United Kingdom

    Footage has been released of a parent deliberately driving into a teacher at the school gates when he went to pick up his child. The teacher at Winston Churchill School was swept off his feet and carried on the car bonnet before being thrown to the ground by the VW which narrowly avoided hitting two schoolchildren. The driver, Rainer Schoeman, of The Goldings, Woking, Surrey, was jailed for 10 months at Guildford Crown Court on Friday. He had earlier pleaded guilty to causing actual bodily harm, dangerous driving, driving without insurance and having no MOT. The 22-year-old had continued to travel at speed through the car park, police said. Surrey Police have released dramatic video footage of a parent who drove at a teacher at the school gates. Headteacher Zoe Johnson-Wal...

    Britain looks set to be battered by the remains of Hurricane Maria and debris from Hurricane Lee as the two storms speed across the North Atlantic, forecasters have warned. Maria is currently moving in a northerly direction off the east coast of the USA, and is likely to pick up turbulent weather from Hurricane Lee. At least 25 people have been killed by the deadly hurricane, and forecasters believe the two will merge to form a superstorm across the Atlantic. This is likely to be picked up by the jet stream and swept towards the British Isles and northern Europe, with the potent cocktail predicted to reach an area close to the UK on Monday. Western areas are likely to be hit by the worst of the storm, with some forecasts indicating winds could be gale force. It means condi...

    Girls as young as four are being forced to wear the hijab as uniform at state funded Islamic schools, new research has found. More than two in five Islamic schools in England that accept girls require them to wear a hijab as school uniform, according to the research. Some 59 of 142 (42 per cent) of Islamic schools, including 27 primary schools, have a uniform policy which states a head covering is compulsory, the National Secular Society (NSS) said. The body has written to Education Secretary Justine Greening to express its concern over the figures, which also showed eight of the secondary schools and three of the primary schools were state-funded. The research was first reported in the Sunday Times. In the letter, the NSS asks for Muslim girls to be given free choices and...

  Bank of England says banking system requires a contingency plan of £10bn to ward off the threat of bad debt. Banking system needs £10bn contingency plan to ward off the risk of bad debt. Britain’s banks could incur £30bn of losses on their lending on credit cards, personal loans and for car finance if interest rates and unemployment rise sharply, the Bank of England warned on Monday. After assessing the fast growth in the consumer credit market, Threadneedle Street is requiring the banking system to hold an extra £10bn of capital as protection against any future losses after finding that lenders are underestimating their exposure to bad debts in an economic downturn. Publishing its latest assessment of risks to the financial system, the Bank of England also spelt out specific conc...

    Dr Nasser Kurdy suffers stab wound in neck while arriving for evening prayers at Altrincham mosque. Altrincham’s Islamic centre Police said they are treating the attack as a hate crime and confirmed they have arrested two men, aged 54 and 32. Sunday 24 September 2017 22.53 BST Last modified on Sunday 24 September 2017 23.54 BST A man has been stabbed outside a mosque in Greater Manchester in an incident that police are treating as a hate crime. The victim, named locally as Dr Nasser Kurdy, an orthopaedic surgeon and imam, was reportedly arriving at the Altrincham Islamic centre, Grove Lane, for evening prayers at 6pm when someone stabbed him in the neck from behind. A friend of the victim told the Manchester Evening News that he had suffered a non-critical 3cm stab wound w...

    Emergency services in Charles Street, Blackpool after a gas explosion at a guest house. Two people have been injured, one seriously, after a gas explosion ripped through a guest house burying them under rubble. Firefighters had to sift through the debris to reach the man and woman trapped by the blast on Charles Street in Blackpool, shortly before 6pm on Saturday. A witness to the explosion described how parts of the property just disappeared into the street. Specialist rescue equipment was used to free the pair who were taken to hospital. One was reported by the ambulance service to have suffered major trauma injuries. A number of people were also treated by paramedics at the scene. A spokesman for Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service (LFRS) said six engines attended the sc...

    A Director of the United Kingom’s National Cybersecurity Centre warned that a category one cyber attack the most severe variety of attack possible is likely to happen within the next few years, the Guardian reported. The siren for the potentially devastating attack was sounded by Ian Levy, the technical director of cyber focused branch of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) while speaking this week at an event hosted by cybersecurity firm Symantec. Sometime in the next few years we’re going to have our first category one cyber incident, Levy said, noting that such an event would require a national or international governmental response in order to deal with the fallout and response to the attack. Such an attack has not yet been seen. The National Cyberse...

    A rugby player who killed his girlfriend in a drink-drive car accident after being distracted by a kiss has been jailed for two years despite her family’s plea for leniency. Benjamin Hughes, 24, had been drinking pints of beer and shots before driving home with his girlfriend Dominique Wright, a master’s student at the University of Leeds, on 30 October last year. Ms Wright was killed halfway through the journey, near Southwell, Nottingham, when Hughes veered into a ditch and crashed into a tree. Hughes, a self-employed plumber, was later arrested and found to have 141 micrograms of alcohol in 110 ml of blood - almost twice the legal limit. However, at Nottingham crown court yesterday, Ms Wright’s family delivered an emotional plea for Hughes to be spared jail, adding that...

    The M3 in Hampshire is still closed in both directions after police were called to the scene at 4am this morning. Officers are working alongside the Explosive Ordnance Disposal team to make the motorway safe again. However, the closure caused enormous disruption on Saturday morning. Delays of over three hours were being reported by some motorists, who face miles of tailbacks due to the diversions being put in place. The road closure is expected to cause major problems for thousands of Manchester United fans travelling south for their Premier League match at Southampton, Hants, at 3pm. The M3 is completely closed between junction 9 and junction 11 at Winchester. People were pictured playing golf, walking their dogs and generally trying to pass the time. A spokesman for Hamp...

    Banks and building societies are to carry out immigration checks on 70m current accounts from January in the biggest extension of Theresa May’s plans to create a hostile environment for illegal immigrants in Britain, the Guardian has learned. The Home Office expects to identify 6,000 visa overstayers, failed asylum seekers and foreign national offenders facing deportation in the first year of the checks, which are to be carried out quarterly. The accounts of those identified will be closed down or frozen to make it harder for them to establish or maintain a settled life in the UK. Officials say freezing accounts that hold significant sums will create a powerful incentive [for those involved] to agree to voluntary departure so they can secure their money once they have left...