Click here to view this media From the BBC – British journalist Tim Hetherington dies in Libya : An award-winning British photographer has been killed while covering the conflict in the Libyan city of Misrata. Liverpool-born Tim Hetherington, 40, is said to have been killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack. His family said he would be “forever missed”. US photographer Chris Hondros, 41, was also killed, and two others, including Briton Guy Martin, were injured. Mr Hetherington, who co-directed Oscar-nominated war documentary Restrepo, was working for Vanity Fair magazine. In a statement on the magazine’s website , his family said: “It is with great sadness we learned that our son and brother, photographer and filmmaker, Tim Hetherington was killed in Misrata, Libya, by a rocket-propelled grenade. “Tim will be remembered for his amazing images and his Academy Award-nominated documentary Restrepo.” They added: “Tim was in Libya to continue his ongoing multimedia project to highlight humanitarian issues during time of war and conflict.” And here’s more from Human Rights Watch: A Tribute to Tim Hetherington .
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Jury found that the Barbie toymaker had stolen trade secrets from a smaller rival, MGA Entertainment The Bratz dolls have beaten Barbie in a plastic cat fight of epic proportions. A US jury has found that Barbie toymaker Mattel had stolen trade secrets from a smaller rival, MGA Entertainment, and awarded the house of Bratz $88.4m (£53.5m). The battle of the dolls has been ongoing since 2006 and the verdict will come as a bitter blow to Mattel. Both sides have spent millions of dollars fighting over the rights to the controversial line of bestselling pouty-lipped dolls that became a global phenomena. Mattel had argued that the dolls’ designer Carter Bryant developed the Bratz concept while working for it in the late 1990s and secretly took the idea to MGA. MGA denied the claims and countersued, accusing Mattel of corporate espionage, using spies with fake business cards and dummy invoices to gain access to MGA’s ideas. MGA also accused Mattel of threatening to scupper business deals with retailers and media firms if they did business with Bratz. Bryant has always argued he came up with the idea for Bratz while living with his parents, in between stints working for Mattel. Multi-ethnic and trendy, the Bratz styled themselves as “the girls with a passion for fashion!” They became a huge hit in the mid-2000s, making $1bn in annual revenue at the height of their popularity, spawning real life clothes ranges and even a movie in which four actors struggled like “colour-blind drag queens” to “replicate their plastic precursors’ range of expression,” according to the Guardian review. The dolls also sparked a furious debate about the sexualization of young girls. But it was the impact on Barbie’s bottom line that had Mattel reaching for their lawyers. Mattel said in court that the more demure Barbie had lost more than $300m in profit as a result of the Bratz dolls’ success. The case has been in and out of court for years. The original trial in 2008 found in favour of Mattel and awarded the company $100m in damages. The trial judge also ordered MGA to turn over the Bratz franchise to Mattel. But in July 2010, an appeals court in San Francisco threw out the original decision after deciding the value of the Bratz line had “overwhelmingly” been created by MGA and that the original decision had failed to take into account all the development that had gone into the line after Bryant’s original creation. The jury in the latest trial considered both Mattel and MGA’s claims and concluded that Mattel did not own the idea for the Bratz line or any of the sketches that led to their creation. Isaac Larian, chief executive of MGA, cried while listening to the verdicts. Last autumn MGA celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Bratz line with the release of a new generation of slightly less pouty dolls. The latest incarnation has generated only lacklustre sales. Barbie has seen a bounce-back in sales, although Mattel has seen revenues eaten up by legal costs. United States Intellectual property Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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Half of 15-year-old girls have been drunk at least twice, nearly double the average proportion in other developed countries British girls are the biggest teenage binge drinkers in the western world, according to a report. Half of 15-year-olds have been drunk at least twice – almost double the 29% average of other developed countries, while 44% of 15-year-old British boys admitted to being intoxicated on two or more occasions. Girls also drink more alcohol in the UK than their male counterparts, with 44% of 15-year-old boys being intoxicated on two or more occasions. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures were published in a Through the Looking Glass , a report commissioned by the thinktank Demos. They found that between 1998 and 2008 the proportion of girls who binge-drank – defined as consuming more than six drinks per session – increased from 17% to 27%. As part of the report, which offers recommendations for a policy to empower young women, Demos conducted a poll of 500 British females aged 16 to 19. It found 84% were anxious about being able to secure the job they wanted in the future, with 81% also worried about doing well in exams. Money fears also featured highly, with more than three-quarters (76%) saying they were worried about not having enough money, compared with 38% who were anxious about finding a partner and 57% who were worried about getting into university. Having more cash to spend was ranked as the top answer (27%), when girls were asked what would make them happiest, while in second place was a good or better relationship with their boyfriend, girlfriend or partner (26%). The poll also found teenage girls thought success in education (92%), having good friends (72%) and being kind (70%) would enable them to excel in life. Among respondents 16% were not very happy, while 64% were quite happy most of the time and 17% felt very happy. Teenage girls from lower socioeconomic groups were less happy than their wealthier counterparts, with 13% reporting being very happy most of the time, against 19%, and 21% reporting to being not very happy most of the time against 15%. More than half (55%) said their mobile phone was the most important item in their bag, while 62% said their main use of the internet was for social networking. Children Alcohol Health Women guardian.co.uk
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Southbank Centre’s four-month jamboree includes a theatre inside a cow, world’s longest bunting and Susan the straw fox From the patio of her concrete den, Susan the giant straw fox is keeping a vigil over Waterloo Bridge. Her glare, enough to chill the dreams of the capital’s pet rabbits, is softened by the sounds of piped birdsong and the distant giggles of toddlers playing on the sandy beach by the Thames. Past the gaudy beach huts, on the other side of Hungerford Bridge, lie a helter skelter and an enormous, upturned purple cow. The only thing missing from the riverside as the Southbank prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain is a towering steel cigar, but the Skylon is long missing, presumed scrapped, buried or submerged. To pay homage to the event that helped usher London and the rest of Britain out of the postwar doldrums, the Southbank Centre is hosting a four-month jamboree boasting everything from gardens sprouting from the concrete buildings to a museum chronicling the original festival. From Friday until 4 September, the Royal Festival Hall, Hayward Gallery and Queen Elizabeth Hall will be enhanced by a Mobile Gull Appreciation Unit (essentially a kiosk shaped like a seagull), the world’s longest bunting and, of course, Susan the fox. While the pop-up beach and bunting hail from Southend-on-Sea, the enormous fox was built over 10 days in a Nottingham barn before being cut in half and taken down the M1 “on a wing and a prayer and two big lorries”, according to her creator, Alex Rinsler. The festival also includes a theatre in the body of Udderbelly the purple cow, a funfair and a part-built dry stone wall. Although organisers are loth to draw explicit comparisons between today’s Britain and Britain in 1951 – an austere, war-weary nation unsure of its place in the world – parallels are present. On the way up to a new garden on the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, where daisies and sunflowers bloom and a band plays English Country Garden, visitors come to an al fresco gallery known as Helmand. Staring down from its walls are the dirty and dusty faces of British service personnel in Afghanistan. In one of the photographs, taken by the war artist Robert Wilson, a union flag-draped coffin waits to be loaded on to a transport plane at an airfield far from the Thames. According to Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, the festivities are about more than history. “The British Isles is truly worth celebrating and you don’t have to be jingoistic to celebrate it,” she said. “This summer, we pay homage to this extraordinary event – and the thinking and vitality behind it – which paved the way for a better future for the country, following the aftermath of the second world war.” The aim, said Kelly, was to celebrate the landscape, seaside, character and imagination of the British people just as the original had. And the early signs on a hot late April morning a day before the opening certainly were encouraging. “The reaction of the public has been great and people will be able to see the site from angles that they haven’t seen before,” said Kelly. “You can already see people walking past the