Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Araimi, 20, was attacked in Knightsbridge on Friday
A King’s College London student who was stabbed to death in the capital while returning home from a restaurant with a friend was “entirely blameless”, police have said.
Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Araimi, 20, was attacked near Harrods department store in Knightsbridge shortly after midnight on Friday.
Continue reading...Shadow chancellor says sorry to Jewish community, adding party was ‘doing everything possible’ to tackle issue
The shadow chancellor has expressed his concern that the row over antisemitism in Labour may have an effect on the election result, adding that the party had “done everything we can possibly do” to tackle the problem.
In a BBC One interview on Sunday morning, John McDonnell apologised to the Jewish community for “the suffering we’ve inflicted on them”. He added: “I say to them, we’re doing everything possible and we are going to learn more lessons and we want to be the shining example of anti-racism that the Labour party should be.”
Continue reading...Eleventh-hour appeal to anti-Tory voters as poll shows Conservative majority halved
A cross-party alliance of opposition politicians has launched an 11th-hour appeal to anti-Tory voters to consider switching allegiance in Thursday’s general election, amid signs that a late surge of tactical voting in a few swing seats could deprive Boris Johnson of a majority in parliament.
The calls from senior Labour, Liberal Democrat and SNP figures come as a major poll suggests Johnson’s likely majority has been cut in half in the last two weeks – from 82 a fortnight ago to just 40 with four days to polling day.
Continue reading...Save the Children urges people taking part in its charity event to source sweaters through clothes swaps and vintage shops
Save the Children is calling on people to hold clothes swaps and scour vintage shops rather than buy new Christmas jumpers, after research found that 95% of the novelty items for sale contained plastic.
The appeal for consumer “sustainability” comes ahead of the charity’s annual Christmas jumper day on Friday, when it encourages supporters to buy and wear festive pullovers. Research by the environmental charity Hubbub estimates that 12m jumpers will be bought this year, triggering huge amounts of plastic waste.
Continue reading...Vernon Unsworth’s legal team had sought at least $190m in damages after Tesla CEO called him ‘pedo guy’
Elon Musk did not defame British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth by calling him a “pedo guy” on Twitter, a Los Angeles jury found Friday.
Musk shook hands with his lawyer at the close of the four day trial in Los Angeles. He did not address Unsworth, whose team had told the court earlier on Friday the Tesla CEO should pay at least $190m in damages for his tweets about the diver.
Continue reading...Labour and Conservative party leaders clash over racism and NHS in final before polling day
Jeremy Corbyn accused Boris Johnson of having made “racist remarks” as the pair clashed over Islamophobia and antisemitism in their parties in a crucial head-to-head debate less than a week before polling day.
Corbyn made the allegation during the BBC One leaders’ debate on Friday as he defended himself against Johnson’s charge that his handling of antisemitism complaints within Labour was a “failure of leadership”.
Continue reading...London orbital motorway is likely to be affected for a considerable time, say police
The M25 has been shut after a serious collision involving a crane that overturned and crashed over both sides of the carriageway.
The incident happened at junction 27 with the M11 in Essex on Friday evening. It has caused huge tailbacks in both directions including more than 10 miles on the clockwise carriageway of the motorway around London.
Continue reading...Labour leader says government report states Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal will be ‘highly disruptive’
The Labour leader has produced a leaked report on Northern Ireland and customs checks, describing it as “cold hard evidence” that Boris Johnson has been misleading people about his Brexit deal.
Corbyn revealed the confidential document, titled Northern Ireland Protocol: Unfettered Access to the UK Internal Market, at a press conference in central London on Friday.
Ask our experts a question
As part of a new series you can ask our political team any questions you have about the general election, and they will post their responses on the politics live blog between 12.30pm and 1.30pm every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until polling week.
Continue reading...Agnes Taylor accused of offences that allegedly occurred during Liberian war
A judge in London has dismissed torture charges against the ex-wife of the former Liberian president Charles Taylor.
The university lecturer Agnes Taylor, 54, was charged in 2017 with a string of offences alleged to have taken place in 1990 during the west African country’s civil war.
Continue reading...This election has dragged party leaders to a new level of pathology. One that may be beyond treatment
I’m not sure what the protocols are for these sorts of events, but the sight of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn attending the vigil for Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones, who were killed in the London Bridge terrorist attack, felt like shameless political grandstanding: a desire to be seen to be doing the right thing, rather than heartfelt sympathy. And judging by what Jack’s father later wrote about the prime minister he would probably have also preferred Johnson to be a no show. Shortly after the vigil, various members of one of my WhatsApp groups expressed much the same feeling and we made a promise to actively prevent politicians from pitching up at our funerals or hospital beds if we were killed or injured in a terrorist attack or some other major incident. Should the prime minister, or any other political leader, try to muscle in on my family’s grief, I want a security detail to escort them off the premises. If they insist on making statements “to express the nation’s feelings” they can do so via a video-link from their own bedrooms. And there will be no need for them to worry about looking as if they didn’t give a toss by not attending, because my friends will have put out a statement to the media saying they were NFI. Not that I have given much thought to what sort of funeral I do want, though I’ve always thought how weird it must have been for the Queen Mother to look out of her bedroom window and watch the military rehearsing for hers. But my friend Simone has her funeral arrangements totally sorted. While her close friend Ali was dying of cancer, she dreamed of her own funeral – the music, the readings – in its entirety. When she woke up she remembered everything, thought it to be just perfect, and wrote out her instructions. I’m still waiting for that dream.
