VIDEO: Barrister arrested at St George's University during security guard strike

SOLIDARITY FOREVER 

AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL

By Riley Krause cavemankrause Reporter - Croydon & Merton

A barrister was arrested just hours into a protest outside St George's University of London on Monday morning.

Security guards at St George’s went on strike in protest at what their trade union has described as an “antiquated and discriminatory regime of outsourcing.”

During the industrial action, music was playing, horns were being blown and members from the union were handing out flyers outside the building.

But less than two hours into the first day of protests, police arrived at the scene.


Officers told the group that if they didn't move away from the building's entrance that they would "start nicking people" as they were "causing a nuisance."

At this point the music had stopped playing.

That was when lawyer Franck Magennis - who was part of the group protesting - stepped in to ask what was going on.

He questioned police about their right to stop the protest at the site and after a short discussion, was arrested.

"We are taking lawful industrial action as the security guards are in a dispute with their employer," Mr Magennis told the Wandsworth Times following his arrest.


"When I arrived on the scene there was no music and the police were trying to say, pursuant to legislation that we were trying to commit some specific crime that takes place on NHS property and they were threatening to arrest everyone.

"As a lawyer I stepped in and asked them to explain this and we were in the process of talking it through and one of the three elements of the offence requires you to be on NHS property without a reasonable excuse and committing a nuisance.

"So I was saying why do you think workers taking industrial action is not a reasonable excuse, he said ‘I’m not discussing it with you’ and I was saying they need to explain the offence and so he put his hand on my arm and arrested me."

Shortly after he was taken to a police van and after talking a bit more to the officers, he was taken out of the cuffs.

The group of protesters were however forced to leave the site less than two hours after the protest began.




So why are they protesting?

The workforce is outsourced to Noonan Services Group UK. Trade union United Voices of the World (UVW) are demanding that the workers be made direct employees of the university.

The workers currently only receive the statutory minimum in sick pay, annual leave allowance, maternity pay, paternity pay, and pension contributions.

Among those striking today was Cetin Avsar who has worked at the hospital for nearly two years.

He told the Wandsworth Times: "They treat us as if we’re nothing, like we're not human beings.

"All we want is to go in-house and we want he same benefits as the SGUL staff. "We want equal pay, respect, equality, everything because we don’t get any sick pay, no other benefits.


"The management haven’t even had the decency to sit down and listen to us. The duty of care is being ignored."

Another member of the security staff who was out protesting was Denis B M Darboh.

He echoed those same sentiments.

"It makes you feel down," he added.

"We work longer hours, we don’t get sick pay at all, if we’re ill we have to struggle to get in.

"We have to argue to get holidays. We get treated differently. We want to come in-house so that we are on the same level."



While the university has not yet responded to a request for comment, a letter obtained by the Wandsworth Times was handed out during the police action.


The letter was from Jenni Doman, deputy director, estates and facilities at St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

It read: "I wanted to write to confirm the Trust's position on any strike and demonstration activity on site.

"As the site is private land including the perimeter road no industrial action can take place directly on any part of these areas.

As the landlord for your occupation this also includes the SGUL areas of occupation and all entrances and exits.

This is consistent with all Trust procedures in these instances.

"If this action is due to take place then this must be off site and all those participating in this must also be respectful to all those patients, visitors and staff/students visiting the site.

"If this is not followed them the Trust may take more formal action to remove anyone found not to be adhering to this."

A further 13 days of strikes had been planned throughout January and February.

POSTMODERN PAGANISM Scotland's largest puppet, a ten-metre tall sea goddess called Storm,

 

2/50 13 January 2020

Puppeteers from Vision Mechanic rehearsing with Scotland's largest puppet, a ten-metre tall sea goddess called Storm, in the grounds of the Museum of Flight, East Lothian. Made entirely from recycled materials, it was unveiled ahead of its debut at the Celtic Connections Costal Day celebrations in Glasgow this weekend

'Absolute unit': Escaped Highland cow delays trains after walking onto tracks

Commuters held up for around an hour after trespasser escapes country park

Jon Sharman

A hulking Highland cow held up train passengers near Glasgow after escaping from a country park, leading rail staff to dub the beast an “absolute unit”.

The disruption also set off a deluge of bad puns, with ScotRail pledging to get the escaped livestock “moooooved as soon as we can”.

Glasgow City Council, whose workers were dispatched to help, also got in on the action early on Tuesday morning after a number of the animals escaped from Pollok Country Park.

“The coos have been retrieved and moooved back to Pollok Park. Our cooncil team are working with rail staff to check where the breach in the fence is,” the local authority tweeted.

ScotRail released a still image from one of its CCTV cameras, and tweeted: “Absolute unit spotted on the track at Pollokshaws West. Sorry if you’re being delayed due to this.”

Video later posted by Network Rail Scotland showed the cow being led away from the tracks by a person holding a bucket of feed.

Commuters were delayed for about an hour.

