Best New Music — December 6, 2019

Parents Arrested Over Missing Teenager

The parents of missing teenager Shafilea Ahmed were today arrested on suspicion of her kidnap.

The teenager, from Warrington, Cheshire, went missing in September and police have since released poetry which spoke of her unhappy home life.

Cheshire Police today confirmed that a 44-year-old man and a 41-year-old woman had been arrested at the family home at 8.05am.

Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed are being questioned at a Cheshire police station.

Shafilea was last seen at the home she shared with her parents, three sisters and younger brother in the Great Sankey area of Warrington on September 11.

The troubled teenager had recently returned from a trip to Pakistan where she drank bleach after being introduced to an arranged marriage suitor.

The injuries she suffered required regular medical attention and detectives from Cheshire believe she must now be dead.

They have refused to rule out the possibility that her disappearance is linked to her apparent refusal to marry.

Song lyrics found in the teenager's bedroom were read out at a press conference by actress Shobna Gulati, who plays Sunita in Coronation Street.

In one song, titled Happy Families, the westernised teenager refers to a clash of cultures and her family's preoccupation with "honour".

She wrote: "I don't pretend like we're the perfect family no more.

"Desire to live is burning.

"My stomach is turning.

"But all they think about is honour.

"I was like a normal teenage kid."

In a recent interview, the police chief running the inquiry said he had not ruled out the possibility of an "honour killing".

Detective Chief Inspector Geraint Jones said: "That remains a line of inquiry."

He distanced himself from the phrase, saying: "It is not a phrase I have used and it is not a phrase I find appropriate."

Shafilea's home has already been searched once by officers, and at the time the family were said to have been co-operative.

Investigators also searched wasteland near to the family home.

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The John Lennon Quotes That Are Still Painfully Relevant In This Troubled World

(PA)

On 8 December 1980, John Lennon was shot four times in the back outside of his apartment building in New York City.

He was 40 years old.

7 days after his death, millions of people paused their daily routines to honour Yoko Ono's request for ten minutes of silence in commemoration of his contributions.

30,000 gathered in Liverpool, 225,000 in New York City's Central Park. The radios went silent, too. That strength of love for this man, this musician in a band, has quelled little over the years. His outspoken political activism has made him a herald for those who have so longed for global peace and "Imagine" has become their perennial anthem; it re-entered the UK charts at number 18 in 2012 after Emeli Sandé recorded a cover for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

His legacy is eternal, though his presence is so greatly missed. And though he would have wished it weren't so, Lennon's words still ring just a true today as they did in his own lifetime. Here are a select few:

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality."

"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."

"You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die."

"We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once?"

"We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant.... You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it."

"What we've got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it we'll sink."

"If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal."

"I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you."

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."

"Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but not if you put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Carter or Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself."

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