Police talking to members of the public at the scene in Hainault, north east London, Tuesday, April 30, 2024 after reports of several people being stabbed at a Tube station.
| Photo Credit: AP

A man wielding a sword attacked members of the public and two police officers on April 30 in the east London community of Hainault before being arrested, police said. The incident is not being treated as terror-related.

The Metropolitan Police said they were called on April 30 to reports of a vehicle being driven into a house in a residential street and people being stabbed close to the Hainault underground station. A 36-year-old man was arrested at the scene, police said.

No other details were immediately available.

“This must have been a terrifying incident for those concerned,” Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan said. “I know the wider community will be feeling shock and alarm. People will want to know what has happened and we will provide more information as soon as we can.”

He added that police do not believe there is a threat to the wider community. “We are not looking for more suspects,” he said. ”This incident does not appear to be terror-related.”

London:

Two army horses that were seen galloping through central London at rush hour on Wednesday have been contained, police and media reports said.

Photos and video posted on social media and by British news outlets showed the horses running along busy roads, dodging buses, taxis and other traffic.

NEW: Runaway horses are currently on the loose in Central London

One horse is covered in blood after colliding with a bus

Police are working with the Army to locate them pic.twitter.com/yZ10SeiFV3

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) April 24, 2024

Both were wearing saddles and bridles, with one apparently covered in blood on its chest and forelegs.

London’s Metropolitan Police said it was “working with colleagues in the army to locate them”. 

A number of prestigious army regiments have stables in the British capital and horses are a regular sight around government buildings on Whitehall, Buckingham Palace, The Mall and in nearby Hyde Park.

The City of London Police, which polices the Square Mile financial district, said they were called at about 8:40 am (0740 GMT) about the loose horses.

“Our officers have contained two horses on the Highway near Limehouse,” a statement read.

“We’re waiting for an Army horse box to collect the horses and transport them to veterinary care.”

The Daily Telegraph said up to five army horses had thrown their riders while they were being exercised and at least one soldier was injured.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

London:

The wingtip of an empty Virgin Atlantic jet collided with a stationary British Airways airliner while being towed from a stand at London’s Heathrow Airport on Saturday, the airlines said.

Heathrow, Britain’s busiest airport, said no passenger injuries had been reported and it did not anticipate any ongoing impact to the airport’s operations.

Accident at #heathrow involving a #virginatlantic#boeing787 and a #britishairways#A350#bigjettv@BigJetTVLIVEpic.twitter.com/Hm5Vh6ehrc

— specialise cyclists (@slaytor_roger) April 6, 2024

“Our aircraft is being assessed by our engineering teams and we have provided an alternative aircraft to limit the impact on our customers,” British Airways said in a statement.

Virgin Atlantic said its empty Boeing 787-9 had just completed a flight and was being towed to another part of the airfield when the incident happened at Terminal 3.

A Virgin Atlantic spokesperson said: “We’ve commenced a full and thorough investigation and our engineering teams are performing maintenance checks on the aircraft, which for now has been taken out of service.”

The airline said there would be no disruption to its flying programme on Saturday.

Heathrow said it was working with emergency services and the two airlines in response to the incident.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A popular radio DJ in London was allegedly tortured to death by “sadistic thugs” who inflicted around 94 injuries on him and locked his girlfriend in a bathroom for two days, a court has heard. According to The Independent, 43-year-old Mehmet Koray Alpergin and his girlfriend, Gozde Dalbudak, were kidnapped by six men near Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London, last year in October. They were taken to an empty wine bar where Mr Alpergin was allegedly beaten, throttled, scalded with boiling water, stabbed, maimed and violated. 

On Wednesday, the jurors were told that the couple was abducted when they were returning home from an Italian restaurant in Mayfair. The assailants had allegedly installed a tracking device on Mr Alpergin’s car, the outlet reported. They were put in separate vehicles and taken to a bar on White Hart Lane. Mr Alpergin’s naked body was later dumped in Essex woodland and his 34-year-old girlfriend spent two days locked in a toilet before being freed. 

Six men are now on trial at the Central Criminal Court in London. They are accused of murder, kidnap, false imprisonment and preventing the course of justice. 

