Tiny fossils reveal inner secrets

Last Updated: Friday, 13 October 2006, 17:51 GMT 18:51 UK

Tiny fossils reveal inner secrets

By Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter, BBC News

In pictures

The exact moment when a 550-million-year-old cell began to divide has been captured in an exquisite 3D image.

The picture is one of a series taken by researchers examining ancient fossil embryos from Guizhou Province, China.

The specimens, described in the journal Science, are the oldest known examples of fossil embryos, and shed light on the early evolution of complex life.

Scientists used an advanced X-ray technique to peer inside the balls of cells to reveal the structures inside.

"We have been able to tease apart every structure, geological or biological," said Professor Phil Donoghue of the University of Bristol in the UK and one of the team which worked on the 162 pristine specimens.

Digital probe

The tiny fossils are part of South China's Doushantuo Formation, a limestone bed deposited between 635 and 551 million years ago that contains layers composed almost entirely of fossil embryos.

The team behind the research believes the fossils are the developing offspring of extremely primitive sponge-like creatures.

It is amazing that such delicate biological structures can be preserved in such an ancient deposit Shuhai Xiao Virginia Tech Ancient life in China rock

To resolve the delicate internal structures, the scientists used a technique known as microfocus x-ray computed tomography (microCT). The method allowed the team to construct 3D images of the tiny fossils.

Computer software was then used to analyse individual cells.

"We digitally extracted each cell from the embryos and then looked inside the cells," said Shuhai Xiao of Virginia Tech University in the US.

Inside, the team found kidney-shaped structures that it believes could be nuclei or other subcellular components.

"It is amazing that such delicate biological structures can be preserved in such an ancient deposit," said Professor Xiao.

In some four-celled embryos, each cell had two of the kidney-shaped structures, suggesting they were caught in the process of splitting prior to cell division.

Explosion of life

Although the bed is packed full of the tiny fossils, the team has been unable to find any adult specimens.

Previous research has suggested that the embryos were the product of complex animals, the ancestors of modern organisms.

Theory holds that complex life "exploded" after the Cambrian

If true, this would suggest that complex multi-cellular life got started much earlier than previously thought, prior to the "Cambrian Explosion" 542 million years ago.

At this time, fossils record a dramatic change in animal diversity with many of today's modern groups suddenly making an appearance.

Some researchers believe that the Cambrian Explosion marked the emergence of modern animal life. Although complex animals had started evolving before 542 million years ago, their development accelerated at this point.

Others maintain that complex animals lived long before this event and that the period just marks a time of exceptional fossil preservation.

The Doushantuo Formation is important because it gives a window into the time leading up to the Cambrian and the new analysis goes some way towards resolving the dispute.

Unique insights

Using the microCT technique to analyse late-stage embryos, with up to 1,000 cells, the team was able to gain insights into the creature that produced them.

This work provides a constraint on when advanced groups evolved, Phil Donoghue University of Bristol Embryos delight scientists

Although the cells show some modern traits, they crucially lack others.

"Even in these late-stage embryos, there is no evidence of the formation of a tissue layer," said Dr Donoghue.

"You would expect to see that in modern embryos, even those of sponges."

The team believes the cells probably came from extremely simple creatures.

"They would have developed into sponge-like creatures, but more primitive," said Dr Donoghue.

If right, this means that the Cambrian Explosion theory for the origin of complex animal life would still stand.

"This work provides a constraint on when advanced groups evolved," Dr Donoghue said.

Balkan heartbreak a hit in Berlin

Last Updated: Wednesday, 24 October 2007, 12:47 GMT 13:47 UK
Balkan heartbreak a hit in Berlin

One woman donated her wedding dress to the exhibition

A travelling exhibition devoted to the theme of failed relationships is proving a hit in Berlin.

The Museum of Broken Relationships asks people in the cities it visits to donate mementos of everything from short flings to painful divorces.

Originating in Croatia, the show has visited Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia and has amassed more than 300 exhibits.

Berliners have donated more than 30 objects, including a wedding dress and an axe used to break an ex's furniture.

Zvonimir Dobrovic is organising the Berlin show in the Tacheles arts centre, a former squat in the heart of the city.

"It's such a nice, simple idea, because everyone can relate to it," he told the BBC News website.

I left on a scorching summer's day - I thought going on foot or taking a tram would be incredibly stupid - so I got on the bike

"It's not pretentious, it's interactive, a place where people can present their own stories and compare them to others."

