn and had fallen from $7.9bn in 2015, the Punch newspaper reported. But in September 2018, the agriculture minister at the time, Audu Ogbeh, said Nigeria spent $22bn importing food every year. | 0.750523 | 0.826218 | 0.78837 |
3327_1 | The southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh recorded 36,749 lightning strikes in just a 13-hour period on Tuesday, officials say. The number is unusually high and the result of "extreme weather patterns", according to the state disaster management authority. Nine people, including a nine-year-old girl, have been killed in the state by lightning strikes since Tuesday. Lightning strikes are common in India during heavy monsoon rains. The season typically begins in June and lasts until September. However, this particular region usually sees increased lightning activity before the monsoon begins, Kishan Sanku, who runs the state emergency operation centre, told the BBC. Tuesday's bout of lightning is being considered an anomaly because data from last year shows that there were some 30,000 lighting strikes throughout the entire month of May in the same region. Some scientists believe that global warming will significantly increase the frequency of lightning strikes. The lightning strikes have been occurring along the northern coast of Andhra Pradesh, an area which often experiences heavy rains. Although there is usually increased lightning activity in the region before the monsoon, this year cold winds from the Arabian sea collided with warmer winds from northern India and produced conditions that led to the formation of more clouds than usual, Mr Sanku said. This increased the chance of lightning strikes. What has made conditions particularly unique, he added, is that the cloud cover extended over 200km (124 miles). "Usually it is in patches, around 15-16km," he said. "In our experience, this is very rare." At least 2,000 people have died in lightning strikes in India every year since 2005, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. In June 2016, 93 people were killed and more than 20 injured by lightning strikes in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. India's death toll from lightning strikes is far higher than that in developed countries such as the United States, where, on average, 27 people die from lightning strikes each year. The lack of a reliable warning system is often cited as one reason for the high number of deaths. Another is that a large number of people work outdoors in India compared to other parts of the world, which makes them more vulnerable. But Mr Sanku says his office has made people more aware of the dangers. On Tuesday, they alerted district officials on messaging services WhatsApp and Telegram, and made announcements on television and radio warning people to stay indoors. He says they also have a subscription-based alert for mobile phone users. "But we are not able to alert the people working in the fields because they don't carry their phones with them." - Seek shelter inside a large building or a car - Get out of wide, open spaces and away from exposed hilltops - If you have nowhere to shelter, make yourself as small a target as possible by crouching down with your feet together, hands on knees and head tucked in - Do not shelter beneath tall or isolated trees - If you are on water, get to the shore and off wide, open beaches as quickly as possible Source: Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents | How common are lightning deaths in India? | 1,631 | At least 2,000 people have died in lightning strikes in India every year since 2005, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. In June 2016, 93 people were killed and more than 20 injured by lightning strikes in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. India's death toll from lightning strikes is far higher than that in developed countries such as the United States, where, on average, 27 people die from lightning strikes each year. The lack of a reliable warning system is often cited as one reason for the high number of deaths. Another is that a large number of people work outdoors in India compared to other parts of the world, which makes them more vulnerable. But Mr Sanku says his office has made people more aware of the dangers. On Tuesday, they alerted district officials on messaging services WhatsApp and Telegram, and made announcements on television and radio warning people to stay indoors. He says they also have a subscription-based alert for mobile phone users. "But we are not able to alert the people working in the fields because they don't carry their phones with them." | 0.787401 | 0.781011 | 0.784206 |
1097_0 | President Trump has told Americans to "get their shots" as measles cases spread across the country. "The vaccinations are so important," he told reporters outside the White House. Nearly 700 cases have been reported across 22 states amid a resurgence of the highly infectious disease, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says. Mr Trump has previously appeared to link vaccines and autism. Public health experts say there is no link. Vaccination rates have dropped steadily in the US with many parents objecting for philosophical or religious reasons. Others, known as "anti-vaxxers", believe discredited information that vaccines cause autism in children. The CDC says measles cases have reached a level not seen since 2000, when the disease was eliminated from the US. Mr Trump's warning comes as hundreds of staff and students at universities in the Californian city of Los Angeles have been quarantined over fears they may have contracted measles. Those who were at risk of being infected were asked to stay at home unless they could prove their immunity. As of Thursday, 82 people at the University of California (UCLA) were unable to provide vaccination records, the university says. At California State University, 156 people - including library employees and students - could not provide records and remain in quarantine, AP news agency reported. Mr Trump's latest comments contrast markedly from his previous public statements about vaccinations. During a Republican primary debate in 2015, he suggested vaccines were responsible for what he called an "epidemic" of autism. He said he was in favour of vaccines, but wanted "smaller doses over a longer period of time". He also held meetings with several prominent anti-vaccine campaigners ahead of the 2016 election. He has also linked vaccinations to autism in earlier social media posts. Measles is a highly infectious disease and can cause serious health complications, including damage to the lungs and brain. But despite the dangers, vaccination rates are declining in many countries. There have been more than 110,000 measles cases worldwide in the first three months of 2019 - a rise of 300% compared to last year, World Health Organization figures show. The increase in measles cases in the US "is part of a global trend seen over the past few years as other countries struggle with declining vaccination rates" the CDC says. | What has Trump said about vaccines? | 1,374 | Mr Trump's latest comments contrast markedly from his previous public statements about vaccinations. During a Republican primary debate in 2015, he suggested vaccines were responsible for what he called an "epidemic" of autism. He said he was in favour of vaccines, but wanted "smaller doses over a longer period of time". He also held meetings with several prominent anti-vaccine campaigners ahead of the 2016 election. He has also linked vaccinations to autism in earlier social media posts. | 0.739858 | 0.82596 | 0.782909 |
1405_0 | Shares in Spotify have started trading in the New York, valuing the music streaming service at about $26bn. In an unconventional move, the firm has not issued new shares, with those held by its private investors being sold. The flotation marks a turning point for Spotify, which is the global market leader but is yet to make a profit. In an open letter, chief executive Daniel Ek said: "We are still early in our journey and we have room to learn and grow." Once an small upstart Swedish music platform, Spotify has grown rapidly in recent years, adding millions of users to its free-to-use ad-funded service and converting many of them to its more lucrative subscription service. It is now the global leader among music streaming companies, boasting 71 million paying customers, twice as many as Apple Music. So far costs and fees to recording companies for the rights to play their music, have exceeded Spotify's revenues, although that gap is narrowing. The firm made a commitment to investors who backed it as the company was growing, that they would be given the chance to cash in their investment. So Spotify had to list its shares sooner or later. But it could also herald a new phase for the firm. Being publicly traded will put pressure on the management, and could provide the excuse they need to make changes, says Mark Mulligan at at MIDia Research. "Once you're a tech stock - more than with a normal listed company - [investors] expect you to do stuff fast, change fast," he says. "So far they've been treading a very fine line between being the dramatic new future of the music business but simultaneously being the biggest friend of the old music industry by giving record labels a platform to build out of decline," says Mr Mulligan. "To go to the next phase [Spotify] will have to stop talking out of both sides of its mouth, which it does at the moment. And stop being so friendly to the record companies." More than half of Spotify's revenue goes directly to the record companies. But they are not likely to make any bold moves immediately, since the labels also control two thirds of the music that Spotify plays. Chris Hayes at Enders Analysis says while it may not be as a direct result of the share listing, he also expects Spotify to evolve. "I think over time they're going to have to diversify their offering," he says, helping to set them apart from a sea of rival streaming services. They have already moved into podcasts and producing original music. They may well start to offer more original content, such as Taylor Swift's recent video that was only made available on the platform, says Chris Hayes. It could also be thinking about emulating Berlin-based Soundcloud, which offers a social media forum for lower-profile content creators, he adds. Mark Mulligan thinks it could offer documentaries, information about artists, special music features, news articles and even comedy. One of the thorniest issues for Spotify in the past has been a backlash from artists, who say only the biggest stars make enough income from the streaming subscription model. "At the moment it's all about record labels. Spotify doesn't have a place for artists," Mulligan says. "The bigger bolder things post [the share listing] will be doing something very clear for artists." He thinks in time Spotify could start offering places for artists to build their own creative spaces and profile pages - so that there are ways to bypass the record labels and go straight to Spotify to reach fans. Chris Hayes thinks it will be some time before record labels are sidelined. But he says if Spotify can attract more subscription customers, payments to artists will increase automatically through the current pay-per-listen model. The firm's first operating profit (not including debt financing) is on the horizon for 2019 based on current trends, according to Mr Hayes. "The strategy has always been, the free tier is not very lucrative but it is a funnel through which to persuade free users to upgrade to the subscription tier, which is lucrative." As long as subscriptions continue to grow it should eventually become profitable. Mr Mulligan thinks as the business matures it will learn to make money from its loyal customers by offering more services. Above all there is scope to exploit the data gleaned from fans' playlists, and the company could sell its data tools back to the music industry. For example Spotify's insights into people's listening habits could inform an artist planning a route for their next tour. Spotify may be the current market leader, but in the long-term there are threats on the horizon in the shape of the Apple, Amazon, Google and possibly even Facebook. "Ultimately Spotify's biggest risk is: what is it like to be the only company in a marketplace that has to turn a profit?" says Mr Mulligan. The tech giants wield vast resources and have ready-built ecosystems from smart speakers to social networks. "Spotify's rivals are the biggest companies in the world with bottomless pockets," he says, and they are using music as a way to sell their core products, not as a business proposition in itself. They could offer the record labels more money than Spotify can afford to pay. "That would be my biggest worry if I were Daniel Ek," he says, referring to Spotify's co-founder. "What if Apple decided: let's throw ten billion at this and see if we can throw Spotify out of the water?" | Why is Spotify listing its shares? | 958 | The firm made a commitment to investors who backed it as the company was growing, that they would be given the chance to cash in their investment. So Spotify had to list its shares sooner or later. But it could also herald a new phase for the firm. Being publicly traded will put pressure on the management, and could provide the excuse they need to make changes, says Mark Mulligan at at MIDia Research. "Once you're a tech stock - more than with a normal listed company - [investors] expect you to do stuff fast, change fast," he says. | 0.760346 | 0.804665 | 0.782505 |
