Costa Concordia: The rules of evacuating a ship

By Tom de Castella BBC News Magazine

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Cruise disaster

• Profile of captain
• Industry 'undented'
• In pictures
• Underwater search

It's been suggested women and children were not given priority for lifeboats when the Costa Concordia capsized. But are there rules governing who leaves a sinking ship first?

It's a famous moment in the Titanic story. "Women and children first!" went the cry.
It's too early to know exactly what happened in the final hours of the Costa Concordia. The captain has already had to deny allegations he left the ship before everyone had been evacuated.
And it has been reported that some male passengers ignored informal injunctions to wait until women and children had made it into the lifeboats.

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How did the priority rule begin?

• This protocol started when HMS Birkenhead sank in 1852
• "Women and children first" phrase coined in 1860
• RMS Titanic disaster in 1912 popularised the rule
• Only 20% of men on board Titanic were saved
• It is not a part of international maritime law

Edwin Gurd, a retired police chief, told the Times. "We were keen for women and children to go first, and men if they had babies or families. A lot of men regardless of that were trying to save themselves."

But is the traditional maxim of women and children going first really part of the maritime rules?
Once passengers board a cruise ship, they are assigned a lifeboat according to where their cabin is, says Rob Ashdown, operations director at the European Cruise Council.
If there is an accident, as is the case with the Concordia hitting the rocks, it is up to the captain to decide whether to abandon ship. To signal the start of an evacuation, a loud alarm sounds ordering people to go to their muster station.

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Costa sinking: How it happened

• Maps and stats on the grounded cruise ship

From this point onwards, ships have 30 minutes to load, launch and manoeuvre away the lifeboats, under regulations set down by the International Maritime Organisation. And there is no legal duty to allow women and children to board first, Ashdown says.

The evacuation of the troop ship HMS Birkenhead in 1852 is widely believed to be the first occasion of women and children being told to board the lifeboats first.
The ship was carrying nearly 500 troops and about 26 women and children. After the commanding officer's order for the soldiers to wait, all the women and children survived but most of the men died. The phrase "women and children first" is thought to have come later.
But there is one group who may receive preferential treatment today - disabled people with special mobility needs, Ashdown says.
"This idea of women and children first is just a convention there is for historical reasons," he suggests. "It may be appropriate in certain circumstances and cultures and not elsewhere."
When it comes to air travel, the point is immaterial as prioritising women and children in an evacuation would be impractical.
An argument could be made in relation to ships that men are generally likely to be stronger swimmers than women and therefore have a better chance of survival in the water. But today the argument is less about survival chances and more about treating people fairly.
Prof Ed Galea, an evacuation expert at the University of Greenwich, says orderly behaviour among passengers is crucial to a successful evacuation.

The women and children first rule caused more men to die when the Titanic sank

And having studied major disaster situations, including interviewing survivors from the World Trade Center, he says that people don't respond to these evacuations in the way that one might think.
"It's not like Hollywood, it's not like every man for himself. People behave quite selflessly. You'll find people screaming and crying but it doesn't mean they are panicking."
Usually people will help the most vulnerable to leave the scene first. It's not necessarily women, but is likely to be the injured, elderly and young children, he says.
It's too early to know in detail what happened during the Concordia evacuation. But it seems that the crew did an "exemplary" job and that most passengers behaved well, Galea says.
The real problem aboard the Concordia was the slowness of the order to "abandon ship", he argues. Crucial minutes were lost after the ship hit the rocks and reports suggest it was only once the ship began to heel that the evacuation began.
Once a ship heels at 20 degrees it becomes difficult to launch the lifeboats and after the Concordia began to tip over it was soon heeling dramatically.
"They had time," Galea says. "But as I understand it the evacuation didn't start until the ship had a serious heel."

The only living master of a dying martial art

By Stephanie Hegarty BBC World Service

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In today's Magazine

• The myth of the War of the Worlds panic
• The challenges of doing business in Venezuela
• Scientists glimpse inside a Peruvian mummy
• Population control: Is it a tool of the rich?

A former factory worker from the British Midlands may be the last living master of the centuries-old Sikh battlefield art of shastar vidya. The father of four is now engaged in a full-time search for a successor.

The basis of shastar vidya, the "science of weapons" is a five-step movement: advance on the opponent, hit his flank, deflect incoming blows, take a commanding position and strike.
It was developed by Sikhs in the 17th Century as the young religion came under attack from hostile Muslim and Hindu neighbours, and has been known to a dwindling band since the British forced Sikhs to give up arms in the 19th Century.
Nidar Singh, a 44-year-old former food packer from Wolverhampton, is now thought to be the only remaining master. He has many students, but shastar vidya takes years to learn and a commitment in time and energy that doesn't suit modern lifestyles.
"I've travelled all over India and I have spoken to many elders, this is basically a last-ditch attempt to flush someone out because if I die with it, it is all gone."

Mr Singh is searching India and Pakistan for a young successor

He would be overjoyed to discover an existing master somewhere in India, or to find a talented young student determined to dedicate his life to the art.
Until he was 17 years old, he knew little of his Sikh heritage. His family were not religious - he wore his hair short and dressed like any British teenager. He was a keen wrestler, but knew nothing of martial arts.
He spent his childhood between Punjab and Wolverhampton and it was on one of these trips to see an aunt in India that he met Baba Mohinder Singh, the old man who was to become his master.
Already in his early 80s, Baba Mohinder Singh had abandoned life as a hermit in a final effort to find someone to pass on his knowledge to.
"When he saw my physique he looked at me, even though I was clean-shaven and he asked me: 'Do you want to learn how to fight'," recalls Nidar Singh. "I couldn't say no."
On his first day of training, the frail old man handed him a stick and instructed Mr Singh to hit him. When he tried, the master threw him around like a rag doll.
"He was a frail old man chucking me about and I couldn't touch him," he says. "That definitely impressed me."
Open-minded
Mr Singh spent the next 11 years on his aunt's farm, milking the buffalos in the morning and spending every day training with his master.
In 1995 he returned to Britain to get married and took work packing food in a factory. He began to teach shastar vidya and immersed himself in research on early Sikh military history.
Soon he had enough interest from students to go into teaching full-time. He now travels around the UK to teach classes and to Canada and Germany where eager students have asked him to share his knowledge.

