3D vision

9 June 2011 Last updated at 23:01 GMT By Katia Moskvitch Science and technology reporter, BBC News A 3D bird from the film Rio comes to life thanks to augmented reality and a cereal box Still not very used to having a full-size car jump out at you from a billboard?

Or seeing a building you pass on your way to work suddenly crumble to pieces - only to be rebuilt seconds later?

Such realistic 3D content, once constrained to four cinema walls and seen via clunky glasses, is starting to pour from pretty much anything with a screen.

More and more businesses are embracing the technology, using 3D for adverts on giant screens and cereal boxes, or by helping you pick furniture through an immersive online 3D experience.

It is also appearing on mobile devices - the first 3D advert has recently been launched for the iPad.

Despite being around for decades, companies around the globe are constantly experimenting with different ways to relate to consumers using 3D - via 3D TVs and cinemas, or billboards in airports and bus stops - what is known as digital signage.

But some firms have more innovative solutions to try to engage the viewer.

Feeding the bird

Nestle, the Swiss food and nutrition company, used the help of a French firm Dassault Systemes to engage people with… a cereal box.

Equipped with a box of Chocapic Nestle cereal, you type in the internet address provided and turn on your webcam.

Ford Focus used 40 cameras to create a Matrix-like still-frame 3D video effect

You are then directed to a page featuring characters from an animated 3D film Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard.

Holding the box in front of the computer, all of a sudden you see yourself on the screen as in a mirror - but the box in your hands comes to life and transforms into an augmented reality game console. As you tilt the box, the technology detects your movements in real time - and you can play a game on the screen.

"This campaign, which involved more than two million boxes in France, increased the market share of Nestlé France by 1.6%," says Mehdi Tayoubi, Dassault Systemes' interactive strategy director.

Another similar Nestle project currently taking place in 53 countries with 26 million cereal boxes features a bird from a recently released animated 3D film Rio.

Using a tag that you cut out from the back of a cereal box, you can make the 3D bird interact with you - and even feed it by tipping the tag to "fill" a bowl on the screen.

"The Rio campaign has made a lot of buzz internationally and especially in Latin America and the US," says Mr Tayoubi.

Social 3D

A similar idea of combining the web and 3D occurred to another well-known firm - the car manufacturer, Ford.

Continue reading the main story

Producing a 3D advert is more expensive than producing a 2D ad, but the impact the activity has had internationally has made it worthwhile ”

End Quote Jennie Farmer De Beers jewellery During the Uefa Champions League tournament in London in May, together with a communications agency Imagination, Ford decided to create 3D videos inspired by a slow-motion scene in the action film the Matrix, where the main character Neo successfully dodges bullets.

For that, the car firm used 40 cameras to capture the moment in 120 degrees, creating a freeze-frame video that looked like the camera was moving around a still 3D image of people "suspended in motion".

People were then able to upload the films with a Ford Focus logo and then on YouTube, and share them using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

"We wanted to create something fun to do, something people would want to share, and what was inspired by camera technology in the car," says Mark Jones, European sponsorship manager of Ford, referring to the cameras installed in the new version of the Ford Focus model.

"Our objective was to have around 25,000 views of the films that were created.

"At the moment we're up to 64,000, so we've more than exceeded that."

In cyberspace, depth and perspective can also be achieved in a different manner.

Mydeco is an interior design firm, letting consumers visualise their home in 3D when buying new furniture - and see just how that new red sofa would actually look.

Having uploaded a floor plan, you can then move the walls and drag and drop furniture from different shops - in real time, almost instantly updating the screen as you put your computer-generated table into your online dining room.

Mydeco helps you visualise your home online in 3D while buying furniture

The site works with businesses, too - for instance, one of the biggest US furniture retailers, Design Within Reach, uses Mydeco's online tool on their website, featuring furniture from their store.

"We try to be the 'google maps' of interiors online," says Mydeco CEO Nicole Vanderbilt.

"Our tool is very much real-time 3D. You're designing in 3D, dragging and dropping real world products that we've had modelled in 3D into your room."

3D billboards

One of the most common business uses of 3D is digital signage.

Continue reading the main story

We project onto a transparent holographic screen, and that transparency allows us to create depth in the eye of the viewer”

End Quote Jeffrey Moscoe Holo FX And when it comes to choosing a 3D display, firms have more than one option to pick from.

First, there is stereoscopy.

This technique uses two cameras, one for each eye, to create to separate 2D images that are then combined in the brain to give the illusion of depth.

For the image to be in focus you have to wear special glasses - just like during a 3D film.

When CBS Outdoor installed a huge high-definition 3D screen at Grand Central Station in New York, it had to distribute some 70,000 3D glasses to passers-by in order for them to see the effect.

To add more style to often dull-looking and uncomfortable 3D glasses, certain brands have even created sunglasses that can be worn outside or used to see 3D content on a home TV screen or in stores.

But can you really expect many shoppers to walk into a shopping centre and don their glasses, however trendy they might be?