9799_0 | Outgoing German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen has been confirmed as the next president of the European Commission, replacing Jean-Claude Juncker. She will now form a new team of commissioners and they will start their new term on 1 November, a day after the UK is due to leave the EU. But what is the European Commission, and why does it matter to the more than 500 million people living in the EU's 28 countries? Its job is to develop laws for member states and enforce them. Based in Brussels, it's the only EU body that can draft laws. It employs more than 32,000 staff in total and its running costs this year are EUR3.6bn. Once its proposals have the approval of the European Parliament and a council of 28 ministers from the EU states, they can become law. The laws it proposes cover many areas. Clean air The European Commission has referred a number of countries - including the UK - to court for breaching air pollution limits. Fines amounting to millions of pounds could be enforced by the EU body, which says it "owed it to its citizens" to take legal action. Rule of law The European Commission has also taken action against some eastern member states over the rule of law. It launched a series of legal actions against Poland over reforms to its judiciary. And it warned Romania it would take legal action if it failed to scrap measures seen to threaten the independence of its courts. Data protection The EU made changes last year to data privacy regulations, tightening up rules about the way companies use our personal information. The General Data Protection Regulation has seen companies compelled to do more to protect data. There are punishments for those who fail - British Airways, for example, is facing a record fine over a website security breach. Internet giants Curbing the power of internet giants has also been a focus for the European Commission. It has fined Google three times in the past two years. Most recently, it hit the firm with a EUR1.49bn (PS1.28bn) fine for blocking rival online search advertisers. Competition cases have also been brought against Apple, Amazon, Ikea, Gazprom and chip giant Qualcomm. Going overseas Mobile roaming charges for travellers within the EU ended in 2017, after a lengthy battle between the European Commission and mobile operators. The new rules meant consumers travelling within any EU country could text, call or go online on their mobiles for the same cost as they would pay at home. On air safety, the commission maintains a list of airlines which are either banned from operating in Europe, or face restrictions on their operations. Olive oil Less popular was an attempt in 2013 to introduce rules for restaurants about refillable bottles and dipping bowls for olive oil. The move was introduced to improve hygiene and protect consumers, said the commission. But it was ridiculed as unnecessary interference, and the EU backtracked on the idea shortly afterwards. Every five years, the 28 commissioners are replaced. New commissioners - one from each country - and a president of the commission are put forward to be voted on by a newly-elected European Parliament. These candidates all have to be approved by a clear majority of the parliament, which has 751 MEPs. The process of finding a candidate to fill the role of president this time caused controversy. Mrs von der Leyen was put forward by political leaders in the EU as their preferred candidate in a last-minute deal. The leaders rejected the candidacy process agreed with the European Parliament, under which political groupings put forward their own candidates during EU parliamentary elections. Mrs von der Leyen is a close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but she faces some opposition from green and left-wing political groups. She is the first woman to lead the European Commission. | What does the European Commission do? | 422 | Its job is to develop laws for member states and enforce them. Based in Brussels, it's the only EU body that can draft laws. It employs more than 32,000 staff in total and its running costs this year are EUR3.6bn. Once its proposals have the approval of the European Parliament and a council of 28 ministers from the EU states, they can become law. The laws it proposes cover many areas. Clean air The European Commission has referred a number of countries - including the UK - to court for breaching air pollution limits. Fines amounting to millions of pounds could be enforced by the EU body, which says it "owed it to its citizens" to take legal action. Rule of law The European Commission has also taken action against some eastern member states over the rule of law. It launched a series of legal actions against Poland over reforms to its judiciary. And it warned Romania it would take legal action if it failed to scrap measures seen to threaten the independence of its courts. Data protection The EU made changes last year to data privacy regulations, tightening up rules about the way companies use our personal information. The General Data Protection Regulation has seen companies compelled to do more to protect data. There are punishments for those who fail - British Airways, for example, is facing a record fine over a website security breach. Internet giants Curbing the power of internet giants has also been a focus for the European Commission. It has fined Google three times in the past two years. Most recently, it hit the firm with a EUR1.49bn (PS1.28bn) fine for blocking rival online search advertisers. Competition cases have also been brought against Apple, Amazon, Ikea, Gazprom and chip giant Qualcomm. Going overseas Mobile roaming charges for travellers within the EU ended in 2017, after a lengthy battle between the European Commission and mobile operators. The new rules meant consumers travelling within any EU country could text, call or go online on their mobiles for the same cost as they would pay at home. On air safety, the commission maintains a list of airlines which are either banned from operating in Europe, or face restrictions on their operations. Olive oil Less popular was an attempt in 2013 to introduce rules for restaurants about refillable bottles and dipping bowls for olive oil. The move was introduced to improve hygiene and protect consumers, said the commission. But it was ridiculed as unnecessary interference, and the EU backtracked on the idea shortly afterwards. | 0.787998 | 0.769404 | 0.778701 |
679_0 | North Korean state media had strong words for Joe Biden - the former US vice-president and current presidential candidate - on Wednesday. Mr Biden had "gone reckless and senseless, seized by ambition for power", a commentary on the news website KCNA said. He was "an imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being, let alone a politician", the commentary said, adding that he was "a fool of low IQ". The piece also accused him of "vulgar acts and words about women" - a reference to earlier allegations of unwelcome touching from women - and said he became a "laughing-stock of the media" when he appeared to fall asleep during a speech by then-President Barack Obama in 2011. It even went back to the 1960s, reminding readers of the fact that Mr Biden "received a grade of F" in a paper because he had plagiarised another article. Mr Biden has admitted to plagiarism, but said he misunderstood rules about citations. Colourful insults in North Korean media are nothing new - KCNA recently quoted officials calling US national security adviser John Bolton "dim-sighted", and accusing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of "fabricating stories like a fiction writer". And, two years ago, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un famously called President Donald Trump a "dotard" - a 14th-Century term that means "an old person, especially one who has become weak or senile". Yet - North Korea is one of the world's most secretive societies, and all of its media are under direct state control, which means its news reports, even when they mostly consist of insults, give us an interesting glimpse into what Pyongyang could be thinking. Wednesday's KCNA report accused Mr Biden of "rhetoric slandering the supreme leadership of the DPRK" during a recent election campaign. This appeared to refer to Mr Biden's rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, where he criticised Mr Trump for working with "tyrants like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Kim Jong-un". "North Korean media tend to react sensitively to any comments made by foreign officials, especially US officials, about the North Korean leader," Rachel Lee, a senior analyst at NK News and a former North Korean media analyst for the US government, told the BBC. However, it's important to note that KCNA is an external agency aimed at international audiences, and "North Korea's public don't have access to it", she added. Often, domestic North Korean media avoid certain sensitive topics - or may avoid commenting on some issues, to ensure the government has more wriggle room later on, Ms Lee says. Meanwhile, Prof Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University, says that such propaganda is part of Pyongyang's attempt to "drive a wedge" between Donald Trump and his political advisers. State media criticism of Mr Biden, as well as Mr Pompeo and Mr Bolton, is an attempt to portray an image that "they would like to deal with Donald Trump, but he's prevented from doing anything meaningful by the hardline American establishment". Whether this is true or not is another matter - the most recent direct talks between Mr Trump and Mr Kim ended in Hanoi in February without any progress towards an agreement. "Given Joe Biden's record of standing up for American values and interests, it's no surprise that North Korea would prefer that Donald Trump remain in the White House," a spokesperson for his campaign, Andrew Bates, told the BBC. North Korean state media are a lot blunter - and ruder - than you'd expect most official government outlets to be. They have not been afraid to be sexist - previously carrying quotes describing former President Park Geun-hye as "an unseemly wench who has never had a chance to marry or bear a child", and criticising the "venomous swish of her skirt". It has also called North Korean defectors, who have spoken about human rights abuses, as "human scum". "Most North Korean propaganda is extremely - almost comically - aggressive," says Prof Lankov. "In North Korea, the harsher you sound, the better... this is how you're supposed to talk about political subjects." Much of it is influenced by China's rhetoric from the late 1960s, he says, but Chinese propaganda has changed over the decades, with many in Chinese media educated in the West or influenced by Western styles. North Korean rhetoric hasn't changed however, because "while society has changed a lot, their ideology has been frozen". Prof Lankov adds that the North Koreans working in state media are likely to be from elite families, and graduates of prestigious local schools, who will be required to follow instructions from the Propaganda and Agitation Department. "North Korea is one of the last countries where the government has full control over the media." Despite the insults, North Korea has actually toned down its anti-US rhetoric in last year and a half, Ms Lee says. "Since the [first] Singapore Trump-Kim summit last June, North Korean domestic media have by and large refrained from carrying negative commentaries about the US." In the past, "the last page of Party Daily newspaper [Rodong Sinmun], was almost always filled with commentaries criticising South Korea and the US - but since 2018 the page is now filled with more international news". "I think the fact they are refraining from explicit criticism of the US using domestic outlets shows they're not closing the door on US-DPRK [North Korea] talks just yet." | Why is North Korea criticising Joe Biden? | 1,630 | Wednesday's KCNA report accused Mr Biden of "rhetoric slandering the supreme leadership of the DPRK" during a recent election campaign. This appeared to refer to Mr Biden's rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, where he criticised Mr Trump for working with "tyrants like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Kim Jong-un". "North Korean media tend to react sensitively to any comments made by foreign officials, especially US officials, about the North Korean leader," Rachel Lee, a senior analyst at NK News and a former North Korean media analyst for the US government, told the BBC. However, it's important to note that KCNA is an external agency aimed at international audiences, and "North Korea's public don't have access to it", she added. Often, domestic North Korean media avoid certain sensitive topics - or may avoid commenting on some issues, to ensure the government has more wriggle room later on, Ms Lee says. Meanwhile, Prof Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University, says that such propaganda is part of Pyongyang's attempt to "drive a wedge" between Donald Trump and his political advisers. State media criticism of Mr Biden, as well as Mr Pompeo and Mr Bolton, is an attempt to portray an image that "they would like to deal with Donald Trump, but he's prevented from doing anything meaningful by the hardline American establishment". Whether this is true or not is another matter - the most recent direct talks between Mr Trump and Mr Kim ended in Hanoi in February without any progress towards an agreement. "Given Joe Biden's record of standing up for American values and interests, it's no surprise that North Korea would prefer that Donald Trump remain in the White House," a spokesperson for his campaign, Andrew Bates, told the BBC. | 0.779563 | 0.774526 | 0.777044 |
4253_0 | Guatemala's Fuego volcano erupted at about noon local time (18:00 GMT) on Sunday. It is one of Central America's most active volcanoes but Sunday's eruption caused more fatalities than any of those previously recorded at Fuego. At least 69 people are known to have died. Most of them lived in villages on the slopes of the 3,763m-high volcano and were killed by what is known as pyroclastic flow, a searing cloud of debris. Fuego is a stratovolcano or composite volcano. Its steep, conical shape, which is typical of this type of volcano, can be seen from the capital, Guatemala City, 44km (27 miles) south-west of Fuego's summit. Fuego sits on the Ring of Fire, a horse-shoe-shaped string of volcanoes, earthquake sites and tectonic plates around the Pacific, which spreads across 40,000km (25,000 miles) from the southern tip of South America all the way to New Zealand. Stratovolcanoes are usually formed over a period of tens to hundreds of thousands of years and commonly produce highly explosive eruptions. Fuego regularly erupts but usually these are smaller events which pose little risk to surrounding villages. Stratovolcanoes are made up of alternating layers of lava, ash and rock. When a stratovolcano erupts, the rock layer is smashed into tiny dust particles. These particles mix with the hot ash and gases to form a giant cloud. Volcanologists say the ash plume from Fuego reached a height of 10km (33,000ft). It could be clearly seen from space, as this image taken by Nasa shows. As the eruption weakened, the ash cloud collapsed under its own weight and cascaded down the side of the volcano as a pyroclastic flow. Pyroclastic flows contain a high-density mix of hot lava blocks, pumice, ash and volcanic gas. They move very quickly down volcanic slopes, typically following valleys. Fuego's pyroclastic flow is the reason why so many people died in the volcano's most recent eruption compared to the last major eruption in 1974, when no deaths were officially recorded. They can reach a speed of up to 700km/h (450mph) and are considered to be the most deadly volcanic event because they are impossible to outrun and can travel for miles. Temperatures inside pyroclastic flows can range between 200C and 700C (390-1300F) and can ignite fires. They destroy everything in their path. Locals living on the slopes are used to smaller eruptions but the virulence of Sunday's event caught them by surprise. Many of the victims were found near their homes, indicating that they did not have time to flee. Others managed to save themselves but are still searching for members of their families. The villages worst affected were San Miguel Los Lotes and El Rodeo. Aerial photographs show how they were covered by pyroclastic flow which rushed down the slopes of the volcano. Video footage showing people gazing at the pyroclastic flow coming down the mountainside suggests they were not aware of how fast it spreads and the danger it poses. Volcanologists warn that while the eruption has seized for now, the danger is not yet over. If heavy rain were to fall on Fuego's slopes, it could cause deadly mudslides carrying ash, boulders and debris down the mountainside. The Guatemalan authorities calculate that 1.7 million people have been affected by the eruption and large areas remain covered in ash. | What type of volcano is Fuego? | 424 | Fuego is a stratovolcano or composite volcano. Its steep, conical shape, which is typical of this type of volcano, can be seen from the capital, Guatemala City, 44km (27 miles) south-west of Fuego's summit. Fuego sits on the Ring of Fire, a horse-shoe-shaped string of volcanoes, earthquake sites and tectonic plates around the Pacific, which spreads across 40,000km (25,000 miles) from the southern tip of South America all the way to New Zealand. Stratovolcanoes are usually formed over a period of tens to hundreds of thousands of years and commonly produce highly explosive eruptions. Fuego regularly erupts but usually these are smaller events which pose little risk to surrounding villages. | 0.752837 | 0.799834 | 0.776335 |
