Descriptions of criminals give height, hair and eye colour, complexion, nose chin, mouth and remarks such as previous convictions, tattoos, scars etc. Just a word of warning though, you may find family members accused of crimes you would rather not know about — entries still have the power to shock and disgust even from the distance of time.
Archives New Zealand have an information sheet about these books at. Here is a blog on the subject. John Grenham — Irish Roots. From time to time I get asked why I am addicted to genealogy. I have stuttered and stammered with the effort of trying to put into words the reason for my "wasting of time and money". Recently, though, I had to answer in public, and found myself coming out with some truths. First, I love the endless solving of thousands of small puzzles.
It is literally addictive. The compulsion to go on is continually reinforced, and the fact that no family history can ever be completely finished, that the bigger puzzle can never be solved, just amplifies that compulsion. Lots of fourth cousins twice removed. And like Van, I take an evangelical pleasure in it. As well, of course, as the less pure satisfaction of revenge on records that used to consume days of my life but now take only minutes.
Luverly, luverly heritage databases. Most of all, though, genealogy brings history to life in ways that are endlessly enthralling. To use records properly, you have to try to see them through the eyes of the people who made them, the recorders, as well as the people who are recorded. But it certainly helps. Irish genealogy and heritage.
FamilySearch is a wonderful website. Every time I immerse myself in it I find new developments and new databases. I cannot do my research without consulting the website. I found this article on projected developments for this year. Worldwide interest in online genealogy services and activities will continue to grow solidly in Here are 6 exciting developments to look forward to from FamilySearch in , a global leader in free online family history services.
The more you work on your personal FamilySearch family tree, the more new, applicable content the system will automatically send to you through your dashboard throughout the year. As millions of new historical records are added to FamilySearch weekly, the savvy search engine maps them against your Family Tree. Keep checking back to see what new information it has been dug up on your ancestors. Forgot what you did the last time you visited your tree? Your new dashboard will automatically keep track of the ancestors you are researching each time and create a list that makes it easy to pick up where you left off a few minutes ago or during a previous visit.
Make quick notes in this convenient new feature to help you remember what you want to do on your next visit to your Family Tree. Users will be able to search Ancestry. Imagine being able to search the two largest online sources of family history records from your mobile device! A new descendancy view feature will give users the ability to create notes for specific ancestors, easily see a log of any changes made by others, and download user-contributed memories Memories app.
Multiple windows in the Family Tree app will significantly increase the speed of research from mobile devices. These indexes are the secret ingredient to your ability to discover ancestral connections online quickly and easily. The new feature will enable guests to have fun, large-as-life personal discovery experiences with their family history using the latest technologies. Similar discovery experiences will be implemented in select locations worldwide in , including St. Over FamilySearch digital camera teams worldwide will digitally preserve — million historical records in for free online access.
Over 30 percent of the 2. The digital collections can be located in the FamilySearch catalog online and by perusing collection lists by location. If you are not familiar with all the wonderful free benefits of FamilySearch, create your free account at FamilySearch. Sometimes even experienced researchers need to be reminded that there are reasons why your birth, death or marriage is missing from the Indexes. Therefore, if you can't find your reference, just quietly bang your head against the wall, swear profusely, and move onto another source.
Ranting against the system is energy sapping and worthless particularly if your family have a history of dodging the authorities, sabotaging them or plain telling lies like my "beloved" ancestors and their relatives.
A Catalogue of the Papers of the Cyclists' Touring Club
General Register Office births , marriages and deaths are a fantastic resource covering the entirety of England and Wales between and They not only allow you to discover when and where your ancestors were born, got married and spent their final moments, but also provide you with the information needed to order a copy of an original certificate from the General Register Office of England and Wales.
Despite the fact they are perhaps the most complete source of UK vital records available online, there are a number of reasons why your ancestor may appear to be missing from the registers. Indexes to the civil registers of birth are virtually complete from July onwards. However despite the threat of fines, registration was not wariness of authority, non-compliance and transient family lifestyles, for example made mandatory until Up until then, there was actually under-registration due to a variety of factors including a lack of public awareness of the requirement, indifference,.
