Latest news with #BBCWorldService
BBC News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Forest 'part of my window to the outside world '
This week, we are asking you to share your stories and photos about why you fell in love with is a selection of your submissions: Guru: When I was a lad growing up in Kenya in the 1950s, our window to the outside world was BBC World Service. On Saturdays, I used to be mesmerised listening to the football scores. One team always stuck in my mind - Nottingham Forest. In my mind, it had associations with Robin then, I was not to know that eventually I would come to live within 17 miles of City Ground. One of the first things I did was get a season ticket, which I then had all through the glory years. How I wish I still had it! Send us your pictures and stories here
BBC News
27-07-2025
- Science
- BBC News
How voices from Daventry travelled the world
This years marks the centenary of the opening of the BBC transmitting station at Daventry in carried the BBC World Service to countries across the world from 1932 to 1992 and was also the site of the world's first national radio how did this small town in the Midlands become a famous name across the globe? Why was Daventry chosen as a transmitter site? When the BBC sprung into life in 1922, radio broadcasts could only be made over short company's chief engineer, Peter Eckersley, believed it was possible to create a long wave transmitter that would serve most of the BBC decided to find a site for a transmitting station that was situated north of a line between the Severn and the Wash, surrounded by as much land as locations were explored and Borough Hill in Daventry turned out to have the best coverage of BBC bought 58 acres (23 hectares) of the hill and started work on constructing the station. There was no road to the top, so it built a rack and pinion railway to haul building materials up the 128m (420ft) masts were erected with a lattice of copper wires and aluminium transmission equipment was housed in a spacious hall with cathedral windows in what became known as the 5XX building. What was the first radio service to be broadcast from Daventry? The station opened on 27 July 1925, with a poem called The Dane Tree written by the-then poet laureate, Alfred first broadcasts, for the BBC's National Programme, mainly originated in London and included plays, like The Glittering Gate, the story of two dead was also music, including popular songs and orchestral items. When was the BBC World Service first broadcast from Daventry? The BBC governors had been considering the idea of broadcasting beyond the shores of the United Kingdom for some corporation's engineers knew that short wave radio signals could travel long distances by reflecting off the ionosphere, part of the Earth's atmosphere, making international broadcasting in 1932, they expanded the site at Daventry and installed two short wave transmitters to send out the Empire Service, as the World Service was then called, to four zones across the a speech to mark the opening on 19 December 1932, the BBC's director-general John Reith warned that the early programmes "will neither be very interesting nor very good", but he also said the launch of the service was "a significant occasion in the history of the British Empire".He predicted that "broadcasting is a development with which the future must reckon and reckon seriously". How big did the international operation at Borough Hill become? As time went on, more services were launched to different countries, and complicated schedules of frequency changes were needed to keep the radio stations on air as atmospheric conditions changed during the engineer John Barry recalls services being broadcast in about 38 languages in the added that most of the languages were for eastern countries, as "in Asia, there are various vernaculars of Chinese, Indian, etcetera whereas, if you broadcast to the west, it was mainly Spanish". What impact did the transmitting station have on Daventry? People living in Daventry reported hearing programmes through metal items in their houses, such as taps and kettles, as well as chimneys and Viveash, another retired engineer, said other aspects of daily life were affected: "When TV started, [the radio signals] did cause a lot of interference with TV, so we went through a bit of a period being unpopular."When cars started to get in-built burglar alarms, you'd get the sound of the programme coming out of the car when you got into it."BBC sports teams were created and a BBC club was opened in Sheaf Street.A number of the men who came to work on Borough Hill ended up marrying local women. Why did the BBC station at Borough Hill close? There were two main reasons why the BBC vacated the Cold War, a period of tension between the USA and the Soviet Union , was over so the USA's international radio service, the Voice of America, moved out of the BBC's site at Woofferton in Service transmission could then be transferred from Daventry to modernising the Daventry facility would have involved constructing a large number of self-supporting towers on Borough Hill in place of masts held up by would have been expensive, and may not have enhanced the Daventry Bird, who worked on the hill for nearly 50 years, was given the honour of switching off the last transmitter on 29 March exhibition is currently open at Daventry's museum telling the story of the BBC's time in the town. Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
BBC News
25-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
New lease of life for Daventry's pioneering radio building
