The time has passed when every day seemed to bring another harrowing tale of a young life needlessly snuffed out, when pictures of smiling young faces, now dead, gazed out at us and parents showed their naked grief to the world, and let us hope it does not return.

That the immediate crisis has passed does not mean that the need to educate young people has also passed. The opposite is true. Now more than ever, teenagers need to be made fully aware of the danger of knives and other weapons, of how a moment's bravado can end a life. End it really, truly and forever.

So it is heartening that a conference has been held in Leeds to help schools pass on that message.

Conferences are rarely big news, they do not have the necessary dynamic impact, but nevertheless this one was vital.

Headteachers and other senior staff learned about the help available to them in their front-line work to keep teenagers safe and about how to bring home to pupils the terrible and true dangers of weapons-related crime.

It was rightly said at the conference that Leeds schools do not have a major problem with weapons, and this is a massive plus point for our city.

The quiet work of conferences like this one is essential to make sure our schools stay that way.

Sense on TB

Hundreds more new arrivals to Leeds are to be screened for tuberculosis.
Health bosses have been given extra funding to pay for the extension of the screening service, which invites people at high risk to be tested. This includes those who move to Leeds from areas where TB is rife, such as some African countries, Pakistan and India.

Some people might feel uncomfortable reading this news, as if the targeting of those from certain countries is somehow unfair. But cases of the potentially fatal disease are rising fast, and to concentrate on testing people from those areas where it is predominant is only common sense.

It is a bias, but it is a bias for the greater good and for the protection of all of us.

Hard to swallow?

A Leeds restaurant is offering an unusual menu. Salvo's in Headingley has created an eight-course meal of such delicacies as stuffed pig's trotters, pig's head and, the absolute creme de la creme, a dessert of pig's blood mixed with chocolate spread.

Some epicureans may find it offally good – but there are definitely many who would prefer famine to this feast.