Month: November 2019

The beauty of Hillary Clinton’s new book title, What Happened, is it can be interpreted in so many ways.

Perhaps it’s a definitive account of the 2016 presidential election. “Here’s what happened”.

Maybe it’s an exclamation, like someone reacting to an unexpectedly loud noise (or an electoral earthquake). “Yikes! What happened!?”

Then again, it could be a stern mom, who just walked in on the mess her children (the voters) made in the living room. “Whaaaaat happened …”

Or is she the dazed boxer, picking herself up off the canvas after getting knocked out by a surprise punch from her opponent.

“Wha-, wha-, what happened???”

It’s up to readers to decide for themselves, but in Mrs Clinton’s recent interviews and in her book, which was formally released on Tuesday, she offers plenty of explanations from which to choose.

Here’s a list of just some of the factors to blame for the fact that she’s hitting book stores across the country, while Donald Trump is redecorating the Oval Office.

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James Comey

“If not for the dramatic intervention of the FBI director in the final days we would have won the White House.”

This isn’t the first time Mrs Clinton has said the former FBI director – who wrote a letter informing Congress that he had reopened the investigation into the handling of classified material on Mrs Clinton’s personal email server as secretary of state – is the main culprit behind her defeat.

In her book, Mrs Clinton calls the use of that server a “dumb mistake”, but the resulting scandal was “even dumber”. And in Mrs Clinton’s eyes, Mr Comey’s blame for the matter extends to his public announcement that he would not bring charges against Mrs Clinton, despite the fact that she had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified material.

“I don’t know quite what audience he was playing to, other than maybe some right-wing commentators, right-wing members of Congress, whatever,” Mrs Clinton said of Mr Comey’s press conference in July 2016.

Did it matter? Heading into the election home stretch, Mrs Clinton appeared to have all the momentum. Mr Trump was reeling after the decade-old Access Hollywood tape revealed he had boasted of making unwanted sexual advances. Then Comey’s letter happened, and for nearly a week the story dominated the media, casting a cloud over Mrs Clinton and giving Mr Trump room to win back his Republican base. In a race as close as this one turned out to be, it was likely enough to tip the balance to the Republican.

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Vladimir Putin

“I never imagined that he would have the audacity to launch a massive covert attack against our own democracy, right under our noses – and that he’d get away with it.”

Although few knew it at the time, there was mounting evidence over the course of the 2016 election that Russia was attempting to influence the outcome.

Through hacking of Democratic Party emails and state electoral databases, social media advert purchases and bots, and the proliferation of political propaganda, the US intelligence community has concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin was attempting to put his finger on the electoral scale in favour of the Republican.

Mrs Clinton, needless to say, is not amused. What’s more, she is convinced that members of the Trump team colluded with Russia to help get the Republican nominee elected.

“There certainly was communication and there certainly was an understanding of some sort,” she said in an interview with USA Today.

Did it matter? If what we know Russia did is all that Russia actually did, then it almost certainly wasn’t enough to hand Mr Trump the election (although it is, and should be, a major cause for concern going forward). Mrs Clinton compares Russian influence to the equivalent of a major outside political action committee contributing to a candidate. Of course, the Democrat had plenty of those kind of organisations at her disposal – and vastly outspent her opponent – and she still lost.

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Barack Obama

“I do wonder sometimes about what would have happened if President Obama had made a televised address to the nation in the fall of 2016 warning that our democracy was under attack. Maybe more Americans would have woken up to the threat in time. “

According to media reports, part of the reason why the nation didn’t know about the evidence implicating Russia in election meddling until after the election is because President Barack Obama wouldn’t go public unless he had the support of Republicans in Congress.

Without that support, the president kept quiet – concerned that any action he took would be viewed as being done for partisan benefit.

Mrs Clinton has plenty of words for Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as well, who she said shamefully put partisanship ahead of national security.

“McConnell knew better,” she writes, “but he did it anyway.”

Did it matter? During the campaign Mrs Clinton tried to make the case that Mr Trump was a Russian “puppet”, who took too soft a stand against Mr Putin’s aggressive foreign policy. “You’re the puppet,” was the Republican’s famous debate-night retort. Americans largely shrugged it all off, but perhaps the attacks would have stuck if it had been clear that Russia’s machinations reached well beyond Ukraine.

What went wrong for Hillary Clinton?

Democrats struggle to find a message

The dark depths of hatred for Hillary Clinton

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The media

“Many in the political media … can’t bear to face their own role in helping elect Trump, from providing him free airtime to giving my emails three times more coverage than all the issues affecting people’s lives combined.”

