Lancashire Police were called at 6.30pm on Saturday, September 5, to reports of racially aggravated assault in Harpers Recreational Ground, in Harpers Lane, Chorley.

The force is treating the incident as a hate crime, and an investigation has been launched.

Enquiries are ongoing.

A force spokesperson said: “We were called at 6.28pm on Saturday 5th September to a report of racially aggravated assault on Harpers Recreation Ground, Harpers Lane, Chorley.

“It was reported to us that a six-year-old boy had been approached by two older children and that a racist word had been written on his forehead and arm with a marker pen.

“This is being treated as a hate crime, and an investigation has been launched. Our enquiries are ongoing.

“If you were in the park from around 6pm and have information, please contact 101 – quoting log 1021 of 5th September.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorneys asked the Supreme Court Monday to stay the execution of a Florida death row inmate scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday for the 1996 kidnapping and strangulation of a man who was found nude and emasculated.

Daniel Conahan Jr., 72, was sentenced to death for the April 1996 killing of Richard Montgomery. The victim was found in a wooded area in Charlotte County, Florida, which was described as what appeared to be a dumping area that contained a lot of trash.

Authorities said Conahan killed Montgomery after paying him to pose f or nude photos. Authorities suspect him of similar homicides committed in the 1990s in southwest Florida.

Conahan has denied his involvement in Montgomery’s murder. The petition said he has been requesting DNA testing since March 2025 of evidence collected at the scene and from Montgomery’s body to “conclusively establish that he is not responsible for the death.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant Aug. 11 while his motion for DNA testing was pending, the petition for the stay says. Within 24 hours of that warrant being signed the state postconviction court denied the motion.

“Mr. Conahan does not ask to be declared innocent at this posture. Nor does he ask to be released from prison. All he asks is for this Court to stay his imminent execution so that this Court can review his meritorious claims,” the filing says.

Florida has executed 14 people this year.

A police ID error saw a father spend weeks by the bedside of a teen boy before learning his son had died three weeks earlier in a crash

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An inquest has heard how a grieving family feel like they have been through two deaths after finding out their son had been the one to pass away in a car crash. A dad told the coroner he only found out his son had died three weeks later due to a police identification error.

Teen pals, Joshua Johnson, 18, and Summer Louise Scott, 17, tragically died when the car they were in crashed into a tree. Police determined the Toyota Corolla left Todwick Road, at Todwick, near Rotherham, in the early hours of December 13 last year, inquests in Doncaster heard on Monday.

A previous hearing heard how police originally misidentified front seat passenger Trevor Wynn, then 17, as the male who had died in the crash, with Mr Wynn’s family believing he was dead until he came out of sedation three weeks later, on January 4.

At the same time, Mr Johnson’s family sat at the bedside of seriously injured Mr Wynn, not realising their son was dead.

A statement from Mr Johnson’s father, Lee Johnson, was read at Doncaster Coroner’s Court on Monday, where a coroner ruled his son was unlawfully killed.

Mr Johnson explained how he and his wife spent weeks at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, in Sheffield, believing they were sitting with their serious injured son, only to be told there had been a mistake.

He said: “This information came as a huge shock and I cannot comprehend it.

“It felt like, as a family, we had two deaths.

“I felt I had missed out on the initial grieving part of the process.”

Senior coroner Nicola Mundy read the statement of Detective Chief Inspector Andy Knowles, of South Yorkshire Police, who told the court in January how the mix-up began when a number of items of personal property were found at the scene, “though were not physically about the person of either of the males”.

One of these items was a phone in a case, which also contained Joshua Johnson’s driving licence.

A second phone nearby contained medical ID information in the name of Trevor Wynn, and a bank card in the same name was also attached.

Mr Knowles told the court earlier this year how an officer used this information to trace Trevor Wynn’s mother, who provided a college ID card, as well as a description of his build and footwear.

The senior officer said: “That officer then took this ID card to Rotherham Mortuary where, at that time, the deceased victim of the collision was booked in as an unknown male.