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History of shastar vidya

• When Sikh leader Guru Arjan Dev was murdered by the Mughal emperor in 1606, his son Guru Hargobind set out to militarise the Sikh people
• Men were instructed to carry arms - including the kara (iron bracelet) and kirpan (small blade) still worn by orthodox Sikhs today
• Hair was worn long and wrapped around the head to protect the skull
• Hargobind also set up schools to train an elite warrior caste called the Akali Nihang, the immortal crocodiles, which developed secret fighting techniques
• They also adopted a unique belief system with the martial art as a main tenet of their faith

"The people who are here are open-minded," he says. "I have Muslims and Christians here as well as Sikhs."

But even his most advanced pupils have only recently reached the stage where they can fight him with weapons without getting hurt.
Shastar vidya often gets confused with Gatka, a stick-fighting technique that was developed during British occupation of Punjab and was widely practised among Sikh soldiers in the British army.
Though it is a highly skilled art it was developed for exhibition rather than mortal combat. It is much easier to practise in public.
By working to revive a culture and practice that left the mainstream more than 200 years ago, Mr Singh has come up against a lot of resistance from within the Sikh community.
He says he received 84 death threats in his first two years as a teacher, from other Sikh groups who disagree with the ideology of shastar vidya and the beliefs of the small Nihang sect, which he identifies with.
"It is not just martial technique, there is a lot of oral tradition and linguistic skills that has to be there as well," he explains.
Nihangs still maintain some tenets of the Hindu faith, they have three scriptures rather than one and these extra books contain influences from Hinduism.
Many Nihangs also eat meat and drink alcohol which fundamentalist Sikhs disagree with. Traditionally they also drank bhang, an infusion of cannabis, to get closer to God.
"Sikhism has gone through several stage of evolution," says Christopher Shackle , a former professor of South Asian studies at Soas, University of London. "When the Nihangs were formed at the end of the 17th Century they were a very powerful group but they became rather marginalised."

An Akali Nihang soldier in 1865

When the Sikhs established their own kingdom under Maharaja Ranjit Singh, he realised he needed a modern army to keep the British out, and he hired ex-Napoleonic officers to train up his soldiers, sidelining the Nihangs.
The Nihangs were further isolated when the British Raj defeated the Sikh state in 1849 and forced Sikhs to give up arms.
"The British introduced a shoot-to-kill policy," says weapons collector and historian Davinder Tool, adding that accounts of British army officers show some troops fired on any man with a blue turban and a firearm.
"There is a sense that the Nihang's got left behind by time," says Mr Shackle.
Mr Singh spends a lot of time travelling to India and Pakistan researching the art, searching for descendents of the Akali Nihang and adding to his vast collection of weapons.
So far he has only met four people who could claim to be masters, now all dead. The last of these, Ram Singh, whom he met in 1998, died four years later.
"Nidar Singh is like someone who has walked straight out of the 18th Century," says Parmjit Singh, who has worked on several books on Nihang culture with the master.
"He is like a window into the past."
He is also still hoping to be a door to the future, opening up the path for new practitioners of the art to follow.

27 May 2011 Last updated at 19:02 GM

Toronto couple defend move to keep baby's sex secret

Mr Stocker and Ms Witterick say the decision to keep Storm's sex a secret was "a tribute to freedom"

A Toronto couple are defending their decision to keep their infant's sex a secret in order to allow the child to develop his or her own gender identity.

Kathy Witterick and David Stocker have been widely criticised for imposing their ideology on four-month-old Storm.
The family were the subject of a recent profile in the Toronto Star newspaper.
In an e-mail, Ms Witterick wrote that the idea that "the whole world must know what is between the baby's legs is unhealthy, unsafe, and voyeuristic".
Ms Witterick, 38, and Mr Stocker, 39, have also been criticised for the manner in which they are raising their two sons Jazz, five, and Kio, two.
The boys are encouraged to choose their own clothing and hairstyles - even if that means wearing girls' clothes - and to challenge gender norms. Jazz wears his hair in long braids, and the boys are "almost exclusively assumed to be girls," Mr Stocker told the Toronto Star.
The child's grandparents do not know Storm's sex, the Toronto Star reported, and have grown weary of explaining the situation, but are supportive.
In an e-mail to the Associated Press news agency, Ms Witterick, a stay-at-home mother, said a four-month-old infant was still learning to recognise him or herself, and said it was inappropriate to impose a gender identity on the child.

Has feminism blocked social mobility for men?

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In today's Magazine

• The rise of LOL
• 7 days news quiz
• Men without wedding rings
• A mind-boggling building job

Feminism provided an obstacle to social mobility for working-class men, Cabinet minister David Willetts has controversially argued. But is he right?

They were meant to welcome a new era of fairness and opportunity for all. Instead, a minister's remarks have prompted debate over the effect of women's entry into higher education and the professions.

In a briefing to journalists ahead of the government's social mobility strategy, David Willetts, the universities minister, appeared to suggest that feminism had made it harder for working-class men to get ahead in life.

Asked what was to blame for a lack of social mobility, the Daily Telegraph quoted him saying: "The feminist revolution in its first-round effects was probably the key factor.

"Feminism trumped egalitarianism. It is not that I am against feminism, it's just that is probably the single biggest factor."

His remarks sparked a wave of criticism, and Mr Willetts made it clear that he supported the move of women into the workplace and higher education. But to some the notion that more jobs for females equals fewer opportunities for males will be a convincing one.

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An economist's view

Alan Manning, professor of economics, LSE

"The expansion of university education was faster among women - they went from being a minority of students to a majority.

"But it's not true that if one group takes something, there's automatically less for the other.

"The deterioration in employment opportunities among young men was primarily the consequence of the decline in manufacturing.

"It's not the case that all these apprenticeships were suddenly taken by lots of young women. It's that the manufacturing jobs just weren't there anymore."

Certainly, there is no question that the number of female workers in the UK has increased significantly over the past four decades.