An GRO birth register. In addition to this, there is an inevitable small-percentage loss of actually recorded events due to clerical error e. There are also more contemporary hazards — for example, pages inadvertently not microfilmed and, therefore, not digitised for the online versions with which most of us are familiar with these days, and entries that transcribers have mis-indexed.
Estimates of under-registration of birth vary, and perhaps can be exaggerated — the level will always be uncertain and unknowable. In the very earliest years, to maybe the mids, comparing the civil registers with parish registers reveals that some entries in the latter do not appear in the former. The reverse is also true of course, because the parish registers of the established church by their very nature exclude Catholics, Non-Conformists, Jews and others.
For certain districts, one sometimes also notices an unusually high number of entries indexed as 'male' or 'female' in the civil births i. Don't forget to consider these, just in case they don't necessarily denote an infant death.
A Catalogue of the Papers of the Cyclists' Touring Club
There are other reasons why you might not be able to find the birth: Ireland, Scotland, or Isle of Man ; they may have been registered under a variant of the name you have; they may have been born illegitimately and their birth registered under the mother's name; or they may have been born legitimately, lost their father to premature death and taken the surname of a step-father after a remarriage of their mother; or they may have been informally fostered and taken the name of the family in whose care he was placed.
Thousands of genealogy books are available to you right now. You can search for them and, if you find some that look interesting, you can be reading them within minutes. There is no waiting for the post office to deliver them. Best of all is the price: As you may have guessed, these are out-of-copyright books printed prior to plus a handful of later books. Luckily, there were a lot of genealogy books published in those days.
In addition, I will list sources for many newer genealogy books that are for sale at modest prices. Perhaps the best-kept secret about ebooks for genealogists: More than 80, digital genealogy books! This new website enables genealogists for the first time to have free, easy, and precise searching of family history books.
Thousands of family history books and magazines are available to be searched directly from multiple websites. But searching through these websites and combing through the jumble of information they return can be a frustrating, costly, and fruitless process. Genealogy Gophers has the most easily searched and retrieved family history books on the Web. Search tools based on artificial intelligence algorithms significantly increase the chances of finding relevant search term matches compared to typical word search engines. Relevant pages and books can be downloaded for free from the GenGophers.
Results include the publication name and a snippet from the page showing the highlighted search terms. Click on the URL shown and you will then see the entire book within a few seconds. The two versions are otherwise identical. Genealogy Gophers may be found at: Other free sources of ebooks. Family History Library from FamilySearch more than 80, digitized genealogy and family history publications from the archives of some of the most important family history libraries in the world: Dozens of free online ebooks dealing with Canadian genealogy may be found by starting at http: British History Online is a digital library of primary and secondary sources on medieval and modern history of Great Britain.
It was created and is managed, as a cooperative venture by the Institute of Historical Research , the University of London and the History of Parliament Trust. Sources of ebooks available for purchase. Genealogical Publishing Company has a new online catalog of ebooks at http: Archive CD Books Canada: The Internet Archive and Google Books. The Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
Nobody knows how many genealogy and local history books are available in the Internet Archive but obviously it is huge number. You can check it out at: Google Books with thousands of free ebooks, genealogy and almost every other imaginable topic at http: Of course, there are the two long-time commercial book sellers: Both companies sell ebooks and printed books alike. This book explores the background scene to the Profumo scandal that occurred over 50 years ago.
To those who are too young to remember or for that matter too confused to remember or plain forgotten Jack Profumo was War Minister in Macmillan's Conservative Government who was "caught" having sex with Chris tine Keeler who was having sex with a Soviet spy. The muck-raking English press did a thorough job of over exposing the affair which resulted in the government falling.
Before he enters the saga of the scandal, the author explores Macmillan, his life, beliefs and his machinations to arrive at the job of Prime Minister. He describes the arrogance of the Upper Class and their expectations of their right to rule, even though they were blatantly not capable of exercising that rule. The medical "industry" is thoroughly exposed as was the antics of the "good time girls" and prostitutes. The landlords, land developers and other such "get rich quick" men are exposed and the newspaper industry, especially its "shock and horror headlines, explored before the individual players of the scandal actually "did the dirty deed".