“Upon considering the comparison between the male’s features against the ID, and also considering the descriptive details of build and clothing, the officer was satisfied that this was the body of Trevor Wynn.”

Mr Knowles said a second officer, with the surviving but sedated teenager, was told this person was Joshua Johnson by colleagues at the crash site, and was able to obtain a photograph from Mr Johnson’s driving licence.

He said: “The officer liaised with medical staff and the photograph was compared against the casualty.

“Those present were then satisfied that this person was Joshua Johnson.”

Mr Knowles explained how he set out establishing the true identity of the deceased male with “no further reliance in this case on visual recognition as a form of ID” and this was done using dental records.

On Monday, separate inquests were held into the deaths of Mr Johnson and Miss Scott.

Senior Rotherham Coroner Nicola Mundy heard how Miss Scott was was driving the Toyota and lost control as she approached a slight bend.

The car went across a verge and hit a low wall which caused it to roll in the air before it struck a mature tree almost 50m from the road.

The inquests heard how police investigators used the tracking app Life360, which was on one of the phones in the car, to determine that the car was travelling at 95mph for about a kilometre before the crash happened, and had slowed to 86mph about 130m before the bend.

Forensic collision investigator Peter Gallagher said it was the first time his team had used this technique.

Mr Gallagher said tests showed the maximum speed at which the bend could be safety negotiated was 68mph.

The inquest heard how Miss Scott had a provisional driving licence but had not passed her test.

Pc Joe Binley said two men were arrested who were in a car which was following the Toyota.

He said officers investigated whether the cars had been racing but evidence, including a Snapchat video of the crash filmed by someone in the second car, showed there was a distance between the vehicles and it was Miss Scott’s decision to drive in the way she did.

Miss Scott had told friends there was an issue with the brakes on her car but the inquest heard there were no defects found on the vehicle which would have contributed to the crash.

The coroner heard that Miss Scott’s family described her as “loving, caring and very funny” but also “fierce and sassy”.

They said she had a long-standing love of cars.

Mr Johnson’s family described him a “gentle giant” with a “massive heart” who had a “bright future ahead that was tragically cut short”.

The coroner concluded that Miss Scott died as a result of a road traffic collision and Mr Johnson was unlawfully killed.

Earlier this year, the police watchdog, which is investigating the misidentification error, said it was “clear something has gone very wrong”, leading to “awful consequences” for the two families.

A spokesman for the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said on Monday that the investigation was “at an advanced stage” and they hoped it would conclude “in the coming weeks”.

South Yorkshire Assistant Chief Constable Colin McFarlane said: “We recognise the shock and significant distress caused by the misidentification following the collision on Todwick Road, and the unimaginable consequences this had for the families involved.

“Only those involved can truly understand.”

Mr McFarlane said the force took immediate steps to review processes and will look at the findings of the IOPC, when it reports.

He said work is ongoing to ensure all officers are confident following new guidance issued by the College of Policing in August.

In other Oasis news today, it was reported that an archive of unreleased recordings, which span 63 live shows, as well as soundchecks and more than 100 hours of rehearsal from brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher in the 1990s, are set to be auctioned off next month.

They were collected by the Oasis’ sound engineer Huw Richards, who worked with the band from the release of their debut album Definitely, Maybe in 1994, until 2001.

However, Littleton Auctions, who have called the sale a “once-in-a-generation opportunity for fans and collectors alike”, has confirmed the band does not support the sale.

The auction house said their role was to ‘present these items responsibly and allow collectors and institutions to engage with an important part of British music history’.

READ THE FULL STORY: Oasis ‘express concerns’ as unheard archive of recordings goes up for sale

The red car was filmed driving across the Anderston Footbridge before the driver turned around and headed back.

A driver sparked disbelief after appearing to take a wrong turn and ending up driving across a Glasgow footbridge.