beach huts and plotting to bring their sandwiches and deckchairs. And why not?” Still, she mused, as workers put the finishing touches to exhibits, a little more time would have been nice. “We were going to open in two weeks but then William and Kate decided to get married and we felt it would be ungenerous not to open earlier.” On the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, a pebble’s toss from the sandy beach that had already been annexed by a dozen or so under-fives, a team of ex-prisoners and former homeless people from the Eden Project toiled to plant and water the garden. Watching them was Shân Maclennan, the Southbank Centre’s creative director of learning and participation and mother of Florence, the girl who decided, for reasons most readily evident to the nine-year-old mind, that the vulpine effigy should be christened Susan. “I felt an enormous responsibility towards the original festival and didn’t want to do anything that people would feel was disrespectful,” said Maclennan. “I really, really want a lot of people to come and enjoy it. In 1951, even when it was night-time, people put their coats on and danced on the terraces and we want that to happen again.” • Southbank Centre celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, 22 April to 4 September 1951 vs 2011 The Festival of Britain, which was billed as “a tonic to the nation”, was a countrywide event designed to boost morale and promote British industry, ingenuity and art in the wake of the second world war. As one of its architects, the Labour MP Herbert Morrison, put it, the festival was “the British showing themselves to themselves – and the world”. It also allowed the country an opportunity to take stock of how it and the world had changed since the glory days of the Great Exhibition of 1851, for which the sumptuous Crystal Palace had been constructed. Although there were events all over Britain between May and September 1951, the festival is best remembered for the events held in London, much of which was still in ruins after the Blitz. The Royal Festival Hall, which sits at the centre of the South Bank complex, was designed and built within three years to make sure it would be ready for the festival’s kick-off in May 1951. The star of the show, though, was the Skylon, a and futuristic skinny steel tower, 90 metres high, that appeared to float above the Southbank. Incredible feat of engineering as it was, its enduring fame has been as punchline. Much like the economy at the time, the joke ran, the Skylon had no visible means of support. The festival attracted more than 10m visitors, acted as an enormous trade show for the best of Britain, and lifted spirits. And that, said another of the brains behind the projectorganisers, the newspaper editor Gerald Barry, was the whole point of it. “Don’t run away with the idea that the Festival of Britain is going to be solemn,” he wrote in early 1951. “Not a bit of it. It will afford us all the opportunity, as occasion allows, for some harmless jollification. After more than a decade of voluntarily imposed austerity, we deserve it, and it will do us good.” Or, as the festival guidebook noted: “It will leave behind not just a record of what we have thought of ourselves in the year 1951 but, in a fair community founded where once there was a slum, in an avenue of trees or in some work of art, a reminder of what we have done to write this single, adventurous year into our national and local history.” London Festivals Sam Jones guardian.co.uk
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Good Friday broadcast will make him the first pontiff to take part in a televised question-and-answer session The Pope will take a small but significant step into the modern media age this afternoon when he becomes the first pontiff to take part in a televised question-and-answer session . It will not, however, be a Today programme-style grilling on controversial issues for the Catholic church such as child abuse. The pre-recorded Good Friday broadcast will show Benedict XVI answering a small number of pre-selected questions about Jesus and the Christian thinking behind world events. The 80-minute programme, In His Image – A Good Friday Special, on Italy’s publicly owned RAI channel, will begin at 2.10pm local time (1.10pm BST) so it can be on TV at 3pm, the moment that Jesus is traditionally thought to have died on the cross, the Catholic news agency CNA said. The RAI website for the programme has been soliciting questions for the pope and those selected have an apparently deliberate global and multifaith spread. According to CNA they will include one from a Muslim woman in Ivory Coast asking about Jesus’s role in teaching peace, and one from a group of seven Christian students from Baghdad. The agency quotes the website as saying viewers will also hear “questions from an Italian mother whose son was in a coma for many years and a young Japanese girl who wrote to ask the pope to explain the cause of the recent earthquake”. The idea for the broadcast came from its host, Rosario Carello, who said it was initially devised as a format in which viewers could ask questions about Jesus. The production team them came up with the idea of asking Benedict to answer them. While the idea seemed “crazy”, they gave it a try, CNA quoted Carello as saying: “We proposed it and the Pope accepted.” Pope Benedict XVI Catholicism Italy Vatican Christianity Easter Religion Television Peter Walker guardian.co.uk