Sex, drugs, class, celebrities, race, chequebook journalism and the criminal underworld - the Profumo scandal had it all. The value of the book is the description of post-war English society and what was wrong with it. The book, when it gets into the actual scandal itself, is not as interesting. This is another scene-setting book for the eventually masterpiece you should be writing very soon. This is a big book of over pages of New Zealand history written from a female point of view.
It tells of the various battles that women have fought over the years to achieve the rights they have now. I was amazed at how women, on their marriage, lost the ownership of any property they had owned before this marriage. They lost all control and did not have any right to vote. They could not divorce easily. If they separated from their spouse they still lost their land and possessions. They were basically chattels of their husbands. To avoid this some women, including Maori, did not marry. This book explores the process of how universal suffrage and parliamentary representation was achieved.
It includes the other momentous milestones that had major influences on female life such as contraception, employment, education and sexual orientation and many more. The history of Maori women is explored as well as their pakeha counterparts. This is a wonderful book and is a must include in your library of NZ history. It is not in a format of being very "educated" and thus is a very readable book.
It also adds to the social background of the times and thus adds background to your impending family history. By Julia Baird, Kindle edition available from Amazon. The book is engaging and well written, even though it is a serious work of authoritative history with almost as many pages of notes as there are of primary text. Victoria was perhaps the perfect queen for her times, a transition from the days when the royalty had real power to their current purely constitutional role.
Victoria meddled in affairs of state, appointing generals and dismissing prime ministers in ways that would be unthinkable for the current queen, yet her circumscribed power made her far from the autocrat of previous generations of royalty, or of other European royalty of the time.
The TV series presents a picture of Victoria and her times consistent with this book, presumably one of its sources. The TV series and this book go well together, I look forward to seeing their visualisation of the rest of her life. Shared by findmypast Ireland. If your organisation is not a group subscriber then there will be a charge for advertising events and services, which must be paid for before publication. Like everyone else we need funds to help keep FamNet going. Fees are very minimal. If your organisation paid a yearly subscription you can have all the advertising you want all year round in the Group News section.
Your group could be anywhere in the world, not just in New Zealand. The editor will continue to exercise discretion for free events. If you have problems with this page you can email us directly but the page is self-explanatory. Feel free to redistribute this newsletter. When he makes a reference to Bury St Edmunds Tesco car park - typically, he finds a song thrush there, singing beneath a sodium light - or to a mobile phone, it brings you up short. But it's not that Deakin's thoughts were turned towards the past, simply that he has a different perspective on life to almost anyone else.
On hearing an item on Radio 4 about I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here - 'someone called Phil Tufnell had eaten five plates of "creepy-crawlies"' - Deakin's reaction is to lament the fact that shows like this 'treat nature as a threat - compounding the couch-potato problem by actively alienating nature'. If this sounds a little po-faced, Deakin is far from being a solemn companion. He can be very funny at times and as sharp-eyed about his own foibles as he is about everything else. On one occasion he and a friend, Rob, go off to Dorset to try to trace the setting of Geoffrey Household's classic thriller, Rogue Male - one of Deakin's favourite books.
They camp for the night and cook a meal. Deakin has been extremely well served by his editors, Alison Hastie and Terence Blacker, who have given his notes a loose structure, grouping them into diary form so that they cover the course of a single year.
Some of the final entries must, I suspect, have been written shortly before he died of a brain tumour, aged Although there is no mention of imminent death here, there's an awareness throughout of the transience of life - of both its fragility and its surprising power to endure. One day, buried beneath an old compost heap, Deakin finds a length of chain that he had used 20 years earlier as a goat tether. In a way, Deakin's books are archaeological finds too - full of unexpected treasures and destined, one hopes, to be discovered anew by generations to come.
Get the best at Telegraph Puzzles. A collection of the best contributions and reports from the Telegraph focussing on the key events, decisions and moments in Churchill's life. As a humble viewer, I was able to detect no questions were put or offered concerning the deliberations in the jury room - and any conversations outside the jury room were contrary to the judge's express instructions; Raphael pointed up more than once in his script that he was aware of the legal restrictions; and, of course, the matter was one of great public interest.