The owner of the home of the first national radio transmitter in the world said he is determined to give it a new lease of 5XX building on Borough Hill in Daventry, Northamptonshire, celebrates the centenary of its opening on site went on to broadcast the BBC World Service for sixty years before being closed by the BBC in Silk bought the 5XX building, named after its transmitter callsign, in 2018 after "admiring it from afar" and is converting it into a base for his business, Juice Sound and Light. The 5XX transmission building contained what was then the most advanced and highest-power transmitter in the the BBC moved out in the nineties, it was left to decay until Mr Silk was offered the chance to buy it."It's a hundred-year-old building and it was left derelict to rot," he said."When we came in, it was a scene from a Halloween movie with cobwebs hanging everywhere and, internally, ivy growing down the walls and the roof was collapsing." Renovating the building was clearly going to be a long and expensive task, but Mr Silk was determined to get started."I've admired the building from afar for about 18 years prior to making the offer and it was always one of those places that intrigued me," he said. There are a few signs of its historic role in the past, including a travelling crane that was installed in 1925 to lift generator the iconic cathedral windows that once bathed the machinery in light had been bricked over. A particularly quirky part of the structure is a reinforced nuclear Silk said: "If nuclear war broke out, there was to be four persons placed in this bunker, and they would survive the shocks."They had supplies and services here for 28 days and, after that, they would open the blast doors and walk out to what was left." Mr Silk said he has spent about £330,000 on the building and there is still a lot of work to do, including the installation of offices and a small wants to ensure the building "maintains its quality for at least the rest of my lifetime, but hopefully for another hundred years". Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Forbes
24-07-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
U.K. Risks Being A Dumping Ground For Goods Made Using Forced Labor
A young person sifts through stones at a cobalt and copper mining pit on May 25, 2025, in Kolwezi, ... More Democratic Republic of Congo. (Photo credit:) On July 24, 2025, a Parliamentary committee in the United Kingdom published a report warning that the U.K. has fallen behind in its approach to addressing forced labor in supply chains and is at risk of becoming a dumping ground for goods made using forced labor. The report produced by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, a committee consisting of members of both Houses of Parliament (House of Commons and House of Lords) to examine matters relating to human rights within the United Kingdom, found that human rights abuses are so pervasive in key sectors it is inevitable these goods are entering the U.K. market, as no effective safeguards are in place. The report recommends, among others, that import bans should be established for goods linked to forced labor, in line with the approach taken by the United States and the European Union. The Joint Committee on Human Rights received significant amount of evidence of modern day slavery in the supply chain reaching the U.K. It identified that the U.K. imports over $26 billion of goods from five sectors where high levels of forced labor are found: electronics, garments, fish, timber and textiles. There is also evidence of human rights abuses in other industries – a BBC World Service report uncovered evidence of processed tomatoes labeled as being from Italy were in fact highly likely to have been produced using forced labor in China. In relation to modern day slavery in the garments industry, the report raised the concern that, as reports suggest, 1 in 5 garments made from cotton have been linked to forced labor in the Xinjiang area of China, a community subjected to crimes against humanity and genocide in the country. The Committee heard from Rahima Mahmut, of the World Uyghur Congress, about the dire situation of the Uyghurs and other minority groups, including discriminative forced labor and re-location practices that they are subjected to in China, including the separation of families. The Committee noted that many of the cotton products coming to the U.K., may be tainted in forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang, and retailers cannot guarantee that this is not the case. Among others, the Committee raised that when retailer Shien gave evidence to the Business and Trade Committee, their representative could not confirm whether cotton from Xinjiang was used in clothing sold to U.K. consumers. The report further noted that evidence suggests that North Korean workers are being subjected to forced labor on Chinese fishing vessels. This is said to be part of North Korea's export of its citizens as laborers in order to raise funds for the regime, including its weapons programs. The fish caught by North Korean workers are sent to China for processing before being sold on to markets in the Europe and the United States. In 2023, Britain imported £307 million worth of fish from China, making China the U.K.'s second largest supplier of fish. The Committee also heard from Michael Rudin, the Executive Producer of the BBC World Service investigation 'Blood on the Shelves.' The investigation found evidence that processed tomatoes were being sold in the U.K. and labeled as being from Italy despite highly likely being produced in China under forced labor conditions. Furthermore, the Committee noted that solar panels are at a high