Schoolgirl from Barnsley disappeared after a house party in Peckham at the weekend
A 13-year-old girl from South Yorkshire who disappeared after a house party in London has been found safe and well, police said.
Carmelle Hepi, from Barnsley, was reported missing by her family in the early hours of Sunday.
Continue reading...Male suspect reportedly from Bristol could face a prison term of up to five years for the widely condemned act
Italian police have identified a man from England as the suspected culprit behind an inscription carved into a wall of the Colosseum, after a four-day search.
A young man wearing a blue flowery shirt was filmed by an onlooker using a key to scratch his and his girlfriend’s name into an internal wall of the 2,000-year-old monument last Friday. If convicted, the suspect could face a hefty fine and prison term under Italy’s strict cultural heritage protection laws.
Continue reading...Family calls for more restrictions on underage access to electric scooters after Mustafa Nadeem was killed last December
A 12-year-old boy was killed while riding a hired Voi e-scooter unlocked by a 14-year-old friend using their father’s account, an inquest has heard, as his family called for stricter measures to prevent children using loopholes to access them.
Mustafa Nadeem suffered fatal injuries when he rode an e-scooter along the pavement and accidentally collided with a pedestrian causing him to fall on the road into the path of a bus in Birmingham on 6 December last year.
Continue reading...Fees for accessing UK seabeds help boost profits to £443m while King Charles says some of surplus will go towards public good
The crown estate has generated record profits of almost half a billion pounds from Britain’s offshore windfarms, as talks continue over how much of the windfall should be shared with King Charles.
The royal property manager made £443m in profits in its last financial year, up by almost £130m from the year before, in large part thanks to payments made by renewable energy companies for the right to access the seabed.
Continue reading...Council of Europe team raised a wide range of concerns based on visit to Kent detention centre last year
Many asylum seekers may have been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment at Manston holding facility in Kent, according to a report.
A seven-strong delegation from the Council of Europe’s prevention of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment committee carried out a “rapid reaction” visit to Manston over 25-28 November due to concerns about conditions there, a visit that officials described as “relatively rare” in these circumstances.
Some people absconded from Manston.
One-sixth of those who arrived in small boats were lone children.
Some people were detained at Manston for up to 15 days after being granted bail.
Three different Home Office databases did not communicate well with each other.
There were two documented cases of migrants trying to strangle themselves with seatbelts while segregated in a cell van on the site. The delegation invoked human rights legislation to ensure that the cell van was removed from the site, a stipulation that the Home Office has complied with.
There were cases of people being detained for up to 43 days at Manston.
Continue reading...Committee says ministers do not have credible strategy to tackle digital exclusion
The government is failing millions of digitally excluded citizens who do not have the means, money or ability to go online, a House of Lords committee has said.
Ministers do not have a credible strategy to tackle digital exclusion and are allowing “millions of citizens to fall behind”, according to a report by the Lords communications and digital committee.
Continue reading...Former chancellor and ex-shadow chancellor will discuss and analyse the state of the British economy
George Osborne is launching an economics podcast with his “frenemy” Ed Balls in an attempt to capitalise on the success of shows such as The Rest is Politics.
Osborne, the architect of the Conservatives’ austerity policies which imposed deep cuts on British public services, spent four years opposite Balls in the House of Commons. But since leaving frontline politics the pair have become a marketable media double act, appearing together on political shows to debate the state of the economy.
Continue reading...Government initiative, which it is hoped will cover 1 million people in first four years, is aimed at saving lives and reducing pressure on NHS
A digital NHS Health Check is to be rolled out across England from next spring, the government has announced, in an attempt to alleviate the pressure on GP surgeries.
The initiative will deliver 1m checks in the first four years, according to the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).
Continue reading...Three men have been arrested after girl, who travelled to London from Barnsley, Yorkshire, was reported missing on Sunday
Police have begun a kidnap investigation after a 13-year-old girl from Yorkshire disappeared following a house party in London.
Three men have been arrested on suspicion of kidnap as officers from the Metropolitan Police work “around the clock” to find Carmelle Hepi, from Barnsley. The teenager was reported missing by her family in the early hours of Sunday.
Continue reading...Labour leader presses prime minister to admit his party will not meet promised targets over house building
PMQs is coming up soon.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
We remain seriously concerned about the potential implications of the illegal migration bill on human rights and the safety of individuals.
Careful consideration should continue to be given to the impact of the bill on different groups with protected characteristics – including children, pregnant women, disabled people, torture survivors, and victims of trafficking.