The challenge for the College is to make sure that our journalists are aware of the way in which the law is applied in cases like this - and don't draw the wrong conclusions. It would be wrong, for example, to conclude from this Panorama special that interviewing jurors was now fine in all cases. The Panorama decision also illustrates another truth about the application of the law - and another challenge for the College. In very few cases where there's a legal risk is the decision to cut or broadcast a clear one.
Almost always, the editorial team has to make its decision based on the balance of risk - and since most defamation cases, for example, are settled out of court, there are often too few similar precedents to be a clear and unequivocal guide. In the end, though, it is always should be an editorial decision informed by precise legal advice. The College can do two things; provide the knowledge that no journalist should lack through online and face-to-face courses; and second, to provide awareness of important cases and decisions. In the end, though, the most important lesson is that all cases are different and there is no substitute for detailed, specialist advice.
Newsnight presenter Gavin Esler pays tribute to veteran reporter Charles Wheeler. As you'll know, this week's news has been dominated by one story - when will Tony Blair step down - so given the fact that the outcome of this row will have a bearing on when the country will get a new prime minister following almost ten years under Mr Blair, we thought our listeners would like the opportunity to share their views with others on The World Tonight's Listener Debate. Much to my surprise - given the response to phone-ins and appeals for texts on other BBC networks - the response was negligible.
Our listeners don't seem remotely engaged by the goings on at the top of the government. Our presenter, Robin Lustig expressed his surprise in his weekly newsletter today. All or none of these may be the reasons listeners who have responded in huge numbers to debates - on the crisis in the Middle East, civil liberties issues, and climate change among other subjects - are left unmoved by what most journalists think is the most important and interesting political story to come along in some time. Is it because politics is less interesting and important to people than it used to be, or is it the way we report what's going on that fails to engage people?
Since the end of the Cold War, politics in liberal democracies has appeared to have become more of a competition over who can manage the system best, rather than a struggle between competing ideologies with different visions of how societies should be organised. It seems that many voters think it matters less which party governs and this could account for the fall in the number of people who exercise their right to vote and are actively interested in politics. The evidence in favour of this is that single issue politics can still galvanise people to join organisations and demonstrations, over such things as fair trade and globalisation, or the war in Iraq.
And when there is a real ideological choice, such as in the last French presidential election when voters had to choose between Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front and Jacques Chirac, the electorate turned out in high numbers to vote against Le Pen. Journalists are essentially telling a story and like a good narrative, and drama and tension make for that. So there is a tendency to present politics as a conflict between personalities - which as we have seen this past week are undoubtedly important - as much as an argument over policies.
The downside of this is that there's a danger we gloss over the complexities and nuances. Some listeners tell us all politics is a soap opera - which it isn't always. So are we reporting politics as a soap opera, and does that account for the lack of engagement? There are two problems with having your programme attacked by Martin Bell. One is that he's a distinguished former BBC foreign correspondent , so the defence of muttering "what would he know about news programmes anyway" is unavailable.
The other is that he is a pre-eminent prose stylist whose polemics are laced with cutting phrases - in this case describing the Six O'clock News as a "parody of something between Down Your Way and Nationwide". His ire had been raised by our decision to send Natasha Kaplinsky out for a week to places ranging from Dorset to Glasgow to present a series of segments on social change under the banner "The Changing Face of Britain" - you can watch some of the reports by clicking here. He took up his pen after watching the first, in which we went to Christchurch in Dorset, the town with the most elderly population in Britain, to report on what might be the future for many other parts of the country.
The segment contained a report from Richard Bilton, a piece by Natasha looking at what the town was like decades ago and an interview with the 71 year old Mayor of the town about what it was like to live there. Now I would be the first to admit that this wasn't the strongest of the five stories we covered in Six on Tour - and if I'm honest the interview with the Mayor was a bit too local in content - but there is a more general point that Martin Bell was making.
