How carers are helped to understand effects of dementia
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President Barack Obama has said the US is looking at all options in Libya
US President Barack Obama has secretly authorised covert assistance to rebels seeking to overthrow Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, US media reports say.
He recently signed a document known as a “finding”, allowing support to the rebel groups, Reuters news agency and ABC News said.
Such “findings” are a common way for the president to authorise covert operations by the CIA.
The CIA and White House have both declined to comment on the reports.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said: “I will reiterate what the president said yesterday – no decision has been made about providing arms to the opposition or to any group in Libya. We’re not ruling it out or ruling it in.
“We’re assessing and reviewing options for all types of assistance that we could provide to the Libyan people, and have consulted directly with the opposition and our international partners about these matters.”
The latest reports come amid an ongoing debate about the legality of arming the forces opposed to Col Gaddafi, the BBC’s Steve Kingstone in Washington says.
Mr Obama has said publicly the US has not ruled out arming the rebels. He has pledged US troops will not join the effort to eject Col Gaddafi.
The New York Times, citing American officials, said on Wednesday that the CIA has had operatives on the ground in Libya for several weeks. They are said to be gathering intelligence for air strikes and making contact with the forces fighting Col Gaddafi.
The newspaper says British intelligence and special forces are also involved.
In interviews with US television networks on Tuesday, Mr Obama spoke of applying “steady pressure, not only militarily but also through these other means” to encourage Col Gaddafi to step down.
He said the US had not decided whether or not to provide arms to Libyan rebels in the future.
“It’s fair to say that if we wanted to get weapons into Libya, we probably could. We’re looking at all our options at this point,” he told ABC News.
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Self-test health kits sold online or at chemists could do more harm than good, warns consumer group Which?.
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Why did people lie about their age in 1970?
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Pro-Ouattara forces are advancing on several fronts from their northern bases
Forces loyal to UN-backed President-elect Alassane Ouattara are advancing towards Ivory Coast’s capital, Yamoussoukro, on two fronts.
His forces have recently taken several towns and incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo has appealed for a ceasefire.
Mr Gbagbo refuses to stand down despite the UN saying he lost November’s poll.
A BBC reporter says Yamoussoukro is only the capital in name, but its capture would be a major symbolic victory for the pro-Ouattara forces.
Some one million people have fled the violence – mostly in the main city of Abidjan – and at least 462 people have been killed since December, according to the UN.
In the western town of Duekoue, thousands of people have taken refuge in a church compound to escape the fighting this week.
In Abidjan, the UN says attacks on civilians by pro-Gbagbo youths have continued.
The BBC’s John James in the northern city of Bouake, in territory held by the pro-Ouattara forces, says the enrolment of these youths into the army is due to start on Wednesday to replace soldiers who are not turning up for work or who have changed sides.
This week, fighters loyal to Mr Ouattara have been gaining ground in two offensives from their northern bases.
Ivory Coast: Battle for power
462 killed, one million fled since disputed election9,000 UN peacekeepers monitor 2003 ceasefireWorld’s largest cocoa producerOnce was haven of peace and prosperity in West AfricaAlassane Ouattara recognised as president-electInternational sanctions imposed to force Laurent Gbagbo to goHarding blog: Will the world prevent war?
In the west, pro-Ouattara forces are reported to have taken the major town of Daloa and the town of Duekoue, while in the east, the forces say they have captured the town of Bondoukou.
A spokesman for Mr Gbagbo said the army had adopted a strategy of tactical withdrawal but warned it could use its “legitimate right of defence”.
Our reporter says Yamoussoukro voted overwhelmingly for Mr Ouattara in the elections.
Residents in the city say it is quiet as pro-Ouattara forces advance from several sides.
“Fighting with heavy weapons started at 2am, we are hiding in our houses,” a resident in Tiebissou, 40km (25 miles) north of the city, told the AFP news agency.
Clashes have also been reported in the town of Bouafle, about 50km to the west of the capital.
“Since about 6 o’clock this morning, we are hearing gunfire in Bouafle, machine-gun fire and often heavy detonations,” Alain Zagole, a resident of the town, told Reuters news agency.
Our reporter says the other main target under immediate threat is the port of San Pedro in the south-west.
Its capture would open up a vital supply route for the pro-Ouattara forces and eventually allow them to start shipping the country’s main export, cocoa, he says.
The pro-Ouattara forces have controlled the north of the country since a 2002 civil war.
Pro-Gbagbo troops have lost every battle against them since last November’s election, our reporter says.
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Jeremy Beadle’s pranks were a huge TV hit in the UK
As April Fools jokers hatch their plans, what’s the secret to a perfect prank, asks broadcaster Toby Amies. And how far do the very best tricksters go in preparing their practical jokes?
This article is not a hoax. I promise you. It’s a serious work about the practical joke.
How far would you go to pull off a prank? The dole queue? In 1987, a young British broadcaster called Chris Morris let off helium into the BBC Bristol studio, causing the newsreader’s stories to reach a higher and higher pitch. Chris lost his job. And started his career in satire.
Would you risk prison? Pranks are often protests, against unfairness or authority or reality. And protest is increasingly risky in the 21st Century.
As the film director Billy Wilder said: “If you are going to tell people the truth, be funny or they will kill you.”