Members of the public are asked to give or donate an object, along with a short description of what it means to them, the time of the relationship, and where they are from.

"Even if the objects seem ordinary the stories are very individual and they make the exhibition come alive," Mr Dobrovic said.

"People really enjoy being here, we get couples who spend a long time here, looking and laughing and hoping it never happens to them, and then people who've just broken up who want to tell us their stories," he added.

Cathartic effect

The idea was born when two Zagreb artists, Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic, split up and wanted to do something creative with the pain they were feeling.

"The exhibition comes from a sincere, universal experience and helped us in our break-up process", Ms Vistica told the BBC News website.

Some of the objects donated are ordinary, some more unusual

The artists decided to collect the objects left over from their relationship and put them on display and asked their friends to do the same.

Ms Vistica says the exhibition can have a therapeutic effect.

"The normal impulse is to destroy the mementos of a relationship in order to recover, but we thought of using creativity to overcome the pain of the experience and also remember the joy those objects once held for us," she said.

The cathartic effect is evident in some of the descriptions accompanying the objects.

One woman donated an axe and described chopping up the furniture of her cheating female lover.

"The more her room filled up with chopped up furniture, the more I started to feel better. Two weeks after she was kicked out she came to take the furniture. It was neatly arranged into small heaps and fragments of wood."

After Berlin the exhibition travels to Belgrade, Skopje and Stockholm and there are plans for possible shows in Tokyo, New York and Sao Paulo.

Students to be given own minister

Last Updated: Wednesday, 17 October 2007, 23:12 GMT 00:12 UK
Students to be given own minister

Students are to have an independent forum to air their views

Students in England are to have their own government minister and a national forum to influence university policy.

Lord Triesman will be the first "minister for students" - with specific responsibility to speak up for higher education students.

There will also be an independent National Student Forum which will advise ministers on student issues.

"Student juries" will be convened in five locations before Christmas to inform its work.

There are 2.3 million students in the UK - and the latest figures from the university admissions service published this week showed a further rise in numbers entering higher education.

Consumer students

Lord Triesman, a former head of the AUT lecturers' union, will be responsible for establishing a dialogue with students about their experience of higher education.

The Universities Secretary, John Denham, says it would put "students' voices at the heart of government".

The newly-designated minister will also have to engage with students as consumers - with increasing pressure from fee-paying students to make sure that university courses are value for money.

Student welfare officers have reported a growing trend for students to see themselves as customers - threatening legal action if they feel that universities are failing to deliver adequate courses.

The announcements have been welcomed by the National Union of Students.

"For far too long students have been out in the cold when it comes to decisions about their futures," says union president, Gemma Tumelty.

"We're delighted that the government is willing to listen to the voice of the learner in its approach to education."

Should it be Burma or Myanmar?

Last Updated: Wednesday, 26 September 2007, 11:21 GMT 12:21 UK
Should it be Burma or Myanmar?

WHO, WHAT, WHY? The Magazine answers...

'Burma' to the pro-democracy camp

Protest marches in Burma have entered a ninth day. But why is the country not known in the UK by its official name, Myanmar?

The eyes of the world's media are focused on Rangoon, where tensions are rising in the streets, yet news organisations and nations differ in what they call the country.

The ruling military junta changed its name from Burma to Myanmar in 1989, a year after thousands were killed in the suppression of a popular uprising. Rangoon also became Yangon.

THE ANSWER It's known as Myanmar in many countries and at the UN But the UK doesn't recognise the legitimacy of the regime that changed the name

The Adaptation of Expression Law also introduced English language names for other towns, some of which were not ethnically Burmese.

The change was recognised by the United Nations, and by countries such as France and Japan, but not by the United States and the UK.

A statement by the Foreign Office says: "Burma's democracy movement prefers the form 'Burma' because they do not accept the legitimacy of the unelected military regime to change the official name of the country. Internationally, both names are recognised."

It's general practice at the BBC to refer to the country as Burma, and the BBC News website says this is because most of its audience is familiar with that name rather than Myanmar. The same goes for Rangoon, people in general are more familiar with this name than Yangon.

But look in a Lonely Planet guidebook to Asia and the country can be found listed after Mongolia, not Brunei. The Rough Guide does not cover Burma at all, because the pro-democracy movement has called for a tourism boycott.