298_1 | The internal Labour row over anti-Semitism has dragged on for nearly three years. Here's a guide to what's been going on. Jewish people have faced prejudice and hostility for centuries. During World War II, six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis or their accomplices in what is known as the Holocaust. Modern-day anti-Semitism can take many forms including, but not limited to, conspiracy theories about Jewish control of the global financial system and the media, to attacks on synagogues, verbal abuse or hate speech and abusive memes on social media. In 2018, anti-Semitic hate incidents in the UK reached a record high, according to the Community Security Trust, which monitors them. In 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) adopted a working definition of anti-Semitism which described it as "a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews". The UK and the IHRA's other 30 members accepted the definition, as well as a series of accompanying "contemporary" examples of how anti-Semitism manifests itself in public life. These include Holocaust denial, denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination (through the existence of the State of Israel), and holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of that state. Labour got itself into trouble over the definition - as we'll explain later. Debates about anti-Semitism in Labour often involve Israel and the term "Zionism". In its modern sense, Zionism refers to support for Israel's existence and prosperity. It began as a political movement in Europe in the late 19th Century which sought to develop Jewish nationhood in the land known as Palestine - also known to Jews as the ancient Land of Israel. The movement evolved and eventually led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Some say "Zionist" can be used as a coded attack on Jewish people, while others say the Israeli government and its supporters are deliberately confusing anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism to avoid criticism. Attitudes to Israel in the UK, and on the left in particular, are influenced by its troubled relationship with its Arab neighbours and its long conflict with the Palestinians. A 2016 report by the Home Affairs Committee of MPs backed the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism but said it should include an additional statement to maintain freedom of speech "in the context of discourse about Israel and Palestine". This, it said, should read "it is not anti-Semitic to criticise the Israeli government without additional evidence to suggest anti-Semitic intent" or to hold Israel "to the same standards as other liberal democracies or to take a particular interest in the Israeli government's policies or actions, without additional evidence to suggest ant-Semitic intent". Anti-Semitism was generally not regarded as a big problem in the Labour Party before Jeremy Corbyn's election as leader in September 2015. Since then, things have changed, with Mr Corbyn and other figures on the left setting a new political direction. There has been an influx of new members, many of whom are vocal critics of Israel and who believe the UK, along with the US, should be tougher towards Israel, especially regarding its policies towards the Palestinians and its building of settlements in the occupied territories. The strength of the left's support for Palestinian statehood, which Jeremy Corbyn has championed for decades, contrasts with the more nuanced position taken by many of his predecessors. As the balance of power within Labour changed after Mr Corbyn's appointment, attention quickly focused on what activists and elected representatives were saying - and had said in the past - on social media and elsewhere about Israel and Jewish people. There were claims that anti-Semitic tropes were being widely propagated and a number of incidents attracted a great deal of attention. High-profile suspensions over alleged anti-Semitic comments include MP Naz Shah, the ex-London Mayor Ken Livingstone and MP Chris Williamson, an ally and friend of Mr Corbyn. Ms Shah apologised for a string of comments on Twitter, including one suggesting Israel should be moved to the United States, although she was subsequently re-instated. Mr Livingstone quit the party after a long-running row over claims Adolf Hitler had once supported Zionism while Mr Williamson was stripped of his membership for saying the problem of anti-Semitism had been over-stated and Labour had been "too apologetic" over the issue. Mr Williamson's case is still ongoing - he was allowed back into the party several months later, but was suspended again two days later. pending further consideration of his future. In February this year Labour released figures showing that the party received 673 accusations of anti-Semitism by Labour members between April 2018 and January 2019. However the scale of the issue remains disputed. In April 2019, the Sunday Times reported that Labour had received 863 complaints against party members, including councillors. The newspaper claimed leaked e-mails it had seen showed more than half of the cases remained unresolved while there had been no investigation in 28% of them. It said fewer than 30 people had been expelled while members investigated for posting online comments such as "Heil Hitler" and "Jews are the problem" had not been suspended. Labour disputed the reports while Jewish Voice for Labour, a newly constituted group supportive of Mr Corbyn, maintained the number of cases being investigated represented a tiny fraction of Labour's 500,000 plus membership. Not nearly enough, say its critics. In 2016, Mr Corbyn asked the barrister and human rights campaigner Shami Chakrabarti - who was appointed a Labour peer soon after her report was published - to look into the extent of anti-Semitism and other forms of racism within the party. The report concluded that while Labour was not "overrun by anti-Semitism or other forms of racism", there was an "occasionally toxic atmosphere". It called for a series of recommendations to tackle what it said was the "clear evidence of ignorant attitudes" within sections of the party. The report's launch was marred, though, by a verbal confrontation which led to the expulsion of activist Marc Wadsworth from the party after he criticised a Jewish MP. Labour's General Secretary Jennie Formby says she has strengthened and speeded up the party's disciplinary procedures, with more staff to handle investigations but Baroness Chakrabarti - now Labour's shadow attorney general - has criticised the pace of progress. The Home Affairs Committee's 2016 report said the leadership's lack of action "risks lending force to allegations that elements of the Labour movement are institutionally anti-Semitic". More recently, in early 2019, Labour approached its former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer about leading a review into its complaints process, which critics say has become politicised. This, in turn, led to complaints from prominent Jewish MPs that he was too close to the party for any review to be independent. But in a politically damaging move, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) announced it would be conducting its own wide-ranging investigation into whether Labour "unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish". Labour said it would co-operate fully with the watchdog. It is only the second time the EHRC has investigated a political party - in 2010, it ordered the BNP to re-write its constitution to comply with race relation laws. A Labour spokesman rejected "any suggestion that the party does not handle ant-Semitism complaints fairly and robustly, or that the party has acted unlawfully". The party faced further criticism following a BBC Panorama called Is Labour Anti-Semitic? The programme spoke to a number of former party officials who alleged that senior Labour figures - namely Ms Formby and Mr Corbyn's communications chief Seumas Milne - had interfered in the process of dealing with anti-Semitism complaints. The disputes team is supposed to operate independently from the party's political structures, including the leader's office. The whistleblowers also claimed they had faced a huge increase in anti-Semitism complaints since Mr Corbyn became leader in 2015. Labour strenuously disputed the claims, insisting there was no interference and the former staff were "disaffected" individuals with "personal and political axes to grind". It also said the programme was "heavily slanted and inaccurate" - a suggestion Panorama has rejected. The party's deputy leader, Tom Watson, said he "deplored" the official response to the documentary, and other senior figures joined him to call on the leadership to listen to the concerns it raised. MPs and peers are now pushing for a fully independent complaints process. In July 2018, Labour adopted a new anti-Semitism code which critics, including Jewish leaders and some Labour MPs, said fell unacceptably short of the IHRA definition. Labour's version did not include a number of its examples of anti-Semitism, including: - accusing Jewish people of being more loyal to Israel than their home country - requiring higher standards of behaviour from Israel than other nations Following a consultation - and widespread criticism - Labour subsequently adopted the full IHRA definition and examples, along with an accompanying statement that "this will not in any way undermine freedom of expression on Israel or the rights of Palestinians". Critics have said the addition of a "caveat" undermines the IHRA definition - but Labour says it is intended to reassure members they can be critical of Israel without being anti-Semitic. Mr Corbyn proposed a longer additional statement - which would have allowed criticism of the foundation of the state of Israel as a racist endeavour - but this was not accepted by the party's ruling executive. Jeremy Corbyn has insisted time and time again there is no place for anti-Semitism in Labour. Some of his supporters say the problem has been exaggerated and is being used as a stick to beat the Labour leader by people who don't like him or his views on the Middle East. He comes from a different political tradition than virtually every other post-war Labour leader, having campaigned for 40 years against Western imperialism and aggression. Mr Corbyn's opponents accuse him of being too close to Hamas, a militant Islamist group, and Hezbollah, a Lebanese paramilitary group. Both groups are widely viewed in the West as terrorist organisations. He described representatives of Hamas as his "friends" after inviting them to a controversial meeting in Parliament in 2009. He later said he regretted his use of language, but insisted his motivation in talking to enemies of Israel was the promotion of peace in the Middle East. But his critics argue his views have created the space for anti-Semitism to flourish in the party and he has condoned anti-Jewish prejudice through several of his own actions. Mr Corbyn faced criticism in August 2018 after a video emerged on the Daily Mail website of a 2013 clip in which he said a group of British Zionists had "no sense of English irony". Former chief rabbi Lord Sacks branded the comments "the most offensive statement" by a politician since Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech and accused the Labour leader of being an anti-Semite. Mr Corbyn said he had used the term "Zionist" in an "accurate political sense and not as a euphemism for Jewish people". He added: "I am now more careful with how I might use the term 'Zionist' because a once self-identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by anti-Semites as code for Jews." It isn't the only row he has been embroiled in, though. In August 2018, the Labour leader also came under fire over his presence at a ceremony in Tunisia in 2014 which is said to have honoured the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich massacre, during which 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage by Palestinian militants and killed. The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Mr Corbyn deserved "unequivocal condemnation" for laying a wreath on the grave of one of those behind the atrocity. The Labour leader tweeted that Mr Netanyahu's claims about his "actions and words are false", adding: "What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children." Mr Corbyn said he had attended the event in Tunis as part of a wider event about the search for peace. Earlier in August 2018, Jeremy Corbyn apologised over an event he hosted as a backbench MP in 2010 where a Holocaust survivor compared Israel to Nazism. After the Times published details of the event, the Labour leader said he had "on occasion appeared on platforms with people whose views I completely reject" and was sorry for the "concerns and anxiety that this has caused". In March 2018, Mr Corbyn was criticised for sending an apparently supportive message to the creator of an allegedly anti-Semitic mural in 2012. In a message sent via Facebook, he had appeared to question a decision to remove the artist's controversial work from a wall in east London. He later said he had not looked at it properly, calling it "deeply disturbing and anti-Semitic". The artist, called Mear One, denied this, saying the mural was about "class and privilege". Following the row, Mr Corbyn said he was "sincerely sorry for the pain" caused and conceded there were "pockets" of anti-Semitism within the party. Unease within Labour ranks in Parliament intensified in 2017 and 2018 amid concerns the leadership was not doing enough to defend Jewish MPs, such as Luciana Berger, who were themselves the targets of anti-Semitic abuse and death threats. In March 2018, scores of Labour MPs joined Jewish groups, including the Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and other anti-racism campaigners to demand action in an unprecedented "Enough is Enough" rally outside Parliament. In a further sign of the breakdown in trust between Labour and the Jewish community, the Jewish Labour Movement considered severing its century-old affiliation to the party. While deciding to retain its ties, the organisation of 2,000 members did pass a motion of no confidence in Mr Corbyn and voted to describe the party as "institutionally anti-Semitic". In February 2019, nine MPs quit Labour, many of them citing the leadership's handling of anti-Semitism as their reason for leaving. Ms Berger, who had a police escort at the 2018 Labour Party conference, said she had come to the "sickening conclusion" that the party had become institutionally anti-Semitic and that she was "embarrassed and ashamed" to stay. Ms Berger's supporters, including deputy leader Tom Watson, claimed she has been "bullied out of her own party by racist thugs". Among the other defectors, Joan Ryan claimed the party had "become infected with the scourge of anti-Jewish racism" while Ian Austin blamed Mr Corbyn for "creating a culture of extremism and intolerance". In March 2018, the head of the Labour Party's disputes panel quit after it emerged she had opposed the suspension of a council candidate accused of Holocaust denial. Christine Shawcroft said she had not not been aware of the "abhorrent" Facebook post that had led to his suspension In July 2018, the UK's three main Jewish newspapers published the same front page, warning that a government led by Mr Corbyn would pose an "existential threat to Jewish life". Earlier that month the party brought disciplinary action against the Labour MP Margaret Hodge, after she reportedly called Mr Corbyn an "anti-Semite" and a "racist". Ms Hodge refused to apologise and the action was later dropped. Frank Field, the MP for Birkenhead since 1979, quit the party's group in Parliament in August 2018, saying the leadership had become "a force for anti-Semitism in British politics". In May 2019, a member of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee - Peter Willsman - was suspended after LBC radio reported he had been recorded as saying that the Israeli embassy was "almost certainly" behind the anti-Semitism row. And Labour's successful candidate in the Peterborough by-election, Lisa Forbes, was engulfed in a row after it emerged she had liked a social media post suggesting Theresa May had a "Zionist slave masters agenda". She apologised and calls for her to be suspended were