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Murder Inquiry Launched After Teenager Found Fatally Stabbed In Street (2009)

Detectives launched a murder inquiry today after a teenager was found fatally stabbed in a north London street.

Passersby found the 19-year-old, who has not been named, collapsed in Stoke Newington late yesterday and called the emergency services. Paramedics arrived shortly before 11pm and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police said the incident followed an altercation between the teenager and two male suspects. They are looking for a silver vehicle that left the scene shortly afterwards and turned into Church Street. A spokesman said investigators from the homicide and serious crime command would lead the inquiry.

He is the 12th teenager to be murdered in the capital this year and the ninth to be stabbed to death – two died in arson attacks and one in a fatal shooting.

Official figures show that the numbers of young people killed and seriously injured by knives have fallen dramatically this year since the Metropolitan police increased stop and search operations to identify those carrying knives. There were 28 youth murders in January to October last year, compared with 11 during 2009.The number of youths aged between 10 and 17 searched by police rose from 123,819 in 2007/8, to 185,489 in the 12 months to March 2009.

The last teenager to be murdered this year was rapper Carl Beatson Asiedu, 19, of Norbury, south London, who was fatally stabbed after playing a gig at Club Life in Kennington in August.
Since June, at least one teenager a month has been murdered. The stabbing victims this year include: Jahmal Mason-Blair, 17, who died in May in Hackney, east London, Adam Pervaiz, 18, who died the same month in Deptford, south-east London, Shay Ogunyemi, 16, died near Larkhall Park, Lambeth. Two brothers were later charged with murder.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/20/teenager-fatally-stabbed-street

Tackling Gangs (2005)

"My little brother and his friends were hanging around in groups and had nothing to do. There was violence between the white community and the Asian community and people like me, Somali kids, were sort of in the middle. I didn't want to see them following in the footsteps of others, younger boys looking up to the older ones and thinking that gangs were the thing to do."

That's when youth charity Envision turned up. The organisation works with hundreds of teenagers, predominantly in London, and helps them take leading roles in shaping their communities. Unlike most volunteering organisations, it doesn't tell them what to do. Instead, it supports them in all their ideas - good and bad - and teaches them how to negotiate the roadblocks of officialdom which stand in the way. In the case of Sharmarke, he wanted to set up a sports club, based around the martial arts he enjoys, to provide a focus and discipline for younger teenagers at risk of getting into gang culture.

Run on a shoe string budget, the project eventually attracted up to 40 people per session - 40 people who could very well have been hanging around on the streets. As a result, gang culture may be a little bit weaker today in one area of north London than it was two years ago."We believe that young people have the ideas and we want to take their ideas and turn them into action," says James Williams of Envision."You don't know what's going to work sometimes because every school or community is different. But it's about being willing to put some trust [as adults] in someone's ideas."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4639235.stm

Teen Dies In London Stabbing (2007)

Two people have been arrested after a 15-year-old boy was stabbed to death in east London. The attack which happened around 11pm last night in Whitwell Road, Plaistow. Police officers on a routine patrol came across a large group of youths who fled when they approached.
They discovered a male youth with stab wounds to the chest. He was taken to Royal London hospital, but died less than an hour later from his injuries.

The Metropolitan Police said two people were arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning and the boy's next of kin have been informed. Detectives from the Met's Homicide and Serious Crime Command unit say they are unsure exactly how the boy came to be injured, and are keeping an "open mind" about what happened.

Forensic officers are currently carrying out a fingertip search of the area. A post-mortem is due to be carried out later. In a separate attack, a 14-year-old boy was shot in the head in Tulse Hill, south London. Police said his injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.
A 16-year-old boy was also shot but suffered only a grazed arm.

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/parenting/Teen+Dies+In+London+Stabbing-1100.html

The BBC Will Only Survive By Understanding Its Diverse Consumers

A snail could crawl the entire length of the Great Wall of China in just slightly more time than the 200 years it will take for women to be equally represented in parliament. That was just one of a series of striking statistics from the Equality and Human Rights Commission in their Sex and Power report published last week.

It added that women hold just 11% of FTSE directorships, with the judiciary and others also strongly criticised. At the BBC, the figures are a bit better - almost 38% of all senior managers are women - but it does bring into sharp focus the challenge the whole media industry is facing to improve diversity among its workforce.

Tomorrow's Guardian Ethnic Media Summit is a chance to debate what is arguably our most pressing diversity issue - ensuring more talent from ethnic minority communities reaches the upper echelons of broadcasting. The growth particularly of young ethnic minority audiences, is soaring - way above the population average - making them a critical cultural and business challenge for everyone in our sector.

Things are definitely changing but still not quickly enough. The whole media industry needs to look afresh at what more can be done.
So why does a white, middle-aged bloke like me feel compelled to write about this? As the BBC's chief creative officer, overseeing our programme production made in-house, I believe passionately that only by drawing on the talents of every part of society can we best reflect the lives and concerns of our diverse audiences on screen.

We must do more and the BBC is certainly redoubling its efforts. And though ethnicity is very important, it is only one part of this story. We must also think in terms of age, disability, gender, social class and regional difference.