It’s no secret that Mrs Clinton isn’t happy about the way the media covered the presidential race. She singles out the New York Times, in particular, which she accuses of “shoddy reporting” about her use of a private email server and over-hyping Mr Comey’s election-eve letter announcing the FBI was reopening its investigation.

“The Times was by no means been the only – or even the worst – offender,” she writes, “but its treatment has stung the most.”

Did it matter? Mr Trump was an unconventional candidate who garnered an unprecedented amount of media attention – and ratings. His regular disregard for political norms, his seeming invulnerability to scandals that would sink typical politicians meant reporters were hard-pressed to cover the race in the traditional both-sides-get-their-say manner. Mrs Clinton may complain that the media weren’t being fair, but Mr Trump was playing by a different set of rules.

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Image copyright Getty Images

Bernie Sanders (and his supporters)

“His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.”

Mrs Clinton still has a bone to pick with her Democratic primary opponent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, as well.

She writes that he impugned her character, made unrealistic promises that put her in the position of being a wet-blanket realist and did little to confront those in his movement who were launching “ugly and more than a little sexist” attacks on her supporters.

Mrs Clinton also points out that Mr Sanders is not a member of the Democratic Party and, consequently, may not always have the party’s best interests in mind.

“I am proud to be a Democrat, and I wish Bernie were, too,” she writes.

Did it matter? According to several post-election surveys, as many as 12% of Sanders supporters ended up voting for Mr Trump. If they had opted for Mrs Clinton, that would have been more than enough to put her over the top in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – and give her the White House. Then again, the percentage of cross-party voting in 2016 wasn’t unusual compared to historical norms.

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Jill Stein

“There were more than enough Stein voters to swing the result, just like Ralph Nader did in Florida and New Hampshire in 2000.”

The last time a presidential candidate won the popular vote but lost the election thanks to the state-by-state idiosyncrasies of the Electoral College was in 2000, when Republican George W Bush beat Democrat Al Gore.

This historical quirk was clearly in Mrs Clinton’s mind as she wrote this book, as she draws a comparison between Mr Nader’s Green Party campaign and Jill Stein’s in 2016.

The 2000 gap between Mr Bush and Mr Gore in Florida was 537 votes, so just a fraction of the 97,488 votes Mr Nader received in that state would have tipped the election to the Democrat.

Did it matter? In 2016 Ms Stein received 1,457,216 votes, the first time since 2000 that the Green Party had topped the million mark. Put Ms Stein’s Pennsylvanian, Wisconsin and Michigan voters in Mrs Clinton’s column, and the Democrat wins. Given that Ms Stein didn’t have much visibility during the election cycle, however, her performance probably was more a reflection of dissatisfaction with Ms Clinton, than anything the Green Party candidate did or didn’t do.

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Sexism

“This has to be said. Sexism and misogyny played a role in the 2016 presidential election. Exhibit A is that the flagrantly sexist candidate won.”

Mrs Clinton was the first woman to be a major party presidential nominee. At key moments – such as when she locked up the nomination during the primaries and when she gave her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention – she explicitly acknowledged this fact. Other times, she downplayed it.

The groundbreaking nature of her campaign, however, was always in the background. On election day, women put flowers on the graves of famous leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, in anticipation of a historic night to come.

That, of course, didn’t happen – and, in Mrs Clinton’s view, her gender was an obstacle she had to overcome.

“I started the campaign knowing that I would have to work extra hard to make women and men feel comfortable with the idea of a woman president,” she said during a CBS interview. “It doesn’t fit into the stereotypes we all carry around in our head. And a lot of the sexism and the misogyny was in service of these attitudes. Like, you know, ‘We really don’t want a woman commander in chief’.”

Did it matter? The thing about historic firsts is that there is no standard by which to judge them. Mrs Clinton had remarkably high negative ratings for a modern presidential nominee (as did Mr Trump). Was this because of her gender or an aspect of her personality that some voters found off-putting? “What makes me such a lightning rod for fury?” Mrs Clinton writes. “I’m really asking. I’m at a loss.” Until there’s another female nominee (or more), it will be difficult to know for certain.

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White resentment

“He was quite successful in referencing a nostalgia that would give hope, comfort, settle grievances, for millions of people who were upset about gains that were made by others … millions of white people.”

Image copyright Getty Images

Mrs Clinton has plenty of criticism of Mr Trump in her book, from his naivete to his sexism to his dangerous and ill-conceived policies. During her interview with CBS, however, the former Democratic nominee was particularly blunt about what she viewed as the explicit attempts by the Trump campaign to stoke racial resentment among white working-class voters.

Her critique picks up on a particularly testy exchange between Trump and Clinton campaign aides in a post-election forum, where Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri said Mr Trump gave a platform to white supremacists and that she would “rather lose than win the way you guys did”.