HOW IS MYANMAR PRONOUNCED? There are various ways 'My' may be 'mee' as in 'street' or 'my' as in 'cry' And stress can be on the first, second or third syllable How to say 'Myanmar'

So does the choice of Burma or Myanmar indicate a particular political position?

Mark Farmener, of Burma Campaign UK, says: "Often you can tell where someone's sympathies lie if they use Burma or Myanmar. Myanmar is a kind of indicator of countries that are soft on the regime.

"But really it's not important. Who cares what people call the country? It's the human rights abuses that matter.

"There's not a really strong call from the democracy movement saying you should not call it Myanmar, they just challenge the legitimacy of the regime. It's probable it will carry on being called Myanmar after the regime is gone."

Colloquial name

The two words mean the same thing and one is derived from the other. Burmah, as it was spelt in the 19th Century, is a local corruption of the word Myanmar.

They have both been used within Burma for a long time, says anthropologist Gustaaf Houtman, who has written extensively about Burmese politics.

WHO, WHAT, WHY? A regular part of the BBC News Magazine, Who, What, Why? aims to answer some of the questions behind the headlines

"There's a formal term which is Myanmar and the informal, everyday term which is Burma. Myanmar is the literary form, which is ceremonial and official and reeks of government. [The name change] is a form of censorship."

If Burmese people are writing for publication, they use 'Myanmar', but speaking they use 'Burma', he says.

This reflects the regime's attempt to impose the notion that literary language is master, Mr Houtman says, but there is definitely a political background to it.

Richard Coates, a linguist at the University of Western England, says adopting the traditional, formal name is an attempt by the junta to break from the colonial past.

The UN uses Myanmar, presumably deferring to the idea that its members can call themselves what they wish Richard Coates, Linguist

"Local opposition groups do not accept that, and presumably prefer to use the 'old' colloquial name, at least until they have a government with popular legitimacy. Governments that agree with this stance still call the country Burma.

"The UN uses Myanmar, presumably deferring to the idea that its members can call themselves what they wish, provided the decision is recorded in UN proceedings. There are hosts of papers detailing such changes. I think the EU uses Burma/Myanmar."

Other countries to rename themselves like this include Iran (formerly Persia), Burkina Faso (Upper Volta) and Cambodia (Kampuchea).

"They've substituted a local name for an internationally acknowledged one for essentially nationalistic and historical reasons."

Vatican archive yields Templar secrets

Last Updated: Monday, 15 October 2007, 10:53 GMT 11:53 UK
Vatican archive yields Templar secrets

By David Willey BBC News, Rome

The Knights Templar were disbanded in the 14th Century

The Knights Templar, a military order of the Roman Catholic Church, are back in the news again, almost 700 years after they were suppressed by papal edict.

They were originally formed to protect Christians in the Holy Land during the early Crusades.

The Templars are the stuff of legend, and their exploits have provided the plots for many films and popular novels.

The Knights, who wore a distinctive white mantle decorated with a red cross, became very wealthy, owned property all over Europe and the Middle East, and started up a primitive international banking system.

They caused deep controversy, even in their own time. They helped to finance wars waged by several European monarchs.

Some believe the Templars were the custodians of the fabled Holy Grail.

Disentangling fact and fiction about them is difficult.

In France, a Grand Master of the Order and other knights were burned alive by order of King Philip IV, after the Order was accused of heresy, blasphemy and sexual misconduct.

Faithful reproduction

Now the Vatican has decided to shed some new light on this often obscure period of late medieval history.

To the delight not only of scholars but also of Templar buffs around the world, who have been captivated by Dan Brown's stories, they are publishing facsimile reproductions of the original account in Latin of the investigation and trial into the alleged misdeeds of the Knights Templar. It took place in Rome between 1307 and 1312.

The document, known as the Chinon parchment, shows that Pope Clement V found the Templars not guilty of heresy, but guilty of other lesser infractions of Church law. Nonetheless he ordered the disbandment of the order.

The Vatican's Secret Archives, one of the world's great repositories of historical documents, is selling a limited edition of 800 numbered copies of the Chinon parchment.

It is printed on synthetic parchment, comes complete with a reproduction of the original papal wax seal, and is packaged in a soft leather case together with a scholarly commentary.

Each copy will cost just over 5,900 euros ($8,000; £3,925).

