The Queen has been pleased to appoint Dame Mary Peters to be a Lady Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, and the Marquess of Salisbury to be a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.
Background
The appointment of the Knights and Ladies of the Garter is in The Queen's gift, without Prime Ministerial advice. Appointments to the Order of the Garter are therefore in the same category as the Order of the Thistle, the Order of Merit and the Royal Victorian Order. Today's announcement brings the number of Companions to twenty-three (out of a maximum of twenty-four).
Dame Mary Peters, CH, DBE (born 6 July 1939) served as Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of the County Borough of Belfast between 2009 and 2014. In the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich, Dame Mary won the Gold Medal in the pentathlon. In 1975, she established The Mary Peters Trust to support talented young sportsmen and women across Northern Ireland.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 7th Marquess of Salisbury, KCVO, PC, DL (born 30 September 1946) is a former Leader of the House of Lords. Lord Salisbury is a Deputy Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, and was Chairman of the Thames Diamond Jubilee Foundation, which organised the Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames in 2012. Lord Salisbury is also Chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire.
crime reporter(wp/bbc)::: A man who was fatally stabbed by a gang wielding knives, guns and a samurai sword was attacked in front of children at a hair salon, police say.
The 19-year-old victim was stabbed in Vincent Road, Wood Green, north London, on Friday and died hours later.
Detectives are also investigating the attempted murder of a 20-year-old man who was shot and stabbed in the same attack.
Police believe some or all of the gang were riding bikes.
The Metropolitan Police said officers were called to reports of people fighting on Vincent Road just before 20:10 GMT on Friday.
Det Ch Insp Katherine Goodwin said her team believed the attack may have started near a Vue cinema and McDonald's at Hollywood Green shopping area, opposite Wood Green Tube station.
"We believe that a gun was fired at this location," she said.
"There are a number of lines of inquiry ongoing as to which premises in this area the victims or suspects may have entered during the relevant time, though we believe the 19-year-old was fatally attacked in a hair salon on Vincent Road," she added.
"This would have been witnessed by several people, including children."
There have been no arrests and police continue to appeal for witnesses.
There have been 11 fatal stabbings in London this year.
Knife crime in London
Between April 2017 to March 2018 the Metropolitan Police recorded 14,707 knife crimes, an eight-year high according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Knife and sharp instrument crimes rising
Yearly offences recorded by Met Police between April 2013 and March 2018
Home Office figures show out of 43 forces, the Met Police saw the highest knife crime offences per head of population between April 2017 and March 2018.
Ten forces with the highest knife crime rates
The number of offences reported for every 100,000 people
Note: Figures for Greater Manchester Police were undercounted until December 2017
Pic--Ismail Tanrikulu was found with gunshot wounds in Tottenham Cemetery on 3 September Crime reporter(wp/bbc):::
A man was shot dead in a cemetery after meeting a former friend to resolve their "bad blood", a court has heard.
Ismail Tanrikulu, 22, shouted "you think it's me" before he was shot in Tottenham Cemetery, north London, on the morning of 3 September last year, jurors at the Old Bailey were told.
A bullet passed through his arm and into his abdomen, causing fatal internal injuries.
Musa Duru, 21, of Great Cambridge Road, Tottenham, denies murder.
Prosecutor Julian Evans said Mr Tanrikulu and the defendant had spoken on the phone and arranged to meet at the cemetery to "amicably" resolve a falling out.
"Ismail Tanrikulu and Musa Duru were well known to one another and... it appeared they had been on friendly terms," Mr Evans said.
"However, by that morning it would appear there had been some sort of falling out between the two of them."
Mr Evans said Mr Tanrikulu "hoped no doubt to sort out the issue between them amicably".
Mr Tanrikulu arrived at the graveyard with his cousin, who parked up and waited outside in his Audi.
The witness allegedly heard his cousin shout "you think it's me" moments before two loud bangs.
He reversed his car for a better view and saw Mr Tanrikulu lying on the ground, with his head down and holding his side, the court heard.
Mr Duru was allegedly accompanied by a second man who was seen on CCTV carrying a "man bag" over his shoulder as they entered the cemetery.
The man held up the bag and pointed it towards Mr Tanrikulu's cousin, prompting him to drive off, the prosecutor said.
Mr Evans said: "The bad blood that did exist was between Mr Tanrikulu and this defendant Mr Duru."
Mr Duru's defence would claim the victim had stolen some cannabis, was aggressive towards him at the cemetery and there was a scuffle when the second man stepped in, the prosecutor said.
Mr Duru claimed he was walking away when he heard the shot and was later told it was Mr Tanrikulu's gun.
But Mr Evans said Mr Duru and the second man had acted together "as a team" and had armed themselves.
The second man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, fled to Turkey within days of the shooting, jurors heard.
Pic--Pte Geoff Gray was found with two gunshot wounds to his head
Crime reporter(wp/bbc):::
The family of a 17-year-old soldier found shot dead at Deepcut barracks have made fresh claims they believe he was murdered.
Pte Geoff Gray's mother also voiced doubts a second inquest due to begin in Surrey would bring any answers.