Did it matter? Whether you call it playing to racial grievances or giving hope to socially and economically anxious voters, there’s no question that Mr Trump had a message that resonated with many members of the white working-class.

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Hillary Clinton

“You can blame the data, blame the message, blame anything you want – but I was the candidate. It was my campaign. Those were my decisions.”

Political analyst Mark Shields likes to note that in few professions is failure on such prominent display as in the world of politics. If the average Joe doesn’t get a promotion, the local paper won’t devote entire articles to what character flaw or personal mistake is to blame.

“Politicians boldly risk public rejection of the kind that the rest of us will go to any lengths to avoid,” he writes.

Image copyright Getty Images

Any attempt by Mrs Clinton to explain “what happened” in 2016 was going to be ripe for criticism. Is she talking out too much? Or not enough? Why is she blaming other people? Will she devote 300 pages to delving into why people just don’t seem to connect with her?

Although Mrs Clinton in her book is liberal with apportioning responsibility for her defeat, she sets aside plenty of space to point the finger at herself.

She calls her labelling of a certain segment of Mr Trump’s base as being in a “basket of deplorables” as a “political gift” to her opponent. She says she deeply regrets her remarks about how government policies were going to put coal workers “out of business”, even if she insists they were taken out of context.

She laments that she was unable to connect with the anger and resentment that many Americans felt after the financial crash in 2008.

Most of all, she says she understands that something just didn’t click between her and many US voters.

“I have come to terms with the fact that a lot of people – millions and millions of people – decided they just didn’t like me,” she writes. “Imagine what that feels like,”

Did it matter? Mrs Clinton has written her book and stated her case that, despite any personal flaws, it was a perfect political storm that dashed her presidential dreams. In the end, history will be the judge.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has found that Tesla’s Autopilot system was partly to blame for a fatal accident in which a Model S collided with a lorry.

Federal investigators say Tesla “lacked understanding” of the semi-autonomous Autopilot’s limitations.

The NTSB recommended that car manufacturers and regulators take steps to ensure such systems are not misused.

It said the collision should never have happened.

The crash, in May 2016, led to the death of Tesla driver Joshua Brown, 40. The driver of the truck, which was pulling a trailer, was unhurt.

“In this crash, Tesla’s system worked as designed, but it was designed to perform limited tasks in a limited range of environments,” Christopher Hart, a member of the NTSB said in a meeting to discuss the findings of its investigation.

“Tesla allowed the driver to use the system outside of the environment for which it was designed, and the system gave far more leeway to the driver to divert his attention to something other than driving.”

Semi-autonomous driving

In June, the NTSB released a 500-page report stating that in 37 minutes of driving, Mr Brown had his hands on the wheel for just 25 seconds.

At the time, the lorry driver told the Associated Press that Mr Brown had been watching a Harry Potter film when the collision occurred.

However, the NTSB said today that there was no evidence that Mr Brown was watching a film while he was driving.

The safety board added that the lorry driver refused to be interviewed for its investigation.

Primary factors

The NTSB found that both Mr Brown and the lorry driver had sufficient sight distance to afford time for either party to have acted to prevent the collision.

The investigation found that Mr Brown’s inattention and the lorry driver’s unwillingness to give way were both primary factors of the crash.

The investigators could not find a reason why Mr Brown was inattentive.

However, they confirmed that neither driver was fatigued or impaired by alcohol and drugs, and neither driver was distracted by a mobile device.

Following the meeting, the NTSB’s report included seven safety recommendations requiring car manufacturers to add safeguards to prevent automated vehicle control systems from being used outside the conditions for which they were designed.

“At Tesla, the safety of our customers comes first, and one thing is very clear: Autopilot significantly increases safety, as NHTSA has found that it reduces accident rates by 40%,” the car-maker said in a statement.

“We appreciate the NTSB’s analysis of last year’s tragic accident and we will evaluate their recommendations as we continue to evolve our technology.

“We will also continue to be extremely clear with current and potential customers that Autopilot is not a fully self-driving technology and drivers need to remain attentive at all times.”

Police in India have reopened the case of a 10-year-old girl after forensic tests revealed that her baby’s DNA samples did not match those of her uncle who is charged with raping her.

After the Supreme Court denied her permission to abort, she gave birth to a baby girl last month.

The 10-year-old was not aware of her pregnancy. She was told her bulge was because she had a stone in her stomach.

She alleges she was raped several times in the past seven months by the uncle.

The accused, who is in his 40s, was arrested and is being tried in a special court dealing with crimes against children. He is in prison and has made no statement so far.

The BBC’s Geeta Pandey in Delhi says the result of the DNA test has now led to questions over whether the girl was abused by others.