Lucky find

Rosy Fontana, spokesperson for Scrinium, the publishing and merchandising company handling the sale, says one copy will go to Pope Benedict XVI while most of the remaining 799 copies of this luxury limited edition have already been reserved by libraries and collectors around the world.

Scrinium has already published two other digitally mastered and hand-finished collections of colour reproductions of precious documents from the Secret Archives.

The Chinon parchment was recently rediscovered by Barbara Frale, a Vatican historian who works in the Secret Archives.

She says she stumbled across the document in a box containing other papers five years ago, having been lost for centuries after it was wrongly catalogued.

The document is half a metre (20 inches) wide by two metres long - the size of a small dining table.

According to Ms Frale, one of the accusations against the Templars was that they practised blasphemous initiation rites such as spitting upon the cross.

They justified this, according to the document, by claiming this was part of a ritual of obedience in preparation for possible capture by Muslim armies.

King's secrets

Both the Vatican's Secret Archives, and its adjoining Library (at present closed to scholars while it undergoes restoration) are housed in Renaissance buildings not far from the Sistine Chapel.

Together, the two collections of books, manuscripts, and letters cover tens of kilometres of shelf space, much of it underground for security reasons and to protect the archive against fire.

The official archives of the Holy See were systematically organised for the first time only in the 17th Century.

In the early days of the Church, popes did preserve manuscripts concerning their reign. But the fragility of papyrus documents used before the invention of paper, and the frequent changes of residence of popes before the 11th Century, means that most of the earliest Church archives have been lost.

Among other treasures from the Archive, sometimes shown to VIP visitors, are letters from King Henry VIII of England to Anne Boleyn, his future wife, stolen from London by a Vatican spy to provide evidence of the King's disloyalty to Rome. There is also correspondence between Lucrezia Borgia and her father Pope Alexander VI.

There are no immediate plans for the publication of any of these unique documents.

Look of fear sparks fast reaction

Last Updated: Sunday, 14 October 2007, 04:56 GMT 05:56 UK

Look of fear sparks fast reaction

Individuals respond most quickly to a fearful expression

A look of horror will grab the attention of those around you faster than a smile, US research shows.

Individuals react more quickly to a fearful expression than to faces showing other emotions such as joy, a study in the journal Emotion found.

Researchers from Vanderbilt University found the same speedy reaction to fear when only the eyes were visible.

It is thought the brain has evolved to react more quickly to potentially threatening situations

The brain responds very quickly to all facial expressions - at a speed of less than 40 milliseconds.

So to assess if certain emotions prompt a faster reaction, the researchers had to slow down the speed at which volunteers became aware of facial expressions.

A happy face prompted the slowest reaction time

Volunteers looked through a viewer which flashed a black and white, quick-changing pattern to one eye and a static image of a face to the other eye.

The flashing image had the effect of slowing down the speed at which the individual noticed the face.

Quick response

Participants became aware of a fearful expression far faster than a neutral or happy face.

Reaction to happy faces was consistently slower than for the other expressions looked at.

The fast reaction to fear was the same if the whole face was visible or just the eyes.

It is thought an area of the brain called the amygdala can process simple visual signals bypassing the normal visual processing pathway.

Dr David Zald, associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee said: "We believe that the brain can detect certain cues even before we are aware of them, so that we can direct our attention to potentially threatening situations in our environment."

Neutral expressions also produced slower responses than fear

He added there was other evidence showing the eyes were an important part of the picture.

"Fearful eyes are a particular shape, where you get more of the whites of the eye showing.

"That may be the sort of simple feature that the amygdala can pick up on, because it's only getting a fairly crude representation."

He added that the brain may react to happy faces slowly because they signal safety and do not require immediate attention.

The team are now planning to do a similar study to look at the response to anger.

Dr Bahador Bahrami, associate researcher in the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in London said the findings were very interesting but not unexpected.

"It's quite well accepted that fearful faces have a special significance.

"And other imaging studies have shown the brain responds more strongly to fear, so this is consistent with that finding."

Goodbye, cruel world -- have fun without us

Goodbye, cruel world -- have fun without us
A look at a post-human world is interesting trivia,but the bigger issue remains: Who cares?

Reviewed By Michael Grunwald | Washington Post Book World
September 9, 2007

If human beings vanished from the Earth, our ceramic pottery and bronze statues would last much longer than our wood-frame houses. New York's subways would be flooded within days; Lexington Avenue would be a river within decades.