The red car was filmed travelling onto the Anderston Footbridge, which crosses above the busy M8 motorway and links the city centre with the West End. Footage shows the motorist attempting to reverse as pedestrians look on in disbelief at the bizarre scene.

One man can be seen stopping to speak to the driver before continuing on his way, while another pedestrian turns his head in disbelief as the car eventually heads back over the bridge.

Eyewitness Chris Watt said he watched the bizarre incident unfold after the driver approached from Waterloo Street.

He said: “I saw it happen. He was heading onto the M8 slip road at Waterloo Street. Went to the cycle lane at the lights. Parked for a bit. We were watching saying no way is he going to park there. Then he just carried on over the bridge!”

The car travelled along the main span before apparently coming to a halt at the tight, curved descent towards Argyle Street on the other side.

The car is understood to have been on the footbridge for around ten minutes. The footage shows the bemused pedestrians watching as the driver attempts to manoeuvre the vehicle before eventually turning around and retracing their route.

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The Anderston Footbridge has an unusual history of its own. Construction began in the early 1970s but was halted in 1972 amid opposition, leaving the structure unfinished for more than four decades.

The bridge was famously dubbed the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’, with its western end left hanging around 40ft in the air.

It was finally completed in 2013, providing a pedestrian and cycling link between the city centre and Anderston.

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The leader of the movement clashing with police after blocking ports in Dover and Portsmouth has cornered Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf in Portsmouth.

Daniel Thomas – who goes by the nickname Danny Tommo – is often referred to as English Defence League (EDL) co-founder Tommy Robinson’s right-hand man.

He ordered a ‘Dunkirk-style’ rescue mission for his 200 or so ‘patriots’ intent on blocking migrants from landing in Portsmouth. His call was answered by a granny on a kayak delivering power banks and water.

The mob damaged police cars and several police officers were injured in clashes as a coach tried to leave the port.

Hampshire Police Federation said two officers were pushed off their motorbikes while others, including a rookie who had finished training school only three days earlier, had stones and bricks thrown at them.

Thomas, who spent the night waist-deep in the sea splashing authorities trying to split the protesters up, and his group finally disbanded at 4am after being given blankets by police.

Barry John-Williams, 69, said he was returning from watching seals in his small rib boat when he spotted ‘big offshore lifeboats’ and ‘a lot of police barges’ and then noticed vessels ‘full of migrants’.

‘Then obviously it got on Facebook and then all the protesters from all over the South, like they said there was some from Gatwick … came here, and were just wading through the water, and yeah, then it started to get a bit nasty.’

He added: ‘The main guy who I think his name’s Danny on, you know, like YouTube, I guess, and he was saying like, you know, ‘don’t engage with the police and stuff’.

‘But then, unfortunately, along with them, are all the idiots with masks up who want to smash the vehicles up, and they put all concrete blocks in the road and stuff.’

He challenged Reform’s Zia Yusuf after Nigel Farage called his masked followers ‘disgusting’.

He said: ‘You know how bad the press are. They’ve gone for Nigel on every single level.

‘Nigel is a hero to this country for what he did for Brexit, and he’s a hero to this country for what he’s trying to do with the boats.

‘All I would ask you to do is take the message back to him and say, Nigel, I don’t think it’s a good idea to be calling working-class [disgusting].’

He added that his followers were likely to vote Reform in three years’ time but he had had enough of words.

He told him: ‘What do you expect the men of this country to do when they see all this violence against women, they see all these sexual assaults? What would you do as a man, as a father? Sit down and just wait? They’re coming out and making their voices heard.’

When challenged by Yusuf on the damage to police vehicles, he claimed: ‘That was nothing to do with us. That was probably done by the lefties to try and make us look bad.’

A Hampshire Police spokesperson told Metro: ‘Violence and criminal damage have no part in peaceful protest.

‘No arrests have been made at this time, however an investigation to identify offenders responsible for any assaults to officers, criminal damage to vehicles, or other criminal offences has been launched.

‘We can also confirm that Border Force has advised us that individuals from the boat have been transported outside of Hampshire for processing as part of the normal process after they were safely disembarked.’

Some activists shared photos of volunteer Coastguards helping migrants calling them ‘Traitors’.

Imran Hussain, Executive Director of External Affairs at the Refugee Council, said ‘We are enormously grateful to the lifeboat volunteers who go out in dangerous conditions to save lives, and to the police officers working on our streets to keep people safe and maintain order. 

“Most people do not want to see Britain become a country where masked groups threaten refugees, minorities, volunteers or police officers. This is bigger than the treatment of refugees. It is about the sort of country we want to live in.

‘We should not allow a small number of people who use fear and violence to undermine the decency, tolerance and respect for the law that the vast majority of people in Britain expect.’

Farage, the leader of Reform UK, said he is against ‘masked people turning up and protesting anywhere’.

Asked what he made of the protests in Dover, he told GB News: ‘Disgusting. Nobody in any political protest, whether they’re on the left or the right, should appear in balaclavas. It is wrong.’

Responding to claims families were stuck in horrific traffic jams, Mr Farage said: ‘Disgusting. Disgusting. And I… Look, nobody feels more strongly about stopping the boats than me. Nobody has flown the flag to say this could be a disaster.

‘I was the first out there. But I’ve also in the last few months, it was me that exposed the Iranian regime putting terrorist operatives into Britain. No one wants this stopped more than me. But turning up in balaclavas is not the way to do it.’

Who is Danny Tommo?

The 37-year-old campaigner was among activists spotted at the protest on Saturday, which brought traffic to a standstill on the A20.

Both he and Robinson were previously members of UKIP, the eurosceptic party formerly led by Reform leader Nigel Farage.

Thomas previously worked as a tank driver for the King’s Royal Hussars, an armoured regiment of the British Army.

He is understood to have been discharged on medical grounds without having performed any active service.

He served two years in prison in 2016 for breaking into a man’s house brandishing knives, accusing the owner of having stolen £10,000 of drugs from him.

Following his spell behind bars, he claims to have turned to God and Christianity, with his X bio referring to ‘trusting in Jesus Christ’ and posts quoting Bible passages.

However, he has continued to have run-ins with the police, including a standoff at a protest following Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament in 2019.

He was also detained by officers at a counter-protest clashing with anti-Trump demonstrations during the US president’s second state visit to the UK last year.

MORE: ‘I was assaulted at Reform’s conference – the party celebrates attacks on women’

MORE: Everything we learned at Reform UK’s 2026 party conference

MORE: 20,000 England flags being removed for £2,600,000 under cover of darkness

CAIRO (AP) — Houthi rebels in Yemen accused Saudi Arabia of striking a prison on Monday in the country’s north, killing seven, including a child, as tensions escalate between the Iran-backed group and Saudi-backed Yemeni forces.

The strike on the Central Corrective Facility in the strategic city of Hazm in Jawf province also wounded at least seven people, including a woman, said Anees al-Asbahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry.

The prison’s warden told the Houthi al-Masirah news channel 35 prisoners and a woman who was visiting her husband were trapped under the rubble.

Yemen plunged into civil war in 2014 when the Houthis descended from their northern stronghold and seized the capital, Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee southward, then into exile in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition entered the Yemen war the following year in an attempt to restore the government.

Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel aired 46 seconds of footage it says shows the aftermath of Monday’s strike: a collapsed building, with structures crumbled into rubble and broken slabs scattered across the ground.

Several people, including what appeared to be rescue teams, were seen moving carefully across the debris, searching through the wreckage.

Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree accused Saudi Arabia of launching airstrikes and “committing massacres” in Jawf, as well as deploying a reconnaissance drone and supplying mercenaries with various weaponry.

“The ongoing Saudi aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered or unpunished,” he said.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia’s media ministry.

Saree said later Monday that Houthi forces downed a total of four reconnaissance drones belonging to Saudi Arabia over the past 24 hours, including one that was spotted Monday morning in Bayda province.