Labour Force Survey estimates suggest that the employment rate for women aged 16 to 59 rose from 56% in 1971 to 73% in 2004.

Whereas in 1971 there were nine million women over the age of 16 in work, by 2004 that figure stood at 13 million.

At the same time, social mobility for men appears to have fallen back over the same period.

According to the government's own social mobility strategy, the proportion of males born in 1958, with parents who were in the bottom fifth of earners, moving upwards was 70%. For those born in 1970, the figure was 62%.

In 2008-09, 51% of young women entered higher education, according to figures released earlier this year by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, compared with 40% of young men.

It was the first time more than half of women went on to higher education - 20 years previously, only about one in five young women went into higher education and a decade prior to that it was about one in 10.

It is figures like these that may have led Mr Willetts to conclude that greater opportunities for women have resulted in fewer for men.

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Mind the gap

• The 2010 gender pay divide, which was the closest since figures started in 1997, showed UK men took home 10% more pay than their female counterparts
• The Office for National Statistics data shows that, in April 2010, the UK workforce was made up of 12.7 million men and 12.3 million women.
• However, work patterns were vastly different between the sexes. Some 88% of men worked full-time, but only 58% of women worked full-time
• Women tended to have lower hourly rates of pay in general, the figures show

Rod Liddle, the son of a train driver who has risen to become a prominent journalist, says he does not like the manner in which the minister made his point. And Liddle insists the move of women into the workplace was just and correct.

But he says such statistics demonstrate that the arrival of middle-class women in large numbers into the universities and professions has restricted the prospects for men with working-class backgrounds.

"The move of women into the workplace is absolutely right - it should be guaranteed," he says.

"But what Willetts said in down-the-line, factual terms is right. It annoys me when the left refuse to accept that it's harder for men or that the process has had an effect on the family. That doesn't mean it was wrong."

Of course, the number of job opportunities on offer and the nature of the labour market did not stand still as women began to make up a greater proportion of the labour force.

As a result, many academics regard such an interpretation of the data as simplistic.

Men used to achieve social mobility by rising through the factory ranks

Karen Mumford, professor of economics at the University of York, says it is "woolly-minded" to assume that the number of job opportunities has remained static.

In the days before feminism, she says, those working-class men who achieved upward social mobility tended to do so by moving through the ranks at their workplace.

But, Prof Mumford adds, the decline in manufacturing - which traditionally was a source of better-paid jobs for a predominantly male workforce - has meant that these opportunities are no longer available.

The number of jobs in manufacturing fell to 2.5 million in 2010, according to figures from business organisation, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). This is equal to just 9% of the total workforce. In 1978 over seven million people were employed in the sector, equal to 28.5% of the workforce.

She points out, additionally, that the rise in the proportion of women attending higher education mirrored a huge increase in the number of places available for both genders. Government figures show an all-time high of 45% of young people going to university in 2008-09 compared with only about one in 20 in the early 1960s.

As a result, Prof Mumford says, there was never a pre-feminist golden age in which large numbers of working-class men attended universities.

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A feminist for Willetts

Janice Turner, Times columnist

"I don't like to defend government ministers.

"But I don't think David Willetts was saying feminism is wrong or evil.

"It's not about social mobility per se. What's happened is that middle-class parents aren't just getting their sons into university, they're now getting their daughters in as well.

"That's just a fact. We need to have a clearer debate about these things. The issue needs to be unpicked."

"It was very rare then and it's very rare now," she says. "They are not competing. The problem isn't feminism.

"What's happened is that those middle-income working class jobs with which a man used to be able to keep a family have disappeared, while the number of lower-skill service sector jobs, which women have always tended to do, has expanded."

She acknowledges that the number of better-paid "problem-solving" occupations at the top of the income scale which require a university education have increased, but that this has benefited male and female workers alike.

Moreover, feminists would point to the fact that men in the UK took home 10% more pay than their female colleagues in 2010, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Kate Saunders, feminist writer and novelist, says the idea that greater female participation in the workforce is to blame for a decline in male social mobility ignores the large numbers of women working in badly paid service sector jobs that many men don't want.

"So many things have changed, not just the number of women in the workplace," she says.

"Years ago many working-class men used to work in the factory at the bottom of their street, it just doesn't happen like that anymore and that's not the fault of women. They aren't to blame for things like the decline of the manufacturing industry in this country."

But as long as there is a debate over social mobility, there will also be debate about the repercussions of feminism.

Why did LOL infiltrate the language?

Comments (286)

By James Morgan BBC News

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In today's Magazine

• 7 days news quiz
• Men without wedding rings
• A mind-boggling building job
• Paper Monitor

The internet slang term "LOL" (laughing out loud) has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, to the mild dismay of language purists. But where did the term originate? And is it really a threat to our lexicon?

"OMG! LOL's in the OED. LMAO!"

If you find the above string of letters utterly unintelligible, you are clearly an internet "noob". Let me start again.

Golly gosh! The popular initialism LOL (laughing out loud) has been inducted into the canon of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary. Blimey! What is going on?

The OED defines LOL as an interjection "used chiefly in electronic communications... to draw attention to a joke or humorous statement, or to express amusement".

It is both "LOL" where all the letters are pronounced separately, but also commonly "lol" where it is pronounced as a word.

The phrase was ushered in alongside OMG (Oh My God), with dictionary guardians pointing to their growing occurrence "in e-mails, texts, social networking... and even in spoken use".

As well as school playgrounds, words like "lolz" and "lolling" can be heard in pubs and offices - though often sarcastically, or in parody.

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OED definition

LOL (ɛləʊˈɛl/lɒl) colloq.

A. int. Originally and chiefly in the language of electronic communications: 'ha ha!'; used to draw attention to a joke or humorous statement, or to express amusement.

B. n. An instance of the written interjection 'LOL'.

Love it or loathe it, "lol" is now a legitimate word in our lexicon, says Graeme Diamond, the OED's principal editor for new words.

"The word is common, widespread, and people understand it," he explains.

The word serves a real purpose - it conveys tone in text, something that even the most cynical critics accept.

"I don't 'LOL'. I'm basically someone who kind of hates it," says Rob Manuel of the internet humour site b3ta.