The girl’s father had earlier told the BBC that the accused had not denied the charges against him. Police said the uncle had admitted to the allegations, our correspondent reports.

“So far no-one had thought of any other possibility. The girl had testified to the court on video conferencing and in her statement, she had very clearly named the uncle and revealed facts about her abuse,” an official involved with the investigation told the BBC on Wednesday.

The girl’s mother has reportedly told the investigators that they do not suspect anyone else, so the case has taken a very strange turn, the official added.

On Tuesday, police and counsellors visited the family again to speak to the 10-year-old.

A senior police official told BBC Punjabi that they would ask for a re-check of the forensic tests to ensure there had been no error in the DNA report.

• The pregnant child caught in a media storm
• No abortion for 10-year-old rape victim

Her pregnancy was discovered in mid-July when she complained of stomach ache and her parents took her to hospital.

A local court in Chandigarh turned down the abortion plea on the grounds that she was too far into her pregnancy after a doctors’ panel advised that termination of the pregnancy would be “too risky”. Later, the Supreme Court also refused to allow an abortion for her on similar grounds.

As her family refused to have anything to do with the newborn, the baby is in the care of child welfare personnel and will be put up for adoption.

The landmark case dominated global headlines for weeks, with officials saying they had never heard of a mother so young giving birth in an Indian hospital.

Indian law does not allow terminations after 20 weeks unless doctors certify that the mother’s life is in danger.

But in recent years, the courts have received several petitions, many from child rape survivors, seeking to terminate pregnancies after 20 weeks. In most cases, these pregnancies are discovered late because the children themselves are not aware of their condition.

Last Friday, a 13-year-old girl who was 32 weeks pregnant gave birth to a baby boy after the court allowed her to terminate her pregnancy. The infant died two days later.

In May, a similar case was reported from the northern state of Haryana where a 10-year-old, allegedly raped by her stepfather, was allowed to abort. She was about 20 weeks pregnant, doctors said.

None of the girls can be named for legal reasons.

The scale of abuse in India

• A child under 16 is raped every 155 minutes, a child under 10 every 13 hours
• More than 10,000 children were raped in 2015
• 240 million women living in India were married before they turned 18
• 53.22% of children who participated in a government study reported some form of sexual abuse
• 50% of abusers are known to the child or are “persons in trust and care-givers”

Grenfell: Fire chief calls for sprinklers in all council high-rises

At least 80 people died when fire spread through Grenfell Tower, in west London, in June. Now London’s fire commissioner has said the disaster must mark a “turning point” in safety standards. Dany Cotton is calling for sprinklers to be fitted in all high-rise council flats.

They’ve been compulsory in new-build high-rises over 30 metres tall since 2007, but the stipulation doesn’t apply to older buildings, like Grenfell, which was built in 1974. “I support retrofitting – for me, where you can save one life, then it’s worth doing,” said Ms Cotton. “This can’t be optional. It can’t be a nice to have. This is something that must happen.”

The government said public safety was “paramount” and promised to look at all recommendations made by the independent review of building regulations and fire safety that it has commissioned.

What’s causing homelessness to rise?

The number of households living in temporary accommodation has risen by more than 60% since 2010/11, according to the National Audit Office – the public spending watchdog. It’s accused the government of having a “light-touch approach” to the problem of homelessness and it argues that reforms to the local housing allowance are “likely to have contributed”.

Welfare reforms announced in 2015 included a four-year freeze to housing benefit, which came in last year. The government said tackling homelessness was a “complex issue” and that it was working to “restore fairness” to the system and provide a “strong safety net” for the most vulnerable in society.

Storm Aileen hits UK

Parts of England and Wales will experience winds of up to 75mph (121km/h) as Storm Aileen hits. Gusts have already reached 69mph on the Isle of Wight and 60mph on the Welsh coast. But Met Office chief forecaster Frank Saunders said the winds should pass “swiftly from west to east”. Meanwhile, a yellow weather warning for rain is in place for parts of Northern Ireland, northern England and southern Scotland – with up to 1.6ins (40mm) of rain expected to fall within six to nine hours.

Boris Johnson to visit Irma victims

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is due to arrive in the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla later to survey the damage caused last week by Hurricane Irma. About 1,000 UK soldiers are now in the region to deliver aid, and officials say more personnel and supplies are due in the next few days. The UK and other European governments have faced criticism that they have not done enough to help hurricane victims – which they have denied.

Analysis: Is school uniform over-priced?

By BBC Reality Check

Clothing and shoes for young children have been charged a zero rate of VAT since the introduction of the tax on 1 April 1973. The problem is that there is no definition of the term “young children” in VAT law. Instead, the VAT relief is based on the maximum size an average child will be on their 14th birthday. So clothes for older children, as well as many children under the age of 14 who are larger than the average figures, are taxed at 20%. And this includes school uniform.

