Unnamed: 0
int64 0
49
| text
stringlengths 1.37k
13.5k
| summary
stringlengths 73
304
|
|---|---|---|
24
|
Robert Bowers, 46, is accused of opening fire at the Tree of Life synagogue during its Sabbath service. He faces 29 criminal counts, including use of a firearm to commit murder. Federal prosecutors say they will also file hate crime charges, and the suspect could face the death penalty. President Donald Trump described the attack as a "wicked act of mass murder". Six people - including four police officers - were injured in Saturday's attack. The suspect was also wounded in a shootout with police. Hundreds of people - from the neighbourhood and also all across Pittsburgh - later gathered for an interfaith vigil for the victims of the attack in the synagogue in Squirrel Hill. Sophia Levin, a local resident and one of the organisers, told the BBC people wanted to be "together, not alone", and the vigil would help heal the city. President Trump said he would visit Pittsburgh soon. He also ordered US flags at government buildings to be flown at half-mast until 31 October. What are the charges? The 29 charges were announced in a statement issued by the US Attorney's Office of the Western District of Pennsylvania: How did the shooting unfold? On Saturday morning, worshippers had gathered at the synagogue for a baby naming ceremony during the Sabbath. Squirrel Hill has one of the largest Jewish populations in Pennsylvania and this would have been the synagogue's busiest day of the week. Police said they received first calls about an active shooter at 09:54 local time (13:54 GMT), and sent officers to the scene a minute later. According to reports, Mr Bowers, a white male, entered the building during the morning service armed with an assault rifle and three handguns. The gunman had already shot dead 11 people and was leaving the synagogue after about 20 minutes when he encountered Swat officers and exchanged fire with them, FBI agent Robert Jones said. The attacker then moved back into the building to try to hide from the police. He surrendered after a shootout, and is now being treated in hospital for what has been described as multiple gunshot wounds. The crime scene was "horrific", Pittsburgh's Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich told reporters. "One of the worst I've seen, and I've [worked] on some plane crashes. It's very bad." Mr Hissrich said no children were among the casualties. What do we know about the gunman? US media said he had shouted "All Jews must die" as he carried out the attack. Social media posts by someone with the name Robert Bowers were also reported to be full of anti-Semitic comments. FBI special agent Bob Jones told a press conference that Mr Bowers did not appear to be known to authorities prior to the attack. He said that any motive remains unknown but that authorities believe he was acting alone. 'Grief and hurt' Gary O'Donoghue, BBC News, Pittsburgh In the dwindling light, and with the cold autumn rain falling, hundreds gathered in front of the 6th Presbyterian church just a few streets away from the Tree of Life Synagogue. Holding their candles, they sang the Jewish prayer of healing. The elders in the community had wanted to wait a day before holding the vigil, but the young people said no - they wanted an immediate chance to share their grief and voice their hurt. Fifteen-year-old Sophia Levin declared that she was a different Jew today to the one she was yesterday. Anti-Semitism, she said, had been something she thought happened elsewhere and in earlier times; but now she knew it was right here, right now. Some of these young people have been involved in the student gun control movement that sprang up after the Parkland shooting earlier this year. One of them, Rebecca Glickman, told the crowd that gun control was needed now more than ever. She told me that an anti-Semite with a gun is more dangerous than an anti-Semite without a gun, so that's a good place to start. What has been President Trump's reaction? He called the shooting a "terrible, terrible thing". "To see this happen again and again, for so many years, it's just a shame," he told reporters. He described the gunman as a "maniac" and suggested the US should "stiffen up our laws of the death penalty". "These people should pay the ultimate price. This has to stop," he said. Mr Trump added that the incident had "little to do" with US gun laws. "If they had protection inside, maybe it could have been a different situation." Former US President Barack Obama voiced a different position on the ongoing gun law debate, tweeting: "We have to stop making it so easy for those who want to harm the innocent to get their hands on a gun." What about other reaction? Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said in a statement that the incident was an "absolute tragedy" and that such acts of violence could not be accepted as "normal". The president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, Jeff Finkelstein, said his "heart goes out to all these families". "Now I'm just sad. This should not be happening. Period. It should not be happening in a synagogue. It should not be happening in our neighbourhood here in Squirrel Hill," he said. Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish non-governmental organisation that fights anti-Semitism, said he was "devastated". "We believe this is the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States," he said in a statement. World leaders also condemned the attack, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said he was "heartbroken and appalled", and German Chancellor Angela Merkel who said: "We all have to stand up against anti-Semitism, everywhere." Extra police officers have been deployed at synagogues and Jewish centres across the US after the attack. The BBC's Dan Johnson in Washington says the shootings come at a tense time in the US, after a week in which mail bombs were sent to critics of Mr Trump, ahead of crucial mid-term elections next month.
|
যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের পিটসবার্গ শহরের এক ইহুদী উপাসনালয়ে হামলা চালিয়ে যে লোকটি ১১ জনকে হত্যা করে, তার বিরুদ্ধে আনুষ্ঠানিক অভিযোগ এনেছে যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের ফেডারেল কৌশুলিরা।
|
33
|
It had been due to take place at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana but was changed because of concerns over coronavirus precautions. It will now be co-hosted by Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic. The two men will hold three debates in all before the 3 November vote. Reverend John I Jenkins, president of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, said the health precautions needed to stage the event "would have greatly diminished the educational value of hosting the debate on our campus". The new location will be at Western Reserve University's Health Education Campus, the Commission on Presidential Debates said. The second presidential debate on 15 October will take place in Miami after getting shifted from the University of Michigan. The third will take place in Nashville on 22 October, while a debate between Vice-President Mike Pence and the Democratic vice-presidential nominee - who has still to be chosen - will be held on 7 October in Salt Lake City. Mr Biden is currently holding a lead of 15 percentage points nationally, a Washington Post-ABC News poll suggests. The president's national approval ratings have dropped in a year dominated by coronavirus - of which the US has by far the world's highest death toll with more than 147,000 - and widespread protests over the death of black man George Floyd in police custody in May.
|
৩রা নভেম্বরে মার্কিন প্রেসিডেন্ট নির্বাচনের আগে প্রথমবার বিতর্কে মুখোমুখি হয়েছিলেন ও রিপাবলিকান ও ডেমোক্র্যাট প্রার্থী ডোনাল্ড ট্রাম্প ও জো বাইডেন।
|
30
|
A bill requiring Boris Johnson to ask for an extension to the UK's departure date to avoid a no-deal Brexit on 31 October is set to gain royal assent. But the PM has said he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than ask for a delay. Legal experts have warned the prime minister could go to prison if he refuses to comply with the new law. MPs have lined up a legal team and are willing to go to court to enforce the law to avoid no deal, if necessary. Meanwhile, pro and anti-Brexit protesters held demonstrations in Westminster on Saturday, with some people arrested by police. The cross-party bill - which requires the prime minister to extend the exit deadline until January unless Parliament agrees a deal with the EU by 19 October - was passed on Friday. Although the government has said it will abide by the law, Mr Johnson described it as obliging him "in theory" to write to Brussels asking for a "pointless delay". Downing Street said the British public had been clear that they wanted Brexit done. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told BBC News the party was not taking legal action over the legislation, but said it was "aware of the actions that are being discussed and prepared for". He added that Labour would allow a general election "when we are clear that there will be an end to the danger of no-deal on 31 October". "We need a clear statement from the prime minister that he is going to abide by that act of Parliament," Mr Corbyn said. Meanwhile, clashes erupted between pro-Brexit protesters and police in Parliament Square in London. Several hundred people joined pro and anti-Brexit demonstrations in Westminster. Pro-leave protesters were seen throwing a metal barricade at officers, while others tried to break the police cordon. Anti-Brexit MP Anna Soubry, who leads the Independent Group for Change, said she had been due to speak at the March for Change rally in London but told organisers she was too frightened to do so, after consulting with police. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said officers made 16 arrests in connection with the protests. That included 13 arrests for violent disorder, one for possession of an offensive weapon, one for affray and one for a racially aggravated public order offence. Some 35 other events were held across the UK and Europe, including a pro-democracy protest in Berlin. 'Dangerous precedent' The Daily Telegraph reported that the prime minister said seeking another extension is "something I will never do", fuelling speculation that ministers could try to find a loophole. But David Lidington, who resigned as Cabinet Office minister in July, in opposition to Mr Johnson's no-deal Brexit strategy, told the BBC's Today programme: "The government is bound by the words of any statute that has been duly enacted by the Queen in Parliament, which is a fundamental principle of our constitution and our ministerial code. "Defying any law sets a really dangerous precedent." He added that at a time when other countries were "holding up alternatives to the rule of law and democratic government" it was imperative that British governments always demonstrate they comply with the law. Mr Lidington, who supported the government in voting for an early general election, urged Mr Johnson to "re-double [his] efforts" in talking to a "wide range" of European leaders to get a Brexit deal he can put before Parliament in October. What are the PM's options? Mr Johnson's options are "narrowing" after this week's Brexit defeats, says Dr Hannah White, deputy director of the Institute for Government. Some possibilities being discussed are: Commentators on PM's next move. Former attorney general Dominic Grieve has warned the prime minister "could be sent to prison" if he refuses to obey the law and delay Brexit. Mr Grieve told BBC News Mr Johnson would be "under an obligation" to abide by the law after it has received royal assent. "If he doesn't, he can be taken to court which will if necessary issue an injunction ordering him to do it," he said. "If he doesn't obey the injunction, he could be sent to prison." Earlier the former director of public prosecutions Lord MacDonald told Sky News a refusal to delay Brexit in the face of court action "would amount to contempt of court which could find that person in prison". One Tory MP said the idea of Mr Johnson ignoring the legislation was "nonsense". Kevin Hollinrake, MP for Thirsk and Malton, tweeted: "Even if it was under consideration, which I'm sure it's not, you would see a very significant number of Conservative MPs resigning the whip, including me." A number of cabinet sources have told the BBC in recent days that they have significant concerns about Number 10's strategy. It comes in the wake of a series of Parliamentary defeats for the government, beginning after Mr Johnson announced his decision to suspend Parliament for five weeks in September and October. First, the prime minister lost control of the House of Commons agenda. That allowed opposition MPs and rebel Tories to put forward the bill to prevent a no-deal Brexit, which Mr Johnson said "scuppered" his negotiations with the EU. In response, the prime minister expelled 21 of his own MPs for rebelling against the government over the vote and then called for a general election. But on Friday, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, SNP and Plaid Cymru jointly agreed to reject Mr Johnson's demand for a snap poll before the EU summit in mid-October. The day before, the prime minister's younger brother, Jo Johnson, resigned as an MP and minister, saying he was "torn between family loyalty and the national interest". According to the Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson wrote to Conservative Party members on Friday night, saying Labour MPs had "left us no choice" but to call for an election. He said: "They just passed a law that would force me to beg Brussels for an extension to the Brexit deadline. This is something I will never do." No 10 said an election would allow the public to choose between the government's approach - Mr Johnson's commitment to leave on 31 October, either with a re-negotiated deal or no deal - and "more delay, more dither" from Labour. But opposition MPs say they will only agree to an election when the extension to the Brexit deadline has been secured, to ensure the UK does not "crash out" without a deal. What does the no-deal bill say? The bill, presented by Labour MP Hilary Benn, says the prime minister will have until 19 October to either pass a deal in Parliament or get MPs to approve a no-deal Brexit. Once this deadline has passed, he will have to request an extension to the UK's departure date to 31 January 2020. Unusually, the bill stipulates the wording of the letter Mr Johnson would have to write to the president of the European Council. If the EU responds by proposing a different date, the PM will have two days to accept that proposal. During that time, MPs - not the government - will have the opportunity to reject that date. The bill also requires ministers to report to the House of Commons over the next few months. potentially providing more opportunities to take control of the timetable.
|
ব্রিটেনের প্রধানমন্ত্রী বরিস জনসন যদি ব্রেক্সিট পিছিয়ে দিতে রাজি না হন, তাহলে আইনি ব্যবস্থা নেয়ার জন্য প্রস্তুতি নিতে শুরু করেছেন পার্লামেন্টের সদস্যরা, যাদের মধ্যে বরখাস্ত হওয়া টোরি এমপিরাও রয়েছেন।
|
17
|
According to the People's Daily state newspaper, officials at a private aerospace institute in Chengdu want to launch this "illumination satellite" in orbit by 2020, and say it will be bright enough to replace street lights. The straight-out-of-sci-fi news has sparked fascination, scepticism from scientists, lots of questions and outright mockery. What do we know about this project? Not much - and the little information that is available is somewhat contradictory. People's Daily first reported it last week, quoting comments made at an innovation conference by Wu Chunfeng, chairman of the neatly named Chengdu Aerospace Science Institute Microelectronics System Research Institute Co, Ltd. Mr Wu said the idea had been in testing for a few years and the technology was now in place to make it happen, with a launch scheduled for 2020. The China Daily newspaper quoted Mr Wu as saying that three "huge mirrors" could be launched by 2022. It's not clear from any of the reports whether this project has any official backing. How might a 'fake moon' work? The artificial moon would work as a mirror, reflecting sunlight back to Earth, according to China Daily. It would orbit 500km about Earth - roughly the same height as the International Space Station. The Moon orbits, on average, about 380,000km above Earth. The reports gave no details about what the fake moon would look like, but Mr Wu said it would reflect sunlight across an area of between 10km and 80km with brightness "eight times" that of the real Moon. According to Mr Wu, both the accuracy and intensity of the light would be controllable. But... why? To save money. It might sound ridiculous but the Chengdu aerospace officials say putting a fake moon in space could actually end up being cheaper than paying for street lights. China Daily quoted Mr Wu as saying illuminating an area of 50sq km could save up to 1.2bn yuan ($173m; £132m) a year in electricity charges. It could also "illuminate blackout areas" after, say, a natural disaster like an earthquake. "Think of this as sort of an investment," Dr Matteo Ceriotti, a lecturer in Space Systems Engineering at the University of Glasgow, told the BBC. "Electricity at night is very expensive so if you could say, have free illumination for up to 15 years, it might work out better economically in the long term." OK but is it possible? Scientifically, it's viable, says Dr Ceriotti. But to serve its purpose, the fake moon would have to be permanently in orbit over Chengdu - a relatively tiny area when you look at the Earth from space. That would mean it would need to be in geostationary orbit, which is about 37,000km from the Earth. "The only problem is at that distance you'd need the satellite pointing direction to be extremely accurate," said Dr Ceriotti. "If you want to light up an area with an error of say 10km, even if you miss by one 100th of a degree you'll have the light pointing at another place." And to have any impact from that distance, the mirror would have to be truly colossal. What impact would this have on the environment? Kang Weimin, director at the Harbin Institute of Technology, told the People's Daily that the light of the satellite would be similar to a "dusk-like glow" and "should not affect animals' routines". But social media users in China have concerns. Some said it will surely confuse nocturnal animals, while others say that many cities in China already suffer from light pollution. "The moon would significantly increase the night-time brightness of an already light-polluted city, creating problems for Chengdu's residents who are unable to screen out the unwanted light," John Barentine, director of Public Policy at the International Dark Sky Association, told news outlet Forbes. Dr Ceriotti told the BBC that if the light is too strong "it will disrupt the night cycle of nature and this could possibly affect animals". "But conversely if the light is so faint then the question is, what is the point of it?" Is this a first? No, a space mirror to create daylight at night has actually been tried before. In 1993, Russian scientists released a 20m-wide reflector from a supply ship heading to the Mir Space Station, which was orbiting at between 200km and 420km. Znamya 2 briefly beamed a spot of light about 5km in diameter to Earth. The light marched across Europe at 8km/hr, before the satellite burned up on re-entry. Attempts to build a bigger model of Znamya failed in the late 1990s, leading the BBC's science editor at the time to say there was "not the slightest chance that the Earth will be girdled with space mirrors in the foreseeable future".