Continue reading...Commissioner brings forward her retirement and will step down on New Year’s Eve
The London fire commissioner in charge of the highly criticised response to the Grenfell Tower fire has resigned following renewed calls from bereaved families and survivors of the disaster for her to quit.
Dany Cotton announced on Friday that she would be stepping down on New Year’s Eve, bringing forward her planned retirement in June. In October, after the public inquiry into what happened on the night of the fire found serious failings in the London fire brigade’s (LFB) preparation and response, Cotton refused to resign, saying she wanted to see out reforms. The inquiry concluded that the LFB’s delay in evacuating the burning building cost lives. The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, also resisted calls for her to go.
Continue reading...Audrey Mash developed severe hypothermia while hiking in Catalan Pyrenees in freezing weather
Doctors in Barcelona have managed to revive a British woman who had a six-hour cardiac arrest after developing hypothermia while hiking in the Catalan Pyrenees in freezing weather last month.
Audrey Mash said she was surprised at the attention her case had attracted and said it had not put her off hiking. “I feel like a fraud for not being back at work. I’m hoping to go back before the end of next week,” she said on Thursday.
Continue reading...PM says sorry for describing Muslim women in veils as ‘letterboxes’ and promises EU trade deal by end of 2020
Boris Johnson has claimed that all-out strikes on public transport will be made illegal under a new Conservative administration following major disruption on UK train routes.
On a day when the prime minister also apologised “for any offence caused” by his comments about Muslim women and refused to concede it could take more than a year to agree a trade deal with the EU, he said it was “absurd” that rail workers could bring the system to a halt.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Donald Tusk says it would still be better for both sides if UK stayed in EU
Brexit has been “one of the most spectacular mistakes” in the history of the EU and followed a campaign marked by “an unprecedented readiness to lie”, Donald Tusk has said.
In his first interview since standing down as European council president last week, Tusk said Brexit was “the most painful and saddest experience” of his five years in office, a tumultuous period marked by the Greek eurozone crisis, bitter rows over migration and the election of Donald Trump.
Continue reading...Pair ‘almost certainly wearing ear defenders’ and were not aware of train until too late
There were no formal lookouts when two experienced rail workers were hit and killed on a train mainline, a report has found.
Gareth Delbridge, 64, and Michael “Spike” Lewis, 58, were struck on the south Wales mainline by a Swansea to London train on 3 July.
Continue reading...Woman says she thought of taking her life after being raped and forced to perform sex acts as a child
A woman who alleges she was traded to men and sexually abused from the age of 12 repeatedly thought about taking her own life and claimed teachers did not intervene when rumours about her went around her school, a jury has heard.
The woman alleges she was forced to perform sex acts, raped , and urinated on by one of the alleged attackers.
Continue reading...Squabbling, a spreading focus and Trump raise doubts about the effectiveness of the alliance
Seventy years after Nato was founded to protect western Europe from Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, the military alliance returned this week to its first home in London to discuss an increasingly sprawling set of goals while bickering leaders competed to see who could offer the most contentious soundbite.
Normally this is an arena that would be dominated by Donald Trump, although this time he was somewhat upstaged by Emmanuel Macron, whose pre-summit declaration that the organisation had become “brain dead” obliged Trump to describe his French counterpart’s comments as “very, very nasty”.
Continue reading...PM signals he is preparing to shut Chinese firm out after lobbying from Donald Trump
Boris Johnson has cast doubt on whether the UK will allow Huawei to invest in its 5G network, suggesting it might “prejudice” the Five Eyes intelligence relationship, after Donald Trump applied pressure for other countries to adopt the US ban.
In his strongest signal so far that he is preparing to shut Huawei out of the network, Johnson said that security concerns were paramount in the decision about the Chinese company.
Continue reading...Talks took place in Watford after the Queen hosted Nato leaders at Buckingham Palace
Continue reading...US president’s statement easily disproved as prince faces pressure to give evidence in US
Donald Trump has falsely claimed not to know the Duke of York as pressure rises on the latter to submit to questioning in America over his links to the sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
The US president was asked during an event at the US ambassador’s residence in London on Tuesday about the Queen’s son having stepped down from royal duties after his disastrous BBC interview about the allegations. “I don’t know Prince Andrew, but that’s a tough story, it’s a very tough story,” he answered.
Continue reading...