Tribute to "family man" Chakib killed in Hull cycle collision
''Chakib was a hard-working family man, known for his jolly nature and fooling around," his family said."Chakib, or "Tic Tac", as he was known to his friends, was the owner of Queens Gardens News and Whitefriargate News.''We will always remember his wise words, live your life and make the most of it."Officers investigating the incident have renewed an appeal for anyone who may have witnessed the collision or who may have relevant CCTV or dashcam footage to contact them.Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
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Times
41 minutes ago
- Times
His voice was taken by disease. Now he delivers justice through a synthesizer
A syrupy American voice congratulates members of the jury for being selected to serve in Dundee sheriff court. The inflection is almost celebratory, as though the line-up has secured new jobs or passed an exam. Although the words were supplied by Sheriff Alastair Carmichael, who has overseen proceedings in the city for 12 years, the voice was produced by Microsoft. 'You'll already have noticed that this is another synthetic voice that's speaking my words,' Carmichael's laptop tells the courtroom. Motor neurone disease (MND), which affects the nerve cells connecting muscles and the brain, has eroded his ability to enunciate words himself. The illness began with a 'numb, spongy feeling' inside his mouth in the autumn of 2023, then progressed to a lisp. Carmichael can still talk but the range of sounds demanded by the English language are no longer feasible. The letter 'C', he tells me, is particularly difficult. When I struggle to understand, as we chat during a morning in his chambers, he jots in a notebook or taps a phrase into his phone and shows me the screen. Bizarrely, during two holidays to France, he found French easier to enunciate. Of his diagnosis, he types: 'I'm not bitter about it. It is one of life's mysteries. You can only control what you can control.' Still agile, he moves nimbly around his book-lined room, providing refreshments and showing how he uses different digital devices. Carmichael's form of MND has only affected him from the throat up, a condition known as progressive bulbar palsy. His wife Helen, sons and courtroom colleagues who converse with him daily are much quicker at understanding his words than me. In order to do his job Carmichael uses a range of text-to-speech software and each programme has its quirks. One of 127 sheriffs in Scotland, Carmichael is thought to be the only judge in the UK, and possibly the world, presiding over cases using synthesised speech. 'Carrying on doing this gives me a purpose and enables me to be a full part of society by contributing,' he says. Carmichael recorded his own voice before he lost the power of speech. He had to read 300 sentences to create the necessary voice bank with SpeakUnique. As a result, his phone and PC can read his typed words in a tone his friends recognise. A phone app speeds up the process using text templates for common scenarios, such as shopping. Crucially for his work, the system is customisable and Carmichael has spent hours inputting the kind of phrases he is most likely to need in court. The MND team within NHS Tayside helped support this with a computer system called Grid 3. Press the tab for 'traffic offence' and it reads: 'On charge one you will be disqualified from driving for X months, reduced from X months because a plea of guilty means that a trial was not required.' Carmichael only needs to fill in the appropriate numbers in the courtroom on the day. He can also type during proceedings — he finds two fingers the fastest approach — swiftly granting two warrants for arrest on the morning I visit. He deploys the same technology for taking oaths. Translators, for example, have to promise to faithfully interpret during proceedings. Once, Carmichael says, he accidentally pressed the wrong key on his device. Instead of asking the interpreter to swear solemnly and sincerely he said: 'There is no alternative to a custodial sentence.' 'You have to retain a sense of humour,' he says with a smile. Carmichael comes from a family of engineers but took a different path because his maths was 'hopeless'. Before moving north he served as a High Court prosecutor in Edinburgh for seven years. Now living nearer to his wife's extended family, who farm, he says he does not miss life in the central belt. In 2023 he sentenced Tracie Currie and Carl O'Brien for targeting Humza Yousaf, then the first minister, with racist abuse. Last November he sentenced the Earl of Dundee, Alexander Scrymgeour, for drink driving. When hearings go to trial, the systems that use his synthetic voice cannot rise to the occasion, unable to handle text longer than three sides of A4. Carmichael calls his words for a trial on to the screen. With all his directions to jurors, it runs to page 18. For this to be heard he relies on Microsoft Word, which cannot use his voice and instead provides its own. This is why his opening remarks to the jury are delivered in an American drawl. 'I cannot get rid of it,' he says. He can select the gender of the speaker and the system offers English narrators known as Hazel and George, but Carmichael says he cannot always control who shows up to the courtroom. He demonstrates a section of text delivered in a more soothing lilt, known as 'smooth' George, although Carmichael is not sure why this virtual character takes over his monologue at this point. 'Sometimes it is a complete surprise to me which voice comes to the microphone,' he says. There are pros and cons to this technological uncertainty. Carmichael emphasises the importance of the jury trusting him, but he also sees the possibility of a sudden shift in voice keeping the 15 men and women engaged. 'My laptop becomes a point of interest, who knows which voice might pop up next,' he writes. The Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service is working on a solution that will allow his own synthesised tones to be used more extensively. Carmichael has handed out hundreds of criminal sentences using voice technology and since the system was launched for jury trials last November, after a period of testing, he has adjudicated in a dozen jury trials. There have been no complaints thus far. People, he notes, are well accustomed to technology. It is the jar filled with slips of paper for picking jurors' names I find anachronistic, not his laptop on the bench. 'The important thing is [that] as long as the words are my words, an objection will not succeed,' he explains. 'For example, if I was using artificial intelligence that would be a bad thing, but I am not. I'm always making sure it is what I want to say before I say it.' The harder it has become to speak, the less self-conscious he has felt about relying on all the other options, he says, writing down 'self-conscious' because it is hard to mouth. 'I think you cannot really understand unless you have experienced something similar,' he continues. 