London fire: 'Outrageous' lack of help for Grenfell tower victims


There are many things fuelling the anger felt here.
The catastrophic loss of life is the primary factor, of course. But there is also the fact that people are finding it very difficult to get any information.
There does not appear to be any central official point here on the ground where people can go to get answers and support. No marquee with "help centre" written on the side. No officials with lanyards guiding confused and desperate people to counsellors.
There has been a huge voluntary response, with local churches and others helping people.
Donations have flooded in - too many now - such is the public response.
And unseen officials are caring for those in hospital and working to find empty accommodation in which to house those left homeless.
And yet on the ground people speak of a total lack of coordination from the government and Kensington and Chelsea council.
Local residents' association representatives say some families are still sleeping on floors in centres around the Grenfell Tower four days after the fire.

'Absolute chaos'

They talk of absolute chaos. And they say what they regard as the inability of the local council to respond to their needs and concerns is "symptomatic of why we had this disaster".
Such is the total and utter lack of trust between residents and the officials in charge.
One of the things fuelling the anger here - perhaps the main thing - is the lack of a central point of contact for answers.
Crisis management at disasters around the world swings into action at varying speeds. But even in remote areas, international bodies have normally set up obvious local centres of support fairly soon after the event.
It has not happened in North Kensington.
Twenty-four hours after the 2010 Haitian earthquake, I arrived to find no international response to speak of.
But within another 24 hours that response was arriving and was significant there three days after the disaster - teams from around the world flying in, crisis centres and the United Nations in control of feeding points and housing solutions.
Yes, there were problems. There always are. But the centralised and visible response was in place days later in a relatively remote area.
That is what appears to be missing in the richest borough in one of the world's leading cities.
People need visible and accessible emotional psychological and physical help and right now they say they are not getting it.
Many people here believe an affluent Conservative council failed to look after its poorest residents.
But one angry former resident of the tower, who moved out in October, said: "Right now the residents need housing and taking care of. The council have failed to do so.
"This is not about politics. It is about getting people what they need and deserve. It is an outrage."
There has been little trust between residents and the council over the years. They say their concerns about safety in the Grenfell Tower were not listened to - not acted upon.
Right now that lack of trust is deepening. And so is the anger.
First Secretary of State Damian Green told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Kensington council are absolutely doing their best.
"People want answers, people want someone on the ground. The new recovery taskforce that the prime minister is chairing has people from central government as well as from the council on the ground to answer all those perfectly reasonable questions.
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London fire: 58 missing, presumed dead - police



A total of 58 people are dead or missing, presumed dead following the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower in west London, police have said.
Commander Stuart Cundy said that number "may increase". The BBC understands it could be around 70 people in total.
The recovery operation at the burnt-out block of flats, which was briefly stalled due to safety reasons, has resumed and could take weeks, he said.
Residents caught up in the fire have condemned the "chaotic" relief effort.
Commander Cundy appealed for anyone who managed to escape from the building to let authorities know they were safe.
Pictures and footage showing the inside of the tower will be released on Sunday to help people understand why the search was taking so long, he said.
Of the resumed search, he said: "As soon as we can, we will locate and recover loved ones.
The latest police update comes as the Queen reflected on the "sombre national mood" following tragedies in London and Manchester in recent weeks in her official birthday message.
In an unprecedented statement, the Queen said she had been "profoundly struck by the immediate inclination of people throughout the country to offer comfort and support to those in desperate need".
"Put to the test, the United Kingdom has been resolute in the face of adversity," she said.