|
চীনের একটি কোম্পানি রাতের আকাশের উজ্জ্বলতা বাড়াতে মহাকাশে একটি ফেইক মুন বা নকল চাঁদ বসানোর কথা ঘোষণা করেছে।
|
48
|
By Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna are the first two women to share the prize, which honours their work on the technology of genome editing. Their discovery, known as Crispr-Cas9 "genetic scissors", is a way of making specific and precise changes to the DNA contained in living cells. They will split the prize money of 10 million krona (£861,200; $1,110,400). Biological chemist Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede, commented: "The ability to cut DNA where you want has revolutionised the life sciences." Not only has the women's technology been transformative for basic research, it could also be used to treat inherited illnesses. Prof Charpentier, from the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin, said it was an emotional moment when she learned about the award. "When it happens, you're very surprised, and you think it's not real. But obviously it's real," she said. On being one of the first two women to share the prize, Prof Charpentier said: "I wish that this will provide a positive message specifically for young girls who would like to follow the path of science... and to show them that women in science can also have an impact with the research they are performing." She continued: "This is not just for women, but we see a clear lack of interest in following a scientific path, which is very worrying." During Prof Charpentier's studies of the bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes, she discovered a previously unknown molecule called tracrRNA. Her work showed that tracrRNA is part of the organism's system of immune defence. This system, known as Crispr-Cas, disarms viruses by cleaving their DNA - like genetic scissors. In 2011, the same year she published this work, Prof Charpentier began a collaboration with Prof Doudna, from the University of California, Berkeley. The two had been introduced by a colleague of Doudna's at a cafe in Puerto Rico, where the scientists were attending a conference. And it was on the following day, during a walk through the streets of the island's capital, San Juan, that Prof Charpentier proposed the idea of joining forces. Together, they recreated the bacterium's genetic scissors in a test tube. They also simplified the scissors' molecular components so they were easier to use. In their natural form, the bacterial scissors recognise DNA from viruses. But Charpentier and Doudna showed that they could be reprogrammed to cut any DNA molecule at a predetermined site, publishing their findings in a landmark 2012 paper. The breakthrough DNA snipping technology allowed the "code of life" to be rewritten. Since the two scientists discovered the Crispr-Cas9 genetic scissors, their use has exploded. The tool has contributed to many important discoveries in basic research; and, in medicine, clinical trials of new cancer therapies are underway. The technology also holds the promise of being able to treat or even cure inherited diseases. It is currently being investigated for its potential to treat sickle cell anaemia, a blood disorder that affects millions of people worldwide. But without regulation, some fear Crispr could equally be used to create "designer babies", opening up an ethical minefield. If genome-edited children grow up and have children, any alterations to their genomes could be passed down through the generations - introducing lasting changes to the human population. Last year, Chinese scientist He Jiankui was jailed for three years after creating the world's first gene-edited human babies. He was convicted of violating a government ban by carrying out his own experiments on human embryos, to try to give them protection against HIV. It had been thought a Nobel for this revolutionary science would not be awarded for many years because the technique is also the subject of a long-running patent battle in the US. The dispute involves Charpentier and Doudna's group at the University of California, Berkeley, and a team at MIT and Harvard's Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The disagreement centres on the use of the Crispr technique in eukaryotic cells - those cells that bundle their DNA in a nucleus. It is in such cells, which are found in higher animals, that the most profitable future applications will exist. The competing institutions claim their scientists made the crucial, most relevant advances. Emmanuelle Charpentier was born in 1968 in Juvisy-sur-Orge, France. She obtained her PhD while at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and subsequently worked at scientific institutes in the US, Austria, Sweden and Germany - in addition to her native France. Jennifer Doudna was born in 1964 in Washington DC but spent much of her childhood in Hilo, Hawaii. She was awarded her PhD by Harvard Medical School. This year is the first time any of the science prizes has been awarded to two women without a male collaborator also listed on the award. Swedish industrialist and chemist Alfred Nobel founded the prizes in his will, written in 1895 - a year before his death. Follow Paul on Twitter. Previous winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 - John B Goodenough, M Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino share the prize for their work on lithium-ion batteries. 2018 - Discoveries about enzymes earned Frances Arnold, George P Smith and Gregory Winter the prize 2017 - Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson were awarded the prize for improving images of biological molecules 2016 - Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa shared the prize for the making machines on a molecular scale. 2015 - Discoveries in DNA repair earned Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar the award. 2014 - Eric Betzig, Stefan Hell and William Moerner were awarded the prize for improving the resolution of optical microscopes. 2013 - Michael Levitt, Martin Karplus and Arieh Warshel shared the prize, for devising computer simulations of chemical processes. 2012 - Work that revealed how protein receptors pass signals between living cells and the environment won the prize for Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka.
|
জিন প্রকৌশলের মাধ্যমে ডিএনএ সম্পাদনার সূক্ষ্মতম কৌশল উদ্ভাবনের স্বীকৃতি হিসাবে রসায়নে নোবেল পেয়েছেন দু'জন নারী গবেষক - ফ্রান্সের এমানুয়েল শাপেনটিয়ে এবং যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের জেনিফার ডুডনা।
|
13
|
By Michelle RobertsHealth editor, BBC News online The once-daily pill contains hormones designed to stop sperm production. It would be a welcome addition to condoms or vasectomy - the only options currently available to men. But doctors at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting were told it could still take a decade to bring it to market. Sex drive The female pill was launched in the UK more than 50 years ago. So why is a male pill proving so difficult? Some say there has been less societal and commercial will to get a male pill off the ground - but opinion polls suggest many men would consider taking it if a pill did become available. Whether women would trust men to reliably take it is another issue. A UK survey by Anglia Ruskin University, in 2011, found 70 out of 134 women would worry that their male partner would forget to take a pill. Biologically, the challenge of creating a hormone-based pill for men is making sure that it doesn't blunt sex drive or reduce erections. Sperm production In fertile men, new sperm cells are constantly made in the testicles, triggered by hormones. Temporarily blocking this effect without lowering hormone levels to such an extent that it creates side-effects is the issue. But this latest male pill, being tested by researchers from LA BioMed and the University of Washington, should hopefully achieve this goal, researchers say. Initial "phase one" safety tests with 40 men looked promising, they told the Endocrine 2019 meeting in New Orleans. For the 28 days of the study: And among those taking the androgen-based drug, levels of hormones required for sperm production dropped greatly compared with placebo, returning to normal after the trial. Erectile dysfunction Side-effects, meanwhile, were few and mild. Five men on the pill reported mildly decreased sex drive - and two described mild erectile dysfunction - but sexual activity was not decreased, no participant stopped taking it because of side-effects and all passed safety tests. The researchers behind the work, Prof Christina Wang and colleagues, are excited but cautious about the findings. "Our results suggest that this pill, which combines two hormonal activities in one, will decrease sperm production while preserving libido," she said. But bigger, longer trials were needed to check it would work well enough as a birth control. Body gel And this is not the only prototype hormone-based male contraceptive Prof Wang has been testing. She and colleagues have come up with a body gel men in the UK will be trying as part of an international trial. Users apply it daily to their back and shoulders, where it can be absorbed through the skin. Progestin hormone in the gel blocks natural testosterone production in the testicles, reducing sperm production to low or nonexistent levels, while replacement testosterone in the gel maintains sex drive and other functions that rely on the hormone. Meanwhile, Prof Wang, Dr Stephanie Page, and colleagues at the University of Washington School of Medicine, have been testing another compound - DMAU - that they believe men could take as an oral daily contraceptive pill. And trials in 100 men have suggested this is safe enough to move into the next phase of testing. Mood disorders Other scientists have been trying delivering longer-acting birth control hormones in a jab given every other month. But they stopped enrolling men to their phase-two study, looking at the safety and effectiveness of the injection, after some of the volunteers reported side-effects, including mood disorders or depression. For men who don't fancy taking hormones, researchers have been looking at ways to block sperm flow, stopping it from ever leaving the penis - effectively, a non-surgical vasectomy. Vasalgel - a polymer material that is injected into the two ducts that transports sperm from the left and right testicles to the penis - is being developed as a non-hormonal, reversible, long-acting male contraceptive. So far, it has been tested in animals only - but the researchers behind it have recently received funding to look to begin human trials. Potential market Prof Richard Anderson, of the University of Edinburgh, is leading one of the UK trials that will test a contraceptive body gel on men. He said the pharmaceutical industry had been slow to get behind the idea of a new male contraceptive despite good evidence that both men and their female partners would welcome the additional choice. "I think that industry has not been convinced about the potential market," he said. "It's certainly been a long story - part of it is lack of investment." Chequered history With little industry involvement, he said, researchers had had to rely on charitable and academic funding, which took time. Allan Pacey, professor of andrology, at the University of Sheffield, said: "The development of a male birth control pill, or injection, has had a chequered history without much success so far and so it is good to see that new preparations are being tested. "The key will be if there is enough pharmaceutical company interest to bring this product to market if their trials are successful. "Unfortunately, so far, there has been very little pharmaceutical company interest in bringing a male contraceptive pill to the market, for reasons that I don't fully understand but I suspect are more down to business than science."
|
পুরুষের জন্য এক ধরণের জন্মনিয়ন্ত্রণ বড়ি প্রাথমিকভাবে মানবদেহের জন্য নিরাপদ কিনা - তার পরীক্ষায় উত্তীর্ণ হয়েছে। আমেরিকার নিউ অর্লিনসে একটি নেতৃস্থানীয় মেডিক্যাল সম্মেলনে এ কথা ঘোষণা করা হয়েছে।
|
27
|
By Lucy RodgersBBC News But, while cement - the key ingredient in concrete - has shaped much of our built environment, it also has a massive carbon footprint. Cement is the source of about 8% of the world's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, according to think tank Chatham House. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world - behind China and the US. It contributes more CO2 than aviation fuel (2.5%) and is not far behind the global agriculture business (12%). Cement industry leaders were in Poland for the UN's climate change conference - COP24 - to discuss ways of meeting the requirements of the Paris Agreement on climate change. To do this, annual emissions from cement will need to fall by at least 16% by 2030. So, how did our love of concrete end up endangering the planet? And what can we do about it? In praise of concrete As the key building material of most tower blocks, car parks, bridges and dams, concrete has, for the haters, enabled the construction of some of the world's worst architectural eyesores. In the UK, it helped the massive wave of post-World War Two development - much of it still dividing opinion - with several of the country's major cities, such as Birmingham, Coventry, Hull and Portsmouth, largely defined by the concrete structures from that building push. But concrete is also the reason some of the world's most impressive buildings exist. Sydney Opera House, the Lotus Temple in Delhi, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai as well as the magnificent Pantheon in Rome - boasting the largest unsupported concrete dome in the world - all owe their form to the material. A mix of sand and gravel, a cement binder and water, concrete is so widely embraced by architects, structural engineers, developers and builders because it is a remarkably good construction material. "It's affordable, you can produce it almost anywhere and it has all the right structural qualities that you want to build with for a durable building or for infrastructure," explains Felix Preston, deputy research director at the Energy, Environment and Resources Department at Chatham House. Despite known durability problems with using steel reinforcement, which can crack concrete from the inside, it is still the go-to material across the world. "Building without concrete, although it is possible, is challenging," says Mr Preston. Growth of cement industry It is these unrivalled attributes of concrete that have helped boost global cement production since the 1950s, with Asia and China accounting for the bulk of growth from the 1990s onwards. Production has increased more than thirtyfold since 1950 and almost fourfold since 1990. China used more cement between 2011 and 2013 than the US did in the entire 20th Century. But with Chinese consumption now appearing to level off, most future growth in construction is expected to happen in the emerging markets of South East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa - driven by rapid urbanisation and economic development. The floor area of the world's buildings is projected to double in the next 40 years, say Chatham House researchers, requiring cement production to increase by a quarter by 2030. Concrete has a long history While many of us assume concrete is a recent addition to our cities, architects, and builders have actually been using cement-like binders for millennia. The earliest use is believed to have been more than 8,000 years ago, with traders in Syria and Jordan using such binders to create floors, buildings and underground cisterns. Later, the Romans were known to be masters of cement and concrete, building the Pantheon in Rome in 113-125AD, with its 43m-diameter free-standing concrete dome the largest in the world. But the concrete used in our modern-built environment owes much of its make-up to a process patented in the early 19th Century by bricklayer Joseph Aspdin of Leeds. His new technique of roasting limestone and clay in an oven and then grinding it to a powder to make "artificial stone" is now known as Portland cement - still the key ingredient in almost all modern concrete. But, despite its ubiquitous presence, concrete's environmental credentials have come under increased scrutiny in the last couple of decades. Not only does the production of Portland cement involve quarrying - causing airborne pollution in the form of dust - it also requires the use of massive kilns, which require large amounts of energy. The actual chemical process of making cement also emits staggeringly high levels of CO2. 'Action needed' The sector has made progress - improvements in the energy-efficiency of new plants and burning waste materials instead of fossil fuels has seen the average CO2 emissions per tonne of output fall by 18% over the last few decades, according to Chatham House. The newly-established Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA), currently representing about 35% of the world's cement production capacity and with a focus on sustainable development, was at COP24. Chief executive Benjamin Sporton says the fact the organisation now exists "is a demonstration of the commitment of the industry to sustainability, including taking action on climate change". The GCCA is due to publish a set of sustainability guidelines, which its membership will have to follow. "By bringing together global players to provide leadership and focus, as well as delivering a detailed work programme, we can help ensure a sustainable future for cement and concrete, and for the needs of future generations," Mr Sporton says. But despite the promise, Chatham House argues that the industry is reaching the limits of what it can do with current measures. If the sector has any hope of meeting its commitments to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, it will need to look at overhauling the cement-making process itself, not only reducing the use of fossil fuels. 'Clinker' - the big polluter It is the process of making "clinker" - the key constituent of cement - that emits the largest amount of CO2 in cement-making. In 2016, world cement production generated around 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 - equivalent to 8% of the global total. More than half of that came from the calcination process. Together with thermal combustion, 90% of the sector's emissions could be attributed to the production of clinker. Because of this, Mr Preston and his colleagues argue the sector urgently needs to pursue a number of CO2 reduction strategies. Further efforts on energy efficiency, a move away from fossil fuels and pursuing carbon capture and storage will help, but can only do so much. "We've got a long way to close the gap," Mr Preston says. What the industry really needs to do is plough efforts into producing new types of cement, he argues. In fact, low-carbon cements and "novel cements" might do away with the need for clinker altogether. New cements One of those trying to drum up greater support for such alternative cements is Ginger Krieg Dosier, co-founder and CEO of BioMason - a start-up in North Carolina that uses trillions of bacteria to grow bio-concrete bricks. The technique, which involves placing sand in moulds and injecting it with microorganisms, initiates a process similar to the one that creates coral. "I have a long fascination with marine cements and structures," explains Ms Krieg Dosier, a trained architect who was surprised to find no real green alternatives to bricks and masonry when she began research at an architectural firm more than 10 years ago. The discovery led her to create her own solution, which, after years of development, now takes only four days. It happens at room temperature, without the need for fossil fuels or calcination - two of the main sources of the cement industry's CO2 emissions. Ms Krieg Dosier believes green cements and technologies such as hers offer a solution to the sector's emissions issue. "Traditional Portland-based cement production practices will continue to release CO2 due to its fundamental chemistry," she says, adding that rather than turning to carbon capture and storage, we should be investing more in techniques that actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. "Alternative cements and binding technologies go beyond evolutionary CO2 capture to revolutionary methods that fundamentally sequester CO2." 'Disruptive forces' Alongside such alternative cements, other "disruptive" forces are also beginning to drive change. Digitalisation, machine learning and an increasing awareness of sustainability are all having an impact on the cement industry's culture. "It's partly changing because of how people want to live, but also because of our ability to dream up new and innovative structures and test those with computer models," says Mr Preston. "There's also the ability to build things more cheaply with robots - with automation." But changing processes quickly enough to meet the cement industry's obligations will be a challenge. The sector is dominated by a small number of major producers who are reluctant to experiment or change business models. Architects, engineers, contractors and clients are also, rather understandably, cautious about using new building materials. "This quite slow-moving, difficult-to-change sector is starting to bump against these quite profound disruptions that we're starting to see in the built environment," says Mr Preston. But, with very few low-carbon cements reaching commercialisation, and none being applied at scale in an industry where bigger and taller is often the ambition, it looks likely that sustained government support will be needed. Without governments applying pressure on the industry or providing funding, it may not be possible to get the next generation of low-carbon cements out of the laboratory and into the market within the required timescale. And the timescale is ever-shrinking. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the leading international body on global warming - last month argued the global average temperature rise needed to be kept below 1.5C - not 2C as noted in the Paris Agreement. This means CO2 emissions need to decline by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030. Like other young companies, Ms Krieg Dosier describes the difficulties of simultaneously developing and marketing her products and scaling up manufacturing processes to compete within the wider construction industry. But she thinks there are reasons to be optimistic. "I do believe the construction industry is approaching a point where alternative materials will be more widely adopted," she says. "This is in part due to market demand, other innovative technologies and wider concern for climate change." The cement industry, too, points to more optimistic assessments of the industry's progress on emissions and suggests that, across its lifetime, concrete could make a net climate benefit when all possible action is taken into account. This includes re-carbonation (or the re-absorption of CO2 by cement), concrete's contribution to the energy efficiency of buildings, and innovation in the way cement is manufactured - including carbon capture and storage. The GCCA says such innovation is its key priority in the months and years ahead. Projects are already underway and showing promise, it added. But Mr Preston says it is imperative that governments and industry now act quickly at a time when global development is expected to rise but CO2 emissions need to fall. "There's a desperate need for quality, affordable homes," he says. "There's a need for new infrastructure. We can only square this circle if we can dramatically improve the way that we build, so that overall these buildings are constructed with, as close as possible, net zero emissions." Design by Lilly Huynh.
|
মানুষের তৈরি যেসব সামগ্রী সবচেয়ে বেশি ব্যবহৃত হয় তার একটি সিমেন্ট। পানির পরেই এই জিনিসটি ব্যবহৃত হয় সবচেয়ে বেশি।
|
9
|
The State Department regulations say people will have to submit social media names and five years' worth of email addresses and phone numbers. When proposed last year, authorities estimated the proposal would affect 14.7 million people annually. Certain diplomatic and official visa applicants will be exempt from the stringent new measures. However, people travelling to the US to work or to study will have to hand over their information. "We are constantly working to find mechanisms to improve our screening processes to protect US citizens, while supporting legitimate travel to the United States," the department reportedly said. Previously, only applicants who needed additional vetting - such as people who had been to parts of the world controlled by terrorist groups - would need to hand over this data. But now applicants will have to give up their account names on a list of social media platforms, and also volunteer the details of their accounts on any sites not listed. Anyone who lies about their social media use could face "serious immigration consequences", according to an official who spoke to The Hill. The Trump administration first proposed the rules in March 2018. At the time, the American Civil Liberties Union - a civil rights group - said there is "no evidence that such social media monitoring is effective or fair", and said it would cause people to self-censor themselves online. US President Donald Trump made cracking down on immigration a key plank of his election campaign in 2016. He called for "extreme vetting" of immigrants before and during his time in office. On Friday Mr Trump vowed to impose gradually rising tariffs on Mexico unless the country curbed illegal immigration at the US southern border.