Diane Gray said witnesses asked for by the family would not appear.
Four young soldiers died at Deepcut between 1995 and 2002. Pte Gray was found with two gunshot wounds to his head in 2001.
A first inquest in 2002 into the death of the soldier from Seaham, County Durham, who lived in Hackney, London, from the age of five, ended with an open verdict.
A new hearing is taking place at Woking Coroner's Court after the family won the right to apply for a new hearing, arguing fresh evidence had come to light.
Who pulled the trigger
Second inquests held into the deaths of Pte Cheryl James and Pte Sean Benton concluded they had killed themselves, after hearing evidence of bullying and a lack of care at the barracks.
Mrs Gray, who has viewed material from Surrey Police disclosed to the family, said she had been left shocked by what she had been shown, but was unable to talk about it under a legal order.
At a pre-inquest review last year, Judge Coroner Peter Rook QC heard the issue facing the second inquest was "simply who pulled the trigger".
Britain’s services industry is its gloomiest since the 2009 financial crisis, due to an “unmistakably negative” impact from Brexit uncertainty, the Confederation of British Industry said on Monday.
The CBI said business and professional services firms - such as accountants, lawyers and marketing companies - had seen the biggest fall in profits in six years over the past three months, and sentiment was weakening at the fastest rate in a decade.
Consumer-focused companies - which have benefited from rising household incomes and employment - also reported falling profits and were the most negative about the outlook for business expansion since 2009.
“Dimmed expectations for the year ahead mean it’s more important than ever for the UK to avoid a no-deal scenario, which would create a perfect storm of issues,” CBI chief economist Rain Newton-Smith said.
Trade tensions between the United States and China and a broader economic slowdown have weighed on Britain too, which - despite its worst full-year growth since 2012 - outperformed Germany, France and Italy in the final three months of 2018.
Nonetheless, any no-deal Brexit is forecast to be a much bigger hit to Britain than other major European economies, and Prime Minister Theresa May has failed to win parliament’s backing for the transition deal she negotiated late last year.
“Until politicians can agree a deal that commands a majority in Parliament and is acceptable to the UK and protects our economy, sentiment will continue to deteriorate,” Newton-Smith said.
Monday’s data also showed the weakest employment growth since August 2012, and that business uncertainty was holding back investment to the greatest extent since May 2013.
Political reporter(wp/reuters)::: British Prime Minister Theresa May will on Tuesday propose formally ruling out a no-deal Brexit in a bid to avoid a rebellion by members of parliament who are threatening to grab control of the divorce process, The Sun and Daily Mail newspapers reported.
As the United Kingdom’s labyrinthine Brexit crisis goes down to the wire, May is making a last-ditch effort to get changes to the separation package but MPs will try on Wednesday to impose their authority in a series of parliamentary votes.
After the British parliament voted 432-202 against her deal in January, the worst defeat for a government in modern British history, May has tried to use the threat of a potentially disorderly no-deal Brexit to get concessions out of the EU.
But many British lawmakers and some of her own ministers have warned they will try to take steps to avoid thrusting the world’s fifth largest economy into a potentially tumultuous economic crisis.
May on Tuesday will propose to her cabinet of senior ministers that she formally rules out a no-deal Brexit, opening the door to a delay of weeks or months to the March 29 exit date, The Sun newspaper reported.
The Daily Mail newspaper said May is ready to rule out a no-deal Brexit after as many as 15 ministers said they were ready to resign. A spokesman for her Downing Street office declined to comment on the reports.
Reuters reported on Monday that May’s government was looking at different options, including a possible delay.
Sterling, which has lost about 20 cents against the dollar since the 2016 Brexit referendum, rallied against the dollar and the euro while the FTSE 100 fell 0.7 percent.
It was not immediately clear how explicitly May would rule out a no-deal. She is due to chair a cabinet meeting and then update parliament at around 1230 GMT.
If May does rule out a no-deal, it would be a clear attempt to undermine MPs’ attempts to grab control of Brexit on Wednesday.
Her de-facto deputy, David Lidington, told BBC radio he would not disclose what cabinet would be discussing. When repeatedly asked if May was going to delay, Lidington did not address the questions directly.
DELAY?
In the 2016 referendum, 17.4 million voters, or 51.9 percent, backed leaving the EU while 16.1 million, or 48.1 percent, backed staying.
With just a month to go until Brexit, the ultimate outcome is still unclear with scenarios ranging from a last-minute deal to another referendum that May has warned would reopen the divisions of the referendum or even scupper Brexit altogether.
Both of Britain’s main parties are under intense pressure to change course on Brexit, though both are officially committed to implementing the result of the referendum.
The opposition Labour Party said on Monday it would back calls for a second referendum on Brexit if parliament rejects its alternative plan for leaving the EU.
But the tilt towards another referendum raises problems for Labour, many of whose traditional voters supported leaving the EU.
“Voters in very, very large numbers will not accept that. I call on (Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn to reverse this absurd decision,” Brexit-supporting Labour lawmaker John Mann said.
He said Corbyn was reneging on promises made before the 2017 election and it would be “catastrophic” for the party.
Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer added an additional twist to the political chaos in London by saying that even if May’s deal was passed by March 12 it should face a public vote.
May wants to negotiate changes to the exit deal she agreed with the EU last year and has promised to bring it back for approval in parliament by March 12 at the latest.
It has been 20 years since the publication of a report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager who had been stabbed to death in a racist attack in south-east London.
After his murder, a public inquiry - the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry - was ordered by the government.
Led by retired judge Sir William Macpherson, the inquiry published its findings on 24 February 1999.
But out of the 350-page report, two words had the biggest impact.
Sir William labelled London's Metropolitan Police as "institutionally racist".
Twenty years on, what do people think of the police service he criticised with such force?
Yvonne Lawson says she is "disheartened and appalled" to hear what young people think of the police.
She is the founder of the Godwin Lawson foundation, set-up after her 17-year-old son, Godwin, was stabbed to death in 2011.
In January, her foundation - aimed as reducing gang and knife crime - published a report after speaking to young people in Haringey, north London.
"We interviewed over 70 young people who expressed the same concerns I had 20 years ago.
"Most of the young people we spoke to said they didn't trust the police and wouldn't even call them when they or their friends were in danger."
She says not enough is being done to bridge the gap between black and ethnic minority communities and the police.
"One young person was even convinced the force didn't hire black people," she says.
"This is why we need more diversity. More young people from these backgrounds need to feel like they can identify with the police.
"This issue of trust kept coming up and once you identify with someone, you immediately start trust them more."
'They are still institutionally racist'
Leroy Logan, 62, is a former Met officer and ex-chairman of the National Black Police Association.
Twenty years after Macpherson, he says the force remains institutionally racist.
Logan says improvements were made post-Macpherson, such as hate crimes now being identified, but adds: "We still don't have the promotion of equality and justice in the organisation.
"Black officers are disproportionately subjected to discipline compared to their white counterparts.
"You still see black staff hugging the lower ranks and they aren't breaking through to the upper levels of the organisation."
He adds: "We still have disproportionality in stop and search, where a black person is five times more likely to be stopped by police than their white counterparts.
"They are 20 times more likely to be stopped under section 60 roadblocks and you are more likely to be Tasered if you are black.
"So even if this is unconscious bias, the fact the police force know these figures but have not decided to question why this is happening and haven't addressed it - it is institutionally racist."
Logan runs a leadership programme called Voyage Youth and says the young people he works with have the same attitude towards the police as he did in his younger years.
"They say they are over-policed and under-protected. They don't feel safe."
He adds: "In London we have white British gangs, Bengali gangs, eastern European, you name it.
"So why is it that 80% of them on the [police] gangs matrix is black? What happened to the rest of them?"
ir William Macpherson, a retired high court judge from rural Scotland, led the public inquiry into Mr Lawrence's murder and wrote the final report, and the findings he still stands by.
"I couldn't work miracles about making the police behave better or improving the relationships between black and white people.
"But I hoped that the inquiry might assist," he said.
At the time, the public inquiry heard from more than 80 witnesses and considered 100,000 pages of documents.
Sir William said the police needed to re-establish trust with minority ethnic communities.
He says he recognised there was a problem within the force, which was "worse than individual acts of racism".
Sir William says that he has been through his initial report "over and over again" since 1999 and stands by the recommendations he made.
He says the report allowed police to take a step in the right direction, but adds: "There's obviously a great deal more to be done."
'More accountability'
Image copyrightPA
Gwenton Sloley, 35, served three years in prison for armed robbery before going on to become one of Britain's leading anti-gangs advisors.
He has helped set up witness protection programmes, trained Met police officers, and had national contracts to work with young people.
But he too says the police are still institutionally racist.
Mr Sloley says the 1999 report gave minorities "a voice at a time when a lot of people were suffering in silence".
But he says there still needs to be "more accountability".
Tim Head, 25, is a volunteer for Hackney's Stop and Search Monitoring group and the Youth Independence Advisory Group, (YIAG).
"The impact of the report is felt in many ways and still talked about a lot, I think in terms of the rhetoric it's had a huge impact.
"In terms of actual changes on the ground, it's difficult to measure."
Despite the Met's claim that today's force is "utterly different" to 20 years ago, he says "a lot of the issues raised by Macpherson are still present".
"This isn't about officers using racist slurs, its about something much wider, much more structural. It's about the way demographics are policed.
"You can have very well meaning officers, who still support racist structures, even if their own personal beliefs aren't racist."
Cressida Dick, Britain's most senior police officer, believes the Macpherson Report was "the most important thing that's happened in my service".
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner says Macpherson "defined my generation of policing", adding: "We're not at all complacent."
Currently 14% of Met officers are from BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) backgrounds.
However, 40% of London's population comes from BAME backgrounds.
This means, if the Met continues to recruit at this rate, it will take 100 years to build a workforce that truly reflects the community it serves.
Despite this, Ms Dick says she does not believe the force is still institutionally racist.
"I simply don't see it as a helpful or accurate description. This is an utterly different Metropolitan Police", she claimed.