Head lice would go extinct, and predators would make short work of our doggies, but a lot of endangered fish and birds and trees would flourish in our absence. We endangered them, after all.

A diligent and intelligent science writer named Alan Weisman discovered all this while investigating what would happen to this planet if people suddenly disappeared. Now he has converted his thought experiment for Discover magazine into a deeply reported book called The World Without Us, and it's full of interesting facts. For example:

The European starling spread like avian kudzu after some Shakespeare buff introduced every bird mentioned by the Bard into Central Park.

The demilitarized (and therefore depopulated) zones of Korea and Cyprus have become undeclared wildlife sanctuaries; so have Chernobyl and abandoned forests in New England and Belarus.

Almost every ounce of plastic that ever has been manufactured still lurks somewhere in our environment.

And radio waves are forever, so extraterrestrials at the edge of the universe might be able to watch I Love Lucy reruns billions of years after we're gone.

Who knew?

Also: Who cares?

Ultimately, The World Without Us is trivia masquerading as wisdom. By journeying around the world to interview biologists and paleontologists, engineers and curators, Zapara elders and Masai ecoguides, Weisman has done a remarkably thorough job of answering a question that doesn't particularly matter.

Imagining the human footprint on a post-human planet might be fun for dormitory potheads who have already settled the questions of God's existence and Fergie's hotness, but it's not clear why the rest of us need this level of documentary evidence.

When Weisman does make larger points, they are achingly familiar. Yes, man is doing foolishly destructive things -- such as warming the climate with carbon and tearing the peaks off mountains and littering the oceans with plastics -- that will have long-term consequences for the Earth. This no longer qualifies as news.

And, yes, nature and the Earth are resilient, while man and his works -- with exceptions such as Mount Rushmore, the caves of Cappadocia, and Styrofoam -- are fleeting. And though Weisman is an admirable reporter, his prose -- always lucid, sometimes elegant -- has an irritating look-ma-I'm-writing quality.

This is how he describes one guy he meets: "His olive features bespeak Sicily; his voice is pure urban New Jersey." I think he's bespeaking of an "Italian-American." It's not an exotic species around Jersey.

For all its existential ruminations, this is basically an environmental book, an imaginative effort to make us think about our impact on the Earth. It reminds us: This is a nice Earth! It's going to be around for millions of years, and we're not, so let's stop littering it with nuclear reactors and plastic bags that will leave toxic messes long after we're gone!

But as Weisman demonstrates, the Earth will do just fine without us. It's an excellent healer, and time -- especially geologic time -- is an even better one.

Actually, there's a much more compelling reason for us to stop despoiling the Earth and depleting its resources: If we don't, we might create that world without us. As Jared Diamond has shown, unsustainable civilizations tend to collapse; as countless environmental writers have shown, our gas-guzzling, water-wasting, plastic-producing civilization is not sustainable. This is an issue of policy and morality, not just theory.

Weisman knows this, but he believes that people don't like to hear about environmental destruction in those apocalyptic terms. It's too scary. He describes his ruminations as a nonthreatening effort to change hearts and minds through indirection. If we imagine the world without us -- even though Weisman makes it sound as if the world could be better off without us -- we might start taking care of it.

At one of those depressingly apocalyptic environmental conferences, I recently heard a speaker give the best argument I've ever heard for saving the Earth: "It's the only planet we know of that has chocolate." There probably wouldn't be chocolate in a world without us.

And even if there were, it wouldn't do us much good.

Games violence study is launched

Last Updated: Tuesday, 9 October 2007, 00:22 GMT 01:22 UK
Games violence study is launched

All games in the UK are regulated

The government is asking for evidence for a new study of the effect of violent computer games on children.

Psychologist Tanya Byron will head the study, which will also examine how to protect children from online material.

The review is due to be launched by Dr Byron - together with Schools Secretary Ed Balls and Culture Secretary James Purnell - at a school in east London.

The games industry's association Elspa said it would co-operate - but it was too often blamed for society's ills.

Paul Jackson, of Elspa (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers' Association), said the body had already met with Dr Byron and would work with the government on the review.

We are very responsible and keen to ensure that our products are only played by those who they are designed for Paul Jackson, Elspa

But he said the industry was "too often blamed for everything from obesity to youth violence".