'Bewildered and confused'

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Theresa May has met victims, volunteers and community leaders in Downing Street.
As they left Number 10, one representative spoke to reporters briefly, saying they would not make a full statement yet.
"We will be making this in the community, with the community," he said. "We have had two-and-a-half hours with the prime minister in the last 48 hours and spoke about demands and what we expect."
In other developments:
  • A minute's silence was observed by the Queen at the Trooping the Colour parade to remember the victims
  • Mrs May's new taskforce, made up of central government and Kensington and Chelsea council representatives, met
  • Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, led an adoration and mass in memory of the victims at St Pius X Church
  • The Circle line and Hammersmith and City underground lines, which run close to the tower, are partly suspended at the request of fire chiefs following a "short-term risk of some debris falling onto the tracks"




The BBC's Matthew Price said senior members of the residents' association described an "absolute chaos" of "no organisation" from officials.
Some residents said they no longer want Kensington and Chelsea council involved in any way.
He added: "They do not believe they are capable of managing the response. Such is the total and utter lack of trust."
Reverend Mike Long, from Notting Hill Methodist Church, said people in the community were angry and bewildered, and had lots of questions.
"They feel they're not being listened to and what they have been saying has not been listened to, and they don't know how to be able to express those things at the moment," he told BBC Radio 4's Today.
The fire broke out at the 24-storey block, which contained 120 one and two-bedroom flats, shortly before 01:00 BST on Wednesday.
It tore through all floors of the building and took more than 200 firefighters 24 hours to bring under control.
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Victims pull out of Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

Sex abuse victims have been "utterly marginalised" by an inquiry set up to help them, one of the victims claimed.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) is examining the extent to which religious groups and local authorities failed children.
Earlier this week a latest victims group - Survivors of Organised and Institutional Abuse (SOIA) - withdrew from the process.
The IICSA said it had "taken on board" a number of issues raised by SOIA.
SOIA said the group had taken the decision to withdraw "with regret" but said the inquiry was "not fit for purpose".
Set up in 2014, the inquiry has been beset by controversy, with three chairwomen stepping down, lawyers quitting and victims losing faith in the process.

'Darkest episodes'

One of the victims, Dr Phil Frampton, who grew up in Cornwall, said instead of being at the heart of the inquiry, survivors have been "utterly marginalised".
"This inquiry is not fit for purpose and has never been fit for purpose - we engaged to try to help it be fit for purpose, but it's actually going backwards," Mr Frampton said.
He said the Home Office had a "conflict of interest" and had failed to deal with abuse that had taken place, including in children's homes and approved schools it was responsible for prior to 1970.
"This is one of the darkest episodes in the country's history and if you've got people with conflicts of interest, they're never going to shine a torch into those dark places, for fear they'll see themselves," he said.
Dr Frampton has waived his right to anonymity.
More than 200 victims and survivors are involved in the inquiry, which was launched in 2014 by the then Home Secretary, Theresa May.
SOIA is the second victims' group to withdraw from the inquiry. Last September the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association announced it would be pulling out, having lost faith in an inquiry it believed was not independent.

Decision 'regretted'

"The heart of the inquiry is the big institutions who are using taxpayers' money to defend their institutions," Dr Frampton said.
"It is a callous and cold process the inquiry is inflicting on survivors."
The inquiry, chaired by Professor Alexis Jay, involves 13 initial investigations into allegations against local authorities, religious organisations, the armed forces, public and private institutions and people in the public eye.
In a statement, IICSA said it regretted SOIA's decision to withdraw and would welcome the group or individual members back,
It said it had "taken on board" a number of issues raised by SOIA, adding that the "important work" of the inquiry would continue.
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China's quantum satellite in big leap


The term "spy satellite" has taken on a new meaning with the successful test of a novel Chinese spacecraft.
The mission can provide unbreakable secret communications channels, in principle, using the laws of quantum science.
Called Micius, the satellite is the first of its kind and was launched from the Gobi desert last August.
It is all part of a push towards a new kind of internet that would be far more secure than the one we use now.
The experimental Micius, with its delicate optical equipment, continues to circle the Earth, transmitting to two mountain-top Earth bases separated by 1,200km.
The optics onboard are paramount. They're needed to distribute to the ground stations the particles, or photons, of light that can encode the "keys" to secret messages.
"I think we have started a worldwide quantum space race," says lead researcher Jian-Wei Pan, who is based in Hefei in China's Anhui Province.

