Author: Darren Smith

Two men have been arrested after a 19-year-old woman was sexually assaulted near an underpass in Telford in broad daylight — with the teenager fighting off her attacker before he fled the scene. The attack occurred between 3.30pm and 4pm on 28 May near Laburnum Road and Stafford Road in Oakengates, Telford. The teenager was approached by an unidentified man and subjected to a sexual assault but was able to resist and fight him off. The suspect — described as white, approximately 5ft 9in tall and of average build — fled toward Trench following the incident, according to West Mercia…

White British pupils have dropped below 60 per cent of the school population in England for the first time on record, according to new data published by the Department for Education, with minority ethnic children now accounting for nearly four in ten pupils across the country. The 2025/26 Schools, Pupils and their Characteristics census, covering nearly nine million pupils, shows white British children at 59.7 per cent — down from approximately 70 per cent a decade ago — while minority ethnic pupils have reached a record high of 38.7 per cent, up 0.7 percentage points from the previous year. The…

A Melbourne man has sparked widespread debate online after claiming he was pulled over and fined by police for spraying perfume on his way to a party — an offence most drivers had no idea existed. Danny Greige took to TikTok to share his disbelief after officers allegedly booked him over the incident, asking followers to help him make sense of what had happened. “I’m on the way to a party and I needed to top up my fragrance,” he explained in the clip. “The cops pulled me over and they’re fining me for spraying a fragrance while driving. I…

The sister of a 22-year-old Penn State student shot dead steps from his own front door after an apparent attempted phone robbery has broken down in tears on live television, saying she cannot understand how anyone could do this to her family as police hunt the killers with no arrests made. Billy Schmidt was fatally shot in the chest at around 1.30am on Saturday while walking home through southern Philadelphia after watching the NBA Finals. He was just months from graduating with a degree in digital journalism and media. The shooting happened directly across the street from his family’s house.…

New York’s socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani paid nearly $1,000 for a standing-room-only ticket and spent Game 3 of the NBA Finals shaking hands with Knicks fans and posing for selfies — while President Donald Trump watched the same game from behind bulletproof glass in an elevated VIP suite and was loudly booed during the national anthem. The contrasting scenes at Madison Square Garden on Monday night provided a vivid illustration of two very different approaches to public politics, played out on the biggest stage in American sport as the New York Knicks faced the San Antonio Spurs. Mamdani, who announced…

The daughter of a British hostage beheaded by the ISIS Beatles terror cell has expressed “delight” after gang member El Shafee Elsheikh lost his bid to be transferred from a US prison to a British jail — declaring she hopes he will “rot for the rest of his days in America, thousands of miles away from us.” Bethany Haines, 29, whose father David was abducted from a Syrian refugee camp in 2013 and murdered by Elsheikh and his fellow ISIS Beatles the following year, welcomed the decision but made clear her relief was tempered by anger at how long the…

Britain’s only native venomous snake is facing a growing threat of extinction as housing developments, road construction and rural fires continue to destroy the fragmented habitats it depends on — with experts warning the adder could be confined to just a handful of locations across the UK within the next decade. A report by the West of England Nature Partnership identified “intense habitat loss” as one of the most serious dangers facing adder populations, warning that without urgent action the species could be restricted to isolated pockets of countryside by 2032, leaving it increasingly vulnerable to dying out altogether. Chris…

A US Army helicopter has gone down near the Strait of Hormuz in circumstances that remain unclear, triggering a rescue operation that successfully recovered both crew members, according to US media reports. The New York Times, citing two people briefed on the incident, reported that it has not yet been established whether the Apache helicopter was shot down by Iranian forces or suffered a mechanical failure before crashing. Both crew members are believed to have been safely rescued following the incident. The incident comes at an extraordinarily sensitive moment. The Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway between Iran and…

A man has been arrested after a violent stabbing attack in north Belfast in which bystanders intervened to overpower the knifeman as he attacked a victim on the ground — with witnesses telling arriving police officers the attacker was “trying to cut his head off.” Police were called to Kinnaird Avenue at approximately 10.30pm on Monday 8 June following reports of a serious stabbing. Disturbing footage circulating on social media appeared to show a man being stabbed repeatedly to the head before bystanders stepped in to intervene. An eyewitness told the Belfast Telegraph that “three men, one armed with a…

A 19-year-old with no driving licence or insurance drank six pints and took cocaine before mounting his friend’s motorcycle and ploughing into a pedestrian at speed, leaving the 22-year-old with life-changing brain injuries — then fled the scene leaving his victim unconscious in the road. Liam Kenny spent several hours drinking at the Ship Inn in Hartlepool on 10 May last year, ordering his last pint at 6.30pm before walking out with it in his hand and taking his friend’s Yamaha motorcycle for a ride through a 20mph zone. CCTV footage shows him knocking back drinks from around midday. Moments…