Author: Darren Smith

A man who punched a female police officer in the face with such force that he broke her nose at Manchester Airport, then “played the victim” when only partial footage of the incident circulated on social media, has been jailed for three and a half years. Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 21, was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court after being convicted of actual bodily harm against PC Lydia Ward and assault against PC Ellie Cook. He was also convicted of a separate assault on a member of the public at an airport Starbucks earlier in the same incident. The events unfolded on…

Sergei Ivanov, one of Vladimir Putin’s longest-serving and most influential allies and a figure who was once widely considered the most likely successor to the Russian president, has died aged 73, Kremlin media have reported. The cause of death has not been publicly specified. The announcement was made by the United VTB League, the Russian basketball organisation of which Ivanov served as honorary president, and was subsequently confirmed by Kremlin-linked outlets including TASS, as reported by Meduza. Ivanov and Putin first worked together in the KGB, and the two men remained closely bound throughout the decades that followed. Ivanov served…

Britain was battered by more than 63,000 lightning strikes in just 24 hours as ferocious thunderstorms swept across the country overnight, striking landmarks including Stonehenge, Chesil Beach and The Needles, even as a record-breaking third consecutive day of red extreme heat warnings pushed temperatures toward 38C. The Met Office confirmed the extraordinary lightning count in the 24 hours to 10am on Friday, warning that many more strikes could follow through the day and into Saturday. Stunning photographs captured bolts hitting Stonehenge in Wiltshire, Fistral Beach in Cornwall and The Needles on the Isle of Wight, while videos shared from Manchester,…

Andrew and Tristan Tate have lost a High Court challenge aimed at forcing the Crown Prosecution Service to disclose the names of the women who have made criminal allegations against them in the UK, with a judge ruling the claim was not arguable. Mr Justice Chamberlain dismissed the brothers’ legal challenge on Friday, finding that the CPS’s decision to withhold the names of alleged victims until proceedings begin formally in a British court was “coherent and rational.” The ruling is a significant setback for the brothers, who had argued the CPS position was unlawful and breached their right to a…

A 19-year-old woman has mysteriously disappeared from a Kentucky lake after getting off a pontoon boat with friends to use the toilet, with a massive search operation now spanning its third day across a 1,500-acre reservoir. Marly Kinney was last seen on Wednesday afternoon after stepping off the boat at the side of Grayson Lake with her group of at least ten friends. The party only realised she was missing once they were already back out on the water — and in a detail that has complicated the search significantly, none of them can remember exactly where on the lake…

Police divers have recovered the body of a teenage boy who entered a lake in Leicestershire yesterday afternoon, as the dangers of open water swimming during the heatwave claimed another young life. Officers were called to Meynell Lake on Fosse Way in Syston just after 1.30pm, alongside Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service and East Midlands Ambulance Service. Initial searches were carried out before police divers were deployed to recover the boy’s body. Leicestershire Police confirmed there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death. The tragedy adds to a growing toll of open water deaths during the current heatwave, with emergency…

Thousands of Shiite Muslims marked the holy Day of Ashura on Friday with ceremonies of ritual self-flagellation across Iraq, Lebanon, Iran and beyond, as this year’s commemoration carried an additional layer of grief for communities still reeling from the devastation of recent wars. In Iraq, pilgrims converged on the holy city of Karbala, the site of the seventh-century Battle of Karbala and home to a shrine dedicated to Imam Hussein, dressed in white robes quickly stained red as worshippers cut themselves across the scalp or whipped their bodies with blades attached to chains in acts of mourning. In Baghdad, thousands…

Elon Musk’s Starlink has announced it will provide free satellite internet across Venezuela for a month following two devastating back-to-back earthquakes that killed at least 188 people, injured more than 1,500 and caused widespread destruction across the country. The announcement came on 25 June, a day after a magnitude 7.2 foreshock struck near Morón on the Caribbean coast, followed just 39 seconds later by a 7.5 magnitude mainshock — the strongest earthquake to hit Venezuela in more than a century. The twin quakes triggered the collapse of buildings in Caracas and other major population centres, knocked out power and telecommunications…

Six members of a drugs gang have been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a woman who was shot dead at her door in Talbot Green after being caught in the crossfire of a turf war between two rival organised crime groups. Joanne Penney was killed on 9 March 2025 when Marcus Huntley, 21, shot her as she answered the door of a property in Talbot Green that was being used by both gangs to deal drugs. Joanne herself had no connection to either criminal group. Melissa Quailey-Dashper, 40, had been instructed to knock on the door to…

A 16-year-old boy has been found not guilty of the murder and manslaughter of nine-year-old Aria Thorpe, who died after being stabbed through the heart at her home in Weston-super-Mare last December. The jury at Bristol Crown Court returned its not guilty verdict after hearing harrowing evidence about the death of Aria, who was stabbed in the chest on 15 December last year while sitting on the sofa eating pizza and watching YouTube at her home in North Somerset. In a statement read to the jury, Aria’s mother Victoria Hull described the ordinary family evening that ended in tragedy. She…