He said: "It is just not true and it's not appropriate."

He added: "We feel quite positively about this review. It's clear the review is about making sure parents are properly informed about what their youngsters are playing and what they are accessing on the internet."

Dr Byron told BBC News 24: "The study will be about what industry is doing already to protect children and what more could be done to ensure they have a positive experience on the internet and with games."

'Singled out'

Veteran developer David Braben, of Frontier games, asked why games were being singled out.

"A review might be useful but it should not just look at one media, especially when media are intersecting," he said.

He added: "Historically there has always been in government a Luddite sentiment - whatever the new industry is tends to take the blame of the latest ailment of society.

"We do tend to be the people who get the blame first at the moment. And that is a tragedy - because this industry is one of the most interesting media."

Philip Oliver, chief executive of Blitz games, said more education was needed for parents.

"They aren't paying attention to the certificates. That is partly because they don't understand them and have a distorted image of games - that either they are harmless or totally evil."

The review is launched a day after the British Board of Film Classification refused a certificate for Manhunt 2 for a second time.

Mr Oliver said the decision was proof "the system is working".

According to Elspa, only 2% of games released in the UK receive an 18 certificate and the average age of a gamer is 28.

'Higher standards'

Mr Jackson said: "We are a very important British industry. We are very responsible and keen to ensure that our products are only played by those who they are designed for."

Margaret Robertson, a video games consultant and former editor of Edge magazine, said the industry felt it was doing as much as it could.

"The games industry is holding itself to higher standards than the film industry. This is a solved problem.

"Allowing that, everyone is united in not wanting material for older gamers to get into the hands of children."

She added: "This report may start finding some wider ways to do that."

Burmese exiles in desperate conditions

Last Updated: Saturday, 29 September 2007, 18:29 GMT 19:29 UK

Burmese exiles in desperate conditions

By Mark Dummett BBC News, Dhaka

The Tal camp is not much more than a swamp. It is the squalid home of about 8,000 refugees - the victims of the Burmese military.

They are Muslims, and of the Rohingya minority.

In total as many as 200,000 have settled in Bangladesh, to escape persecution, over the past 20 years. They have been keenly following events in their home country, hoping that military rule will crumble, and that they can soon restart their lives.

They are unwelcome guests here, so they do not receive any support from the Bangladeshi government.

When the sun shines, we get burnt - when it rains, we all get wet Toyaba Haq, mother of seven

They get barely enough food to eat from scavenging in the forest, begging, prostitution or doing the most menial of work in the nearest town.

Their flimsy houses are squeezed onto a 30m-wide strip of land and mangroves, between a busy road and the Naf River, which separates the most southerly tip of Bangladesh and Burma's Arakan state.

The residents say that already this year 20 children have been knocked down by passing vehicles, and at high tide each day the camp floods.

During the rainy season and when cyclones strike the area, everyone suffers.

"When the sun shines, we get burnt. When it rains, we all get wet. There is not even a spare bit of land for us to sit down, and our houses are so cramped," said Toyaba Haq, a mother of seven.

Necessary exile

Conditions are absolutely appalling, but everyone in the camp agrees they are better off here than in Burma.

"The government is torturing the Muslim community," said Dudu Miah, a health care worker. "It steals our lands to build military camps, it takes our men for forced labour, it refuses us education."

"We need to get permission to marry or even have children," he said. "This is the third time I have come to Bangladesh as a refugee, and my life is totally ruined. I just want to live in my Arakan, my Burma."

Not much information about the demonstrations is now reaching the camp, even though Burma is just the other side of the river.

Tal camp is home to around 8,000 refugees

Some say that the Burmese military has stepped up patrols along the border to prevent any protest leaders, or news, crossing into Bangladesh.

They have not been entirely successful, and snippets of information indicate that the protest movement had spread to even small towns in Arakan before the army stepped in.

Exiles say that Muslims had joined protests led by Buddhist monks, but there is no way of confirming any of this information.

Mohammed Salim, who feeds his family of eight by carrying mud on building sites, listens to the BBC Burmese Service on his shortwave radio to find out what he can.

"We all support these demonstrations, the monks, and Aung Sang San Suu Kyi. We want the military to go, so we can go home," he said.

But Toyaba Haq is not at all hopeful. "There is no peace in this world," she said. "There is just strife, strife, strife, and I want it to stop."