Author: Darren Smith

Weeks before a 34-year-old anti-gravity researcher was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head, she sent a retired British intelligence officer a message that has now resurfaced as part of a wider congressional inquiry into the deaths and disappearances of eleven prominent American scientists. “If you see any report that I killed myself, I most definitely did not,” Amy Eskridge wrote to Franc Milburn on 13 May 2022. “If you see any report that I overdosed, I most definitely did not. If you see any report that I killed anyone else, I most definitely did not.” Eskridge died…

A Houston police officer has been stripped of her badge and gun and removed from active duty after a video emerged on social media in which she repeatedly declared that she “hates Black people” and threatened to arrest any Black person present at a call she was sent to. Officer Ashley Gonzalez, who joined the Houston Police Department in January 2024 after serving in the US Marine Corps, appeared in the footage sitting in the front seat of a car wearing casual clothing, speaking directly to the camera in what has since been described as a racist tirade. The clip,…

A beloved primary school head teacher took her own life after becoming convinced she was developing dementia and had become a burden on those around her, an inquest has heard — despite never having received a formal diagnosis. Alison Higgins, 61, who had served as co-head teacher at Barham Primary School near Canterbury for a decade, was found unresponsive at her home in Hythe by her husband Christopher shortly after 7am on 8 December last year. Paramedics worked for 40 minutes before she was pronounced dead. A Maidstone inquest this week concluded she had taken her own life. Detective Sergeant…

A man has been charged with assault causing harm after a television appeal broadcast on RTÉ’s Crimecall led to his identification and arrest in connection with an unprovoked attack on a young woman in Cork city centre last November. Abdelilah Habbouly, 36, of Meadow Park, The Meadows, Hollyhill, Cork, was brought before Cork District Court on Monday afternoon after being arrested by Detective Garda Conor Cronin. He was charged with assault causing harm to the woman on Oliver Plunkett Street on 23 November 2025, contrary to the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act. Footage of the attack shows a man…

A mid-air collision between two South Korean military fighter jets five years ago was caused by pilots using their mobile phones to take photographs and video during a flight mission, an official audit has found. The incident, which took place over the city of Daegu, involved two F-15K jets on a routine flight mission. Both pilots survived without injury, but the damage sustained by the aircraft cost the military the equivalent of £440,500 in repairs. Seoul’s Audit and Inspection Board published its findings on the crash this week, revealing that the sequence of events began when the wingman pilot decided…

A convicted child rapist who was deported from the United Kingdom has been jailed after unlawfully returning to the country and attempting to claim Universal Credit — a benefit application that ultimately led police directly to his door. Sebastian Pavel Baltatu, 24, was sentenced to three years in 2019 for the rape of a child under the age of 13 and was subsequently deported in 2020 following the conclusion of his sentence. He had no legal right to return to the United Kingdom, but routine monitoring by Greater Manchester Police’s Sex Offender Management Unit later revealed he had done exactly…

Perth Airport’s international terminal has been thrown into chaos after Western Australian and Australian Federal Police established an exclusion zone around an unattended item discovered in the Terminal 1 forecourt on Tuesday afternoon, leaving thousands of passengers stranded with little information and no clear timeline for resolution. Officers from both WA Police and the Australian Federal Police moved to lock down part of Terminal 1 — the airport’s international wing — at around 4pm local time, closing check-in desks and removing staff from the terminal. The Terminal 1 short-term car park was also shut, with traffic redirected to the Terminal…

Andrew McGinty, a 34-year-old coach who worked with England and Great Britain’s water polo squads, was found dead in a hotel room after taking his own life, an inquest has concluded. McGinty’s body was discovered at the Village Hotel in Bury, Greater Manchester, on 18 December last year after staff forced their way into his room when he failed to check out. He had arrived at the hotel two days earlier on 16 December. When staff entered, they found the door had been chained from the inside. He was found lying on a bed. A final hearing at Rochdale Coroner’s…

A 50-year-old man has been arrested after walking into a café on Tonge Moor Road in Bolton and stabbing two men in an attack that left residents of the north-east area of the town shaken on Monday morning. Greater Manchester Police were called to Tonge Moor Road at around 10.30am on 21 April following reports of a stabbing. Emergency services attended and two men were treated by medical professionals at the scene for stab wounds. According to witnesses, the attacker entered the café and stabbed a young man sitting at a table before a second man sustained a stab wound…

Israel is set to stage the largest LGBT festival in the history of the Middle East, with a four-day event at the Dead Sea planned for June 2026 that organisers say will transform a stretch of the Judean Desert into a fully functioning pride city operating around the clock. Pride Land, running from 1 to 4 June, is the brainchild of producer Aaron Cohen, who described the scale of the undertaking as unlike anything previously attempted in the region. “We chose to grow,” he said. “To take an investment of millions, purchase entire hotels for four days, and build a…