| Race and local authorities: how white are our councils? Are the council bosses of Britain's most diverse areas 'hideously white'?• Get the dataThis is a snapshot of top black staff in the town halls of the big cities that have the largest black and minority ethnic (BME) populations.Also surveyed were London boroughs with large BME populations. The-Latest.Com, the citizen journalism website, used Freedom of Information requests followed up by emails and phone calls over a three month period to gleans the information – and some authorities were less co-operative than others. According to the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, the data should have been collected by local authorities and acted on where it revealed inequality. But the Guinness effect of black people at the bottom of town hall staffing grades and white people at the top was uncovered.Here's the data behind the story we ran yesterday. What can you do with it?Download the data• DATA: download the full spreadsheetWorld government data• Search the world's government with our gatewayDevelopment and aid data• Search the world's global development data with our gatewayCan you do something with this data?Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group• Get the A-Z of data• More at the Datastore directory• Follow us on TwitterLocal governmentRace & religionRace issuesMarc Wadsworthguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Probe Links European Plot to 9/11 A terrorist suspect from Germany killed last week by a U.S. drone missile in Pakistan was in contact with 9/11 collaborators just days before the 2001 attacks, according to court records. online.wsj.com |
ICRC urges Pakistan to grant access to detention centres Rare public intervention by ICRC official as south Asia chief says organisation is talking to Islamabad about access to detaineesThe Red Cross is urging Pakistan to give it access to detainees as security forces are rounding up thousands of people in what the authorities describe as law enforcement operations.The head of operations for south Asia for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Jacques de Maio, told the Guardian today: "We are engaged in discussions with the Pakistani authorities with the goal of achieving access to places of detention."Arrests of people described as threats to security throughout Pakistan have not received as much attention or scrutiny as the situation in Afghanistan, where an armed conflict is plain for everyone to see andhumanitarian agencies and western governments are privately deeply concerned about the potential consequences of transferring power and responsibility to Afghan forces and officials.Though this is key to the British and US governments' exit strategy, it could lead to what one official described yesterday as a "fragmentation of the political and security landscape" in Afghanistan against the background of a weak central government in Kabul."Our greatest challenge consists in maintaining access to the areas hardest hit by the fighting, but the multiplication of armed groups is making this much harder for us," Stocker said last week. A concern is that the greater the number of different groups detaining people, the more difficult it will be to gain access to the detainees.De Maio's public intervention, rare for the ICRC, comes at a time when humanitarian agencies and other independent experts in the region are expressing growing concern about the number of the victims the conflicts in Pakistan and Afghanistan are producing.Just last week the ICRC revealed that the number of war casualties taken to Mirwais hospital in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, had hit record levels. The ICRC-supported hospital registered nearly 1,000 admissions with weapons-related injuries in August and September - almost twice as many as during the same months last year, it said."This is just the tip of the iceberg, as those who suffer other sorts of injuries or contract disease as an indirect result of the conflict far outnumber weapon-wounded patients," said Reto Stocker, the head of the ICRC delegation in Kabul.Concern is also growing, experts say, about the legality and pragmatic consequences of British and US forces targeting mid-level Taliban commanders in southern Afghanistan. Over the past three months, more than 300 Taliban leaders have been killed or captured, General David Petraeus, the US and Nato commander in the country, said in London last week. "These are important figures. This is the so-called jackpot – the target of a particular operation", he said.However, well-placed sources warned today that apart from the difficult legal issues involved, and the definition of what constituted "assassination", Taliban commanders who have been killed or captured are being replaced by younger ones more ideologically extreme and much less likely to agree to join any moves towards reconciliation.PakistanAfghanistanHuman rightsRichard Norton-Taylorguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
G-20 Sketches Out Currency Steps The Group of 20 nations are pursuing an accord to end battles over currencies that relies on goodwill and peer pressure to persuade countries to comply with internationally agreed norms, rather than enforceable sanctions. online.wsj.com |
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