Some businesses that do not think so decided to go glass-free - and adapt auto-stereoscopy, with the most common approaches being parallax barrier and lenticular technologies.

Vienna Tourism Board used a building as a screen for a 3D projection to get tourists to come to Vienna

The first method involves placing an actual barrier on top of an LCD panel; pixels for left and right eyes are then filtered, with no overlap.

There is a catch, though - you can only see the effect from a certain spot, and if somebody is standing next to you, they will not see it, which is not very useful if you want to show the image to a crowd strolling past your shop.

The perception of depth in displays with lenticular technology comes when a series of strips are interlaced at different angles, and there are more of those "spots" from which you can view the effect.

Diamond jewellery brand De Beers used the second method to advertise their diamond rings. In a campaign devised by Holition and Pointy Stick Films, the jewellery was shot from eight different angles to ensure the 3D effect had a wide field of view on screen.

"Producing a 3D advert is more expensive than producing a 2D ad because it is more complex to film and edit, plus the display technology also costs a premium," says communications director Jennie Farmer.

"However, the impact the activity has had internationally has made it worthwhile."

Holographic adverts

Finally, there are holograms.

And if giants like Sony and Samsung are pushing their way through with stereoscopic and auto-stereoscopic solutions, holographic 3D has so far mostly been supplied by smaller firms.

One, for instance, is HoloFX, a small Canadian company based in Toronto.

In holographic 3D, the depth is behind the object - a totally different effect from stereoscopic 3D where objects are "flying" towards you.

"We project onto a transparent holographic screen, and that transparency allows us to create depth in the eye of the viewer," explains the company's head Jeffrey Moscoe.

"You don't need glasses, you can stand anywhere and see it - and our effect doesn't make you feel nauseous."

One of the latest features of 3D displays is the touch interactive - when the image spins before your eyes and you can rotate it or flip it upside down.

With all the different 3D concepts around, the market seems ready for innovative 3D content - so in the years to come, what seemed sci-fi just a decade ago could finally become a reality.

Glasses-free 3D adverts of a jewellery firm De Beers attracted many passers-by

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VIDEO: Battle to contain Arizona wildfires

10 June 2011 Last updated at 02:12 GMT Help

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To boldly go...

10 June 2011 Last updated at 07:12 GMT By David Shukman Environment & science correspondent, BBC News, Pasadena A replica of the Voyager probes is housed at JPL Keep your voice down, the press officer warns me, as I step inside Nasa's mission control room in California, a centre with an utterly unique role in the exploration of space.

It's almost silent and very dark, here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and operators are hunched over banks of consoles.

These are people with an extraordinary job: they provide the sole connection with mankind's most distant creations.

Above us a giant screen is gently filling with numbers, row after row of digits - it's the daily flow of data from an inconceivably remote corner of space.

At the start of each line of figures, there's a three-letter code - VGR - that represents the longest expedition ever mounted in human history.

VGR stands for the pair of spacecraft, Voyagers 1 & 2, launched way back in 1977 and now entering a realm never visited before - the very edge of the Solar System.

As another row of figures nudges its way on the screen, I try to comprehend what they've crossed to reach here.

Waiting game

One measure is that it takes an incredible 16 hours for their radio transmissions to arrive on Earth.

And if the controllers need to send a signal back out to them, it takes the same again - 32 hours in all to fire off a message and get a response.

Guiding me through this is the godfather of the mission, a sprightly professor in his 70s who is still bursting with the same enthusiasm he felt when he began the project in 1972.

Voyager is approaching the edge of the bubble of charged particles the Sun has thrown out into space

This is Ed Stone, something of a legend in space circles. Few other scientific endeavours have lasted this long and he's followed every twist and turn.

I ask about the distances involved and he can't wait to explain.

Continue reading the main story Voyager 2 launched on 20 August 1977; Voyager 1 lifted off on 5 September the same yearTheir official missions were to study Jupiter and Saturn, but the probes were able to continue onThe Voyager 1 probe is now the furthest human-built object from EarthBoth probes carry discs with recordings designed to portray the diversity of culture on Earth"When you feel the effects of the Sun," Professor Stone tells me, "that's how the Sun was eight minutes ago. But when you get a message from Voyager, that's how it was 16 hours ago."

He seems to relish the scale of the numbers - and is obviously used to having a reporter stand open-mouthed beside him.

The Voyagers, he says, are travelling at 17 kilometres per second (98,000 mph). And their computing power? A decent smart phone has ten million times more memory than all three on-board computers combined.

Yet what they have shown us still inspires. Among many revelations, Jupiter's moon Io was seen to be the most volcano-wracked body in the Solar System and Neptune's deep-frozen moon Triton to be blasted by geysers.

And then the little craft ventured beyond the orbits of the planets - further than any other manmade machines - and entered a region labelled with a bizarre vocabulary unfamiliar to most of us.

