horible
Unanswered questions behind the Pathankot terror attack
Security forces personnel on alert near the Indian Air Force base that was attacked by militants n Pa
thankot, Punjab.
Even as it becomes clearer that the attack at Pathankotair-base could have been handled better, there remain several questions that need answering, particularly those regarding the role of Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh, who claimed to have been carjacked and later dumped by the terrorists
.
The BBC has opened the door to providing "a different mix" of news and current affairs programming across the UK in response to political devolution.
Director general Lord Hall has written to the Scottish government, regional assemblies and UK ministers inviting them to submit evidence for an internal review of the BBC's news coverage.
He wrote: “As devolution continues, we believe that the BBC may need to adapt our services to ensure that they fully reflect and report the increasing divergent policies of the UK, with more aspects of public policy devolved.
“I believe that there is now a much stronger case for providing a different mix of news and current affairs to our audience.”
The BBC's output was called into question during 2014's Scottish independence referendum and first minister Nicola Sturgeon has since called for a dedicated Scotland channel and a second English-language radio station. She also wants Scotland to have its own 6 O'Clock News bulletin
- Current Affairs 2016: Top News Events of January 5, 2016
Prepsure.com brings to you the top Current Affairs news of January 5, 2016. The Daily Current Affairs are immensely useful for candidates preparing to appear in various competitive and entrance exams like UPSC IAS Prelims, IAS Mains, SSC, MAT, NDA, CDS, CAPF and State PCS. Going through these current Affairs news items will be helpful for candidates and update the aspirants on current events that are relevant for them in their preparation of various competitive exams, entrance exams, interviews and Group discussions. A short summary has been given under each headline which are explanatory in nature. The Top News of January 5, 2016 brought to you by prepsure are as – Operation closes end in Pathankot, Pollution levels once again reach severe levels in Delhi, President gives assent to 5 key bills, Telangana launch e-Vahan bima for vehicles
The BBC's Northern Irish Troubles
In August 1969, rioting broke out in Derry. The unrest soon spread to Belfast. A young Catholic boy died after being shot by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The British army was called in. Northern Ireland was on the cusp of 'the Troubles', a conflict that would last 30 years and leave more than 3,000 people dead.
BBC Television in Belfast had the job of transmitting dispatches from the restive ‘province’ to the rest of the UK. As sectarian bloodshed broke out on the streets, local controller, Waldo Macguire, declared that the BBC should “modify the presentation" of the news "in a way designed to avoid extreme provocation".
That the Northern Irish branch of the BBC downplayed the scale of the violence in its early days – and avoided interrogating the root causes of the unrest – is laid bare in Robert Savage’s excellent recent monograph ‘The BBC's Northern Irish Troubles: Television, Conflict and Northern Ireland’.
Thirty years on, BBC Northern Ireland is hardly a mouthpiece of the British state. Yet it still struggles at times to articulate a distinct, post-peace process identity.
‘God save the Queen’
From its inception the BBC in Belfast was clearly tied to the unionist establishment, which held power unopposed in the Northern Irish parliament at Stormont since the creation of the state in 1920. Four years later, the inaugural first Northern Irish radio broadcast opened with ‘Belfast Calling! Belfast Calling!’, immediately followed by a rendition of 'God Save the Queen'.
As Savage notes, between the wars, unionist leaders saw the BBC as "a vital link to a British culture they considered their own." Local BBC director generals routinely rubbed shoulders with political leaders at the exclusive Ulster Reform Club.
The Catholic minority had limited access to the national broadcaster. A BBC Northern Ireland advisory council, set up in 1946 ostensibly to make the corporation more representative, had just three nationalists among its 20 members – despite more a third of the population being Catholic/nationalist.
At the same time, the unionist hierarchy was wary of any journalism that would shine a light on the sectarian inequality that riddled Northern Ireland – and would later play an important role in igniting the Troubles.
While other nations in the UK were embracing the transfer of greater broadcasting control, unionist politicians rejected proposals for BBC Northern Ireland autonomy, fearing it could lead to more coverage of the divided nature of the local society.
That said, unionists were also wary of 'mainland' journalists, and the BBC didn’t always toe the line. In 1959, the popular broadcaster Alan Whicker came to Northern Ireland to make a series of short programmes. The result, broadcast on the BBC’s Tonight programme, bore Whicker's trademark style, peeking behind the curtain at the quotidian reality of ordinary life. There were shots of Belfast bars, ‘No Pope’ graffiti and armed police.
Prime minister Terence O’Neill was furious, expressing “concern and indignation” at the “unbalanced” picture portrayed by Whicker's film in a statement read out in the Northern Irish senate. A loyalist crowd at a football match attacked a BBC camera crew.