|
যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের নতুন আইন অনুযায়ী এখন থেকে দেশের ভিসার জন্য প্রায় সব আবেদনকারীদের ইন্টারনেট-ভিত্তিক সামাজিক যোগাযোগ মাধ্যমের বিস্তারিত তথ্য জমা দিতে হবে।
|
38
|
They said he had endured a "long-term battle with a progressive lung condition" which "rapidly worsened towards the end of this year". He died at home on Monday with his family by his side, who said they were "heartbroken". Tributes have been paid from the world of entertainment for the "true telly legend". His career spanned five decades. 'Life and soul' Chegwin was perhaps best known for hosting programmes including children's game show Cheggers Plays Pop, Swap Shop and Saturday Superstore. The Liverpool-born star began his career as a child actor, starring in films such as Roman Polanski's Macbeth and TV shows including The Liver Birds, The Adventures of Black Beauty and Z-Cars. He went on to appear in reality TV shows including Celebrity Big Brother. The larger-than-life character, described by his family as "a loving husband, father, son, brother, uncle and friend", leaves his wife Maria and two children. Chegwin had been cared for at a hospice in recent weeks. His last tweet was posted on 28 September. 'Childhood memories' Chegwin was previously married to fellow TV presenter Maggie Philbin, whom he had met on Swap Shop. Philbin paid tribute to her former husband, saying: "It is incredibly sad. Keith was a one-off. Full of life, generous and with a focus on things that mattered - his family. "I saw him two months ago at his sister Janice's wedding, where he was still attempting to be life and soul of the party despite being on portable oxygen and made sure he knew how much he meant to us all. "Our daughter Rose flew home from San Francisco to be with him over the last few weeks and I know he was surrounded by so much love from his second wife Maria, their son Ted, his sister Janice, his twin brother Jeff and his father Colin." Fellow Swap Shop presenter Noel Edmonds said in a statement: "I've lost my first real telly chum and I'm certain I'm not alone in shedding tears for a true telly legend. "The greatest achievement for any TV performer is for the viewers to regard you as a friend and today millions will be grateful for Keith's contribution to their childhood memories and like me they will mourn the passing of a friend." Ricky Gervais, who created the series Extras which Chegwin starred in, described him as a "national treasure". 'Great character' Gaby Roslin, who worked with Chegwin on The Big Breakfast, described him as "so generous and kind" and a "happy and joyous man". John Craven, who worked with Chegwin on Swap Shop told BBC News that his colleague "never lost his cool. I never saw Keith when he wasn't happy. He was a great, great character." He added: "We were great friends for many years, but we lost touch a bit and [his death] came as a huge shock for me." Presenter Chris Evans, who worked with Chegwin on the Big Breakfast, tweeted: "Very sad and shocked to hear of the passing of Keith Chegwin. The king of outside broadcast." Bobby Davro said Chegwin was "one of the nicest guys" in showbiz. And Tony Blackburn said he was "devastated" at the loss of his friend. Blackburn told BBC News that Chegwin was "exactly the same (off air) as he was on television" and that he never saw him with a script. "He was the most lovely person I've ever met and I'm so sad he's no longer with us," he added. 'Saturday morning hero' Breakfast presenter Lorraine Kelly said he was "a kind, funny, brave man". And Fiona Phillips, who also worked with him on breakfast TV, also paid tribute to her friend. Phillip Schofield, who presented Saturday morning show Going Live, described Chegwin as "one of my many original Saturday morning heroes". Chegwin also had a hit single with I Wanna Be A Winner in 1981. The novelty hit, which was recorded by Chegwin and his Swap Shop co-hosts under the name Brown Sauce, reached number 15 in the charts. His career fell away in the 80s and 90s and he had a well-documented struggle with alcoholism for many years. But it was revived by a stint on the Big Breakfast. He went on to make infamous Channel 5 nudist gameshow Naked Jungle, appearing naked except for a hat - which he later described as the "worst career move" of his "entire life". Chegwin - known affectionately by the nickname Cheggers - also appeared in Celebrity Big Brother, Bargain Hunt Famous Finds and Dancing on Ice. He was due to appear in the 2012 Dancing on Ice series but had to pull out after breaking his ribs during the first day of rehearsal. He returned as a contestant the following year. He also took part in Pointless Celebrities and Masterchef. The disease Chegwin had is called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which causes scarring of the lungs. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
|
স্টিভেন হকিং এর পরিবারের একজন মুখপাত্র বলছেন, ৭৬ বছর বয়সে তিনি মারা যান।
|
3
|
The conversation also included a discussion about the ongoing opposition protests in Russia. A Kremlin statement did not refer to any points of friction, saying the call was "businesslike and frank". Both sides reportedly agreed to extend the countries' last remaining nuclear deal during the call. Former US President Donald Trump sometimes undercut his own administration's tough posture on Russia and was accused by some of being too deferential to Mr Putin. But Mr Trump's predecessor Barack Obama - under whom Mr Biden served as vice-president - was also criticised for failing to check Russia as it annexed Crimea, supported rebel forces in eastern Ukraine and backed the government of warn-torn Syria. What did the White House and Kremlin say? "President Biden made clear that the United States will act firmly in defence of its national interests in response to actions by Russia that harm us or our allies," the White House said in a statement, referencing the main talking points of Tuesday afternoon's call but listing no further details. The US said that the two presidents also discussed the massive SolarWinds cyber-attack, which has been blamed on Moscow; reports that the Kremlin placed bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan; and the poisoning of Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny. The Kremlin statement about the call said their president had "noted that the normalisation of relations between Russia and the United States would meet the interests of both countries and - taking into account their special responsibility for maintaining security and stability in the world - of the entire international community". The leaders also discussed the New Start treaty, an Obama-era accord that limits the amounts of warheads, missiles and launchers in the two countries' nuclear arsenals. It had been due to expire on 5 February, but both sides reportedly agreed to extend the treaty during Tuesday's call. The Trump administration, however, had refused to sign it and talks over an extension stalled. On Wednesday, Russia's parliament ratified a five-year extension of the treaty. Mr Putin said the move was a "step in the right direction" to reducing global tensions. Biden doesn't want a confrontation Joe Biden had indicated he would be tougher on Vladimir Putin than Donald Trump, who refused to take on the Kremlin and frequently cast doubt on Russian interference in the 2016 elections. On that matter Mr Biden made his sharpest break with Mr Trump, reportedly telling Mr Putin that he knew Russia had tried to meddle in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. He also warned the Russian president that the US was ready to defend itself against cyber-espionage, and any other attacks. Despite Mr Trump's conciliatory approach, the Kremlin did not benefit from his presidency, because his administration heavily sanctioned Russians for issues ranging from Ukraine to attacks on dissidents. Joe Biden and his foreign policy team will take a robust position on human rights and Mr Putin's intentions in Europe. But they are not looking for a confrontation. Rather, they hope to manage relations and co-operate where possible. In that vein, the two presidents agreed to work at completing the extension of the New Start arms control treaty before it expires next month. What does the New Start treaty actually do? The treaty, signed in 2010, limits each side to 1,550 long-range nuclear warheads, a lower number than under the previous deal. Each country is allowed, in total, no more than 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear arms. Another 100 are allowed if they are not operationally deployed - for example, missiles removed from a sub undergoing a long-term overhaul. Again, this is a significant reduction from the original treaty. You may also be interested in:
|
ভ্লাদিমির পুতিনের সাথে প্রথম ফোনালাপে জো বাইডেন আমেরিকার নির্বাচনে রাশিয়ার হস্তক্ষেপের ব্যাপারে সতর্ক করে দিয়েছেন।
|
32
|
The case, which has been bitterly contested for decades by Hindus and Muslims, centres on the ownership of the land in Uttar Pradesh state. Muslims would get another plot of land to construct a mosque, the court said. Many Hindus believe the site is the birthplace of one of their most revered deities, Lord Ram. Muslims say they have worshipped there for generations. At the centre of the row is the 16th Century Babri mosque which was demolished by Hindu mobs in 1992, sparking riots that killed nearly 2,000 people. What did the court say? In the unanimous verdict, the court said that a report by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) provided evidence that the remains of a building "that was not Islamic" was beneath the structure of the demolished Babri mosque. The court said that, given all the evidence presented, it had determined that the disputed land should be given to Hindus for a temple to Lord Ram, while Muslims would be given land elsewhere to construct a mosque. It then directed the federal government to set up a trust to manage and oversee the construction of the temple. However, the court added that the demolition of the Babri mosque was against the rule of law. What has the reaction to the verdict been? Despite warnings by authorities not to celebrate the verdict, BBC correspondents in court say they heard chants of "Jai Shree Ram" (Hail Lord Ram) outside as the judgement was pronounced. "It's a very balanced judgement and it is a victory for people of India," a lawyer for one of the Hindu parties told reporters soon after. Initially, a representative for the Muslim litigants said they were not satisfied and would decide whether to ask for a review after they had read the whole judgement. However, the main group of litigants has now said that it will not appeal against the verdict. Outside the court, the situation has been largely calm. Hundreds of people were detained in Ayodhya on Friday ahead of the verdict, amid fears of violence. Thousands of police officers have also been deployed in the city, while shops and colleges have been shut until Monday. The government issued an order banning the publication of images of the destruction of the Babri mosque. Social media platforms are being monitored for inflammatory content, with police even replying to tweets and asking users to delete them. Prime Minister Narendra Modi reacted to the verdict on Twitter and said that it should not be seen as a "win or loss for anybody". What was arguably one of the world's most contentious property dispute has finally come to an end. The dispute over the plot has polarised, frustrated and exhausted India. The reason is that this is not a humdrum civil matter. It was touched by faith (Hindus believe the plot was the birthplace of Lord Ram, a revered deity) violence (the demolition of the mosque in 1992) and subterfuge (idols of Lord Ram were placed in the mosque surreptitiously in 1949). Saturday's unanimous judgement by the five most senior judges of the court will hopefully lead to some reconciliation that the country badly needs. The verdict showed "judicial craftsmanship and statesmanship where the letter of the law was adhered to, but the relief was moulded, taking into account the ground realities," lawyer Sanjay Hegde told me. The judges appear to have gone by the evidence laid before it. "They have applied a plaster. Let's not reopen the wounds," Mr Hegde added. Will the verdict lead to a closure of past animosities and help close India's deepening religious fissures? Only time will tell. For the moment, India's main communities need to avoid triumphalism - because eventually there are no victors and vanquished, in what is essentially a contestation of faith. What is the row actually about? Many Hindus believe the Babri Masjid was actually constructed on the ruins of a Hindu temple that was demolished by Muslim invaders in the 16th Century. Muslims say they offered prayers at the mosque until December 1949 when some Hindus placed an idol of Ram in the mosque and began to worship the idols. The two religious groups have gone to court many times over who should control the site. Since then, there have been calls to build a temple on the spot where the mosque once stood. Hinduism is India's majority religion and is thought to be more than 4,000 years old. India's first Islamic dynasty was established in the early 13th Century. Have religious tensions eased in India in recent years? Ever since the Narendra Modi-led Hindu nationalist BJP first came to power in 2014, India has seen deepening social and religious divisions. The call for the construction of a Hindu temple in Ayodhya has grown particularly loud, and has mostly come from MPs, ministers and leaders from the BJP since it took office. Restrictions on the sale and slaughter of cows - considered a holy animal by the majority Hindus - have led to vigilante killings of a number of people, most of them Muslims who were transporting cattle. An uninhibited display of muscular Hindu nationalism in other areas has also contributed to religious tension. Most recently, the country's home minister Amit Shah said he would remove "illegal migrants" - understood to be Muslim - from the country through a government scheme that was used recently in the north-eastern state of Assam.
|
ভারতের অযোধ্যাতে যে বিতর্কিত ধর্মীয় স্থানটি নিয়ে বহু বছর ধরে সংঘাত, সেখানে একটি হিন্দু মন্দির বানানোর পক্ষেই রায় দিয়েছে সে দেশের সুপ্রিম কোর্ট।
|
26
|
The sultan deposed his father in a bloodless coup with British support in 1970 and set Oman on a path to development, using its oil wealth. Widely regarded as popular, he was also an absolute monarch and any dissenting voices were silenced. No cause of death has been confirmed. His cousin Haitham bin Tariq Al Said has been sworn in as his successor. A family council had three days to choose a successor as Qaboos had no heir or publicly designated successor. Instead they opted for opening the sealed envelope in which Qaboos had secretly left his own choice. The sultan is the paramount decision-maker in Oman. He also holds the positions of prime minister, supreme commander of the armed forces, minister of defence, minister of finance and minister of foreign affairs. Last month Qaboos spent a week in Belgium for medical treatment, and there were reports he was suffering from cancer. Images showed a crowd of men gathered outside the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in the capital, Muscat, where the coffin had been placed before he was buried in a family cemetery. In a televised speech after being sworn in, Sultan Haitham - a former culture and heritage minister who studied at Oxford - pledged to continue his predecessor's policies of friendly relations with all nations while further developing the country. Smooth transition, for now at least By Sebastian Usher, BBC World Service Arab affairs editor This is a day that had long been dreaded in Oman where the elegant, beturbaned and white bearded figure of Sultan Qaboos had for five decades embodied the identity of a country that he had brought into the modern world. There were concerns that his death might bring instability to Oman, which has largely avoided the unrest elsewhere in the region. For now at least, the process of finding a successor has moved swiftly and smoothly. And Haitham bin Tariq Al Said - born in 1955 - was swift to reassure his people and the wider world that he would follow the same path as his predecessor. Being the chosen successor of Qaboos will enhance his legitimacy within Oman, but a far harder task will be to take on the crucial role that Oman has played for so long as a trusted and independent mediator in many of the most intractable conflicts that have blighted the region. Neutral policy, absolute rule For almost five decades, Qaboos completely dominated the political life of Oman, which is home to 4.6 million people, of whom about 43% are expatriates. At the age of 29 he overthrew his father, Said bin Taimur, a reclusive and ultra-conservative ruler who banned a range of things, including listening to the radio or wearing sunglasses, and decided who could get married, be educated or leave the country. Qaboos immediately declared that he intended to establish a modern government and use oil money to develop a country where, at the time, there were only 10km (six miles) of paved roads and three schools. In the first few years of his rule, with the help of British special forces, he suppressed an insurgency in the southern province of Dhofar by tribesmen backed by the Marxist People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. Described as charismatic and visionary, he pursued a neutral path in foreign affairs and was able to facilitate secret talks between the United States and Iran in 2013 that led to a landmark nuclear deal two years later. A degree of discontent surfaced in 2011 during the so-called Arab Spring. There was no major upheaval in Oman, but thousands of people took to the streets across the country to demand better wages, more jobs and an end to corruption. Security forces initially tolerated the protests, but later used tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition to disperse them. Two people were killed and dozens of people were injured. Hundreds were prosecuted under laws criminalising "illegal gatherings" and "insulting the sultan". The protests failed to produce anything in the way of major change. But Qaboos did remove several long-serving ministers perceived as corrupt, widened the powers of the Consultative Council, and promised to create more public sector jobs. Since then, the authorities have continued to block local independent newspapers and magazines critical of the government, confiscate books, and harass activists, according to Human Rights Watch. Reacting to the death on Twitter, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said it was a "loss for the region", and voiced hope that the new leadership would take "inspiration from the past". UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Qaboos had left a "profound legacy, not only in Oman but across the region" while former US President George W Bush said the late leader had been a stable force in the Middle East.
|
আরব বিশ্বের সবচেয়ে দীর্ঘস্থায়ী শাসক ওমানের সুলতান কাবুস বিন সাইদ আল সাইদ মারা গেছেন। তাঁর বয়স হয়েছিল ৭৯ বছর।
|
40
|
A BBC report found that hundreds of children from the Uighur minority ethnic group had had both parents detained, either in camps or in prison. At the same time, China has launched a large-scale campaign to build boarding schools for Uighur children. Critics say it is an effort to isolate children from their Muslim communities. However, Chinese ambassador Liu Xiaoming dismissed this. "There's no separation of children from their parents. Not at all," the ambassador told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday. "If you have people who have lost their children, give me names and we'll try to locate them", he added. Evidence gathered by the BBC showed that in one Xinjiang township alone more than 400 children had lost both of their parents to some form of internment. Chinese authorities claim the Uighurs are being educated in "vocational training centres" designed to combat extremism. But evidence suggests that many are being detained for simply expressing their faith - praying or wearing a veil - or for having overseas connections to places like Turkey. More than a million people are thought to be held within the system. After parents are detained, formal assessments are then carried out to determine whether the children need "centralised care". One local official told the BBC that children whose parents had been detained in camps were sent to boarding schools. "We provide accommodation, food and clothes… and we've been told by the senior level that we must look after them well," she said. But Dr Adrian Zenz, who carried out the research commissioned by the BBC, said boarding schools "provide the ideal context for a sustained cultural re-engineering of minority societies." "I think the evidence for systematically keeping parents and children apart is a clear indication that Xinjiang's government is attempting to raise a new generation cut off from original roots, religious beliefs and their own language," he said. Dozens of Uighur parents living in Turkey spoke to the BBC about their desire to be united with their missing children. "I don't know who is looking after them... there is no contact at all," one mother said. Thousands of Uighurs have moved to Turkey to do business, to visit family, or to escape China's birth control limits and what they call religious repression. Many stayed after China began detaining hundreds of thousands of Uighurs over the past three years. Mr Liu, however, described the parents who spoke to the BBC as "anti-government people". "You cannot expect a good word [from them] about the government," he said. "If they want to be with their children they can come back."