Read the full article

What the papers say

There’s a mixed reaction to the government’s decision to stop the 1% pay cap for police and prison officers. The Financial Times says it ends “one of the most divisive austerity measures imposed by the Conservative-led government”, but the Guardian focuses on what it calls “derision” from Labour and unions, some of whom are threatening strike action in demand for higher wage increases and for the pay cap to be removed across the public sector. Elsewhere, the Daily Mirror reports that the NHS is facing a “huge ‘flu crisis” this winter. And The Daily Star headlines on Storm Aileen, calling it a “killer 75mph hurricane”.

Daily digest

Pregnancy antibiotics More women to get treatment for potentially deadly Group B Strep infection

Attitudes survey More than a quarter of British people hold at least one anti-Semitic view, study finds

Blame list All the people Clinton holds responsible for losing election to Trump

iPhone X It costs £999, but is it worth it?

If you see one thing today

Café culture: Meet the regulars

If you listen to one thing today

How do we describe food flavours?

If you read one thing today

Image copyright iQIYI

Hip hop takes centre stage in China

Today’s lookahead

09:30 The Office for National Statistics publishes the latest UK unemployment statistics, for the three months to July.

10:30 The shortlist of six authors for the Man Booker 2017 prize is announced.

12:00 The funeral of former Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor takes place at Westminster Cathedral.

On this day

2001 Iain Duncan Smith becomes Conservative leader, beating Ken Clarke in a ballot of party members.

The “wind is back in Europe’s sails”, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said in his annual state of the union address.

He told the European Parliament there was a “window of opportunity” to build a stronger, more united union – but it “wouldn’t stay open forever”.

Mr Juncker said Europe’s economy was “bouncing back” and the EU had to move beyond Brexit.

He called for the union to embrace reforms and forge new trade deals.

• UK will soon regret Brexit – Juncker

Last year, the EU was “battered and bruised by a year that shook our very foundation”, Mr Juncker said – facing the challenges of Brexit, the migrant crisis and the rise of populism.

In his speech of more than an hour, during which he switched from English to French to German, Mr Juncker said member states “chose unity” and the union was “slowly but surely gathering momentum”.

‘Brexit isn’t everything’

Addressing the UK on its decision to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, he said that “we will always regret this” and, departing from his script, he added “and I think you will regret it soon, too”. “We will move on because Brexit isn’t everything. It isn’t the future of Europe – it’s not the be all and end all.”

He called for a summit in Romania on 30 March 2019 for decisions to be taken on a “more united, stronger and democratic Europe”.

The state of the union address gives the Commission’s president a chance to outline the political objectives of the EU executive for the immediate future and announce new policies.

Juncker’s speech: as it happened

Mr Juncker looked forward to a European Union beyond Brexit where membership of the banking union, eurozone and the Schengen border-free zone would be standard.

On trade, Mr Juncker hailed recent deals with Canada and Japan, and said deals with Mexico and South America were in the pipeline.

Trade talks should open with Australia and New Zealand, he said, and be completed by late 2019. But he said there had to be reciprocity in trade deals: “We have to get as much as we give.”

And he promised new openness in trade negotiations and – amid concern about Chinese investment in strategic European assets – said investors in the EU would be screened.

Mr Juncker praised Europe’s progress on migration, saying it protected its external borders in a more efficient manner. He highlighted Italy’s “perseverance and generosity” in helping to manage irregular migration from Africa.

But work needed to be done opening legal migration routes, ending “scandalous” conditions in Libya and investing in Africa.

The EU project

Mr Juncker said the EU must embrace the value of equality – between member states, workers and consumers.

Referring to growing controversy over different food standards across the union, Mr Juncker said he “would not accept that in some parts of Europe, people are sold food of lower quality than in other countries, despite the packaging and branding being identical”.

Europe had to pursue a “credible enlargement project to the countries of the western Balkans”, and it was high time for Romania and Bulgaria to be brought into the EU’s border-free Schengen zone, along with Croatia when it was ready, he said.

But he sternly reminded member states that final jurisdiction in the union belonged to the European Court of Justice, and said the rule of law was not optional. That might have been a tacit reference to countries such as Poland, which have defied judicial decisions from the EU on a number of issues.

In the EU “the rule of law, justice and fundamental rights” took priority, he said – and “that rules out EU membership for Turkey for the foreseeable future”.

He demanded that Ankara free imprisoned journalists and stop personal attacks on European leaders.

“Stop calling our leaders fascists and Nazis!” he demanded, to applause from the assembly.