rejected but the controversy led to fresh ructions and claims racism had become "institutionalised" within the party. Update 25th June 2019: Although intended as a general guide, an earlier version of this article omitted some relevant information and it has since been updated. Correction 23rd July 2019: An earlier version of this article inaccurately said that Labour has never confirmed the number of anti-Semitism cases it is investigating and this has been amended to confirm that the party did release figures for a 10 month period in 2018/19. | What is the Labour anti-Semitism row about? | 2,796 | Anti-Semitism was generally not regarded as a big problem in the Labour Party before Jeremy Corbyn's election as leader in September 2015. Since then, things have changed, with Mr Corbyn and other figures on the left setting a new political direction. There has been an influx of new members, many of whom are vocal critics of Israel and who believe the UK, along with the US, should be tougher towards Israel, especially regarding its policies towards the Palestinians and its building of settlements in the occupied territories. The strength of the left's support for Palestinian statehood, which Jeremy Corbyn has championed for decades, contrasts with the more nuanced position taken by many of his predecessors. As the balance of power within Labour changed after Mr Corbyn's appointment, attention quickly focused on what activists and elected representatives were saying - and had said in the past - on social media and elsewhere about Israel and Jewish people. There were claims that anti-Semitic tropes were being widely propagated and a number of incidents attracted a great deal of attention. High-profile suspensions over alleged anti-Semitic comments include MP Naz Shah, the ex-London Mayor Ken Livingstone and MP Chris Williamson, an ally and friend of Mr Corbyn. Ms Shah apologised for a string of comments on Twitter, including one suggesting Israel should be moved to the United States, although she was subsequently re-instated. Mr Livingstone quit the party after a long-running row over claims Adolf Hitler had once supported Zionism while Mr Williamson was stripped of his membership for saying the problem of anti-Semitism had been over-stated and Labour had been "too apologetic" over the issue. Mr Williamson's case is still ongoing - he was allowed back into the party several months later, but was suspended again two days later. pending further consideration of his future. In February this year Labour released figures showing that the party received 673 accusations of anti-Semitism by Labour members between April 2018 and January 2019. However the scale of the issue remains disputed. In April 2019, the Sunday Times reported that Labour had received 863 complaints against party members, including councillors. The newspaper claimed leaked e-mails it had seen showed more than half of the cases remained unresolved while there had been no investigation in 28% of them. It said fewer than 30 people had been expelled while members investigated for posting online comments such as "Heil Hitler" and "Jews are the problem" had not been suspended. Labour disputed the reports while Jewish Voice for Labour, a newly constituted group supportive of Mr Corbyn, maintained the number of cases being investigated represented a tiny fraction of Labour's 500,000 plus membership. | 0.836887 | 0.71554 | 0.776214 |
390_0 | Heavy seasonal rains are a regular feature of life in Nigeria and towns close to the country's main rivers are particularly vulnerable. This year floods have killed almost 200 people with many thousands displaced. The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) say these figures are likely to rise as the full impact becomes clear. A state of emergency has been declared in four of the worst-hit states: - Niger - Kogi - Anambra - Delta President Muhammadu Buhari has pledged $8.2m (PS6.2m) for relief efforts. The NEMA has activated five local operation centres to coordinate emergency responses. Flooding regularly wreaks havoc in Nigeria: - In 2017, floods affected 250,000 people in the eastern-central region - In 2016, 92,000 were displaced and 38 died - In 2015, more than 100,000 were displaced, with 53 deaths - In 2012, devastating flooding forced two million Nigerians from their homes and 363 died, according to authorities "Floods have become a perennial challenge with increasing intensity each year, leaving colossal losses and trauma," the Nigerian Meteorological Agency says. So why does Nigeria keep flooding, and is it getting worse? Nigeria hosts two of West Africa's great rivers: - the Niger which enters the country from the north-west - the Benue, which flows into Nigeria from its eastern neighbour Cameroon These two immense waterways meet in central Nigeria and then flow south as a single river on to the Atlantic Ocean. Much, though by no means all, of Nigeria's flooding occurs along these two rivers as their banks overflow in the rainy season. In 2012, hundreds of thousands of acres of land were flooded in Nigeria when the Benue and Niger over-spilled. That year, the Niger River reached a record-high level of 12.84m (42ft). In 2018, levels reached 11.06m, with fears that the heavy rain, expected to continue through October this year, could lead it to approach similar heights. There has also been extensive damage to farmlands, according ACAPS, a humanitarian data-analysis organisation, which is the mainstay of most livelihoods in the affected regions. Flooding is also caused by: - the tidal movements of coastal waters, such as in the Delta region of the south-east - saturated drainage systems, such as in the country's largest city, Lagos, in the south-west Heavy rainfall has certainly increased the likelihood of rivers overflowing and flash floods. And there's evidence to suggest increasing rainfall over time. Data from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency from 1981-2017, analysing 13 affected locations, reveals a rising trend in annual rainfall, which it says is likely to be a significant factor responsible for floods. But it's not just rain falling in Nigeria itself. Heavy precipitation upstream on the Benue and Niger rivers - in Cameroon, Mali and the country of Niger - contributes large volumes of water to Nigeria's river system, according to Zahrah Musa at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. Another factor in Nigeria's flood problem is dams. Nigeria's three main electricity-generating dams, at Kainji and Jebba on the Niger river and the Shiroro dam on the Kaduna River, "have become bloated" by the heavy rains and excess water has had to be released downstream over the past month, says Hussaini Ibrahim, of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency (NSEMA). The uncompleted Zungeru dam, in Niger state, which is part-funded by the Chinese government, is also believed to be affecting areas once free from flooding. On the Benue River, the main concern is the Lagdo Dam, in neighbouring Cameroon, which has previously caused the river to swell by releasing water. In 2012, water flowing in from the Lagdo dam was blamed for 30 deaths in Nigeria. The Cameroonian authorities have yet to allow water to pour out from Lagdo during the current rainy season - but there are concerns in Nigeria that this might happen. Nigeria's population is expanding rapidly, currently estimated at 186 million, and the lack of proper town planning can make flooding worse in urban areas. "Town planning in Nigeria is very weak," says Aliyu Salisu Barau, of Bayero University. "These areas are affected by a lack of drainage networks." The city of Lokoja, for example, at the meeting-point of Benue and Niger rivers, is particularly prone to flooding. "If you go to Lokoja, you see massive developments along the Niger River," says Mr Barau. These developments are almost always unregulated, with people building on floodplains, reducing the surface areas for water to travel, and without constructing drainage systems. Because of the unregulated nature of town planning, there's also limited information on how much land has been built on and therefore little assessment of the impact. In the city of Makurdi, for example, on the Benue river, Mr Barau says, "one can see all forms of informal activities" along the river bank. New land developments along the Niger River has more than doubled in Nassarwa and Kogi States, according to estimates. The dumping of waste in the streets can also prevent the steady flow of water and put pressure on the few urban drainage systems. It's also common, after the floods, for people to come back and start rebuilding in the same vulnerable areas. Hussaini Ibrahim, of the NSEMA, also points the finger at deforestation, which he says is happening across Nigeria. It's a resource that people use for fuel or to sell - but trees play an important role in storing rain-waters. If the impact of flooding is to be reduced in the future, the consequences of rapid urbanisation and poor urban planning need to be addressed. And greater co-operation with Nigeria's neighbours in the control of river levels will need to be achieved in order to avoid dangerous surges in water levels during the periods of heavy rain. The wider issue of the increasing rainfall levels identified by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency is one that some in Nigeria have attributed to climate change. Read more from Reality Check Send us your questions Follow us on Twitter | Are Nigeria's rains causing the floods? | 2,303 | Heavy rainfall has certainly increased the likelihood of rivers overflowing and flash floods. And there's evidence to suggest increasing rainfall over time. Data from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency from 1981-2017, analysing 13 affected locations, reveals a rising trend in annual rainfall, which it says is likely to be a significant factor responsible for floods. But it's not just rain falling in Nigeria itself. Heavy precipitation upstream on the Benue and Niger rivers - in Cameroon, Mali and the country of Niger - contributes large volumes of water to Nigeria's river system, according to Zahrah Musa at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. | 0.782008 | 0.769737 | 0.775873 |
8522_1 | Former FBI director James Comey's evidence to the Senate Intelligence Committee has been keenly awaited by the US public. Mr Comey, who was sacked by Donald Trump on 9 May, gave some clues to the inner workings of the Trump administration and its relationship with the intelligence services. But despite the forensic examination of the witness by senators some questions remain unanswered, whether because they involve classified information or because, well, the answers just aren't there yet. Here are a few of them: The former FBI director said there were a "variety of reasons" why Mr Sessions' involvement in the investigation of Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 election campaign would be problematic. However, he said he was unable to speak about them in an open session of the hearing. Mr Sessions recused himself from the investigation in March after revelations that he had had conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the election campaign. He had failed to reveal these conversations at his confirmation hearings. Three days after Mr Comey was fired, the president tweeted that the former FBI director should hope there were no tapes of their conversations. Mr Comey has since expressed the hope that there are tapes and at the hearing he urged the president to release all their conversations if tapes exist. "I'm good with it," he said. But while Mr Comey has himself kept detailed memos of his conversations, there is no actual evidence that tapes exist. Mr Comey testified that President Trump asked Attorney General Sessions, aide Jared Kushner and senior intelligence officials to leave the room during a meeting on counter-intelligence on 14 February. Mr Trump then mentioned Mike Flynn, whom he had recently sacked as national security adviser. Near the end of the conversation, Mr Trump said: "He is a good guy, I hope you can let this go." In his testimony, Mr Comey did not explain why Mr Trump wanted to speak to him alone, and Mr Trump has as yet shed no light on the matter. The committee's Republican chairman hinted that Mr Trump might be called to give evidence at some stage. "The American people need to hear your side of the story, just as they need to hear the president's description of events," Richard Burr told Mr Comey. To date, only one sitting US president has ever testified before a Senate committee. In August 1919, Woodrow Wilson gave testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee on the Treaty of Versailles with Germany after World War One and the establishment of the League of Nations. The Senate twice rejected the treaty and the US never joined the League of Nations. However, President George Washington testified on Indian treaties before the whole Senate in 1789, and Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford gave evidence to Senate committees after they had left office. Mr Comey said in his statement released on Wednesday that he had assured Mr Trump on three occasions that he was not personally under investigation, confirming Mr Trump's own accounts. Explaining why he hadn't gone public with this information at the time, he said that if anything changed and an investigation into the president was started, he would have felt obliged to go public with that as well. Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz said that the president felt "totally vindicated" by Mr Comey's account. But since Mr Comey is no longer in charge of the FBI, and the investigation has now been passed to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, it is possible that Mr Trump is now being investigated after all. | Are there tapes of Mr Comey's conversations with Mr Trump? | 1,054 | Three days after Mr Comey was fired, the president tweeted that the former FBI director should hope there were no tapes of their conversations. Mr Comey has since expressed the hope that there are tapes and at the hearing he urged the president to release all their conversations if tapes exist. "I'm good with it," he said. But while Mr Comey has himself kept detailed memos of his conversations, there is no actual evidence that tapes exist. | 0.742958 | 0.808493 | 0.775726 |
7584_0 | MPs have rejected Prime Minister Boris Johnson's attempt to hold an early general election on 12 December. But why does the PM want an election and what are his remaining options? The next general election is not due until 2022, but the PM wants an early election to try to restore the Conservative Party's majority. While an early election carries risks, Mr Johnson hopes to win more seats in the House of Commons, to make it easier to pass a Brexit deal. Once an election is called, there has to be a gap of at least five weeks before polling day. That is because the law requires Parliament to dissolve 25 working days beforehand. At this point, MPs lose their status and campaign for re-election, if they choose to stand again. So, in order for polling day to take place on Mr Johnson's preferred date of 12 December, the election would have to be triggered before 6 November. Mr Johnson can't just decide to hold an early election. He needs the support of two-thirds of all MPs - at least 434. This is a legal requirement, set out under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. The latest rejection by MPs on Monday night comes after Mr Johnson lost two previous attempts last month to trigger an early election. Labour says it will support an early election, but only once the risk of a no-deal Brexit is "off the table". Had the PM secured enough votes, he would have then recommended the day of the election to the Queen. Despite losing the vote, there are other options the government can pursue. The government plans to get round the two-thirds threshold by introducing a very short law that fixes the date of the election as 12 December. The advantage of this route - from the government's point of view - is that it would only require a simple majority of MPs to support it rather than two-thirds. MPs are set to vote on it on Tuesday. The SNP and Liberal Democrats had already discussed the idea of a similar bill - although they want a different date. Under their plan, both parties had said they would propose a law on Tuesday that sets an election for Monday 9 December - three days earlier than Mr Johnson's preferred date. It is not yet clear if they might switch to support the government's bill. If an election was held on 9 December, it would be the first time since 1931 that a UK election had not been held on a Thursday. If an election was brought via this route - either for 9 or 12 December - it would need to clear all stages in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. There is also a risk the law could be altered if MPs or peers propose changes - such as allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote. Rather than the government, it could be the opposition that initiates an early election. This could happen if Labour proposed a no-confidence vote. This would give all MPs a vote on whether they wanted the current government to continue. Only a simple majority would be needed. If it succeeded, opposition parties would be allowed two weeks to come together to try to form an alternative government. If this happened, Mr Johnson would be expected to resign and a new prime minister would take over. But if nothing was resolved during those two weeks, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act says a general election would be automatically triggered. Under this scenario, an election would take place at least seven weeks after a no-confidence vote was passed. That's because two weeks would be taken up by opposition parties trying to form a government, plus a further five weeks to dissolve Parliament for the campaign. This would leave 19 December as the earliest possible date - a week after Mr Johnson's preferred date. If the government felt it had no other way of forcing an early election, it could in theory call a motion of no confidence in itself. In order for it to succeed, Conservative MPs would have to vote to bring down their own government. While such a tactic might appear extreme to outside observers, it would trigger an automatic early election - as long as opposition parties failed to form an alternative government within the 14 days. As such, this option would be extremely high risk. Brexit - British exit - refers to the UK leaving the EU. A public vote was held in June 2016 to decide whether the UK should leave or remain. | Why does Boris Johnson want an early election? | 180 | The next general election is not due until 2022, but the PM wants an early election to try to restore the Conservative Party's majority. While an early election carries risks, Mr Johnson hopes to win more seats in the House of Commons, to make it easier to pass a Brexit deal. | 0.793617 | 0.755712 | 0.774664 |
4848_0 | Feeling a little lost on Brexit? Never really got your head around it in the first place? Let us walk you through it. Brexit is short for "British exit" - and is the word people use to talk about the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union (EU). The EU is a political and economic union of 28 countries that trade with each other and allow citizens to move easily between the countries to live and work (click here if you want to see the full list). The UK joined the EU, then known as the EEC (European Economic Community), in 1973. A public vote - called a referendum - was held on Thursday 23 June 2016 when voters were asked just one question - whether the UK should leave or remain in the European Union. The Leave side won by nearly 52% to 48% - 17.4m votes to 16.1m - but the exit didn't happen straight away. It was due to take place on 29 March 2019 - but the departure date has been delayed (we will explain in more detail below). The 2016 vote was just the start. Since then, negotiations have been taking place between the UK and the other EU countries. The discussions have been mainly over the "divorce" deal, which sets out exactly how the UK leaves - not what will happen afterwards. This deal is known as the Withdrawal Agreement. The withdrawal agreement covers some of these key points: - How much money the UK will have to pay the EU in order to break the partnership - that's about PS39bn - What will happen to UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU and, equally, what will happen to EU citizens living in the UK - How to avoid the return of a physical border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland when it becomes the frontier between the UK and the EU It also includes a transition period, which has been agreed to allow the UK and EU to agree a trade deal and to give businesses the time to adjust. That means that if the withdrawal agreement gets the green light, there will be no huge changes between the date of Brexit and 31 December 2020. Another, much shorter, document has also been drawn up that gives an overview of what the UK and EU's future relationship will be in the longer term. This is the political declaration. However, neither side has to stick exactly to what it says - it is a set of ambitions for future talks. The deal was agreed by the UK and the EU in November 2018, but it also has to be approved by British MPs. Well, no. They have voted against it three times. On 15 January they rejected the deal by 432 votes to 202 - a record defeat. Then on 12 March, after Theresa May - the prime minister at the time - had gone back to the EU to secure further legal assurances, they rejected it again. And on 29 March - the original day that the UK was due to leave the EU - MPs rejected it for a third time (this vote was slightly different as it did not include the political declaration). Yes. As MPs did not approve Mrs May's withdrawal deal, she was forced to ask other EU leaders to delay Brexit. The deadline was delayed until 31 October - but, unable to see a way forward, Mrs May stepped down as PM and was replaced by Boris Johnson. There is a broad range of complaints, many of which claim the deal fails to give back to the UK control of its own affairs from the EU. One of the biggest sticking points has been over what happens at the Irish border. Both the EU and UK want to avoid the return of guard posts and checks (here's why), so something called the backstop - a sort of safety net - was included in the deal. The backstop is meant to be a last resort to keep an open border on the island of Ireland - whatever happens in the Brexit negotiations. It would mean that Northern Ireland, but not the rest of the UK, would still follow some EU rules on things such as food products. Theresa May insisted that, if all went as planned, it would never be used. But it has annoyed some MPs, who are angry that the UK would not be able to end it without the EU's permission and so EU rules could remain in place for good. Other MPs would prefer the UK to stay closer to the EU - or even still in it. And others say Northern Ireland should not be treated separately from the rest of the UK. Boris Johnson has said he wants to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement with the EU - and remove the backstop. If he succeeds in doing this, it will still have to be approved by MPs before being passed into UK law. However, EU leaders have consistently said they will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement and that the backstop is an essential part of any deal. If the prime minister fails to convince the EU to change the withdrawal agreement, he has promised to take the UK out of the EU without a deal on 31 October. Leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement would be known as a "no-deal Brexit". "No deal" means the UK will have failed to agree a withdrawal agreement. It would mean there would be no transition period after the UK leaves and EU laws would stop applying to the UK immediately (more on that here). The government says it is preparing for this potential situation. It expects some food prices could rise and customs checks at borders could cost businesses billions of pounds. (Read the government's report here). It has published a series of guides - which cover everything from mobile roaming on holiday to the impact on electricity supplies. Here is a list of 10 ways you could be affected by a no-deal Brexit. It is still written into law that the UK will be leaving, even though the deadline has shifted. The European Court of Justice has said the UK could cancel Brexit altogether without the agreement of other nations - but few politicians publicly back this option. | What is Brexit? | 118 | Brexit is short for "British exit" - and is the word people use to talk about the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union (EU). | 0.735541 | 0.81249 | 0.774016 |
9319_0 | Saudi Arabia and Iran are at loggerheads. They have long been rivals, but it's all recently got a lot more tense. Here's why. Saudi Arabia and Iran - two powerful neighbours - are locked in a fierce struggle for regional dominance. The decades-old feud between them is exacerbated by religious differences. They each follow one of the two main branches of Islam - Iran is largely Shia Muslim, while Saudi Arabia sees itself as the leading Sunni Muslim power. This religious schism is reflected in the wider map of the Middle East, where other countries have Shia or Sunni majorities, some of whom look towards Iran or Saudi Arabia for support or guidance. Historically Saudi Arabia, a monarchy and home to the birthplace of Islam, saw itself as the leader of the Muslim world. However this was challenged in 1979 by the Islamic revolution in Iran which created a new type of state in the region - a kind of revolutionary theocracy - that had an explicit goal of exporting this model beyond its own borders. In the past 15 years in particular, the differences between Saudi Arabia and Iran have been sharpened by a series of events. The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq overthrew Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab who had been a major Iranian adversary. This removed a crucial military counter-weight to Iran. It opened the way for a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad and Iranian influence in the country has been rising ever since. Fast-forward to 2011 and uprisings across the Arab world caused political instability throughout the region. Iran and Saudi Arabia exploited these upheavals to expand their influence, notably in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, further heightening mutual suspicions. Iran's critics say it is intent on establishing itself or its proxies across the region, and achieving control of a land corridor stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean. The strategic rivalry is heating up because Iran is in many ways winning the regional struggle. In Syria, Iranian (and Russian) support for President Bashar al-Assad has enabled his forces to largely rout rebel group groups backed by Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is trying desperately to contain rising Iranian influence while the militaristic adventurism of the kingdom's young and impulsive Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - the country's de facto ruler - is exacerbating regional tensions. He is waging a war against the rebel Houthi movement in neighbouring Yemen, in part to stem perceived Iranian influence there, but after four years this is proving a costly gamble. Iran has denied accusations that it is smuggling weaponry to the Houthis, though successive reports from a panel of UN experts have demonstrated significant assistance for the Houthis from Tehran in terms of both technology and weaponry. Meanwhile in Lebanon, Iran's ally, Shia militia group Hezbollah, leads a politically powerful bloc and controls a huge, heavily armed fighting force. Many observers believe the Saudis forced Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, whom it backs, to resign in 2017 over Hezbollah's involvement in regional conflicts. He later returned to Lebanon and put the resignation on hold. There are also external forces at play. Saudi Arabia has been emboldened by support from the Trump administration while Israel, which sees Iran as a mortal threat, is in a sense "backing" the Saudi effort to contain Iran. The Jewish state is fearful of the encroachment of pro-Iranian fighters in Syria ever closer to its border. Israel and Saudi Arabia were the two countries most resolutely opposed to the 2015 international agreement limiting Iran's nuclear programme, insisting that it did not go far enough to roll back any chance of Iran obtaining the bomb. Broadly speaking the strategic map of the Middle East reflects the Shia-Sunni divide. In the pro-Saudi camp are the other major Sunni actors in the Gulf - the UAE and Bahrain - as well as Egypt and Jordan. In the Iranian camp is Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, a member of a heterodox Shia sect, who has relied on pro-Iranian Shia militia groups, including the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, to fight predominantly Sunni rebel groups. Iraq's Shia-dominated government is also a close ally of Iran, though paradoxically it also retains a close relationship with Washington on whom it has depended for help in the struggle against so-called Islamic State. This is in many ways a regional equivalent of the Cold War, which pitted the US against the Soviet Union in a tense military standoff for many years. Iran and Saudi Arabia are not directly fighting but they are engaged in a variety of proxy wars (conflicts where they support rival sides and militias) around the region. Syria is an obvious example, while in Yemen Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of supplying ballistic missiles fired at Saudi territory by the rebel Houthi movement. Iran is also accused of flexing its muscle in the strategic waterways of the Gulf, through which oil is shipped from Saudi Arabia. The US says Iran was behind recent attacks on foreign tankers there - something it denies. So far Tehran and Riyadh have fought via proxies. Neither is really geared up for a direct war with the other but a major Houthi attack against the Saudi capital or, as in the most recent case, against a key economic target could upset the apple cart. Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia's infrastructure have inevitably added a new front to the confrontation between Tehran and Riyadh. As in the Gulf, where Iran and Saudi face each other across a maritime border, rising tensions could risk a much broader conflict. For the US and other Western powers, freedom of navigation in the Gulf is essential and any conflict that sought to block the waterway - vital for international shipping and oil transportation - could easily draw in US naval and air forces. For a long time the US and its allies have seen Iran as a destabilising force in the Middle East. The Saudi leadership increasingly sees Iran as an existential threat and the crown prince seems willing to take whatever action he sees necessary, wherever he deems it necessary, to confront Tehran's rising influence. Saudi Arabia's vulnerability has been demonstrated by these latest attacks on its oil installations. If a war breaks out, it will be more perhaps by accident rather than design. But the Saudis' own activism, encouraged in part by a lingering uncertainty as to the Trump administration's own goals in the region, inevitably adds another element of tension. | How is the Saudi-Iranian rivalry being played out? | 4,360 | This is in many ways a regional equivalent of the Cold War, which pitted the US against the Soviet Union in a tense military standoff for many years. Iran and Saudi Arabia are not directly fighting but they are engaged in a variety of proxy wars (conflicts where they support rival sides and militias) around the region. Syria is an obvious example, while in Yemen Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of supplying ballistic missiles fired at Saudi territory by the rebel Houthi movement. Iran is also accused of flexing its muscle in the strategic waterways of the Gulf, through which oil is shipped from Saudi Arabia. The US says Iran was behind recent attacks on foreign tankers there - something it denies. | 0.802515 | 0.744455 | 0.773485 |
