Nick Hallett - Page 33

The Italian navy has this morning taken control of an unmanned cargo ship with an estimated 450 migrants aboard that was on a collision course with the coast, the second such vessel to be abandoned and set to crash in

Dozens of bodies, along with aircraft wreckage and oxygen tanks, have been found floating the Java Sea, about six miles from where AirAsia flight QZ8501 last communicated with air traffic control. Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Director SB Surpriyadi said

An 83-year-old woman was mugged for £20 on Christmas Day in what police have described as a “callous and violent” attack. The BBC reports that the woman, from Bournemouth on the south coast of England, left her home at 11.30

The missing AirAsia flight is likely to be at the “bottom of the sea”, the head of Indonesia’s search and rescue operation has said. The BBC reports that Bambang Soelistyo said that due to the coordinates of the flight when

Yet another poll has put Labour on course to lose the vast majority of its Scottish MPs at May’s General Election. The ICM poll for the Guardian puts the party down 16 percent on the 2010 election, with the Scottish

UKIP leader Nigel Farage has been named ‘Briton of the Year’ by the Times of London. The paper awarded him the title for what it called his “game-changing” politics in a year in which the party won the European elections

The Conservative party will attempt to repeal the ban on hunting with hounds if it wins next year’s General Election. The party will offer a free vote to repeal the controversial law, passed by Tony Blair’s Labour government, using government

A bill affirming the right of local councils in England and Wales to hold prayers at meetings has received the support of the both the government and the main opposition Labour Party. The Local Government (Religious etc. Observances) Bill, which

The BBC’s Director of Television has said that he has “never felt so uncomfortable as a Jew in the UK” due a rising level of anti-Semitism. The Jewish Chronicle reports that Danny Cohen told a conference in Jerusalem about rising

An English Catholic bishop has condemned John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’ as “heart-chilling” in a Christmas homily. The Catholic Herald reports that Mark Davies, Bishop of Shrewsbury, will use his Christmas Day homily to reflect on the First World War, saying:

Some internet services are back online in North Korea after the country suffered a massive outage. The unprecedented down time came amid a cyber-security row in which Sony was forced to cancel the release of a film depicting the assassination

The Labour party faces being all but wiped out in Scotland at next year’s General Election, a new poll suggests. The Survation poll for the Daily Record puts the party – traditionally dominant north of the border – on just

The Catholic tradition of Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve is under threat in Britain due to interruptions from drunken intruders. According to a survey for Catholic magazine The Tablet, 50 deaneries – local groups of parishes – have had to

Eight siblings have been found stabbed to death in a house in Australia. The children, aged from 18 months to 15 years, were discovered by an older brother, aged 20, who arrived home to find them dead. The mass killing

Thousands of Germans will take to the streets today to protest against what they see as the country’s “Islamification” in what are likely to be the largest in a string of demonstrations in recent weeks. Protests have started taking place

One in every seven people arrested in Britain last year was foreign, new figures have revealed. The figures from the Association of Chief Police Officers show that police officers arrested 173,000 foreign suspects in 2013, with some having lengthy criminal

Three months after the independence referendum, the majority of Scots now support an independent Scotland a YouGov poll has found. The survey says that 52 percent of Scots now want Scotland to break away from the UK, once undecided voters

A former security minister has said that British spies may have been aware of torture carried out by CIA agents. Lord West of Spithead, who served in Gordon Brown’s Labour government, said there may have been the “odd case” where

Britain’s media was shocked today after it emerged that UKIP attempted to win the support of a man described by Margaret Thatcher as “the best parliamentarian I ever knew”. The Telegraph reports that, in the early years of UKIP, Nigel

The 12-day UN climate change summit in Peru has generated more carbon dioxide than an entire African country. The talks, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, generated more than 50,000 tonnes of CO2, as more than 12,500 politicians, green

An African woman gave evidence to a London court for more than an hour before a clerk noticed she was not speaking English. Lawyers had struggled to understand the woman, who claims she was raped by a Kenyan preacher, but

More than 5,000 people died worldwide last month as a result of jihadi violence, a BBC report claims. The four worst countries were Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Syria, which account of 80 percent of all deaths in November. The investigation,

All on duty police officers in the West Midlands Police force were ordered back to base last night after the force received anonymous information regarding a threat to kidnap and kill an officer. The force released a statement saying that

A head teacher who ran a school that was investigated by the ‘Trojan Horse’ inquiry has said that he was forced out for “giving children British values”. Balwant Bains, who is Sikh, said he had to leave Saltley School in

Fat commuters should lose weight if they want more space on the train, an MP has said. Anne Milton, a former public health minister, tweeted yesterday that a “very large bottomed man” was making her feel “squashed” as he sat

A thief apparently put a shopkeeper in a hypnotic trance before stealing the day’s takings at a store in Highgate, north London. Security footage shows the man, wearing black bomber jacket, gently tapping shop owner Aftab Haider – who is

Two British-born jihadis have been jailed for 12 years and eight months each after spending eight months fighting with the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front terror group in Syria. Mohammed Nahin Ahmed and Yusuf Zubair Sarwar were sentenced at Woolwich

Home Secretary Theresa May has been accused of suppressing a report that found hundreds of foreign criminals were escaping deportation from Britain. John Vine, who heads the UK’s border service, claims that he gave the critical report to the Home

Islamist extremist Michael Adebolajo lost his appeal against his murder conviction in less than a minute earlier today. Adebolajo, who was convicted of killing soldier Lee Rigby as he walked down a London street, tried to claim that he should

British children are not being taught the true meaning of Christmas because teachers of too scared of “offending” other faiths, a BBC presenter has claimed. Roger Bolton, who presents the Radio 4 programme Feedback, also added that some atheist teachers

Prince Charles’s coronation should include a reading from the Koran, a Church of England Bishop has said. Lord Harries of Pentregarth, a retired Bishop of Oxford, said that such a gesture at the traditionally Anglican service would be “creative” and

There could be as many as 13,000 victims of modern slavery working in the UK, a figure much higher than previously thought, the Home Office has admitted. Victims include immigrants trafficked from countries such as Albania, Nigeria, Vietnam and Roman

Students at the University of Cardiff in Wales have voted down a motion that would have made the Students’ Union officially pro-choice and effectively banned pro-life activities. Clauses within the motion included preventing “affiliated societies and groups from taking part

Austrian police have launched a mass raid on mosques and prayer rooms in a crackdown on suspected jihadists who trying to radicalise young people. Nearly 500 officers raided religious centres in Vienna, Graz and Linz early today, detaining 13 people.

Migrants will have to wait at least four years before receiving welfare payments and social housing, the Prime Minister is expected to say today. Speaking in the West Midlands, David Cameron will say that major changes to Britain’s immigration rules

In a serious blow to Prime Minister David Cameron, new figures reveal that net migration has risen to a record 260,000 per year, leaving his pledge to cut immigration to the tens of thousands in tatters. The data from the