Continue reading...Telecoms firm, which manages 999 phone system, says it will publish findings of own inquiry on Thursday
The communications watchdog has launched an investigation into BT after technical faults hit the 999 emergency call service on Sunday.
Ofcom said it would look into the incident to find out whether the telecoms company failed to comply with its regulatory duties. Police forces, ambulance services and fire and rescue services across the UK asked people not to phone 999 on Sunday morning due to a “technical fault”.
Continue reading...Star of The Wire and Luther says playing 007 would be the pinnacle of an actor’s career, but the discussion became ‘off-putting’
Idris Elba has said that the racist backlash to the prospect of him being cast as James Bond “made the whole thing disgusting and off-putting”.
Elba was speaking on the SmartLess podcast about the continued speculation linking him to the role, saying: “I was super complimented for a long time about this. We’re all actors and we understand that role is one of those coveted [roles] … Being asked to be James Bond [would be] like: ‘OK, you’ve sort of reached the pinnacle’. That’s one of those things the whole world has a vote in.”
Continue reading...Watchdog calls for campaigners to behave responsibly amid fears over potential misuse of generative AI
Time is running out to enact wholesale changes to ensure Britain’s electoral system keeps pace with advances in artificial intelligence before the next general election, regulators fear.
New laws will not come in time for the election, which will take place no later than January 2025, and the watchdog that regulates election finance and sets standards for how elections should be run is appealing to campaigners and political parties to behave responsibly.
Continue reading...Plans drawn up to pay for cost of dealing with sewage crisis and climate emergency
Water companies are reportedly pushing for bills in England to rise by up to 40% under plans being drawn up to pay for the cost of dealing with the sewage crisis and the climate emergency.
The increases are due to be announced next year and could drive annual bills up from an average of £450 to £680 in parts of the country by the end of the decade, according to a Times report citing consultation documents.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Dropping promise to restore Department for International Development would follow series of U-turns
Keir Starmer is considering dropping a promise to reinstate the Department for International Development (DfID), prompting anger from senior Labour figures and high-profile names in the international development world.
The Labour leader promised last year to restore the department, which was scrapped in 2020 by Boris Johnson, who called it a “giant cashpoint in the sky”.
Continue reading...Hope Street scheme in Southampton aims to keep women in criminal justice system out of jail and with their children
It all started when Edwina Grosvenor spent an hour with two heroin addicts at a drug rehabilitation centre in Liverpool, almost 30 years ago.
Her parents – Natalia and Gerald Grosvenor, who was one the richest men in the UK and the sixth Duke of Westminster – decided to take her to the centre at the age of 12 or 13 to show her that there was a world beyond her privileged bubble. “At that moment I learned about empathy,” Lady Grosvenor said.
Continue reading...The lack of response to TV producer Daisy Goodwin’s allegation about a mayoral candidate casts doubt on complaints processes
Two years after the Pestminster scandal about sexual harassment by politicians swept through parliament in 2017, a downbeat speech in the House of Commons summed up how many female MPs and aides felt about its consequences.
The verdict was delivered by Jess Phillips, the Labour MP and women’s rights campaigner. “Nothing has changed since we started the whole Pestminster thing or even the broader #MeToo movement; it feels as if a moment of blood-letting led to no significant material change in the actual working lives of the people we are here to try to protect.”
Continue reading...Exclusive: Sunak regularly pictured using Pilot V fountain pens during time as chancellor and prime minister
Rishi Sunak routinely uses pens with erasable ink to make hand-written notes on official documents and in government meetings, prompting concerns over Downing Street secrecy, the Guardian has learned.
The prime minister has regularly been pictured using the disposable Pilot V fountain pens during his time as chancellor and prime minister, most recently while taking notes during the Cabinet meeting two weeks ago.
Continue reading...Mirror Group Newspapers says it has ‘sympathy’ for royal but he has no ‘hard evidence’, court told
Prince Harry should receive only £500 in damages at the end of his phone-hacking trial, Mirror Group Newspapers has argued at the high court.
The Duke of Sussex wants a judge to award him more than £200,000 over allegations that he was the victim of illegal activity by journalists working for the Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the People.
Continue reading...UK economy became reliant on cheap money due to the Bank’s actions, warns former permanent secretary to the Treasury
The Bank of England’s quantitative easing money-printing programme enabled high inflation to take root in Britain, while creating “windfall gains” for the rich, a former Treasury mandarin has warned.
Nick Macpherson, who was permanent secretary to the Treasury under the last Labour government and during David Cameron’s premiership, said the central bank’s £895bn bond-buying stimulus programme had gone “too far” and made the inflation shock hitting Britain worse.
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