Golden records containing sounds from Earth were carried aboard both spacecraft

They travelled through the exotically-named "termination shock" - where the Sun's flow, or wind, of particles suddenly decelerates.

Now they're in the heliosheath - the outer zone of the Sun's influence. At some unknown point they'll cross the heliopause, defined as the final limit of the Solar System.

Then they'll enter interstellar space - the void between stars - where our Sun will become just another speck, one among billions.

According to Professor Stone, with four instruments still working on Voyager 1 and five on Voyager 2, new findings are made almost every day.

Sensors measure the speed and density of the solar wind, the magnetic field, energetic particles and radio waves - all providing clues about the pioneering moment when humankind will first venture beyond the Solar System.

Borrowed time

I ask why he thinks the Voyager expedition attracts such support and so much attention. It's a mission everyone loves to hear about.

"It's the urge," he says, "to explore our solar neighbourhood and now we're about to explore outside our solar bubble. It's remarkable how it resonates with the public."

So, what next?

The plutonium power source will stop generating electricity in about 10-15 years and there's no way to extend it so the spacecraft's electronic systems will die. No more messages will be sent after 2025.

"Then they'll become silent ambassadors orbiting around the centre of the Milky Way."

And where are they heading once they leave the Solar System?

Voyager 1 is on course to approach a star called AC +793888 - but it will only get within two light-years of it.

Voyager 2 is hurtling towards another star named Ross 248 - but, again, even at its closest, it will still be a whole light-year away.

And when are these encounters due? Professor Stone can't help laughing with delight. He knows his answer will amaze me.

"In about 40,000 years' time."

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VIDEO: Prince Philip at 90: I've done my bit

10 June 2011 Last updated at 09:15 GMT Help

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Iraq 'to request' US troops stay

10 June 2011 Last updated at 04:25 GMT The US soldiers' role is to advise and assist Iraq's security forces in fighting insurgents Iraq will ask the US to keep troops in the country beyond an end-of-2011 pullout deadline, says the nominee to be the next US defence secretary.

Outgoing CIA director Leon Panetta said he had "every confidence that a request like that will be forthcoming".

Mr Panetta was speaking at a US Senate committee considering his nomination.

The US currently has about 47,000 troops in Iraq, none in a combat role. Under a 2008 deal, they are expected to leave by 31 December 2011.

Inducements?

"It's clear to me that Iraq is considering the possibility of making a request for some kind of [troop] presence to remain there [in Iraq]," Mr Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

He said that whether that happened depended on what Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki might ask for.

But if Baghdad did make such a request, he added, Washington should say yes.

Mr Panetta did not say how many troops would be involved or what they would do.

He said there were still some 1,000 al-Qaeda members in Iraq, and the situation remained "fragile".

Leon Panetta said the situation in Iraq remained "fragile"

"I believe that we should take whatever steps are necessary to make sure that we protect whatever progress we've made there," Mr Panetta said.

The current US contingent is deployed in a training and advisory role.

In April, outgoing Defence Secretary Robert Gates said that American troops could, if required by Iraq, stay in the country beyond the withdrawal date.

Mr Gates had also expressed hope that Baghdad would make such a request.

The BBC's Andrew North in Washington says it seems likely that the US has offered Iraq some inducements to maintain its troop presence.

But any suggestion that President Barack Obama will allow some American forces to remain behind is bound to be seen as backpeddling by both his opponents and supporters on his commitment to pull out entirely from Iraq by this year, our correspondent says.

He adds that it will be controversial in Iraq as well, where there has been an increase in attacks on US bases apparently aimed at derailing any moves to keep American troops on.

US fatalities in Iraq have been rare since Washington officially ended combat operations in the country last August.

But earlier this week, five American soldiers were killed in central Iraq, in what is believed to be the US military's single most serious incident in the country in more than two years.

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Test tube miracles

16 October 2010 Last updated at 23:22 GMT

Photos from around the world this week

Religious healers in Kenya's slum of Kibera

Areas of Chile and Argentina covered in ash

Gen Ratko Mladic's birthplace and former HQ

Photos from around the world on 6 June

Volcanic eruptions in Chile

Pope's second day in Croatia

Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Zagreb

News photos from around the world

First appearance at the war crimes tribunal

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Chile ash cloud grounds flights

9 June 2011 Last updated at 15:13 GMT There has been disruption at airports in Argentina since the volcanic eruption last week A cloud of ash spewed from a volcano range in Chile has grounded flights at airports in Argentina and Uruguay.

All flights from the Argentine capital Buenos Aires and many from Montevideo, in Uruguay, have been cancelled.

Chile's Puyehue-Cordon-Caulle volcano range, about 800km (500 miles) south of Santiago, began erupting last Friday.

An airport official said that the cloud was now directly above Buenos Aires, at a height of 9,000m (29,000ft).

Other smaller airports in Argentina will also be closed, officials say, and a crisis committee is due to meet to re-evaluate the situation later.