|
চীনের পশ্চিম শিনজিয়াং এলাকায় মুসলিম শিশুদেরকে কৌশলে তাদের বাবা-মা থেকে বিচ্ছিন্ন করার অভিযোগ অস্বীকার করেছে যুক্তরাজ্যে নিযুক্ত চীনা রাষ্ট্রদূত।
|
20
|
By Michelle RobertsHealth editor, BBC News online The survey of nearly 7,000 sexually active women aged 16 to 74, in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, suggests this medical problem - called dyspareunia - is common and affects women of all ages. Women in their late 50s and early 60s are most likely to be affected, followed by women aged 16-24. Doctors say there are treatments that can help if women seek advice. But many still find the subject embarrassing and taboo, the survey results show. Painful sex was strongly linked to other sexual problems, including vaginal dryness, feeling anxious during sex, and lack of enjoyment of sex. However, there can be lots of different physical, psychological and emotional factors causing painful sex, which can be complex to treat. Some women said they avoided intercourse because they were so afraid of the pain. 'It hurt so much' Karen (not her real name) is 62 and from Greater London. She said her problems began around the age of 40. "I felt that my sex drive dipped quite considerably, arousal seemed to take longer, and, despite an understanding husband, I started to dread him making approaches. "It's like any muscle group I guess, the less you use it the worse it gets." Karen tried using lubricant but still encountered problems. "It became like a vicious cycle. You worry and get tense and that only makes it worse." Karen developed another complication called vaginismus - involuntary tightening of the muscles around the vagina whenever penetration is attempted. "It wasn't just in bed. It happened when I needed smear tests too. I would be crawling up the bed away from the nurse because it hurt so much." Karen spoke to her doctor who recommended she try oestrogen creams and pessaries for the dryness and dilators to help with the involuntary tightening. "Women need to know that there is help out there for these kinds of problems, especially as we are all living longer. "You shouldn't have to be writing off your sex life in your 50s. "Many women don't like to talk about it. We share all the gore of childbirth, yet women of my generation don't tend to talk openly about sex and the menopause. We should." The national survey of sexual attitudes and lifestyles was carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), University College London and NatCen Social Research. Of those who reported painful sex (7.5%), a quarter had experienced symptoms frequently or every time they had had intercourse in the last six months or more. Around a third of these women said they were dissatisfied with their sex life, compared with one tenth of the women who didn't report painful sex. Lead researcher, Dr Kirstin Mitchell, from LSHTM and the University of Glasgow, the said there could be a whole range of reasons for dyspareunia. Lack of enjoyment "In younger women, it might be that they are starting out in their sexual lives and they are going along with things that their partner wants but they are not particularly aroused by. "Or they might be feeling tense because they are new to sex and they are not feeling 100% comfortable with their partner." Painful sex might be caused by other health problems, such as sexually transmitted infections, endometriosis and fibroids, which should be diagnosed and treated. Women around the age of the menopause can find sex painful because of vaginal dryness. Dr Mitchell says it's not just older women who can feel embarrassed talking about painful sex, even though the condition is common. Other research, involving about 200 university students in Canada, suggests up to half of young women find their first experience of intercourse painful. Seek advice Dr Mitchell says sex education should do more to better prepare young people. "Often sex education is about STIs and pregnancy, but it should also prepare people to think about what makes sex enjoyable and how to communicate what they like and dislike in a trusting and respectful relationship." If you have pain during or after sex, you should get advice from your GP or a sexual health clinic. If there is an emotional reason or anxiety that is causing problems, a counsellor or sex therapist may be able to help - and your GP or sexual health clinic can refer you to one.
|
বিস্তৃত এক সমীক্ষায় দেখা গেছে, ব্রিটেনে প্রায় প্রতি দশ জন নারীর মধ্যে একজনের কাছে যৌন সঙ্গম বেদনাদায়ক একটি কাজ।
|
16
|
The plan appears to be in its early stages, with all districts in Wuhan told to submit details as to how testing could be done within 10 days. It comes after Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, recorded six new cases over the weekend. Prior to this, it had seen no new cases at all since 3 April. Wuhan, which was in strict lockdown for 11 weeks, began re-opening on 8 April. For a while it seemed like life was getting back to normal as schools re-opened, businesses slowly emerged and public transport resumed operations. But the emergence of a cluster of cases - all from the same residential compound - has now threatened the move back to normalcy. 'The ten-day-battle' According to report by The Paper, quoting a widely circulated internal document, every district in the city has been told to draw up a 10-day testing plan by noon on Tuesday. Each district is responsible for coming up with its own plan based on the size of their population and whether or not there is currently an active outbreak in the district. The document, which refers to the test plan as the "10-day battle", also says that older people and densely populated communities should be prioritised when it comes to testing. However several senior health officials quoted by the Global Times newspaper indicated that testing the entire city would be unfeasible and costly. Peng Zhiyong, director of the intensive care unit of the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, instead that testing was instead likely to be targeted at medical workers, vulnerable people and those who'd had close contacts with a case. Another Wuhan University director suggested that a large percentage of Wuhan's population - around 3-5 million - had already been tested, and Wuhan was "capable" of testing the remaining 6-8 million in a 10-days period. To put the goal into context, the US now conducts around 300,000 tests each day, according to the White House. So far, it's tested almost 9 million people in total. On Chinese social media site Weibo, people have been raising questions about whether such a large number of tests can be carried out in just a matter of days. "It is impossible to test so many people," said one commenter, who also questioned how much it would cost. Another said that such tests should have been carried out before Wuhan re-opened its doors to the rest of China. Taking no chances Stephen McDonnell, BBC News, Beijing Wuhan was where this global emergency started and there was relief when the first cluster site seemed to come out the other side. There would also be despair if the first lockdown city was to be engulfed again by the coronavirus. Not letting this happen has become a priority for the Chinese government. When a new domestic infection appeared in the city three days ago you could feel the concern over 1,000km away in Beijing. Then five others were infected by the 89-year old man previously declared "asymptomatic", and the manager of their housing complex was removed. However, sacking local officials in this way might also encourage a tendency to hide future cases. China's most powerful seven people, in the Politburo Standing Committee, met last week to discuss improving the country's early warning system for outbreaks like this. They could start by easing the "no mistakes at all costs" approach to governing, in which those who reveal the bad news can end up being punished. China reported just one new cases on Monday, bringing the total number of cases to 82,919, with the death toll at 4,633. Hundreds of asymptomatic cases are being monitored by Wuhan health authorities
|
চীনে উহান শহরের কর্তৃপক্ষ শহরের সমস্ত বাসিন্দা অর্থাৎ এক কোটি দশ লক্ষ মানুষের করোনাভাইরাস পরীক্ষার পরিকল্পনা নিচ্ছে।
|
31
|
Spark New Zealand wanted to use Huawei equipment in its 5G mobile network. However, a NZ government security agency said the deal would bring significant risks to national security. The move is part of a growing push against the involvement of Chinese technology firms on security grounds. 5G networks are being built in several countries and will form the next significant wave of mobile infrastructure. Huawei, the world's biggest producer of telecoms equipment, has faced resistance from foreign governments over the risk that its technology could be used for espionage. Telecoms firm Spark New Zealand planned to use equipment from the Chinese firm in its 5G network. The head of NZ's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) told Spark the proposal "would , if implemented, raise significant national security risks", the company said. Intelligence services minister Andrew Little said Spark could work with the agency to reduce that risk. "As the GCSB has noted, this is an ongoing process. We will actively address any concerns and work together to find a way forward," Huawei said. What other countries have concerns? The move follows a decision by Australia to block Huaewi and Chinese firm ZTE from providing 5G technology for the country's wireless networks on national security grounds. The US and UK have raised concerns with Huawei, and the firm has been scrutinised in Germany, Japan and Korea. Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the US government has been trying to persuade wireless providers to avoid using equipment from Huawei. In the UK, a security committee report in July warned that it had "only limited assurance" that Huawei's telecoms gear posed no threat to national security. One country is standing by Huawei: Papua New Guinea said this week it would go ahead with an agreement for Huawei to build its internet infrastructure. The Pacific nation has seen a surge in investment from China over the past decade. What are the fears? Experts say foreign governments are increasingly worried about the risk of espionage by China, given the close ties between companies and the state. Tom Uren, visiting fellow in the International Cyber Policy Centre at Australia's Strategic Policy Institute, said the Chinese government had "clearly demonstrated intent over many years to steal information". "The Chinese state has engaged in a lot of cyber and other espionage and intellectual property theft," he said. Links between firms and the government have fuelled concerns that China may attempt to "leverage state-linked companies to be able to enable their espionage operations", Mr Uren said. Those concerns were exacerbated by new laws introduced last year that required Chinese organisations assist in national intelligence efforts. The laws enable the Chinese state to compel people and possibly companies to assist if they needed it, Mr Uren said. The combination of new rules and a history of espionage have increased the perceived danger of using companies like Huawei and ZTE in critical national infrastructure. "It's hard to argue that they don't represent an elevated risk," Mr Uren added.
|
জাতীয় নিরাপত্তার কারণ দেখিয়ে সর্বশেষ দেশ হিসাবে নিউজিল্যান্ড চীনের মোবাইল প্রযুক্তি কোম্পানি হুয়াওয়ে থেকে সরঞ্জাম কেনার প্রস্তাব নাকচ করে দিয়েছে।
|
44
|
Reuters photographer Ahmed Jadallah and reporter Rania El Gamal joined some of the 200 women employees being taught at Saudi Aramco Driving Center in Dhahran. One of the students is Maria al-Faraj (pictured left below), who is having a lesson with driving instructor Ahlam al-Somali. As well as being taught to drive, she is also learning how to check oil levels, change a tyre and the importance of wearing a seat belt. The lifting of the driving ban is a huge moment for the women of Saudi Arabia. Previously they could face arrest and a fine if caught driving, and were reliant on male members of their family to either drive them or hire private drivers. Architect Amira Abdulgader (pictured below) says that on 24 June she plans to be sitting at the wheel of a car giving a ride to her mother. "Sitting behind the wheel [means] that you are the one controlling the trip," Amira Abdulgader said. "I will be the one to decide when to go, what to do, and when I will come back. "We need the car to do our daily activities. We are working, we are mothers, we have a lot of social networking, we need to go out - so we need transport. It will change my life." Women make up 5% of Aramco's 66,000-strong workforce, meaning some 3,000 more could eventually enrol in the driving school, Reuters says. Although Saudi Arabia has been widely praised for deciding to lift the ban, it has not been without controversy. Activists who have been campaigning for the ban to be lifted say they have received online death threats, and a number were arrested in May on suspicion of being "traitors" and working with foreign powers. Photos by Ahmed Jadallah.
|
সৌদি আরবে ২৪শে জুন থেকে নারীদের গাড়ি চালানোর ওপর নিষেধাজ্ঞা উঠে যাচ্ছে। তার জন্য ড্রাইভিং শেখার ধুম পড়েছে সৌদি নারীদের মধ্যে।
|
25
|
By Anahita Shams & Reality Check teamBBC News This is disputed by Washington. "The United States exempts medicine and medical devices for the Iranian people from US sanctions," says Brian Hook, the American special representative for Iran. So how are sanctions affecting access to medicines in Iran? What medicines does Iran import? Iran produces most of its own basic pharmaceuticals - but when it comes to the most advanced medicines, it relies heavily on imports. It's estimated that although only about 4% of its medicines come from abroad in terms of volume, the more expensive imported drugs make up about a third of the total value. There is only limited data on drug imports and prices paid inside Iran but anecdotal evidence can give some idea of the situation. The BBC's Persian Service has heard from its audience about rising costs of medicines. A sufferer of Crohn's disease described the difficulties of accessing vital drugs. "I have to travel to other towns and cities to check if their pharmacies have the drugs," they said. "Some of them do but the prices are so high that I cannot afford them." The BBC also spoke to a pharmaceutical importer from inside Iran who said the past two years had brought shortages and price rises. Drugs for anaesthetics, cancer-treatment and diabetes were particularly hard to find, they said. In the past 12 months, the cost of health and medical services rose by 19%, according to official Iranian statistics. But these shortages and price increases could be for many reasons, not only as a consequence of sanctions against Iran. How do the sanctions work? International sanctions were lifted in 2016 following an agreement with Iran over its nuclear programme, but in November 2018 the United States reinstated "the toughest ever" sanctions on Iranian industry and banks. It threatened heavy punishment and exclusion from the US financial system for foreign companies seeking to circumvent these restrictions. However, exporters of humanitarian supplies such as medicines and medical devices - and the companies facilitating this trade - should not be punished by the US for doing business with Tehran. "The problem is that you need to find banks willing to keep open the business lines and compliance functions to process those transactions," says Richard Nephew, an expert on US sanctions. "Often, they're seen as not worth the headache... so there is a practical problem in getting banks to do it. But can they? Sure." Also, not all medicines or medical devices qualify for the exemption. "Trading humanitarian goods and processing payments with Iran remains complex," says Justine Walker, director of sanctions policy at UK Finance, which represents British banks. "Legally, medicines are not prohibited under sanctions. However, they do become prohibited if they are found to be going to a designated actor or entity." These include Iran's major banks. Are medicines reaching Iran? Official Iranian figures seen by BBC News show a snapshot of the past 16 months of overall Iranian imports of medical drugs and devices. These imports reached a peak of $176m (£145m) in September 2018, then fell significantly. By June 2019, imports of medical supplies had fallen by 60% to about $67m. This fall coincides with the imposition of US sanctions but the data is limited and it's not possible to say with any certainty that sanctions are responsible. There is also data available from the EU, a key trading partner with Iran. Since sanctions were imposed in November last year, medical and pharmaceutical sales to Iran fell at first before rising slightly in May. This followed a period when trade in medical supplies fluctuated, reaching a peak in 2016 (when international sanctions were lifted) and then falling in the following two years. Is trading with Iran risky? Navigating new regulations and incurring extra costs, for example by changing banks, makes trade with Iran "daunting for smaller firms", says Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder of Bourse & Bazaar, which tracks Iran's economy. The lack of foreign currency inside Iran and the volatility of the Iranian currency also make imports more expensive. Iran has been calling for the urgent implementation of a proposed European plan to support companies wishing to bypass US financial restrictions. But this has proven complex and politically difficult to implement. Read more from Reality Check Send us your questions Follow us on Twitter
|
ইরান বলছেন চিকিৎসা সামগ্রী বিশেষ ছাড় পাওয়ার কথা থাকলেও নিষেধাজ্ঞার কারণে জীবন রক্ষাকারী ঔষধ পাচ্ছেনা তারা।
|
47
|
Here are just some of the hurdles facing the UK after Brexit. 1. Agreeing a trade deal with the EU This legal departure from the EU means the UK can finally start formal trade negotiations - both with the EU and countries around the world, like the US. The government is determined not to extend the post-Brexit transition period - to discuss the future relationship with the EU - beyond the end of 2020. This means the timetable for getting an agreement with the EU is extremely tight. Formal talks are expected to begin in March, once the remaining 27 EU countries have agreed on instructions for their negotiators. Getting any agreement finally signed off and put into practice will take a couple of months towards the end of the year. So, realistically, that only leaves time for a fairly basic free trade deal to emerge, with plenty of issues still up for discussion once the transition period is over. The government talks about getting a "zero tariff, zero quota" deal on goods, with no border taxes and no limits on exports and imports. But there are a host of issues to be dealt with if the aim is to keep trade flowing as smoothly as possible, and that is before we mention the services sector. From financial and business services to the food and drinks industry, this accounts for more than 80% of UK jobs. It is of course in the interest of both sides to get a deal done, but it remains a massive task. Expect disputes about fisheries, fair competition, the role of the European Court of Justice and more. It is possible that no deal will be done in time, which will generate a fresh crisis in UK/EU relations as 2020 draws to a close. 2. Keeping the UK secure If the challenge to get a trade deal within 11 months is not hard enough, the UK must also agree a treaty to paper over legal cracks in the way countries work together on security. Policing and security experts in the UK and the EU agree that things will become harder after Brexit. For instance, the UK no longer has a place on the team that manages Europol, the agency that co-ordinates major investigations into Europe-wide organised crime. This means the UK's priorities - such as concerns about smuggling people or arms across the English Channel - may, slowly, fall down the pecking order. British police officers can, for now, still use EU systems to check criminal records of foreign nationals, or alerts on wanted people from around the continent. But access to that information could either end or become harder, because many member states have their own specific laws governing data-sharing beyond the EU. The government is trying to think ahead. It has, for instance, pledged to pass laws to ensure the same fast service the UK has enjoyed from the European Arrest Warrant - which allows suspects to be sent to another country for trial - if a deal cannot be struck. Everyone, on both sides, wants that. The question is whether it is legally doable - and if so, can it be done by January 2021? 3. Making sure the food keeps coming From farming and fishing to manufacturing and retail, the UK's food and drink sector adds £460bn to the UK economy every year, employing more than four million people. It represents a fifth of UK manufacturing, by far the biggest chunk of the sector. So there is some nervousness about what will happen to the complicated way that food and drink makes its way to consumers after the end of the transition period. A third of people in the industry are from outside the UK, with many from Eastern Europe. What happens if the number of such workers is restricted because of the introduction of a minimum salary being imposed for migrants? When it comes to trade, there is the prospect products may have to be opened and checked at borders which could add expense and cut the shelf life of fresh food. And the Food and Drink Federation, a body representing food manufacturers, says the most complex challenge is around trying to get a trade deal with Europe that satisfies what are called "rules of origin". UK manufacturers use a mixture of domestic and internationally-produced ingredients, which would not be allowed under rules included in recent EU trade deals. 4. Building a new role in the world The government has a huge task ahead to establish the UK's place in the world after leaving the EU. Ministers have to work out what the government's slogan "Global Britain" actually means. The traditional role of providing a transatlantic bridge between Europe and the US will be put to one side. Instead, ministers must develop a more independent foreign policy. That could mean less automatic support from the UK for the US, as it focuses more on domestic issues and less on its relations with other countries. It will mean a new relationship with European allies, not through EU structures, but through smaller existing groups. These include the E3, an informal group made up of the UK, Germany and France, which has worked together on issues like relations with Iran. The biggest foreign policy challenge will be how to navigate a path between an increasingly stronger China and a defensive US, without the protective membership of the EU. To that end, Boris Johnson has ordered what he calls an 'integrated review" of the UK's security, defence and foreign policy which is expected to report later this year. Please upgrade your browser Your guide to Brexit jargon Use the list below or select a button 5. Showing that all the arguing was worth it The protesters who turn up on Westminster's College Green are a lonely bunch these days. Even the most ardent fan of the EU would have to admit that the heat has gone out of the passionate, and often vicious, political fight of the last few years. The challenge for Mr Johnson is now to show to the public that all the disruption, all the arguing, was actually worth it. That will not be easy. Brexiteers are keen to make the most of the powers that will come back to the UK from Brussels as soon as possible. But now we are in the departure lounge - the transition period where the status quo will stay pretty much the same. Even if you popped champagne on Friday night to celebrate the UK leaving the EU, when you woke up on Saturday morning not much would have actually felt very different. Can the enthusiasm and excitement on that side be managed? And even though the stay or leave debate is now at an end, some voters still believe we are setting off on a path of folly. And there are big fears that a trade deal No 10 wants simply is not doable by the end of the year. Mr Johnson would be perfectly happy if after Friday, the B-word was never heard again, but he needs to show to the public on both sides it was worth it. He has already found a place in the history books, but the chapter is not yet complete. What questions do you have about Brexit and how it will affect you in the future? In some cases your question will be published, displaying your name, age and location as you provide it, unless you state otherwise. Your contact details will never be published. Please ensure you have read our terms & conditions and privacy policy. Use this form to ask your question:
|
যুক্তরাজ্য ইউরোপীয় ইউনিয়ন ছেড়েছে কিন্তু এখনো অনেক প্রশ্ন রয়ে গেছে, যার উত্তর মেলেনি।
|
35
|
By Gavin FischerBBC News, South Africa It was the middle of the night when the telephone call came, waking Nokubonga from her sleep. The girl at the other end of the line was just 500m away - and she said Nokubonga's daughter, Siphokazi, was being raped by three men they all knew well. Nokubonga's first response was to call the police, but there was no answer. She knew, anyway, that it would take them time to reach her village, in the rolling green and brown hills of South Africa's Eastern Cape province. She was the only person that could help. "I was scared, but then I was forced to go because it was my daughter," she said. "I was thinking that when I get there, she might be dead... Because she knew the perpetrators, and because they knew her and knew she knows them, they might think they had to kill her so she couldn't report them." Siphokazi had been visiting friends in a group of four small houses in the same village but had been left alone, asleep, when her friends went out at 01:30. Then three men who had been drinking in one of the other houses attacked her. Nokubonga's sparsely furnished hut has two rooms, a bedroom, where she had been sleeping, and a kitchen - where she picked up a knife. "I took it for me, for walking the distance between here and where the incident was taking place, because it is not safe," she says. "It was dark and I had to use the torch on my phone to light the way." She heard her daughter's screams as she approached the house. On entering the bedroom, the light from her phone enabled her to make out the awful sight of her daughter being raped. "I was scared… I just stood by the door and asked what they were doing. When they saw it was me, they came charging towards me, that's when I thought that I needed to defend myself, it was an automatic reaction," Nokubonga says. Nokubonga refuses to go into detail about what happened next. Find out more Listen to Nokubonga and Siphokazi talking on Outlook, on the BBC World Service Download the Outlook podcast The judge in the court case against the attackers said Nokubonga's testimony showed she had "become very emotional" as she saw one of the men raping her daughter, while the other two stood nearby with their trousers round their ankles, waiting to take their turn again. Judge Mbulelo Jolwana went on to say, "I understood her to mean that she was overcome with anger." But in recounting the story now, all Nokubonga will admit to was fear - for herself and her daughter - and her face betrays only sadness and pain. It's clear, though, that when the men charged at Nokubonga she fought back with her knife - and that as she stabbed them they tried to flee, with one even jumping out of a window. Two were seriously injured, and the other died. Nokubonga did not stay to find out how badly hurt they were. She took her daughter to a friend's house nearby. When the police arrived, Nokubonga was arrested and taken to the local police station, where she was kept in a cell. "I was thinking of my child," she says. "I got no information [about her]. It was a traumatic experience." At the same time, Siphokazi was in hospital worrying about her mother, imagining her in her cell and heartbroken about the prospect of her being jailed for years. "I wished that if she spent time in prison, I would be the one who would serve it on her behalf," she says. Still in shock, she could remember little or nothing of the attack. What she now knows she heard from her mother when she arrived at the hospital two days later, after being freed on bail. From that moment on they have been each other's emotional support. "I didn't get any counselling but my mother has been able to assist me," Siphokazi says. "I am recovering." Nokubonga's efforts are focused on ensuring that life continues just as it was before. "I'm still the mother and she is still the daughter," she says. They share a laugh about the closeness of their relationship, joking that Siphokazi cannot get married, because then Nokubonga would have no-one to look after. In the 18 months since the attack occurred they have come a long way. Buhle Tonise, the attorney who represented Nokubonga, remembers that both seemed to have given up when she first met them, a week after the attack. "The mother was distraught," she says. "When you are meeting with people that are at that level of poverty, then you know most of the time they would feel that the mother is going to jail because she has no-one to stand by her side. The justice system is for those who have money." As Buhle spoke to Nokubonga, Siphokazi watched her silently, as though the attack had deprived her of the power of speech. Although Buhle says she was confident Nokubonga could argue convincingly that she acted in self-defence, she feared it would be a struggle to overcome her client's overwhelming pessimism. What neither of them had foreseen was the help they would get from the media, which ended up creating the legend of the Lion Mama. It is rare in South Africa for a rape case to get more than basic news coverage. This may be in large part down to the sheer number of rapes in the country, estimated at around 110 per day - a situation President Cyril Ramaphosa recently labelled a national crisis. The Eastern Cape province - the country's poorest, with unemployment of over 45% - has a higher level of rape per capita of population than any other. In Lady Frere, the village where Nokubonga and Siphokazi live, there were 74 recorded rapes in the year 2017/2018 - an astonishingly high figure for somewhere with a population of less than 5,000. But among the numerous harrowing stories of rape in South Africa, Nokubonga and Siphokazi's story stood out. The press quickly latched on to the tale of a mother protecting her daughter. Unable to name Nokubonga, to protect her daughter's anonymity, one newspaper labelled her "Lion Mama", placing the story next to a picture of a lion and her cubs. The name stuck. "For me, at first, I didn't like it because I couldn't understand," Nokubonga says. "But in the end I knew it meant I was a hero, because when you look at a lion it would protect its cubs." The public responded by criticising the decision to charge Nokubonga with murder and raising funds to help her mount her legal defence. This raised her spirits, but the extent of the public support did not sink in until her first appearance in a local magistrate's court, a month after the attack. "Going to court I was scared, I woke up and said a prayer," she says. When she got there, she found the place was full of well-wishers. "There were a whole lot of people from all over South Africa. What I said to people is thank you, because the fact that the court was filled to the rafters, it meant that they supported me. They really gave me hope." She was quickly called before the magistrate. "I was told the charges had been withdrawn," she says. "I just stood there, but I was excited, I was happy. At that moment I knew the justice system is able to separate right from wrong, they were able to tell I had no intentions of taking someone's life." Buhle Tonise recalls the impact the magistrate's decision had on Siphokazi as well. "After the case was withdrawn, she calls her daughter. For the first time ever I heard her daughter laugh. I think that's when [Siphokazi] said she also wants to see the guys going to jail." They had to wait over a year for that to happen, but in December 2018 the two remaining attackers, 30-year-old Xolisa Siyeka and 25-year-old Mncedisi Vuba - members of the same clan as Nokubonga and Siphokazi - were each sentenced to 30 years in prison. "I was happy about it," says Siphokazi, now 27. "I felt a bit safe, but a part of me just felt they deserved life imprisonment." This is as close as Siphokazi gets to showing anger toward her attackers. Once the case was finished, she decided to waive her anonymity in order to give encouragement to other rape survivors. "I would tell a person that even after such an attack there is even life beyond it, you can still go back to society. You can still live your life," she says. Nokubonga also shows a surprising lack of anger for someone compared by the media to a lioness. In fact, she has hopes that her daughter's rapists can achieve something positive in the future. "I'm hoping that when they finish their sentence they'll come back as reformed or changed people," she says, "to tell a story about it and be a living example." You may also be interested in: Pili Hussein wanted to make her fortune prospecting for a precious stone that's said to be a thousand times rarer than diamonds, but since women weren't allowed down the mines she dressed up as man and fooled her male colleagues for almost a decade. Read: I acted as a man to get work - until I was accused of rape Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.
|
নকুবঙ্গা কাম্পি দক্ষিণ আফ্রিকায় পরিচিত হয়ে উঠেছেন একজন 'লায়ন মামা' অর্থাৎ 'সিংহ মা' হিসেবে। তার মেয়ের তিন ধর্ষণকারীর একজনকে হত্যা এবং বাকি দু'জনকে মেরে আহত করার পর লোকজন তাকে এভাবেই ডাকতে শুরু করে।
|
23
|
"It was all about the sanctions," Mr Trump told reporters. "They wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn't do that." North Korea said it had made "realistic proposals" at the summit. The two leaders had been expected to announce progress on denuclearisation. "Sometimes you have to walk and this was one of those times," Mr Trump said. Speaking at a news conference after the summit, in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, Mr Trump said no plans had been made for a third summit, but he expressed optimism about a "good outcome" in the future. And on his flight back to the United States, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was very hopeful that officials from both sides could resume talks before too long. The original White House programme for the day had planned for a "joint agreement signing ceremony" as well as a working lunch for the two leaders, but expectations were abruptly dashed with the cancellation of both. What were the sticking points? According to Mr Trump, Mr Kim made a significant offer - to dismantle all of the Yongbyon complex, the research and production facility at the heart of North Korea's nuclear programme. But in return Mr Kim wanted all sanctions on North Korea lifted, something the US was not prepared to offer. There was also a question over the network of facilities that extend beyond Yongbyon. Last month, Stephen Biegun, the US state department special representative for North Korea, said North Korea had committed in pre-summit talks to destroy all of the nation's plutonium- and uranium-enrichment facilities, dependent on unspecified US measures in return. Yongbyon is North Korea's only known source of plutonium but the country is believed to have at least two other facilities where uranium is enriched. Those unspecified US measures appear now to have been complete sanctions relief, which Mr Trump would not offer. The US president also suggested in his news conference that Mr Kim had offered only the destruction of Yongbyon and not North Korea's entire nuclear apparatus. The president said that when he raised the issue of a second enrichment facility apart from Yongbyon, the North Korean delegation was "surprised" by what the US knew. North Korea's foreign minister later said that Pyongyang had been seeking partial sanctions relief, not a complete lifting. The North had offered to permanently stop nuclear and long-range rocket testing, the minister added. Is this a setback for Trump? The first summit between the two leaders, which took place in Singapore in June 2018, was criticised for having produced little in terms of substance, leading to anticipation that Mr Trump would push at the summit in Hanoi to produce an agreement on denuclearisation. The failure will be viewed as a setback for self-styled deal-maker Mr Trump, who has talked up his historic rapprochement with Mr Kim as a significant policy achievement. Some saw the president's decision to not agree a deal as a good move. "From Mr Trump's perspective it will be a loss he can weather," Andray Abrahamian, a North Korea expert at Stanford University, wrote in a column for the BBC. "A 'bad deal' in which he gave away a lot would inspire years of debate and pushback from US foreign-policy elites. With this, he's spun it as saveable through working-level talks." The summit came as Mr Trump was facing increased scrutiny at home in the US over his business dealings and alleged ties to Russia, after his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen testified before Congress on Wednesday. International reaction A statement from South Korea's presidential office called the breakdown of talks "regrettable" but said the US and North Korean leaders had made "more meaningful progress than at any time prior". South Korean leader Moon Jae-in has worked to improve bilateral relations between the two Koreas, and played a role in arranging the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore. A later statement from President Moon said he had held a 25-minute phone conversation with Mr Trump and "looked forward to productive results at follow-up consultations between the US and North Korean leaders". China, North Korea's main ally, said it hoped both sides would keep talking. "Solving this problem is definitely not something that can be achieved overnight," foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said. What was said about Otto Warmbier? US media extensively covered remarks by Mr Trump about an American student, Otto Warmbier, who died from extensive injuries shortly after he was released from North Korean detention in 2017. The president said he had raised the Warmbier case with Mr Kim and believed the North Korean leader's assurances that he knew nothing of the student's treatment. "Some really bad things happened to Otto - some really really bad things. But he tells me that he didn't know about it and I will take him at his word," Mr Trump said. Warmbier, who was 22, was arrested for taking a propaganda poster from a hotel while on a visit to Pyongyang in January 2016. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour. Mr Trump is not thought to have pressed Mr Kim during their talks on North Korea's wider human rights record. According to Human Rights Watch, the United Nations and international powers, the North Korean regime is among the world's worst human rights abusers, with an estimated 80,000 - 120,000 political prisoners and a history of murder, torture, and sexual violence perpetrated against its citizens. What does denuclearisation mean? There is uncertainty about what exactly both sides mean by denuclearisation. Washington has previously said North Korea must unilaterally give up its all of its nuclear weapons and destroy all of its nuclear facilities before there can be any sanctions relief, but that condition is known to be a sticking point for the North Koreans. It is thought Mr Kim views denuclearisation as a mutual arrangement in which the US withdraws its military presence on the Korean peninsula. Asked at the news conference on Thursday what he meant by denuclearisation, Mr Trump said: "To me it's pretty obvious, we have to get rid of the nukes." Mr Trump said the US delegation "had some options and this time we decided not to do any of the options". Where does this leave the relationship? The pair seemed to get along at the Hanoi summit, as they did at the previous summit in Singapore. They took a poolside stroll for the cameras, although neither appeared to say much. Speaking after the talks in Hanoi, Mr Trump said Mr Kim was "quite a guy and quite a character" and described their relationship as "very strong". Despite the lack of an agreement, the second summit would appear to build on a significant shift in the tenor of the relationship between the two nations. In late 2017, they were exchanging vitriolic threats, with Mr Trump calling Mr Kim "little rocket man" and Mr Kim calling Mr Trump a "mentally deranged dotard". An end to war? Before the summit, there was talk of a possible political declaration to end the 1950-53 Korean War, which finished with an armistice rather than a full peace treaty. With the abrupt end of the talks, that peripheral goal seemed to have been kicked into the long grass.
|
যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের প্রেসিডেন্ট ডোনাল্ড ট্রাম্প আর উত্তর কোরিয়ার নেতা কিম জং-আনের মধ্যে বৈঠকটি কোন সমঝোতা ছাড়াই শেষ হয়ে গেছে কারণ উত্তর কোরিয়ার দাবি অনুযায়ী নিষেধাজ্ঞা তুলে নিতে রাজি হয়নি যুক্তরাষ্ট্র।
|
49
|
Mr Trump spoke as the two Gulf states signed agreements fully normalising their relations with Israel. The three countries hailed the deals as historic, as did Mr Trump, whose administration helped broker them. The Gulf states are just the third and fourth Arab countries to recognise Israel since its founding in 1948. Mr Trump hopes other countries will follow suit, but the Palestinians have urged them not to while their conflict remains unresolved. For decades, most Arab states have boycotted Israel, insisting they would only establish ties after Israel's dispute with the Palestinian was settled. "After decades of division and conflict we mark the dawn of a new Middle East," Mr Trump told a crowd of hundreds gathered at the White House on Tuesday. "We're here this afternoon to change the course of history," he added. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the deals, saying, "This day is a pivot of history; it heralds a new dawn of peace." But Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said only an Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories could bring peace to the Middle East. "Peace, security and stability will not be achieved in the region until the Israeli occupation ends," he said in a statement after the signing of the deals, AFP news agency reports. The Israeli army said that two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel while the ceremony was under way. Why are these agreements being hailed as 'historic'? Before the UAE and Bahrain, the only other Arab countries in the Middle East to recognise Israel officially were Egypt and Jordan, who signed peace treaties in 1978 and 1994 respectively. Mauritania, a member of the Arab League in north-west Africa, established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1999 but severed ties in 2010. All eyes will be on whether other countries in the region follow suit, above all Saudi Arabia. So far, the Saudis have signalled that they are not ready. The agreements are also likely to usher in new security ties in a region where many of the Gulf Arab states share with the Israelis a common adversary in Iran. A significant achievement Analysis by Gary O'Donoghue, Washington correspondent These agreements represent the most significant diplomatic achievement of the Trump administration. Persuading two Arab states to engage in this kind of rapprochement with Israel - without a solution to the Palestinian question - marks a significant move for pan-Arab unity. The specific details of the agreements are not yet public, but there will be embassies, commercial deals and the opening of travel links between the countries. Mr Trump even suggested five other Arab states were "far down the road" towards finalising similar arrangements. But the agreements have been condemned by the Palestinian leadership as a "black day" for the region. Developments on the ground in the occupied West Bank and Gaza could still derail these new relationships. Why have Palestinians condemned the deals? The Palestinians have said the agreements are dangerous betrayals. They believe the moves by the Gulf countries renege on a promise by Arab states not to embrace ties with Israel until Palestinian statehood is achieved. The UAE has said progress on Palestinian statehood is central, and that their agreement included a promise from Israel to "suspend" its controversial plan to annex key parts of the occupied West Bank that were allocated to it by President Trump under the Middle East peace plan he unveiled in January. The Palestinians rejected Mr Trump's proposals as biased towards Israel and warned that annexation would destroy their hopes of a viable future independent state and violate international law - a stance supported by much of the international community. The UAE's minister of state for foreign affairs told the BBC that it had sensed an "opportunity" when Mr Netanyahu signalled he would press ahead with annexation earlier this year. "Everybody was worried about the annexation of Palestinian lands, which was really a threat to the viability of the two-state solution," Anwar Gargash said. "And I think this sort of brought our plans forward and gave us a reason, a clear reason and clear rationale, why a decision that we would have taken in 2021 or 2022 should be taken now." Mr Gargash said he did not believe Mr Netanyahu or another Israeli leader would be likely to renege on the promise to suspend the annexation plans. The UAE has called on the Palestinian leadership to use this moment to reorganise its approach and prepare to re-engage in productive discussions with Israel. In a statement issued after he attended the ceremony at the White House, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said the deals were "a massive and welcome opportunity to recast the politics of the region". He said he understood Palestinian objections but that "in time, the Palestinian people will understand that it is only by radically changing strategy that the legitimate aspirations for a viable Palestinian state can be realised". What's the background? There is a backdrop of the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran in these diplomatic moves. 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. The UAE and Bahrain are both Saudi allies. Saudi Arabia's response will be watched closely. There is no indication yet it is ready to follow Bahrain and the UAE. Prior to the announcement of the UAE agreement in August - which included the suspension of Israel's controversial plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank - Israel had had no diplomatic relations with Gulf Arab countries. Last month saw the first official flight from Israel to the UAE, which was seen as a major step in normalising relations. President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who was on the plane, described the UAE deal as having "the ability to change the whole course of the Middle East".