That is why I think the historic changes to move a significant proportion of BBC network production out of London to places such as Glasgow or North West England over the next decade might be key to all this.

We will transfer large numbers of staff from London but we will also recruit many new faces - a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to add something substantially new to our gene pool of talent, to change the BBC's DNA a little.

We seem to be moving in the right direction, increasing opportunities for people from ethnic minority backgrounds at most levels.

The proportion of our staff from ethnic minorities is 11.5% - again comparing very well with both public and private sector organisations including the civil service, health service and the police. But as the Edinburgh Television Festival heard, still not enough people make it into senior management roles, particularly as controllers and commissioners.

The BBC has looked closely at the barriers to progress and announced new schemes to tackle them - costing £3m over three years.

Firstly, we need to change the way we recruit. We are dramatically increasing the outreach work we do - in community groups, colleges, schools and through open sessions across the UK - to encourage under-represented groups to apply to the BBC. I recently worked with an energetic bunch of young students, mainly from ethnic minority backgrounds, who were introduced to the BBC by the University of Central Lancashire - from the former mill towns of Blackburn and Preston, not places we'd traditionally think to look for the next generation.

Then we need to be better at retaining talented individuals and supporting them in reaching their full potential and moving into senior roles. Our new mentoring and development programme, which offers greater one-to-one and intensive personalised support, is so important. In addition, our new trainee production scheme, which has just kicked off, and our journalism trainee schemes, have a strong diversity focus, so we are providing clearer pathways into all parts of the BBC.

On screen, we must constantly strive to reflect as accurately as possible the rich cultural mix of the UK.

Earlier this year BBC non-executive director Samir Shah criticised what he called "inauthentic representation" of ethnic minority communities, citing the Ferreira family in EastEnders.
It is unfair to highlight one five-year-old example from a drama series that remains the most popular programme on television among ethnic minority audiences. This example fails to reflect many other aspects of our work, particularly our in-house drama output. Our continuing drama series, including Holby City and Casualty, have led the way in casting diverse talent, in leading roles as well. Though we do not always get it right, overall we have much to be proud of.
The BBC set up the Writers' Academy, under John Yorke, four years ago, increasing the number of writers from diverse backgrounds working on our biggest programmes, including some of our continuing drama series.

In addition, programmes such as Criminal Justice, No1 Ladies Detective Agency, Life Is Not All Ha Ha Hee Hee, Shoot the Messenger, the entertainment series Last Choir Standing and a lot of our children's output have also been praised for the way they have represented diversity or addressed issues faced by communities from different backgrounds.

Part of this is ensuring we get closer to audiences when making programmes. For example, White Girl - part of BBC2's groundbreaking White Season - told the story of a white family relocating from Leeds to a predominantly Asian community in Bradford. Here the production team worked very closely with the community to ensure a sensitive and accurate portrayal.
In an increasingly globalised creative economy where competition will intensify, it is only by understanding our diverse consumers that we can stay relevant and survive. The BBC prides itself on keeping in touch with its audiences - to do so successfully we'll need to keep making changes, and fast.

Cadbury Dairy Milk ad cleared of racism

The advertising regulator has cleared Cadbury of racism and perpetuating colonial stereotypes of African people in its latest TV advertising campaign.

Cadbury's campaign featured Ghanaian musician Tinny and aimed to promote the chocolate brand's tie-up with the Fairtrade organisation for cocoa from the African nation for its Dairy Milk range.

The Advertising Standards Authority received 29 complaints that the TV campaign was demeaning to African people and perpetuated racial stereotypes.

However, the ASA's council has decided not to formally investigate the complaints. "Although the council acknowledges that Cadbury had used stereotypes in their ads, they felt that the stereotypes were not harmful or offensive," said the ASA, which argued that most ads use some form of stereotype device to get a message across.

Cadbury has steadfastly maintained that the company went to "considerable lengths" to ensure that the ad campaign was culturally sensitive and developed as a "joyous and uplifting portrayal of Ghanaian culture and something which Ghanaians can feel proud of".

In 2007 the ASA banned an ad for Cadbury's Trident chewing gum, which featured a black "dub poet" speaking in rhyme with a strong Caribbean accent, after more than 500 complaints that it was racist.

Rupert Murdoch Doesn't Think Barack Obama Sacist

Rupert Murdoch has been forced to deny he believes Barack Obama is a racist, after appearing to back the controversial Fox News presenter Glenn Beck's comments about the US president.

The chairman and chief executive of News Corporation said in an interview earlier this week that Obama had made "a very racist comment" and that Beck's views were "right".

"He does not at all, for a minute, think the president is a racist," a News Corp spokesman told the US website Politico.

In the interview with Sky News Australia, Murdoch was asked about the views expressed by contributors to Fox News, including Beck's view that Obama was a racist.

"He [Obama] did make a very racist comment about blacks and whites and so on, which he said in his campaign he would be completely above," Murdoch said.

"That was something which perhaps should not have been said about the president but if you actually look at what he [Beck] was talking about, he was right."

Beck caused uproar in July when he described Obama had "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture".

His remarks were made during a discussion of Obama's reaction to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr, an African-American Harvard academic.

Murdoch also said in the interview he thought the Obama presidency was going "badly", citing the defection of independent voters in recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey.