Woman arrested on suspicion of murder after two children found dead in Margate

Crime reporter(wp/es):

A 37-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of murder after two children were found dead in Margate, police said. 

Police said the children, who the force described only as young, were discovered at a property in the Kent coastal town of Margate in the early hours of Thursday.

Less than an hour before they were found and taken to hospital, the woman was involved in a car crash and taken to hospital.

A Kent Police spokesman said: "At around 3.35am on Thursday 27 December 2018 officers attended a property in Castle Drive, Margate, due to concerns for the welfare of the occupants.

"The South East Coast Ambulance Service also attended and two young children were taken to hospital, where they were later declared deceased.

"Police remain at the scene and a 37-year-old woman from Margate has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

"The woman had been involved in a road traffic collision on the A299 Thanet Way at around 2.50am and was taken to hospital with minor injuries. She has now been discharged and taken into custody at a police station."

Two uniformed police officers stood outside the terraced house in Castle Drive, which is on a new-build estate on the outskirts of Margate.

Forensics officers were earlier seen at the address.

It is believed they had not been living at the house very long, according to neighbours who said they did not know them.

Local priest Father John Taylor, who did not know those involved, said: "As a priest and as a parent, when I heard I was shocked, very disturbed and saddened."

He added: "I came down to see if I could help and will say a prayer for the children.

"Something like this affects the whole community - just imagine how the neighbours feel and the rest of the family."

teenage boy, 16, fighting for life after being knifed in north London

Crime reporter(wp/es):

A teenage boy was fighting for his life in hospital last night after being stabbed in Hendon.

Police and paramedics attended the scene in New Brent Street just after 6.10pm on Thursday.

The teenager, 16, was rushed to hospital where he remained in a critical condition, Scotland Yard said.

There have been no arrests.

A person who wished to be anonymous told the Standard that officers were still at the scene late on Thursday evening.

They said: “It’s never happened before. It’s a very family orientated estate.”

Any witnesses or anyone with information is asked to call police on 101 quoting CAD 5088/dec27. To remain anonymous, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

Man charged with killing woman, 19, who was found dead in Kent on Christmas Day

Crime reporter(wp/es):

A man has been charged with murder after a 19-year-old woman was found dead in Kent on Christmas Day.

Mohammad Qoraishi, 27, was arrested on Tuesday after emergency services were called to a property in London Road, Maidstone, shortly after 1pm.

South East Coast Ambulance Service also attended and the woman was declared dead at the scene.

The woman has not been named.

Qoraishi and the 19-year-old were known to each other, Kent Police said.

The suspect will appear via videolink at Medway Magistrates' Court on Friday.

Police and border force officials struggle to stop rise in gun smuggling to UK

Crime reporter(wp/es):

Police and border officials are struggling to stem the rise in illegal guns being smuggled into the UK, a leading police chief has warned.

Chief Constable Andy Cooke, the national police lead for serious and organised crime, said the rising supply of weapons - many coming in from eastern Europe - was expected to continue due to the scale of the problem.

The situation has become so serious that the National Crime Agency (NCA) has used its legal powers to direct every police force in England and Wales to step up its efforts in providing intelligence on the supply of guns, The Guardian reported.

Mr Cooke told the newspaper: "We in law enforcement expect the rise in new firearms to continue.

"We are doing all we can. We are not in a position to stop it anytime soon."

Mr Cooke said efforts to tackle the issue had been "hampered" by a fall in the number of police officers and the resulting reduction in proactive work to "keep these criminals on the back foot".

According to the NCA, many weapons are bought in eastern Europe where they are legal and unrestricted. They may then be transported to the Netherlands, where Dutch organised crime groups negotiate the sale to a British buyer.

The illicit cargo is then smuggled into the UK via ferry ports, train stations and postal hubs, often concealed inside vehicles or parcels.

Guns are also being bought on the dark web.

The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics for the year ending June 2018 showed a 5% decrease in offences involving firearms, to 6,362. Figures released earlier in the year showed an 11% increase to the end of December 2017.

Mr Cooke said he believed serious and organised crime was one of the two greatest threats to national security, alongside terrorism.