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Following Martin Bashir's absolutely pathetic interview with Andrew Breitbart Wednesday, the conservative publisher has proposed a $10,000 bet with the perilously liberal MSNBC host. “I’m willing to take a lie detector test next to him on anything,” Breitbart told WOR radio's Steve Malzberg Thursday, “if he’s willing to take a lie detector test next to me talking about whether he read my book” (video follows with transcript and commentary): ANDREW BREITBART: I will, look, how about this? How about a $10,000, I’m willing to take a lie detector test next to him on anything, Sherrod, all the stuff, where he thinks I’m Mr. Selective Edit, all the propaganda against me, if he’s willing to take a lie detector test next to me talking about whether he read my book. STEVE MALZBERG, HOST: Alright, great. So you’re making this challenge. BREITBART: Absolute, well, you know, I’d, let’s see. Let’s just have a lie detector test because he could read the book between now and then. But he did not read the book. MALZBERG: Well, if he had read it, you could always preface it the question would be asked to him by the lie detector administrator, “Did you read it prior to the interview?” BREITBART: There you go. MALZBERG: Yeah. BREITBART: I’m willing to take that. I’ll, I’ll do my lie detector… MALZBERG: Ten grand. Ten grand. BREITBART: …he can do his lie detector test. MALZBERG: And for ten grand, right? BREITBART: Yes. For those that missed it, Breitbart on Wednesday accused Bashir of having not read his book “Righteous Indignation” prior to their interview, and instead just got talking points from the George Soros-funded shills at Media Matters. This certainly wouldn't be the first time liberal media members have questioned conservative authors about their books without having actually read them. Frankly, it happens all the time. In this instance, Breitbart has marvelously thrown down the gauntlet. Will Bashir accept the challenge? Stay tuned.
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Omagh man to appear in a Northern Ireland court on Saturday although he has not been charged with murder A man who was arrested in connection with the murder of a Catholic police officer in Northern Ireland will be charged with a number of firearms offences this weekend. The man will appear at Dungannon court on Saturday. He is not charged with murder. The 33-year-old, from Omagh, has been charged with possession of explosives, firearms and articles likely to be of use to terrorists. Two other men arrested over the murder of Constable Ronan Kerr were released “unconditionally” on Tuesday. Kerr was killed when a bomb exploded under his vehicle in Omagh earlier this month. Northern Ireland Crime Henry McDonald guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media This is very disturbing news that’s been breaking today. CNN: Investigators asked for help Thursday as they searched for a man seen in a mall in Littleton, Colorado, shortly before what they described as a possible attempt to bomb the shopping center on the anniversary of a shooting spree 12 years earlier at the nearby Columbine High Schoo l. Authorities told reporters at a news conference that the man they are seeking is a “person of interest,” and they asked for help from the news media and public in identifying him. No evidence exists so far of a link to the Columbine shootings, Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink said, but he acknowledged the possibility was on the minds of law enforcement officials. “There’s not a definite link that we have right now to anything at Columbine other than the date,” Mink said, adding that the April 20th anniversary of the shootings “is fresh on everyone’s mind.” A security camera shows the man sought by authorities in the mall just minutes before a security guard noticed a fire. Investigators say that fire may have been part of an attempt to detonate explosives. The incident happened Wednesday at the Southwest Plaza Mall, less than two miles from Columbine High School. It came on the 12th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine that left 12 students and a teacher dead at the hands of two other students, who then killed themselves. Speculating is not an option since it’s too early to tell and the investigation is hitting its stride, but it appears to be a form of domestic terrorism either way.