Changing winds

"All flights have been cancelled because the ash cloud is above Buenos Aires," a spokesperson for Aeropuertos Argentinos 2000, the group that manages the area airports, told Agence France Presse.

The official said that the ash cloud was just beneath the height at which planes normally fly.

In Uruguay, many flights into Montevideo's Carrasco airport were also cancelled.

After being cancelled earlier in the week, flights into Buenos Aires - a key air hub for the whole of South America - had begun to resume on Wednesday.

Changing wind directions have pushed the ash cloud back and forth across southern Argentina and Chile.

This is the first serious eruption of the volcano chain since 1960, when the area was hit by a massive earthquake.

Chile is one of the most volcanic countries on Earth. There are more than 3,000 volcanoes dotted along its length, and around 80 of them are active.

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Croatia cleared for EU membership

10 June 2011 Last updated at 10:41 GMT Croatia's accession is expected to be approved later this month Croatia has been given the go-ahead to become a member of the European Union, and is likely to join in 2013, the European Commission has said.

Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he would recommend EU nations wrap up talks and prepare to greet Croatia as the 28th member state.

Talks on reforming the Croatian judiciary, a very sensitive area, had been successful, Mr Barroso said.

Croatia will be the second ex-Yugoslav country after Slovenia to join.

"The European Commission has just proposed... to close the last four chapters in the accession negotiations with Croatia," Mr Barroso said in a statement.

"Today is a historic day for Croatia and the European Union."

'Reinvigorate efforts'

Mr Barroso described the move as "a signal to the rest of south-eastern Europe".

"I... hope that Croatia's progress is an inspiration to our other partners to reinvigorate their reform efforts and to deliver to the benefit of their people."

Two other countries of the former Yugoslav federation, Montenegro and Macedonia, are currently candidates for membership.

Serbia is expected to start membership talks next year, after the arrest last month of former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic on war crimes charges removed the biggest obstacle Belgrade faced to joining the EU.

The four outstanding chapters in Croatia's talks included the judiciary and competition issues.

Correspondents say judicial issues are especially sensitive because the last EU countries to join - Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 - failed to meet full EU standards in that area.

The EU imposed a monitoring mechanism on them to deal with the shortcomings.

Croatia applied for EU membership in 2003 and formal negotiations began in 2005.

But the BBC's Mark Lowen, reporting from Zagreb, says progress was marred by initially sluggish co-operation with the UN War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, as government officials appeared slow to hand over documents relating to the 1990s war of independence.

Corruption and organised crime have also dented the country's image, he adds.

EU leaders are expected to approve Croatia's accession at a summit on 23-24 June.

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Bean sprouts 'source of E. coli'

10 June 2011 Last updated at 10:59 GMT It is believed the bean sprouts were produced in Germany New data released in Germany strongly suggests that locally produced bean sprouts were, as suspected, the source of the deadly E. coli outbreak.

"It's the bean sprouts," said Reinhard Burger, head of Germany's centre for disease control.

Officials initially blamed the E. coli, which has killed 29 people, on imported cucumbers, then bean sprouts.

In another development, Russia agreed to lift its ban on imports of EU fresh vegetables in return for guarantees.

The Russian ban had compounded a crisis for EU vegetable-growers, with Spanish cucumber producers wrongly blamed for the contamination.

Mr Burger, who heads the Robert Koch Institute, told reporters on Friday that even though no tests of the sprouts from a farm in Lower Saxony had come back positive, the epidemiological investigation of the pattern of the outbreak had produced enough evidence to draw the conclusion.

The institute, he added, was lifting its warning against eating cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce, but keeping it in place for the sprouts.

Some 3,000 people have been taken ill with the German outbreak of E. coli, which involves a previously unknown strain of the bacterium.

Sufferers may develop haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) where bacteria attack the kidneys and nervous system, giving them fits and often forcing them on to dialysis.

'Hot lead' Robert Koch Institute researchers have been examining the farm in Bienenbuettel

"People who ate sprouts were nine times more likely to have bloody diarrhoea than those who did not," Mr Burger said.

Germany's top disease control official said the origin of the contamination was still believed to be the small organic farm in Lower Saxony which first came under suspicion at the weekend.

"The links are ever clearer - it's a hot lead," he told reporters in Berlin, at a joint news conference with the heads of Germany's federal institute for risk assessment and federal office for consumer protection.

He said it was possible that all tainted sprouts had now either been consumed or thrown away, but he warned the crisis was not yet over.

"There will be new cases coming up," he said.

"Thousands of tests carried out on tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce have proved negative," he added.

Lower Saxony agriculture minister Gert Lindemann said earlier this week that experts had found no traces of the E. coli bacterium strain at the Bienenbuettel farm but he did not rule it out as the source of the contamination.

In an interview to be published in next week's edition of Focus magazine, Mr Lindemann said some 60 of the people taken ill had eaten sprouts from the farm, which employs about 15 people.

Contamination might have been caused by contaminated seeds or "poor hygiene", he added.

