Category Archives: London

Manchester-London 7am ‘ghost train’ to carry passengers after outcry over regulator’s decision

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Avanti service was to have been axed from mid-December but would have still run because of needs out of Euston

The express Manchester-London 7am Avanti service will take passengers after all, after the rail regulator conceded defeat in the face of public outcry over a ruling that would have left it running as an empty “ghost train” each day.

The 7am train, the only service linking the cities in under two hours, was set to be axed from the passenger table from mid-December – but would, as the Guardian reported on Saturday, have kept running empty from Piccadilly each day so it could run morning trains back out of Euston.

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Londoners told to be vigilant with messages after cyber-attack on council

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Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea says it is checking whether data taken contained residents’ details

A London council has urged thousands of residents to be “extra vigilant” when receiving calls, emails or text messages after confirming that data had been taken in a cyber-attack.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), which has 147,500 residents, said some data had been copied from its systems in an attack this week.

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‘The new Hamilton’? Show with Mary Todd Lincoln as drunken first lady comes to London

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The one-act play Oh, Mary! – ‘the stupidest, funniest thing possible’ – to open after blockbuster run in New York

What if, in the final weeks before Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the first lady could not care less about the American civil war and was instead hell-bent on becoming a cabaret star?

That is the question posed by Oh, Mary!, the smash-hit show that reimagines Mary Todd Lincoln as a gloriously unhinged alcoholic who despises her closeted husband.

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NHS doctor suspended over alleged antisemitic social media posts

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Rahmeh Aladwan barred from practising for 15 months pending inquiry amid claims she ‘celebrated terrorist acts’

An NHS doctor accused of antisemitism has been suspended for 15 months pending an investigation, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) in the UK has ruled.

The General Medical Council (GMC) is investigating Dr Rahmeh Aladwan over posts and comments made across various social media platforms after several complaints, including from the Jewish Medical Association UK and the Campaign Against Antisemitism.

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‘The ad libs had us shaking behind the camera’: Corbyn and McKellen cameos raise panto’s profile

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Star turns are boosting ticket sales this season, including Islington show featuring MP’s Wizard of Oz and Olivier winner’s Toto

We’re a third of the way through the fabulously camp production of Wicked Witches, a mashup of Wicked and The Wizard of Oz, at the Pleasance theatre in Islington, north London. Dor (formerly known as Dorothy) and Tin 2.0 need guidance on how to take down the Wicked Witch and save the borough of Oz-lington from a great blizzard.

But wait! Who’s that Facetiming? It’s only Jeremy Corbyn, the wise Wizard of Oz-lington! The 200-person audience cheers and applauds the Islington North MP, who looks as if he’s beaming in from the allotment.

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Spycops inquiry: Doreen Lawrence says she does not believe ex-home secretary

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Stephen Lawrence’s mother tells inquiry she did not believe Michael Howard when he told her he did not know police had spied on her family

The mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence has told a public inquiry that she does not believe claims by the former home secretary Michael Howard that he did not know undercover police officers had spied on her family.

Doreen Lawrence told the spycops inquiry on Thursday that Lord Howard, a former leader of the Conservative party, invited her to a meeting shortly after the inquiry was set up in 2014.

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Incredible story of Irish labourer buried alive in coffin for 61 days told in new documentary

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Mick Meaney made global headlines when he beat world record in 1968, but returned to Ireland penniless

They were known as burial artists – people who had themselves buried alive in macabre feats of endurance – and Mick Meaney resolved to be the best there ever was.

It was 1968 and the Irish labourer had barely a pound to his name but he believed that if he stayed underground in a coffin longer than anyone else the world would remember his name.

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Toby Carvery owner urged to fund ‘life support’ for felled Enfield oak

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Sprinklers could save 500-year-old tree that had branches cut off without authorisation in April, says expert

The restaurant chain Toby Carvery is being urged to pay for life support for an ancient oak tree that its owner had chainsawed last spring to widespread public dismay.

Experts say the trunk of the 500-year-old tree, on the edge of a Toby Carvery car park in Whitewebbs Park, Enfield, has shown signs of regrowth, despite its branches being sawn off by the restaurant’s contractors in April.

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Police ‘urgently’ looking for prisoner freed by mistake in London

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Algerian man, 24, ‘released in error’ from HMP Wandsworth two days after stronger checks for jails were brought in

Police have launched an urgent manhunt for a second foreign prisoner freed mistakenly, two days after the justice secretary, David Lammy, brought in stronger checks for jails.

The 24-year-old Algerian was wrongly released from Wandsworth prison in south London last Wednesday, with the Metropolitan police informed only this week.

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RMT accepts three-year pay deal for London Underground staff

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Agreement that will increase drivers’ pay to nearly £80,000 by 2027 comes after strike action in September

The RMT union has accepted a three-year inflation-plus pay deal for London Underground workers, ending the dispute that led to travel chaos in London in September and increasing drivers’ pay to nearly £80,000 by 2027.