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Many years ago, at a mutual friend’s wedding, I was chatting with John Von Kannon, fundraiser extraordinaire for the Heritage Foundation. We were discussing the importance of his work since I was performing a similar (but far less successful) task for another political group. “Robert E. Lee deserves all the credit he’s gotten,” Von Kannon explained, “but without his supply wagons he’d have accomplished nothing.” The point is salient: in the world of politics it is the generals who make the headlines, but it is the organizers, naturally overshadowed, who make it all possible. It is commonly accepted that without the National Review magazine and Bill Buckley there would have been no Ronald Reagan. Let the history books be amended to state that without the functional organization of its publisher,
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Department for Education’s figures lead one headteacher to accuse teaching profession of institutional racism There are just 30 black male headteachers in England’s 21,600 state schools, official figures obtained by the Guardian show, triggering accusations that the country’s education system is “institutionally racist”. The Department for Education (DfE) revealed that there are 20 black Caribbean or black African male heads in state nurseries and primaries and 10 in secondary schools. There are none in special schools. The figures from November last year – which do not include academies and which are the latest available – show there are 127 black female headteachers, meaning that one in every 125 heads is a black man or woman. Headteachers are overwhelmingly white – some 94.7% are white British. Just 0.7% are black Caribbean or black African, despite these ethnic groups making up 2% of England’s population. Black people are also under-represented among those that have not yet made it to senior leadership posts in schools – 89.3% of teachers in England’s maintained schools are white British, while 1.5% are black Caribbean or black African, the statistics reveal. Marva Rollins, headteacher of Raynham primary school in Enfield, north London, predicted that it would take another 50 years for the number of black teachers to reach a level that reflects the country’s population. She said it would be another 200 years before the number of black headteachers is broadly in line with the number of black people in England. “These figures show historical inequalities. When I was at school, 50 years ago in Ilford, Essex, it was not on the agenda for black people to become teachers. It was seen to be a profession that was out of reach for us. To some extent, it is still like that. There is institutional racism.” Some of the figures were published this week by the DfE as part of a statistical breakdown on the school workforce; others were requested by the Guardian. It has also been revealed that there are only 19 teachers on one of the main programmes designed to improve aspiring black and ethnic minority headteachers, assistant and deputy heads. The National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services is a quango that runs Equal Access to Promotion, a scheme that started three years ago and is funded jointly by the agency and the National Union of Teachers. It said 60 headteachers had completed another course to help “minorities” advance to headteacher posts and 45 more would start this autumn. Other organisations, such as Future Leaders, provide mentoring and coaching but do not have specific programmes. Toby Salt, deputy chief executive of the National College, said the number of black and ethnic minority teachers on “mainstream training courses” was continuing to rise and that the quango had increased tailored support for minority teachers “as part of our drive to encourage all aspiring heads to step up to school leadership roles”. Rollins said: “Often black teachers feel they can get to middle leadership positions, but no further. It’s down to the perception that many people have that a headteacher is a white male in a secondary school and a white female in a primary school.” Black teachers are often unfairly overlooked and told they are not ready to be heads, she said. She said part of the problem was that selection panels, which choose headteachers, are made up of governors, who are predominantly white. “More black teachers could come forward and try to be headteachers, but they feel trapped in middle management and do not have the guidance to overcome this.” She said black headteachers were “snowed under” by requests from black teachers for mentoring. Chris Vieler-Porter, a former teacher who is researching for a PhD at the Institute of Education, University of London, on the low representation of black headteachers, agreed that the figures were an “indication of institutional racism”. He said: “It is not racism in a conscious or overt way. This is about the everyday assumptions that are made about the capabilities of black teachers.” Nicole Haynes, a black deputy headteacher at a secondary school in London, said: “For the middle-class and educated young black person, the private sector offers more opportunities, financial incentives and fewer obstacles. “Education is still a very traditional institution. How many middle managers are black? Once you enter the teaching profession, there is a lack of promotional opportunities or the roles are quite stereotypical, which will not necessarily lead to senior leadership.” Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said he did not think the education system was institutionally racist. He said the figures showed school governing bodies replicated the kinds of headteachers that they had had in the past. “This is more about inertia than racism,” he said. Earlier this month Arne Duncan, the US education secretary, told a civil rights organisation that fewer than 2% of his country’s schoolteachers were black men. “And we wonder why our boys are struggling. We need to show these kids that they can also educate people just like them when they grow up.” David Cameron provoked a row with Oxford University earlier this month during which the university accepted that only one student identified as “black Caribbean” origin was accepted for undergraduate admission in 2009. Race in schools Primary schools Secondary schools Education policy Schools Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk
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