Mr Juncker also called for a number of key reforms to the union’s organisation.

He suggested his own role of Commission president should be merged with that of the Council president, and elected following a “pan-European campaign”.

This proposal, he added, did not “target in any way” the work of his “excellent friend” Donald Tusk – the current incumbent of the Council presidency. Any attempt to merge the two roles would require a change to EU treaties.

The Commission leader also proposed the creation of a Europe-wide finance minister, enabling deeper integration of the eurozone.

In response, Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said he agreed with Mr Juncker that there should not be treaty changes. “No new grand projects or institutional discussions,” he tweeted.

But the role of the Council president was important, he said, and needed as a voice of member states.

The BBC has spoken to Rohingya Muslims maimed after apparently stepping on landmines as they fled Myanmar (Burma).

A boy of 15 being treated in Bangladesh lost both legs while a woman at the same hospital said she had trodden on a landmine after being fired on.

The area was mined in the 1990s but Bangladeshi sources say Myanmar’s army recently planted new mines – an allegation denied by Myanmar officials.

More than 300,000 Rohingya have fled a brutal security crackdown in Myanmar.

On Monday UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said that a “cruel military operation” was taking place, calling it “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

What sparked latest violence in Rakhine?

The Rohingya, a stateless mostly Muslim minority in Buddhist-majority Rakhine, have long experienced persecution in Myanmar, which says they are illegal immigrants.

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, is due to visit one of her country’s main refugee camps for Rohingya. She said earlier that Myanmar had to solve a problem of its own making.

The White House has called on Myanmar to respect the rule of law and end the displacement of civilians.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, is facing mounting criticism for failing to protect the Rohingya.

‘Suffering so much’

On Sunday the human rights group Amnesty International accused the authorities of laying landmines at border crossings used by fleeing Rohingya.

Bangladeshi government sources made the same allegation speaking to Reuters news agency last week.

The hospital visited by the BBC has seen an influx of people with landmine injuries, doctors say.

The 15-year-old boy, Azizu Haque, arrived with his legs destroyed. His brother, in another hospital, suffered the same fate, his mother says.

“Their injuries are so bad it’s as if they are dead,” she told the BBC. “It’s better that Allah [God] takes them, they are suffering so much.”

The injured woman, Sabequr Nahar, says she fled Myanmar because the military had been targeting her community, and she was crossing the border with her three sons when she stepped on a landmine.

“We’d been fired on, shot at, and they planted mines,” the 50-year-old said.

• Seeing through the official story
• Tales of horror from those who fled

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Horrific injuries – by Reeta Chakrabarti, BBC News, Bangladesh

Azizu Haque’s body has been devastated by a blast, his legs gone, and parts of his torso also injured. His doctor is visibly emotional when he talks of trying to save him – he doesn’t expect to be successful. Azizu has a rare blood type, and the hospital has no blood bank, and has run out of donors.

Next door in the women’s ward, Sabequr Nahar is a tiny, exhausted figure. She says she crossed the Myanmar border behind her three sons – they got through unscathed.

It is unclear who laid the traps that caused these injuries – and when – but the condition of these people nevertheless raises questions about the Myanmar government’s version of events.

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How the did the violence start?

The violence began on 25 August when Rohingya militants attacked police posts in the northern state of Rakhine, killing 12 security personnel.

The attacks triggered a vast security operation that has drawn international criticism.

• Myanmar conflict: The view from Yangon

Rohingya who have fled Myanmar say villages have been burned and civilians attacked in a brutal campaign to drive them out.

The UN Security Council said it was looking to meet on Wednesday to discuss the violence after Sweden and the UK requested a closed-door meeting on the “deteriorating situation” in Rakhine state.

Bangladesh is already host to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who have fled previous outbreaks of violence in Rakhine.

Existing refugee camps are full and the new arrivals are sleeping rough in whatever space they can find, reports say.

The Rohingya are extremely unpopular inside Myanmar. On Sunday, police fired rubber bullets to break up a mob attacking the home of a Muslim butcher in Magway region in central Myanmar. One protester was quoted by AFP news agency saying it was a response to events in Rakhine.

How much pressure is there on Suu Kyi to speak out?

Five Nobel peace Laureates have accused her of showing “indifference” to the Rohingya’s plight.

In an open letter issued by the Nobel Women’s Initiative, they say Ms Suu Kyi has a “personal and moral responsibility to uphold and defend the rights” of Myanmar’s citizens.

The letter is signed by Mairead Maguire, Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, who were awarded the Nobel peace prize between 1976 and 2011.

“How many Rohingya have to die; how many Rohingya women will be raped; how many communities will be razed before you raise your voice in defense of those who have no voice?,” they ask in the letter.

