BBC TV News - 16th November

It was a special Children in Need charity night on BBC television last night. It is sort of like a giant televised BBC money collection charity pantomime, where members of the public are hoodwinked into phoning in and pledging monies to deprived infants via images of suffering and do-gooding, along with urges from "celebrities" to hand over the (your) cash.

Anyway, Fiona Bruce was presenting the news before appearing on CIN, and we began with the story that the police search of the house in Margate where the body of Vicky Hamilton was found buried has uncovered another body, believed to be that of another missing teenager Dinah McNicol. We saw images of the house, helicopter views of the property and again the ridiculously simplistic 3D computer representation of a garden, this time to show us where the graves were located.

Another missing child story followed, Madeleine McCann. One of the Tapas 9, Jane Tanner, is to appear on Panorama on Monday night in a special programme, "The Mystery of ..". A brief clip of the troubled JT was shown, she spoke of the mysterious man with the bundle that she saw that evening.

The Northern Rock, we heard more about the possible takeover/rescue for the troubled bank, Robert Peston, the BBC business editor was interviewed about his thoughts. Again, as in previous reports, our attention was drawn to white knight Richard Branson, and a large image of his friendly face appeared on the screen to remind us what he looks like.

The cyclone in Bangladesh, we heard of the devastation, the video link is here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7090000/newsid_7099400/7099484.stm?bw=bb&mp=rm&asb=1&news=1#

Climate Change, a UN panel have seemingly produced a report which verifies the theories behind climate change and warns of devastating problems ahead. Images of polar bears in need were displayed and we heard from BBC scientific officer David Shukman. The video link report from him is here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7090000/newsid_7099200/7099212.stm?bw=bb&mp=rm&nol_storyid=7099212&news=1#

Coming up - DNA online

First though, we heard the nightly update on the Pakistan situation along with images of social disorder.

More children, this time gangs and gun culture. It seems that police are to somehow get hold of the leaders of the gangs and give them a good talking to of some description, warning them that their behaviour will not be tolerated any longer. We were told that Gordon Brown has met members of the Xcalibre Task Force in Manchester to discuss issues further. What is forgotten here is that someone else will simply fill their role, if indeed they bother listening. The problem is not the individuals or the gangs, the problem is our society. There have always been gangs and violence yet now they have guns where as it used to be knives, baseball bats whatever. The video link follows

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7090000/newsid_7098800/7098817.stm?bw=bb&mp=rm&asb=1&news=1#

Football, we heard about Scotland's chances tonight in the World Cup qualifiers and saw images of the famous Tartan Army.

To close, the DNA feature. Often on a Friday night we close with a scientific/dna type feature, tonight we heard of the DeCode Genetics who are offering an online genome profiling which will enable any customers to ascertain thel likelihood of contracting various diseases. You can read about it here. This could be great for our children, maybe they could simply have the offending genes removed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7098998.stm

cheers

Genetic Xcalibre Task Force ?