Author: Darren Smith

EXCLUSIVE:A car fire broke out on Whitehorse Road in Croydon at around 5.30pm on Tuesday, sending a thick plume of smoke billowing above the street and drawing a London Fire Brigade response as the capital sweltered under some of the hottest temperatures recorded in May for over a decade.Photographs from the scene at 119 Whitehorse Road show at least one London Fire Brigade engine in attendance, with firefighters working to bring the blaze under control as yellow cordon tape was stretched across the road to keep back onlookers who had gathered to watch. Dense white smoke could be seen rising…

A Lebanese-American beauty queen has ignited a fierce national debate about identity, religion and patriotism after appearing at a Memorial Day parade in Michigan wearing a hijab while waving the American flag — with the images spreading rapidly across social media and drawing sharply divided reactions from across the country. Nour Khalil, 25, a Wayne State law graduate and daughter of Lebanese immigrants from Dearborn Heights, made her first major public appearance as Miss Wayne County at the 25 May parade in Dearborn, Michigan, which honoured 347 local fallen service members before thousands of spectators. Dressed in her pageant sash…

Ian McEwan has warned that our addiction to smartphones is eroding one of the most fundamentally human activities — thinking — as he described society as “unteaching itself the joys of treating the mind like a garden.” The novelist, widely considered one of Britain’s finest living writers, made the remarks during an appearance at the Hay Festival in Wales, which runs until 31 May. Speaking to an audience about the profound shift in daily life since he began his writing career in the 1970s, he pointed to the compulsive pull of the smartphone as the defining difference between that era…

A 19-year-old woman was tortured for months by her boyfriend before being stabbed to death and found bound to a bloodstained mattress in their shared apartment, police in North Carolina have revealed. Isabella Stroupe was discovered unresponsive inside a Charlotte apartment on 1 May after officers responded to an emergency call. First responders found her in a bedroom wearing minimal clothing and bound with a tow strap to a blood-soaked mattress. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Her boyfriend, Thomaz Kenon Hamilton, initially told Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police that Stroupe had suffered a suspected heart attack while they were having sex.…

Britain has shattered the hottest May day record for the second consecutive day as the heatwave tightens its grip on England and Wales — but the soaring temperatures have brought tragedy, with a fourth teenager now confirmed dead after getting into difficulty in open water since the hot spell began. A temperature of 35C was provisionally recorded at both Heathrow and Kew Gardens on Tuesday, according to the Met Office — surpassing Monday’s record of 34.8C at Kew Bridge, which had already broken the previous May record of 32.8C set in 1922 and 1944. It is the first time in…

With Britain baking in its hottest May on record and temperatures expected to climb even higher this week, vets and animal welfare charities are issuing urgent warnings to dog owners — urging them to think carefully before reaching for the lead, as heatstroke in dogs can kill within minutes. Kew Gardens hit 34.8C on Bank Holiday Monday, smashing the previous May temperature record, and the Met Office has forecast possible highs of 36C in parts of southern England and Wales on Tuesday. At those temperatures, every breed of dog is firmly in the danger zone. The British Veterinary Association has…

A teenage boy has been stabbed to death in Hackney after a large-scale machete fight broke out following a house party on Bank Holiday Monday evening, with reports of possible gunshots also bringing police and air ambulance crews racing to the scene. Officers were called to Towpath Walk in Hackney at 7.17pm on Monday 25 May following reports of a large group of people armed with machetes and signs of serious disorder. The Met said the trouble began during a house party taking place on the same street. While officers were responding, further calls came in reporting a stabbing and…

Iran has demanded the United States release $24 billion in frozen funds as the price for ending hostilities, even as American forces launched fresh strikes on Iranian territory and the two sides traded accusations of ceasefire violations in a rapidly escalating confrontation. Iranian negotiators made the demand during talks in Qatar on Monday, according to state media, with Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf travelling to Doha to press for agreement on a mechanism to implement the payment. Tehran is insisting that at least half the sum be made available immediately upon the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Washington, with the…

The CIA has been accused of secretly accessing the databases of commercial DNA testing companies to search for individuals carrying extraterrestrial genetic markers — claims that have been amplified by a philosophy author, a self-described former psychic spy and, remarkably, sitting members of the United States Congress. Jason Reza Jorjani, a philosophy PhD and science fiction writer, made the allegations on the American Alchemy podcast, claiming that a retired US Army sergeant with knowledge of a covert government programme had told him the CIA possessed a backdoor into the systems of genetic testing companies including 23andMe and Ancestry.com. According to…

Network Rail has released shocking CCTV footage of children dancing on live railway tracks and placing stones on the line in Inverness, Scotland — with one near miss so close that a driver was forced to slam on emergency brakes before the train narrowly missed two teenagers by a matter of feet. The footage, captured at a pedestrian crossing in Inverness, shows two separate incidents within a week of each other at the same location, where around 30 trains pass daily at speeds of up to 50mph. In the first incident, recorded at around 1pm on 7 May, two teenagers…