Policing minister Chris Philp suggests target of more than 200,000 searches over next six months
Police are being encouraged to double their use of retrospective facial recognition software to track down offenders over the next six months.
Policing minister Chris Philp has written to force leaders suggesting the target of exceeding 200,000 searches of still images against the police national database by May using facial recognition technology.
Continue reading...Amigo the donkey hoisted to safety after falling waist-deep into muddy drain hole covered by leaves
Donkeys have a reputation for being stubborn. But in the case of “poor Amigo”, a donkey who has been rescued by firefighters from a field in Shropshire, it wasn’t stubbornness that kept him stationary – it was mud.
A spokesperson from Shropshire fire and rescue said a team of “10 or 11 firefighters” attended a call to rescue the hapless animal, who got stuck in waist-deep mud after falling into a hidden storm drain covered in leaves.
Continue reading...Scotland’s first minister speaks of family worry after Israel cuts off population of Gaza from communication with world
Scotland’s first minister has said he does not know if his parents-in-law who are trapped in Gaza are dead or alive after Israel knocked out communications there.
Humza Yousaf said he and his wife, Nadia, are “desperately worried” and that she is “numb” as they try to find out news about her parents.
Continue reading...Government’s failure to back ceasefire resolution adds to tensions among demonstrators
Tens of thousands marched through central London yesterday to demand a ceasefire in Gaza with many also expressing fury at the UK government’s refusal to back one.
As Israel ratcheted up its offensive in the coastal strip 2,200 miles away, around 100,000 people attended the latest demonstration – matching last Saturday’s record turnout for a pro-Palestinian march in the UK. One difference seemed to be a palpably more tense mood than previous marches, reflecting events unfolding in Gaza and widespread exasperation over the government’s approach to the three-week-old conflict.
Continue reading...As many as 100,000 believed to have joined march organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Police arrested two people after thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators took to the streets of central London on Saturday to demand a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
Aerial footage showed large crowds setting off on the march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which has coordinated multiple protests in response to the escalating conflict in the Gaza Strip.
Continue reading...Fee income for 20 largest operators – many private equity-owned – soars as councils struggle to meet costs
The biggest private providers of children’s homes in England made profits of more than £300m last year, as concern mounts over the conditions some children are being placed in and the spiralling costs for councils.
Fee income for the 20 largest operators of independent children’s homes totalled £1.63bn last year, a 6.5% increase on the previous year. And 19% of that – £310m – was recorded as profit, according to an independent analysis. Half of the top 20 providers have some private equity or sovereign wealth fund ownership.
Continue reading...People with families in Gaza call on British government to help get them out and to join calls for ceasefire
On Friday evening, as Israeli air and ground forces ramped up their operations in the Gaza Strip and a communications blackout fell across the embattled territory, Salim Hammad received a text from the UK Foreign Office notifying him of a possible increase in attacks and violence.
“What are we supposed to do with that information?” said Salim, a 34-year-old doctor in Oxford whose father, Abdel, is stuck at the Rafah border crossing.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Vince Cable, Chris Huhne and Norman Lamb claim they were targeted for stories or to 'exert political influence’
Two former Lib Dem cabinet ministers and a former party whip are suing the publisher of the Sun and the defunct News of the World, claiming that their phones were hacked for stories or to “exert political influence”, including when Rupert Murdoch was seeking approval for a takeover of BSkyB.
Journalists working at Murdoch’s newspapers are said to have unlawfully targeted the former business secretary Vince Cable as well as Chris Huhne, a former energy and climate change secretary, and Norman Lamb, a whip and sometime adviser to the then deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.
Continue reading...Constrained on multiple fronts by finances and resistance from both wings of his party, the PM still has a few vote-winning options
Exhausted by scandals, deflated by byelection defeats and uninspired by their leader at Conservative party conference, many of Rishi Sunak’s MPs are not looking forward to the next year in politics. “It’s hard to muster the enthusiasm to come out fighting given everything that has happened,” said one Tory adviser.
But Sunak appears still to be energised by the prospect of governing for at least another 12 months – and has explicitly said he wants to get things done in the next year. “What can a country achieve in 52 weeks? Watch this space,” his new promotional video said this week.
Continue reading...Campaigners call for Sir Robert Goodwill to resign as Guardian reveals he is also head of ‘destructive’ rural pressure group that backs trophy hunting
The Conservative chair of the environment select committee has been urged to resign as the Guardian revealed he is also chair of a group endorsing nature policies described by critics as “destructive and dangerous”.
