Author: Darren Smith

A former Metropolitan Police special constable has been sentenced to 32 years following conviction for a string of serious sexual offences, including the rape of a child who was just 12 years old when the abuse began. James Bubb, who now identifies as a woman named Gwyn Samuels, was sentenced at Aylesbury Crown Court on Friday — 24 years in custody plus a further eight years on extended licence. The offences involved two separate victims and took place over a period of several years. The first victim was a child whom Samuels contacted online in 2018, when Samuels was around…

A routine request to stop vaping inside a London train carriage descended into a violent confrontation involving a group of teenagers, with footage of the incident spreading widely online and reigniting debate over antisocial behaviour on the capital’s transport network. The altercation took place on an Elizabeth line service travelling through a tunnel, with commuters trapped inside the carriage as the situation deteriorated. Video showed the trouble beginning when a middle-aged male passenger asked a teenage girl wearing a baseball cap to stop vaping. Rather than comply, she exhaled smoke in his direction, told him to leave her alone in…

The White House is actively discussing plans for a ground operation in Iran targeting Kharg Island, the country’s most strategically vital economic asset and the origin point for around 90 per cent of its oil exports, sources have told Axios. The proposals under consideration include occupying or blockading the island, with the aim of wresting control of Iran’s oil infrastructure and forcing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. White House adviser Jarrod Agen framed the potential operation in stark terms, telling Fox News that seizing Kharg would put “massive oil reserves in Iran out of the hands of terrorists”…

Two Iranian nationals have been arrested after attempting to gain entry to HM Naval Base Clyde in Scotland — home to Britain’s fleet of nuclear-armed submarines — without the required authorisation. The incident took place at around 5pm on Thursday 19 March, when a man aged 34 and a woman aged 31, both reported to be Iranian, approached a gate at the base in a vehicle. Unable to produce the necessary passes, they were refused entry. Officers subsequently detained the pair after they were observed behaving suspiciously in the surrounding area. Police Scotland confirmed both individuals had been arrested in…

A small but potentially significant piece of marble has been recovered from a 19th-century shipwreck off the Greek island of Kythira, with Greek authorities suggesting it may have originated from the Parthenon and formed part of the controversial collection assembled by Lord Elgin. Greece’s Ministry of Culture confirmed the find, which was unearthed during excavations of the Mentor — a brig owned by Thomas Bruce, the British soldier and diplomat better known as Lord Elgin — which sank in September 1802 near the fishing port of Avlemonas on the southeastern coast of the island. The vessel had been carrying artefacts…

A North Carolina daycare worker faces involuntary manslaughter charges after a 16-month-old girl in her care died on what should have been a routine first day at the facility. Madolyn Mitchell — known to her family as Maddy — was dropped off at Creative Beginnings in Lenoir for the first time on 19 May 2025. She did not survive the day. The North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has since classified her death as a homicide. Alexandra Coffey, 29, is accused of smothering the toddler while attempting to make her sleep during nap time. A civil lawsuit filed…

Huge explosions have struck Qatar’s primary liquefied natural gas production site and the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, hours after Iran threatened to launch what it called a “full scale economic war” by targeting energy facilities across the Middle East. Video footage showed large blasts at Ras Laffan, Qatar’s main LNG production hub, as well as explosions lighting up the night sky over Riyadh, where an orange fireball was captured on camera as missiles struck the city. Energy sites across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar had been evacuated earlier in the day after Tehran warned it would hit…

A short video showing a street confrontation in Manchester between a group of British teenagers and foreign men has gone viral on X, attracting nearly 900,000 views and reigniting debate over policing practices after footage appeared to show officers pursuing one of the teenagers rather than the foreign men involved in the standoff. The clip, approximately 52 seconds long and credited to Prank Lens on Facebook, was posted on 17 March by X account @KieraDiss, an account focused on anti-immigration and patriotic content. It gathered more than 7,000 likes and hundreds of reposts and replies within hours of being shared.…

A convicted kidnapper serving a 21-year sentence has been missing for more than five months after walking out of an open prison in Sussex, raising fresh questions about the transfer of high-risk offenders to low-security facilities under measures introduced to tackle prison overcrowding. Ola Abimbola, 36, a Nigerian national, is understood to have absconded from HMP Ford on 10 October last year and has not been located since. He had been at the open prison for only around a month before disappearing, having been transferred there under new rules introduced by the Labour government to ease pressure on more secure…

Punch, the baby macaque who captured the world’s attention after being abandoned by his mother and forming an attachment to an orange plush toy, appears to have taken a significant step forward — finding companionship with a female monkey at the Japanese zoo where he lives. The young macaque, who is housed at Ichikawa City Zoo near Tokyo, has been filmed interacting with a female macaque understood to be named Momo-chan. Videos shared across social media platforms including X show the pair hugging, cuddling and exchanging what appear to be affectionate gestures, as well as playing together — chasing each…