Bangladesh’s prime minister has urged Myanmar to take back hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in Rakhine state.

Speaking as she visited a refugee camp, Sheikh Hasina urged Myanmar to view the situation with humanity, saying innocent people were suffering.

Some 370,000 Rohingyas have crossed the border since violence began last month.

Myanmar’s military says it is fighting Rohingya militants and denies it is targeting civilians.

But many of those who have fled say troops responded to attacks by Rohingya militants on 25 August with a brutal campaign of violence and village burnings aimed at driving them out.

The BBC has spoken to Rohingyas maimed by landmines as they fled Myanmar. Bangladeshi sources say Myanmar’s army recently planted new mines – an allegation denied by Myanmar officials.

The Rohingyas, a stateless mostly Muslim minority in Buddhist-majority Rakhine, have long experienced persecution in Myanmar, which says they are illegal immigrants.

• Seeing through the official story
• Tales of horror from those who fled
• Rakhine: What sparked latest violence?

Bangladesh is already home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas who have fled previous outbreaks of violence in Myanmar.

Its two official refugee camps are full and aid agencies say the new arrivals desperately need food, shelter and medical help.

‘These people… are suffering’

Sheikh Hasina’s comments came as she visited the Kutupalong camp, one of the official camps.

“My personal message is very clear, that they should consider this situation with the eyes of humanity,” she told the BBC.

“Because these people, innocent people, the children, women, they are suffering. So these people, they belong to Myanmar. Hundreds of years they are staying there. How they can deny that they are not their citizens?”

The Bangladesh prime minister said her country would offer Rohingyas shelter until Myanmar took them back.

She also condemned the militants for their role in the violence, but said Myanmar’s government should have dealt with the situation more patiently.

Rohingya families have been arriving in Bangladesh from Myanmar in waves since the 1970s. About 32,000 registered refugees live in the two official camps, but more than 300,000 undocumented Rohingyas were also estimated to be in Bangladesh before this latest influx.

Bangladesh says their presence strains local resources, increases crime and deters tourists in the Cox’s Bazar area.

Earlier this year, it backed a plan to transfer them to an island in the Bay of Bengal, Thengar Char, but rights groups said the island was unfit for human habitation due to seasonal flooding.

International condemnation grows

Myanmar is facing mounting criticism over the Rohingya crisis and there have been protests in several Muslim-majority nations.

UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said on Monday that the security operation in Rakhine appeared to be “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

In a statement, the White House urged Myanmar’s troops to “respect the rule of law, stop the violence, and end the displacement of civilians from all communities”.

China, however, said it thought the international community “should support the efforts of Myanmar in safeguarding the stability of its national development”.

Myanmar’s foreign ministry said it welcomed statements from the UN and other countries “firmly condemning the terrorist attacks” and said troops were being ordered to exercise “all due restraint” as they worked to restore stability.

The UN Security Council is due to meet on Wednesday to discuss the Rakhine crisis.

Pope Francis has warned history will judge world leaders who do not act as he blasted climate change sceptics in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Harvey.

The pontiff said the recent storms meant the effects of climate change could be seen “with your own eyes”.

There have been four major Atlantic hurricanes in less than three weeks.

But US Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt said it was an inappropriate time to discuss what role climate change may have played.

Mr Pruitt – who has previously said he “would not agree” carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming – told CNN current speculation “on the cause and effect of the storm… is misplaced”.

Instead, Mr Pruitt said the conversation should be focused on the clean up effort.

• Does Trump still think climate change is a hoax?
• What is climate change?
• Hurricane Irma: Damage mapped

Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado – whose city ended up partially underwater as Hurricane Irma swept across Florida – disagreed however, telling the Miami Herald newspaper: “This is the time to talk about climate change. This is the time that the president and the EPA and whoever makes decisions needs to talk about climate change.”

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Can we blame worsening hurricanes on climate change?

By Matt McGrath, BBC News environment correspondent

Hurricanes are complex, naturally occurring beasts – extremely difficult to predict, with or without the backdrop of rising global temperatures.

The scientific reality of attributing a role to climate change in worsening the impact of hurricanes is also hard to tease out, simply because these are fairly rare events and there is not a huge amount of historical data.

But there are some things that we can say with a good deal of certainty.

There’s a well-established physical law, the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, that says that a hotter atmosphere holds more moisture.

For every extra degree Celsius in warming, the atmosphere can hold 7% more water. This tends to make rainfall events even more extreme when they occur.

Another element that we can mention with some confidence is the temperature of the seas.