|
সংযুক্ত আরব আমিরাত ও বাহরাইনের সাথে ইসরায়েলের ঐতিহাসিক চুক্তির দিনটিকে মার্কিন প্রেসিডেন্ট ডোনাল্ড ট্রাম্প বললেন 'নতুন মধ্যপ্রাচ্যের ভোর'।
|
34
|
The renowned theoretical physicist's final resting place will also be near that of Charles Darwin, who was buried there in 1882. Prof Hawking, who had motor neurone disease, died on 14 March, aged 76, at his home in Cambridge. The Dean of Westminster said the location was "entirely fitting". A private funeral service will take place at Great St Mary's, the University Church on 31 March, Prof Hawking's family said. The church is close to Gonville and Caius College, where Prof Hawking had been a fellow for more than 50 years. The thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey will take place later in the year. Announcing funeral arrangements on the college website, Prof Hawking's children Lucy, Robert and Tim said: "Our father lived and worked in Cambridge for over 50 years. "He was an integral and highly recognisable part of the university and the city. "For this reason, we have decided to hold his funeral in the city that he loved so much and which loved him. Our father's life and work meant many things to many people, both religious and non-religious. So, the service will be both inclusive and traditional, reflecting the breadth and diversity of his life." The Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, said: "It is entirely fitting that the remains of Professor Stephen Hawking are to be buried in the Abbey, near those of distinguished fellow scientists. "Sir Isaac Newton was buried in the Abbey in 1727. Charles Darwin was buried beside Isaac Newton in 1882." He added: "We believe it to be vital that science and religion work together to seek to answer the great questions of the mystery of life and of the universe."
|
আন্তর্জাতিক খ্যাতি সম্পন্ন ব্রিটিশ বিজ্ঞানী স্টিভেন হকিং-কে ওয়েস্টমিনস্টার অ্যাবেতে আরেক বিখ্যাত বিজ্ঞানী আইজ্যাক নিউটনের পাশে সমাহিত করা হবে বলে জানা গেছে। তার কাছেই থাকবেন আরো একজন বিজ্ঞানী বিবর্তনবাদের জনক চার্লস ডারউইন। তাকে কবর দেওয়া হয়েছিলো ১৮৮২ সালে।
|
28
|
He urged fellow right-wingers not to back a deal after ultra-nationalist Naftali Bennett said he would form a coalition with a centrist party. Mr Netanyahu's opponents have until Wednesday to form a government. If they are successful, it would bring to an end the rule of the country's longest-serving prime minister. Mr Netanyahu, who faces serious corruption charges and could go to jail, fell short of a decisive majority at a general election in March. It was the country's fourth inconclusive vote in two years - and again he failed to secure coalition allies. But his opponents may only be able to form a minority government, propped up by Arab members of parliament. On Monday, the centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid warned that "many obstacles" remained before a unity government could be formed. "We'll have to overcome them together," he told journalists. "That's our first test - to see if we can find smart compromises in the coming days to achieve the greater goal." Tensions remain following the recent Gaza conflict, which also triggered inter-communal clashes in Israeli cities between Jews and Arabs. Some Arab politicians could be reluctant to back a government led by Mr Bennett, who is a staunch supporter of Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank - land Palestinians want for a future state. 'Fraud of the century' "Don't form a left-wing government - such a government is a danger to Israel's security and future," 71-year-old Mr Netanyahu, who has dominated Israeli politics for a generation, said on Sunday. Naming left-wing leaders who, he hinted, could weaken Israel's security cabinet, he asked: "What impact will that have on Israel's deterrent capability? How will we look to our enemies? What will they say in Iran and Gaza?" Mr Netanyahu accused Mr Bennett of "misleading the public" and of carrying out "the fraud of the century" - a reference to the Yamina party leader's previous public promises not to join forces with Mr Lapid. Mr Bennett, 49, earlier announced in a televised address that his party would join talks to form a unity government. "Mr Netanyahu is no longer trying to form a right-wing government because he knows full well that there isn't one. He is seeking to take the whole national camp, and the whole country, with him on his personal last stand," Mr Bennett said. "I will do everything to form a national unity government with my friend Yair Lapid." Before the announcement, Israeli media reported that under the proposed terms of the deal, Mr Bennett would replace Mr Netanyahu as prime minister and later give way to Mr Lapid, 57, in a rotation agreement. The arrangement has not been officially confirmed. The proposed coalition would bring together factions from the right, the left and the centre of Israeli politics. While the parties have little in common politically, they are united in their desire to see Mr Netanyahu's time in office come to an end. Mr Lapid, a former finance minister, was given until 2 June to form a new coalition government after Mr Netanyahu failed to do so. His Yesh Atid party came second to Mr Netanyahu's right-wing Likud at the last election. Netanyahu fights on After an evening of high political drama on Sunday, Israel is much closer to a new coalition that will unseat its long-time prime minister. But Benjamin Netanyahu should not be written off. He was quick to respond to the latest announcement with his own appeal to right-wing members of Naftali Bennett's Yamina party - and those of Gideon Saar's New Hope - not to join the agreement. He taunted them by asking "Who will take care of settlements?" and suggested the proposed unity government would offer a weak security cabinet that would be unable to stand up to Israel's rival, Iran. If he chips away just a couple of members of parliament with these attacks, then the prospective government could tumble. And even if this coalition does get sworn in, it will be a fragile one - bringing together parties from across the political spectrum with stark ideological differences. To stay in power, it will be forced to kick many sensitive issues into the long grass. On Saturday night, Mr Netanyahu's Likud party made an offer to Mr Bennett and the leader of another potential coalition party to share the premiership in a three-way split. His offer was rejected but the prime minister repeated the same option on Sunday. Under Israel's electoral system of proportional representation, it is difficult for a single party to gain enough seats to form a government outright. Smaller parties are usually needed to make up the numbers needed for a coalition. Mr Lapid was initially given a 28-day mandate to form a government but this was interrupted by the recent 11-day conflict in Gaza. One of his potential coalition partners, the Arab Islamist Raam party, broke off talks because of the violence.
|
ইসরায়েলের প্রধানমন্ত্রী বেনিয়ামিন নেতানিয়াহু হুঁশিয়ার করে বলেছেন যে, প্রস্তাবিত নতুন জোট সরকার দেশটির "নিরাপত্তার জন্য বিপজ্জনক" হতে পারে।
|
0
|
They also agreed to field a joint women's ice hockey team in rare talks at the truce village of Panmunjom. These are the first high-level talks between the countries in more than two years. It marks a thaw in relations that began in the new year when North Korea offered to send a team to the games. The games will take place between 9 and 25 February in Pyeongchang in South Korea. What will happen? If the plans are realised, a hundreds-strong North Korean delegation - including 230 cheerleaders, 140 orchestral musicians and 30 taekwondo athletes - could cross into the South via the land border to attend the Winter Olympics. It will mean the opening of the cross border road for the first time in almost two years. The two countries have also agreed to field a joint team for the sport of women's ice hockey. It would be the first time athletes from both Koreas have competed together in the same team at an Olympic Games. The North has also agreed to send a smaller, 150-member delegation to the Paralympics in March. The agreement will have to be approved by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Saturday, because North Korea has missed registration deadlines or failed to qualify. South Korea will also need to find ways to host the North Korean delegation without violating UN Security Council sanctions outlawing cash transfers to Pyongyang and blacklisting certain senior North officials. What has the reaction been? South Korea's hockey coach and conservative newspapers have expressed concern about the prospect of a united hockey team, saying it could damage South Korea's chances of winning a medal. Tens of thousands of people are said to have signed online petitions urging President Moon Jae-in to scrap the plan. But the liberal leader told South Korean Olympic athletes on Wednesday that the North's participation in the Games would help improve inter-Korean relations. Japan has viewed the latest detente with suspicion, with Foreign Minister Taro Kono saying the world should not be blinded by Pyongyang's recent "charm offensive". "It is not the time to ease pressure or to reward North Korea," Mr Kono said, according to Reuters news agency. "The fact that North Korea is engaging in dialogue could be interpreted as proof that the sanctions are working." No Korean Spring Analysis by Jonathan Marcus, BBC Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent The Olympic embrace between North and South Korea represents a rare moment of hope in a crisis that at times has appeared to be steadily moving towards another war on the Korean peninsula. But is this a brief respite from the bluster and war-like words exchanged between Pyongyang and President Donald Trump, Seoul's main ally? Or does it really offer a platform for a diplomatic route out of this crisis? The enormity of an armed conflict is clear to all - even President Trump. However, the Olympic detente does not alter the realities of North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. Both programmes need more testing to demonstrate a true inter-continental capability. And with Mr Trump insisting that this is a capability that the North will not be allowed to obtain, it is hard to see this developing into a Korean spring, let alone a definitive resolution of the nuclear dispute. How did the agreement come about? The talks which resulted in this agreement came after tensions on the Korean peninsula reached their highest point in decades. This is because North Korea has made rapid advances in its nuclear and conventional weapons programmes in recent years. Its latest ballistic missile test, on 28 November, sparked a series of fresh sanctions from the UN targeting petrol shipments and travel. Soon afterwards North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he was "open to dialogue". In a New Year speech, he said he was considering sending a team to the Winter Olympics. South Korea's Olympics chief had said last year that the North's athletes would be welcome. Then, on 9 January, the two countries made the breakthrough announcement that the North would be sending a delegation. It was also agreed that a military hotline between the nations, suspended for nearly two years, would be reinstated. President Moon Jae-in has said the Olympic agreement could pave the way for the nuclear issue to be addressed and lead to dialogue between the North and the US, according to Yonhap news agency in Seoul.
|
আগামী মাসে শুরু হতে যাওয়া শীতকালীন অলিম্পিকে একসাথে এক পতাকার নিচে সামিল হবার ঘোষণা দিয়েছে দুই কোরিয়া।
|
8
|
By Joe Tidy & Becky DaleBBC News As the founder of technology innovation hub IceAddis, his co-working space is usually abuzz with wide-eyed entrepreneurs fuelled on strong coffee and big dreams. But when the internet shuts down, everything is stopped in its tracks. Data shared with the BBC by digital rights group Access Now, shows that last year services were deliberately shut down more than 200 times in 33 separate countries. This includes, on one occasion, in the UK. In April 2019 the British Transport Police shut down the wi-fi on London's Tube network during a protest by climate change activists Extinction Rebellion. Also revealed in the report about shutdowns in 2019: In Addis Ababa, everything stops, says Markos Lemma. "No one comes in - or when they do they don't stay for long because without the internet, what are they going to do? "We had a software development contract that was cancelled because we couldn't deliver on time, because... there was internet disconnection. We've also [had] situations where international customers think our businesses are ignoring them, but there's nothing we can do. " Motorbike drivers wait around, rather than delivering food. Without an internet connection, people cannot order online or on apps, says Markos. "Internet shutdowns have a direct consequence on businesses and people here." Disconnecting the web It is not just Ethiopia, and the impact is not only economic. Access Now's research shows that blackouts are affecting tens of millions of people all over the world in various ways. Government officials are able to "switch off" the internet by ordering service providers to block certain areas from receiving signals - or sometimes, by blocking access to specific web services. Human rights groups are concerned that the measure is becoming a defining tool of government repression around the world. This new data analysed by the BBC suggests that disruption is increasingly linked to times of protest. Governments often say a shutdown is to help ensure public safety and to stop the spread of fake news. But critics say they stifle the flow of information online – and crack down on any potential dissent offline. The UN declared internet access to be a human right in 2016, and achieving universal access is one target of its Sustainable Development Goals. However, not all leaders subscribe to that idea. In August 2019, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared that the internet is "not water or air" and that shutdowns would remain an important tool for national stability. Markos Lemma is angry about that. "The government doesn't see the internet as important. I think they really think the internet is just about social media, so they don't really see the economic value of the internet and how that impacts the economy." India tops the blackout list The new data for 2019 shows that India had by far the highest number of shutdowns of any country last year. Mobile data or broadband services were switched off for residents in various parts of the country 121 times, with the majority (67%) occurring in disputed India-administered Kashmir. And protesters in Sudan and Iraq found themselves forced to resort to organising everything offline when their internet was turned off. The impact of each incident varies greatly depending on the scale of the outage: from localised blocking of social media platforms to countrywide outages of all internet traffic. "Throttling" is a form of blackout that is harder to monitor, and happens when a government slows down data services. They might bump modern, fast 4G, mobile internet down to 1990s-era 2G, making it impossible to share videos or livestream. This happened in May 2019, when the President of Tajikistan admitted to throttling most social networks. including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, saying they were "vulnerable to terrorist activity". Some countries, like Russia and Iran, are currently building and testing their own versions of a locked-off nationwide internet, thought to be a sign of increased control on the web. Digital rights group Access Now says: "It seems more and more countries are learning from one another and implementing the nuclear option of internet shutdowns to silence critics, or perpetrate other human rights violations with no oversight."