Should we be out in this way - sending a presenter to cover the growing elderly population or the exodus of young people from Wales, Polish immigrants doing the jobs Asians used to do in the Midlands, town dwellers moving to the country, and Glasgow's record in dealing with asylum seekers as we did on the other days in this way, when there are people dying in Afghanistan, Iraq and, on Monday, a British tourist shot in Jordan. Of course we did cover events in the Middle East well ahead of Six on Tour.
But his question remains valid - why did we devote eight minutes a night to being on the road like this? There are a number of answers I would give. Principal among them I would say that the issues we covered were important and that they sometimes get lost in among the more urgent daily stories. But we did have a wider purpose than that - to get our programme out among some of the audiences we serve to report on things that were happening locally, but had some greater national resonance. Our reporters and Natasha also appeared in the local newspapers and on local media, providing more potential viewers with a reminder of the service we offer.
And our overnight research showed that our report on the elderly was the programme item people most wanted to know more about. As a man with a full BBC career behind him, who looks set to continue using his talents for many years to come, I might have hoped Martin Bell himself would have agreed with that.
There's always been a debate about what is and isn't acceptable on TV news programmes, and now that we have blogs, forums and podcasts it's only getting more complicated. And should Newsnight's on-line persona be exactly the same as that on TV? Here are a few of this week's posers. By today's standards that's hardly obscene and I'm sure the minor in question had heard, and probably said, much worse, but I must admit I spluttered into my cocoa watching at home.
On the other hand, when I used the term "crap prizes" in a response on this blog , I was surprised that some viewers thought that was inappropriate language for the editor of Newsnight, even in an obscure corner of the blogosphere. In short, I don't know. On Newsnight, we censor nothing that appears on the site, but we do employ an outside moderating company who check for, among other things, "profane, abusive or threatening language" full guidelines here.
So, in response to a question about graffiti scrawled on his abandoned car , the foul-mouthed Justin's strictly factual response was barred from publication. I'm not going to repeat it here, but it begins with "w". Yesterday on the website, we asked you - as a diverting pastime while we waited for Mr Blair - to construct a statement which might get the PM off the hook. About hundred of you obliged, but one bridled: Then again - as some of you have also raised - the standard of spelling and grammar among viewers' contributions to the blog is sometimes pretty appalling.
Not what we would expect from Newsnight viewers. Tony Blair portrayed as Christ at the Last Supper as an illustration of that memo. One of our own programme editors thought that was appalling. This week while we hacks have been revelling in one of the most dramatic political stories in years a vocal section of our audience has taken a different view. Even on Radio Four, where listeners normally have a high threshold for political news, there have been complaints. Here's an eloquent example:. This sort of view demonstrates an unusual dissonance between the journalists and some of those they serve.
Normally when listeners complain, whether you agree or disagree with the complaint, you can understand why they are doing it. On this story journalists in the PM office just look puzzled and bemused when confronted by such views. For us it's an utterly compelling piece of political drama.
It's the battle over who is going to be in charge of the country played out on the airwaves. Some say we should concentrate on policies, but policies are less relevant if the person putting them forward will not be in a position to carry them out. So overall I think it's ridiculous to suggest we are all too obsessed. It's also wrong to say it's only a story inside the 'Westminster bubble'.
I visited a friend in the Cotswolds this week and was struck how even the sheep seemed to be worried about the prime minster's future. If you listen carefully they are definitely saying 'Blair' The pronunciation we recommend, based on various published sources, is err-ith-roh-POY-uh-tin. My colleague John Clayton at Radio Lancashire did that; Tony Livesey, the former editor of the Daily Sport, has been presenting the Breakfast show there very successfully for the last 15 months.
Watch his debut performance here. What really sells him as a sports presenter though is his love of sport, a genuine fan who congratulates himself on being Burnley FCs fourth most famous supporter. Freddie Flintoff got on famously with him, one football manager was happy to natter away at a bus stop while he waited for the team coach.
Tony is quietly spoken, self-deprecating, desperate to learn and terminally scruffy. I may have to introduce him to a razor though. Michael Parkinson calls for more intelligent women to be given plum jobs on TV. There was a feeding frenzy in the Westminster newsroom yesterday. Jon's distinguished career has taken him to Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo and all sorts of other hotspots. But he's never experienced anything quite like this.