Whether personal or public, the prank has a point to make, but if you’re planning on tricking someone, it’s best to ensure everyone gets the joke.
Russian Art Collective Voina might have gone furthest in making fun of the unfair. Two of their members went to prison. Russian prison.
Although Voina’s manifesto is political, their activities make more immediate (non)sense, from launching live cats at workers in McDonald’s to their most notorious “action” – daubing graffiti on a raised bridge opposite the headquarters of the federal security service in St Petersburg, with an enormous, crude phallus that erected every time the bridge did.
Perhaps inevitably, two Voina members were arrested – not for the abstract insult of the penis but for overturning police cars. Voina’s name means “war” and they see themselves as part of another Russian revolution, one that refuses to take the very serious seriously at all, even if it means loss of liberty.
Find out moreThe Artiness Of Naughtiness is on Friday 1 April at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4Or catch up using the link below
The Artiness of NaughtinessThe pranksters have been bailed out of prison by the world’s most internationally famous “anonymous” street artist, Banksy.
With its roots in the mythological trickster who mediated between Heaven and Earth – known by many names in many cultures, like Loki, Anansie, Prometheus, Coyote, Eshu or Brer Rabbit – a good prank allows boundaries to be crossed, including the ones between art and crime, or amateur and professional.
“Pranksters are the special forces of comedy, getting out into the field to tell truth through laughter”
Toby Amies
When unemployed Mancunian Karl Power became, for a brief moment the 12th man in Manchester United’s team against Munich in 2001 by walking onto the pitch at the right moment in the right kit, he turned every fan’s fantasy into reality.
But it was the result of two years of careful strategy, he said. “We planned it like a military campaign and brought three United kits with us – red, white and blue.” The choice of three kits meant Karl the imposter could blend in with the reality of a Champions League match unnoticed till it was too late.
Legendary American media hoaxer Joey Skaggs has devoted his whole life to the prank. For more than 30 years, Joey’s been making up ridiculous lies that get disseminated so far by the mass media we are forced to wonder if the same media might not be fact-checking every other story so closely.
“I am an artist. To me the media is a medium and I create plausible but none existent realities and I stage for the news media to make social, political, satirical commentary.”
Joey simplifies the process as “the hook, line and sinker”.
The hook has the bait, a ready-written story, so sexy that a journalist wants it to be true so much they don’t bother to check.
The line is a record of the process. Joey uses clippings services and devices like Google alerts help him chart the reach of the hoax. “I watched how the news media would change the intent, content, meaning of the message to suit their own agendas.”
Karl Power gatecrashed many sports, including football and Formula One
Joey’s duped the media into covering an embarrassing number of weird but wonderful stories, from his canine brothel, The Cathouse for Dogs, to his celebrity sperm bank, and probably several other stories that are works in progress that have yet to be revealed.
The sinker is the reveal, the moment when the lights go on and we all realise how easy it is to be fooled.
It’s hard work to overturn reality. Joey creates shell companies, puts out official press releases, hires actors, installs dedicated phone lines, whatever it takes to make the false seem real. It’s a wonder he hasn’t been headhunted by the financial services industry. The prank on his scale is an artform and consequently a mix of inspiration, craft and industry, imagination and talent is needed.
False reality
Even so, pranking has proved extremely popular as a form of television, the hidden camera pioneered in Alan Funt’s Candid Camera in the US allowed the delicious dramatic irony of watching a carefully planned plot unfold from several angles.
Famous pranks1957: Hoax BBC Panorama reveals spaghetti harvest in Switzerland1976: Patrick Moore tells Radio 2 listeners that at 0947 a planetary event would lessen Earth’s gravity and if people jumped in the air at that momentm, they would float1986: Le Parisien newspaper announces that the Eiffel Tower is to be moved to Euro Disney1998: Burger King launches left-handed Whopper
Television turned the prank into an expensive business with millions at risk. The budgets of TV and film allowed for exactly the kind of careful dramatic plotting that a good prank needs, fortunes were spent in creating versions of reality that were are at once, ridiculous to the viewer and plausible to the victim.
Nigel Crowle, an associate producer for Noel Edmonds and Jeremy Beadle, describes it as creating “layer upon layer of absurd situations, build it up, to a climax, which really if you analysed it make absolutely no sense whatsoever”.
You almost need to bully your target into accepting a false reality, by not giving them the opportunity to consider the alternatives. Of course this is how advertising works.
Pranksters are the special forces of comedy, getting out into the field to tell truth through laughter and using the public space as a theatre.
Charlie Todd’s Improv Everywhere most famously froze time in New York’s Grand Central Station in a performance that has received millions of views on YouTube. He’s used social media as effectively as revolutionaries in the Middle East for feel-good pranks.
If nothing else, the use of social media is another symptom of the prank’s appropriateness as the perfect art for our zeitgeist. It’s anti-authoritarian, hard to commodify or monetise, full of social comment, anti-violent and revolutionary. The opposite of the kind of art a billionaire would buy.
But as I write this, I wonder if I’ve been unfair to authority and the status quo: the bosses, the parents, the teachers, the politicians, the forces of darkness who would stop us laughing and joking.
On reflection perhaps not, because you might say they’ve been playing the most terrible joke on us 364 days a year.
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