"But the truth is, we do need emotional signifiers in tweets and emails, just as conversation has laughter. 'LOL' might make me look like a twit, but at least you know when I'm being arch."

Death of the dictionary

But for young internet entrepreneurs like Ben Huh, of the Cheezburger Network of comedy sites, "LOL" is much more than a necessary evil. It's both a tool and a toy.

Ben Huh says LOL is 'a part of everyday life'

"'LOL' is a part of everyday life. I use it all the time in e-mail exchanges. It's a polite way of acknowledging someone," he says.

"And yes, I do say 'LOL' out loud. In almost an ironic sense, like a slow handclap after a bad joke. 'Lol' means 'yes, I understand that was funny, but I'm not really laughing'."

But no matter how much irony we cake it in, the L-word grinds the ears of many people over the age of 25.

"The death of the dictionary" is how one blogger greeted its induction to the bastion of English.

While on Facebook, there are at least half a dozen "anti-LOL" groups, where lol-ophobes dream of loll-ageddon:

"If something is funny, 'ha', 'hehehehe', or 'hee hee' is perfectly fine depending on the joke, and more descriptive than 'lol'," writes one hater.

Another complains that lol "doesn't sound anything like laughter. In fact you physically CAN'T say it while smiling. I'm all for bastardisation of the language, but with lol, that thing you thought was rubbish really is rubbish".

Wags point out that "LOL" is almost always disingenuous. "How many people are actually laughing out loud when they say LOL?" asks David Crystal, author of Language and the Internet.

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LOL around the world

• mdr (and derivatives)

French version, from the initials of "mort de rire" which roughly translated means "dying of laughter"

• חחח‎/ההה

Hebrew version. The letter ח is pronounced 'kh' and ה is pronounced 'h'. Putting them together makes "khakhakha"

• 555

Thai variation of LOL. "5" in Thai is pronounced "ha", three of them being "hahaha"

• asg

Swedish abbreviation of the term Asgarv, meaning intense laughter

• mkm

Afghan abbreviation of the Dari phrase "ma khanda mikonom", which means "I am laughing"

Source: Know Your Meme

But those laughing least of all are the language purists, who lament "LOL" as a hallmark of creeping illiteracy.

"There is a worrying trend of adults mimicking teen-speak," says Marie Clair of the Plain English Campaign, in the Daily Mail.

"They [adults] are using slang words and ignoring grammar. Their language is deteriorating."

But is "LOL" really a lazy, childish concoction?

When the OED traced the origins of the acronym, they discovered 1980s computer fanatics were responsible.

The oldest written records of "LOL" (used to mean laughing out loud) are in the archives of Usenet, an early internet discussion forum.

And the original use was typed by Wayne Pearson, in Calgary, who says he wrote the first ever LOL in reply to a gag by someone called "Sprout".

"LOL" was "geek-speak that filtered through to the mainstream", says Manuel.

"I first saw it in the 1990s - at the end of emails. Then it got picked up by the young kids. Then it went naff. But it came back ironically - with people saying things like 'megalolz'."

Lolcats brought the phrase to a whole new audience

Grandparents, for example, often adopt "LOL" as one of their first "internet words", says Huh. "'LOL' and 'OMG' are like momma and dada."

But many mistake "LOL" for "lots of love", leading to some unintended "LOLs", such as the infamous tale of the mother who wrote: "Your grandmother has just passed away. LOL."

It has also lent its name to some wildly popular internet crazes, like Lolcats, whose appeal spread far beyond the realms of cyber-geeks.

More than funny

So why has "LOL", above all other web phrases, become such a phenomenon?

Because it's simple and multipurpose, says Tim Hwang, founder of ROFLCon, a whole festival dedicated to "internet awesome".

"The magic of LOL is that it's both exclusive and inclusive," he says. "On one level, it's simple to understand.

"But it also conveys something subtle - depending on the situation. It means more than just 'funny'. For example, if I had my bike stolen, my friend might reply 'LOL'. It helps overcome an awkward moment."

For school kids, acronyms like "LOL" and "KMT" (kiss my teeth) are a kind of secret code, a badge of belonging, says Tony Thorne, author of the Dictionary of Contemporary Slang.

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LOL-ternatives

• :D (smileys)

Simple and clear but may appear childish. Are you a Comic Sans fan?

• ROFL, LMAO, BWL

Even more annoying than LOL.

• !!!

One is fine, three reeks of desperation: 'Look!!! I made a joke!!!' Yes, we noticed.

• Haha, Hehehe, Arf arf

The safe option. Effective but not very imaginative. Were you really laughing?

• Hilarious! How funny!

You are living in the dark ages.

"I go into schools and record slang words - all the new terms kids are saying - words like 'lolcano'. And if you talk to kids they will say this is our language - this is what identifies us."

But aren't these slang words also harmful to children's vocabulary? Not at all, says Thorne.

"Government educationalists get all worked up about words like LOL - they see them as substandard and unorthodox.

"But the small amount of research on this issue shows that kids who use slang abbreviations are the more articulate ones. It's called code switching."

If we have a literacy crisis, it's among adults as well as children, says Thorne. And slang is not the culprit. In fact, it is enriching the language.

Diamond agrees: "There will always be a minority who want the English language to remain as a frozen beast, that doesn't admit changes," he says.

"But language is a vibrant, evolving animal."

18 March 2011 Last updated at 17:45 GMT

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Why is there no looting in Japan after the earthquake?

Continue reading the main story

In today's Magazine

• Why do people tell sick jokes?
• Quiz of the week's news
• Dennis the Menace in the Asbo era
• The bizarre Nazi book craze

During a state of emergency it is not unusual to hear about looting, so why have there been very few reports of this in Japan? Commentators from across the media have their say.

It's not possible to list them all but reports of looting during disasters are commonplace, like current reports from GNN Liberia on Liberian mercenaries being accused of looting in Ivory Coast.

In the UK there have also been incidents, like Exeter's Express and Echo's report of people scavenging motorbikes on the Devon coast back in 2007, when the contents of a container ship were washed ashore. In the same year, police investigated reports of looting at flood-hit properties in West Yorkshire.

The absence of stories of this kind has been noted by writers around the world. Slate's Christopher Beam says there's more to the lack of looting than honesty. He says that Japanese people are more honest than most, but adds the Japanese legal structure rewards honesty more than most.

His other theories why there isn't any looting in Japan include the police presence and organised crime. "Police aren't the only ones on patrol since the earthquake hit," he says. "Members of Yakuza, Japan's organised crime syndicate, have been enforcing order."

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

It sounds grotesque to say we should see reasons for hope as we watch in real time while the earth is shaken six inches on its axis”

Johann HariIndependent columnist

The Voice Of America's Steve Herman has been in Japan. He describes the country as "slowly grinding to a halt", which he puts down to traditional Japanese stoicism.

"There's a touch of bitterness in a few voices and some subtle signs of frustration but no show of open anger," he says.

The nearest Mr Herman gets to suggesting anyone taking advantage of the disaster is when he speculates that a black economy in rationed goods may rise up. To back up his prediction, Mr Herman cites the time this happened in the days after Japan's defeat in World War II.

The idea that the Japanese are acting in some way against the grain in an emergency situation is challenged by columnist Johann Hari in the UK's Independent. He says the panicking disaster victim is a myth. He argues that in reality the vast majority of people behave in the aftermath as altruists, saving their fellow human beings and sharing what they have. He goes on to say the same predictions are made about every disaster.

Opportunists made the most of motorbikes washed up on the Devon coast

"Once the lid of a tightly policed civilization is knocked off for a second, humans will become beasts. But the opposite is the case. It sounds grotesque to say we should see reasons for hope as we watch in real time while the earth is shaken six inches on its axis, tsunamis roar, and nuclear power stations teeter on meltdown. But it is true."

This, for Mr Hari, is proof enough to "kill off right-wing ideologies based on the belief that humans are inherently selfish".

But US blogger Andrew Sullivan's readers have been disputing the story there is not looting in Japan. They've been sending in examples.

According to a commenter on Mr Sullivan's blog the Daily Dish, who has been reading Japanese reports, they don't seem to be translated into English or reported on English language news sites.

But, the commenter translates an article in Japan's 47 News citing 40 known cases of looting in Miyagi.

10 February 2011 Last updated at 00:20 GMT

The stigma of Japan's 'suicide apartments'

By Roland Buerk BBC News, Sendai

The daughter's photograph is not alongside those of ancestors on the family altar

Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and on average nearly 100 people take their own lives every day.

But where those deaths take place has a big impact on families left behind.

In a stuffy apartment in Sendai, the air blue with smoke from cigarettes, a father kneels in prayer.

Lighting incense sticks and ringing a bell before the family altar, an ornate wooden cupboard.

His daughter's photograph is not inside alongside the other ancestors, it is still on the bookshelf.

Putting it there would be a final acceptance that she has gone, that two years ago he found her body in her rented Tokyo flat.

She was only 22 and her father cannot face that yet.

"When I realised she was dead I just could not move and I could not think at all," he says.

"I could not take in what happened. I thought there is really no God in this world at all. That is what I remember from that day."

This father is suffering not just bereavement, but financial hardship too

Only the father, and his former wife, the young woman's mother, know their daughter took an overdose.

Other relatives and friends have never been told it was suicide, so he does not want his name to be used.

It was not long after the death that he got another shock - this time a letter from his daughter's landlord.

"We held her funeral at the end of March," he remembers.

"The bill for renovating the flat came in April, then a demand for compensation for lost rent in May. So it was one after another.

"The only thing I could think about was my lost daughter. So when I was getting those bills, I had no will or strength to negotiate or resist."

In all he paid more than £18,650 ($30,000).

Purification rituals

Japan has a historic tradition of ritual suicide as an honourable way out. But as the number of people killing themselves has risen, public unease has grown.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

We feel the house is not pure and it will bring unhappiness”

End Quote Yoshihiro Kanuma Estate agent

Few would choose to rent an apartment where a previous occupant had taken their own life. So a death is frequently followed by a demand for money.

"There are a lot of them," says Sachiko Tanaka who set up a support group for the families of suicides after her own son died.

"Mostly it's compensation for loss of rent for flats. The biggest was 120m yen (£900,000). The claim was that the entire apartment building was worthless because one person committed suicide there. So they have to pay to rebuild it."

Many families are also required to pay for expensive purification rituals.

The support group is dealing with around 200 complaints of excessive demands from landlords and she is calling for a change in the law.

Already some estate agents are keen to help the bereaved.

Yoshihiro Kanuma has what he calls a difficult house on his books. He was motivated to take it on by his devout Buddhism.

Nine out of 10 people don't want anything to do with the house, says estate agent Yoshihiro Kanuma

It is an ordinary-looking place, a few years old - what the trade in Japan calls a 3LDK; three bedrooms, a living room, dining room and kitchen, in a commuter town outside Tokyo.

The tour takes in the master bedroom, with a view over a paddy field, but then he has to tell potential buyers that the last owner hanged himself on the stairs.

"Nine out of 10 people say I don't want anything to do with the house," he says.

"The Japanese may think the house is stained. I guess some may say it's heroic to take your own life but in terms of a house it's not viewed that way. We feel the house is not pure and it will bring unhappiness. I personally think the house itself has no responsibility but lots of Japanese feel that way."

Mr Kanuma has managed to persuade one family to put in an offer which has been accepted - half the price of other houses in the area.

Back in Sendai the bereaved father sits silently in his chair, and lights up another cigarette.

He admits he has turned into a recluse, and says he would like to die himself.

Compared to the loss of his daughter the money is nothing, but like many Japanese he is suffering not just bereavement, but financial hardship too.

6 February 2011 Last updated at 01:40 GMT

Japan custody heartache for foreign fathers

By Roland Buerk BBC News, Tokyo

Thousands of Japanese people marry foreigners every year. Many are happy - but if the marriage breaks down the foreign spouse may end up cut out of the children's lives.

Alex Kahney often visits the places he used to take his children

Alex Kahney, who works for a medical publisher, still lives in what was once the family home, now nearly bare of furniture but full of memories.

There are photographs of his daughters on the walls of the small four-storey town house in one of the nicer Tokyo neighbourhoods.

Their favourite stuffed toys, a dog and a mouse, are on the back of the sofa - reminders of the little girls, aged nine and seven, who he has not seen for months.

His Japanese wife took them with her, along with much of the contents of the house, when their marriage broke down, and is refusing to let him see them.

Mr Kahney first tried the police.

But when he told them that his wife had abducted their children, they laughed at him.

What makes it more painful is that their new home is just down the road.

Pressure for change

"They're on a second-floor apartment," he says. "I can hear them talking inside. I go and stand underneath the balcony listening to them. It's tough.

"For the first few months I cried, I howled. For half an hour sometimes. I hardly sleep. I'm usually awake most of the night. And I have dreams, I dream about my children every night."

Many Japanese parents are also campaigning for change

In Japan, the courts normally give custody to one parent after a marriage breakdown and it is up to that parent if they let the other parent have any access.

Many separating couples come to amicable agreements, but it is not unusual for one parent to be cut out of their children's lives forever.

When the former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi divorced, he got custody of his two eldest sons, who have not seen their mother since.

She was six months pregnant at the time, and Mr Koizumi has never met his youngest son.

But now there is pressure for a change in the law.

Every few weeks Alex Kahney joins a demonstration organised by a group called Left-Behind Parents, Japan.

They have lobbied members of the Diet, and on a recent Sunday they marched, more than 100 strong, through the centre of Tokyo.

Among the demonstrators were many Japanese parents.

Courts defied

There are a quarter of a million divorces in Japan every year, which is relatively low by international standards, but a dramatic increase from earlier generations.

Continue reading the main story

Number of cases

Twelve countries have been urging Japan to sign up to the Hague Convention:

• US: 131
• Canada: 38
• UK: 38
• France: 30
• Germany 2
• Australia, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand and Spain - no figures available
• Belgium and Colombia - 0 cases

• Joint statement by the 12 embassies

It is the cases involving foreigners, though, that are drawing the most attention.

Japan's customs around divorce have become a diplomatic issue because the country has yet to sign up to the 1980 Hague Convention on child abduction. As a result, Japanese parents who bring their children home after a divorce abroad can defy joint custody orders made by foreign courts.

The British embassy is dealing with 38 cases involving children, other embassies many more.

"There are 12 embassies involved in this," says David Warren, the British ambassador in Tokyo.

"We have been making frequent representations to the Japanese government. We've been saying to them that Japan cannot any longer go on without becoming part of the international legal framework for resolving these cases."

Abusive relationships

Japan is considering ratifying the Hague Convention.

A newspaper report earlier this month said an announcement could come as soon as the spring.

Continue reading the main story

'Women look after the children'

Osamu, who doesn't want to use his full name, got divorced five years ago and his daughters are now 17 and 14. He sees the younger girl once every two months, the older girl about twice a year.

"I thought about their best interests," he says. "So I gave in and let their mother have custody."

Osamu says that at the time of the divorce he thought of splitting up his daughters, with the parents having custody of one each. But he decided it would not be good for them.

"In Japan traditionally men go out to work and women look after children. We tend to think women will be better off taking care of them, especially when they are small.

"Of course, there are exceptions. Maybe the father's family has a business and needs the next generation to take over."

Osamu added that men tend to think they can go on, get married again and start a new family more easily than women. From his experience it's usual for fathers not to see children at all.

But implementation is likely to be a long process.

It would mean a change from the expectation that families should largely work things out for themselves, to the state enforcing agreements on access and child-support payments.

Some people are also worried that the convention could hinder Japanese trying to flee abusive relationships abroad.

Akiko Oshima is a marriage counsellor who has worked as a mediator in the family court.

"These women who come back, do not do it because they want to," she says.

"They feel this is the only way out. They want their child to be brought up in Japan, and not in the host country where the father is abusive and she has no control over her children's education, and so forth. Not even, say, getting a job to support herself. This is the problem."

Alex Kahney spends a lot of time visiting places he went with his children, like the playground near his home.

He says he was a good parent and his daughters were daddy's girls.

If he is to see them again he must only hope their mother takes pity on him.

• The number of Japanese men marrying foreign women is higher than the number of Japanese women marrying foreign men. It is rare for a Japanese man to marry a Western woman, but Japanese women frequently marry Western men.
• A Japanese man marrying a foreigner is most likely to marry a woman from China, the Philippines or Korea, in that order. A Japanese woman marrying a foreigner is most likely to marry a man from Korea, the US or China.

How to say 'Louis Vuitton' and other designers' names

The hyper-critical gaze of fashionistas around the world focuses on Britain this week for London Fashion Week. But if you're planning to venture an opinion on whether Alexa Chung's liking for long skirts will spark a wider trend, you'd better be able to pronounce the names of the top designers.

It's what separates the dedicated followers of fashion from the casual observers - whether you say Louis Vwee-ton or Louis Vee-ton, or even Lewis Vee-ton.

The international nature of the world of fashion can sometimes complicate researching fashion-related pronunciation for the BBC Pronunciation Unit. Our policy for company names is, where possible, to recommend the pronunciation the company itself prefers.

However, if there is a fashion house with multiple corporate offices around the world (such as Milan, Paris, New York and Tokyo), pronunciations used within the company itself can sometimes differ across languages.

Another point for us to consider is that many companies are named after a particular individual's name, and the pronunciation of the name itself and the company are not necessarily always the same.

With foreign names in general, we consider the opinion of the speakers of the relevant languages and ask them how they pronounce it in the original language and how they might expect it to be anglicised.

For company names, we then consult official sources, such as press offices at the company's headquarters, to enquire about their preferred pronunciation. We also speak to boutiques of the brands in this country to see if there are any established anglicisations that the brands go by in the UK.

A mouthful

(All the pronunciations given below are written in BBC Text spelling; stressed syllables in upper case, -uh as "a" in ago.)

An example of this is the pronunciation of the fashion house Balenciaga. Balenciaga is named after its founder, Basque designer Cristóbal Balenciaga. He was widely know in Spain by the Spanish pronunciation of his name, bal-en-thi-AA-guh (-th as in thin, -aa as in father). The company is now owned by a French company, so a gallicised pronunciation is also a possibility.

Ralph Lauren - easy, or is it?

After speaking to the corporate offices in Paris and the boutique in London, we found the company itself prefers the pronunciation bal-en-si-AA-guh (-s as in sit) in English language contexts.

Miu Miu, part of the Prada fashion house empire, is pronounced MYOO-myoo (-my as in music, -oo as in boot). Other Italian designers with names that can be a mouthful include Ermenegildo Zegna, pronounced air-men-uh-JIL-doh ZEN-yuh (-air as in hair, -j as in Jack, -y as in yes), Giambattista Valli, pronounced jam-bat-EE-stuh VAL-i (-j as in Jack, -al as in pal), Francesco Scognamiglio, pronounced fran-CHESS-koh skon-yam-EEL-yoh (-y as in yes) and Gianfranco Ferre, pronounced jan-FRANK-oh ferr-AY (-j as in Jack, -ay as in say).

Designers based in Paris include Christian Lacroix, pronounced kreest-YAA(NG) laa-KRWAA (-aa(ng) as in French blanc, -aa as in father), Lebanese designer Elie Saab, pronounced ELL-i SAAB (-aa as in father) and influential Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto, whose name is pronounced YOH-ji yam-uh-MOH-toh (-oh as in no, -j as in Jack, -established anglicisation). The French fashion powerhouse Louis Vuitton is sometimes anglicised as LOO-i VWEE-ton by some native English speakers, but we recommend the company's own preferred pronunciation, LWEE vwee-TO(NG) (-w as in wet, -o(ng) as in French bon).

American designers Anna Sui, pronounced, AN-uh SWEE, Isaac Mizrahi, pronounced IGH-zuhk miz-RAA-hi (-aa as in father), and Ralph Lauren, pronounced RALF LORR-uhn (-orr as in sorry), are familiar faces at London Fashion Week.

And finally, here are the pronunciations of some of our own British designers: Jaeger is pronounced YAY-guhr (-y as in yes, -ay as in say) and Hussein Chalayan is pronounced huuss-AYN chuh-LIGH-uhn (-uu as in book, -ay as in say, -igh as in high).

The BBC Pronunciation Unit writes an occasional 'How to Say' column for the Magazine Monitor. To download the unit's guide to BBC Text Spelling, click here.

A Life Revealed

A Life Revealed

Her eyes have captivated the world since she appeared on our cover in 1985. Now we can tell her story.

By Cathy Newman

She remembers the moment. The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since.

The photographer remembers the moment too. The light was soft. The refugee camp in Pakistan was a sea of tents. Inside the school tent he noticed her first. Sensing her shyness, he approached her last. She told him he could take her picture. "I didn't think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day," he recalls of that morning in 1984 spent documenting the ordeal of Afghanistan's refugees.

The portrait by Steve McCurry turned out to be one of those images that sears the heart, and in June 1985 it ran on the cover of this magazine. Her eyes are sea green. They are haunted and haunting, and in them you can read the tragedy of a land drained by war. She became known around National Geographic as the "Afghan girl," and for 17 years no one knew her name.

In January a team from National Geographic Television & Film's EXPLORER brought McCurry to Pakistan to search for the girl with green eyes. They showed her picture around Nasir Bagh, the still standing refugee camp near Peshawar where the photograph had been made. A teacher from the school claimed to know her name. A young woman named Alam Bibi was located in a village nearby, but McCurry decided it wasn't her.

No, said a man who got wind of the search. He knew the girl in the picture. They had lived at the camp together as children. She had returned to Afghanistan years ago, he said, and now lived in the mountains near Tora Bora. He would go get her.

It took three days for her to arrive. Her village is a six-hour drive and three-hour hike across a border that swallows lives. When McCurry saw her walk into the room, he thought to himself: This is her.

Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said of the Pashtun that they are only at peace when they are at war, and her eyes—then and now—burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist.

Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened. "She's had a hard life," said McCurry. "So many here share her story." Consider the numbers. Twenty-three years of war, 1.5 million killed, 3.5 million refugees: This is the story of Afghanistan in the past quarter century.

Now, consider this photograph of a young girl with sea green eyes. Her eyes challenge ours. Most of all, they disturb. We cannot turn away.

"There is not one family that has not eaten the bitterness of war," a young Afghan merchant said in the 1985 National Geographic story that appeared with Sharbat's photograph on the cover. She was a child when her country was caught in the jaws of the Soviet invasion. A carpet of destruction smothered countless villages like hers. She was perhaps six when Soviet bombing killed her parents. By day the sky bled terror. At night the dead were buried. And always, the sound of planes, stabbing her with dread.

"We left Afghanistan because of the fighting," said her brother, Kashar Khan, filling in the narrative of her life. He is a straight line of a man with a raptor face and piercing eyes. "The Russians were everywhere. They were killing people. We had no choice."

Shepherded by their grandmother, he and his four sisters walked to Pakistan. For a week they moved through mountains covered in snow, begging for blankets to keep warm.

"You never knew when the planes would come," he recalled. "We hid in caves."

The journey that began with the loss of their parents and a trek across mountains by foot ended in a refugee camp tent living with strangers.

"Rural people like Sharbat find it difficult to live in the cramped surroundings of a refugee camp," explained Rahimullah Yusufzai, a respected Pakistani journalist who acted as interpreter for McCurry and the television crew. "There is no privacy. You live at the mercy of other people." More than that, you live at the mercy of the politics of other countries. "The Russian invasion destroyed our lives," her brother said.

It is the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan. Invasion. Resistance. Invasion. Will it ever end? "Each change of government brings hope," said Yusufzai. "Each time, the Afghan people have found themselves betrayed by their leaders and by outsiders professing to be their friends and saviors."

In the mid-1990s, during a lull in the fighting, Sharbat Gula went home to her village in the foothills of mountains veiled by snow. To live in this earthen-colored village at the end of a thread of path means to scratch out an existence, nothing more. There are terraces planted with corn, wheat, and rice, some walnut trees, a stream that spills down the mountain (except in times of drought), but no school, clinic, roads, or running water.

Here is the bare outline of her day. She rises before sunrise and prays. She fetches water from the stream. She cooks, cleans, does laundry. She cares for her children; they are the center of her life. Robina is 13. Zahida is three. Alia, the baby, is one. A fourth daughter died in infancy. Sharbat has never known a happy day, her brother says, except perhaps the day of her marriage.

Her husband, Rahmat Gul, is slight in build, with a smile like the gleam of a lantern at dusk. She remembers being married at 13. No, he says, she was 16. The match was arranged.

He lives in Peshawar (there are few jobs in Afghanistan) and works in a bakery. He bears the burden of medical bills; the dollar a day he earns vanishes like smoke. Her asthma, which cannot tolerate the heat and pollution of Peshawar in summer, limits her time in the city and with her husband to the winter. The rest of the year she lives in the mountains.

At the age of 13, Yusufzai, the journalist, explained, she would have gone into purdah, the secluded existence followed by many Islamic women once they reach puberty.

"Women vanish from the public eye," he said. In the street she wears a plum-colored burka, which walls her off from the world and from the eyes of any man other than her husband. "It is a beautiful thing to wear, not a curse," she says.

Faced by questions, she retreats into the black shawl wrapped around her face, as if by doing so she might will herself to evaporate. The eyes flash anger. It is not her custom to subject herself to the questions of strangers.

Had she ever felt safe?

"No. But life under the Taliban was better. At least there was peace and order."

Had she ever seen the photograph of herself as a girl?

"No."

She can write her name, but cannot read. She harbors the hope of education for her children. "I want my daughters to have skills," she said. "I wanted to finish school but could not. I was sorry when I had to leave."

Education, it is said, is the light in the eye. There is no such light for her. It is possibly too late for her 13-year-old daughter as well, Sharbat Gula said. The two younger daughters still have a chance.

The reunion between the woman with green eyes and the photographer was quiet. On the subject of married women, cultural tradition is strict. She must not look—and certainly must not smile—at a man who is not her husband. She did not smile at McCurry. Her expression, he said, was flat. She cannot understand how her picture has touched so many. She does not know the power of those eyes.

Such knife-thin odds. That she would be alive. That she could be found. That she could endure such loss. Surely, in the face of such bitterness the spirit could atrophy. How, she was asked, had she survived?

The answer came wrapped in unshakable certitude.

"It was," said Sharbat Gula, "the will of God."

Page last updated at 11:30 GMT, Tuesday, 2 March 2010

Did the discovery of cooking make us human?

By Clare Kingston BBC Horizon

Learning to cook created 'big brains'

Cooking is something we all take for granted but a new theory suggests that if we had not learned to cook food, not only would we still look like chimps but, like them, we would also be compelled to spend most of the day chewing.

Without cooking, an average person would have to eat around five kilos of raw food to get enough calories to survive.

The daily mountain of fruit and vegetables would mean a six-hour chewing marathon.

It is already accepted that the introduction of meat into our ancestors' diet caused their brains to grow and their intelligence to increase.

Meat - a more concentrated form of energy - not only meant bigger brains for our ancestors, but also an end to the need to devote nearly all their time to foraging to maintain energy levels.

As a consequence, more time was available for social structure to develop.

'Accident'

Harvard Professor Richard Wrangham believes there is more to it than simply discovering meat.

Australopithecus was ape-like but walked upright like humans

He thinks that it is not so much a change in the ingredients of our diet, but the way in which we prepare them that has caused the radical evolution of our species.

"I think cooking is arguably the biggest increase in the quality of the diet in the whole of the history of life," he says.

"Our ancestors most probably dropped food in fire accidently. They would have found it was delicious and that set us off on a whole new direction."

To understand how and when our bodies changed, we need to take a closer look at what our ancestors ate by studying the fossil records.

Our earliest ancestor was the ape-like Australopithecus.

Australopithecus had a large belly containing a big large-intestine, essential to digest the robust plant matter, and had large, flat teeth which it used for grinding and crushing tough vegetation.

None the less, it was Australopithecus that moved out of the trees and onto the African savannah, and started to eat the animals that grazed there.

And it was this change of habitat, lifestyle and diet that also prompted major changes in anatomy.

Bigger brain

The eating of meat ties in with an evolutionary shift 2.3 million years ago resulting in a more human-looking ancestor with sharper teeth and a 30% bigger brain, called Homo habilis.

The brain consumes 20% of a person's energy while sitting

The most momentous shift however, happened 1.8 million years ago when Homo erectus - our first "truly human" ancestor arrived on the scene.

Homo erectus had an even bigger brain, smaller jaws and teeth.

Erectus also had a similar body shape to us. Shorter arms and longer legs appeared, and gone was the large vegetable-processing gut, meaning that Erectus could not only walk upright, but could also run.

He was cleverer and faster, and - according to Professor Wrangham - he had learned how to cook.

"Cooking made our guts smaller," he says. "Once we cooked our food, we didn't need big guts.

"They're costly in terms of energy. Individuals that were born with small guts were able to save energy, have more babies and survive better."

Professor Peter Wheeler from Liverpool John Moores University and his colleague, Leslie Aiello, think it was this change in our digestive system that specifically allowed our brains to get larger.

Energy transfer

Cooking food breaks down its cells, meaning that our stomachs need to do less work to liberate the nutrients our bodies need.

This, says Wheeler, "freed up energy which could then be used to power a larger brain. The increase in brain-size mirrors the reduction in the size of the gut."

Significantly Wheeler and Aiello found that the reduction in the size of our digestive system was exactly the same amount that our brains grew by - 20%.

Professor Stephen Secor at the University of Alabama found that not only does cooked food release more energy, but the body uses less energy in digesting it.

He uses pythons as a model for digestion as they stay still for up to six days while digesting a meal. This makes them the perfect model as the only energy they expend is on digestion.

His research shows that pythons use 24% less energy digesting cooked meat, compared with raw.

So being human might all be down to energy.

Cooking is essentially a form of pre-digestion, which has transferred energy use from our guts to our brains.

According to Professors Wheeler and Wrangham and their colleagues, it is no coincidence that humans - the cleverest species on earth - are also the only species that cooks.