So he reached down to the back of his drawer, only to discover that - horror of horrors — his prized bar had been nibbled almost to nothing. Feeding frenzy or what…. Little Milly had even chewed his earpiece! His producer wanted him on air decoding the work of the Downing Street postman. But Jon wasn't having any of that; he wanted immediate action from Millbank's Chief Mouse-catcher me.
This was perhaps the wackiest moment of a wacky day. Yesterday was the antidote to all those worries. It became clear for all to see that really serious stuff is going on, mostly behind closed doors, but occasionally bursting out like a lanced boil. So memo to self: But back to the important business of the day - Milly the mouse escaped. Jon Devitt and his colleagues up the end of the newsroom want a date NOW for his departure from Millbank. The mouse is silently defiant: Who will win in this titanic struggle?
The trial of a man charged with carrying out the car-bombing in that town in had been due to start today. Click for a guide to our phonetic pronunciations PDF. When you invite print journalists to an advance viewing of a film, you're not really expecting a round of applause. On the other hand you don't anticipate the programme being roundly abused. The programme is a meticulous and thorough re-examination of the evidence that convicted Barry George - the oddball who police and prosecution believe was responsible for the appalling murder of our colleague.
It wasn't an easy film for the BBC to commission, but Raph and producer Kristin Hadland have come up with many new and pertinent facts that could affect the safety of the conviction. Notably a new forensic report suggests the 'firearms discharge residue' particle found in Barry George's pocket in all probability comes from a source other than a gun and doesn't connect Barry George to the crime; and new evidence that the jury ignored some of the judge's instructions by discussing aspects of the case in their hotel when some of the jury members were not present.
This, and a host of other new facts contained in the programme, will be forwarded to the Criminal Cases Review Commission by Barry George's defence team - who believe this should lead to the case being referred back to the Court of Appeal. By and large the assembled hacks weren't interested and, despite the evidence to the contrary, claimed there was nothing new in the film. Again this simply wasn't true. The film doesn't duck the fact that he was an oddball, a threat to women, with convictions for indecent assault and attempted rape and that he had an interest in guns.
So the pack then took the line that Raphael was an inappropriate person to investigate this story. It's no secret that Raphael was himself a victim of a miscarriage of justice - serving 12 years before his own conviction was overturned at the Court of Appeal. Raphael explained how his own experience had given him a special interest in the criminal justice system, but this didn't mean he compromised the BBC's normal standards of accuracy and impartiality.
But looking at some of today's newspaper coverage he might as well have whistled in the wind: You'll have to judge for yourself who's right and wrong. For my part I think Raphael, Kristin and the rest of the team have produced a valuable piece of work. At no point do they claim that Barry George is definitely innocent - simply that the jury did not hear all the relevant evidence. If they had, who can say for sure they would have reached the same verdict. In America, the Labor Day holiday has been and gone, marking the end of the summer.
According to the etiquette of a bygone era, white shoes and gloves should no longer be worn in polite society until next May. Serious campaigning starts now for the November 7 mid-term elections. His current ratings are near rock-bottom, so canny Republicans are wary of close association and Democrats scent blood. A close fight is in prospect. Although I may eat my words when, as November approaches, we find ourselves neck deep in campaign ads, shrill political lobbying and the braying tones of an American political campaign in full flow. I may find a new attraction for weather stories.
As you may have read elsewhere on this blog , my colleague Adrian Brown wrote about the World Tonight's staging of a war crimes trial over the recent conflict in Lebanon last Friday. Both the Israelis and Hezbollah had been accused of breaking humanitarian law by senior UN officials and the respected pressure group, Human Rights Watch. We asked our listeners to be the jury and send us their verdict, and we announced the verdict last Friday; a little more than half say the Israeli Defence Force committed war crimes and just under half say Hezbollah are also guilty.
But the debate goes on and the e-mails are still coming in - though the proportions have not altered substantially. It was an experiment, and although we, the BBC, were not making the cases - we left that to the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth - we did get some criticism for it. But the level and quality of the defence mounted on the programme and the e-mails we have received since, I think, made it - on balance - a successful experiment.