Ban to be lifted

The agreement to lift the Russian ban was announced after talks between top EU officials including the Commission chief, Jose Manuel Barroso, and Russian counterparts in the central Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod.

Continue reading the main story Wash fruit and vegetables before eating themPeel or cook fruit and vegetablesWash hands regularly to prevent person-to-person spread of E. coli strain

Source: UK Health Protection Agency

"We are ready to resume the shipments under guarantees of the EU authorities," President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters.

Russia's top food safety officer, Gennady Onishchenko, said Russia would lift its prohibition after receiving food safety guarantees from the European Commission.

Mr Barroso said the EU would send a form for issuing food safety certificates to Russia in the next few days.

According to the Commission, the total value of EU exports of fresh vegetables to Russia is 600m euros (£530m; $870m) a year, a quarter of the total exported.

Spain, France, Germany and Poland are the biggest exporters.

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10 June 2011 Last updated at 10:23 GMT Help

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Syrian army 'moves on rebel town'

10 June 2011 Last updated at 13:54 GMT Amateur video - thought to be genuine - showed a convoy of troops moving to Jisr al-Shughour. The BBC's Jim Muir said many inhabitants have fled

The Syrian army has moved against the town of Jisr Al-Shughour where the government says 120 security personnel were killed earlier this week.

Heavy gunfire has been reported in the area. The expected action has prompted a flow of refugees to nearby Turkey.

Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Syria is committing "atrocities", in remarks quoted by Turkish media.

Elsewhere in Syria, at least three people have been killed amid growing anti-government protests.

Turkey says more than 2,000 Syrians have crossed the border seeking refuge from the anticipated crackdown in Jisr al-Shughour.

Syria's government has blamed the deaths in the town on armed groups, but there are reports of a mutiny among security forces.

Syrian state TV said armed men had prepared defences and set fire to crops and trees around Jisr al-Shughour in order to slow the army's advance.

Activist websites have carried reports from people in the area saying there was heavy gunfire in a village where barricades of burning tyres had been set up to block the road to the town.

Syria has prevented foreign journalists, including those from the BBC, from entering the country, making it difficult to verify reports from there.

Continue reading the main story Jim Muir BBC News, Lebanon

It is not clear how much resistance the Syrian troops can expect to meet in Jisr al-Shughour.

Some of the government newspapers have been suggesting there may be as many as 2,000 armed men in the area.

Syrian state TV has been running telephone intercepts of conversations between people inside the town suggesting first of all that the place is deserted but also that armed men have been withdrawn.

It could be that they will be rolling into a ghost town.

One way or another, the long-promised operation does now, at least according to official outlets, appear to be under way.

There has been no word from the other side at this stage, probably because communications and electricity have been cut off in the area.

In other developments:

Reports say two protesters have been shot dead in the southern province of Deraa, after security forces in vehicles opened fire on protestersAnti-government activists say a third protester was shot dead by security forces in the capital, Damascus.Eyewitnesses in the central city of Hama tell BBC Arabic that thousands of protesters are gathering in al-Aassi Square, the main square in the city centre - there is no security or police presence at allThere are protests in the cities of Homs, Hasska, al-Qamishili and al-Amood. Gunfire has been heard in Bab Amr, a suburb of HomsConflicting accounts

The BBC's Jim Muir, in Beirut, Lebanon, says the events in Jisr al-Shughour present a massive challenge to President Assad.

Syrian state TV has been preparing for the security operation in the town by widely broadcasting the movement of troops in the area, prompting many residents to flee.

The action against Jisr al-Shughour is in response to claims by Damascus that armed gangs killed 120 members of the security forces there after protests against President Assad's rule.

State TV has been broadcasting images of what it says are soldiers and police shot dead in the town.

The government says local residents requested the army's intervention to restore peace and quiet.

Continue reading the main story 20km (12 miles) from Turkish border to the northIn remote, agricultural province of IdlibPopulation: approx. 50,000Mainly Sunni Muslim1980 rebellion against Hafez al-Assad brutally crushedBut dissenting accounts say the violence was sparked by deserting soldiers, and that loyal troops have massacred peaceful civilians.

Human rights groups say more than 1,100 people have been killed since protests against President Assad began in March, and it now appears several hundred security forces may also have died.

Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan has previously been reluctant to criticise Syria, but in an interview quoted by Anatolia news agency, he said the Assad regime was committing "atrocities" against anti-government demonstrators.

"They are not acting in a humane manner. This is savagery," he said in a TV interview on Thursday.

The unrest in Syria has prompted a split within the UN Security Council, where France and Britain have proposed a resolution to condemn the government's actions.

But other nations on the council, including Brazil, China and Russia, say such a resolution - which does not propose concrete action - could further inflame tensions in an already volatile region.

The UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay, and the Pope have urged Damascus to show restraint, with Ms Pillay strongly condemning the Syrian government.

The Syrian army has moved against other cities that have seen anti-government protests, including Deraa, Baniyas, Rastan, Latakia, Homs, Hama and some Damascus suburbs.

Anti-government activists have promised to mount widespread protests after Friday prayers.

One Facebook page was billing it a "Day of Tribes", in an attempt to draw in more of Syria's powerful tribes to the protests, says our correspondent in Beirut.

'Dodging soldiers'

The Red Crescent has set up a tent city to house Syrian refugees across the border in the Turkish town of Yayladagi and there are plans to set up a second camp in Altinozu.

A Turkish official told the BBC the influx of Syrians was sharply increasing and the latest arrivals included several dozen wounded people.

Most of the refugees were too frightened to speak to the BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones, who is in Yayladagi.

But one man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had made a three-hour trek from Jisr al-Shughour, dodging Syrian soldiers along the way.

He said an estimated 30,000 Syrian soldiers were massing near the town - but added that hundreds of soldiers had also deserted and were also gathering on the border hoping to make an escape into Turkey.

A Syrian government spokeswoman said there were no refugees fleeing to Turkey, just the normal traffic of people visiting relatives across the border.

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Parts of England hit by drought

10 June 2011 Last updated at 10:26 GMT Liam Dutton explains the weather conditions that have led to a drought being declared

Parts of England are officially in a drought following the dry spring, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has said.

Areas of East Anglia are in drought, with parts of the Midlands, South West and South East in a "near-drought" state.

In the drought-affected areas, Anglian Water and Cambridge Water say there is no threat to public water supplies.

But Severn Trent Water says there may be restrictions if rainfall stays low.

And Thames Water, which serves London and the Thames Valley, has reassured its customers that hosepipe bans are unlikely this year.

The British Retail Consortium said the dry weather had created "another unwelcome upward pressure on food prices".

Both the South East and central-southern region of England have had their driest spring on record.

Across England and Wales as a whole it has been the driest spring since 1990, prompting the Environment Agency to issue advice on how best to reduce water use.

It comes as large areas of northern Europe are facing drought after one of the driest European springs on record.

But not all areas of the UK have suffered from the dry weather. Scotland has seen three times the average amount of rain this spring, while snow flurries were reported at the summit of Mount Snowdon in north Wales.

Continue reading the main story Wash a car using a bucketReuse bath water on plants and in your gardenLet your grass growKeep a jug of water in the fridge instead of running a cold tapDon't let water waste while waiting to get into a shower

Source: Environment Agency

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman has held a second drought summit to review the impacts of the continuing dry weather.

She said: "Water companies are confident that supplies are high enough so that widespread restrictions to the public are unlikely. We're doing all we can to reduce the impact on agriculture and wildlife, but everyone can play their part.

"Households know how to use less water and everyone can do their bit to use water more wisely, not only through the summer, but throughout the year."

Low levels of water are causing considerable problems for farmers, with crop yields being hit.

In parts of the Fens, some farmers and growers have volunteered to irrigate only at night to reduce evaporation, and co-operatives have formed to share limited amounts of water available.

Ahead of talks with the government later, Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers Union, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there was a need to look at long-term solutions such as having enough reservoirs and "computer-controlled drip feed irrigation".

Caroline Spelman: "This is a time to use water wisely, conserve it while you can"

Mr Kendall said there would be calls for an approach in which authorities "talk to farmers in advance" and "don't just turn the tap right off" to "allow farmers to eke out supplies".

He said: "It would be crazy if you have a big investment and you say 'no water from now on'.

"We would much rather say, 'Actually, it's getting low, you can have 30% or 40% of your water.'

"That's the sort of initiative we need and then we need to look longer term at how we can plan to become more resilient."

The NFU president urged ministers to "keep talking to the farmers" and "make sure we make food production a priority".

'Strategic' response

The British Retail Consortium's food director, Andrew Opie, said: "Farming is an uncertain business. Few years have a perfect pattern of weather and retailers are again working with suppliers to make sure there continues to be affordable food in the shops.

"East Anglia is prone to dry weather and there will be more of these conditions in the future. Many large producers have already invested in private irrigation systems to deal with low rainfall and make sure crops grow successfully."

He pointed out that, although the weather had created a problem for some commodities, such as wheat and other cereals, the dry conditions have produced bumper crops of foods such as raspberries and asparagus.

Cambridgeshire farmer Roger Hunt-Pain: 'It has been exceptionally dry here since early spring'

Craig Bennett, of environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth, said most water companies had "dramatically improved their efforts to reduce leakage", despite the failure of a few to meet their targets.

But he was critical of the overall approach taken by successive governments.

He said: "Although water companies generally have upped their game, government has completely failed to up its game. We have seen successive governments fail to address this issue properly."

"Mr Bennett went on: "We see precious little action by successive governments in between floods and droughts to put long term measures in places and have a strategic response to this."

He called on the government to use planning regimes to make sure infrastructure was built in a way that did not put more demand on water resources.

For example, he said housing developments were being built where there was already "extreme pressure on water resources".

The Environment Agency said the specific areas of the Anglian region suffering from a drought were Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, parts of Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire and western Norfolk.

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VIDEO: In full: Prime Minister's Questions

David Cameron has called Labour an "empty opposition" after Ed Miliband accused the government of being in a "complete mess" on key policies.

At Prime Minister's Questions on 8 June 2011, the Labour leader asked David Cameron whether he had "torn up" plans to halve offenders' sentences for an early guilty plea.

The plans were put forward by Justice Secretary Ken Clarke as part of a wider package of proposals aimed at reforming sentencing and reducing the prison population.

They were expected to save save £130m from the Ministry of Justice budget. And they were behind a row over Mr Clarke's comments about rape in a BBC Radio 5Live interview last month.

Mr Cameron stopped short of directly denying the plans had been axed, saying the government had been consulting on its sentencing proposals and that legislation would be brought forward soon.

Mr Miliband told MPs there was "widespread public concern" about discounting offenders' sentences, and pressed the prime minister again if reports were true he had blocked the plans.

"He should do something more useful than just read the newspapers," Mr Cameron remarked.

He added that shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan, sat beside Mr Miliband, had supported the consultation paper on sentencing policy, quoting him as saying it was "entirely in keeping with the emphasis on punishment and reform that Labour followed in government".

"Why the sudden u-turn?" he asked the Labour leader.

Mr Miliband later moved on to the government's health policy, which he said was in a similar state to its sentencing plans.

David Cameron had the "wrong values", he said, adding that he had "proved the Tories cannot be trusted with the NHS".

Mr Cameron said it was his government that was "boldly making reforms in the public sector", adding that the "empty opposition" had no plans of its own and said the former Labour government had paid private health firms millions of pounds to do nothing.

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How good are UK universities?

9 June 2011 Last updated at 10:49 GMT By Michael Blastland GO FIGURE - Seeing stats in a different way How good are UK universities? In his regular column, Michael Blastland says comparison is irresistible. But watch out.

We're bad, they're good, gotta change.

Can't help looking over our shoulders, can we, at the way the rest of the world behaves and performs? Comparison is compulsive.

And so we should. It would be surprising if we had the edge every which way.

But to state the obvious, people are different in different countries because they're different, if you see what I mean. That is, international comparisons are seldom like with like. Some pesky social or cultural difference gets in the way - and one simple metric doesn't show it.

A great example recently - of how obvious, but vital, differences go unnoticed in big debates - was how UK and US universities compare.

The standard story is: not well. US good, UK lagging. And a common metric is that, according to one ranking, the US has 13 universities in the world top 20 to the UK's four.

Writing in the London Review of Books, Howard Hotson picked a couple of differences between the US and the UK like, er… population.

Context doesn't come more basic. And it seems the UK is doing better than you would expect for a country of its size compared with the US. Do we expect Lichtenstein to have 13 universities in the world top 20? Basingstoke to have as many football teams in the Premiership as London?

Compare the two countries by how many universities they have in the top 30 instead of the top 20 and the UK looks better still - but not if you look, instead, at the Times Higher Education world university rankings.

Perhaps next most obvious is money. How much do they spend on their universities and what do they get for it? Here's just one way of making that comparison.

According to the latest OECD figures, the US spends about 3.1% of its income on tertiary education, the UK less than half that. But simple calculations suggest that people in the UK have about twice the chance of attending an elite university.

Convinced that the UK comes out on top after all?

Continue reading the main story

It's a mildly entertaining game to wonder what stories we would tell to justify the quick but often bad conclusion suggested by a raw number ”

End Quote Maybe. But maybe you might also want to ask if a fantastically disproportionate amount of UK spending goes on its top four. That is, you might have the population of Denmark but still manage a university in the top 20 if you throw the Treasury at it and 10p a head at the rest.

So maybe we should compare not total spending but spending per student at the elite institutions.

And it doesn't stop there. We might want to make a distinction between domestic and overseas students, might want to take into account the fact that the US national income is bigger than the UK's, might want to be sure that charitable giving and endowments are included in the calculation of spending.

And we might want to say that this affects such a small number of people that we just don't care.

The key with international comparisons is not to rest easy. But resting easy is what simple comparisons encourage - and often what people want. Here's a league table, here's a ranking, here's the powerful single number that proves…

My favourite bad example is from an academic who came across data to show that Finland had no escapes from open prisons. This was at a time when the UK was in a tizz about people waltzing out. He later discovered the reason: they didn't classify this as escape in Finland, but "absent without leave".

US universities dominate the top spots in world rankings

Or there is the comparison of nurses per head of population, where a figure for UK population was divided by a figure for the number of nurses - obtained from the Department of Health in London. Unfortunately, health is a devolved responsibility, so, at that time, the DoH didn't count the nurses in Scotland.