|
আদ্দিস আবাবার উঁচু অফিস ভবনে যে ডেস্কে বসে মারকোস লেমা কাজ করেন, সেখান থেকে পুরো নগরীর একটা চমৎকার দৃশ্য দেখা যায়।
|
18
|
Theo Van Eijck's little house in Somerset is a treasure trove of curiosities. Toy witches swing on tiny broomsticks from the ceiling of his sitting room, a family of ceramic cats peers down inquiringly from the higher shelves and a couple of skulls sit grinning on the sideboard. But the most fascinating items of all are spread out on Van Eijck's coffee table - Dutch newspaper clippings from 1964, with show-stopping headlines reporting the antics of a young sailor who stole a Grumman Tracker propeller plane from his military base in Malta and flew it to Benghazi, Libya. "It's me!" laughs Van Eijck, now white-haired and aged 76. "That's me right there in the photo and I was just 21!" His wife hands me a mug of coffee and shakes her head in mock despair as he translates the stories for me. "Arrogant little man!" she jokes, wagging her finger at him. "Good job I didn't know you back then." Back then Theo Van Eijck was just a young man who dreamt of flying. In fact, he'd had fantasies about flying since he was seven years old. He wasn't, he admits, the greatest student in the world and feared he would never make the grades needed to join the Air Force as a pilot. But then he heard about a scheme in the Dutch Navy whereby a young man could enter the service as a trainee electrician, and if he did well could apply internally for the Navy's pilot training course. Aged just 19 and full of optimism, Van Eijck didn't hesitate. He signed up immediately for eight years. He picks up a black-and-white photograph of himself in the cockpit of a small plane from the coffee table and hands it to me. From under a heavy dark helmet, I see a boyish face grinning in utter delight, impatient to stop posing and eager to take off. "Oh, it started well," he agrees, when I remark upon how elated he looks in the old print. "I got selected for the pilot scheme and I loved it." But in early 1964, with around 40 hours' flying time stamped proudly into his log book, the exhilarated young Van Eijck went to a party at his barracks in Holland and got rather drunk. His commanding officer was at the party and also rather the worse for wear. He suggested to Van Eijck that they should talk frankly about the quality of the pilot training scheme (which was conducted jointly by the Belgian Air force and the Dutch Navy) and he invited Van Eijck to be honest. It was, he assured him, an off-the-record discussion. And so, perhaps naively, 21-year-old Van Eijck spoke openly. He needed to be trained on a proper plane he insisted, a Grumman Tracker submarine destroyer that would be deployed on naval aircraft carriers, not the twin-engine training planes the Belgians were using to teach them. The planes they were being taught on were (Theo grins self-consciously as he remembers the words he used) "quite frankly, crap". Find out more Up to that point, Van Eijck had maintained a perfect flying record but the very next day after the party he had his report card marked with an orange warning sign, which meant he was at imminent risk of being failed. Furious at the injustice, he wrote something cocky about the slowness of the training programme on the classroom blackboard, while waiting for the instructor to arrive. That move saw him jailed at his barracks for a weekend, but seeing a skirting board was loose he managed to use it to slide back the bolt across his cell door, and escaped. When his absence was discovered, he was immediately kicked out of the pilot's scheme. Van Eijck was encouraged to appeal against the decision by superiors who admired his gumption. But the officers inadvertently gave him the wrong forms to fill in. When he finally got a response, three months later, he was told he had not followed correct procedure and it was now too late to take further action. He was no longer to train as a pilot and must serve out his remaining six years in the Navy as an electrician. "I come from a big family," says Van Eijck who is number nine in a line of 12 brothers and sisters. "And in the family we knew that right was right and wrong was wrong. And this was wrong. It just wasn't fair." Depressed and despondent, with his dreams of flying now shattered, Van Eijck pleaded to be discharged from the Navy, but his request was repeatedly refused. So he started plotting to find a way to extract himself from the force once and for all. "I told absolutely no-one," he smiles coyly. "If I had told someone it would not have worked." Just like Sgt Paul Meyer, Theo van Eijck decided his ticket to freedom was to steal a plane. He found a handbook for a Grumman Tracker plane and hid it in his locker. While his friends went out drinking or headed to bed, Van Eijck secretly studied. He befriended the qualified pilots and chatted to them about instrument flying, about engine start-ups, about take-offs. "Little did they know why I was interested!" he sniggers. "But from Holland the route was difficult - I didn't want to end up in East Germany with all that political trouble. And then one day they asked for volunteers to go on a two-month exercise in Malta with the British Navy. And I thought, from Malta I could fly anywhere!" In Malta, Van Eijck hung around the aerodrome chatting to the aviation mechanics, watching them work. In the early mornings and evenings, he continued to study his now well-thumbed Tracker handbook. On the last weekend before he was due to fly home, he politely attended the farewell party on the base but while his fellow servicemen succumbed to the temptations of the freely flowing liquor, the young Van Eijck was careful to stay completely sober. "And that's where my story matches Sgt Paul Meyer's," he says. "Because the next morning, I got up early and I borrowed a bike and biked to the runway. Sgt Meyer told the guard his name was Capt Epstein. I told the one guard on duty I was called Jansen - which is like Smith in Dutch - so he had no idea who I was and he helped me open the doors of the hangar!" Van Eijck had planned his theft meticulously, he says, even locking up the guard's pistol and bike and removing the microphones from the telephone in his office, to ensure that if he was rumbled too soon, the guard would struggle to get back-up. Van Eijck's blue eyes twinkle as he remembers the thrill of that morning. "So I started the engine, switched the radio on and the control tower started asking who I was, what I was doing. I didn't answer. I taxied and then…" He rubs his hands together theatrically and shows me his open palms like a magician delighting in performing an elaborate disappearing trick. "And then…. I was gone." And so was the Dutch Navy's Grumman Tracker submarine destroyer aircraft, armed with two torpedoes and heading for North Africa. "I did worry a bit about the torpedoes," admits Van Eijck. "But I didn't care because I just wanted out of it. No way was the Navy going to get me back." Flying at 5,000 feet over the Mediterranean to conserve fuel, Van Eijck was completely alone in the sky. "I know how Sgt Meyer must have felt," he says. "Because it's what I felt. It was the best thing ever; you're doing something that everyone says can't be done and it's all you. All you in this big machine and you're more powerful than anyone else, all lonely in that big sky and..." He tails off suddenly and I realise he's crying. "No-one can take it away from you," he says, choking on his words. "It was marvellous, so powerful. I can still feel it now. And I was totally convinced I can do this." I remind Van Eijck that as Sgt Meyer sat in the cockpit, trying to work out where he was going and what he was doing, he called his wife on the radio to calm himself. I ask Van Eijck if he thought of his own family as he flew into the unknown. "My mother," he says quietly. "Yes, I thought of my mother. A week or so before, I had sent her a present. It was a silver cross. And she guessed I was up to something, my mother." Van Eijck is struggling now to master his tears and asks to pause for a moment so he can drink his coffee. The wind chimes suspended from the ceiling knock gently against one another in the breeze slipping in from the open window, filling our silence with a jangled, staccato music. The yellowed newspaper cuttings on the table flutter and curl. For five-and-a-half hours, 21-year-old Theo Van Eijck flew that plane, wondering where might be the safest place to attempt a landing. At Tripoli the British Army still had a presence and, nervous of trouble, he flew to Benghazi where he saw a landing strip with a few huts on either side. The strip was full of sheep, he says, and he had to circle low over it a few times to make sure the animals scattered and cleared the runway for him. His landing, he recalls proudly, was immaculate, and he took pleasure in the thought that this would be reported back to his commanding officers. "I thought, 'If I can land nicely those Navy guys must see I can fly!'" He picks up his flight log book from the table and shows me the scrawled entry in his own large hand from May 1964, where he defiantly recorded his illicit flight in the hijacked plane. On the opposite page someone has overruled the entry, writing firmly and in an indignant hand, "Not to be totalled!" Strangely, the first man who came running out of one of the huts next to the landing strip was a Dutch expat, who was stunned - and rather alarmed - to see a military plane land on his runway. Exhausted but still exhilarated, Van Eijck poured out his story. However, as he related his plans for the future - release from the Navy, a new civilian life, a good job - he noticed his fellow countryman frown, and began to realise that perhaps he hadn't thought his plan all the way through. The Dutchman warned him that he was in big trouble and that if returned to Europe, he would certainly go to jail. On his compatriot's advice, Van Eijck gave himself up to the Libyan police, whom he remembers roaring enthusiastically up the air strip on Harley Davidson motorbikes, delighted to be taking a Dutch hijacker into custody. Claiming (again on the advice of his countryman) to have fled Europe because he objected to its liberal views on homosexuality and women, Van Eijck was offered political asylum and protection. When the Dutch military came to reclaim its AWOL recruit - and of course, to get its stolen plane back - he sometimes refused to see them. When he talks now about those power games, giggling and grinning, it's clear that Van Eijck still relishes the fact that he managed to get one over on the very authorities who had cheated him of his dreams. After a week of negotiations with the Dutch ambassador, Van Eijck agreed to a deal. He would return to the Netherlands (a passenger rather than a pilot) and would serve a 12-month jail term in a state prison for desertion. In return he would receive an honourable discharge from the Navy. In some of the newspaper clippings on the table, Van Eijck is shown in his immaculate Navy uniform standing outside the court in the Netherlands, his white sailor's cap pulled down low over his forehead. At first glance he looks like the model sailor - respectable, neat and disciplined. But study his face closely and you will see just a hint of defiance in his eyes, perhaps the faintest traces of scorn across his lips. "I got what I wanted!" explains Van Eijck. "I wanted to get out of the bloody Navy and I got that. And I still don't regret what I did." Flick past the ignominious page in his flight log book and you will see it is crammed with the details of further flights made in his native Holland or in South Africa, where he lived for many years. This time though they are licensed, legitimate flights; when he left prison, Van Eijck qualified officially as a private pilot. "It was all I wanted," he shrugs. "I just wanted to fly." He brings me back to the story of Sgt Meyer and my investigations into what made him crash in the Channel. He is convinced that Meyer had a lot less experience than he did with instrument flying and rather than being shot down by pursuing British, American or French fighter jets, he is convinced he just made a simple pilot error. "You see, they sent three planes after me," he says. "But they went in the wrong direction so they didn't find me. But I spoke to the pilots afterwards and they were told only to try to make me talk to them on the radio and to follow them; they were never given instructions to shoot me down - and remember, I had two torpedoes on board." He picks up the helmeted photograph of himself in the cockpit, in the halcyon days before he was kicked out of the Dutch Navy's pilot training programme. "If you ask me now what I think about it, I think 'What the hell were you doing you bloody fool, how did you get such a stupid idea in your head?'" He smoothes back his white hair. "I still can't believe sometimes that I bloody did it!" The breeze strengthens and the wind chimes above our heads begin to spill their fractured music again. Theo Van Eijck grips my hand and looks at me with wild, dancing eyes. "But it was marvellous! My God it was marvellous!" You may also be interested in: In January 2018, Greek pilot Vasileios Vasileiou checked into a luxury hilltop hotel in Kabul. The Intercontinental was popular with foreign visitors - which is why, on 20 January, Taliban gunmen stormed it, killing at least 40 people. Vasileios explains how he survived. Read: 'The bed that saved me from the Taliban'
|
নববিবাহিত স্ত্রীর সাথে দেখা করতে ১৯৬৯ সালে ব্রিটিশ বিমানঘাঁটি থেকে বিমান চুরি করে পালাতে গিয়ে নিখোঁজ হন মার্কিন অফিসার সার্জেন্ট পল মেয়ের। তার উপরে গত দু'বছর অনুসন্ধান করছেন বিবিসি'র সাংবাদিক এমা জেন কিরবি।
|
19
|
"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. What's Trump's issue with the WTO? 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 (£154bn) 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. What about other trade deals? 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".
|
যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের বিষয়ে নিজেদের নীতি পরিবর্তন না করলে বিশ্ব বাণিজ্য সংস্থা (ওয়ার্ল্ড ট্রেড অর্গানাইজেশন) থেকে বেরিয়ে যাওয়ার হুমকি দিয়েছেন মার্কিন প্রেসিডেন্ট ডোনাল্ড ট্রাম্প।
|
14
|
Billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, two members of his staff, the pilot and a passenger were killed when the aircraft spiralled out of control and crashed in a fireball on Saturday. It had just cleared the King Power Stadium when it came down at 20:30 BST. The Duke of Cambridge said he was lucky to have known Mr Vichai, describing him as a dedicated family man. Leicestershire Police said it believed the other people killed in the crash to be two members of Mr Vichai's staff - Nusara Suknamai and Kaveporn Punpare - and pilots and partners Eric Swaffer and Izabela Roza Lechowicz. Police have said Ms Lechowicz was a passenger at the time of the crash. Mr Swaffer had over 20 years' flying experience as a private jet and helicopter pilot. His career included flying helicopters for live media broadcasting including Channel 4's The Big Breakfast and the Virgin Radio traffic helicopter. Mr Swaffer's friend Lucie Morris-Marr said he was a "veteran in the field" and would have done all he could to prevent lives being lost in the crash. She described him as a "funny and vivacious" man who was in an "aviation love story" with Ms Lechowicz. "Not many people get to work and travel with their soulmate, travelling the world going to glamorous places," she said. The couple were professional pilots who lived together in Camberley, Surrey. Ms Lechowicz moved to the UK from Poland in 1997. In a statement, the Polish embassy said: "With great sadness, we received the news about the death of Izabela Lechowicz in the Leicester catastrophe. "She was a great pilot, winner of the #Polka100 contest. It contributed to the creation of a positive image of Poland in the UK." Mr Vichai, 60, who was married and had four children, bought Leicester City for £39m in 2010. Under his ownership the Foxes won the Premier League in 2016, having started the season as 5,000/1 outsiders. In a statement, Leicester City said the club's thoughts were with "the Srivaddhanaprabha family and the families of all those on-board at this time of unspeakable loss". Prince William, who is president of the FA, said Mr Vichai made a big contribution to football, adding that Leicester City's Premier League title-winning season "captured the imagination of the world". "He will be missed by all fans of the sport and everyone lucky enough to have known him," he said. Former England and Leicester striker Gary Lineker tweeted to say he was "deeply saddened" to hear of Mr Vichai's death. Speaking outside the stadium, club ambassador Alan Birchenall said Leicester City owed "everything" to Mr Vichai. "We wouldn't have won it [the Premier League] without him," he said. "We wouldn't have got near it without him. "There won't be a dry eye among any of the staff today." Thousands of supporters have shared an amended image of the club's emblem with a crying fox on it on social media as a mark of respect. Prime Minister Theresa May said: "The outpouring of grief is a testament to how many people's lives were touched by those on board." The club described Mr Vichai as "a man of kindness, of generosity and a man whose life was defined by the love he devoted to his family and those he so successfully led". "Leicester City was a family under his leadership. It is as a family that we will grieve his passing and maintain the pursuit of a vision for the club that is now his legacy," it added. A book of condolence will open at the King Power Stadium at 08:00 GMT on Tuesday, with an online version on its website for those unable to visit in person. The team's next fixture against Southampton in the EFL Cup, scheduled for Tuesday evening, has been postponed. The players will also wear black armbands this week against Cardiff in the Premier League. Mr Vichai's two horses, due to run at Leicester Racecourse on Monday, have been withdrawn. Jockeys there will wear black armbands at the meeting as a mark of respect. Leicester goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, who witnesses said ran out of the stadium towards the crash scene, said Mr Vichai had "changed football forever". "I cannot believe this is happening. I am so totally devastated and heartbroken," he added. Club captain Wes Morgan tweeted: "Absolutely heartbroken and devastated regarding the news of our chairman. A man that was loved and adored by everyone here at lcfc." Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said: "Vichai was a gentleman who graced the game with his civility and charm and we will miss him enormously. "His impact on Leicester - the football club and the city - will be remembered forever." Kasabian band member and Foxes fan Serge Pizzorno called Mr Vichai "an unbelievable human being". "It never felt like he acquired this club to then sell on after a few years," he said. "He bought into everything, bought into the city, supported everything around it. "He made all our dreams come true." Paris Saint-Germain, Inter Milan, West Ham United, Tottenham Hotspur, Nottingham Forest and Swansea City were among the football clubs that passed on condolences to Leicester. The helicopter came down in a car park near the stadium just over an hour after Leicester had drawn 1-1 against West Ham United in the Premier League. Leicestershire Police confirmed no-one else had been injured and said the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) is leading the investigation. Supt Steve Potter said: "Emergency services were immediately on scene when the crash happened, working to put out the fire and gain access to the helicopter in attempts to reach those inside. "Despite those efforts, there were no survivors." Supt Potter said it was likely to take several days to complete the investigation at the crash site. Freelance photographer Ryan Brown, who was covering the game, saw the helicopter clear the King Power Stadium before it crashed. He told BBC Radio Leicester: "The engine stopped and I turned round and it made a bit of a whirring noise, like a grinding noise. "The helicopter just went silent, I turned round and it was just spinning, out of control. And then there was a big bang and then [a] big fireball."
|
ইংলিশ ফুটবল ক্লাব লেস্টার সিটির মালিক খেলা দেখে যখন হেলিকপ্টারে করে ফিরে যাচ্ছিলেন তখনই সেটি বিধ্বস্ত হয়েছে।
|
39
|
1. Pollution drops As countries go into lockdown over the virus, there have been significant drops in pollution levels. Both China and northern Italy have recorded major falls in nitrogen dioxide - a serious air pollutant and powerful warming chemical - amid reduced industrial activity and car journeys. Researchers in New York also told the BBC that early results showed carbon monoxide, mainly from cars, had been reduced by nearly 50% compared with last year. And with airlines cancelling flights en masse and millions working from home, countries around the world are expected to follow this downward path. You can read more about the drops in pollution levels here. 2. Canals go clear On a similar note, residents of Venice have noticed a vast improvement in the water quality of the famous canals running through the city. The streets of the popular tourist destination in northern Italy have emptied amid the outbreak leading to a drastic drop in water traffic, which has allowed sediment to settle. The usually murky water has gone so clear that fish can even be seen. 3. Acts of kindness There are plenty of stories of panic buying and fights over toilet roll and tins, but the virus has also spurred acts of kindness around the world. Two New Yorkers amassed 1,300 volunteers in 72 hours to deliver groceries and medicine to elderly and vulnerable people in the city. Facebook said hundreds of thousands of people in the UK had joined local support groups set up for the virus, while similar groups have been formed in Canada, sparking a trend there known as "caremongering". Supermarkets in Australia are among those to create a special "elderly hour" so older shoppers and those with disabilities have a chance to shop in peace. People have also donated money, shared recipe and exercise ideas, sent uplifting messages to self-isolating elderly people and transformed businesses into food distribution centres. 4. A united front Between a hectic work and home life it is often easy to feel disconnected from those around you. As the virus affects us all, it has brought many communities around the world closer together. In Italy, where a countrywide lockdown is in place, people have joined together on their balconies for morale-boosting songs. A fitness instructor in southern Spain led an exercise class from a low roof in the middle of an apartment complex, which residents in isolation joined from their balconies. Many people have used the opportunity to reconnect with friends and loved ones over phone or video calls, while groups of friends have organised virtual clubbing or pub sessions using mobile apps (including those of us in the BBC who are working from home). The virus has also highlighted the importance of health workers and other people working in key services. Thousands of Europeans have taken to their balconies and windows to applaud the doctors and nurses fighting the virus, while medical students in London have volunteered to help healthcare professionals with childcare and household chores. 5. A creativity boom With millions of people now stuck in isolation, many are using the opportunity to get creative. Social media users have shared details of their new hobbies, including reading, baking, knitting and painting. The DC Public Library in Washington is among those hosting a virtual book club, while Italian Michelin-starred chef Massimo Bottura has launched an Instagram series called Kitchen Quarantine, teaching basic recipes to aspiring foodies who are stuck at home. An art teacher in the US state of Tennessee has been live-streaming classes for children who are out of school, inspiring them to get creative at home. And while many public spaces have been shut, art fans have been making the most of virtual tours offered by the world's biggest galleries, observing the famous paintings of the Louvre in Paris and the classic sculptures of the Vatican museum from their living rooms. Australia's Sydney Observatory offered a tour of the night sky for people stuck at home. Pop stars including Coldplay frontman Chris Martin and country singer Keith Urban have also been live-streaming gigs to combat the boredom of self-isolation. On Monday, we're going to bring you a day of live coverage focusing on the positive stories, like these, that are emerging from the coronavirus crisis. We hope you can join us from 07:00 GMT.