The case of the Stornaway schoolgirl Molly Campbell highlighted discussion about "arranged marriages" and "forced marriages". There are very important differences between the two; they are not alternatives. Arranged marriages have a long and successful history in this country and elsewhere.
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I am sure I read figures that suggested the divorce rate among couples whose marriage had been arranged by a third party usually their families was lower than those of couples who fended for themselves, so to speak. Forced marriages are completely different. By their very nature they involve compulsion of at least one - if not both - of the people involved as well physical threats and intimidation. They could well be the subject of serious criminal charges, such as rape.
The story of why Molly Campbell left Scotland with her father to go to Pakistan has raised a number of difficult issues about the way we have covered it - and led to a number of discussions at our editorial meetings. Initially, the story seemed pretty clear: Her emotional mother and grandmother - and the police - asking for her return and some of her family raising the fear of an arranged marriage.
This latter line was picked up heavily by many parts of the media. It became apparent the next day that the story was quite different and more complicated than that. I think we now feel that we probably didn't show enough sophistication in covering the story on the first day. We accepted on face value the words of Molly's mother and her grandmother. However, I don't think in hindsight that we should necessarily have accepted this so readily and we should have tried to find out more about the father and the family as the day went on.
I also think that is particularly the case in that some of the suggestions reinforced some stereotypes.
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As more facts came out over the next couple of days, we have strived to be as fair and accurate as we can in reflecting all sides. We carried the press conference by Molly and her father - indicating that it was Molly's wish to go to Pakistan. We have interviewed friends of the father before that to put his point of view. Hopefully we have now given the best all-round picture we can of a complicated and sad story. One other point that has arisen is the personal nature of some of the comments made at the press conference today by Molly's brother about members of his family.
As the story was unfolding, we carried this press conference live on News As sometimes happens, live events can turn up unexpected and unfortunate comments.
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin - review
His words underlined how difficult it is for us to tread the line of reporting stories of wide public interest when they could trespass on private family emotions. It is something we try to avoid as far as is possible - and we won't be repeating the personal comments or re-running those parts of the press conference on News Putting Israel on trial for war crimes is not something one does lightly.
But that's what The World Tonight decided to do last week. Not Israel alone, mind you. Hezbollah was in the dock too - both of them for allegedly committing war crimes during the recent Lebanon conflict. And I should clarify, we were simply hosting the trial. This was not the BBC putting either side on trial.
We left that to Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch whose organisation had recently released a detailed report accusing both sides of committing war crimes. Defending Israel was Daniel Reisner, a former legal advisor to the Israeli army. Friday's presenter Paul Moss was judge. Our listeners were the jury. You can hear the debate here.
To keep order in court we allowed Roth two minutes to make the case against each defendant who then had two minutes each to offer a defence against the "charges". Roth then cross-examined both defendants. To end we gave each of the participants a final say. It was a fascinating contest which thanks to Ken Roth's surgical cross examination really cut to the core issues of what is, and is not, legally permissible in times of war. A stunt or useful contribution to the BBC's coverage of the conflict? Judging by the torrent of e-mails we received, I'd say this was a resounding success.
Here's a typical response:. It was refreshing to see both points argued sensibly and logically. In my opinion, both sides are guilty of war crimes. Using the device of the court hearing opened up the debate in ways that a straightforward interview wouldn't. Thanks also to the time constraints imposed there was real drama as Roth's prosecution demolished in large parts both defendants' cases. The jury is still out as the e-mails continue to come in, though there are currently marginally more who think Israel is guilty than Hezbollah.
Our listeners' final verdict will be announced on tonight's programme. The L in the article 'al' turns into an S before the first letter of the surname which is a so-called sun letter. Was it Susan Watts' investigation into stem cell treatments? Many anxious viewers suffering from MS and other incurable conditions contacted us after that one, but there were just a couple of press calls.
Was it our series on the best public services in the world , which this week featured the revolution in education in Qatar, where the female teachers wear the full veil? No, although you can read about the series in this week's New Statesman and next Monday in the Daily Mirror. The interview was about the parlous state of the NHS's computer systems involving the troubled company iSoft. It was a good story, but it wasn't that which interested the press pack. As she spoke a woman wove casually past in the background, as people often do in newsroom shots.