"Nationally, we need to ensure serious and organised crime gets the same funding as the terrorist threat," he added.

Leicester explosion: Three men guilty of murder after five killed in shop blast

Crime reporter,Leicester(wp/es):

Three men have been found guilty of murder after five people, including a mother and two sons, were killed in a shop explosion in Leicester.

Aram Kurd, Arkan Ali and Hawkar Hassan lit 26 litres of petrol in the basement of the shop to benefit from a £330,000 pay-out.

The explosion completely destroyed the shop, a Polish supermarket in Hinckley Road where Kurd worked, and a flat above.

Leicester Crown Court heard how some residents living nearby thought a bomb had reduced the property to rubble.

A five-week trial was told the defendants left shop worker Viktorija Ijevleva, 22, to die in the building because she was aware of the insurance policy taken out less than three weeks earlier.

Opening the Crown's case at the start of the trial, prosecutor David Herbert QC told a jury the defendants intended to maximise the damage to the premises and "would have known" people would have been in the two-storey flat above.

Ali, 38, Hassan, 33, and Kurd, 34, were assisted by a Kurdish interpreter throughout the trial after denying murder and alternative counts of manslaughter.

The three men showed little emotion after the jury unanimously found them guilty of five counts of murder after just over 11 hours of deliberations.

The trio were also convicted of conspiring with Ms Ijevleva to make a gain by dishonestly pursuing an insurance claim in respect of the fire.

Ms Ijevleva, Mary Ragoobeer, 46, her teenage sons Shane and Sean, and 18-year-old Leah Beth Reek, who was Shane's girlfriend, were all killed in the blast on Sunday, February 25.

Around 26 litres of petrol was used to start the fire in the basement of the supermarket, triggering a massive explosion at 7.01pm.

CCTV and traffic camera footage released by police at the end of the trial shows people escaping from a nearby takeaway moments after the explosion, and rubble being blasted into the roadway as cars pass by.

Footage recovered by police from a neighbouring business showed Ali in shot three days before the blast moments before the camera angle was moved.

Further images from the same CCTV unit a day before the fire showed a gloved hand moving the camera angle again, at a time when all three defendants were nearby.

Kurd was also recorded on a security camera as he escaped from the scene at the rear of the shop.

Ali, from Oldham, Hassan, from Coventry, and Kurd, from Leicester, were remanded in custody and will be sentenced in mid-January.

Ten Films to Watch in 2019

Entertainment reporter(wp/bbc):

1.Captain Marvel

Aliens! Action! Mystery Parentage! Brie Larson stars as Marvel’s latest superhero, Carol Danvers, who discovers her powers as Captain Marvel. Set in the 1990s, the story has Danvers searching for her true identity while trying to save the Earth during a war between alien races. If she can’t juggle it all, who can? Danvers grew up among the Krees, noble warriors whose line includes Annette Bening. Jude Law marches through the trailer, in a role he has been forbidden to talk about, and Samuel L Jackson appears as Avengers stalwart Nick Fury. Avengers: Endgame may get more pre-release attention next year, but Captain Marvel might be the fresher film in the franchise. (Credit: Marvel Studios)

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2.Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino’s films always make noise. This one has a double dose of movie stardom plus extra-chilling hints of violence. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the fading star of a television Western and Brad Pitt is his stunt double, in a story set in 1969, soon before the Manson murders. Margot Robbie plays soon-to-be- Manson victim, Sharon Tate. Al Pacino appears as the DiCaprio character’s agent. All those stars don’t come cheap: the film reportedly cost $95 million (£76 million). With its allusion to the epic Once Upon a Time in the West, by one of Tarantino’s directing heroes, Sergio Leone, this film clearly has big ambitions. (Credit: Andrew Cooper/CTMG Inc)

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3.Us

Jordan Peele’s brilliant Get Out – which combined sly, comic horror with social commentary about race – became a surprise smash hit, and established him as one of today’s most exciting writer-directors. His follow-up is being promoted as “A New Nightmare”, but everyone has been so secretive about the plot, you’d think they were in a Marvel movie. Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke (M’Baku in Black Panther) star, along with Elisabeth Moss, who has said that Us continues in Peele’s style of “thought-provoking popcorn movies.” (Credit: Universal Pictures)

