Former Another Generation magazine editor Farah Damji is imminently due to be sentenced for a new series of offences she pleaded guilty to last week.

At Blackfriars Crown Court last week the prosecution said Ms Damji had £17,000 worth of benefit fraud and made false representations to two separate landlords for properties in London
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by Sunny Hundal
Editor

Is Farah Damji out of prison and terrorising people’s wallets again?

That is the question on everyone’s lips as the most notorious name in Asian media history hits the headlines again.

Damji was recently profiled in two places – the London Evening Standard and The Economist’s Intelligent Life magazine. I’ve been trying to find out what she’s up to ever since.
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The much-anticipated film Mad, Sad and Bad releases on 31st July in cinemas across the UK. A gala screening was held in central London this week with lead stars Meera Syal and Nitin Ganatra attending.

The film is a thirty-something comedy about a dysfunctional family and group of friends whose personal lives are continuously messed up by their own selfish needs and neuroses.
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A big question mark hung over the fate of BBC Asian Network this week after it was criticised in an annual report by the BBC Trust for its falling audience figures.

A report in the Evening Standard last week by former Eastern Eye editor Amar Singh, now their media correspondent, suggested the station was up for a chop.
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The BBC’s latest annual report admits that the corpration continues to miss its targets on diversity. It has an internal target of having at least 12.5% of staff from an ethnic minority background.

It also has internal targets to have at least 7% of senior managers from an ethnic minority background. But both targets have been missed third year in a row since they were first mooted.
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A group of young men who decided in the early 1980’s to try and make an impact. And that too for one night only.
You can follow the lives of: The Sultans of Soul here, exclusively on AIM.

by Ravi Mangat
Writer

[Earlier chapters: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11]

Ramesh had tidied the flat, after he had broken the news to his roommate Jagpal, that he had a girlfriend…and after he had picked up Jagpal from the floor, where he had fallen after laughing so hard. Most of the work in tidying the flat had in fact been to basically just get rid of Japgpal. The man was a walking dustbin. A dustbin, with holes in that is.

Ramesh had changed into his best suit…his only suit. He had cleaned his teeth for an extra sixty seconds more than normal. He had prepared his famous dish…the supermarket special, meal-for two. Straight out of a box and ready to eat in 60 minutes.

The doorbell rang.
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This is an extract from London based journalist Salil Tripathi’s new book: ‘Offence – The Hindu Case (Manifestos for the Twenty-first Century)‘

Near the end of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus tells the reader: “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning.”

For the Indian artist Maqbul Fida Husain, these words now carry a special meaning: opposition to him and his work has now travelled beyond India’s borders. In 2006, a group of Hindu activists attacked two of his paintings at an upscale art gallery, asserting that if Muslims could ban cartoons of Prophet Mohammed made by Danish artists, why couldn’t Hindus do the same with Husain’s art?
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Fresh from his success at the Brussels Film Festival, Faisal Qureshi’s script: The Screaming Phone, won Best Short Script at this year’s Super Shorts Film Festival in London. It is a horror story about a young
woman who’s tormented by the phone ringing in the apartment next door. What is her neighbour hiding and how far will she go to find out?

Faisal is a North West based filmmaker who has directed several short films and is currently getting his first feature off the ground. He won Best Film Story at the Brussels Film Festival for The Footsoldier.

The thorny question of faith schools will not go away. Every time there is a debate on this subject , the supporters and those who oppose it lock horns without reaching a conclusion.

It is not until you see it in reality that you realise how this system of education actually affects children.
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Actor and rapper Riz Ahmed has released another single – ‘Sour Times’. It is the MC’s second independent track after his highly political debut ‘Post 9/11 blues’.

Sour Times follows a similar political theme and features a montage of people mouthing the lyrics. It include rappers Plan B, Scroobius Pip, actors Jim Sturgess, Tom Hardy, and musician Nitin Sawhney.
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A former journalist, showbiz editor and television presenter is making a leap from the media industry to the charity sector to help bone barrow and blood donation charities.

Reena Combo, the former editor of Desi Xpress newspaper and then Ikonz magazine, has co-founded ‘Desi Donors’ and is organising an event in Birmingham this week to raise money for the Anthony Nolan Trust.
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The Bollywood focused television network B4U announced this week it has successfully launched two channels in the Caribbean.

B4U Movies and B4U Music started broadcasting via Columbus Communication in Trinidad from 1st July. Last month it also launched in Malaysia.

CEO of B4U Network, Sunil Rohra said: “We are confident that both channels will cater to the large Bollywood fan base in the community and that they will enjoy the variety offered by B4U.”

A group of young men who decided in the early 1980’s to try and make an impact. And that too for one night only.
You can follow the lives of: The Sultans of Soul here, exclusively on AIM.

by Ravi Mangat
Writer

[Earlier chapters: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10]

By the time they got together that night, each of the guys had different things on their mind. Raj had his mind clearly focused on the band and what they were going to do. Ramesh was so hung over with love that he wasn’t really listening to anything that was being suggested.

Ashok was silent, for once. He was still worried about his sister Rupa and what she must be thinking about his less than lawful activities. As for Bernie, well he was in two moods. One side of him felt like a child again, as if he was at the beginning of a new adventure. The other side was tormented with a sense of guilt at what the guys would say if they found out what his original intentions for the band had been.
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From comfy cushions to the collapse of capitalism, documentary maker Navid Akhtar (pictured) examines the impact of Islamic design and values on the life of the Victorian designer, poet, craftsman and socialist radical, William Morris.
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A British made Bengali ‘western’ is about to finish its tour of cinemas this week after a successful run.

The Last Thakur is made by director and cinematographer Sadik Ahmed and was first screened at the London Film Festival and Dubai International Film Festival last year.
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The BBC’s new head of religion Aaqil Ahmed takes up his post on Monday 6th July.

The date of his start at the BBC has been highly anticipated given the controversy surrounding his appointment.
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Independent News & Media, owners of the broadsheet paper The Independent, today announced that it was reducing its media investments in India.

The company was one of the first major media groups in the UK to consider investing in Indian newspapers a few years ago. It was quickly followed by Associated Newspapers and Reuters.
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Singer and actress Karen David released her debut single Magic Carpet Ride this week with an accompanying video.
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Did you know that there was a time when Jewish women were among the leading ladies of Bollywood? No, neither did we.

But there was an era when Baghdadi Jewish families who had emigrated to India starred in Bollywood.
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