Recent tragic events in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton have forced a painful reckoning amongst Americans across the country as kitchen table conversations turn to the issue of gun violence. While mass shootings have also happened in characteristically peaceful societies like Canada, Norway and New Zealand, those governments, unlike in the US, have been swift and decisive in enacting meaningful gun control. The question is: how do we do that here? New York Times columnist Max Fisher and Chelsea Parsons, vice president of gun violence prevention at the Center for American Progress, share their global perspectives on gun violence with Co-host Ray Suarez.
26 August 2019
Today in Focus: The crisis in Kashmir
Azhar Farooq and Vidhi Doshi report on the crisis over Kashmir, triggered by the Indian government’s decision to impose direct rule from Delhi. Plus Jason Burke on life in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.
A communications blackout means accurate, up-to-date information from Kashmir is extremely difficult to get. The reporter Azhar Farooq had to fly from its summer capital, Srinagar, to Delhi to file his dispatch as phone lines and internet connections are all down. He describes an eerie quiet on the streets as residents prepare for what they fear could be long period of lockdown.
On Friday, the BBC released a video appearing to show huge crowds marching through the streets of Srinagar. The footage shows people running for cover as police appear to open fire and use teargas.
The Guardian’s Vidhi Doshi tells Anushka Asthana that the history of Kashmir since it was given special status after Indian independence in 1947 has been that of a contested territory and the centre of tensions between India and Pakistan.
Mirza Waheed, a Kashmiri journalist and author, describes how his idyllic childhood in the 80s changed abruptly as his home town became a frontline for militants after elections widely seen to have been rigged by India sparked an insurgency.
Also today: Jason Burke reflects on life in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe where living conditions for millions have rapidly deteriorated.
The Guardian Longreads: Speed kills: are police chases out of control?
In the 1980s, Alpert was invited by the UK government to consult on the subject. He found “enormous similarities between Britain and America,” he recalled, recently. “Crazy police driving, serious injuries, deaths – and very little interest around the departments in exploring this further. It was seen as the natural thing, same as in the States. Bad guy runs, cop chases.” A sharp spike in fatalities at the end of the 1990s did lead to the IOPC (then under a different name; it has transitioned through several rebrands) bringing in a criminologist, David Best, to investigate accidents resulting from chases. Best came to the conclusion that standards varied wildly from district to district and that, in the main, officers were given a lot of leeway once the sirens were on and the suspects in flight. There seemed to be a received locker-room understanding: most chases turned out fine. “We’ve done a lot of work on this in America,” Alpert said, “where an amazing number of officers don’t wear a seatbelt. It’s called ‘phantom ninja’ [syndrome]. You’re inside the car with lights and sirens blaring and you think you’re immune and nothing bad can happen. But it can. It does.” [...]
Chase lots, or chase little. What mattered most, said Martin Cooper’s solicitor, Michael Oswald, was that police drivers were not only taught but incentivised to keep their heads. The report into the deaths of Rozanne and Makayah, sitting on the conference-room table in front of us, included findings by the IOPC “that two officers may have committed criminal offences both during and following the pursuit”. Martin and his family had been confused, then, to receive a letter from the CPS, agreeing that, yes, there were evidentiary grounds to bring charges against the officers; but there would be no such charges – “not in the public interest”. The phrase jarred with Diana. For the first time, sitting in the conference room, she spoke up, asking softly: “What are we?” [...]
Around this time, I met an off-duty coroner who, discussing the new ramming tactic, raised an eyebrow and asked: why not swear the police in as judge and jury too? “It’s wild west stuff.” Because what if a suspect was thrown off their bike (injured, killed) and later found to be innocent? This happened at least once, to another client of the Cooper family’s solicitor Michael Oswald. The client was under 18. The city did not tend to look fondly on young men on scooters just then. But he was guilty of no criminal offence when, riding around on a London A-road, he was rammed off his bike by a police officer. A barrister called Michael Etienne, a colleague of Oswald’s and a fellow member of an organisation called the Police Action Lawyers Group, told me he is profoundly uneasy about the changing flavour of policing. Etienne acknowledged that running thieves off their scooters probably was effective as a crime suppressor. “But so would be cutting off their hands.”
BBC News: Dukes, aristocrats and tycoons: Who owns Scotland?
Scotland is said to have some of the most concentrated land ownership in the developed world. It’s estimated that fewer than 500 people own half the country’s privately-owned rural land.
But how does land ownership affect our lives and is it important who the land belongs to?
SciShow: Why You Should Never Put Tomatoes in the Fridge!
Without refrigerators, we'd have spoiled milk, moldy cheese, and warm sodas. However, there are some foods that don't fare so well in a chilly fridge, including tomatoes.
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