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4.The Lion King

Disney gives one of its most beloved animated films a high-tech remake, using lifelike computer generated images. James Earl Jones, once again the voice of Mustafa, was apparently the only irreplaceable actor from the 1994 film. Here Donald Glover is the voice of the adult Simba, with Beyoncé as his love, Nala, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is the villainous Scar. Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner add comic relief as Pumbaa and Timon. With some help from Beyoncé, Elton John has reworked songs from the original, including the can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head Circle of Life. (Credit: Walt Disney Pictures)

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5.Downton Abbey

Talk about a built-in audience. The Crawley family and their servants all return, except for the characters who have been killed off. Sorry, no ghost Matthew. But Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery, Jim Carter and the others are here, including Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess, complete with deliciously withering aphorisms. The story picks up circa 1927, after the series ended on a happy note, with no one in prison and romance all around. Writer Julian Fellowes must have cooked up some disasters. The film’s new characters include Imelda Staunton as Lord Grantham’s cousin. (Credit: Focus Features)

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6.Ad Astra

Brad Pitt launches into space in this sci-fi adventure from director James Gray, whose spectacular Lost City of Z was one of 2016’s best films. Pitt’s character is searching for his father (Tommy Lee Jones) who disappeared two decades before on a mission to Neptune. Surely the resemblance to the Dad-lost-in-the-cosmos plot of A Wrinkle in Time is coincidental. Gray has compared Ad Astra to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, so we can expect someone in the family to go off the rails, which in Gray’s hands could be another amazing trek into an unknown land. (Credit: Twentieth Century Fox)

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7.Rocketman

For someone who is not on screen, Elton John is having a big year at the movies. (See: The Lion King.) In this authorised musical biopic, labeled “a true fantasy”, Taron Egerton sings and acts as Elton in the years leading to his 1977 breakthrough. There will be glittery jackets, giant eyeglasses, and flashbacks to his days in rehab. The director, Dexter Fletcher, took over shooting the Freddie Mercury biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, after Bryan Singer walked away. Rocketman could tap into the same taste for get-up-and-dance movies with a dark undertone. (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

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8.The Woman in the Window

AJ Finn’s bestselling novel was widely praised as Hitchockian, a thriller ready-made for the screen. Here it is, burnished with Oscar nominees and winners. Amy Adams is an agoraphobic psychologist who spies on her neighbors – played by Julianne Moore and Gary Oldman – then has to convince the world that she hasn’t imagined the crime that happened across the street. Or did she? The great Brian Tyree Henry (Widows) adds to his string of supporting roles as a detective. Director Joe Wright is known for prestige period pieces like Darkest Hour and Atonement, but he also made the underrated 2011 thriller Hanna, with Saoirse Ronan as a teenaged assassin, so he knows how to ratchet up suspense. (Credit: Fox 2000 Pictures)

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9.Star Wars: Episode IX

They Will. Not. Stop. Coming. Yet another Star Wars installment, this one the third in the “sequel trilogy” of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. The old franchise can’t promise originality, but the trilogy has thrived on the dynamism of its younger cast. Daisy Ridley is the heroine, Rey, Adam Driver is Kylo Ren – possibly the best dark character since his granddad, Darth Vader – and John Boyega is the wholesome Finn. Leftover footage from previous films will bring back Carrie Fisher as Leia, now a General in the Resistance. JJ Abrams, of The Force Awakens, directs. (Credit: Lucasfilm)

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10.Last Christmas

Sometimes two words are all it takes to make a film appealing: Emma Thompson. She wrote (with the playwright Bryony Kimmings) and appears in this romance, which was inspired by George Michael’s song Last Christmas, and includes more of his music. Emilia Clarke (far from her role as the Mother of Dragons in Game of Thrones) plays Kate, who works in a Christmas shop where she is dressed as an elf. In walks a dreamboat played by Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians). Director Paul Feig, whose films include the raucous Bridesmaids and more recently the comic thriller A Simple Favor, describes the film, irresistibly, as “a love letter to London”. (Credit: Universal Pictures)

UK mortgage approvals show first annual rise in 14 months - UK Finance

Buisness correspondent(wp/reuters):
A decline in the number of mortgages approved by British high-street banks flattened out last month, with the first year-on-year rise since September 2017, figures from industry group UK Finance showed on Friday.

Britain’s housing market has slowed since the country voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, and other surveys this month have shown anxiety among consumers and businesses ahead of the planned departure on March 29.

Friday’s data showed British banks approved 39,403 mortgages for house purchase in November on a seasonally adjusted basis, down from 39,640 in October but up by 0.2 percent from November 2017 — the first annual rise in 14 months.

“The housing market is struggling for momentum in the face of still relatively limited consumer purchasing power, fragile consumer confidence and, possibly, wariness over higher interest rates,” Howard Archer, chief economist at consultants EY ITEM Club, said.

Many economists expect house prices to be flat or marginally higher next year, as weakness in London and surrounding areas weighs on faster price growth in other parts of Britain, though the Bank of England has said falls of as much as a third are possible if Brexit descends into chaos.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s minority government plans to seek parliamentary approval for her Brexit deal in the week starting Jan. 14, after scrapping a vote before Christmas due to opposition from lawmakers of all parties.

Without a deal, Britain faces major economic disruption from the reintroduction of tariffs and customs checks at its borders.

UK Finance said credit card lending picked up slightly last month, though this mostly reflected a shift in preferred payment means rather than higher borrowing, with credit cards offering better consumer protection for purchases such as holiday travel.

Net lending to non-financial businesses fell by the most since May, dropping by 656 million pounds ($829 million).

“Overall lending to businesses has remained subdued in this period of economic uncertainty,” UK Finance’s managing director for commercial finance, Stephen Pegge, said.

The Bank of England will publish November mortgage and consumer credit data from a wider range of lenders on Jan. 4.

($1 = 0.7910 pounds)

Britain's HMV faces the music as retailer calls in administrators

Entertainment reporter(wp/reuters):

Music retailer HMV said it was calling in the administrators, blaming a worsening market for CDs and DVDs, to become the latest victim of brutal trading conditions in Britain’s retail sector.

The accounting firm KPMG has been named as the administrator and intends to keep the business running while it seeks a potential buyer, HMV said in a statement on Friday.

The retailer, one of Britain’s best-known high street stores, went into administration in 2013 before its rescue by restructuring specialist Hilco, but it has since been hit by competition from online rivals and music streaming services.

Sky News reported earlier that about 2,200 jobs were at risk if HMV went into administration, adding that the company had been in talks with leading names in the recorded music industry for funding but that those discussions came to nothing.

HMV was opened on London’s Oxford Street by English composer Edward Elgar in 1921 and made famous by the image of the ‘dog and trumpet’.

“During the key Christmas trading period the market for DVDs fell by over 30 percent compared to the previous year and, whilst HMV performed considerably better than that, such a deterioration in a key sector of the market is unsustainable,” said Paul McGowan, Executive Chairman of HMV and its owner Hilco Capital, which paid around 50 million pounds ($63.47 million) for the group in 2013.

Britain’s retailers had been hoping Christmas would revive spending after a year for much of the sector that has seen a string of store groups go out of business or close shops.

Weakening consumer spending, uncertainty over Britain’s exit from the European Union, rising labor costs and higher business property taxes, has spread gloom across the retail industry.

In the years running up to its first rescue in 2013, HMV struggled to hold its own against supermarkets and online services in sales of CDs, DVDs and video games.

More recently, traditional players in the music industry have been hit by the growing popularity of online streaming services such as Spotify (SPOT.N) and Apple Music (AAPL.O), which this year became the recording industry’s single biggest revenue source.

HMV, which had a hand in the Beatles’ big break in the 1960s, recommending the group’s demo record to publishers, had around 230 stores and over 4,000 staff before it went into administration in 2013. It currently has 125 stores around Britain and employs 2,025 people.