'Messy business'

Quantum privacy in many ways should be like the encryption that already keeps our financial data private online.
Before sensitive information is shared between shopper and online shop, the two exchange a complicated number that is then used to scramble the subsequent characters. It also hides the key that will allow the shop to unscramble the text securely.
The weakness is that the number itself can be intercepted, and with enough computing power, cracked.
Quantum cryptography, as it is called, goes one step further, by using the power of quantum science to hide the key.
As one of the founders of quantum mechanics Werner Heisenberg realised over 90 years ago, any measurement or detection of a quantum system, such as an atom or photon of light, uncontrollably and unpredictably changes the system.
This quantum uncertainty is the property that allows those engaged in secret communications to know if they are being spied on: the eavesdropper's efforts would mess up the connection.
The idea has been developed since it was first understood in the 1980s.
Typically, pairs of photons created or born simultaneously like quantum twins will share their quantum properties no matter how long they are separated or how far they have travelled. Reading the photons later, by shopper and shop, leads to the numerical key that can then be used to encrypt a message. Unless the measurements show interference from an eavesdropper.
A network established in Vienna in 2008 successfully used telecommunications fibre optics criss-crossing the city to carry these "entangled photons", as they are called. But even the clearest of optical fibres looks foggy to light, if it's long enough. And an ambitious 2,000km link from Beijing to Shanghai launched last year needs repeater hubs every 100km or so - weak points for quantum hackers of the future to target.
And that, explains Anton Zeilinger, one of the pioneers of the field and creator of the Vienna network, is the reason to communicate via satellite instead.
"On the ground, through the air, through glass fibres - you cannot go much further than 200km. So a satellite in outer space is the choice if you want to go a really large distance," he said.
The point being that in the vacuum of space, there are no atoms, or at least hardly any, to mess up the quantum signal.
That is what makes the tests with Micius, named after an ancient Chinese philosopher, so significant. They have proved a spaced-based network is possible, as revealed in the latest edition of the journal Science.

Technical tour de force

Not that it is easy. The satellite passes 500km over China for just less than five minutes each day - or rather each night, as bright sunlight would easily swamp the quantum signal. Micius' intricate optics create the all-important photon pairs and fires them down towards telescopes on some of China's high mountains.
"When I had the idea of doing this in 2003, many people thought it was a crazy idea," Jian-Wei Pan told the BBC World Service from his office in the University of Science and Technology of China. "Because it was very challenging already doing the sophisticated quantum optics experiments in a lab - so how can you do a similar experiment at a thousand-kilometre distance and with optical elements moving at a speed of 8km/s?"
Additional lasers steered the satellite's optics as it flew over China, keeping them pointed at the base stations. Nevertheless, owing to clouds, dust and atmospheric turbulence, most of the photons created on the satellite failed to reach their target: only one pair of the 10 million photon pairs generated each second actually completed the trip successfully.
But that was enough to complete the test successfully. It showed that the photons that did arrive preserved the quantum properties needed for quantum crypto-circuits.
"The Chinese experiment is a quite remarkable technological achievement," enthused mathematician Artur Ekert in an e-mail to the BBC. It was as a student in quantum information at Oxford University in the 1990s that Ekert proposed the paired-photon approach to cryptography. Relishing the pun, he added wryly "when I proposed the scheme, I did not expect it to be elevated to such heights."
Alex Ling from the National University of Singapore is a rival physicist. His first quantum minisatellite blew up shortly after launch in 2014, but he is generous in his praise of the Micius mission: "The experiment is definitely a technical tour de force.

"We are pretty excited about this development, and hope it heralds a new era in quantum communications capability."
The next step will be a collaboration between Jian-Wei Pan and his former PhD supervisor, Anton Zeilinger in the University of Vienna - to prove what can be done across a single nation can also be achieved between whole continents, still using Micius.
"The idea is the satellite flies over China, establishes a secret key with a ground station; then it flies over Austria, it establishes another secret key with that ground station. Then the keys are combined to establish a key between say Vienna and Beijing," he told the BBC's Science in Action programme.
Pan says his team will soon arrive in Vienna to start those tests.
Meanwhile, Zeilinger is working on Qapital, a quantum network connecting many of the capitals of Europe, Vienna and Bratislava. Existing optic fibres laid alongside data networks but not currently used could make the backbone of this network, Zeilinger believes.
"A future quantum internet," he says, "will consist of fibre optic networks on the ground that will be connected to other fibre networks by satellites overhead. I think it will happen."
Pan is already planning the details of the satellite constellation that will make this possible.
The need? Secrecy is the stuff of spy agencies, who have large budgets. But financial institutions which trade billions of dollars internationally day by day also have valuable resources to protect.
Although some observers are sceptical they would want to pay for a quantum internet, Pan, Zeilinger and the other technologists think the case will be irresistible once one exists.
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US singer Katy Perry is first to 100m Twitter followers


The US singer-songwriter Katy Perry has become the first person to reach 100m followers on Twitter.
The website posted a video compilation of her tweets since she joined in 2009 along with a message saying "Today, we #WITNESS history".
Witness is the name of Perry's new album.
The Canadian singer Justin Bieber has the second highest number of followers at 96.7m with Barack Obama in third place with almost 91m.
The rest of the top 100 accounts are mostly made up of singers, sports stars, media companies and a few politicians, according to the website Twitter Counter.
US president Donald Trump is the most-followed current leader, in 33rd place with 32.4m followers. Two places behind him - after the boy band One Direction - is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with 30.7m followers.

However it is not clear how many of these accounts' followers are real people and how many may be fake accounts.
Searches using the tool Twitter Audit - which analyses a sample of followers and calculates a score based on factors including the number of tweets they have sent - suggested that about two-thirds of both Perry's and Bieber's followers may not be real.
For Mr Obama and Mr Trump the figure dropped to about a third.
In January researchers in the UK discovered massive collections of dormant fake Twitter accounts.
Some had been used to fake follower numbers, send spam and boost interest in trending topics, the researchers found.
Twitter says users are banned from writing programs that automatically followed or unfollowed accounts or which "favourited" tweets in bulk.
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London fire: Some victims will be kept unconscious for days


Hospital doctors are keeping some casualties from the Grenfell Tower fire unconscious for several days to allow them to recover from the effects of smoke inhalation.
Doctors are currently treating 24 casualties in four hospitals: 12 are in a critical condition.
All are said to be suffering from damage to the throat, lungs and airways caused by breathing in smoke.
This is the major priority for doctors, rather than external burns.
In fact, the BBC understands that no-one is being treated for burns to the skin or body.
However, breathing in smoke can cause damaging internal burns and swelling to the throat, which may not be immediately obvious.
The most serious cases will need a general anaesthetic.
This means they can be kept well-hydrated using an intravenous drip and kept under close supervision while their airways heal.

Vulnerable children

Most will also be suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, caused by breathing in noxious fumes from the fire.
They need urgent treatment with oxygen through a face mask.
Breathing in concentrated oxygen this way enables the body to recover quickly when carbon monoxide enters the bloodstream.
Babies, young children, pregnant women and people with asthma are most vulnerable to the dangers of carbon monoxide.
Most people in big cities have a level of carbon monoxide of between nought and three, and smokers of five or six.
After the fire, the Guardian reported that doctors were treating people whose readings were between 10 and 20.
In total, nearly 80 people have required hospital treatment for the effects of the fire.


At least 30 people are confirmed to have died.
While treating the physical effects of smoke inhalation is a priority in the four London hospitals - King's College Hospital, Chelsea and Westminster, Royal Free Hospital and St Mary's Paddington - the psychological impact is not being ignored.
Psychiatrists and chaplains have been on hand to help support the injured, relatives and staff.
Survivors will have witnessed traumatic sights and many may also have to deal with the loss of loved ones.

Prof Sir Simon Wessely, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, recommends turning to friends, family and religious leaders to talk through feelings.
While mental health professionals are invaluable in times of psychological need, immediately after a traumatic event it is our own strength, and those of our friends and family, that can be the most beneficial.
"Speaking to a mental health professional - a complete stranger - when you are in a state of shock, is not always the solution."
He said the public could play a part by offering practical support and information to those involved in the fire - as the community of North Kensington has been doing in force in the past few days.
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Apple to scan iPhones for child sex abuse images

  Apple has announced details of a system to find child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on customers' devices. Before an image is stored on...