Man fighting for life after being knifed in head near murder scene

Crime reporter(wp/es):

A man is fighting for life after he was stabbed in the head just yards from a murder scene in north London.

Police rushed to Southbury Road in Enfield on Sunday at 2pm after reports a man was injured near a Tesco car park.

Paramedics also arrived and London’s Air Ambulance landed nearby.

They found a man in his 20s suffering from stab wounds to his head and leg.

He was taken to an east London hospital where he remains in a life threatening condition.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “At this stage officers believe that the man was stabbed following an altercation with a group of males in Exeter Road.

“The victim was placed in a vehicle by friends who attempted to seek help.

“The vehicle stopped in Southbury Road where the emergency services were called.”

The crime scene was minutes from Hertford Road, the scene of a triple stabbing on Saturday night that saw an 18-year-old die and left two other youths injured.

No arrests have been made over Sunday’s attack.

Man shot and stabbed in broad daylight east London attack

Crime reporter(wp/es):

A man who died after a broad daylight attack in east London was shot and stabbed, police say.

Emergency services rushed to the scene in Eagling Close, Bow, just before 4.30pm on Saturday where the 41-year-old man was lying injured.

Paramedics, including those from the Air Ambulance, battled to save his life but he was pronounced dead at the scene just over an hour later.

Detectives revealed on Sunday they believe the man was both shot and stabbed.

Police are now looking for anyone who may have seen what happened, including a woman wearing pink trousers who was spotted in the area.

Detective Chief Inspector Gary Holmes, from the Met’s Homicide and Major Crime Command said: "This was a violent murder that happened in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon.

"There will be witnesses who have yet to speak with police who may have seen something significant.

“I want to hear from anyone with information, and in particular from anyone who may have seen or heard anything suspicious between around 4.20pm and 4.40pm in the area of Eagling Close.

He added: "I am aware of a white female wearing pink trousers who was seen in Eagling Close around the time of the murder.

“Even if she doesn't think she saw anything significant, it is vital that this person makes contact with police."

Two men have been arrested over the killing and remain in custody at east London police stations.

The latest attack came just a day after the WT launched an investigation into the capital's knife crime epidemic, with 11 Londoners killed in just 16 days.

Final taxpayer shares in Lloyds Banking Group to be sold off

Business reporter(wp):

The government is expected to sell off its remaining shares in Lloyds Banking Group in the coming week, marking a watershed moment for the sector after the financial crisis.

Eight years after pumping in £20bn to prevent the bank from collapsing, taxpayers will no longer own any shares in an institution that was created in the depths of the financial crisis when Lloyds TSB rescued HBOS.

The share sale, in the midst of the general election campaign, will highlight the contrast between the progress of Lloyds and that of Royal Bank of Scotland, which is still 73% owned by the government and has yet to make an annual profit since its bailout.

At its peak, the taxpayer holding in Lloyds stood at 43% and first started to be scaled back in September 2013. Last week, the bank’s chairman, Lord Blackwell, told shareholders at its annual general meeting that the stake had fallen to 0.25%, with those final shares expected to be disposed of in the coming days.

They will not be sold with the fanfare envisioned by George Osborne when he was chancellor. He had ambitions for a discounted share sale to the public, which had to be abandoned a year later by his successor, Philip Hammond, because of the fall in the bank’s shares after the Brexit vote.

Instead the shares are being sold off on the stock market through the investment bank Morgan Stanley at prices below the 73.6p average that taxpayers paid during the three-stage bailout that began in January 2009.

Hammond has said that despite some of the shares being sold at a loss, the government has still recouped all the £20.3bn used to buy shares. However, that does not take into account the £3.6bn cost incurred by the government although the bank’s chief executive, António Horta-Osório, told last week’s AGM that the government would make at least £500m from the bailout.

The return to the private sector has led to 57,000 job cuts – in part because of cost-cutting implemented in the merger but also subsequent efficiency drives to boost profitability.

The bailout also required a restructuring of the bank. While a competition inquiry was averted after the HBOS deal was clinched at the height of the crisis, the EU required 600 branches to be sold off. Those TSB branches are now owned by Sabadell of Spain. Lloyds still has a 25% share of current accounts, 22% of retail deposits and 21% of the mortgage market, largely through Halifax.

The recovery of Lloyds has also been held back by a bill of more than £17bn to compensate customers missold payment protection insurance (PPI) – about half the industry’s total.

Horta-Osório, who has been paid more than £30m since becoming chief executive in 2011, will now face questions about his own plans. He has focused the bank on the UK, which now accounts for 97% of its business, after retreating from 30 countries to six.

The Portuguese banker is also expanding into credit cards, buying MBNA for £1.9bn to increase Lloyds’ market share from 15% to 26%, at a time when concerns are being raised about the speed of consumer credit growth.