'It is also quite humbling. I am in a new situation where I am more reliant on other people making allowances and adjusting what they do in order to accommodate me.' He says the hardest thing to deal with in court is when a witness is prevaricating or behaving offensively. 'Then you have to type things, but I cannot nuance. You have to just say, 'Answer the question'.' If someone becomes upset on the stand, he always uses his recorded voice to help them calm down, as it 'sounds more empathetic'. Carmichael does ponder how important one's voice is to personality. Aspects of communication he misses include pausing when he would like, making eye contact and gesturing as he talks, which feel absent. The emphasis of repetition in normal speech patterns is also gone. But he has learned to add extra commas to create a more natural sound and misspell some words so they are pronounced correctly. 'The systems don't like Scottish, or dialect words, and many of them get a verbal mangling unless I misspell them,' he explains. The Aberdeenshire village of Strachan is one example, which will be pronounced with a soft 'ch' in the middle unless he writes 'Stracken'. Spontaneity, Carmichael says, is what he misses the most. 'I think of something I want to say but by the time I have put it in my phone or written it down, the conversation has moved on.' Sometimes in meetings he raises his hand to indicate he has a contribution. Backed by his boss, Sheriff Principal Gillian Wade, his approach to each challenge is to simply crack on. MND, though incurable, affects patients so differently that his prognosis is unknown. He feels well. He is aiming to reduce his 'very average' golf handicap before he is 'physically unable' to play. For now, he can eat everything he wants, although it 'takes a lot of time' and a cough or sneeze 'is like a car wash'. While losing the ability to swallow is a worry, he has determined not to let fear dominate. 'I am not going to waste time and energy being miserable,' he says.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
‘Kick Zionism to death,' says UK lawyer representing Hamas
One of the British lawyers representing Hamas has told supporters that 'Zionism' is in a 'serious crisis' and encouraged supporters to 'kick it to death'. Franck Magennis, one of three lawyers working on an application to remove the group from the Home Office's list of banned terrorist organisations, told the Socialist Workers' Party's Marxist Festival last week that 'Zionism is dying'. 'It [Zionism] is in a serious crisis; it looks like it is not long for the world, but that doesn't mean that we can be complacent. We must assure that we kick it to death. It must not be allowed to survive this crisis,' Magennis, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers, said in footage seen by this newspaper. • Gary Lineker 'not welcome' to speak at Jewish football writer's memorial His comments came after Riverway Law, the law firm that filed the application, announced that it had relaunched as Riverway to the Sea, a law centre 'dedicated to understanding and confronting the racist ideology of Zionism' through 'strategic litigation'. The name of the new organisation, which is being led by Magennis, and Fahad Ansari, a solicitor who is also representing Hamas, is a reference to the pro-Palestinian slogan 'from the River to the Sea, Palestine shall be free', which has been interpreted by some Jewish groups as a call for the elimination of Israel. • Who are the Israeli ministers sanctioned over Gaza comments? Riverway Law ceased trading in June and no longer function as a solicitor's practice regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which had opened an investigation into the firm in April after being alerted to social media posts by Ansari. On Monday, a spokesperson for the SRA said that the investigation is ongoing. Both Magennis and Ansari, who are working pro bono as it is an offence to accept money from a proscribed terrorist organisation, have previously made controversial comments on the conflict. In a speech outside Westminster magistrates court in support of Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, a member of the rap trio Kneecap, who had been charged with a terrorism offence, Magennis said, 'It is over for Zionism.' • Hadley Freeman: A conversation every Jew I know is having He added that 'we must make sure that Zionism is not allowed to survive this crisis; we must contribute to the abolition of the state of Israel and its replacement with a single democratic state of Palestine'. In a separate interview earlier this year, Magennis said that the aim of the application was to 'end Israel'. He said: 'I will find a way to empathise with them and hopefully expand the consensus by a bit, so hopefully we can think about what it will mean to end this genocide, to end Israel, which I think is what my client wants'. 'I know a lot of Jews will hear that and think that's a call for some repetition of the Holocaust; it's not, it's a call for peace, it's a call for a democratic state,' he added. • BBC boss left Bob Vylan's Glastonbury death chants on live stream Last year, Ansari tweeted: 'The heroic Palestinian resistance — may every one of their bullets hit their targets … it is imperative that we all support them'. He also paid tribute to Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, following his death in Tehran last July. Both lawyers expressed support for Palestine Action prior to the group being proscribed, with Ansari describing them as 'the heroes of the moment'. In their 106-page legal application, Hamas claimed that proscription was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights because it unlawfully restricts freedom of speech and that it was disproportionate as Hamas 'does not pose any threat to Britain or British citizens'. The Home Office is expected to announce its ruling on Hamas's application on July 9. De-proscription is very rare, with only four groups having been taken off the list of banned terror groups since the system was introduced under the Terrorism Act 2000. The Campaign Against Antisemitism warned that a successful application would 'open the way for funding to be channelled through the UK to Hamas' and said that 'it is particularly perverse and revolting that they are invoking human rights in order to do so'. Riverway to the Sea, the Socialist Workers' Party and Garden Court Chambers were contacted for comment.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Paraglider plunges 20 metres to his death at Mena Creek
A paraglider has died after falling 20 metres over Far North Queensland. Emergency services rushed to Polich Road in Mena Creek, south-west of Innisfail, about 5.40pm on Monday and found a 63-year-old man with serious leg injuries. The man, from Utchee Creek, was using a motorised parachute when he plummeted some 20 metres. He was being airlifted to Cairns Hospital when he died. 'Investigations are continuing to determine the circumstances surrounding the incident,' Queensland Police said in a statement. Innisfail Police will prepare a report for the coroner.