The Houthi claim came as forces of the internationally recognized government advanced across multiple fronts in Yemen, including in Jawf, Bayda, Dahle, and Marib provinces.

Strikes on prisons haven’t been uncommon during the war.

In 2022, a strike by the Saudi-led coalition hit a detention facility in the northern province of Saada, killing at least 87 prisoners and wounding about 266 others. Another strike in Sep. 2019 hit a Houthi-run detention facility in southwestern Dhamar province, killing over 100 people and wounding dozens.

The civil war in Yemen has killed at least 150,000 people, according to U.N. estimates, and at times pushed the country to the brink of famine. A ceasefire that had mostly held since 2022 is now in tatters.

Donald Trump has made AI-generated posts and trolling a major part of how he communicates both domestic and foreign policy – much of which has attracted criticism

The White House is facing a fierce backlash after posting a bizarre AI video of 80-year-old US President as Donald Trump as the comic book superhero Green Lantern.

White House staffers created AI clip that showed Trump wearing the green power ring donned by the DC superhero to create a large border wall and a large manufacturing plant. In the last seconds, Trump appeared to summon US military aircraft using the power of the ring.

“In the brightest day, in the blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight,” the post’s caption read. “Let those who worship evil’s might beware my power…Green Lantern’s light.”

The phrase is an oath uttered by the Green Lantern comic character who has received a surge in fresh interest amid the HBO show Lanterns, which is based on the series. While there were some accounts on X/Twitter that shared positive reactions to Trump’s post, there were many others that hit out at it.

“You are the White House…act like it,” said user @EVIMERONASTERI. Account @JamieBonkiewicz added: “This really is the cringiest collapse of a nation in real time.”

“This doesn’t help lowering the cost of food or gas prices,” said user @LucasSa56947288. The post is Trump’s latest AI content blitz with the US President sending out a flurry of messages in the past few days.

Another post that was shared by the president includes an AI cartoon where he and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney donned ice hockey kits. Moments into the cringeworthy clip, Trump’s cartoon avatar could be seen whacking his Canadian counterpart on the ice.

Trump also shared another clip of himself in from of a sign renaming New Mexico to “New America.” The trolling comes amid an abrupt and bizarre executive order that forced the name change of Lake Ontario to Lake America amid the trade war with Canada, which has a province with the same name.

The US President sandwiched a United States Space Force post with the AI-generated uniform and pin being compared to Nazi uniforms and Star Trek logos, respectively. The octogenarian went on to flood his social media with claiming ownership of the Moon for the US.

It is part of a long track record for the President who has made trolling central to his foreign and doestic policy.

Three men have been arrested as part of the murder investigation following the death of Jamie Evams

Tributes have been paid to a “wonderful son” and “doting uncle” as a murder investigation has been launched following his death. The family of 20-year-old Jamie Evans paid tribute to a young man whose “warmth, kindness and great sense of humour brought happiness to everyone around him”.

Police were called to reports of collision between a red Ford Fiesta and a grey Audi on Friday, September 4 where they found the driver of the Fiesta, Jamie Evans, with injuries deemed consistent with a stab wound. He was taken to hospital, where he died.

Three arrests have been made following the incident in Newcastle-under-Lyme at around 5pm on Friday evening. Don’t miss a court report by signing up to our crime newsletter here

A 20-year-old man and a 22-year-old man, from the Newcastle-under-Lyme area, were arrested on suspicion of murder.

A 19-year-old man, from the Newcastle-under-Lyme area, has been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.

The family of Jamie Evans, from Stone said: “Jamie was so passionate about cricket and fitness, enjoying every opportunity to be active, challenge himself and spend time doing the things he loved. These passions reflected his determination, energy and zest for life.

“Although his life was far too short, the love he gave, the laughter he shared and the memories he created will remain in the hearts of all who knew him.

“He will be deeply loved, profoundly missed and never forgotten. We’d like to thank the members of the public who so kindly went to Jamie’s aid and tried to help him.”

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It is two decades since Facebook introduced the News Feed – letting loose a world in which algorithms would shape ever more of our lives.

In 2006, Facebook was facing something of a crisis. Its internal data suggested that for the first time since its launch two years earlier (as TheFacebook), the company had stopped growing. People weren’t joining, and existing users weren’t spending more time on the site.

The solution co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and colleagues came up with, the News Feed, meant individual users’ homepages would be automatically updated with information tailored to them – in particular, new posts their Facebook friends had added.

Up to then, users had to actively check their friends’ profiles to see what they were up to. Now, this information would automatically be sent to your homepage. With it, a new world of algorithmic interaction was born.

It might seem quaint now, but for many Facebook users at the time, these changes felt like a violation of their privacy and trust. If you were to change your relationship status from “in a relationship” to “it’s complicated”, for example, this could now be broadcast to all of your online friends.

The News Feed caused the first major protest against Facebook. Tens of thousands of users joined a group calling for the return of the original system. A spontaneous protest emerged outside Facebook’s office in the city of Palo Alto, California. For the first time, the company felt it had to hire security guards.

Zuckerberg issued a sort-of-apology, but he didn’t back down. What he and other Facebook engineers could see was that, rather than pushing people away from the site, the News Feed was driving more engagement – leading users to spend more and more time on the platform.

A revolution in media consumption

Twenty years later, we can understand this development as one of the most significant socio-technical changes of the entire digital revolution. It ushered in an age where algorithmic systems structured how people interacted, consumed news and conducted political activity.

Crucially, to enable this new “content pushing” approach, Facebook engineers had to build a new digital architecture that moved the site away from being a static social network, into an algorithmic system built around the extraction and analysis of user data.

Under this new system, in the words of researchers Christina Alaiamo and Jannis Kallinikos, Facebook users could be “computed on the basis of discrete and countable activities”, turning them into “identifiable, knowable and actionable objects”.

Facebook had thus shifted from a site primarily enabling social interaction to one concerned with the production and commercialisation of knowledge. With increasing accuracy, it understood what type of content kept users on the site longer – and what type of information could influence people’s behaviour outside and beyond the site.

Facebook could now continuously optimise the level of social interactions using its algorithmic ranking system, Edge Rank. With a tweak, it could switch from prioritising messages from close friends to content that generated greater interaction, or outrage.

This took power away from users towards the corporation, and raised concerns that users were spending more time on the site than they seemed to want to. (Eventually, this would lead to a “major overhaul” of the News Feed in 2018, with Facebook promising to re-prioritise “meaningful social interactions” over “relevant content”.)

But above all, Facebook’s innovation in 2006 enabled it to capture huge amounts of user data that would, over the next two decades, enable it to expand globally at an astonishing rate – and generate vast amounts of revenue in the process.

A very different algorithmic age

Twenty years on, Facebook’s parent company Meta and other big tech platforms face challenges far more powerful than spontaneous protests on the streets of Palo Alto. Across the world, there is sustained activity from democratic institutions and states to contain the power and perceived harm of the algorithmic systems that emerged from 2006.

In Australia, use of social media platforms by under-16s is banned, and this is potentially spreading to the UK. Meanwhile, courts in the US have forced Meta to restrict the amount of access that children have to their products. While less than 1% of Facebook’s revenue comes from teens, the precedents set by these legal cases appear significant.

However, we also live in a very different algorithmic age than the one heralded by the launch of the News Feed 20 years ago. While Meta continues to derive most of its revenue from its social network platforms, which also include Instagram and WhatsApp, recent investments and prospective AI product launches suggest its leadership believe future revenue streams will largely be tied to developments in machine learning, large language models and “superintelligence”.

The question is: will governments and other institutions react more quickly to the concerns raised by this new era of AI development than they did to the emergence of algorithms two decades ago? On past evidence, this looks unlikely.