risk of exposure to forced labor due to their reliance on polysilicon largely mined and processed in regions with high risks of exposure to forced labor. Katherine Bryant, Director of Operations, Walk Free, told the Committee that due to a lack of traceability, it is almost impossible to know if any solar panel sold in the U.K. is free from forced labor or not. Lastly, the Committee noted the reports of alleged forced labor and child labor in the mining industry. In particular, there is evidence of the use of child labor in artisanal mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As the DRC sources around 70% of the world's cobalt, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries and magnets, it is likely that minerals sourced in the DRC will have entered U.K. supply chains. The report makes a very strong case that U.K.'s current legal and regulatory frameworks are inadequate for confronting the complexity of abuses in global supply chains. It notes that businesses should be mandated to undertake due diligence of their supply chains, with penalties levied for non-compliance and new routes for victims to bring their case to U.K. courts. The report further recommends that import bans should be established for goods linked to forced labor, in line with the approach taken by the United States and in the European Union. In the United States, the law creates a rebuttable presumption that all products coming from Xinjiang, China, are tainted in modern day slavery, unless proven otherwise. The report calls upon the government to set out who is responsible for identifying and seizing these illicit goods and establish robust oversight mechanisms for the new import ban. Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Lord David Alton commented: 'Over the course of this inquiry we have seen evidence of human rights abuses in a wide range of industries that are a major part of U.K. trade. Other nations have progressed in eradicating these appalling abuses from their supply chains, but the UK has been left behind. Global supply chains are highly complex and abuses can be well hidden. A voluntary system is not going to be enough to root out wrongdoing. We are calling for a range of measures to give the UK robust protections against these goods entering the market.' The U.K. Government will now have to respond to the report and explain whether and how it will implement the recommendations. The U.K. is not alone with the problem. Too many countries globally do not have effective laws, policies and mechanisms that would equip them to combat modern day slavery in the supply chain. The global problem of modern day slavery requires truly global responses. This is also where consumers buying the goods tainted in modern day slavery have to speak out and make it clear that they do not want to be part of the crime.
BBC News
23-07-2025
- General
- BBC News
Sir Terry Waite recalls how BBC news was 'tapped on cell wall'
Former Beirut hostage Sir Terry Waite has been recalling how news from the BBC World Service was tapped out in code on a wall for him by a fellow Terry, 86, says the World Service broadcasts from the transmitter station in Daventry, Northamptonshire, gave him hope while he was chained to a wall in darkness day and Terry, who now lives near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, was released in 1991 after 1,763 days in captivity in week sees the centenary of the opening of the station at Daventry. As the Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy, Sir Terry went to Lebanon in 1987 to try to secure the release of hostages, but ended up in captivity himself. He told BBC Radio Northampton's Annabel Amos that the conditions he was kept in were very basic."I was kept in a dark room, sometimes below ground, sometimes above ground, in a bombed-out building," he said."I slept on the floor, I was in the dark most of the time, I was blindfolded and chained by the hands and feet to a wall for 23 hours and 50 minutes a day.""Looking back, I wonder how I survived it." With no access to books, newspapers, television or radio, Sir Terry was completely isolated from the outside then he discovered there were other hostages in the next cell, and he decided to try to communicate with them without the guards finding said: "I began to tap on the wall: one for A, two for B."It's then you regret your name is Terry Waite because it's a long way down the alphabet!"It took about two years of laboriously tapping out his name before someone responded. The hostages nextdoor turned out to be the British journalist John McCarthy and the Irish writer Brian Keenan, who had heard Sir Terry's tapping but had been unable to respond until one of them was chained next to the wall."They had a small radio," said Sir Terry, "and they were able to get the World Service. "They used to communicate with me by tapping on the wall and telling me the latest news."Just before the end of his captivity, Sir Terry became ill and was given a small first time he turned it on, he heard a broadcast of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius: "That was the first music I'd heard for years, and I remember how much it brought me some comfort and some harmony into my life." After his release, Sir Terry visited Daventry to thank the BBC team for transmitting the radio programmes that became his said the Daventry station was "fulfilling a valuable function around the world - long may it continue".The centenary of the opening of the Daventry transmitting station takes place on Sunday. The World Service is now broadcast from Woofferton in Shropshire. Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