It's a mildly entertaining game to wonder what stories we would tell to justify the quick but often bad conclusion suggested by a raw number - the policy, social or cultural reasons that explain the apparent Finnish lawfulness, for example - "so much more civilized, those Scandinavians, even in prison" - or the performance of US universities.

The conclusions you draw about university education are your own and won't necessarily be Howard Hotson's. Maybe you will decide that the amount spent on US universities is a consequence of their superior performance - that is, people pay more because they perceive US university education to be better - so spending follows performance rather than causes it.

Maybe you will decide that British universities are better than given credit for. Maybe you will want a lot more data about how they compare further down the league.

Comparisons, especially across borders, are rarely as conclusive as they seem. Howard Hotson's numbers now feel like a "duh" moment. And by that I mean to flatter him. Maybe the conclusion is never to underestimate our ability to overlook the blinkin' obvious in search of a quick answer.

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Balls hits back over leaked memos

10 June 2011 Last updated at 12:51 GMT Ed Balls says there is no evidence to suggest there was a plot to oust Tony Blair

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has hit back over leaked memos detailing plans to have Gordon Brown succeed Tony Blair as prime minister from 2005.

Mr Balls said it was "not true" to say he and Mr Brown plotted to oust the PM.

Mr Blair said in 2004 he would not seek a fourth term and Mr Brown was widely expected to succeed him - he eventually did so in 2007.

Details of negotiations in personal papers belonging to Mr Balls have been leaked to the Daily Telegraph.

'Brutal' renewal

The newspaper has obtained more than 30 memos belonging to Mr Balls, then one of Mr Brown's closest advisers.

It also names current Labour leader Mr Miliband and shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander as being involved in "Project Volvo" - an attempt by his allies to rebrand Mr Brown.

It was named after the car they believed voters most associated with Mr Brown - in contrast, they described his rival David Cameron as a "sports car".

The documents are believed to have disappeared from the Department for Education - Mr Balls' former department - during last year's general election. The Cabinet Office is looking into whether there were any "breaches of document security within government".

They disclose details of secret meetings, opinion polls on Mr Blair's policies and attempts to rebrand Mr Brown's image.

In one document, Mr Brown writes that "if we are to renew Labour, we will have to be as rigorous and as brutal as we were in the creation of New Labour".

The then chancellor also criticises Mr Blair's 2005 Labour conference speech, saying "all his talk" of Labour dominating the centre ground "is not about re-establishing Labour, but a self-promotion about his exceptionalism".

The papers include letters exchanged between Mr Blair and Mr Brown, which show them haggling over the terms of a handover of No 10.

Mr Blair said in 2004 he wanted to serve a full third term if he won the 2005 general election.

But one document, sent to him by Mr Brown, suggests the chancellor sought to replace him by the end of 2006.

He asked Mr Blair to agree to certain commitments, including: "I will make it clear at the 2006 conference it was my last; call for an immediate leadership election to be resolved by December."

Division 'killing us'

In February 2006, in response to Mr Brown's handover requests, Mr Blair wrote to his chancellor: "The division at the top is killing us."

He acknowledges, "You (understandably) want to end the uncertainty by me going now", but says it would be "corrosive" if Mr Brown was seen to be "disloyal" or "too eager to get his hands on the job".

Mr Blair says he will agree to the timetable for a handover that Mr Brown requested, but that in return he will need "full help and co-operation" on key reforms to the NHS, schools, welfare and energy.

On a copy of Mr Blair's letter he passed to Mr Balls, Mr Brown scribbled the words "shallow", "inconsistent" and "muddled".

Mr Balls told BBC Radio 4's World at One that discussions about the transition of power had started before the 2005 general election.

While Mr Blair had said publicly he would serve a full third term, privately he had agreed to go earlier, Mr Balls said, adding he had encouraged Mr Brown to speak out on wider issues like security in 2006 as part of the transition process.

The Daily Telegraph ran the leaked memos story under the headline "Revealed: Ed Balls and the 'brutal' plot to topple Blair".

But Mr Balls said: "The idea that that these documents show there was a plot or an attempt to remove Tony Blair is just not true.

"It's not justified either by the documents themselves or by what was actually happening at the time."

'Over-hyped'

He insisted there was "no nasty edge" to the communications between Mr Brown and Mr Blair, and that people like him were "trying to hold things together", not widen any divisions.

The relationship between Mr Blair and Mr Brown was "under stress" during the period and there were arguments, he said: "I think people will look back and say it could have been done better. I agree with that and there's a lesson there for us as a party."

Mr Miliband dismissed the Telegraph story as "an over-hyped version of ancient history".

"Frankly, the era of Blair and Brown is over... and this generation of politicians is not going to repeat the mistakes of Blair and Brown," he added.

But Conservative Party deputy chairman Michael Fallon said it showed Mr Balls and Mr Miliband could not be trusted.

He said: "While Britain's debt doubled, welfare spending spiralled out of control and education standards fell, they were obsessing about getting rid of the elected prime minister and putting Gordon Brown into position."

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