Terrence Higgins Trust has received £200,000 to support 250 older people living with HIV in London, as the over-50s continue to be the fastest-growing group of people living with HIV in the UK.
The money is delivered as part of the Big Lottery Fund’s Silver Dreams programme, being run in association with the Daily Mail, to benefit causes which help older people.
The award is designed to help over-50s living with HIV in London to cope financially, to become active citizens and to manage life changing events.
As part of the project, one of four selected for funding, older people will be trained as volunteers to support other older people, offering help and information about accessing services including social activity groups and advocacy.
Lisa Power, Policy Director at THT, said: “Improvements in medical treatments have given people with HIV a longer life than they ever expected. We know that a lot of people with HIV didn’t plan for older age and need help to manage on a low income.
“Many are also socially isolated because of the stigma of HIV. Through this project, we will provide money management advice and get people involved in volunteering and other social activities, giving them the tools to make that new lease of life a healthier, happier and more secure one.”
Alison Rowe, Big Lottery Fund London Head of Region said: “Last October we set the challenge to organisations in England to develop innovative projects that would recognise the positive contribution older people make to society today whilst also supporting them through life changes. I’m delighted that four London projects have risen to the challenge to share a slice of Silver Dreams Lottery funding announced today.”
Bel Mooney, Daily Mail writer and advice columnist, said as part of the judging panel distributing the £546,000 fund she was “amazed and impressed by the wealth of energy now being directed towards the needs of older people and made possible by the Big Lottery Fund. These matters are close to the Daily Mail’s heart, since our Dignity For the Elderly campaign is always on-going and we believe that a healthy society respects its older members, acknowledging our debt and committing ourselves to taking care of their needs”.
Discuss this →Source: www.pinknews.co.uk
Woman police officer was FOUR TIMES over the limit when she crashed MG sports car on seafront - Daily Mail
- WPC Tracy Watts admitted drink-driving and was warned she faces jail
- Crashed car in Southend, Essex, after downing bottle of vodka
By James White
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Drink-drive crash: Tracy Watts was four times over the legal alcohol limit when she crashed her sports car
A police officer is facing jail after she admitted crashing a sports car while four times over the drink-drive limit after binge drinking on a bottle of vodka.
Tracy Watts was arrested after crashing her MG TF into a bollard along Southend seafront, Essex, while heavily drunk.
Watts admitted she had drunk a bottle of vodka when questioned by cops at the scene of the early evening crash.
The 31-year-old appeared at Southend Magistrates’ Court today wearing a black suit, white blouse and sky blue jumper.
She hung her head as she appeared in the dock and pleaded guilty to a single charge of drink-driving.
Watts, who worked as a WPC for City of London Police, was warned she faces up to six months in jail when sentenced.
Lead magistrate Roger Harbidge said: 'This makes for very disturbing reading and it is only good fortune you did not injure anyone else.
'You must understand a custodial sentence is very likely in this case.'
Watts will now have to wait to discover her fate while a full probation report is prepared.
The court heard how Watts collided with a bollard along Eastern Esplanade, in Southend, at around 7.15pm on March 26 this year.
Police and an ambulance rushed to the scene where Watts admitted to officers from Essex Police that she had consumed a bottle of vodka before the crash.
No other people were injured and Watts was rushed to a local hospital and a blood sample was taken.
She recorded a blood-alcohol level of 320mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood - four times over the UK drink-drive limit of 80mcg per 100ml.
Watts, from Shoeburyness, Essex, resigned from her role as a City of London police officer less than a fortnight after the crash.
Crash site: The seafront in Southend, Essex, where Tracy Watts crashed her car in March. Today she admitted drink-driving and warned she faces jail
Miss Bo-Eun Jung, mitigating, said her client had underlying drink problems and was working to deal with them.
She told the court: 'My client has underlying psychological and alcohol problems which are being looked at.'
Watts was given unconditional bail and received an interim banning order meaning she is disqualified from driving until the outcome of the case.
She is due to be sentenced at Southend Magistrates’ Court later this year.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
London 2012: Olympic Games portal opens on Facebook - BBC News
Facebook has announced a dedicated portal for London 2012 to allow fans to "connect with their favourite Olympians" at the Games.
The section features dedicated pages for athletes and sports, including a complete timeline history of the competition since the 1800s.
The IOC said the portal would create a "social media stadium".
However, restrictions on what athletes can or cannot post will restrict some content from being published.
Participants are subject to tight guidelines over content posted on Facebook and Twitter, particularly in relation to brands and broadcasting deals.
It restricts the posting of any video from within an Olympic venue.
'Ambush'Mark Adams, from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that while visitors to the Games would be able to post videos and stills, athletes' activities would be curbed.
“Start Quote
End Quote Boris BeckerIt's impossible to think all day and all night about the next match, interacting with fans is a good thing”
"It depends on where they are," he said.
"If they're in a stadium, they can't. We have a relationship with various broadcasters around the world which provides the funding [for the Games]."
In addition, he said, the IOC would be watching for any attempted "ambush" marketing.
"It's something we always have to keep in our mind," he said.
"It does take away money from the Olympic movement. It's something that we have to protect."
Facebook, which announced the portal at its central London offices, said it hoped the portal would mean Olympics fans could interact with athletes in a way that had not been possible in previous Games.
Alex Balfour, from the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) said there was now a "perfect storm" of technology to allow a "really rich experience" wherever fans were in the world.