The “absolute unit” meme originated on Twitter, when in 2017 a user posted an image of Goring Hotel managing director David Morgan-Hewitt alongside Queen Elizabeth II with the caption, ”in awe at the size of this lad. absolute unit”.

The phrase has since been used to describe any animal, person or even cuddly toy that is deemed remarkably large.

A Highland cow caused rush-hour delays to trains around Glasgow after escaping from a country park.

Rail operator ScotRail initially tweeted about “reports of a couple of Highland Cows on the railway line at Busby”, in East Renfrewshire, at 8.48am on Tuesday.

However, at least one of the animals, described as an “absolute unit”, was spotted on the tracks at Pollokshaws West, which is on the same line and near Pollok Country Park.

In a series of tweets, ScotRail said: “We’ve had reports of a couple of Highland Cows on the railway line at #Busby. We think they’re on the run from Pollok Park… We’ll get them moooooved as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience.

“Absolute unit spotted on the track at Pollokshaws West. Sorry if you’re being delayed due to this.

“@NetworkRailScot track staff on their way to attempt to encourage these coos to mooove back to the park.

“It’s not safe to attempt to pass the area at the moment. In this picture, you can see trains on both tracks are being held. We really appreciate your patience if you’re on board either train or at a station waiting.”

We've moved the animal clear of the railway assisted by @GlasgowCC staff. @ScotRail services are returning to normal, though there is some disruption ongoing at Glasgow Central while trains which were unable to depart are moved from the station. pic.twitter.com/13Imucs0h1

— Network Rail Scotland (@NetworkRailSCOT) January 14, 2020

The firm also said “services are being disrupted into Glasgow Central High Level at the moment due to several line issues across the Network”.

Network Rail said: “Our teams are beginning to arrive on site to deal with this issue and mooove this Highland Coo so trains can run again safely.”

The organisation then posted a video showing the animal being enticed off the line with a bucket of food.

A Glasgow City Council spokeswoman said the cow had been “retrieved safely” by staff from the park just before 10am.

She added the council was in contact with ScotRail to determine where the creature “breached the fence” and was also checking if it was more than one animal, with reports of a cow’s appearance in Busby.

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Indonesian mayor orders anti-LGBT+ police raids amid wall-to-wall coverage of UK serial rapist case

The plans will increase the risk of persecution, human rights official warns

Adam Withnall Asia Editor @adamwithnall

Reynhard Sinaga is described as Britain's most prolific rapist ( GMP/PA )

Police are to be sent on anti-LGBT+ raids in an Indonesian city after a man was jailed for drugging and raping dozens of men in Britain.

Responding to the convictions against Manchester-based Indonesian student Reynhard Sinaga, the mayor of Depok in West Java said he wants officers to prevent “the spread of LGBT” and “protect the children”.

British police believe Sinaga attacked 195 men and prosecutors described him as “the most prolific rapist in British legal history”.

The student is reported to have family ties to Depok and the case has received widespread coverage across Indonesian media.

Plans to storm the homes of LGBT+ people, announced by Depok mayor Mohammad Idris, have been condemned by the national human rights commission.

Reynhard Sinaga: Most prolific rapist in UK history jailed
Show all 11





Mr Idris, who is reportedly known for his anti-LGBT+ statements, said he had sympathy for Sinaga’s family and wants to set up centres to assist those he called “victims” in his community.

After the plans were published on the city’s official website, they were criticised by the head of the National Commission on Human Rights, Beka Ulung Hapsara.

Mr Hapsara said such raids would “increase the risk of persecution and other law-defying acts”. The commission said it had also written to the Depok government to express its concerns.

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Amnesty International condemned what it called “the latest vicious campaign against LGBT+” people in Indonesia, and said there “can be no justification for these hateful raids”.

“The authorities in Indonesia repeatedly launch humiliating crackdowns on suspected same-sex activity, and misuse laws against loitering or public nuisance to harass and arrest [LGBT+] people,” said Usman Hamid, Amnesty International Indonesia’s director.

Homosexuality is not regulated by law in Indonesia, except in Aceh province where Islamic law bans same-sex relations.

But the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation has recently seen a rise in hostility towards the LGBT+ community. Nearly 90 per cent of Indonesians who understand the term LGBT+ feel “threatened” by the community, and believe their religion forbids same-sex relations, according to a 2018 survey.

Such sentiment has been fuelled in part by government officials and public figures. A study last year found almost 50 anti-LGBT+ statements were made on record by authority figures in a single month.

Dede Oetomo, an Indonesian LGBT+ activist, said the community was braced for hysteria over the Sinaga case, with media often ignoring requests to avoid making the convicted rapist’s sexuality the focus of their coverage.

A 22-year-old Depok resident who identifies as bisexual said the planned raids would “violate private spaces” and waste public money.