|
বিশ্বব্যাপী করোনাভাইরাস মহামারির ভয়াবহতা নিয়ে মানুষ এখন দিন কাটাচ্ছে আতঙ্কে। সংক্রমণ বাড়ছে, মৃত্যুর হারও বাড়ছে লাফিয়ে লাফিয়ে। বিভিন্ন দেশে ছোটবড় অনেক শহর অবরুদ্ধ করে দেয়া হচ্ছে। বহু মানুষকে জনবিচ্ছিন্ন অবস্থায় থাকতে বাধ্য করা হচ্ছে।
|
43
|
Speaking to NBC on Friday, he said the US was open to talks but would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. He also expanded on his last-minute decision to call off strikes planned in response to the shooting down of a US unmanned drone this week, saying he had been told 150 Iranians would be killed. "I didn't like it. I didn't think it was proportionate," he said. Tehran says the unmanned US aircraft entered Iranian airspace early on Thursday morning. The US maintains it was shot down in international airspace. Tensions have been escalating between the two countries, with the US recently blaming Iran for attacks on oil tankers operating in the region. Iran has announced it will soon exceed international agreed limits on its nuclear programme. Last year, the US unilaterally pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear activities. The US has now asked the UN Security Council to meet on Monday to discuss Iran. What did Trump tell NBC? He said a plan of attack was "ready to go, subject to my approval" but said he had then asked generals how many people would be killed. "I thought about it for a second and I said, you know what, they shot down an unmanned drone, plane, whatever you want to call it, and here we are sitting with 150 dead people that would have taken place probably within a half an hour after I said go ahead," he told NBC. He denied suggestions that aircraft had already been on their way to attack Iranian targets - reportedly including Iranian radar and missile batteries - saying: "No planes were in the air." Addressing Iran's leaders, Mr Trump said: "You can't have nuclear weapons. And if you want to talk about it, good. Otherwise, you can live in a shattered economy for a long time to come." Earlier on Friday Mr Trump tweeted that the US had been "cocked and loaded" to strike. What reaction has there been? Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was glad the president had not carried out the strikes and said he should seek congressional authorisation before military action. Adam Smith - the Democratic chair of the House Armed Services Committee - warned it was "not smart" of the president to make the details public, saying it undermined the notion of a clear US plan. Some US media reports said the strikes had been recommended by the Pentagon, while others said top Pentagon officials had warned a military response could result in a spiralling escalation with risks for US forces in the region. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton had pushed for a hardline stance, but congressional leaders had urged caution, the Associated Press reported. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency order on Thursday evening prohibiting US airlines from operating in an overwater area of Tehran-controlled airspace nearby in response. Airlines from other countries, including Britain's British Airways, the Dutch carrier KLM, Emirates, and Qantas of Australia, have also said they will re-route their flights to avoid parts of Iran. Meanwhile, a UK government minister will hold talks with Iranian officials in Tehran on Sunday. Andrew Murrison will call for "urgent de-escalation" in the region, the Foreign Office said. What does Iran say? An official warned that "any attack against Iran will have regional and international consequences". "When you violate Iranian territorial space, then we defend," Seyed Sajjadpour, one of Iran's deputy foreign ministers, told the BBC. It was clear, he added, that there were members of Donald Trump's administration who were intent on overthrowing Iran's government. President Trump's decision to order – and then abort – an attack still sends a powerful message to Tehran. The two countries came to the brink of direct conflict. But in this complex game of signalling, just what message will the Iranian leadership receive? It, after all, had sent a significant warning of its own by downing an unmanned US reconnaissance drone. Mr Trump initially appeared to play down the incident – but then apparently came the orders for a US retaliatory strike. That was followed by a last-minute change of heart. The danger now is that Iran receives mixed messages that convey uncertainty and lack of resolve. This might encourage some in Tehran to push back at the Americans even harder. There appears to be no diplomatic "off-ramp" in this crisis. US economic sanctions are hitting home. Tehran is under pressure. Escalation remains an ever-present danger. What happened with the drone? Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced its air force had shot down a US "spy" drone on Thursday morning after the unmanned aircraft violated Iranian airspace near Kuhmobarak in the southern province of Hormozgan. IRGC commander-in-chief Maj-Gen Hossein Salami said the drone's downing was a "clear message" to the US that Iran's borders were "our red line". However, US military officials maintain the drone was in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz at the time. Iranian officials say two warnings were issued 10 minutes before the drone was shot down. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a high-ranking officer in the IRGC, said another military aircraft, carrying 35 passengers, had been flying close to the drone. "We could have shot down that one too, but we did not," he said. The shooting down of the drone followed accusations by the US that Iran had attacked two oil tankers with mines last Thursday just outside the Strait of Hormuz, in the Gulf of Oman.
|
মার্কিন প্রেসিডেন্ট ট্রাম্প বলেছেন, তিনি ইরানের সাথে যুদ্ধ চান না, কিন্তু সংঘাত বেধে গেলে, ইরানকে 'নিশ্চিহ্ন' করে দেওয়া হবে।
|
41
|
Lower courts had deemed the ban unconstitutional, but the US top court reversed the decision in a 5-4 conservative majority ruling. At a White House meeting to discuss Mr Trump's proposed border wall he lauded the decision as "a tremendous success". The court's reversal is viewed as a victory for the Trump administration. The ban prohibits most people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen from entering the US. Mr Trump said the Supreme Court decision was a "great victory" for the nation and constitution. "We have to be tough and we have to be safe and we have to be secure," the Republican president said in Tuesday's meeting with lawmakers. "The ruling shows that all the attacks from the media and the Democrat politicians were wrong, and they turned out to be very wrong," he added. He added: "If you look at the European Union, they're meeting right now to toughen up their immigration policies because they've been over-run, they've been over-run. "And frankly, a lot of those countries are not the same places anymore." The travel ban, which the Supreme Court allowed to take effect in December, has been widely criticised by refugee and human rights groups. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion, which said the travel ban was "squarely within the scope of Presidential authority". He also rejected arguments that the ban discriminated against Muslims. "The Proclamation is expressly premised on legitimate purposes: preventing entry of nationals who cannot be adequately vetted and inducing other nations to improve their practices," Chief Justice Roberts wrote. "The text says nothing about religion." Shortly after the Supreme Court released its decision, President Donald Trump shared the news from his Twitter account. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Justice Sonia Sotomayor in the dissenting opinion, which argues the court failed to uphold the religious liberty guaranteed by the first amendment of the US constitution. "It leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a 'total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States' because the policy now masquerades behind a facade of national-security concerns," Justice Sotomayor wrote. The dissent also states that "a reasonable observer would conclude that [the ban] was motivated by anti-Muslim animus". What does this ruling mean? The travel ban has been in place since December, when the Supreme Court ruled that it could go into full effect, pending legal challenges. The ban prevents most immigrants, refugees and visa holders from five Muslim-majority countries - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen - as well as North Korea and Venezuela from entering the US. But the restrictions on North Korea and Venezuela were not part of the legal challenge. The ban allows for waivers on a case-by-case basis, but applicants who cannot afford an attorney to go through the waiver process will likely be unable to immigrate to the US, immigration advocates say. Justice Stephen Breyer noted in his dissenting opinion that the State Department reported that only two waivers were approved out of 6,555 applicants during the first month of the travel ban. The high court has been issuing a number of decisions this week, including a ruling against a California law that required clinics to inform women of the availability of abortions paid for by the state. The Court ruled that the law violated the free speech rights of Christian facilities. Third time's a charm Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, BBC News - at the scene Despite the controversial nature of Donald Trump's travel ban, there were more abortion rights activists outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning than immigration protesters. Perhaps it's because abortion has been a contentious legal battle for decades, while the president's travel directive had been in effect, and out of the headlines, for months. Attention in recent weeks has been on migrants coming across the southern US border, not visitors and prospective residents from countries like Libya, Iran, Yemen and Syria. Nevertheless, this marks a significant victory for Mr Trump - and for presidential power to set immigration policy in general - albeit by the narrowest of margins. The five court justices said they took the president's order on its face, and separated it from his more bombastic anti-Muslim comments made on the presidential campaign trail and via Twitter. The travel ban was implemented haphazardly at the start of the Trump administration and faced repeated setbacks from the US legal system. In the end, however, the president got his way - or at least enough of his way to claim success. The third time turned out to be the charm. What's the reaction? The White House issued a statement saying the ruling was "a tremendous victory for the American People and the Constitution". "In this era of worldwide terrorism and extremist movements bent on harming innocent civilians, we must properly vet those coming into our country." Immigration lawyer Cyrus Mehta told the BBC that the majority opinion "gave in to President Trump's hate and bigotry and will be viewed as a blemish". He added that Congress could overrule the decision "so that a future president will not have a blank cheque to block the entire people of a nation - from babies to grandmothers - out of hate, fear or bigotry. That is our only hope for redemption as a nation". Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement that the decision was "critical to ensuring the continued authority of President Trump - and all future presidents - to protect the American people". Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Immigrant Rights Project called the ruling one of the court's "great failures". "We must make it crystal clear to our elected representatives: If you are not taking action to rescind and dismantle Trump's Muslim ban, you are not upholding this country's most basic principles of freedom and equality." What's the context? Mr Trump's ban has seen several iterations. Iraq and Chad were banned in previous versions. Iraq was removed for having "a close co-operative relationship with the US" and Chad for having "sufficiently improved its practices". The administration said that the ban was the result of carefully considering national security interests, but critics argued it was fulfilling his campaign promise for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States". The state of Hawaii had challenged the ban and a federal judge blocked its implementation. Critics have noted that major attacks such as the 9/11 New York attacks, the Boston marathon bombing and the Orlando nightclub attack were carried out by people from countries not on the list, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kyrgyzstan, or by US-born attackers.
|
বিশ্বের পাঁচটি মুসলিম সংখ্যাগরিষ্ঠ দেশের জনগণের আমেরিকা ভ্রমণের নিষেধাজ্ঞার ব্যাপারে সমর্থন দিয়ে মার্কিন সুপ্রিম কোর্টের সিদ্ধান্তকে স্বাগত জানিয়েছেন মার্কিন প্রেসিডেন্ট ডোনাল্ড ট্রাম্প।
|
12
|
People have expressed anger and disbelief that such a large quantity of potentially explosive material was kept inside a warehouse without any safety measures for more than six years, so close to the centre of the city. The government has not named the source of the ammonium nitrate, but the same amount of the chemical arrived in Beirut in November 2013 on a Moldovan-flagged cargo ship, the MV Rhosus. The Russian-owned vessel set sail that September from Batumi, Georgia, heading to Beira, Mozambique. It was carrying 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, which typically comes in the form of small pellets that are widely used as agricultural fertiliser but can also be mixed with fuel oil to make explosives for the mining and construction industries. While sailing through the eastern Mediterranean the Rhosus suffered "technical problems" and was forced to dock at Beirut's port, according to a 2015 report for industry newsletter Shippingarrested.com that was written by Lebanese lawyers who represented the crew. The Rhosus was inspected by port officials and "forbidden from sailing", the lawyers said. Most of the crew were repatriated, except for the Russian captain, Boris Prokoshev, and three others, who were reportedly Ukrainians. Mr Prokoshev told the BBC on Friday that the Rhosus only stopped off in Beirut because its owner had money trouble. The captain said he was told the ship needed to collect an additional cargo of heavy machinery, to fund passage through the Suez Canal. However, the machinery proved too heavy to load, and when the ship's owner did not pay the port fees and fine, the Lebanese authorities impounded it, along with the ammonium nitrate, he added. More on the explosion in Beirut Shortly afterwards, the Rhosus was "abandoned by her owners after charterers and cargo concern lost interest in the cargo", according to the lawyers. It was also subject to legal claims from creditors. Meanwhile, the crew still confined to the vessel were running out of food and supplies. The lawyers said they applied to the Judge of Urgent Matters in Beirut for an order authorising them to return home, emphasising "the danger the crew was facing given the 'dangerous' nature of the cargo" in the ship's holds. The judge eventually agreed to allow the crew to disembark and in 2014 the port authorities transferred the ammonium nitrate into "Warehouse 12", next to the grain silos. The lawyers said the cargo was "awaiting auctioning and/or proper disposal". Mr Prokoshev said authorities in Beirut knew how dangerous the vessel's cargo was and should not have stored it at the port. "They should have paid the ship owner to take the ship away. A couple of hundred thousand dollars just to remove it and not have that headache there, in the port. But they wouldn't release it. Is that sensible?" "I understand - they wanted the money. But if they'd have known there would be an explosion like that, they wouldn't have done it." The port's general manager, Hassan Koraytem, and the director general of Lebanese Customs, Badri Daher, both said on Wednesday that they and other officials repeatedly warned the judiciary about the danger posed by the stored ammonium nitrate and the need to remove it. Documents circulated online appeared to show that customs officials sent letters to a Judge of Urgent Matters in Beirut seeking guidance on how to sell or dispose of it at least six times from 2014 to 2017. Mr Koraytem told local channel OTV that State Security also sent warning letters. Public Works Minister Michel Najjar, who took office at the start of this year, told Al Jazeera that he only learned about the presence of the ammonium nitrate in late July and that he spoke to Mr Koraytem about the matter on Monday. A fire appears to have triggered the detonation of the ammonium nitrate the next day. The blast killed at least 137 people and injured about 5,000 others, while dozens are still missing. President Michel Aoun said the failure to deal with the Rhosus' cargo was "unacceptable" and promised to "hold those responsible and those who were negligent accountable, and serve them the most severe punishment". The government has ordered officials involved in storing or guarding the ammonium nitrate to be put under house arrest pending an investigation.
|
লেবানন সরকার বৈরুত বন্দরে ভয়াবহ বিস্ফোরণের জন্য বন্দরের গুদামঘরে ২,৭৫০ টন অ্যামোয়িাম নাইট্রেটের মজুতে আগুন ধরে যাওয়াকে দোষারোপ করেছে।
|
46
|
The draft law, part of a long-term drive by President Emmanuel Macron to uphold secular values, tightens rules on home-schooling and hate speech. Some critics, both in France and abroad, have accused his government of using it to target religion. But Prime Minister Jean Castex called it "a law of protection" that would free Muslims from the grip of radicals. He insisted that the text was not "aimed against religions or against the Muslim religion in particular". What is in the law? The bill "supporting Republican principles" would tighten restrictions on online hate speech and ban the use of the internet to maliciously reveal personal details about other people. This is seen as a response to the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in October. Paty, 47, was killed near his school by a lone attacker after showing pupils cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The investigation has revealed an online campaign had been launched against him. The law also bans "clandestine" schools that promote Islamist ideology and tightens rules on home-schooling. It would also reinforce the ban on polygamy by refusing residency to polygamous applicants. Doctors could be fined or banned for performing virginity tests on girls. There are new rules on financial transparency for Muslim associations and a requirement that they sign up to France's republican values in return for funding. A ban on officials wearing religious attire at work is being extended to transport workers and staff at swimming pools and markets. Meanwhile, separate to the law, President Macron has agreed with France's Muslim Council (CFCM) for a national council of imams to be set up. The president is seeking to put a stop to hundreds of foreign imams practising in France. Why is the law being introduced? The draft law has been under consideration for some time but recent Islamist attacks pushed it up the agenda. Paty's murder was one of three attacks that outraged France. Three people were killed in stabbings at a church in Nice in October. Two people were stabbed and seriously hurt in September in Paris near the former offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, where Islamist militants carried out a deadly attack in 2015. President Macron is a staunch defender of French republican values including state secularism. He has described Islam as a religion "in crisis" and defended the right of Charlie Hebdo to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. France has an estimated five million Muslims, Europe's largest Muslim minority. What has the reaction been? Mr Macron has become the target of sharp criticism in several Muslim-majority countries. Relations with Turkey, already strained, were further undermined with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan describing the legislation as an "open provocation" and saying Mr Macron was "mentally ill". Demonstrations have been held in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Lebanon. The US envoy on religious freedom, Sam Brownback, was also critical, saying: "When you get heavy-handed, the situation can get worse." In France itself, some left-wing politicians have expressed concern that the legislation could be seen as stigmatising Muslims. Le Monde newspaper says it could also antagonise other religious groups who practise home-schooling. But the BBC's Lucy Williamson in Paris says pressure has grown on President Macron to act. Tackling Islamist influence in the name of French secularism may be popular at home, but it's still a delicate operation for the state, she adds.
|
ফ্রান্সে সম্প্রতি চরমপন্থীদের বেশ কয়েকটি হামলার পর ইসলামের উগ্রতাকে দমন করতে একটি বিল পাস করেছে ফরাসি মন্ত্রিসভা।
|
6
|
The "nation state" law says Jews have a unique right to national self-determination there and puts Hebrew above Arabic as the official language. Arab MPs reacted furiously in parliament, with one waving a black flag and others ripping up the bill. Israel's prime minister praised the bill's passage as a "defining moment". "A hundred and twenty-two years after [the founder of modern Zionism Theodore] Herzl made his vision known, with this law we determined the founding principle of our existence," Benjamin Netanyahu said. "Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people, and respects the rights of all of its citizens." However, the law risks further alienating Israel's large Arab minority, who have long felt discriminated against. What does the law say? Called The Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People, the legislation essentially defines Israel first and foremost as a Jewish state. Among its 11 provisions, it describes Israel as "the national home of the Jewish people" and says the right to exercise national self-determination there is "unique to the Jewish people". It also reiterates the status of Jerusalem under Israeli law, which defines the city - part of which is claimed by the Palestinians as the capital of a future state - as the "complete and united... capital of Israel". Controversially, the law singles out Hebrew as the "state's language", effectively prioritising it above Arabic which has for decades been recognised as an official language alongside Hebrew. It ascribes Arabic "special status" and says its standing before the law came into effect will not be harmed. In one of its clauses, the law stresses the importance of "development of Jewish settlement as a national value", though it is unclear whether this also alludes to settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Why was this law created? The question of Israel's status as a Jewish state is politically controversial and has long been debated. Before now, it has not been enshrined in law. Some Israeli Jewish politicians consider that the founding principles of Israel's creation, as a state for Jews in their ancient homeland, are under threat and could become less relevant, or obsolete, in the future. Fears over the high birth-rate of Israeli Arabs, as well as possible alternatives to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which could challenge Israel's Jewish majority, have spurred on calls to anchor the Jewishness of Israel in law. The bill has been under discussion since it was first introduced in 2011 and has undergone multiple amendments, with the final version watering down or dropping altogether sections regarded as discriminatory. Israel has no constitution but instead passed over time a series of Basic Laws which have constitutional status. The nation state law is the 14th such basic law. The issue of Israel as a Jewish state has become increasingly important in recent years and a key dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that the Palestinians must recognise Israel as a Jewish state in any final peace settlement. He argues that the Palestinians' refusal to do so is the biggest obstacle to peace, saying it demonstrates that the Palestinians do not genuinely recognise Israel's right to exist. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meanwhile has said he will never recognise Israel as a Jewish state, arguing that the Palestinians have long recognised the State of Israel and should not be expected to go further. Why does it matter? It is important because it is hugely symbolic, and according to Israel's Arab minority, evidence that Israel is downgrading their status. Israeli Arabs, many of whom identify as or with Palestinians, comprise about 20% of the country's nine million-strong population. They have equal rights under the law but have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens and say they face discrimination and worse provision than Israeli Jews when it comes to services such as education, health and housing. Civil rights groups have denounced the law and some critics, including one Arab MP described it as apartheid - the state-sanctioned racial discrimination of black people during white-minority rule in South Africa. Israel is often accused by its fiercest critics of practising a system akin to apartheid against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Israel vehemently rejects the allegation as a smear tactic used by those who reject its very right to exist.
|
ইসরায়েলকে 'প্রধানত: ইহুদি রাষ্ট্র' বলে চিত্রিত করে সেদেশের পার্লামেন্টে এক বিতর্কিত আইন পাসের পর সেখানকার আরব সংখ্যালঘুরা তীব্র সমালোচনা করেছেন। ওই আইনে হিব্রু ভাষাকেও ইসরায়েলের সরকারি ভাষা হিসেবে আরবীর ওপরে স্থান দেয়া হয়েছে।
|
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
- Downloads last month
- 9