The deal, with an initial 3.4% increase backdated to this April, means London Underground staff pay will rise in line with RPI inflation – higher than the CPI rate normally used for index-linked pay rises – with guaranteed minimum rates if inflation falls, making the total deal worth at least 9.2%.

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UK man who murdered pregnant girlfriend after release from prison jailed for 42 years

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Alana Odysseos, 32, was pregnant with her third child when she was killed by Shaine March in July last year

A man who murdered his pregnant girlfriend after being released from prison on licence has been jailed for 42 years.

Alana Odysseos, 32, was in the early stages of pregnancy with her third child when she was killed by Shaine March last year at her home in Walthamstow, east London. She died at the scene from stab wounds after the attack on 22 July 2024.

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Epping sex offender back in custody after release from prison in error

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Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, whose case triggered summer protests in Essex, detained again and faces deportation

A former asylum seeker and convicted sex offender who was released from prison in error is back in custody and faces deportation.

Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, an Ethiopian national, was jailed for 12 months in September for sexually assaulting a woman and a 14-year-old girl and was made the subject of a five-year sexual harm prevention order.

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Met police urge Epping sex offender spotted in London to hand himself in

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Former asylum seeker Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu has been missing since being released from prison in error

Police searching in London for a former asylum seeker and convicted sex offender who was released from prison in error have urged him to hand himself in.

The Ethiopian national Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu was jailed for 12 months in September for sexually assaulting a woman and a 14-year-old girl and made the subject of a five-year sexual harm prevention order.

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Met police take over search for Epping sex offender after London sighting – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed, you can read our full report here

The accidental release of the asylum seeker was a “mind-blowing” blunder, says the MP for Chelmsford.

The Liberal Democrat MP Marie Goldman said on Saturday: “My mind has blown. How this could possibly happen?”

He came out of the airlock, and kept saying to the officers there, ‘Where am I going? What am I doing? I don’t know where I’m going and what I’m doing.’

He was holding a pack of paperwork in his arms, and his bag of bits …

He knew he’d been deported. He came over to me and said, ‘I need you to help me.’

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What’s in a name? West End casting directors raise concerns about trend for big stars

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Film and TV stars are selling tickets, but director says reliance on famous names is ‘killing audiences’ intellects’

From Ncuti Gatwa in Born With Teeth to Alicia Vikander in The Lady From the Sea and Susan Sarandon in Mary Page Marlowe, there is no shortage of starry celebrities being cast for the West End right now.

It is a phenomenon happening in subsidised theatre too: Indhu Rubasingham’s inaugural season at the National Theatre features the likes of screen favourites Paul Mescal and Nicola Coughlan.

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Will affordable housing be the casualty as London tackles its building emergency?

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Collapse in construction activity causing alarm but mayor and Whitehall face pushback over ‘extreme solutions’

Sadiq Khan has known for a while that he has a problem with housebuilding in London. But last week a consultancy published figures about the scale of the problem, which prompted full-scale alarm in City Hall and Whitehall.

The analysis from Molior showed that new housebuilding in the capital had collapsed. Only 40,000 homes are under construction – two-thirds the normal rate – and in the first three months of the year builders started work on just 3,248 private sector units.

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Case dropped against Met police officer who shot unarmed man

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Officer, known as W80, shot Jermaine Baker during a foiled prison break in 2015

The family of a man shot dead by a police officer during a foiled prison break have accused Scotland Yard of evading accountability after a case against the marksman was thrown out.

The officer, known only as W80, shot Jermaine Baker as police stopped a plot to snatch two prisoners from a van near Wood Green crown court in 2015.

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Man in serious condition after being shot by police in London

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IOPC investigating incident at property in Walthamstow where man reportedly had firearm and made threats to kill

A man was taken to hospital in a “life-threatening” condition after he was shot by police at a home in London on Friday afternoon.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has launched an investigation into the actions of Metropolitan police officers during the incident at a property in Walthamstow, north-east London.

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Happy, stressed, overwhelmed: Palestinians evacuated from Gaza start their studies in UK

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Abdallah, 27, and Soha, 31, describe adjusting to their new lives after leaving their war-torn home

The young man emerging from a backstreet accommodation block in a bustling corner of east London looks much like any other student, getting to grips with his studies at the start of a new term. But 27-year-old Abdallah carries more of a burden than most. A qualified doctor, he has recently been evacuated from Gaza to begin his studies at Queen Mary University of London on a fully funded, government-backed Chevening scholarship.

As well as his work in hospitals, he has been striving for months on behalf of the dozens of Palestinian scholars like himself who have been stranded in war-torn Gaza awaiting evacuation by the British government to take up places in UK universities.

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People claim London crime is rising because it suits them, Met commander says

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Nigel Farage and right-wing commentators seek to portray capital as ‘lawless’ despite evidence to the contrary

Claims that London is becoming more dangerous despite the crime figures indicating otherwise are being made because it suits some people, a senior police commander has said.

The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, and right-wing commentators have increasingly sought to portray the capital as a “lawless” city from which high net-worth individuals are fleeing.

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