3220_0 | India is preparing to send a robotic spacecraft into orbit around Mars - a first for the country. Yogita Limaye from the BBC's India Business Report spoke to K Radhakrishnan, chair of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) - the country's space agency - about his hopes for the mission. A: Essentially in this Mars mission, which we are planning, the prime objective is to demonstrate India's capability to capture the Martian orbit and then to conduct a few meaningful scientific experiments. A: See, essentially when we talk about Mars and exploration of Mars, you look at life as one of those goals. So (we look for) the presence of methane in the Martian environment and see whether this methane, if it is there, has a biological origin or a geological origin. We also would like to study the Martian atmosphere and the escape processes there. A: No, see Curiosity is measuring the presence of methane in a small area where it is there today. We are talking about the entire Martian environment. So Curiosity saying "no" is not a point to be worried about. A: Any mission to Mars has to be done in an opportune window and the imminent window is November 2013, that is we need to get out of this sphere of influence of earth by 30 November to ensure that we have the minimum distance between Earth and Mars. Now we are launching this Mars orbiter from Sriharikota in the east coast of India in the first week of November and then the PSLV-XL (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) is used for the launch which will put this orbiter into an elliptical orbit around the Earth... then around the last week of November, we have a crucial operation, it's called the "trans-Martian injection" where the spacecraft is directed towards Mars. Then it is a long voyage of 300 days where the orbiter spacecraft passes through the sphere of influence of the Earth... Then it goes through a long phase of heliocentric flight where the orbiter spacecraft will be influenced not only by the Sun but by the other planets too. Then as it approaches Mars... we have another major action: capturing the orbit of Mars, which is on 21st of September 2014. A: Soon after the orbiter is put into the orbit of Mars, we would start the experimentation and even before this orbiter reaches the Martian environment we would be calibrating these instruments as it travels from Earth to Mars. But the most important part of it is looking at the distances involved. It takes at least 20 minutes for any signal to come from the Mars orbiter to Earth in some phases. It could be anything between four to 20 minutes one-way. A: Why India has to be in the space programme is a question that has been asked over the last 50 years. The answer then, now and in the future will be: "it is for finding solutions to the problems of man and society." And in this area, India has become a role model for the whole world. Let me talk in terms of numbers. We spend in India about a billion dollars for the space programme. If we look at the central government expenditure, we spend 0.34% of its budget for the space programme. This goes primarily for building satellites in communications and remote sensing and navigation for space applications. Nearly 35% of it goes on launch vehicle development and about 7-8% goes on the science and exploration programme. So the Mars mission we're talking about today is part of that 8% of the 0.34% of Indian central government expenditure. And if you look at the benefit that the country has accrued over the years, it has surpassed the money that has been spent in terms of tangible and intangible benefits. [This can be expressed in terms of] the advantage that the people have got, the fishermen have got, the farmers have got, the government bodies have got for informed decision-making, the support the country has got for disaster management and by providing a communication infrastructure for this country using the INSAT satellites. Today we have nearly 10 communication satellites and 10 remote sensing satellites in orbit. This is a great revolution that has taken place over these last 50 years in the country by a meagre expenditure that has been put into the space programme. A: See, Chandrayaan-1 was an orbiter, but Chandrayaan-2 as you said looks at the surface of the Moon using a rover and a landing module there. In 2009-2010, we planned this as a joint mission where India was to provide the launch and the orbiter and Russia was to provide the lander and the rover. Over these years there has been a programmatic realignment on this and, as of now, the plan is that the rover will be made by India and the lander will also be developed by India, and we must have this lander developed by the year 2016. Now, we also require a reliable GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket) for launching Chandrayaan-2. In December 2013, we are going to launch the GSLV T5 rocket with our own cryogenic engine stage. If that is successful, and we are able to have one more successful flight of the GSLV, then we would be ready - from the launch angle - for Chandrayaan-2. So, this is the scenario emerging and there will be scientific experiments in the lander module and in the rover, and a few in the orbiter too. Yes, 2016 is the correct target and the limiting factor for that is the development of the lander module. A: See, as of now we have no declared programme on human space flight, but in the year 2006-07 we began a study... and as of now we have taken up the critical new technologies that India needs to master a human space flight. The core module development, environment control and life support systems, the crew escape system, these are all part of that and we are working on it at the moment. But we require a human-rated vehicle that is capable of taking the crew module into a lower orbit. So you need to have a reliable GSLV for a manned mission or a GSLV Mark 3 developed and then manned-rated. A: As of now, there is no timeline for a mission but we are working on the development of the critical technologies required for it. A: Let me first say each country has its own priorities and focus. Right from the beginning, right from the early sixties, India's focus has been on peaceful uses of outer space and space applications and there India is today a role model for the whole world. One can be proud of it. China has its own priorities and it is moving in that direction. So, we are not in a race with anybody, but I would say we are in a race with ourselves. We need to excel, we need to improve, and we need to bring new services. We need to do it more cost-effectively and deliver it to the target audience in the country, whether it is to the people or the government or other agencies in the country. So that has been the focus of the Indian space programme. This interview has been abridged for reasons of article length. | Q: What is the objective of India's Mars mission? | 294 | A: Essentially in this Mars mission, which we are planning, the prime objective is to demonstrate India's capability to capture the Martian orbit and then to conduct a few meaningful scientific experiments. | 0.684731 | 0.859782 | 0.772257 |
9369_0 | Brunei has introduced a tough Islamic penal code, known as Sharia law, sparking concern from the UN and the US. The BBC explains how the Sharia system works. Sharia law is Islam's legal system. It is derived from both the Koran, Islam's central text, and fatwas - the rulings of Islamic scholars. Sharia literally means "the clear, well-trodden path to water". Sharia law acts as a code for living that all Muslims should adhere to, including prayers, fasting and donations to the poor. It aims to help Muslims understand how they should lead every aspect of their lives according to God's wishes. Background on Sharia law (BBC religion) Sharia can inform every aspect of daily life for a Muslim. For example, a Muslim wondering what to do if their colleagues invite them to the pub after work may turn to a Sharia scholar for advice to ensure they act within the legal framework of their religion. Other areas of daily life where Muslims may turn to Sharia for guidance include family law, finance and business. The many faces of Sharia Sharia law divides offences into two general categories: "hadd" offences, which are serious crimes with set penalties, and "tazir" crimes, where the punishment is left to the discretion of the judge. Hadd offences include theft, which can be punishable by amputating the offender's hand, and adultery, which can carry the penalty of death by stoning. Some Islamic organisations have argued that there are many safeguards and a high burden of proof in the application of hadd penalties. The UN has spoken out against death by stoning, saying it "constitutes torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and is thus clearly prohibited". Not all Muslim countries adopt or enforce such punishments for hadd offences, and polling suggests attitudes of Muslims to harsh penalties for such offences vary widely. Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Muslim thinker in Europe, has called for a moratorium on corporal punishment, stoning and the death penalty in the Muslim world. He argues that the conditions under which such penalties would be legal are almost impossible to re-establish in today's world. Governing under Sharia (external link) Apostasy, or leaving the faith, is a very controversial issue in the Muslim world and experts say the majority of scholars believe it is punishable by death. But a minority of Muslim thinkers, particularly those engaged with Western societies, argue that the reality of the modern world means the "punishment" should be left to God - and that Islam itself is not threatened by apostasy. The Koran itself declares there is "no compulsion" in religion. Like any legal system, Sharia is complex and its practice is entirely reliant on the quality and training of experts. Islamic jurists issue guidance and rulings. Guidance that is considered a formal legal ruling is called a fatwa. There are five different schools of Sharia law. There are four Sunni doctrines: Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanafi, and one Shia doctrine, Shia Jaafari. The five doctrines differ in how literally they interpret the texts from which Sharia law is derived. | What is Sharia? | 158 | Sharia law is Islam's legal system. It is derived from both the Koran, Islam's central text, and fatwas - the rulings of Islamic scholars. Sharia literally means "the clear, well-trodden path to water". Sharia law acts as a code for living that all Muslims should adhere to, including prayers, fasting and donations to the poor. It aims to help Muslims understand how they should lead every aspect of their lives according to God's wishes. Background on Sharia law (BBC religion) | 0.697411 | 0.845403 | 0.771407 |
9352_0 | Reality check verdict: The US president has the power to both dismiss and appoint the director of the FBI. US President Donald Trump sacked James Comey, director of the FBI, on 9 May, with immediate effect. Mr Trump said he had acted on the recommendation of senior figures at the Justice Department, criticising Mr Comey's handling of the investigation over Hillary Clinton's emails. Mr Comey was sworn in as the seventh FBI director in September 2013, under the Obama administration. He was in his fourth year of a potential 10-year term, heading the organisation within the Justice Department with a broad array of powers to investigate domestic crime and to gather intelligence. According to federal law, the president has authority to both appoint and dismiss the director of the FBI, as well as other senior officials in the Justice Department, but the nominee has to pass hearings and be confirmed by a simple majority vote in the Senate. Only one FBI director has been removed by the President in the bureau's 100-plus-year history. That man was William Sessions, who was fired by President Bill Clinton in 1993. As president, Mr Trump has used his power to remove senior officials in the Justice Department before. He fired the acting attorney general, Sally Yates, at the end of January this year. The White House says the search for the next director has already begun. Before his removal from office, Mr Comey was in charge of investigations into alleged Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election. During a Senate hearing on 20 March 2017, Mr Comey acknowledged that potential links between Trump's associates and Russia were also under review. There's no reason why the investigation would stop, but with Mr Comey gone, Democrats in Congress are demanding that a special prosecutor be appointed to oversee the investigation into Russian involvement in the election. Deconstructing Comey's testimony on Clinton emails | How can a president simply fire the head of the FBI? | 683 | According to federal law, the president has authority to both appoint and dismiss the director of the FBI, as well as other senior officials in the Justice Department, but the nominee has to pass hearings and be confirmed by a simple majority vote in the Senate. Only one FBI director has been removed by the President in the bureau's 100-plus-year history. That man was William Sessions, who was fired by President Bill Clinton in 1993. As president, Mr Trump has used his power to remove senior officials in the Justice Department before. He fired the acting attorney general, Sally Yates, at the end of January this year. | 0.779497 | 0.762989 | 0.771243 |