Horta-Osório is also facing anger from businesses hit by the loans scam at the HBOS branch in Reading. Six people were jailed in February after a jury heard they splashed out on superyachts and sex parties, while destroying businesses they had been lending to. Lloyds has set aside £100m to compensate 64 victims including the TV presenter Noel Edmonds but is facing questions about whether it will be enough.

Timeline

September 2008 A £12bn takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB comes just days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent shockwaves through financial markets. The Financial Services Authority, then the City regulator, says the deal will “enhance finance stability”.

October 2008 As financial instability mounts the government announces a bailout of the banking system. Lloyds TSB renegotiates the takeover of HBOS to 0.605 Lloyds TSB shares for every one HBOS share, from 0.833 a month earlier.

January 2009 Lloyds Banking Group is created from the purchase of HBOS by Lloyds TSB. The government begins first of a three-tranche bailout of the group, pumping in £13bn.

May 2009 Sir Victor Blank is forced to step down as chairman of Lloyds.

June 2009 The government puts in another £1.5bn.

December 2009 The government backs cash call, buying £5.8bn of shares. Total rescue deal amounts to £20.3bn. Taxpayer stake stands at 43%.

March 2011 Eric Daniels leaves and António Horta-Osório takes over as chief executive.

May 2011 Lloyds takes first provision for payment protection insurance of £3.2bn. The bank’s bill eventually tops £17bn.

November 2011 Horta-Osório takes leave, citing fatigue. He returns to work in January.

September 2013 The taxpayer stake gradually reduces from 43% to 39% for technical results. It is cut to 33% when a formal sell-off of Lloyds shares begins: £2.3bn of shares sold to big City investors at 75p a share.

March 2014 £4.2bn of shares sold at 75.5p, taking the taxpayer holding to 24%.

February 2015 Dividends to resume for first time since the bailout.

December 2014 George Osborne announces a plan to dribble out shares into the market.

October 2015 Osborne unveils plans for a cut-price sale to the public.

October 2016 Philip Hammond, the new chancellor, abandons his predecessor’s pledge to sell cut-price shares to the public.

May 2017 The taxpayer is expected to exit Lloyds Banking Group.

independent Scotland may need 'phased' return to EU

Political reporter(wp):

Nicola Sturgeon has said Scotland may not rejoin the European Union if she wins a second independence referendum but could instead apply to join the European free trade area.

Even though most Scottish voters oppose a referendum before Brexit, the first minister has insisted another vote on independence is needed because Scotlandhas been taken out of the EU “against its will” after 62% of Scots voted to remain. 

Sturgeon has now indicated she may not seek immediate reentry to the EU after independence after all, confirming speculation she could instead propose Scotland takes the “Norway option” by joining the Efta free trade area instead.

Sturgeon also indicated that even if she chose to recommend Scotland immediately seeks membership of the EU, it could be forced to reapply from scratch after independence and after the UK leaves the EU.

In her reference to Scotland “regaining” membership, Sturgeon confirmed previous hints she accepts she may have to retreat from her preferred timescale of staging a referendum between autumn 2018 and spring 2019, before Brexit takes place.

Asked by Andrew Marr on BBC1 on Sunday whether joining Efta would be an acceptable compromise, Sturgeon said a “phased approach” to rejoining the EU may be needed.

“My position is I want Scotland to be in the EU. Now we have to set out if we’re in an independence referendum, and we’re not in that right now, the process for regaining or retaining, depending where we are in the Brexit process, EU membership.

“Now it may be that we have a phased approach to that by necessity.”

Asked by Marr to confirm that meant joining Efta first and then seeking EU membership later, Sturgeon replied: “Well, it may be by necessity but we don’t want that. We have to set that out at the time because there are still some uncertainties, many uncertainties, around the Brexit process.”

Despite implying a delay in EU membership could be forced on her by the terms of the UK’s Brexit deal, Sturgeon’s problems with her Europe strategy are chiefly domestic. The European commission has also made clear Scotland can only apply to join once it is independent. 

About a third of SNP supporters voted to leave the EU last June, and some would oppose independence if it meant rejoining. Sturgeon would also face vehement opposition from the vocal Scottish fishing industry, which opposes rejoining the common fisheries policy (CFP).

In a clear hint she is leaving her options open on EU membership, she has repeatedly stressed that her main goal is to rejoin the single market. That would be achieved if Scotland joined Efta instead, allowing Scotland to also remain outside the CFP.

Sturgeon has tried to downplay the referendum question during the general election campaign, insisting that last year’s victory in the Holyrood elections gave her party the mandate she needs to call for a second independence vote.

She has also delayed setting out how she will press on with preparing for that referendum until after the election. The former first minister Alex Salmond has repeatedly said a general election victory for the SNP would be a renewed mandate for that referendum.

Jackson Carlaw, the Scottish Conservative leader, said Sturgeon was playing political games with the electorate. “She claims we must have a referendum on independence because we’re leaving the EU. Now, in a cynical attempt to win back leave voters who have deserted the SNP, she refuses to say whether an independent Scotland would go back in,” he said.