Conflict and control
Against the backdrop of decades of decidedly soft-focus journalism, the BBC in Northern Ireland was woefully under-equipped to deal with the ‘Troubles’ when violence broke out in 1969. Many of the senior producers were English, and the station produced just five hours of TV content each week.
As the violence intensified – and particularly in the wake of Bloody Sunday when the British army killed 14 unarmed protestors in Derry – the BBC came under increasing pressure, both within Northern Ireland and in its network-wide coverage of the conflict.
Indeed, when it came to Northern Ireland, the corporation's relations with the British state became increasingly ambivalent throughout the 1970s. RUC chief constables often attempted to force the press to assist in police investigations, putting pressure on journalists to name sources. At least once, a BBC film crew was roughed up by the notoriously heavy-handed police.
Broadcasts that questioned British policy in Northern Ireland enraged Labour and Conservative Governments alike. In 1981, then BBC political editor John Simpson was criticised for referring to the death of Hunger Striker Bobby Sands as “a great propaganda victory” for the IRA on network news. Simpson was right, of course – by the time Sands died after 66 days refusing food he was a Member of Parliament and an international cause celebre. An incensed Margaret Thatcher pledged to deny the IRA the ‘oxygen of publicity’.
In October 1988, the infamous ‘broadcasting ban’ was introduced. This rather farcical legislation prohibited the voices of representatives of Sinn Fein and other republican and loyalist organisations from being broadcast on TV or radio in the UK. Actor Stephen Rea was among those who provided voiceovers of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams on nightly news bulletins. The ban was only lifted in 1994, in the wake of the Downing Street Declaration and the start of the peace process.
Moves such as the Broadcasting Ban were aimed primarily at the BBC and its UK-wide broadcasts. But within Northern Ireland itself the outbreak of the Troubles highlighted that the corporation's regional coverage was no longer fit for purpose.
In the wake of the massive loyalist Ulster Workers' Council strike, which brought Northern Ireland to its knees in 1974, the old BBC Radio 4 opt-out was finally replaced with a dedicated station, BBC Radio Ulster. Radio Foyle followed a few years later on the other side of the country, in Derry.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, as Northern Ireland remained the biggest domestic story, the BBC's presence in Belfast continued to grow. At the same there was recognition in London that the Belfast wing of the corporation needed to have more local control of its output, with more Northern Irish-only content produced.
By the early 2000s, the peace process had largely bedded in. But Belfast remained the largest newsroom outside London.
Public Health England launches sugar app as part of latest Change4Life campaign
A new app that tells parents and children how much sugar is in the food they eat has been launched by Public Health England (PHE) in a bid to combat obesity and encourage families to lead a healthier lifestyle.
The new Sugar Smart app forms part of PHE’s latest Change4Life campaign and allows users to scan over 75,000 bar codes on products to make them aware how much sugar they are consuming. The app also includes recipes and discounts off healthier products as well as weekly email tips to help parents reduce the amount of sugar they give to their children.
According to Change4Life around 30 per cent of the sugar in children’s diets comes from sugary drinks, and kids are consuming three times more sugar they should be.
The Food and Drink Federation this morning welcomed the news but warned care needs to be taken not increase the price of food, particularly among families.
"The industry absolutely cares about childhood obesity it’s a serious problem,” Tim Rycroft, corporate affairs director told BBC Breakfast.
“We've been working with the government for many years now to try and tackle it. I think our record on reformulation products to take fats, salt and sugar out is rather a proud one. But on the issue of helping people to understand how much sugar is in their food then I think we should use every possible method and we should back it up with education so that people really understand what the reference in-take and daily allowance means.
"We've got a bigger range of highly nutritious sugar across all price point in this country than ever before. We just need to be cautious about taking action that's going to make food more expensive for people for whom food is the biggest part of their household expenditure."
In a report issued in October last year, PHE said that it supported a sugar tax and called for less marketing aimed at children across all mediums.
BBC starts consultation on devolving UK news and current affairs coverage
The BBC has opened the door to providing "a different mix" of news and current affairs programming across the UK in response to political devolution.
Director general Lord Hall has written to the Scottish government, regional assemblies and UK ministers inviting them to submit evidence for an internal review of the BBC's news coverage.
He wrote: “As devolution continues, we believe that the BBC may need to adapt our services to ensure that they fully reflect and report the increasing divergent policies of the UK, with more aspects of public policy devolved.
“I believe that there is now a much stronger case for providing a different mix of news and current affairs to our audience.”
The BBC's output was called into question during 2014's Scottish independence referendum and first minister Nicola Sturgeon has since called for a dedicated Scotland channel and a second English-language radio station. She also wants Scotland to have its own 6 O'Clock News bulletin.
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