The Nazi shame of the first ever Best Actor winner at the Oscars   


Emil Jannings with his Best Actor statuette, 1928 ( Rex )

Martin Chilton delves into the hidden history of the very first Academy Awards @MartinChilton

When the ballot results came in to decide the first winner of the Oscar for Best Actor, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences realised they faced a tricky problem. The “actor” who had collected the most votes was actually a dog called Rin-Tin-Tin, who had starred as Rinty in popular films such as A Dog of the Regiment and Jaws of Steel. The film board were concerned that awarding the first statuette to a canine would hardly give credibility to their new awards. To avoiding appearing to be barking mad, they diverted the 1929 Oscar to Emil Jannings.

The academy awarded some honours in their inaugural year for performances in more than one film. Jannings won for his portrayal of both a bank clerk in 1927’s The Way of All Flesh, and for playing Grand Duke Sergius Alexander in the 1928 film The Last Command.

Looked at through the long lens of history, the decision backfired. A committee who were so worried about the embarrassment of honouring a dog ended up commemorating a man whose career ended in ignominy as a reviled propagandist for Adolf Hitler. The Oscars snubbed a German shepherd and got a Nazi poodle instead.


At the end of the Second World War, with Hitler and his minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels dead, Jannings is said to have rushed towards the allied troops marching into Berlin, clutching his golden statuette and yelling: “Don’t shoot, I have won an Oscar!” He was not imprisoned, but his reputation was in tatters. The man once considered the world’s greatest actor never worked again. Ninety years on from that historic award, it’s no surprise that the academy don’t talk much about their first Best Actor winner

The strange story of Jannings began in Rorschach, Switzerland, with his birth on 23 July 1884. His father Emil, a well-to-do American businessman from St Louis, died when the future actor was a child. His mother, Margarethe, moved the boy, who was christened Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, to Görlitz, in the far east of Germany.

Jannings ran away from home at 16 to become a sailor, but quickly decided that he wanted to be an actor. His first break came when he joined Max Reinhardt’s theatre company in Berlin in 1906. He landed his first film role in 1918 when, using the name Emil Jannings, he starred in Die Augen de Mumie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy). He quickly established himself as one of the talents of the German silent film industry, starring in acclaimed films such as Othello (1922), The Last Laugh (1924) – which Alfred Hitchcock described as “almost the perfect film” – and Variety (1925).

His work attracted the attention of Hollywood and, in 1927, he was lured to America with a lucrative contract from Paramount Pictures. Paramount gave him extraordinary control over scripts, roles and choice of directors. In the next two years, he made six silent films in America, including Betrayal with Gary Cooper. Betrayal, along with The Patriot and Street of Sin, is considered lost forever. He was popular with American movie fans, and he sought to overcome any doubts about his place in American society by dissembling, telling the press he was born in Brooklyn.

Jannings fitted in with the social whirl of Hollywood – there are pictures of him sitting with a swimsuit-wearing Greta Garbo – but to some of the actors with whom he worked closely, he was a moody despot. German-born Fritz Feld, who appeared in 140 films including Hello, Dolly! and Herbie Rides Again, told film writer Michael Dobbs that during the making of The Last Command Jannings took him aside and said he wanted to sack director Josef von Sternberg and put Fritz in his place. Fritz declined to behave treacherously and Jannings screamed “You fool! You god-damn fool!” at him.

When The Last Command was made, Jannings was 44 and carried the baggage of three short-lived marriages that had ended in divorce. He was estranged from his two children. Although he wed again, to a former Berlin cabaret performer and actress called Auguste Maria Holl (who was always known as “Gussy’), it didn’t stop him from making advances towards other actresses.

Evelyn Brent played William Powell’s love interest in The Last Command. In her biography, The Life and Films of Hollywood’s Lady Crook, she recalls that after being snubbed, Jannings went round telling the film crew that Brent “wasn’t his type”. When she heard about his slurs, the 32-year-old, who had been appearing in films since 1917, confronted him. When he asked why she was not interested in a love affair, she replied coolly, “because you’re 10 years too old and 40 pounds too fat”.  


Brent said he was a temperamental and spoilt man. “Emil Jannings could get sulky over trifles,” Brent said. “He didn’t like the fur coat I was wearing in one scene, and when I took it off and laid it aside on the set, he used to go over and kick it, for all the world like a petulant kid.”

His bizarre behaviour extended to male colleagues. Paul Henreid, the Austrian-born actor who played Victor Laszlo in Casablanca, was a teenager when he acted with Jannings that year. In Michael Druxman’s book Hollywood Snapshots, Henreid said he had a minor role as a character who was killed.

In a subsequent scene, Jannings was scripted to stand beside a closed casket supposedly containing the remains. Jannings told Henreid that it was essential he got the “right feeling” to play the scene and ordered the nervous novice to lie in the coffin with the lid closed. Henreid remained there for half an hour before finally summoning the nerve to look out. Jannings had gone to lunch and left him in the coffin.

