Originally published on Times Online
Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman today became the first serving Cabinet minister in memory to plead guilty to a criminal charge after admitting driving without due care and attention.
Ms Harman was fined £350 and ordered to pay a further £70 costs and a £15 victim surcharge after her lawyer entered the guilty plea at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Three points were also put on her licence, bringing her to a total of nine after two previous offences. A driving licence would normally be revoked on reaching 12 points.
A second charge of driving while using a mobile phone was withdrawn. Read more…
Originally published on Times Online
A parcel deliveryman who convinced his friends, families and even his wife that he was a Metropolitan Police officer was jailed for 20 months today.
Stuart Howatson, 31, was so confident of his impersonation that he gave a talk to schoolchildren about the work of the police while wearing a uniform partly bought on eBay and carrying a baton.
Read more…
Originally published on Times Online
After waving goodbye to his beloved at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey he wanted just one more clinch.
So he slipped past security, planted a kiss … and caused a security alert that closed the terminal for six hours.
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Originally published in The Times
For nearly a century one of Britain’s earliest aircraft had lain abandoned in the Antarctic ice-scape.
The monoplane — the first aircraft off the Vickers factory production line in 1911, eight years after the first flight by the Wright brothers — was ditched by the Antarctic explorer Sir Douglas Mawson in 1914 and last seen in 1975 almost completely buried in ice.
On New Year’s Day record low tides caused by a blue moon led to its rediscovery.
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Originally published on the splash in The Journal
Hundreds of offences against animals have made the North East the wildlife crime capital of the country.
Figures obtained by The Journal show that more than one in eight offences against animals in the UK took place in the Northumbria Police area.
Over a 12-month period there were 737 offences in the Northumbria Police area, including badger baiting, illegal hunting, poaching, bat persecution and hare coursing.
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Originally published in The Times by David Brown and Raf Sanchez
A third British bomb disposal expert has been killed in Afghanistan weeks after warning that the Taleban were trying to catch them out.
Captain Daniel Shepherd, 28, was killed while attempting to defuse a roadside bomb in in Nad-e-Ali district of Helmand province on Monday. He had personally neutralised 50 Taleban devices in the past three months.
A soldier from 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards became the 19th British victim this month when he was killed by an explosion while on patrol in the same district yesterday. Read more…
Originally published in The Times
One of the most mysterious elements of the emerging Silvio Berlusconi affair is his reference to Putin’s bed.
When The Times contacted Vladimir Putin’s office, a spokesman said that the Russian Prime Minister had never given the gift of a bed to Mr Berlusconi.
In the recorded conversation, the voice alleged to be Mr Berlusconi’s asks Patrizia D’Addario to meet him in the big bed, which she describes as the one with the curtains.
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Originally published in The Times
The Sri Lankan Army will come under pressure to display the body of Velupillai Prabhakaran (Raf Sanchez writes).
In 2006, US forces swiftly released images of the body of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. His badly damaged remains were identified by fingerprints, scars and tattoos.
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Originally published in Nouse
Police are looking for two Asian men allegedly trying to open the door of missing University chef Claudia Lawrence’s house a week before her disappearance. Claudia’s father has made an emotional appeal to “whoever is responsible for taking her” as the investigation enters its eighth week.
North Yorkshire Police announced on Wednesday that they were seeking two Asian men seen in the early afternoon March 10 outside Claudia’s home on Heworth Road. The 35-year-old chef was last seen on the evening of March 18 and failed to show up to work the following morning at Goodricke’s Roger Kirk Centre. Her normally “prolific” texting went silent at 8.30pm.
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Originally published as a profile box in Nouse
The image emerging of missing University chef Claudia Lawrence is one of a quiet but conscientous woman who enjoyed her work and was well liked by colleagues. Claudia worked at the University for two years, first in Derwent and then moving to Goodricke’s Roger Kirk Centre.
Her father, Peter Lawrence, said: “She’s relatively small but she always seems to be smiling. Quite bubbly. She’s good with people she knows but she’s very shy with people she doesn’t know.
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