5084_0 | The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping route in the Gulf region, is at the centre of rising tensions. Two Royal Navy warships are now in the Gulf, to protect ships sailing under the British flag. So, what is the waterway and why does it matter? Despite its small size, the Strait of Hormuz is one of the world's most important shipping routes. It is about 96 miles long and only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, with shipping lanes in each direction just two miles wide. Bounded to the north by Iran and to the south by Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Strait of Hormuz connects the Gulf with the Arabian Sea. The strait is deep enough for the world's biggest crude oil tankers, and is used by the major oil and gas producers in the Middle East - and their customers. At any one time, there are several dozen tankers on their way to the Strait of Hormuz, or leaving it. About a fifth of the world's oil, nearly 21 million barrels a day, passed through the Strait of Hormuz last year. In 2016, the most recent year for which comparable figures are available, the strait was the world's busiest sea route for oil. It carried about 19 million barrels a day - more than the 16 million barrels a day that went through the the Strait of Malacca, a major international waterway in the Indian Ocean. In comparison, just five or six million barrels a day went via the Suez Canal and Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea. The Strait of Hormuz is vital for the main oil exporters in the Gulf region, whose economies are built around oil and gas production. In 2018, Saudi Arabia sent nearly 6.4 million barrels of oil per day via the strait, while Iraq sent more than 3.4 million, the UAE nearly 2.7 million and Kuwait just over two million. Iran also relies heavily on this route for its oil exports. And Qatar, the biggest global producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), exports nearly all its gas through the strait. It has become particularly important in recent years for the major economies in Asia. Most of the oil going through the strait in 2018 went to China, Japan, South Korea and India. And the US also imported nearly 1.4 million barrels a day via this route. The UK does import some oil from the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz, as well as around a third of its liquefied natural gas. The Strait of Hormuz is still the best route for transporting large volumes of oil out of the Gulf and is the only route by sea. There are some land-based pipelines that can carry oil. A Saudi pipeline goes to the Red Sea, and has a capacity of about five million barrels of oil a day. Abu Dhabi has a pipeline that can carry about 1.5 million barrels of oil a day down the coast, to beyond the Strait of Hormuz. And there is a pipeline that can transport Iraq's oil to the Mediterranean coast. But not all these pipelines are working at full capacity. And they cannot transport nearly as much oil as can be carried by ship. UN rules allow countries to exercise control up to 12 nautical miles (13.8 miles) from their coastline. This means that at its narrowest point, the strait and its shipping lanes lie entirely within Iran and Oman's territorial waters. - Iran diverted a British-flagged oil tanker to one of its ports, which the UK said was illegal - US forces destroyed an Iranian drone that came close to the USS Boxer - The US said it was ready to carry out air strikes after Iran shot down a US drone - Two tankers were damaged by explosions after leaving the Strait of Hormuz - Four tankers were hit by blasts within the UAE's territorial waters - Shipping and oil installations were targeted during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war However, international conventions give ships - including military vessels - the right of passage through a state's territorial waters. Iran is allowed to act in its own territorial waters - but not at the expense of the right of passage for foreign ships. The US has now beefed up its military presence in the region. But it has also said it is keen for other countries to play a part in safeguarding the Gulf and wider region. And the UK is providing a naval escort for British-flagged ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. | What is the Strait of Hormuz? | 246 | Despite its small size, the Strait of Hormuz is one of the world's most important shipping routes. It is about 96 miles long and only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, with shipping lanes in each direction just two miles wide. Bounded to the north by Iran and to the south by Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Strait of Hormuz connects the Gulf with the Arabian Sea. The strait is deep enough for the world's biggest crude oil tankers, and is used by the major oil and gas producers in the Middle East - and their customers. At any one time, there are several dozen tankers on their way to the Strait of Hormuz, or leaving it. | 0.756965 | 0.78268 | 0.769822 |
6053_0 | More than 1,000 firefighters are battling a forest fire in Portugal that has claimed the lives at least 64 people and injured more than 130 since Saturday. Many of the victims died after becoming trapped in cars as they tried to flee. Planes have been used to drop water over the Pedrogao Grande region. Civil protection officials have said they expect the blaze to be under control soon, but warn that soaring temperatures are hampering efforts. The week's highest temperatures in the area are expected to reach around 38C (100F) and, together with windy conditions, could reignite fires already quelled. Despite 70% of the fire now under control, officials said what remained was a source "of great concern". One of the victims has been identified as a 40-year-old firefighter who died in hospital. Many died inside their cars as they tried to escape or were a short distance from them when they became trapped. The government has declared a state of emergency in the forested region around Pedrogao Grande, north-east of the capital, Lisbon. Civil protection commander Elisio Oliveira said there was great concern for the fires still burning. He described the operation as "complex" and said many residents were being forced to evacuate. The blaze continues to rage on several fronts. One volunteer rescuer quoted by Reuters news agency said teams were not optimistic about bringing the blaze fully under control anytime soon. "Low humidity, windy conditions and high temperatures will easily re-ignite the fire, and it will spread very fast," he said. When asked about the plan for Tuesday, he added: "It all depends on the weather." Police believe the fires were started by lightning on Saturday during an intense heatwave and rainless thunderstorms. Wildfires are an annual menace in Portugal. More broke out there between 1993 and 2013 than in Spain, France, Italy or Greece, the European Environment Agency reported last year, despite the country's relatively small geographical size. Given that, was this year's tragedy preventable? Could Portugal have done anything more to save lives and minimise the damage? Read more: Just what makes Portugal such a tinderbox? One of the worst-hit areas was around the village of Nodeirinho. Thirty bodies were found inside cars and another 17 next to vehicles on the N-236 road. Portuguese media have dubbed the N-236 the "road of death". A few miles north, 11 people died in the village of Pobrais, many as they tried to escape the flames. A survivor spoke of the roads being blocked and of no-one coming to their aid. Betty Jesus, a 50-year-old Venezuelan who has lived in the area for decades, said: "I have witnessed a lot of fires, but never like this. The way it spread, the speed." Virgilio Godinho, who lives in the village of Figueiro, said the fire quickly overwhelmed the community. "The fire didn't spread by the ground, it spread through the air at the height of the trees. In five minutes all were on fire in an area of around 10km," he said. Portugal is observing three days of mourning for the victims. | Why are Portugal's wildfires so deadly? | 1,756 | Wildfires are an annual menace in Portugal. More broke out there between 1993 and 2013 than in Spain, France, Italy or Greece, the European Environment Agency reported last year, despite the country's relatively small geographical size. Given that, was this year's tragedy preventable? Could Portugal have done anything more to save lives and minimise the damage? Read more: Just what makes Portugal such a tinderbox? | 0.758066 | 0.780607 | 0.769337 |
3082_0 | The US is cutting hundreds of troops in Africa as it focuses on countering threats from Russia and China. Around 700 counter-terrorism troops will be removed over the next few years, the Department of Defense said. About 7,200 US soldiers are currently based in dozens of African countries including Nigeria and Libya. There will now be a shift away from tactical assistance to advising and sharing intelligence in West Africa, the Pentagon said. However, counter-terrorism activities in several countries including Somalia and Djibouti will remain largely the same. A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity to Reuters, said the reduction of troops would likely take place over three years and could include countries such as Kenya, Cameroon and Mali. Pentagon spokeswoman Candice Tresch said: "We will realign our counter-terrorism resources and forces operating in Africa over the next several years in order to maintain a competitive posture worldwide." A military official said an attack in Niger in October 2017 in which four US troops were killed did not play a role in the decision to cut troops, the Voice of America reports. The move comes as US President Donald Trump works to implement his National Defense Strategy, which ushers in a new era of "Great Power competition" with Moscow and Beijing. On Wednesday, a bipartisan congressional panel reviewing the strategy said America's focus on counter-insurgency operations had weakened its military capability. By Tomi Oladipo, BBC Africa Security Correspondent The announcement of cuts has been coming for some time. In January, the US Defence Secretary James Mattis unveiled a new strategy indicating a shift away from terrorism and towards America's standing when compared to Russia and China. While the cuts begin in Africa, they will eventually affect US military personnel elsewhere. The funding will now be put into military muscle-flexing, as Beijing and Moscow embark on renewed global ambitions. The Pentagon will feel it has been successful in training partner forces in Africa and setting them up to competently fight insurgent groups - particularly Islamist extremists. An example is in Cameroon, where the US feels local Special Forces are now able to operate independently. Even though the US has spent years growing a secret military footprint across Africa, it will only keep those that are most essential, and focus on areas where there is a security vacuum, such as Libya and Somalia. | Why is the US cutting troops in Africa? | 1,479 | By Tomi Oladipo, BBC Africa Security Correspondent The announcement of cuts has been coming for some time. In January, the US Defence Secretary James Mattis unveiled a new strategy indicating a shift away from terrorism and towards America's standing when compared to Russia and China. While the cuts begin in Africa, they will eventually affect US military personnel elsewhere. The funding will now be put into military muscle-flexing, as Beijing and Moscow embark on renewed global ambitions. The Pentagon will feel it has been successful in training partner forces in Africa and setting them up to competently fight insurgent groups - particularly Islamist extremists. An example is in Cameroon, where the US feels local Special Forces are now able to operate independently. Even though the US has spent years growing a secret military footprint across Africa, it will only keep those that are most essential, and focus on areas where there is a security vacuum, such as Libya and Somalia. | 0.769008 | 0.769 | 0.769004 |
3690_0 | Introducing the SNP's general election pledges in an independent Scotland could lead to more austerity, according to an economic research group. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the SNP's manifesto set out plans to increase spending while also setting out a list of tax-cutting measures. It said the SNP had not costed these pledges, unlike the other main parties. But it said spending cuts would have to be made elsewhere, or other taxes would have to rise to pay for them. The IFS has previously said that the spending pledges of both the Conservatives and Labour ahead of the election were "not credible", and accused both parties of not being honest with voters. It said the Liberal Democrats' manifesto would involve lower levels of borrowing than under Labour or the Conservatives, but would still be seen as "radical" in "most periods". The SNP manifesto was unveiled last month by leader Nicola Sturgeon, who said her party was offering Scottish voters a chance to "escape Brexit and put Scotland's future in Scotland's hands". In his analysis of the SNP's manifesto, IFS associate director David Phillips said it differed from those of the other three major parties because it was not "a plan of action for five years of governing the UK". Writing in the Scotsman newspaper, Mr Phillips argued that the document was instead about "starting the process of leaving the UK in the next year". He highlighted the party's call for the UK government to dramatically increase spending on the NHS in England, which would add hundreds of millions of pounds to the Scottish government budget through the Barnett Formula. He said spending proposals such as the abolition of the so-called "bedroom tax", ending the two-child cap on means-tested benefits and other increases to Universal Credit would benefit low-income, working age families. But he said other proposals aimed at pensioners, such as keeping universal free TV licences for the over-75s and offering "compensation" for the so-called Waspi women, could actually increase inequality. This is because pensioners are already "less likely to be in poverty than the rest of the population", he said. - CONFUSED? Our simple election guide - POLICY GUIDE: Who should I vote for? - POLLS: How are the parties doing? - A TO Z: Our tool to explain election words The SNP has also set out a list of tax-cutting measures - including reducing VAT on e-books, bikes, solar panels and energy efficiency measures and calling for National Insurance thresholds to "fit devolved income tax rates" - which Mr Phillips said could mean changes that reduce revenues by billions of pounds across the UK as a whole. He argued that it could therefore have been "problematic" for the party to have set out the cost of the measures it was proposing. Mr Phillips said this was because the SNP's own Growth Commission, which examined the finances of an independent Scotland, had already recognised that the country would "start life with a significant budget deficit". He said the SNP should be "commended" for setting out a plan through the Growth Commission to reduce the budget deficit significantly over the course of a decade. But he said it was "inconsistent" to claim that the Growth Commission's plans would not be austerity but at the same time argue that the UK government had been pursuing austerity in recent years. He added: "Pursuing the types of policies suggested in the SNP manifesto in an independent Scotland would mean either those cuts would have to be even bigger, or other taxes would have to be increased to pay for the proposed net giveaways. "Therefore, in the short-term at least, independence would likely necessitate more, not less, austerity. "Of course, that does not mean Scotland could not afford to be independent, or even that in the longer term better governance and better policymaking as an independent country could mean a stronger economy and more to spend on public services. That is possible - although far from guaranteed. "It just means that an independent Scotland would have to count its pennies and pounds in at least its first decade of life." Kirsty Blackman, the SNP's deputy Westminster leader and economy spokeswoman, insisted that investment in public services would increase "year in year out" after independence, which she said was in "stark contrast to the brutal austerity that is the hallmark of successive UK governments." She added: "The Growth Commission explicitly rejected austerity and instead proposed that Scotland's inherited deficit be reduced by growing the economy, not cutting spending. "The latest Gers figures proves that this is possible. It shows that Scotland's notional deficit fell by 1.1% at the same time as spending increased by 2.5%. This was achieved because growing the economy increases tax receipts. "Brexit is the biggest threat to Scotland's economy and will have a deep and lasting impact on our public services." But Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Murdo Fraser said it was clear that "independence means more not less austerity", and that the SNP was looking to "lead Scotland down the road to economic ruin, all for the price of a flag". Scottish Labour finance spokeswoman Rhoda Grant claimed that the SNP had "abjectly failed to come up with serious and credible policies". And Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said independence would mean "at least a decade of new deep cuts at a time when we need to invest in education and boost mental health services". In analysis published last week, the IFS said it was "highly likely" the Tories would end up spending more than their manifesto pledges, while