Sir Robert Goodwill, who chairs the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) select committee (Efra), is tasked with holding the environment secretary to account on nature and environmental targets. He became chair of the committee after his predecessor, Neil Parish, resigned after a pornography scandal.
Continue reading...Emergency doctors say figures are aggregated with those of minor injury centres to get closer to targets
NHS bosses are using misleading figures to hide dangerously poor performance by A&E units in England against the four-hour treatment target, emergency department doctors claim.
Some A&Es treat and admit, transfer or discharge as few as one in three patients within four hours, although the NHS constitution says they should deal with 95% of arrivals within that timeframe.
Continue reading...Vue cinemas add an interval to Scorsese’s bladderbusting 206-minute Killers of the Flower Moon
We have all felt it: that numbness in the back and legs, a full bladder, or desperately avoiding checking your watch to see how long is left of the film.
But the experience seems to be happening more and more for cinemagoers, who say the growing trend for long movies is putting them off going altogether.
Continue reading...Collins’s notes on his collaborator’s ‘weakest book’ and ‘astonishingly bad’ work were sold at auction in 1890
Charles Dickens may be lauded by many as the greatest Victorian novelist, but one close friend did not demur from fierce criticism after the writer’s death.
Wilkie Collins, the author of The Woman in White, collaborated on drama and fiction with Dickens and the two enjoyed a long, close friendship until Dickens’s death in 1870.
Continue reading...Inquest finds death of Duangphet Phromthep, 17, could not have been foreseen or prevented
The captain of the Thai football team who were trapped in a cave for several days in 2018 took his own life while at school in the UK, a coroner has ruled.
Duangphet Phromthep died at Kettering general hospital on 14 February, two days after being found unconscious at Brooke House College in Market Harborough, Leicestershire.
Continue reading...Derbyshire and South Yorkshire MPs say agency ‘not up to the task’ after people received warnings too late
MPs in areas of England worst hit by Storm Babet have called for a review of Environment Agency (EA) failings after reporting that some residents received flood alerts only after their homes were flooded.
Toby Perkins, the Labour MP for Chesterfield, said some people at Tapton Terrace in the Derbyshire town, where 83-year-old Maureen Gilbert was found dead in flood water, only received a phone call from the early warning system after their houses had been deluged.
Continue reading...Placards declaring support for Hamas and featuring images of paragliders used to attack Israel would break UK terrorism law
Police are looking for four people alleged to have shown support for terrorism, including a man who held a placard declaring full support for Hamas, and three women alleged to have brandished photos of paragliders, which may be a reference to those that were used to attack Israel.
The Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command issued photos of the suspects and said hate crimes continued to increase. Another big pro-Palestinian demonstration through central London is scheduled for Saturday.
Continue reading...Those unable to leave or with family trapped there say they feel hopeless and have had no help
In late August, Nasser Hamid Said made an emergency trip from London to Gaza with his wife and two children after the death of his sister. For the past 20 days the family have been caught up in an altogether different nightmare: sheltering with relatives amid nonstop Israeli airstrikes and growing fears of an invasion.
“I’m fearful for my children,” he said over the sound of airstrikes in the city of Jabalia. “We need from our government just help to get out. What are they waiting for? I don’t understand.”
Continue reading...Gillian Keegan says to trust in due process as eighth Conservative loses whip over sexual misconduct allegations since 2019
A cabinet minister has said there is no “cultural issue” with Tory MPs after Crispin Blunt became the eighth Conservative during this parliament to lose the whip over allegations of sexual misconduct.
Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said all the individual incidents were separate and that the prime minister expected due process in the investigation into Blunt.
Continue reading...The latex-clad individual has caused much distress in the sleepy West Country area, though others say they ‘feel sorry for them’
Search for the Somerset villages of Claverham, Yatton, Cleeve and Bleadon on the local police website and one topic dominates. Not appeals relating to burglaries, car crime or missing people – but sightings of a figure who slips out from the shadows at night, dressed top to toe in black bondage-like gear.
Since the so-called Somerset gimp first emerged five years ago, he has caused a mishmash of distress, fear and concern in this picturesque, usually peaceful, rural area 10 miles south of Bristol, set just back from the coast.
Continue reading...The US author of Sex and the City will appear on stage in London in early 2024 before going on a UK-wide tour
Candace Bushnell, the real-life Carrie Bradshaw, is bringing her one-woman show to the West End for the first time.
The bestselling author – whose newspaper column inspired the hit TV drama Sex and the City – will also tour the UK, sharing her philosophy through stories of fashion, literature and sex.
Continue reading...