Oscar nominations for Best Picture announced

Jannings won his Oscar for his performances in The Last Command and 1927’s The Way of All Flesh, another film that is presumed lost, apart from five minutes of extant footage that is held at the UCLA Film Archive in Los Angeles. When the first Oscars were officially presented, on 16 May 1929, the winners were revealed three months ahead of the ceremony, by which time Jannings was already back in Germany. A photograph showing him holding the statuette had been taken months before by the Paramount publicity department.

The Oscars night he missed was a very different affair to the global extravaganza of modern times. There were only 270 guests in the Blossom Ballroom of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel that first year, and the ceremony was not broadcast on radio or television. Janet Gaynor, the 22-year-old winner of the first Best Actress award (she was nominated again in 1937 for her role in the original A Star is Born), wore an off-the rack dress she had purchased months before. Gaynor, incidentally, had her own sad postscript when she died in 1984 from abdominal injuries suffered in a collision with a drunk driver.

When he posed with his Oscar, Jannings seemed to have a bright future. His commanding stage presence and skills as a wonderfully expressive actor had made him an acknowledged great of the silent era. Even Brent conceded that he was “a splendid actor”. But many of the actors eating their broiled chicken that first Oscars party knew that storm clouds were gathering.

All the gossip was about the success of The Jazz Singer, which had won two Oscars, and what the first talkie would mean for the industry. It was clear that actors would now be required to talk on screen. Although Paramount screen-tested Jannings, they quickly decided that his thick German accent was not what they wanted. He rejected their offer to over-dub his voice.
Emil Jannings and Evelyn Brent in the Josef Von Sternberg’s ‘The Last Command’ (Getty)

Sensing that his career in America was doomed, Jannings returned to make films in Germany. In an article in April 1929 in the Los Angeles Times, film critic Edwin Schallert described him as “the king of the European film stars”, adding that “his going marks the close of a picturesque phase of Hollywood’s history”.

At first, it seemed as though things might turn out well in his homeland. In 1930, Jannings made Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) with Marlene Dietrich. He earned plaudits for playing an elderly professor who is destroyed by his infatuation for a cabaret singer called Lola-Lola. In the book Modern Times, Stanley Kubrick says that one of the greatest moments in film history was “the way Emil Jannings took out his handkerchief and blew his nose in The Blue Angel”. Dietrich, however, came to loathe Jannings and dismissed his acting skills as that of an “old ham”.

Hitler’s inexorable rise to power in the early 1930s coincided with a decline in demand for Jannings’s services. In March 1933, by which time Hitler had assumed a grip on Germany, Goebbels was appointed as Reich minister of public enlightenment and propaganda. Goebbels believed that Jannings would be a useful tool for the Nazis and suggested he work on propaganda films. The first to come to fruition was 1935’s Der alte und der Junge König (The Old and the Young King), in which Jannings portrayed Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I. This historical biopic was intended to extol the idea of Führerprinzip, which, simply put, is the concept of blind obedience to the leader (Führer).

The Berlin-born director Veit Harlan was in Goebbels’s good books after divorcing a Jewish actress called Dora Gerson (who was later killed at Auschwitz, along with all her family) and he was chosen to draw a strong performance from Jannings in 1937’s Der Herrscher (The Ruler), another film aimed at promoting Führerprinzip.

Jannings was still considered an actor of renown in Europe and The Ruler was shown in England. Graham Greene, who was working on his novel Brighton Rock, reviewed the film for The Spectator and mocked the star actor’s depiction of the loyal boss of a munitions firm. “In Der Herrscher, Herr Jannings has the meaningless gaze of a sea lion with huge sloping shoulders and watery whiskers to whose emotions we apply for want of anything better, such human terms as pity, anger, terror, though we cannot tell, on the evidence of those small marine eyes, whether he is really registering anything more than a dim expectation of fish,” wrote Greene.

Back in the Fatherland, though, the film pleased the Führer, who had previously gone out of his way to praise Jannings’s performance in Traumulus (The Dreamer). The close ties between actor and dictator were sealed when Jannings campaigned for Hitler in the 1938 elections, the final ones for the Reichstag during Nazi rule. His show of loyalty earned him a lavish lifestyle and career advancement.

Goebbels placed Jannings on the board of Tobis Films and gave him “overall artistic control” of the state studio’s films. His first project for Tobis was to produce and act in a biopic about the German microbiologist Robert Koch, who experimented on colonial African subjects.
A portrait of Emil Jannings, circa 1930 (Getty)

The 1941 wartime film Ohm Krüger (Uncle Krüger) was to prove the most controversial of all Jannings’s films. Goebbels wanted something to stir up German audiences in advance of a possible invasion of Britain. He allocated a budget of around 6 million Reichsmark (around £22m now) for a film celebrating the life of Paul Kruger, the man who led the Second Boer War fight against the British at the end of the 19th century.

Jannings, who was the producer, launched a press campaign to promote his portrayal of Kruger. He described British imperialism as “a pernicious disease” and put his name to the forward of a reissue of Kruger’s diaries. “President Kruger was the first conscious champion against England, he is an example for us Germans who are now leading the fight against British imperialism. I played him because he was chosen to start a struggle which shall be concluded in our lifetime,” Jannings is quoted as saying in David Welch’s book Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945.

