A man has died after being stabbed in Hackney, East London.
Police were called out at around 4:30am on Saturday to an incident on White Post Lane, E9. Officers established at the scene that both men were stabbed.
The men were then seen to at a nearby hospital, but a 26 year-old man died due to the injuries sustained.
A crime scene is now in place with forensic investigation ongoing. Officers are in the process of informing his family.
The other man, a 24-year-old, is still in hospital awaiting a formal assessment of his condition.
Detectives from the Specialist Crime have launched an urgent investigation, supported by colleagues from the Met’s Central East BCU.
There has been no arrest made. Police are urging anyone with information or any witnesses who are yet to speak with police are urged to call 101, ref 1222/11feb. To remain anonymous please contact the independent charity Crimestoppers.
More to follow…
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MEXICO CITY — The tortured bodies of four municipal employees were found Saturday stuffed into a vehicle in Mexico’s Caribbean coast resort of Playa del Carmen.
Prosecutors in the Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo said identified the victims as city employees, but gave no additional details.
Local officials later confirmed the four were municipal inspectors, and said their bodies showed signs of torture.
Playa del Carmen has long had a problem with illicit businesses, drug sales at shops and beach front restaurants taking over the beach zone. City inspectors are supposed to enforce local codes at such establishments.
It was the latest bit of bad news for the Caribbean coast, where sargassum seaweed has arrived unusually early this year.
Workers and volunteers have begun gathering mounds of seaweed on the beaches, almost two months earlier than usual. The noxious-smelling sea algae usually doesn’t arrive on Mexico’s Caribbean coast until late March or April.
Last year also saw a big influx of sargassum, almost as bad as the peak year of 2018.
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Parents have decided to sell their son’s house after he disinvited them from his wedding out of fear the pair would “embarrass” his partner’s family. The wedding, which was supposed to be a wonderful occasion to celebrate the couple’s love, turned out to be a disappointment for the son’s parents who were rejected from it because there were “not good enough” for the fiancé’s family. Unsurprisingly, the parents were shocked, and the angry father decided to sell his son’s home.
Asking for advice, the father said in a post on Reddit: “Since he doesn’t want us in his new life, he has to get out.”
In his message, the father detailed how they’ve helped their son financially and how they bought a second home for him to use when he moved away to college.
He explained that while their son, who does not pay rent, manages the utilities, they pay property taxes and any maintenance costs. The arrangement seems to have worked for years, even after the son’s fiancé—whom the family says they like—moved in. However, issues developed when the two lovers invited their families to meet.
The father claimed that his wife, daughter, his son, his fiancé, and her family were escorted inside as the families were getting ready to have a BBQ. His wife and daughter left the scene upset a short while later, and they went back home.
The dad was told: “Our son and his fiancé along with her family don’t want us at the wedding.”
His post said: “According to what I was told ‘We’re not their kind of people’. I was livid, I called my son and asked him WTH this was about. He tells me that her family feel that we are not good enough and will embarrass them at a family wedding and that we are all uninvited from the wedding.”
The furious dad added: “I let a week go by to calm myself down and drive back to the PA house, the new future in-laws are in the house along with the fiancé. It appears that they all moved into the house They ask me why I’m there, I tell them that since we aren’t invited to the wedding, I was coming over to talk to my son.
“They tell me to leave their house. I lost it and told them that they had 30 days to get out. Tell my son I’m selling the house and he could find somewhere else to live with all of you. I go to a realtor in town and list the house for sale.”
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand’s national carrier canceled dozens of flights Sunday as Aucklanders braced for a deluge from Cyclone Gabrielle, two weeks after a record-breaking storm swamped the nation’s largest city and killed four people.
Air New Zealand said it was canceling all domestic flights to and from Auckland through midday Tuesday as well as many international flights. The carrier said some international routes would continue operating, although flights might need to be diverted from Auckland.
The carrier also canceled domestic flights to and from the cities of Hamilton, Tauranga and Taupo.
Cyclone Gabrielle was already affecting the northern part of New Zealand on Sunday. On Monday, it was expected to dump up to 250 millimeters (10 inches) of rain on Auckland.
Gabrielle’s windspeed was earlier downgraded as the cyclone slowed. Gusts of about 130 kilometers per hour (80 miles per hour) were expected.
Weather forecaster MetService said it was expecting a “widespread and significant” weather event, with heavy rain, strong winds and large waves.
“Please do take this seriously, we do expect severe weather is on the way,” New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins told reporters. “So please make sure that you’re prepared. Make sure that you’ve got preparations in place for either if you have to stay put for a period of time, or if you have to evacuate.”
Earlier, the cyclone passed near remote Norfolk Island, a territory of Australia that is home to about 1,750 people.
Emergency Management Norfolk Island Controller George Plant said Sunday it had issued an all-clear. He said there was some debris on the roads and some power lines were down.
“We have been extremely fortunate with the passage of the cyclone as the most destructive winds have just missed us,” Plant wrote on Facebook. “However, there is still considerable clean-up to be undertaken and it may take a while for services such as power to be restored.”
As the cyclone began hitting New Zealand’s Northland region on Sunday, flooding and winds caused some roads to be closed and thousands of homes to lose power.
Two weeks ago, Aucklanders experienced the wettest day ever recorded in the city, as the amount of rain that would typically fall over the entire summer hit in a single day.
Quickly rising floodwaters killed four people, caused widespread disruption and left hundreds of homes unlivable.
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A woman with “serious injuries” was found dead in a park by police in Warrington this afternoon. Police were called to reports of a woman seriously injured in Culcheth Linear Park this afternoon. An investigation has been launched after she was pronounced dead at the scene.
A Cheshire Police spokesman said: “At 3.13pm today, Saturday 11 February, police were called to Culcheth Linear Park, Warrington, following reports of a female with serious injuries.
“Sadly, the female was pronounced dead at the scene.
“A scene is currently in place and enquiries are continuing to establish the circumstances surrounding her death.”
Local residents have seen a large number of emergency services working around the area, including a police helicopter and armed officers.
Warrington North MP Charlotte Nichols urged anyone with information to come forward to help with the investigation.
She posted on Facebook: “I’ve spoken to the Warrington Police Borough Commander tonight regarding the tragic death. If you have any information, or were in the nearby area and have dashcam footage, please come forward even if you think it’s nothing- let the police make that decision.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the family of the deceased, and I will continue to liaise with and support our local police in any way I can in ascertaining all of the facts of this case.”
Culcheth in Warrington is a large village, reported to have a population of around 11,000 people. In December 2022, there were only 34 crimes committed in the area, according to Cheshire Constabulary.
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Najwa Ibish poses for a portrait on her hospital bed as she awaits surgery for a leg injury she sustained in the earthquake, in Gaziantep, Turkey, on Friday. (Alice Martins for The Washington Post)
February 11, 2023 at 6:06 p.m. EST
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ISLAHIYE, Turkey — It is hard to escape your thoughts in a hospital bed, although Najwa Ibish was trying. Nearly a week after the earthquake, she wanted to get up and get out. But memories of her husband’s death came in waves, swelling up from nowhere, pulling her back under each time.
In Syria, they were sweethearts. As refugees in Turkey, they built a life away from danger. Hassan, 37, was the breadwinner, Najwa, 27, was the homemaker. It all fell apart in the darkness of Feb. 6, as the earth seemed to roar and the walls and roof came tumbling down on top of them. Najwa remembers waking up to find Hassan’s body wrapped around her. In death, he had saved her and their youngest child, Majid, still asleep in her arms.
Curled under a fleece blanket Friday, her eyes dark from fatigue, Najwa was at a loss. “It’s been five days,” she said, her voice cracking. “It’s hard to believe it.”
Monday’s earthquakes have killed 28,000 people, a number almost impossible to comprehend. As the immediate shock fades, the scale of the human tragedy is only starting to come into view. No one knows how many bodies the rubble still holds. And many survivors don’t know the whole truth about what they’ve lost.
As Najwa mourns her husband, her family hasn’t had the heart to tell her about her middle son, 10-year-old Mohamed.
When the earth started shaking in their mountain town of Islahiye, her eldest son, 12-year-old Mounir, jumped from a window and sprinted through the streets to spread the news to Najwa’s father and brothers, who rushed to the scene. But in the darkness, and without rescue vehicles, her relatives were powerless to lift the cinder blocks from what remained of the bedroom. As day broke, they saw Hassan’s body crushed next to Najwa; when they managed to reach her hand through a hole in the rubble, she was inconsolable.
“She was sure that she wouldn’t make it. She was hysterical, she kept crying out that Hassan and her sons were dead,” recalled her cousin, Mustafa Sheikh. “She wanted us to leave her there. She wanted the stones to bury her too.”
It took hours for the rescue vehicles to arrive. Knowing they had to keep Najwa conscious, her relatives sat with her in shifts, rubbing her hand and trying to distract her — with jokes, with stories of Syria, with talk of the food they would cook together when she got out of there.
Sometimes she’d laugh weakly, other times she grew agitated. She asked again and again for her children. But then a voice interrupted them, somewhere deeper in the rubble. It was Mohamed, and he was telling them his back hurt.
The extensiveness of the destruction meant there was not enough excavation equipment to go around. In both Turkey and Syria, people have died when crude equipment dislodged concrete and rubble on survivors. Without proper tools, it took hours to rescue Najwa first, and then Mohamed.
Najwa’s leg was badly wounded, and she was rushed to the hospital. Mohamed came out smiling. “We think he must have been in shock,” said his uncle, Mustafa Ibish. “You couldn’t tell then that anything was wrong.”
It soon became clear there was something wrong with the child, but they didn’t want to worry Najwa. Though she had been in the hospital for days, no nurse or doctor had taken the time to wash Hassan’s blood from her hair. She asked her brother, Omar, to cut it off for her. Her anxiety was growing as her damaged leg began to turn black. Omar took Mohamed to the hospital without telling her, and he was passed from doctor to doctor before the family got a diagnosis: it was kidney failure.
By Friday, he was on life support. Doctors say he has severe brain damage and they do not expect him to recover. From her hospital bed, Najwa asks for him often, but no one has told her. No one knows how.
It is a dilemma facing countless families in communities across southern Turkey and northern Syria, as relatives try to protect grieving loved ones from further pain.
In the Syrian town of Jinderis, The Washington Post interviewed two fathers who had lost sons under the rubble. Both were still looking for the words to tell their daughters.
In Islahiye, Najwa’s other two sons have not seen their mother since she left for the hospital, 55 miles away in Gaziantep. When Mounir asked relatives where his father is, they told him that he was on a business trip. Now the boy is quiet and has stopped asking.
“We’re just trying to surround them with relatives all the time, we’re trying to treat them like little kings, but it’s not easy,” Mustafa said. With their homes damaged, the family is living together under a tarpaulin. They have pleaded with Turkish authorities for a simple tent, but are still waiting.
Few others have received one in their mostly Syrian neighborhood. “They don’t give them to people like us,” said one man.
By Saturday, there was no update on Najwa or Mohamed’s condition. With the walls of their house missing, the bedroom where Hassan saved Najwa is exposed among the ruins. So is a brown and orange blanket that Mohamed was clutching when he first cried out from the rubble, when they all thought he had been saved.
Haifa Ibrahim contributed to this report.
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The UK is experiencing a “third wave” of migration from Albania, with established criminals recruiting foot soldiers from their former homeland, a lecturer has warned.
Second generation Albanian crime gangs based in the UK are returning to their parents’ country to lure desperate men into crime, Dr Andi Hoxhaj, a lecturer in law at University College London, told MPs.
In written evidence to a Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into migration and asylum, Dr Hoxhaj said: “Organised crime networks of Albanian origin based in the UK have exploded in rural areas of Albania, where there is extreme poverty and/or high unemployment, in order to lure young men.
“They offer a free ride to the UK in exchange for employment in cannabis farming or other criminal activities. There was a successful recruitment campaign in 2022 via social media in conjunction with low prices offered by small Channel-crossing boats.”
Dr Hoxhaj said it was the largest wave of Albanian immigration since the first in 1991, after the fall of Communism, and the second in 1997, after many went bankrupt and civil war struck.
He also said large numbers of Albanians were drawn here because they see the UK as “less racist” than other European countries.
Dr Hoxhaj said there are an estimated 50,000 Albanians in the UK, but there could be more.
However, far from the promised “gangster” lifestyle, many young Albanians are trafficked into modern-day slavery and forced to pay off “travel fees” on cannabis farms.
Many arrested Albanians have been held in immigration detention centres. Some 200 migrant children, mainly Albanians, are missing from Home Office-funded hotels amid fears traffickers have taken them.
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An animal sanctuary in rebel-held Syria rescued a cat trapped inside its human’s shop for three days, a chicken stuck in the middle of a flooding river and a dog bleeding profusely from its leg. But it couldn’t save them all.
“Just like humans, we had to do triage,” said Mohamad Youssef, one of two veterinarians with Ernesto’s Sanctuary for Cats in Syria. “But we saved a lot, and we are still searching.”
As hopes for rescuing earthquake survivors in northwest Syria dwindle, roughly a dozen of Ernesto’s workers continued pulling out dogs, cats, goats and chickens from underneath the rubble. With few tools, they worked mostly by hand.