“The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are about 1.5 degrees warmer above what they were from 1980-2010,” Sir Brian Hoskins from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“That is very significant because it means the potential for a stronger storm is there, and with the contribution of global warming to the warmer waters in the Gulf, it’s almost inevitable that there was a contribution to that.”

Read more – Hurricane Harvey: The link to climate change

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Addressing climate change appears to have fallen down the agenda since Donald Trump took power in January.

The US president has already rolled back some of the environmental protection laws put in place under his predecessor, Barack Obama, and announced his intention to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.

It is unclear where Mr Trump stands on climate change today. However, he tweeted in 2012 that it was made up by China “to make US manufacturing non-competitive”.

Pope Francis, who is returning from a five day trip to Colombia, has no such doubts. He fears the impact of climate change will be hardest on the world’s poorest residents, and has been openly critical of those who do not play their part in reducing its effects – including Mr Trump.

His most recent comments could also be seen as a thinly veiled dig at the president.

“If we don’t go back we will go down,” he warned reporters on Monday. “That is true. You can see the effects of climate change with your own eyes and scientists tell us clearly the way forward.

“All of us have a responsibility. All of us. Some small, some big. A moral responsibility, to accept opinions, or make decisions. I think it is not something to joke about.”

He then quoted a phrase from the Old Testament: “Man is stupid, a stubborn, blind man.”

“Those who deny it (climate change) should go to the scientists and ask them,” the Pope said. “They are very clear, very precise.”

The United Nations has imposed a fresh round of sanctions on North Korea after its sixth and largest nuclear test.

The measures restrict oil imports and ban textile exports – an attempt to starve the North of fuel and income for its weapons programmes.

The US had originally proposed harsher sanctions including a total ban on oil imports.

The vote was only passed unanimously after Pyongyang allies Russia and China agreed to the reduced measures.

The sanctions, which were passed at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, were met with anger by North Korea.

A statement on state news agency KNCA warned that if the US did eventually push through harsher sanctions, North Korea would “absolutely make sure that the US pays due price”.

The US call last week for a total ban on oil imports was seen as by some analysts as potentially destabilising for the regime.

The new sanctions agreed by the UN include:

• Limits on imports of crude oil and oil products. China, Pyongyang’s main economic ally, supplies most of North Korea’s crude oil.
• A ban on exports of textiles, which is Pyongyang’s second-biggest export worth more than $700m (£530m) a year.
• A ban on new visas for North Korean overseas workers, which the US estimates would eventually cut off $500m of tax revenue per year.

A proposed asset freeze and a travel ban on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un were dropped.

The US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, told the Security Council after the vote: “We don’t take pleasure in further strengthening sanctions today. We are not looking for war.”

A South Korean presidential office spokesman said on Tuesday: “North Korea needs to realise that a reckless challenge against international peace will only bring about even stronger sanctions against them.”

• North Korea crisis in 300 words
• Can the world live with a nuclear North Korea?

Monday’s resolution was the ninth one unanimously adopted by the UN since 2006.

What have previous sanctions achieved?

 

• 30 November 2016: UN targeted North Korea’s valuable coal trade with China, slashing exports by about 60% under a new sales cap. Exports of copper, nickel, silver, zinc and the sale of statues were also banned.
• What happened next? On 14 May 2017, North Korea tested what it said was a “newly developed ballistic rocket” capable of carrying a large nuclear warhead.
• 2 June 2017: UN imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on four entities and 14 officials, including the head of North Korea’s overseas spying operations.
• What happened next? On 4 July, North Korea claimed it carried out its first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
• 6 August: UN banned North Korean exports of coal, ore and other raw materials and limited investments in the country, costing Pyongyang an estimated $1bn – about a third of its export economy.
• What happened next? On 3 September, North Korea said it tested a hydrogen bomb that could be miniaturised and loaded on a long-range missile.China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday (link in Chinese) that North Korea had “ignored international opposition and once again conducted a nuclear test, severely violating UN Security Council resolutions”.

  It also repeated its call for a “peaceful resolution” instead of a military response, adding: “China will never allow the peninsula to descend into war and chaos.”

  The BBC’s China editor Carrie Gracie says Beijing is treading a fine line and wants sanctions tough enough to signal its displeasure to Pyongyang and avoid American accusations of complicity, but not so tough as to threaten North Korea’s survival.

  • North Korea crisis: What will Russia do?
  • How do you defend against North Korea?

  Both Russia and China reiterated their proposal that the US and South Korea freeze all military drills – which anger North Korea – and asked for a halt in the deployment of the controversial anti-missile system Thaad, in exchange for Pyongyang’s cessation of its weapons programmes.

  Beijing believes Thaad, which employs a powerful radar, is a security threat to China and neighbouring countries.

  Ms Haley last week dismissed this proposal as “insulting”.