The Communications Act 2003 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The act, which came into force on 25 July 2003, superseded the Telecommunications Act 1984. The new act was the responsibility of Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell. It consolidated the telecommunication and broadcasting regulators in the UK, introducing the Office of Communications (Ofcom) as the new industry regulator. On 28 December 2003 Ofcom gained its full regulatory powers, inheriting the duties of the Office of Telecommunications (Oftel). Among other measures, the act introduced legal recognition of community radio and paved the way for full-time community radio services in the UK, as well as controversially lifting many restrictions on cross-media ownership. It also made it illegal to use other people's Wi-Fi broadband connections without their permission. In addition, the legislation also allowed for the first time non-European entities to wholly own a British television company.
Akinwale Oluwafolajimi Oluwatope Arobieke, commonly known as Purple Aki, is a British man known for his criminal convictions for harassment. He has been convicted for touching and measuring the muscles of young men and asking them to squat his body weight.
Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection (PaDP) is a branch of the Protection Command within the Specialist Operations directorate of London's Metropolitan Police Service.
PC Sharon Beshenivsky was a West Yorkshire Police constable shot and killed by a criminal gang during a robbery in Bradford on 18 November 2005, becoming the seventh female police officer in Great Britain to be killed on duty. Her colleague, PC Teresa Milburn, was seriously injured in the same incident. Milburn had joined the force less than two years earlier; Beshenivsky had served only nine months as a constable in the force at the time of her death, having been a community support officer before.
Peter Norris Dupas is an Australian convicted serial killer, currently serving three life sentences without parole for murder and primarily for being a serious habitual offender. He has a very significant criminal history involving serious sexual and violent offences, with his violent criminal history spanning more than three decades, and with every release from prison has been known to commit further crimes against women with increasing levels of violence. His criminal signature is to remove the breasts of his female victims.
Joshua (Josh) Joseph Boden is a former Canadian football wide receiver in the Canadian Football League (CFL). His career came to an end as the result of several years of criminal activity, including sexual assault, many under the alias Mike Boden. Boden was charged in 2018 with second-degree murder for the 2009 killing of Kimberly Hallgarth. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, and he will not be eligible for parole for at least 14 years.
Terry Anthony Blair was an American serial killer who was convicted of killing seven women of various ages in Kansas City, Missouri, although investigators believed that there were additional unidentified victims.
The history of violence against LGBT people in the United Kingdom is made up of assaults on gay men, lesbians, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex individuals (LGBTQI), legal responses to such violence, and hate crime statistics in the United Kingdom. Those targeted by such violence are perceived to violate heteronormative rules and religious beliefs and contravene perceived protocols of gender and sexual roles. People who are perceived to be LGBTQI may also be targeted.
The history of violence against LGBTQ people in the United States is made up of assaults on gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender individuals, legal responses to such violence, and hate crime statistics in the United States of America. The people who are the targets of such violence are believed to violate heteronormative standards and they are also believed to contravene perceived protocols of gender and sexual roles. People who are perceived to be LGBTQ may also be targeted for violence. Violence can also occur between couples who are of the same sex, with statistics showing that violence among female same-sex couples is more common than it is among couples of the opposite sex, but male same-sex violence is less common.
The Amina Bokhary controversy occurred in Hong Kong in 2010 involving the assault conviction of a wealthy woman from a well-connected family. Amina Mariam Bokhary, 32, received a sentence of probation and a one-year driving ban following an incident in the aftermath of a road traffic accident when she struck several police officers. She had committed similar offences in 2001 and 2008.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine is an English far-right nationalist, internet troll, and convicted criminal from Yeovil, Somerset. Styling himself as a "nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights", he ran a blog called The Daily Bale which published several racist and anti-immigration hoaxes, as well as false accusations against his opponents. He has described himself as "a proud anti-semite".
On 23 October 2019, the bodies of 39 people — 31 men and 8 women, and all Vietnamese nationals — were found in the trailer of an articulated refrigerator lorry in Grays, Essex, United Kingdom. The trailer had been shipped from the port of Zeebrugge, Belgium, to Purfleet, Essex, UK, and the lorry cab and its driver are believed to have originated from Northern Ireland. Investigations involving the national authorities of the UK, Belgium, Ireland and Vietnam have been led by Essex Police.
On June 2, 2020, David Dorn, a 77-year-old retired police captain, was fatally shot after interrupting the burglary of a pawn shop in The Ville, St. Louis. The incident took place during riots in St. Louis, Missouri following the murder of George Floyd. Stephan Cannon, who was 24 years old at the time of the incident, was convicted of his murder on July 20, 2022.
On the early morning of 7 May 2005, 16-year-old Mary-Ann Leneghan was stabbed to death in Prospect Park in Reading, Berkshire, UK. The previous evening, Leneghan and a friend had been kidnapped and subjected to hours of assault, rape, and drugging in a local hotel. Her friend was shot in the head, but survived.
The President's Pleasure (TPP) in Singapore was a practice of indefinite imprisonment formerly applied to offenders who were convicted of capital offences but were below the age of 18 at the time of their crimes. Such offenders were not sentenced to death in accordance with the death penalty laws in Singapore; they were instead indefinitely detained by order of the President of Singapore. This is similarly practised contemporarily for offenders who were of unsound mind when they committed their crimes, who are thus indefinitely detained at prisons or medical facilities in Singapore.
On the evening of 3 March 2021, 33-year-old Sarah Everard was kidnapped in South London, England, as she was walking home to the Brixton Hill area from a friend's house near Clapham Common. She was stopped by off-duty Metropolitan Police constable Wayne Couzens, who identified himself as a police officer, handcuffed her, and placed her in his car before transporting her to Kent. Couzens subsequently raped and strangled Everard, before burning her body and disposing of her remains in a pond in woodland.
In the evening of 18 September 2021, Damien Bendall murdered his partner Terri Haris, her two children Lacey and John-Paul Bennet, as well as Lacey's friend Connie Gent at a residential property on Chandos Crescent in Killamarsh, Derbyshire, an outer suburb of Sheffield, South Yorkshire. He had also raped Lacey as she was dying. After being arrested the next morning, Bendall was charged with four counts of murder and later rape of a girl under 13 in connection with the incident. He pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to a whole-life prison term on 21 December 2022.
On the evening of 24 December 2022, one person was killed and five others injured in a mass shooting at the Lighthouse pub in Wallasey, Merseyside, England. The perpetrator, 22-year-old Connor Chapman, was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder; it is not believed that the victim was targeted.