In a region devastated by tragedy upon tragedy, returning lost pets to owners can bring emotional comfort, and gathering up displaced farm animals ensures a steady source of food for a people largely cut off from international trade.
Workers from Ernesto’s Sanctuary for Cats in Syria tend to a dog that wounded its leg in this week’s earthquake while searching for abandoned pets. (Video: Ernesto’s Sanctuary for Cats in Syria)
Ernesto’s founder, Alessandra Abidin, said her group was the only one in northwest Syria focused on finding animals — others, like the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, concentrated on finding humans in the rubble before ending those recovery missions Saturday. Without Ernesto’s, the animals left behind by their humans fleeing for their lives, or by those who were killed by collapsed buildings, would likely die.
The team has already brought roughly 35 animals to the sanctuary in Idlib city and treated dozens more in the region, driving 20-30 miles to find animals on farms and affected by floods. The rescue operation will continue for roughly another week, Abidin said.
“Humans cannot exist without dogs, without cats, without goats, without chickens,” Youssef said in Arabic. “They are part of our families, like a mom or a dad. They give us food, they give us happiness, they give us comfort. We would not be without them.”
After a traumatic event like an earthquake, Youssef added, pets provide a love that few humans can match, a psychological support that can be a lifeline following so much loss. Earlier this week, the team heard a meow underneath a pile of stones. The team rushed over and dug the cat out with their hands. They later found puppies, too, whose owners had been killed or had fled.
Abidin started Ernesto’s in 2016 at the height of the civil war in Aleppo. Across the country, animals were being left behind by the millions fleeing their homes or the hundreds of thousands who were killed in the conflict. Named after the founder’s late cat, the sanctuary was the only place in northwest Syria dedicated to taking care of animals. What started with 20 cats rose to over 180 a year later.
Then the sanctuary was bombed and gassed with chlorine, its owners said. Many of the cats were killed. Millions in Syria were internally displaced. The sanctuary relocated west to Kafarna, near the Turkish border, but was bombed again.
They finally built the facility that would be their home in Idlib city and now have roughly 2,000 cats, 30 dogs, five monkeys, three donkeys, a horse, a fox, a chicken and a goat, saved from deserted homes or ravaged villages. Ernesto’s hopes to change the culture of violence toward animals that roam the region in part by going out to villages to sterilize ownerless dogs and other rabid animals. They also offer a free clinic.
When the earthquake woke Youssef Monday morning, he, his wife and kids dashed outside, where it was pouring and cold. They didn’t know if there’d be an aftershock, so they stayed outside for hours, feeling attacked from below by the earthquake and above by the rain. The electricity went out, and so did the internet.
A cat is pulled out of the rubble of a collapsed building in rebel-held Syria as workers from Ernesto’s sanctuary search for trapped pets. (Video: Ernesto’s Sanctuary for Cats in Syria)
At Ernesto’s, the cats made strange meows between eerie silences and rumbles. Though none of its animals were hurt, the sanctuary sustained some minor damage.
Youssef and the rest of the team soon decided they had to go out and find surviving animals. The rescue efforts began in full on Wednesday at 6 a.m. with a team of a dozen bringing a makeshift animal ambulance, a hammer, metal cutters and little else.
“We have just our hands, our hearts and our eyes,” Abidin said.
The team found neighborhoods utterly destroyed. In the region, the quake toppled nearly 500 buildings and damaged roughly 1,500 more. Over 2,000 people were killed and nearly 3,000 were injured in what the U.N. aid chief on Saturday described as the “worst event in 100 years in this region.” No one is sure how many animals have died. It looked like a tsunami of earth had taken over the city, Youssef said.
The team quickly got to work intowns outside Idlib city like Haram, Salqin and Al Atarib, walking by piles of stone that used to be buildings as quietly as they could, listening. They set up a Facebook group for locals to contact them about beloved pets trapped or lost. When they heard an animal crying for help, they stopped and zeroed in on where it was, often under rocks or in the middle of a flooded river.
They tended to a dog with a severed groin and bandaged another with a broken leg. They found two cows sitting next to rubble, alive but alone. The large numbers of cats they saved were in shock and wouldn’t eat for days.
“This kind of damage and trauma, we had never seen anything like this before, even with the war,” said Ahmed Khalaf Alyousef, the group’s other veterinarian.
