Stories

Police Scotland has appealed for information after a man dressed entirely in black, believed to be in his 20s, was swept into the Firth of Clyde near Largs at around 12.20am on Tuesday, October 27, with the search by police, the fire service, HM Coastguard and the RNLI called off at about 9am; officers also seek two male witnesses and urge contact via 101 quoting incident 0026.

A body was found on 27 October in the Bradford on Avon area during the search for missing 19-year-old Georgie Nolan, who was last seen near the Kennet and Avon Canal at about 5am on Saturday, 24 October.

Money columnist Rachel Rickard Straus urges taxpayers to claim unclaimed refunds and reliefs as frozen income tax thresholds since 2021, set to last until at least 2031, would otherwise let them earn £4,900 more tax-free and £20,100 more before the 40 per cent rate, noting she recovered a few-hundred-pound Gift Aid refund by phone, £1 billion-plus in pension tax relief goes unclaimed yearly by around 800,000 people, and over two million couples miss the marriage allowance worth up to £252.

UK business leaders including UKHospitality's Allen Simpson, the BRC's Helen Dickinson and entrepreneur Hugh Osmond warned that reported plans for a 3.9 per cent minimum wage rise, lifting the national living wage from £12.71 to about £13.20 an hour and the 18-21 rate from £10.85 to around £11.27, will put jobs at risk ahead of Chancellor John Healey's Budget.

Labour's £1.2billion Connect to Work scheme, launched in November 2024, recruited only 13,900 people in its first year against an original target of 33,623, missing even the reduced goal of 17,954 after ministers cut the target five days before year-end citing 'optimism bias'.

Stephen Glover, author of the novel Levin's War, marks the 70th anniversary of the October-November 1956 Suez Crisis and Hungarian Revolution, drawing parallels between Anthony Eden's failed invasion of Egypt, the Soviet crushing of Imre Nagy's Budapest uprising, and today's fuel crisis, Trump's strike on Iran and Putin's war in Ukraine.

Security Minister Dan Jarvis told the Commons the government would launch a 'Be Ready' campaign urging citizens to stock three days of water and non-perishable food, as Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds announced eased tariffs on gherkins, baked beans and chocolate, while at Foreign Office Questions Ed Miliband tersely deflected Ben Obese-Jecty's question about Jonathan Powell's role in the Chagos fiasco.

An inquest jury concluded on Tuesday that failures by police and healthcare professionals from Devon County Council, Devon Partnership Trust and G4S allowed paranoid schizophrenic Alexander Lewis-Ranwell, 35, to be released from Barnstaple custody in February 2019 hours before he killed Anthony Payne, 80, and 84-year-old identical twins Dick and Roger Carter in Exeter.

Senior coroner Professor Fiona Wilcox ruled that 18-year-old former England schoolboys boxing hopeful Calum Naylor, from Islington, died of multiple drug toxicity — a case of drug-related misadventure — after ingesting ketamine, cocaine, ecstasy and Xanax at a Notting Hill house party on December 7, 2024, and issued a warning about young people taking ketamine 'with abandon'.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope captured an image of the star-forming region N159, spanning about 230 light-years in the Large Magellanic Cloud some 161,000 light-years away, and named it their Picture of the Month.

Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt urges Chancellor John Healey to avoid tax rises in the Budget and instead cut Civil Service headcount, welfare spending and public sector waste, citing estimates that over half of the £22billion headroom inherited from Rachel Reeves has been wiped out by borrowing costs and that returning the benefit bill to 2019 levels would save £58billion a year within five years.

On the 40th anniversary of the October 27, 1986 Big Bang, commentator Liam Halligan argues Chancellor John Healey's Budget will further damage the City of London, whose share of global IPOs has fallen from 1st in 2006 to 23rd today, behind Mexico and Oman, as firms like Arm Holdings list on Nasdaq instead.

Mohammed Tauseef Mumtaz, jailed for life in 2012 with a 13-year minimum term for the July 8, 2009 murder of his six-months-pregnant wife Naila Mumtaz, 21, at their Birmingham home, has been released from prison after the Parole Board recommended it.

Denbighshire County Council is trialling soft plastics recycling across 4,500 homes for three months, taking residents' container count to as many as 12 following a £22million overhaul of recycling rules in 2024, as fly-tipping reports rose 230% from 1,121 to 3,699 between 2024 and 2025.

Julia Starzyk, 36, of Harefield, west London, controls heating, lights, security cameras, a Chinese air fryer from Lidl, dog-feeding robots and smart bulbs via her phone, while a researcher known as @log4j found that a Samsung television used an in-built microphone with automatic content recognition to track background sounds for targeted advertising.

Male members at David Lloyd Purley in Croydon, Greater London, accused the £200-a-month gym of 'discrimination' after it kept women-only spa sessions from 6pm to 8pm on Thursdays, introduced in early October for religious reasons, despite a member survey in which 75 per cent of 82 respondents backed restoring mixed access.

Chancellor John Healey will skip welfare reform in today's Budget, setting aside £5.5billion for a 3.5 per cent rise in benefits for ten million people, at least £1billion for winter fuel bill subsidies, and a new bank profits charge, while freezing NHS prescription charges at £9.90 and leaving frozen tax thresholds unchanged.

Cleopatra Fowler, 19, of Leeds, pleaded guilty at Leeds Magistrates' Court to assaulting three paramedics and spitting at a police officer on 2 July during the Otley Run pub crawl after drinking more than ever before, and was sentenced to a 12-month community order with 90 days of alcohol abstinence and £599 in compensation, surcharge and costs.

Samba the capybara, who escaped Marwell Zoo in Hampshire with her sister Tango on March 17, has been spotted on newly installed wildlife cameras on private land more than six months later, with keepers establishing a feeding area and keeping her location confidential to safely recover her.

On Tuesday on MS NOW's "The Beat," Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) said President Donald Trump has "made himself remarkably wealthy while making us poor," while citing Maryland's nearly 60% drop in violent crime, unemployment below the national average, and job growth nearly double the national rate.