Labour would be unable to deliver its promised spending increases. Neither party was therefore being "honest" with voters, IFS director Paul Johnson said. The Liberal Democrats' manifesto, he said, would involve lower levels of borrowing than under Labour or the Conservatives, but would still be seen as "radical" in "most periods". However, he added that, given the uncertainty around Brexit, it was difficult to determine what the exact effects of the three parties' offers would be. | What does the IFS says about the SNP manifesto? | 1,047 | In his analysis of the SNP's manifesto, IFS associate director David Phillips said it differed from those of the other three major parties because it was not "a plan of action for five years of governing the UK". Writing in the Scotsman newspaper, Mr Phillips argued that the document was instead about "starting the process of leaving the UK in the next year". He highlighted the party's call for the UK government to dramatically increase spending on the NHS in England, which would add hundreds of millions of pounds to the Scottish government budget through the Barnett Formula. He said spending proposals such as the abolition of the so-called "bedroom tax", ending the two-child cap on means-tested benefits and other increases to Universal Credit would benefit low-income, working age families. But he said other proposals aimed at pensioners, such as keeping universal free TV licences for the over-75s and offering "compensation" for the so-called Waspi women, could actually increase inequality. This is because pensioners are already "less likely to be in poverty than the rest of the population", he said. - CONFUSED? Our simple election guide - POLICY GUIDE: Who should I vote for? - POLLS: How are the parties doing? - A TO Z: Our tool to explain election words The SNP has also set out a list of tax-cutting measures - including reducing VAT on e-books, bikes, solar panels and energy efficiency measures and calling for National Insurance thresholds to "fit devolved income tax rates" - which Mr Phillips said could mean changes that reduce revenues by billions of pounds across the UK as a whole. He argued that it could therefore have been "problematic" for the party to have set out the cost of the measures it was proposing. Mr Phillips said this was because the SNP's own Growth Commission, which examined the finances of an independent Scotland, had already recognised that the country would "start life with a significant budget deficit". He said the SNP should be "commended" for setting out a plan through the Growth Commission to reduce the budget deficit significantly over the course of a decade. But he said it was "inconsistent" to claim that the Growth Commission's plans would not be austerity but at the same time argue that the UK government had been pursuing austerity in recent years. He added: "Pursuing the types of policies suggested in the SNP manifesto in an independent Scotland would mean either those cuts would have to be even bigger, or other taxes would have to be increased to pay for the proposed net giveaways. "Therefore, in the short-term at least, independence would likely necessitate more, not less, austerity. "Of course, that does not mean Scotland could not afford to be independent, or even that in the longer term better governance and better policymaking as an independent country could mean a stronger economy and more to spend on public services. That is possible - although far from guaranteed. "It just means that an independent Scotland would have to count its pennies and pounds in at least its first decade of life." | 0.791757 | 0.745303 | 0.76853 |
5096_0 | Social issues like gay marriage and abortion have taken centre stage in the lead up to Canada's autumn election, as the Liberal Party tries to convince voters that the Conservatives want to backtrack on LGBTQ and abortion rights. Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party has fired an early salvo against Conservative party leader Andrew Scheer, and his past record on gay marriage and abortion. But whether it will wound his primary opponent remains to be seen. A Liberal minister released footage last week of Mr Scheer in 2005 opposing same-sex marriage during a debate in parliament. Although his remarks have been a matter of public record for some time, the footage renewed concerns that he would let his personal beliefs influence policy decisions. For days Mr Scheer avoided commenting on his past statements, but on Thursday he gave a press conference where he tried to assuage concerns. Just before, the Liberals launched another attack, this time with footage taken during the 2017 Conservative leadership contest. In it, an anti-abortion activist says Mr Scheer has promised him that Conservative MPs who oppose abortion would be allowed to vote with their conscience if the matter were to come up in parliament. During his press conference, Mr Scheer accused the Liberals of "dredging up divisive issues" in order to distract people from Liberal scandals and poor economic policy. He reiterated that his Conservative Party considered both same-sex marriage and abortion to be "settled law", meaning the party would not seek to make either illegal again. However, he was a bit hazy on how he would deal with members of his own party who wished to pass socially conservative legislation. In 2005, about a year after Mr Scheer was elected to parliament, he voted against same-sex marriage. He was one of 133 members, from all parties, who voted against the law, which passed with 158 votes. "There is nothing more important to society than the raising of children, for its very survival requires it. Homosexual unions are by nature contradictory to this," Mr Scheer, who is Catholic, said during a debate on the proposed legislation. That clip was tweeted out by Liberal public safety minister Ralph Gooddale last week. Since 2005, the Conservative Party has largely given up on making same-sex marriage illegal. In 2016, Mr Scheer voted in favour of removing the heterosexual definition of marriage from the party's policy book. Also in 2016, he voted against a bill to protect gender identity and expression under the Human Rights Act. The bill passed with 248 in favour, including many Conservatives, and only 40 opposed. Mr Scheer is personally opposed to abortion, but says he will keep the party's current policy on the issue, which is to not support legislation that would regulate abortion or reopen the debate. But on Thursday, another Liberal minister tweeted out a video from 2017 that seemed to contradict this promise. In the clip, a member of RightNow, an anti-abortion group, tells conservative television host Faytene Grasseschi that Mr Scheer - who was running for party leadership at the time - had promised that he would allow a "free vote" on abortion if it should come up in parliament. This would mean he would allow his party members to vote with their conscience. This policy stands in stark contrast to Mr Trudeau, who has said no Liberal Party member is allowed to vote against abortion rights, regardless of personal beliefs. "The Liberals showed how intolerant they are, and how they don't actually believe in people's rights to hold personal beliefs," Mr Scheer told the Globe and Mail in 2018. On Thursday, after mounting calls for him to clarify his previous statements, Mr Scheer gave a press conference where he accused the Liberal Party of using socially divisive issues to distract from their own scandals. "Trudeau can't run on his record. He can't possibly defend all his broken promises, massive deficits, tax increases and ethical and corruption scandals," he said. When asked about his personal views on gay marriage, Mr Scheer said he supported it, legally speaking. "My personal views are that LGBT Canadians have the same inherent self-worth and dignity as any other Canadian and I will always uphold the law and always ensure they have equal access to the institution of marriage," he said. He said that while he does not attend pride parades, he supports the community in other ways, such as his motion last year to condemn Russia for its treatment of LGBTQ people. On abortion, his stance was less clear. He reiterated that he would not reopen the abortion debate. "I will oppose measures or attempts to reopen this debate and Canadians can have confidence in that," he said. But he also reaffirmed that individual MPs would be allowed to "express themselves on matters of conscience", which seems to leave the door open for backbenchers to introduce private members bills on the issue. When asked how he personally would vote if such a bill were to be tabled, Mr Scheer declined to answer the "hypothetical" question. There is nothing new about Liberals attacking Conservatives for allegedly being anti-gay or anti-choice. When a dozen Conservative MPs attended an anti-abortion rally in May, Liberals called on Mr Scheer to defend his position. Earlier in August, three federal party leaders - Mr Trudeau. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Green Party leader Elizabeth May - marched in the pride parade. Mr Trudeau did not let Mr Scheer's absence go unnoticed. "It's just unfortunate that there are still some party leaders who want to be prime minister, who choose to stand with people who are intolerant instead of standing with the LGBT community," he said. Both abortion rights and same-sex marriage are popular in Canada. A 2017 IPSOS poll found 77% of Canadians supported legal abortion. Two-thirds of Canadians also support same-sex marriage, according to a recent Research Co. online survey of 1,000. Mr Trudeau has made progressive issues an integral part of his own brand, and his party's platform. The Liberals' slogan for the campaign, "Choose Forward", speaks to this perception, along with the unwritten implication that to choose Conservative would be a step backward. | What were Mr Scheer's views on same sex marriage? | 1,688 | In 2005, about a year after Mr Scheer was elected to parliament, he voted against same-sex marriage. He was one of 133 members, from all parties, who voted against the law, which passed with 158 votes. "There is nothing more important to society than the raising of children, for its very survival requires it. Homosexual unions are by nature contradictory to this," Mr Scheer, who is Catholic, said during a debate on the proposed legislation. That clip was tweeted out by Liberal public safety minister Ralph Gooddale last week. Since 2005, the Conservative Party has largely given up on making same-sex marriage illegal. In 2016, Mr Scheer voted in favour of removing the heterosexual definition of marriage from the party's policy book. Also in 2016, he voted against a bill to protect gender identity and expression under the Human Rights Act. The bill passed with 248 in favour, including many Conservatives, and only 40 opposed. | 0.717919 | 0.81847 | 0.768195 |
449_0 | South Korea and the US have this week launched the world's first commercial 5G services, promising a new wave of capabilities for smartphone users. Samsung said its Galaxy S10 5G device will offer speeds up to 20 times faster than current phones as it began selling the handsets on Friday. Countries are racing to build 5G networks that will be crucial for future tech such as driverless cars. Nations are also working to resolve security concerns tied to the networks. 5G is the fifth-generation of mobile internet connectivity. Users will get more data faster, with less delay. It also promises wider coverage and more stable connections. Ed Barton, chief television and entertainment analyst at Ovum, said the shift from today's 4G networks to 5G will be significant. He said first-generation or 1G networks enabled voice, 2G brought text, 3G static images or photos, and 4G enabled video. "We're expecting the leap from 4G to 5G to be a much greater leap than ever before." Part of the "leap" will come from the ability to move much greater volumes of data across networks. 5G will mean more devices can be connected to the network at better speeds. Nikhil Batra, senior research manager at technology consultancy IDC Asia Pacific, said speeds will be 10 times faster than what is possible with 4G. Samsung said its 5G device will be up to 20 times faster. Initially, 5G will bring higher-quality streaming and the ability to livestream to bigger audiences - a better experience for people watching live sports or cloud gaming. Ovum's Mr Barton said down the track it will enable more augmented reality capabilities, such as better mapping apps and shopping experiences. 5G will be crucial for driverless cars. The scope of possibilities is vast, from remote surgery to holographic video calls. Mr Barton said we don't yet know what the "killer apps and use cases will be". "It's a bit like no one predicted that ubiquitous smartphones with payments and location awareness would give rise to Uber," he said. The technology is being piloted in trials all over the world but commercial applications are just becoming available. South Korea's top three mobile carriers launched 5G services this week, while US telco Verizon also launched 5G services in parts of two cities this week. DJ Koh, president of IT & mobile communications at Samsung Electronics said it has begun "a new era where the incredible speed and connectivity of 5G becomes a reality". Frost & Sullivan telecoms analyst Quah Mei Lee says South Korea and Japan have been leaders in 5G development. She said South Korea has always been strong in consumer applications but there's "more than it can do" in 5G. "We will see more applications coming to the market over the next three-to-six months." Much discussion about 5G infrastructure has centred around possible security risks, namely the participation of China's Huawei. Huawei, the world's largest maker of telecoms equipment, has faced resistance from foreign governments over the risk that its technology could be used for espionage. The US, Australia and New Zealand have all blocked local firms from using Huawei gear in 5G networks. In principle, controlling the technology that sits at the heart of vital communications networks gives an operator like Huawei the capacity to conduct espionage or disrupt communications. This becomes a bigger problem as more things - from autonomous vehicles to domestic appliances - become connected to the internet. The US argues Huawei could use malicious software updates to spy on those using 5G, pointing to a Chinese law that says organisations must "support, co-operate with and collaborate in national intelligence work". Additionally, IDC's Mr Batra said one of the fundamental differences between 4G and 5G networks is the ability for remote control which raises "potential security concerns". Mr Batra said with 4G, software and hardware were very tightly coupled. In 5G networks, hardware is separated from the software. "That allows for remote control... of the network assets. All of these things can be managed virtually, and that makes it challenging in terms of security." Still, he said authorities around the world are working with operators to address these concerns and "we haven't really seen any hard proof in terms of what is the issue". | What will 5G enable? | 1,361 | Initially, 5G will bring higher-quality streaming and the ability to livestream to bigger audiences - a better experience for people watching live sports or cloud gaming. Ovum's Mr Barton said down the track it will enable more augmented reality capabilities, such as better mapping apps and shopping experiences. 5G will be crucial for driverless cars. The scope of possibilities is vast, from remote surgery to holographic video calls. Mr Barton said we don't yet know what the "killer apps and use cases will be". "It's a bit like no one predicted that ubiquitous smartphones with payments and location awareness would give rise to Uber," he said. | 0.762505 | 0.773812 | 0.768158 |
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