"We want make sure our Games is available to that new audience of digital consumers," he added.
Facebook said it would allow fans to use the network to discover footage of their favourite athletes - but some content would be geo-targeted, meaning certain footage might not be available in certain regions of the world.
Mr Adams admitted that the IOC had been slow to adopt social networking, but was now ready to embrace it for London 2012.
"The way I like to think about the IOC and our relationship with social media is that the Olympics is one of the oldest social networks that has ever been.
"Everyone has an experience and shares that experience with their friends and their family - everyone has an emotional attachment to the Games. We're just digitising that experience."
Hot waterFormer world tennis number one and Olympic gold medallist Boris Becker told the BBC that using social media could help athletes prepare.
"It's very positive. It gives athletes the chance to get real opinions and real questions and to answer back.
"It's fun - everyone's online anyway. It's impossible to think all day and all night about the next match, interacting with fans is a good thing."
However, he warned that it was inevitable that some athletes might not think before they tweeted and so land themselves in hot water during the Games.
"The world and people are not perfect," he said.
"There will always be athletes who will take it out of line, but that doesn't mean that the platform is wrong."
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
New buyers may lift London art sales to $1 billion - Reuters UK
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) - London's art market is attracting the lion's share of business from an emerging class of super-wealthy collectors from Russia, the Middle East and China, and they are likely to be a big factor in a summer season of sales valued at up to $1 billion (638 million pounds).
Christie's, Sotheby's and smaller rivals like Phillips de Pury hold a three-week series of auctions featuring works by artists as diverse as Rembrandt, Renoir and Gerhard Richter.
Euro zone turmoil and slowing Chinese economic growth are giving investors the jitters, yet the high-end art market has defied gravity on a record-breaking streak.
New York has long been considered the global capital of the auction world -- most recent records have been set there, including the $120 million paid for Edvard Munch's "The Scream" at a Sotheby's sale in May.
London, a more natural fit for Russian tycoons who have homes in the city and Middle Eastern buyers just a mid-haul flight away, may be closing that gap.
Sotheby's has calculated that, while the number of lots sold to buyers from "new" markets has risen in both cities so far this year, the increase has been far more marked in London (33 percent) than New York (six percent).
"Particularly the Russians feel very comfortable bidding in the London sales as many of them have second homes and are very active here," said Helena Newman, chairman of Sotheby's impressionist and modern art department in Europe.
"I think that because of our geographic situation, we are the gateway to the East ... Central Asia, the Middle East and the East," she told Reuters at the company's London headquarters where star lots from the upcoming sales were on display.
"We definitely see that in the sales of recent years. It is a growing trend."
BILLION-DOLLAR BONANZA?
Beyond bragging rights, auctioneers are not overly concerned with who buys what where. Key lots for sale in London come from the United States, for example, and the market overall has become more globalised.
One of the prize lots of the season is English artist John Constable's "The Lock", being offered by Christie's for 20-25 million pounds and the only one of a series of six important landscapes by the painter to be in private hands.
It goes under the hammer on July 3 and should eclipse the 10.8 million pounds raised when it was sold in 1990 - a British painting record it held for 16 years.
On the same night, Rembrandt's "A Man in a Gorget and Cap" is on course to raise 8-12 million pounds.
On Wednesday, a Renoir nude is set to fetch 12-18 million pounds and the next week the same auctioneer offers Yves Klein's "Le Rose du Bleu", estimated at 17-20 million pounds and Francis Bacon's "Study For Self-Portrait" (1964) (15-20 million).
Christie's, the world's largest auction house, expects to raise at least 310 million pounds from its sales of impressionist, modern, contemporary art as well as those of British paintings and Old Masters.
The upper estimate is closer to 500 million pounds, and combined with Sotheby's low target of 210 million pounds, a billion-dollar art bonanza looks within reach.
"The four week summer season of major international auctions at Christie's ... is set to become one of the richest and most valuable series of auctions in company history," said Jussi Pylkkanen, head of Christie's Europe.
MIRO RECORD IN SIGHT
At Sotheby's, the top work of the season could be Joan Miro's "Peinture (Etoile Bleue), valued at 15-20 million pounds and in sight of the artist record set this year of 16.8 million.
Its appearance so soon after the February record is no coincidence -- auction houses tailor sales to reflect the latest tastes, and the Miro, along with works by Henry Moore and Surrealist Paul Delvaux, all follow recent auction highs.
The prominence of large, colourful, figurative works at Sotheby's, including Kees van Dongen's "Lailla", Marc Chagall's "L'Arbre de Jesse" and Delvaux's "Deux Femmes couchees", also reflects emerging market tastes.
Soaring prices for coveted works of art at a time of global economic uncertainty have long prompted warnings of a sharp correction and even collapse, but time and again in the last three years the market has defied the gloomiest predictions.
There has been weakening in Chinese demand and tastes can be fickle, but the very best works of art have generally risen in value since a sharp but brief drop in auction turnover in 2009.
The contraction was as much a reflection of sellers backing away as of falling demand, experts say, and auction houses believe they are back in a "virtuous cycle" of rising prices in turn attracting the very best works on to the market.
Institutional acquisitions have also played a key role in the recovery, with Qatar emerging as one of the biggest buyers of art in recent years as it fills a growing network of museums.
Widespread reports said the Gulf state paid $250 million for Paul Cezanne's "The Card Players" in a private deal, believed to be the highest price ever paid for a work of art. (Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)
Source: uk.reuters.com
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