Author: Henry Caldwell

British Transport Police are appealing for help identifying a man after a passenger was headbutted on a train travelling between Woking and Guildford, leaving the victim with cuts to his forehead. The incident took place at around 10:10pm on Tuesday 16 December, when the attacker headbutted a fellow passenger on board the service before getting off at Guildford station. He then ran across the tracks and jumped over a fence to flee the scene. Officers have released CCTV images of a man they believe may have information that could assist their investigation and are asking anyone who recognises him to…

The US military continued using Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence model during Saturday’s joint US-Israeli bombardment of Iran, despite President Trump having ordered all federal agencies to stop using the tool just hours before the strikes began, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and Axios. According to the Journal, military command used Claude for intelligence gathering, target selection and battlefield simulations during the massive assault on Iran. The reports highlight how deeply embedded AI tools have become in modern military operations, making a sudden withdrawal highly complex even when ordered directly by the president. Trump moved to sever all…

Almost half of all scheduled flights from London Heathrow to the Middle East have been cancelled today as the fallout from US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran triggers widespread aviation disruption across the region, with Iran retaliating by firing ballistic missiles and drones at targets including Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Aviation analytics firm Cirium confirmed that 24 of the 56 Heathrow departures bound for Middle Eastern destinations on Sunday 1 March have been cancelled. All three scheduled flights to Israel and both departures to Bahrain have been grounded. Eight of nine Qatar-bound services and nine of…

Customers at a Lidl supermarket in Croydon have been left packing their groceries into rubbish bin bags every evening for more than a week, after the store has repeatedly failed to stock adequate shopping bags for customers at the checkout. The ongoing issue has been reported at the Lidl branch on Whitehorse Road, CR0 2LG, where staff have been handing out green bin bags to customers at the self-checkout area in place of the standard carrier bags shoppers would normally expect to purchase. Unlike a one-off stock issue, the problem has now persisted across multiple consecutive evenings, suggesting a recurring…

A 30-year-old man has been sentenced to eight months in prison after carrying out a prolonged campaign of sexual offending against lone women travelling on the Bakerloo line, admitting in police interview that he repeated the behaviour because he enjoyed the adrenaline it gave him. Matheus Prestes, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to eight counts of exposure in November 2025 and was sentenced at Inner London Crown Court on 13 February. The offending began on the evening of 21 June 2025 at Baker Street station, where Prestes stepped off a Bakerloo line service, stood on the platform and exposed…

A Metropolitan Police officer has been dismissed and permanently barred from working in policing after punching a man he was arresting and then deliberately omitting the use of force from his official statement to conceal what had happened. PC Peter Odusote, attached to the Central West Basic Command Unit, was found to have breached professional standards relating to use of force and honesty and integrity at a misconduct hearing that concluded on Thursday 26 February. The panel heard that on 15 August 2023, PC Odusote detained a man who had been committing criminal damage to a police car outside Charing…

Three men have been convicted of murder at the Old Bailey after a retrial, following the stabbing of a teenager whose body was found in a west London park in the early hours of the morning. Tyler Donnelly, 19, was found unresponsive in Hanworth Park in Feltham at around 7:40am on 25 January 2024. He had suffered multiple injuries including a stab wound to the neck and was pronounced dead at the scene. Keith Preddie, 34, of Feltham, Daniel Matos, 23, and Joshua Cowley, 29, both of Hounslow, were all found guilty of murder on Friday 27 February following a…

More than 50 swans have died from a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu at a site in east London, with authorities confirming the outbreak and urging the public to avoid contact with any dead or visibly sick birds in the area. At least 30 swans were recovered at West India and Millwall Docks on Monday, with a further 21 found at the same location on Wednesday. The Animal and Plant Health Agency confirmed through its dead wild bird surveillance scheme that the deaths were caused by H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza, one of the most severe strains of the…

Tube drivers represented by the RMT union have voted in favour of strike action in a dispute over Transport for London’s plans to introduce a four-day working week, raising the prospect of disruption to the London Underground network in the coming weeks. No strike dates have yet been set. Under trade union law, the RMT must give TfL a minimum of two weeks’ notice before any industrial action can begin, meaning the earliest possible disruption remains weeks away. The union has indicated it is willing to hold off if TfL changes course. At the centre of the dispute is a…

Millions of London commuters will face higher fares on the Tube, Overground, DLR and Elizabeth line from 1 March, with prices rising by 5.8 percent across the network in an increase that sits one percentage point above the current rate of inflation. The rise, confirmed by Transport for London, means a single pay-as-you-go fare within Zones 1 to 6 will go up by no more than 20p, with many journeys increasing by 10p. Peak travel within Zone 1 will move from £2.90 to £3.10, while off-peak and weekend journeys on the same routes will rise from £2.80 to £3.00. One…