“It is obvious that before his death Koray Alpergin had been stripped naked and horrifically tortured. From the number and nature of the injuries sustained, the prosecution suggest that it is not hard to envisage a group of sadistic thugs taking it in turns to inflict injury, whether with punches and kicks, hitting him with a bat, scalding him with boiling water, stabbing his feet…” lawyer Crispin Aylett said, according The Telegraph. Mr Aylett also alleged that the attack was connected to “organised crime” and “almost certainly drugs”. 

The jurors were told that the 43-year-old was originally from northern Cyprus. He was a well-known figure in the British Turkish community and owner of a Turkish language radio station in London called Bizim FM. 

On Wednesday the jurors heard that before his death, Mr Alpergin was not his usual “happy-go-lucky” and that he seemed anxious. He was allegedly in debt, including around $40,000 for his car. 

Mr Alpergin’s body was found by a dog walker a few hours after it was dumped in woods on October 15 last year. Mr Aylett said that a post-mortem report identified 94 separate injuries to his body. There were also wounds to the victim’s genitals and an internal injury, the lawyer said. 

Steffan Gordon, 34, Tejean Kennedy, 33, Samuel Owusu-Opoku, 35, Junior Kettle, 32, Ali Kavak, 26, and Erdogan Ulcay, 56, have been accused of murder, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and perverting justice. 
 

India-born Nandini Das is in the running for ‘Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire’ and Caribbean-born Manjapra of mixed African and Indian parentage has been shortlisted for ‘Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation’. File

Two authors of Indian heritage, UK-based Nandini Das and US-based Kris Manjapra, are among six worldwide writers on the shortlist unveiled in London on Tuesday for the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, a leading international non-fiction prize worth GBP 25,000.

India-born Nandini Das is in the running for ‘Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire’ and Caribbean-born Manjapra of mixed African and Indian parentage has been shortlisted for ‘Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation’.

The prize, now in its 11th year, is open to authors of any nationality based anywhere in the world and working in any language provided the nominated work is available in English and published in the UK. It celebrates research-based works of non-fiction that have made an outstanding contribution to the public understanding of world cultures and the ways in which they interconnect.

“We were greatly impressed by the exceptional quality of writing in this year’s shortlist and the ability of the authors to unearth extraordinary new discoveries and to find new perspectives on old perceptions,” said Professor Charles Tripp, Fellow of the British Academy and chair of the 2023 jury.

Ms. Das, in her 40s, is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture in the English faculty at the University of Oxford. She was brought up in India and studied at Jadavpur University in Kolkata before moving to England for further study. Her shortlisted work has been praised by the judges as a “ground-breaking” debut.

“This beautifully written book tells the story of England’s first diplomatic mission to India in the early 1600s, through a combination of biography and historical narrative, alternating microscopic details with broader panoramas,” the judges note.

“As we learn how the Mughals and English understood and misunderstood each other, we appreciate how Das’s shifting perspective reveals important insights into global connections and changing power dynamics in this pivotal period of world history,” they said.

Mr. Manjapra, also in his 40s, grew up in Canada and is now Stearns Trustee Professor of History and Global Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. His shortlisted work examines the slow, drawn-out death of slavery and the failure of emancipation.

“Written with restrained passion, this is a detailed and disturbing account of the false dawn of emancipation that accompanied the formal abolition of slavery in the 19th century,” read the judges’ comments.

“Set against the enormity of the transatlantic slave trade and the myths surrounding its ending, this book gives life and memory to the enslaved, identifies the forces that built new systems of servitude in the aftermath of slavery, and argues forcefully against the disavowal of these ghosts in our social order,” they said.

The other writers on the 2023 shortlist include France-based Daniel Foliard for ‘The Violence of Colonial Photography’, exploring the role of photography in the history of British and French imperialism; Spain-based Irene Vallejo ‘Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World’ which chronicles literary culture in the ancient world; UK-based journalist Tania Branigan for ‘Red Memory’, unearthing rarely-heard stories from China; and US-based anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas for ‘Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living’.

The winner of the GBP 25,000 prize will be announced at an awards ceremony in London on October 31, when each of the shortlisted writers will receive GBP 1,000.

The 2023 judging panel for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding is made up of Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed FBA, Visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics; Professor Rebecca Earle, food historian and Professor of History at the University of Warwick; Fatima Manji, award-winning broadcaster; and Professor Gary Younge Hon, the award-winning author, broadcaster and Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester.