Page last updated at 09:08 GMT, Tuesday, 10 February 2009

'Arctic unicorns' in icy display

By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

Remarkable footage of elusive narwhal has been captured.

A BBC team used aerial cameras to film the creatures during their epic summer migration, as they navigated through cracks in the melting Arctic sea ice.

They believe the footage, which forms part of the BBC Natural History Unit's new series Nature's Great Events, is the first of its kind.

Narwhal are sometimes called "Arctic unicorns" because of the long, spiral tusk that protrudes from their jaws.

The appendages can reach more than 2m (7ft) in length; scientists believe males use them to attract potential mates.

'An amazing sight'

The BBC crew headed to the Arctic in June 2008, to film the tusked animals' summer migration.

At this time of year, temperatures begin to rise above freezing and the thick sea ice starts to melt, creating a complex network of cracks that cover the white expanse.

These animals are just so completely unreal - they are like something from mythology Justin Anderson, BBC producer

Every year, thousands of narwhal use these narrow fissures to travel thousands of kilometres, from the south of Baffin Bay to the high Arctic fjords.

But tracking these animals down is not easy.

Justin Anderson, who produced the programme, said: "Even though they are quite large animals, the area we had to cover was enormous - the size of Scotland.

"It is like finding a needle in a haystack."

A "dive" crew, equipped with underwater cameras, spent four weeks on the ice trying to locate the mysterious whales. But just as they caught a glimpse of them, the sea ice had become so dangerously thin that filming was forced to halt.

However, an "aerial" team arrived by helicopter to take up the mantle.

Mr Anderson explained: "It took us seven days to travel to the place where the whales had been spotted [Lancaster Sound] - we were stuck by possibly the worse thing you can encounter in a helicopter in the Arctic - fog.

They are following the retreat of the sea ice as they have done for thousands of years Mads Pieter Heide-Jorgensen

"But then we got there, we 'lucked out'; the skies cleared and we had eight days of 24-hour summer sunshine."

Using a special mount, cameraman Simon Werry filmed the creatures from the helicopter, as the narwhal swam through the melt-water leads.

Mr Anderson said: "This is the first time the narwhal migration has been filmed this way. It has been filmed from the ice, but this is the first time it has been filmed from the air.

"It was an amazing sight. These animals are just so completely unreal - they are like something from mythology - and we were all just completely gobsmacked when we saw them."

Thanks to their elusive nature, narwhal can prove difficult to study and there is still much to learn about these Arctic mammals.

Mads Pieter Heide-Jorgensen, from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, said the purpose of the creatures' summer migration remained a mystery.

He explained: "The interesting thing is that these creatures feed in the deep water in the central part of Baffin Bay during the winter.

"But when they are in the summer grounds, they hardly feed at all.

"They are following the retreat of the sea ice as they have done for thousands of years, and spending summer in front of glaciers for reasons we do not really understand."

With such a connection to the Arctic ice, researchers are trying to establish whether narwhal will be affected by changes in the Arctic ice cover.

Professor Heide-Jorgensen has been using satellite tags, which, as well as keeping track of the whereabouts of narwhal, are also able to monitor the temperature of the waters where the whales swim.

He said: "They give us the temperature profiles in the wintering grounds and we can see the temperature of the deep areas has been increasing over the past 50 years.

"However, we cannot yet see any direct effects of climate change on the narwhal."

Page last updated at 12:48 GMT, Friday, 30 January 2009

The good, the bad and the mangled

By Finlo Rohrer and Katie Fraser BBC News Magazine

The release of Valkyrie and The Reader have brought to mind a recurring problem for moviemakers and television producers - should actors stick to their own accents?

In Valkyrie, the story of Claus von Stauffenberg's attempt to kill Hitler and topple the Nazi regime, Tom Cruise sounds like Tom Cruise.

Not Tom Cruise with a slight German accent, but the usual vaguely East Coast-tinged Cruise of Mission: Impossible and Top Gun.

Tom Cruise is so well-known that if he started doing an 'Allo 'Allo accent, it would have everyone in hysterics James King Film critic Mark Kermode on accents

And at the same time, there's The Reader, another film set in Germany and tackling Nazism, which goes the other way. David Kross, the young German actor, does his lines in English with a German accent, as do Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes.

As the Anglophone film industry appears disinclined to ever stop making movies about the 1939-1945 period, it's a dilemma that is going to continue coming up.

Take Sam Peckinpah's 1977 epic on the horrors of the Eastern Front, Cross of Iron. A classic war movie it is. A classic example of coherent accents it is not.

Of the main characters, James Coburn as the hero, Steiner, attempts a German accent while James Mason as Colonel Brandt wanders in and out of one, and David Warner as Captain Kiesel speaks mostly in his best stage Received Pronunciation with only the occasional German tinged word. Maximilian Schell, being Austrian, keeps rather more consistently to his accent, as the baddie Stransky. All in all it's a bit of an accent mess.

So it's perhaps not surprising that the Valkyrie's no-funny-voices rule has its supporters.

"Tom Cruise is so well-known that if he started doing an 'Allo 'Allo accent, it would have everyone in hysterics," says film critic James King. "In Valkyrie it works because the opening [dialogue is] in German [even Tom Cruise] and it's done smoothly."

Kate Winslet does a German accent - only Germans know if it is any good

It can sometimes seem a natural thing in a period piece. In Roland Joffe's The Mission, the stars play Spanish parts with their own accents, Robert De Niro American and Jeremy Irons English.

The same tactic can be taken in television. When the BBC recently adapted Swedish author Henning Mankell's Wallander detective novels, the major cast members were British and speaking with British accents. Perhaps the producers were aware of the danger that if not done properly, a difficult and little-done accent could soon degenerate into something like the Swedish chef out of the Muppets.

And where accents are done now, they tend to be low-key affairs.

"These days when people put on a foreign accent they make them slightly less pronounced, not like in the days of Gary Oldman with his full Russian accent as the villain in Air Force One," says King.

Baltimore Brits

Oldman, despite his alarming Russian, has of course made a career out of playing American roles, and doing various accents convincingly. Peter Sellers was another master of accents. In Dr Strangelove he does a comedy German, an uppercrust Englishman and a mild-mannered American, all in the same film.

And how many of those who have recently become fans of the Baltimore cop show The Wire would have guessed that Russell "Stringer" Bell was from Hackney or that the Baltimore twang of Jimmy McNulty was produced by Dominic West, educated at Eton.

SOME RULES OF ACCENTS English RP is similar to Roman Bad Germans are played by Germans Brits must play Americans well Sean Connery does not do accents

And perhaps the greatest accents of recent times were furnished by Americans Gwyneth Paltrow and Renee Zellweger who did upper-middle class English as well as any Englishwoman.

But when things go bad they can go really bad. Everybody remembers Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, but at least that was a comedy. How much worse was Forest Whittaker's frankly ludicrous British accent in The Crying Game, Russell Crowe attempting an English City boy in A Good Year or Sean Connery in most of everything he was ever in?

But context is everything. When Johnny Depp did Cockney in Jack the Ripper movie From Hell he was lambasted. When he did the same accent, again modelled on Keith Richards, to comic effect in Pirates of the Caribbean, it was regarded as amusing. In a good way.

It's all down to your expectations of what you're watching.

Evocation of place

"When you watch Russian plays or Greek tragedies they don't bother with an accent," says Sally Hague, dialect coach at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. "There's a convention that it's set around the characters or the action and not the place. Directors think that using dialect would be a distraction.

"But sometimes an accent would be central to evoking a place. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - it's all about the language of the Deep South that Tennessee Williams was using when he wrote it. It can be perverse not trying to do that accent. Irvine Welsh and Trainspotting. It couldn't have been done without the dialect."

Marlon Brando did Mexican for Viva Zapata

And of course in some movies, accents and casting are offering a subtle code. In some war movies from days of yore, Americans play the heroes, English actors do the more acceptable Germans and the truly bad Germans are played by real Germans.

In some films about the Roman Empire or with other classical or period settings, English accents can be used by Hollywood to convey gravitas.

In Gladiator for instance, Roman-ness can only be properly conveyed by an English accent. Witness Joaquin Phoenix's rather alarming effort as Emperor Commodus. One might surmise that an English accent represents the "Old World" in a more general sense to an American viewer. But still, Tony Curtis, despite his Bronx accent, played a string of roles in ancient dramas.

In many American films the baddie is English or English accented. But you can also get a film like Die Hard, where Alan Rickman does a German accent for a double dose of baddie-ness.

Then you have an actor like Art Malik, born in Pakistan, but raised in England, doing a string of Arab terrorist baddies.

It all tests the audience's ability to suspend their disbelief.

"Films like Die Hard have had their day - no-one blinked an eye. Now people would think of those as out of place," says King.

Dick Van Dyke has never lived down his cockney accent in Mary Poppins

There have been classic films where actors have not just put on accents but even "blacked up" to play exotic parts. We can still relish a viewing of Lawrence of Arabia because we know it comes from 1962, although we may find Omar Sharif [an Egyptian] as Sherif Ali a lot more convincing than Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal.

In Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata from 1952, Marlon Brando (born Nebraska, US) seems more ardent in his Mexican accent than Anthony Quinn (born Chihuahua, Mexico). Quinn got the Oscar.

But perhaps we care less about how convincing an accent is than we do about the quality of the film.

We are happy for Americans and Brits to do foreign voices in the right settings and to do each other, as long as it's well, but show us a rubbish film and we'll zero in on the bad accent.

And if you really want authenticity, why not just take the Mel Gibson route and do it all in Aramaic with subtitles.

Page last updated at 21:55 GMT, Friday, 16 January 2009

NY mayor hails 'hero' crash pilot

The plane's crew and rescue teams averted a tragedy, the mayor said

New York's mayor has hailed the pilot of a plane which crashed in the Hudson River with no loss of life as a hero.

Michael Bloomberg said he would be giving "incredibly brave" Captain Chesley Sullenberger and his crew the keys to the city.

Mr Bloomberg also honoured rescuers who pulled all 155 passengers and crew from the US Airways Airbus A320 to safety.

Investigators are now searching for the jet's two engines that have detached and are believed to be in the river.

At a news conference in New York, National Transportation Safety Board spokeswoman Kitty Higgins said the agency's crews were using sonar equipment to search for the engines.

Ms Higgins said that rescuers planned to lift the plane from the river on Saturday.

The investigation is then expected to focus on recovering the flight recorders from Flight 1549 and interviewing the crew about what happened after it took off from New York's LaGuardia airport en route to Charlotte, North Carolina on Thursday afternoon.

Capt Sullenberger said earlier that the crash was caused by birds flying into the engines. Investigators say they plan to interview him on Saturday.

One person suffered two broken legs in the crash and paramedics treated 78 patients, most for minor injuries.

'Inspirational'

At a news conference in New York, Mr Bloomberg said Capt Sullenberger had been "incredibly skilful" but would be unable to speak to the media while investigations were continuing.

1 1526 local time (2026 GMT): Flight 1549 takes off from LaGuardia airport 2 1527 (2027 GMT): Pilot Chesley Sullenberger reports birds hitting engines 3 1528 (2028 GMT): Pilot told to land at Teterboro airfield 4 1531 (2031 GMT): Pilot ditches plane in Hudson River

Mr Bloomberg said the writer Ernest Hemingway defined heroism as "grace under pressure".

"I think it's fair to say that Captain Sullenberger displayed that yesterday. His brave actions have inspired millions of people in this city and millions more around the world," he said.

Mr Bloomberg praised the plane's crew

The mayor also presented awards to other uniformed and civilian personnel involved in the rescue.

He said the city's "finest and bravest" workers had made "split-second decisions that resulted in a dramatic rescue".

"Because of their efforts and the calm, steady leadership shown by the plane's pilot and crew, miraculously all 155 people on that plane made it to safety," he said.

The White House said President George W Bush had telephoned Capt Sullenberger to thank him for his actions.

Mr Bush praised the former fighter pilot for his "amazing skills in bringing his plane down safely, for his bravery, and for his heroic efforts to ensure the safety of his passengers and the people in the area," said spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Bird strike

HERO PILOT Chesley B 'Sully' Sullenberger III Age 57, from Danville, California Former Air Force fighter pilot 29 years with US Airways Has own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc Profile: Capt Chesley Sullenberger Tale of miraculous escape dot.life blog: Power of twitter

Passengers from the plane and eyewitnesses have been speaking to the media about their experiences.

"I heard an explosion, and I saw flames coming from the left wing, and I thought, 'this isn't good'," said passenger Dave Sanderson.

"Then it was just controlled chaos. People started running up the aisle. People were getting shoved out of the way."

Another passenger, Billy Campbell, described water rushing into the plane as flight attendants did "a wonderful job" of evacuating everyone.

"It's good to be alive today," said Martin Sosa, a father who had been travelling with two young children and his wife.

"It's hard to believe we just survived that," he said.

Capt Sullenberger is reported to have told air traffic controllers that the plane had experienced a "double bird strike" less than a minute after take-off and asked to return to the ground.

Freezing waters

After crashing on the water, the plane was pulled rapidly down the Hudson River, until it was guided to a halt by tug boats against a pier.

The temperature was almost -7C (19F) and the current in the Hudson was running rapidly.

BIRD STRIKE DANGER Large passenger jets can withstand being hit by a 4lb (1.8kg) bird, but problems can arise with flocks of small birds, or with larger birds 219 people have been killed worldwide as a result of wildlife strikes since 1988 In 2007, over 7,600 birds and other wildlife were reported to have hit civil aircraft in the US Bird strikes cause $600m damage to aircraft in the US every year Source: Bird Strike Committee USA

Ferryboats arrived within minutes of the crash to begin the rescue as passengers emerged in life jackets.

Investigators have brought in a giant crane and a barge to help pull the jet out of the river.

Although it is largely under water the plane is still intact, but safety inspectors have said they will need to ensure it is recovered safely and without causing it to break apart.

The Department of Homeland Security has said there was no suggestion that the incident was security related.

Initial witness reports and comments from the pilot suggested the plane may have collided with a flock of geese.

Such bird strikes are fairly common but rarely cause such significant damage to two engines at the same time.

Page last updated at 17:11 GMT, Friday, 30 January 2009

Banker + gangster = bankster

Protesters make their feelings known

A POINT OF VIEW

It seems timely to resurrect this Americanism from the 1930s - one of many evocative words the United States has contributed to the English language, says Harold Evans.

Americans are pretty good at adding words to the English language. We owe them pin-up girls, highbrows, killjoys, stooges, hobos, drop-outs, shills, bobby-soxers, hijackers, do-gooders and hitchhikers who thumb a ride.

During the time Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was cost-cutting, he spent $1.1m doing up his office - $86,000 for a rug Hear Radio 4's A Point of View

The Americanisms are so much more concise and vivid. Instead of saying "sorry we're late but drivers ahead of us slowed us down when they craned their necks to look at a crash" you can say "we were held up by rubberneckers".

Words pop in and out of our language as social conditions change. The American gangster, which is still with us, has been around as a noun and a reality since 1896 according to my Shorter Oxford, but it seems to have dropped another Americanism from the 1930s and I think now is the time to revive it.

The word is bankster, derived by a marriage of banker and gangster.

Stunned crowds gathered on Wall St as news of the 1929 crash spread

It was coined, as far as I can deduce, by an American immigrant, a fiery Sicilian-born lawyer by the name of Ferdinand Pecora. He was the chief counsel to the US Senate Committee on Banking set up in the early 30s to probe the origins of the Crash of 1929.

He exposed quite a lot of the Wall Street practices that Harvard's Professor William Z Ripley had condemned in 1928. The believable Ripley called them - get ready for these Americanisms - "prestidigitation, double-shuffling, honey-fugling, hornswoggling and skullduggery".

The professor had vainly tried to warn President Calvin Coolidge that Wall Street was full of gas and was bound to blow up. To great discomfort all round, Pecora identified Coolidge himself, by then out of office, as one of those who'd been in on the honey-fugling.

The great banking house of JP Morgan had the president on a "preferred list" by which the bank's influential friends were given a chance to buy stock at half price. Shall we say, they made out like bandits?

Today the term bankster perfectly fits Bernard Madoff, whose crooked Ponzi scheme lost $50 billion of what the trade calls OPM - other people's money - invested with him.

Costly rug

But the revelations come thick and fast. People are now struggling for words to describe the latest example of Wall St's money madness. The fabled investment bank Merrill Lynch, run by one John Thain, had so many big zeroes on its balance sheet it would have been liquidated in December but for a merger with the Bank of America.

A shotgun wedding

That was actually a shotgun marriage - in the US vernacular - since the Bank of America was forced to take billions of government money when it learned later that Merrill Lynch was down another $15bn.

Then what? In the few days in December while he was still in charge, Mr Thain reportedly spent nearly $4bn on staff bonuses. That's peanuts on Wall St. In 2007 Mr Thain himself received $83m.

But a week ago, CNBC's Charles Gasparino, in a detailed scoop on the Daily Beast website revealed that during the time Mr Thain was busy cost-cutting, he spent $1.1m doing up his office - $86,000 for a rug, $35,000 for something called a commode on legs.

Readers bayed for blood, posting comments such as: "Oh how I wish this was Revolutionary France and we peasants could storm the offices…"

The anger about the greed that got us into our mess is, in my view, wholly justified. And now we hear that 10 of the big banks that got $148bn from Uncle Sam so they could make loans to get things humming again have actually reduced their loan totals by $46bn.

Mr Thain now is history, having resigned, but the great Bank of America, the biggest in the US and maybe the world is now on the list of banks that may have to be nationalised - a word no red-blooded American ever thought would be uttered in the land of enterprise.

Have money, will lend

The piquancy of all this is that if the term banker is ever to be restored to its former prestige, the public and Wall St might reflect on one highly relevant example of a banker who was not a bankster.

Amadeo Peter Giannini

It is the story of Amadeo Peter Giannini, a big man on the side of the little man. When the transcontinental railway started services to California after the line's completion in May 1869, he was among the very first passengers.

He was in the womb of his newlywed mother, 15-year-old Virginia. His father, having made money in the goldfields, had gone back to Italy for her. It is nice to think that as the young immigrants crossed the Rockies, their adventurous spirits somehow crossed the placental barrier.

Amadeo was born on 6 May, 1870. He grew up on a little farm, whose produce his mother and father sold in booming San Francisco. In 1877 when he was six, he saw his father gunned down. His mother moved to the city to buy wholesale from farmers and sell to shops.

Amadeo - or AP as he became known - grew into a tall, strong man, more than able to hold his own in the rough auctions for fruit and veg on the wharfs where traders met the farmers' boats. He helped to build a thriving business.

When he was 31 he sold his share, saying he had no interest in accumulating wealth. "No man owns a fortune," he said. "It owns him." It was the motto of his life.

Ask and you shall receive?

He'd married and on the death of his father in law, was persuaded to take his vacant place on the board of a little bank in North Beach. He was appalled that they'd not lend money to poor immigrants. The rows in the board room reverberated over North Beach until AP walked out and started a little bank of his own to do that, the Bank of Italy.

From his work on the wharves, he'd become a shrewd judge of character, so he'd cheerfully lend money to pay doctor's bills for delivery of a baby if he judged the couple had integrity.

Phoenix from the rubble

On Wednesday 18 April, 1906, San Francisco was devastated by earthquake and fire. AP rushed to get all his gold and paper money out of danger, hid it under orange crates to conceal it from looters, and stood guard all night in his home.

It must have been a debilitating moment the next day to find his baby bank a mass of charred rubble. The bigger banks, who had vaults too hot to open, had no records and were not lending.

Smoke billows from San Francisco's flattened buildings

AP instead went down to a wharf close to the smouldering North Beach, flung a plank across two barrels, and with his baritone booming across the desolation, started lending some of his $80,000 to rebuild San Francisco.

He looked for steamship captains he knew, shoved money into their hands, saying "go north and get lumber". AP radiated so much confidence, making a big show of jiggling his little bag of gold, hundreds who'd been hoarding cash and gold banked it with him. North Beach was built faster than any other area.

By 1918 he'd established California's first state-wide banking system. A little local bank in the valley that would have closed in a run after a bad harvest could now keep open by borrowing from the city branch.

He set out to build a nationwide banking system so that distressed areas could be helped by ones that were prospering. Wall St hated him. He beat off their attempts to destroy him. In the Great Depression, he took every opportunity in the New Deal legislation to get California revived in time for the war and the boom that followed.

He did it by putting the community first, himself last. He set up low interest instalment credit plans which enabled thousands to avoid the loan sharks and buy cookers and refrigerators and autos, and he built a whole new electrical industry with his loans.

He financed the Golden Gate bridge, and the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

No man could do so much good without being maligned. It was said he wore the mask of populism to create a dangerous instrument of personal power and personal wealth.

The truth is that the man whose life was money had no interest in money. He refused to take increases in pay and spurned every bonus. He banned insider trading. Shortly after retiring in 1945, when he found himself in danger of becoming a millionaire, he set up a foundation and gave it half his personal fortune.

And the little bank for the ordinary man that he founded?

The Bank of America.

Selfish adults 'damage childhood'

By Mark Easton BBC News Home Editor

The report says children's lives are "more difficult than in the past"

The aggressive pursuit of personal success by adults is now the greatest threat to British children, a major independent report on childhood says.

It calls for a sea-change in social attitudes and policies to counter the damage done to children by society.

Family break-up, unprincipled advertising, too much competition in education and income inequality are mentioned as big contributing factors.

A panel of independent experts carried out the study over three years.

The report, called The Good Childhood Inquiry and commissioned by the Children's Society, concludes that children's lives in Britain have become "more difficult than in the past", adding that "more young people are anxious and troubled".

According to the panel, "excessive individualism" is to blame for many of the problems children face and needs to be replaced by a value system where people seek satisfaction more from helping others rather than pursuing private advantage.

A spokesman for the Department for Children Schools and Families said: "We know there are still risks and challenges ahead for children and parents and that there is more for us all to do".

'Tone deaf'

The inquiry has a long list of recommendations including:

• abolishing SATs tests and league tables in English schools

• a ban on all advertising aimed at the under 12s and no TV commercials for alcohol or unhealthy food before the 9pm watershed

• stopping building on any open space where children play

• a high-quality youth centre for every 5,000 young people

"Individual freedom and self-determination bring many blessings," writes the report's principal author, Labour peer Lord Richard Layard.

"But in Britain... the balance has tilted too far," he says.

Another contributor, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, suggests society has become "tone-deaf to the real requirements of children… in a climate where the mixture of sentimentalism and panic makes discussion of children's issues so difficult".

The panel, made up of 11 experts including eight university professors, says its conclusions are evidence based.

But some of its findings on family life in Britain are bound to be controversial.

Working mothers

It cites research suggesting that three times as many three year olds living with lone parents or a step-parent have behavioural problems compared with those living with married parents.

"Children with separate, single or step parents are 50% more likely to fail at school, have low esteem, be unpopular with other children and have behavioural difficulties, anxiety or depression," it argues.

"Child-rearing is one of the most challenging tasks in life and ideally it requires two people," the report concludes.

It also suggests that having many more working mothers has contributed to the damage done to children.

"Most women now work and their new economic independence contributes to levels of family break-up which are higher in the UK than in any other Western European country."

The panel has a series of recommendations aimed at improving the quality of family life experienced by children:

• a civil birth ceremony conducted by a registrar in which parents publicly accept the responsibilities of parenthood

• free parenting classes available around the time of birth

• free psychological and family support if relationships struggle

• rules making it easier for parents to stay at home to rear their children

Chief Executive of the Children's Society, Bob Reitemeyer, commissioned the research which included more than 30,000 submissions from organisations and children.

"Essentially the report brings a taboo into the open which is that we have to confront our selfish and individualistic culture," he said.

"We need to realise that we are collectively responsible for the welfare of all children and that together we can make childhood better."

The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls, is studying the report.

The report says parents should have free parenting classes

Although government may be sympathetic to some of the inquiry's conclusions, it is unlikely it will implement its radical proposals in the near future.

The government statement said: "The report mirrors the ambitious plan for improving children's lives and outcomes we set out in our Children's Plan, which aims to give every child the best chance in life, and we are pleased that the review acknowledges the positive impact that the Children's Plan is already having on children's lives.

"We know there are still risks and challenges ahead for children and parents and that there is more for us all to do.

"But as the report points out, in many ways our children have never lived so well - children are more educated, less sick, and more tolerant, and the government is working hard to invest, help and support children and their families to make Britain the best place in the world to grow up."

Untouched East Germany flat found

The Soviet bloc state of East Germany existed for about 40 years

A flat apparently untouched since before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has been discovered in the German city of Leipzig, German media report.

An architect who renovates buildings in eastern Germany unlocked the door last week and was shocked to find himself in a veritable East German time warp.

It appears the inhabitant of the humble flat fled in a hurry and shrivelled bread rolls still lay in a string bag.

Grocery brands from the Socialist state filled the kitchen.

"When we opened the door we felt like Howard Carter when he found the grave of Tutankhamun," Mark Aretz told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

"Everything was a mess but it was like a historic treasure trove, a portal into an age long gone."

A wall calendar showed August 1988 and an empty bottle of Vita Cola, Marella margarine, Juwel cigarettes and a bottle of Kristall vodka were in the kitchen.

Plastic crockery and aluminium cutlery completed the picture of a bygone state.

The only foreign product to be found was a West German bottle of deodorant.

A zinc bath stood upright against a wardrobe. There was no toilet in the flat - the occupant had to use a communal one on the landing.

According to Mr Aretz, documents and letters in the flat suggest the occupant was a man aged 24 who was in trouble with the East German authorities, and who left in a hurry some time before the Wall came down in November 1989.

汉字在日本变成“摇钱树”

汉字在日本变成“摇钱树”

（2009-01-25） 符祝慧 东京特派员

　　日本人崇拜汉字文化，每年报考汉字测试的日本人比考英文托福的人多。登记为公益团体的日本汉字检定协会近期却被指如同一棵“摇钱树”，单收考试费就累计高达73亿日元的资金，遭到教育当局调查。

　 　根据报道，在保存汉字文化上，日本汉字检定协会尽心尽力。每年年底，它都会在京都著名的清水寺内，举行汉字投票会，公布那年最热门的汉字，借以反映这一 年来的时局。去年，被挑中的是美国总统奥巴马口中的“变”字，贴切反映了突变的经济，受到外界重视。不过，“变”字在日文的另一意思是“怪”。日前，当日 本教育部清查各公益团体资产时，就为了汉字检定协会保有的73亿日元资金，摇头喊道：“怪”！

　　当局报告，日本报考汉字测试的人数在 2000年为158万，到了2007年增加到272万。协会所收的考试费分不同级别，小学生程度是1500日元，大学以及一般社会人士以上的高级程度收 5000日元。协会则为每个考生支付2000日元费用，除去成本积累了大笔盈余，显示考试这门生意原来是该协会的大金库。

　　有报道指出，日本汉字检定协会成立的宗旨，是为了保存汉字传统，为教育作出贡献，将它列入免税的公益团体没错。不过，这种赚大钱的现象，还是难以叫人信服。

　　日本当局在百般考虑后，终于列出两个或能协助抵消盈利的办法：第一、劝导该协会减低考试费，尽快让财政回归非盈利团体的一般水平。第二、应当加紧考虑将资产用在其他公益事业上，以免成为外界批评对象。

　 　对于这些命令，日本汉字检定协会关系人表示将尽力配合。不过，他也为难地指出：“其实在2004年时，也被教育部当局警告过一次，最后是将考试费从 6000日元降到5000日元，以为这就能解决问题。不过，后来才发现汉字测试越来越有市场，因为人们实在越来越重视汉字。”

　　日本重视汉字，全靠民间发挥力量。电视问答节目，就经常以考汉字为主题。一些日本脑专家上电视指出，多读多写汉字能增强脑力。不过，这些都不外是让日本汉字变成大棵“摇钱树”的原因。

Page last updated at 17:52 GMT, Tuesday, 13 January 2009

Teen killed mother in Halo 3 row

Petric's lawyers argued he was not guilty of murder on insanity grounds

A US teenager killed his mother and wounded his father in revenge after they took away his violent computer game, a judge has ruled.

The defence team for Daniel Petric, 17, had argued his addiction to the Halo 3 game, in which players shoot invading aliens, had made him insane.

But the judge rejected this, saying he had planned revenge for weeks.

Petric, of Ohio, was tried as an adult and faces a maximum possible penalty of life in prison without parole.

On the night of the shooting in October 2007, Petric used his father's key to open a lockbox and remove a 9mm handgun and the game, the court heard.

His father Mark, who was shot in the head and survived, testified that his son came into the room and asked: "Would you guys close your eyes? I have a surprise for you."

He said he expected a pleasant surprise. Then his head went numb from the gunshot.

The Associated Press news agency reports that Microsoft, which owns the intellectual property for the game, declined to comment beyond a statement saying: "We are aware of the situation and it is a tragic case."

Page last updated at 06:22 GMT, Friday, 9 January 2009

Venomous mammal caught on camera

By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

Rare footage of one of the world's most strange and elusive mammals has been captured by scientists.

Large, and with a long, thin snout, the Hispaniolan solenodon resembles an overgrown shrew; it can inject passing prey with a venom-loaded bite.

Little is known about the creature, which is found in the Caribbean, but it is under threat from deforestation, hunting and introduced species.

Researchers say conservation efforts are now needed.

The mammal was filmed in the summer of 2008 during a month-long expedition to the Dominican Republic - one of only two countries where this nocturnal, insect-eating animal (Solenodon paradoxus) can be found (the other is Haiti).

It is an amazing creature - it is one of the most evolutionary distinct mammals in the world Dr Sam Turvey, ZSL

The researchers from the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Ornithological Society of Hispaniola were able to take measurements and DNA from the creature before it was released.

Dr Richard Young, from Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, said: "My colleagues were excited and thrilled when they found it in the trap.

"But despite a month's worth of trapping effort, they only ever caught a single individual."

Specialised teeth

The Hispaniolan solenodon is one of the creatures highlighted by the Zoological Society of London's (ZSL) Edge of Existence programme, which focuses its efforts on conservation plans for animals that are both endangered and evolutionarily distinctive.

Dr Sam Turvey, a ZSL researcher involved with the programme, told BBC News: "It is an amazing creature - it is one of the most evolutionary distinct mammals in the world.

"Along with the other species of solenodon, which is found in Cuba (Solenodon cubanus), it is the only living mammal that can actually inject venom into their prey through specialised teeth.

"The fossil record shows that some other now-extinct mammal groups also had so-called dental venom delivery systems. So this might have been a more general ancient mammalian characteristic that has been lost in most modern mammals, and is only retained in a couple of very ancient lineages."

A population was discovered living in a remote corner of Haiti

Dr Turvey and other scientists working for the Edge programme recently discovered a population of solenodons living in a remote corner of Haiti.

The researcher said that the team was surprised to find them; previously it had been feared that the creatures had become extinct in this country because of extensive deforestation, recently introduced mongoose and dogs, and hunting by humans for food.

He said: "They are still incredibly vulnerable and fragile. So it is really important to get back out there to work how how these animals are surviving."

Conservation efforts are now needed in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the teams believe, but the first step would be to find out more about the animal.

Dr Young said: "We know little about its ecology, its behaviour, its population status, its genetics - and without that knowledge base it is really difficult to design effective conservation."

The research will be undertaken by ZSL's Edge programme, Durrell, the Ornithological Society of Hispaniola, the Audubon Society of Haiti, and the Dominican Republic's National Zoological Park and Agency for Protected Areas and Biodiversity.

Page last updated at 13:15 GMT, Saturday, 27 December 2008

Festive goat up in flames again

Authorities in Gavle had tried to fireproof the goat

A giant straw goat erected each Christmas in a northern Swedish town has been burned down - yet again.

The 13m-high (43ft) animal in Gavle has been torched 23 times since it was first erected in 1966. It has also been hit by a car and had its legs cut off.

The vandals are rarely caught, though in 2001 a 51-year-old American tourist spent 18 days in jail after being convicted of setting it alight.

In 2007, the goat managed to make it through the festive season unscathed.

Goat committee spokeswoman Anna Ostman said she was saddened to learn that this year's unlucky creature had been set on fire early on Saturday morning.

But she said: "We have been so happy that he survived through Christmas Eve, which is the toughest period every year.

"So far this year, people from 105 countries have followed the goat via the webcams and many become really sad when they learn that he's burned down."

The 7m-long (23ft), three tonne goat was originally designed to attract tourists to Gavle, which is 106 miles (170km) north of the Swedish capital.

GOAT HIGHLIGHTS 1966: The first goat is burned down - beginning the tradition 1970: It is set on fire six hours after being erected 1971: Tired of arson, the project is abandoned. Schoolchildren build a miniature. It is smashed to pieces. 1976: A car crashes into the goat 1979: The goat is burned down before it is finished 1987: The goat is treated with fireproofing - but still goes up in smoke

But in its first year it was burned down on New Year's Eve and since then has been attacked regularly.

In 2005, it was torched by two arsonists dressed as Father Christmas and the Gingerbread Man.

Authorities in Gavle have tried to protect the goat using fireproofing chemicals and security guards.

But just 10 of the goats, which are built in the town's central square, have survived beyond Christmas since 1966.

Goats have a special place in Swedish tradition. According to folklore, they delivered festive gifts before Father Christmas took over.