People stopped them on the street to ask for help. Wading through water, three members of a team found a cat that had climbed a tree in the middle of a flooded river. In the leveled villages, Alyousef focused on finding trapped or dying creatures. When he did, he retrieved medicine from his vet pack, treating larger animals in the field and vowing to return with food.
“We are the only team doing what we were doing,” Alyousef said. Like those searching for humans, there was no international aid or other veterinarians there to help treat the injured animals.
In a particularly triumphant moment, they found a cat trapped inside his human’s shop — his owner had not returned since the earthquake — so the rescue workers got down on their stomachs to try to lift the garage door off the ground. It was locked, so it would only go inches off the ground. Little by little, first by its front paws and head, and then its body, they pulled the cat under the door.
After a cat’s human disappeared in the quakes in Syria, animal sanctuary workers pull it out from under a locked storefront door. (Video: Ernesto’s Sanctuary for Cats in Syria)
Youseff, the other vet, said they need more people and tools to find animals, and more food and vets to keep them alive. Electricity at the animal clinic cuts out frequently, making it near impossible to perform any major operations. They do what they can, stitching wounds, fixing bandages and offering food.
They search for nine or 10 hours a day, until it gets dark, but then have to go home, leaving the trapped animals alone for another day.
“We cried for the animals that died,” he said. “But we cry for the animals that are still out there. We want to find their humans, too. But we don’t have enough people or time to help everyone. We want to help, but we also need help.”
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BBC chairman Richard Sharp is fighting to keep his job after a cross-party group of MPs accused him of “significant errors of judgment”. The former Goldman Sachs banker denies facilitating a loan between then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Canadian businessman Sam Blyth, but he apologised for not providing MPs with the full facts.
He is under fire for not telling MPs during the pre-appointment scrutiny process that he had met with Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and told him Mr Blyth wanted to help Mr Johnson.
MPs on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee have today published a scathing report in which they say Mr Sharp should “consider the impact his omissions will have on trust in him, the BBC and the public appointments process”.
The committee had backed his appointment but was not aware of his role in Mr Johnson securing a reported £800,000 loan guarantee. Labour says Mr Sharp’s position is now “increasingly untenable because it throws into serious doubt the impartiality and independence that is so fundamental to trust in the BBC”.
The MPs on the DCMS committee state in their report: “Richard Sharp’s decisions, firstly to become involved in the facilitation of a loan to the then Prime Minister while at the same time applying for a job that was in that same person’s gift, and then to fail to disclose this material relationship, were significant errors of judgment.
“They undermine confidence in the public appointments process and could deter qualified individuals from applying for such posts.”
They warn his actions “constitute a breach of the standards expected of individuals applying for such public appointments”.
A spokesman for Mr Sharp said: “Mr Sharp appreciates there was information the committee felt it should have been made aware of in his pre-appointment hearing.
“He regrets this and apologises. Mr Sharp believed he had dealt with the issue by pro-actively briefing the Cabinet Secretary he was applying for the role of BBC chair, and therefore beyond connecting Mr Blyth with Mr Case, he recused himself.
“At that meeting, and subsequently, it was not suggested by the Cabinet Office that the act of connecting Mr Blyth with Mr Case was something that should be declared, and it was explicitly agreed that by not being party to the matter going forward he would be excluded from any conflict.”
A Cabinet Office spokesman said: “The office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments is reviewing the competition to ensure the process was run in compliance with the rules.”
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In the southern Turkish city of Antakya, entire districts of the city have been flattened. Residents who remain are camping outside in temperatures that fall to near-freezing at night.
Rescuers take a break Feb. 9, after the city of Antakya was hit hard by a massive earthquake that rocked Turkey on Feb. 6. (Video: David Enders for The Washington Post)
Rescue operations are taking place round-the-clock, staffed largely by volunteers.
The earthquake that struck southern Turkey on Feb. 6 is the most powerful since 1939 to hit the country and its deadliest since 1999. (Video: David Enders for The Washington Post)
The sound of ambulances is constant. While people are still being found alive, journalists reporting for The Washington Post witnessed only bodies being pulled from the rubble.
Still, residents hold out hope. Rescuers regularly stop to listen for any signs of life from the collapsed buildings. While the death toll climbs past 24,000 in Turkey, survivors have been found in other hard-hit areas nearly a week after the first tremor hit.
This would not be one of those times. After a whistle blew alerting rescuers to be quiet and listen for possible signs of life, another sounded moments later signaling none could be heard. The men resumed their digging while a backhoe rumbled back to life.
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