She was carrying a full tray of teas. Balanced on her head. The press office phones went mad. Who was the mysterious woman with the deft tea-tray skills? I rang our colleagues at Radio Sheffield who told me she's the lady who tidies up the office in the evenings. She's been getting the teas in like this for years. No-one there bats an eyelid. So, for all those inquisitive hacks out there I can reveal that our head-carrying heroine is Nana Amoatin, originally from Ghana. Another diary item on the 'Newsnight tray carrier'. For the latest updates across BBC blogs, visit the Blogs homepage.
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This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Were we having a laugh? Comments Share this page. Pandering to the audience? When News 24 ran some pictures of a bunch of admittedly very cute baby pandas which you can watch by clicking here , this is what happened: Earthquake - one year on Comments Share this page.
One of our biggest stories in recent times was the earthquake in South Asia last year. Ten-nil Comments Share this page. Bush telegraph Comments Share this page. Post question Comments Share this page. The kids' verdict on Gordon Comments Share this page. I'll let you know the outcome later. Next week we're interviewing David Cameron, so we'll put him to the test too.
Cover stories Comments Share this page.
Newswatch Comments Share this page. Breakfast to go Comments Share this page. I'd be very interested to know what people of think of it. Smelling the coffee Comments Share this page. A number of listeners were quick to remind us on e-mail of the damage we were risking: Hoping for the best Comments Share this page. Phones, letters, e-mails Comments Share this page. We received these three e-mails, among thousands of others: Whilst saddened by news of Richard Hammond's accident, I must implore you; please please don't give in to the rantings of those people who would have us beleive it's immoral to drive cars, race cars, drink beer, fly aircraft, strive for new records.
It is feats of derring do of this sort which define humanity, and sure, sometimes things go wrong. That is no reason to stop trying. I for one don't want some bleeding heart liberal to wrap me in cotton wool. I really do think there's more news than Richard Hammond, but listening to the BBC this morning three days after it has happened you wouldnt think so! Why so over the top about someone doing something willingly that went wrong?
I didnt even know his name before three days ago and I imagine many other people didn't. Final preparations Comments Share this page. Who ate my lunch? Thai censorship Comments Share this page. This is the text of the statement read out: Kraisorn Pornsutee, the permanent secretary, asked the media representatives to cancel the show of SMS comments of audience on TVs as well as cancelling phone-in comments on radio programmes.
Those attending the meeting were representatives of state firms, website operators, mobile phone operators, print and electronic media. The meeting took place at Kraisorn also asked the website operators to monitor comments on their webboard to screen out provocative comments. Confession time Comments Share this page. Lembit Opik says he's complained after a Radio Five Live interview.
A day at the World Service Comments Share this page. This morning at our main editorial meeting we thought we could configure our day like this: Expect the Panorama football bunging story to make it to the lead as soon as the embargo is lifted, and keep an eye out for New York and the UN general assembly. Ahmadinajad is speaking, so is George Bush. Very World Service you might say, but in the present climate very relevant, and most topical. Our diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus is at the UN, poised to engage in some fascinating discourse analysis - interpret every word, every pregnant pause, and keep reading between the lines.
But it's not that straightforward. The world is a fascinating place and all is well in the World Service news department. Giving the mic Comments Share this page. In the event, we got very little flak for airing the reports - this is the closest it came to condemnation While I agree that it is important to be able to debate how far any rights can go in terms of the whole community, it would help to start from a basis of respect, which was missing from the beginning in your discussion.
Please do not talk about people as "the disabled". The sting in the tale Comments Share this page. Just kidding Comments Share this page. We also received this e-mail: Why hasn't there been a mention of the England team's win in Portugal in fishing? Fishing is the number one sport in the UK, Team England is the best in the world, yet you don't give it a mention.
I wish the BBC would develop a radio news programme possibly aimed more at women , which does not involve attacking interviewees, and continual and repeated references to Islam, terrorism, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, etc but which provides news, weather, and general items of interest. There is nothing between 6.