Hitler and his cronies adored the film and Goebbels named Jannings “Artist of the State”. Jannings was also awarded the “Ring of Honour of the German Cinema”. Further afield, Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini praised the film and Ohm Krüger won the Mussolini Cup for best foreign film at the 1941 Venice Film Festival.

In the next release, Bismarck’s Dismissal, Jannings played the 19th century Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck who, in 1871, helped unify the German empire. Hitler admired the so-called “Iron Chancellor” and was delighted by Jannings’s flattering comparison of the two leaders.

Hitler was just like Bismarck, said Jannings, because they both “represented the same historical situation – one man against the world”. Jannings had become a full-blown propaganda gun for hire. Fritz Hippler, who ran the film department in the Propaganda Ministry, directed the antisemitic film Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew). When Hippler published his book Contemplations on Filmmaking in 1942, Jannings wrote the preface.

German historian Frank Noack, who wrote a biography of Jannings in 2012, says that Jannings’s Russian-born mother, who was living in Berlin during the war, had Jewish origins. Although this was never openly discussed in the German press, he speculates that keeping his mother safe was perhaps a factor in his willingness to work for the Nazis.

British and allied military officials who quizzed Jannings after the war rejected claims that he had worked reluctantly for Hitler. Jannings was not helped in his pleas of innocence by the contents of Goebbels’s diaries. The minister for propaganda specifically praised the actor’s commitment to the Nazi cause. “He works as though possessed on his Boer film. Jannings outdoes himself. Kruger is as much of an anti-England film as one can only hope for,” Goebbels wrote in April 1941. The allied command in Berlin halted the shooting of his last film – Wo ist Herr Belling? (Where is Mr Belling?) – and decreed that he was subject to “denazification”. He was officially banned from making another film.

Jannings retreated to live in Austria, where he was interviewed by a New York newspaper, The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. The interview was carried out by staff writer Klaus Mann, who had known him in his Hollywood days, and was published on 25 June 1945. Mann described the actor’s “picturesque Lake Wolfgang home” and said that Jannings had “flourished under the Nazis”. When he asked him directly about his involvement with the Nazis, Jannings replied: “Open resistance would have meant a concentration camp”. He claimed he was “ordered” by Goebbels to make the propaganda films.

In his autobiography Life and Me, published by Zimmer and Herzog in 1951, Jannings devoted only 72 words to an oblique defence of his work for the Nazis. “There are things one cannot talk about – things that pull us in opposite directions at the same time, as they appear to the head in a different way from the way they appear to the heart, which would like to be in unison with the soul. As my heart and soul belonged to the art of acting, they ordered my head not to worry about things that were none of its concern.”

It took some years for the full truth about his propaganda role to become clear to people outside Germany. Even in February 1960, he was still highly enough regarded in America to earn a star on the Hollywood walk of fame, although their present-day website makes no mention of his Nazi past. In November 2004, his Swiss birthplace of Rorschach honoured him with their version of the star. His past was brought up and the subsequent outcry ended with the commemoration being removed a few days later. The official academy website has a section dedicated to their inaugural 1929 awards. They include a picture of Best Actress Gaynor but not of Jannings. In the place where the best actor photograph would seem to naturally sit, there is instead a photograph of Joseph Farnham, winner of the “title writing” Oscar.

Jannings has not been entirely airbrushed from history, though. He features as a character in Quentin Tarantino’s war film Inglourious Basterds, played by Hilmar Eichhorn. Jannings appears in a scene in which Goebbels gets him to show the “Ring of Honour” he was awarded for Ohm Krüger to soldier Fredrick Zoller.

Tarantino’s fictional Jannings is killed during an attack on the Nazi leadership. In reality, the actor’s final days on earth were painful, dismal and drawn out. He had taken Austrian citizenship and converted to Catholicism, but nothing seemed to bring him peace. He sought solace in heavy drinking, a factor in his death from liver cancer on 2 January 1950 at the age of 65. “He died alone, bitter and in disgrace,” said his biographer, his body ravaged and his legacy tainted forever as a salesman for the Nazis.

“The joys and the infinite sorrows, they all end,” reads the epithet on his grave. His Oscar, meanwhile, is on exhibit at the Berlin Film Museum.

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Mother urges schools to stop forcing boys to cut long hair as it is 'discriminatory’

The mother of Farouk James is worried her son  will be forced to cut his hair at secondary school (Bonnie Miller)

'It does affect a lot of boys of colour. It is more of a cultural thing,' parent says

THIS WAS COMMON IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES IN SCHOOLS IN CANADA AND USA CUTTING HIPPIE BOY'S HAIR, I GOT A BOWL CUT IN SCHOOL BOYS BAND, WE WENT OUT ON SCHOOL STRIKES OVER IT AND CLOTHING RULES FOR GIRLS
Eleanor Busby Education Correspondent

A mother of an eight-year-old child — who has become an Instagram star thanks to his long hair — has launched a campaign to stop schools from forcing boys to cut their locks as she says it discriminates against black children.