“And her flirtation with Efta would leave us with all the obligations of the EU but no voice in EU decision-making.”

Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, said the first minister “is trying to use Brexit as the excuse for another divisive referendum, but won’t be straight with people about her position on EU membership. People in Scotland can see through Nicola Sturgeon’s contortions on Europe, which is why a majority don’t want another divisive referendum.”

Sturgeon was also pressed hard by Marr on recent data showing a continued decline in reading and writing standards among Scottish school pupils, after a Scottish government study found about one in six 13- to 14-year-olds was functionally illiterate – double the rate in 2012.

She admitted “we have a particular challenge” in those areas, adding: “I absolutely, readily accept there are areas where we need to do better.”

The survey also found less than half of young teenagers could write well or very well and only 40% did well or very well in numeracy. At the same time, there had been a worsening performance gap between the least and most well-off pupils, after 10 years of Scottish National party government.

Sturgeon said that overall Scottish pupils were performing well, with record numbers of passes in Highers, the equivalent of A-levels, and Advanced Highers. She added that literacy rates improved among pupils in their third year.

Cyber-attack could escalate as working week begins, experts warn

ICT reporter(wp):

NHS chiefs and Europol have warned of possible fresh disruption from the global cyber-attack when workers switch on their computers for the first time at the start of the working week.

The pan-EU crime-fighting agency said the threat from the attack was escalating and predicted the number of “ransomware” victims was likely to grow across the private and public sectors.

Many of England’s 8,000 GP surgeries have been closed all weekend following the attack, which started on Friday afternoon. The NHS fears many could be affected for the first time on Monday.

“Given the timing of the cyber-attack, some parts of the NHS will not have clocked there is an issue,” a spokeswoman for NHS Digital told the WT. “If that is going to happen it is more likely to be primary care trusts.”

Surgeries were sent a bulletin on Sunday advising them what to do if they discover their computers have been hacked and how to get support from NHS Digital and the National Cyber Security Centre, which is handling the response.

Speaking about the impact of the malware attack, which not only disrupted patients and doctors at one in five NHS trusts but also hit companies around the world from Australia to Russia, the director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, said: “The numbers are going up. I am worried about how the numbers will continue to grow when people go to work and turn their machines on on Monday morning. The latest count is over 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries. Many of those will be businesses including large corporations.”

About one in five NHS trusts responsible for hospitals have already been affected by the cyber-attack using “WannaCry” malware, which disables computer systems and presents users with a ransom demand. Six trusts were still affected 24 hours after it began, amid concerns networks were left vulnerable partly because they still used outdated Windows XP software and also because security upgrades issued last month had not been installed.

Ambulances were directed away from some A&E units, some non-urgent operations were cancelled, and diagnoses were delayed as doctors had to wait for porters to bring hard copies of patients’ scans.

Organisations across the globe, including investigators from Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA), are hunting for those behind the attack in what is described by Europol as a complex international investigation. As yet, the culprits have not been found.

“Cyber criminals may believe they are anonymous but we will use all the tools at our disposal to bring them to justice,” said Oliver Gower from the National Crime Agency.

A computer security expert credited with stopping the spread of the ransomware on Saturday by activating a digital “kill switch” warned on Sunday that a fresh attack was likely.

The expert, known only as MalwareTech on Twitter, said hackers could upgrade the virus. “Version 1 of WannaCrypt was stoppable but version 2.0 will likely remove the flaw,” he said on Twitter. “You’re only safe if you patch ASAP.”

On Sunday, Microsoft issued a security bulletin marked “critical” including security updates that it said “resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows”.

It emerged over the weekend that NHS Digital last month emailed 10,000 individuals in NHS organisations warning them to protect themselves against the specific threat of ransomware and included a software patch to block such hacks on the majority of systems. However, it would not work with outdated Windows XP systems that still run on about 5% of NHS devices.

NHS Digital said it did not yet know how many organisations installed the update and this would be revealed in a later analysis of the incident.

The hack sparked a bitter political row, with Labour blaming the Conservatives for cutting funding for NHS infrastructure.

The shadow health secretary, Jon Ashworth, on Sunday demanded the publication of the Department of Health’s “risk register” to show how seriously the government had taken a potential cyber-attack.

“If the Conservative prime minister thinks they were taking it seriously, then she shouldn’t have any problem in publishing that register,” he said.

He accused the government of “huge investment cuts in the infrastructure of the NHS” and said £1bn had been taken out in the last year.

He said “a big priority” of Labour’s promise to spend an extra £10bn on NHS infrastructure would “go to investing in cyber security and upgrading our IT”.

On Saturday, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Brian Paddick, said: “A combination of warnings and plain common sense should have told ministers that there is a growing and dangerous threat to our cyber security.”

Amber Rudd, the home secretary, who is leading the response to the attack, said the same day: “I don’t think it’s to do with ... preparedness. There’s always more we can all do to make sure we’re secure against viruses, but I think there have already been good preparations in place by the NHS to make sure they were ready for this sort of attack.”