Bonnie Miller, from Fulham in west London, said she let her son Farouk James grow his afro-textured hair for cultural reasons and it has become a significant part of his identity.

But the child model, who has more than 269,000 followers on Instagram, could be made to cut it off if he secures a place at one of three local faith secondary schools, which require short hair as part of their uniform.

Ms Miller has launched a petition calling on the government to restrict schools from applying “out of date” rules on boys’ hair length as she claims they discriminate on the grounds of gender and race.

It comes after teachers and campaigners warned that schools are unfairly punishing black students for their hairstyles, including braids, amid a growth in strict behaviour and uniform policies.

Speaking to The Independent about policies in schools that ban boys from having long hair, Ms Miller said: “It is a race issue. It does affect a lot of boys of colour more than other races.

“They tend to have longer hair. It is more of a cultural thing.”

One school Ms Miller is hoping to apply to says boys’ hair should not be “too long”, but girls are allowed long hair if it is tied back. “That comes under the umbrella of sexism,” she said.
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“Why can you say a boy has to have short hair and a girl is allowed to have long hair? It is prejudice,” she told The Independent.

Ms Miller added: “It is the same as girls having to wear skirts. Why should they have to wear skirts to school? I think the rules should be the same across the board for boys and girls.”

The petition has already been signed by more than 1,500 people — and Ms Miller said she plans to protest outside the Houses of Parliament to encourage a rule change on long hair being banned in schools.

“This is what I am going to be fighting for. I am not going to stop. I have parents who are going to join me in this battle,” she warned.

In 2018, Fulham Boys School told a pupil, who was originally banned from the school because of his dreadlocks, that he could return without having to cut his hair following legal action.

Chikayzea Flanders was told he would have to cut off his dreadlocks or face suspension. But his mother took the school to court as she said it was an attack on her Rastafarian religion.

More than 3 million adults in England and Wales were victims of child sexual abuse, new figures show 

One in seven adults who experienced child abuse say they hadn’t told anyone about it before, prompting concerns about under-reporting of abuses against children today
May BulmanSocial Affairs Correspondent @maybulman

ONS data shows around one in 13 adults aged 18 to 74 years were victims of sexual abuse before the age of 16 ( iStock )

More than 3 million adults in England and Wales were victims of child sexual abuse, new figures show, prompting fresh concerns about under-reporting of the issue among children today.

Data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows around one in 13 adults aged 18 to 74 years – 2.4 million women and 709,000 men – were victims of sexual abuse before the age of 16.

This includes rape or assault by penetration (including attempts), other contact sexual abuse, and non-contact sexual abuse.

The ONS has been working to produce a comprehensive picture of child abuse in the UK by incorporating questions into the Crime Survey for England and Wales and analysing this alongside other sources of data.

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It found that overall, around one in five adults today had experienced a form of child abuse – which includes sexual and physical abuse, as well as neglect and emotional abuse – before they turned 16.

The Independent revealed last month that almost 19,000 suspected victims of child sexual exploitation were identified by local authorities in 2018-19, up from 3,300 five years before.

Campaigners said the true figure was far higher and accused the government of failing to tackle child sexual exploitation, despite promises made after high-profile cases in Rotherham and Rochdale.

The latest ONS report highlights that many cases of abuse had previously remained hidden, with around one in seven adults who phoned one of the national child abuse helplines saying they hadn’t told anyone about the abuse before.

Andrew Fellowes, public affairs manager at the NSPCC, said that while the ONS report exposed the scale of past child abuse, it also highlighted that the authorities "simply do not know how many children are suffering right now".
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Almost 19,000 children sexually groomed in England in year

He said this "hampered" the ability of charities to plan and fund services to help youngsters recover at an early stage, adding: “It’s crucial government conducts a prevalence study so we get a true picture of the scale of abuse in the UK. Only then will we know what services are needed to protect and support abused young people.”

Ian Dean, director of the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA), said the findings highlighted the “limitations” of the data on child sex abuse currently available for analysis, saying: “This data does not tell us about current levels of abuse or the full scale of the issue as abuse is often hidden from view.

“They are most likely the tip of the iceberg, with most sexual abuse remaining hidden and only reported years after it occurs, if it is reported at all […] Without this information, agencies are making decisions in a fog, using limited or old data that hampers their ability to target responses effectively and provide the best possible support for children.”

Previous figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales has revealed that more than half of child abuse victims experience domestic abuse in later life.

Alexa Bradley, of the Centre for Crime and Justice at ONS, said: “Child abuse is an appalling crime against some of the most vulnerable in society, but it is also something that is little discussed or understood. Today’s release is ONS’s first attempt to fill an important evidence gap on this critical issue.

“Measuring the extent and nature of child abuse is difficult because it is usually hidden from view and comes in many forms. Bringing data together from different sources helps us better understand both the nature of child abuse and the potential demand on support services.”

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CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

Russia ‘hacked Ukrainian energy company’ at centre of Trump impeachment scandal

The firm is linked to Joe Biden – who polls suggest is best placed to beat Trump in 2020

Oliver Carroll Moscow @olliecarroll

An office belonging to Burisma gas company in Kiev ( Reuters )

As an impeachment inquiry turned up the heat on Donald Trump over his irregular efforts to investigate rival Joe Biden, Russian military intelligence got to work hacking the Ukrainian gas company that once employed his son Hunter Biden.

Those, at least, are the conclusions of a US cybersecurity firm published this week.

According to Area 1 Security, the Russian campaign to target Burisma Holdings in Kiev began in November.

The mechanism they used was a fairly unsophisticated phishing tactic. First, they created fake web domains imitating the sites of Burisma’s subsidiaries (for example: kub-gas.com instead of kub-gas.com.ua). Then they sent emails to employees inviting them to visit the fake sites and enter their credentials.

According to the security firm’s report, the tactics were successful – the hackers broke into one of Burisma’s servers. It was unclear if they found what they were looking for. Or indeed what that was. But the timing and the scale of the interventions suggested they were looking for information that could be used to undermine the Bidens.

Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal
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The tactics also seemed to mirror those used against employees of the US Democratic Party in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Then, two hacking groups connected with the Russian state, “Cozy Bear” and “Fancy Bear”, gained access to emails from Democratic Party servers. Compromising material was then leaked and promoted via a network of trolls.

The former group, linked to Russia’s foreign intelligence service, was particularly successful at hacking, evading detection for several months.

Read more
 

Russia behind Fancy Bears hacks, claims UK government report

According to the authors of the report, the discovery was an “early warning” of significant Russian interventions into the forthcoming 2020 campaign.

The cyber campaign only showed up on the security firm’s monitoring network on New Year’s Eve. According to an American security source quoted in The New York Times, it ran “in parallel” to a more conventional spy operation in Ukraine itself. Burisma, and the Bidens’ connection to it, are obvious targets for dirt digging.

Read more
 

Did the US really try to override the Russian power grid?

According to some polls, Joe Biden is best placed to beat Donald Trump in 2020. It seems likely this is why president Donald Trump lent his weight to a conspiracy theory alleging that Mr Biden, when he was vice president, tried to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor who was allegedly investigating Burisma.

While the conspiracy theory is bunk, business in Ukraine is rarely entirely clean. Burisma would likely not have appreciated unfriendly investigators rummaging around for possible skeletons.

Burisma Holdings and the Russian Ministry of Defence had not responded to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Australia fires: Smoke to make ‘full circuit’ around globe, Nasa says


‘We have observed an extraordinary amount injected into the atmosphere,’ space agency says

Jon Sharman Tuesday 14 January 2020

Smoke from the wildfires that have devastated swathes of Australia is so extensive it will circle the planet to blight the country again, Nasa has said.

Experts said the volume of atmospheric debris generated by the months-long fires was “extraordinary”, and had already had a severe impact on nearby New Zealand.

The smoke has so far travelled more than 4,000 miles – with hazy skies reported as far away as Chile – and risen into the lower stratosphere, tens of thousands of feet up, a UV index created by Nasa from satellite data showed.

“The smoke is expected to make at least one full circuit around the globe, returning once again to the skies over Australia,” the US space agency said in a statement.

“Over the past week, Nasa satellites have observed an extraordinary amount of smoke injected into the atmosphere from the Australian fires and its subsequent eastward dispersal.”

The warning came as a tennis player collapsed on court and was forced to retire from Australian Open qualifying, after suffering a coughing fit brought on by wildfire-linked poor air quality. Slovenian Dalila Jakupovic retired at 6-5, 5-6 against Switzerland’s Stefanie Vogele, while the Canadian Eugenie Bouchard was also forced to take a medical time-out because of a sore chest.

Exacerbating problems on the ground and in the air are storms known as pyrocumulonimbus events, which the wildfires have generated. They occur when moisture becomes trapped in smoke in the cold upper air and forms a cloud that produces dry lightning.

These fire-induced thunderstorms have pushed smoke into the stratosphere, allowing it to travel much further and affect atmospheric conditions around the world.

“The effects of those events – whether the smoke provides a net atmospheric cooling or warming, what happens to underlying clouds – is currently the subject of intense study,” Nasa said.

The agency added that there had been noticeable impacts on Australia’s neighbour New Zealand, saying: “The smoke is ... causing severe air quality issues across the county and visibly darkening mountaintop snow.”

The fire threat in Australia is most acute in rural communities but low air quality continues to plague the major cities, with Victoria Health saying Melbourne’s air was the worst in the world early on Tuesday.

Blazes have been burning since September and have killed 28 people, destroyed more than 2,000 homes and led to the evacuations of thousands of people. Animals, including koalas, kangaroos and bats, have died in their hundreds of millions.

Thousands more attended demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne late on Friday, calling for the country’s prime minister Scott Morrison to be sacked and for Australia to take tougher action on climate change.

Mr Morrison has admitted that his personal response to the wildfire crisis has been lacking, saying: “There are things I could have handled on the ground much better.”

The Liberal Party PM has been given a frosty reception by people he visited, having gone on holiday in Hawaii while blazes swept his country



NASA Goddard @NASAGoddard

https://twitter.com/i/status/1215370818156466190
A fleet of NASA satellites working together has been analyzing the aerosols and smoke from the massive fires burning in Australia. https://go.nasa.gov/2NavsuY
1:32 PM · Jan 9, 2020·


Additional reporting by Press Association

SPLIT IN THE MURDOCH MEDIA EMPIRE OVER CLIMATE CHANGE

James Murdoch criticises father's news outlets for climate crisis denial Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Fox cited for ‘frustrating’ coverage of Australian bushfires 

Jim Waterson Media editor Tue 14 Jan 2020
  

James and Kathryn Murdoch have issued a statement criticising Rupert Murdoch’s firms for ‘ongoing denial’ on the climate crisis. Photograph: Joel Ryan/Invision/AP

Rupert Murdoch’s son has strongly criticised his family’s news outlets for downplaying the impact of the climate crisis, as bushfires continue to burn in Australia.

James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn, issued a rare joint statement directly criticising his father’s businesses for their “ongoing denial” on the issue, which has been reflected in the family’s newspapers repeatedly casting doubt on the link between the climate emergency and the bushfires.

“Kathryn and James’s views on climate are well-established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well-known,” a spokesperson for the couple said, confirming a report in the Daily Beast. “They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary.”

James Murdoch was most recently the chief executive of the family’s 21st Century Fox entertainment business, leaving when it merged with Disney. He is making media investments through his own Lupa Systems company but continues to sit on the board of the family’s newspaper business, News Corp, which also owns the Times and the Sun.

The bushfires have focused attention on the likes of Andrew Bolt, a political commentator for News Corp’s Australian newspapers who is known for promoting the views of climate science deniers, and for his own attacks on “alarmists” and his derision of climate change science.


James Murdoch: 'There are views I really disagree with' on Fox News

He also has a programme on the Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia, where he has criticised the “constant stream of propaganda” on the public broadcaster ABC about the role of the climate crisis in the bushfires.

“Politicians who should do better are out there feeding the fear and misinformation,” he said in a recent broadcast criticising politicians who said carbon emissions needed to be cut to avoid future fires. “As if that would stop a fire. You’d have to be a child like Greta Thunberg to believe that fairytale.”

US viewers have also heard commentary from Fox News presenters such as Laura Ingraham, who has said that “celebrities in the media have been pressing the narrative that the wildfires in Australia are caused by climate change”, before introducing guests who cast doubt on this interpretation.

James Murdoch’s criticism sheds light on the family’s internal rifts, amid speculation over his 88-year-old father’s succession plans. James’s older brother Lachlan is still actively involved in the family businesses as the US-based chairman and chief executive of the slimmed-down Fox Corporation, which owns Fox News.

Last year, Rupert Murdoch told shareholders “there are no climate change deniers” around his company and said his business was early to commit to “science-based targets to limit climate change” and was working to reduce its climate emissions.

However, he has been publicly critical about the “alarmist” approach to the issue. In 2015, he used his Twitter account to describe himself as a “climate change sceptic not a denier”.
Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch)

A climate change skeptic not a denier. Sept UN meets in NY with endless alarmist nonsense from u know whom! Pessimists always seen as sagesAugust 27, 2015

Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and News Corp have all separately donated millions of dollars to bushfire recovery efforts in recent days, although the Daily Beast claimed the donations were made after it requested comment about James Murdoch’s statement.


James Murdoch has a long history of advocacy on environmental issues, inviting the former US vice-president Al Gore to present a version of his An Inconvenient Truth slideshow to Fox executives in 2006. At the time he was the heir apparent to the media empire and had been trusted with running BSkyB in London, where he would push environmental issues to the fore, working on ways to reduce the power used by Sky’s set-top boxes and insisting on using hybrid taxis long before such things were standard corporate behaviour.

Since stepping back from day-to-day roles with the family business at the end of 2018, the multibillionaire has made clear he feels uncomfortable about much of Fox News’ output and was unsuccessful in an attempt to cash-in his stock completely and make a clean break with the company – an effort that failed after Lachlan declined to buy him out.

Kathryn Murdoch has already set out the couple’s vision, telling the New York Times last year that she was increasingly focused on the issue of global heating: “There hasn’t been a Republican answer on climate change. There’s just been denial and walking away from the problem. There needs to be one.”

She said she was particularly moved to act after seeing Al Gore’s speech at the Fox event in 2006: “I decided to switch everything I was doing. I wanted to be able to look my children in the eye and say ‘I did everything I could.’”

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