Two people suffered minor injuries in a “dog attack” at Manchester’s Market Street tram stop, where a woman was arrested.

Two people have been left injured after an alleged dog attack by a tram stop in Manchester city centre with a woman arrested.

Police were called to the Market Street Metrolink stop at 2.24pm this afternoon following reports of the attack.

Greater Manchester Police said the dog reportedly bit two people, leaving them with injuries believed to be “minor”.

A 39-year-old woman has been arrested and taken into custody, while the breed of dog involved has not yet been revealed.

A spokeswoman for the force told the Mirror: “We were called at 2:24pm to Market Street, two people reportedly bitten by a dog.

“One woman aged 39 arrested on suspicion of being in control of a dog dangerously out of control.”

An eyewitness said he saw around seven police officers stood on the Metrolink stop and a ‘big dog’ having been ‘tied to the railings’ at the stop, reported the Manchester Evening News.

A spokesperson Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) confirmed Metrolink services were not affected by the incident.

A number of police vehicles remain at the scene this evening following the incident.

Joshua Cammidge, who previously lived in Acomb in York, allegedly researched four drone manufacturing sites in Swindon as well as a Wi-Fi-jamming device and is also said to have carried out reconnaissance.

It is alleged he communicated with and received instructions from an individual believed to be linked to the GRU Volunteer Corps, a group controlled by Russia’s intelligence services.

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The charges state that between March 27 and September 5 this year, Cammidge provided the individual with Google Maps screenshots showing the addresses of four drone manufacturing sites in Swindon and gave details on the activity at one particular factory.

Prosecutor Warren Stanier told Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday that Cammidge had been in contact with the individual on Facebook before agreeing to move to Telegram.

He said there were 58 communications between Cammidge and the individual from August 28 to September 3.

Mr Stanier said: “The prosecution say the essence of communications was locations within the UK of factories that manufactured drones and the sabotage of those factories.”

The 31-year-old appeared at the central London court wearing a prison-issue tracksuit.

Two security officers were present in the dock with the defendant, who spoke only to confirm his personal details.

Cammidge faces two counts, one of assisting a foreign intelligence service and another of intending to commit or engage in conduct to prepare an act of sabotage.

Mr Stanier told the court: “The prosecution case is he knew exactly who he was communicating with and the implications of what he was offering to do.”

The defendant did not enter a plea during the hearing and District Judge Daniel Sternberg remanded him into custody to appear at the Old Bailey on September 25.

Cammidge, of Galsworthy Close, Swindon, was arrested by Counter Terrorism Policing London officers, supported by officers from Wiltshire Police, at an address in Swindon on Friday, the Metropolitan Police said.

He was taken to a London police station and searches were carried out at a different address in Swindon.

The next day, Cammidge was further arrested and detained under the National Security Act 2023, on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service.

In July, the Government formally designated the GRU Volunteer Corps under the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026, making it a criminal offence to express support for the group.

The GRU is sanctioned in its entirety by the UK, and hackers linked to the agency have been blamed for cyber attacks in Britain.

A GRU squad is believed to be behind the attempted murder of former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.

He said: “I’ll show you what rude is” before pressing down on her neck.

An ex-Scottish Laird has been jailed for strangling a woman because she was singing along to a performance of We Will Rock You. Malcolm Potier – who once hired a hitman to kill his ex-partner – grabbed Kirsty O’Donnell by the neck when an argument erupted in the audience of a 2023 performance of the hit Queen show at the London Coliseum.

Potier’s partner, Lizzie Loveridge, had asked Ms O’Donnell to be quiet as she sang along during the show, to which she replied: “That’s a bit rude”.

Potier, 75, who was previously jailed in Australia after ordering the murder of his ex-partner, told Ms O’Donnell: “I’ll show you what rude is” before pressing down on her neck.

Ms O’Donnell later learned about Potier’s criminal background, and is now terrified she he will come after her in the future, she told Southwark Crown Court on Thursday.

Judge Dafna Spiro sentenced Potier to two years in prison over the West End theatre attack. The judge said: “It was a wholly disproportionate response to a trivial disagreement and took place in a crowded public theatre during a live performance”.

She praised Ms O’Donnell for giving evidence at trial and during the sentencing hearing, saying she “has done so primarily to send a clear message that violence against women and girls is something that affects too many people”.

The judge determined that Potier’s past convictions, along with the attack on Ms O’Donnell, have a “common thread of dominance, control, and lack of accountability”.

Prosecutor Sam Lubner said Ms O’Donnell and a friend went to watch We Will Rock You, starring Lee Mead and Ben Elton, on June 7 2023, and they were moved to seats next to Potier and Ms Loveridge halfway through the show.

They “noticed Ms Loveridge was hushing people, demanding for them to be quiet”, the prosecutor said, and she then objected as they sang along to one of the songs, saying: ‘Will you two shut the f*** up?’

“Ms O’Donnell replied with words to the effect of ‘that’s a bit rude’.

“Mr Potier said ‘I will show you what rude is’, he leaned over and placed two hands over Ms O’Donnell’s neck, applying pressure, strangling her.

“She estimated this lasted for three to five seconds, with more intense pressure for the first one or two seconds.

“She was able to say ‘can you please let go’, and shortly afterwards he did let go.

“She was in a state of shock and fear, tearful and felt unable to report him.”

Ms O’Donnell was later able to identify Ms Loveridge through Facebook, leading police to arrest Potier in November 2023.

The court heard about Potier’s past convictions in Australia for plotting murder, after a falling out with his former partner over custody of their daughter.

Potier, a former property tycoon who once owned a Hebridean island and held the title Laird of Gigha, was detained in Australia in 2000 after fleeing the UK with their daughter during family court proceedings.

While in Long Bay prison in New South Wales, Potier revealed he had hatched a plan for a hitman to murder his ex-partner’s new boyfriend.

He initially said he did not want his former partner killed as she “served a purpose”, but summarising the crimes, Mr Lubner said he went on to take actions to try to have her murdered as well.

The court heard he asked a friend to make a call to order the hit, asked her to find a second hitman when his original plot faltered, and he offered to pay for a fellow inmate’s £4,500 bond so that he could carry out the acts.

However, when the fellow prisoner was released, he returned to Italy without following through with the promise.

UK gardens took a battering this summer as a heat dome settled over western Europe, and much of the green and pleasant land turned a dusty beige.

Some areas went without rain for almost two months. The “joy of gardening” turned into waiting until the cooler evening period, then laboriously trailing out from the kitchen with buckets of water to keep the patio plants alive.

But as the rains begin to return, what can gardeners do to restore their garden’s lustre? And what have we learned as we look around our parched borders and fractured lawns?

Let’s start with the good news. Nature is resilient and many plants may still be alive despite appearing bedraggled, wilted or defoliated. They just implemented strategies that help them survive a drought.

Leaf wilting and abscission is the plant’s natural response to conserving water and protecting its vital phloem (which transports sugars from the leaves to the rest of the plant) and root tissues from desiccation.

So, gardeners don’t need to take the hacksaw to the shrub border yet with the notion of making a fresh start. They can check if individual woody plants are still alive by scraping off the epidermal cells (young bark) of the shoots with a thumbnail. If the phloem tissues below are green, life prevails.

Some of the garden’s woody plants may re-leaf again this autumn – or if they are herbaceous, throw up new shoots from the soil. But many will wait until next spring before investing in a new set of leaves or stems.

Gardeners should avoid the temptation to feed plants up (add fertiliser) now, as such chemicals placed on hard soils will simply wash away with the first rains, rather than be incorporated effectively into the soil. More than anything else, gardeners need patience at this time.

Some plants will have dead stems; these can be pruned out immediately. With perennial plants, though, it is worth hesitating before removing the whole specimen, as shoots can regenerate from the stem base or remaining root system.

Similarly, brown lawns will turn green again. However, if there are residual bare patches, new growth can be encouraged by sowing grass seed mixed in with sand in mid-to-late September.

Plants employ different strategies for survival based on the climate they evolved in, and we see a legacy of this in the cultivated species we use in the garden.

Those from high rainfall areas – such as certain rhododendron, pieris, hydrangea, magnolia and sorbus – struggled this summer. Hydrangea has limited capacity to control moisture loss, whereas more drought-adapted species such as cotinus can precisely regulate their stomatal pores (where CO₂ is absorbed and moisture vapour lost).

Other plants such as forsythia and fuchsia are chance takers, still trying to grow throughout a dry period by keeping their stomata open and just running the risk of water shortage. But these types of plants can come a cropper as water columns within their xylem vessels (which transport water and minerals from the roots to the rest of the plant) snap, causing the whole stem to fail.

Anecdotally, despite the harsh dry, hot conditions, some garden plants performed well this year. Salvia, verbena, lavander and, in my garden’s clay-based soils, roses flowered prolifically, even if their shoot growth was curtailed.

Rejuvenating your garden

For those gardeners keen to rejuvenate their dreary, desolate brown patches quickly, autumn bedding plants can help provide some late season cheer. Plants such as cyclamen, chrysanthemum, aster and winter pansies can be planted now as soil moisture is restored.

After a summer like this, some precious plant specimens will be lost, but many gardens should return to their former glories – if the UK experiences a cooler summer next year.

Over the longer term, as climate change moves the UK’s southern regions to something akin to a Mediterranean climate, some gardeners will need to adapt. Mainly, this will mean planting more Mediterranean flora.

Much more challenging, however, is the climate turbulence that accrues from climate change. This compounding of stresses – such as flooding in early summer followed by drought a few weeks later, not to mention more extreme events such as fire and high wind speed – is a much more difficult phenomenon for plants.

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While research on this problem is still in its infancy, early results suggest that gardeners may need to look to plant species with multiple stress tolerances. Some garden plants that are popular in Britain, like buddleia, already have good resilience.

We can also look to new genotypes from the natural world. Plants from dry river beds, for example, cope well with both drought and flooding.

Plantlife with wide natural geographical distributions and weed-like strategies (where they grow and reproduce quickly) should also be brought into breeding programmes now, to help improve climate resilience in the garden plant palette.

The Conservatives’ former director of campaigning and his wife have pleaded guilty to cheating at gambling by placing bets on the date of the 2024 general election.

Anthony Lee stood to win approximately £15,000 after placing more than 60 successful bets totalling £1,549, the Gambling Commission said.

He passed confidential information to his wife about when former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was planning to call the general election.

Laura Lee, who was a parliamentary candidate at the time, placed eight successful bets on the election date totalling £535 and would have profited by around £5,000.

On Thursday at Southwark Crown Court, Anthony Lee pleaded guilty to two offences and Laura Lee pleaded guilty to one offence.

They will be sentenced in October.

The trials of 10 other defendants will take place in September 2027 and January 2028.

Former MP Craig Williams, who was Sunak’s closest parliamentary aide at the time, pleaded guilty in June and will be sentenced at a later date.

In Williams’ case, the prosecution said he bet £250, £100, and £22.50 on the date of the 2024 election, telling the court he “used highly sensitive and confidential information”.

When details of the scandal first emerged in June 2024, Williams admitted making a “huge error of judgment”.

Sunak’s decision to call the poll was a surprise to many, including many Conservative MPs, who were expecting an autumn date.

The Conservative Party has been approached for comment.

The man, who was wearing dark clothing and a beanie hat, fled the scene after carrying out the sick attack.

A woman was raped while walking her dog in a playpark, with a police investigation now underway. The horror incident happened around 10pm on an open grassy area of ground off Westerpark Avenue in Blantyre on Tuesday.

The woman was walking her dog at the spot, near to Abernethy Avenue, when she was approached by a man who she didn’t know. She was then subjected to a serious sexual assault before the man fled the scene.

The suspect is described as a white male, 5ft 9 in tall and was wearing dark clothing and a black beanie hat. A manhunt is now underway and police are appealing to the public for their help in finding the sick attacker.

The assault took place close to a residential area so locals are urged to come forward if they saw or anything toward, or noticed a man matching the description above.

In the meantime, extra police patrols are happening in the South Lanarkshire town to assure locals who may be left worried by Tuesday’s events.

The Prime Minister pointed to Labour’s 2024 manifesto commitment which reaffirmed the party’s opposition to another vote on the constitution.

Andy Burnham has insisted a second referendum on independence remains “off limits” after it appeared the PM had made a sudden concession on the issue this week.

The Prime Minister said on Wednesday there would be no vote on the constitution until it was “clear” a majority of Scots wanted one.

Burnham was asked at PMQs about the position of Northern Ireland where, under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a border poll can be triggered if the Secretary of State believes a majority of people would vote for Irish unification.

SNP MP Chris Law said voters in Scotland should have the “equal right to choose their own future” as those in the province.

Burnham responded: “I would say exactly the same situation in Scotland. I am not aware that there is a majority of public support for another referendum and until that changes there won’t be one.”

The PM’s choice of language was immediately seized on by the SNP, with John Swinney writing to Downing Street to demand a formal mechanism to trigger an IndyRef2 is written into law.

The SNP leader said Burnham’s comments amounted to “a long-overdue acceptance of the reality that the people of Scotland will decide their own future, not the UK Government”.

He added: “Your acceptance of the fact that majority support for independence in Scotland also means that a referendum should take place is welcome.”

But the Labour leader has now clarified he does not support any referendum – and pointed to his party’s manifesto commitment on the matter.

In a letter to Swinney today, the PM said: “As we all recognise, Northern Ireland and Scotland have different historical experiences and therefore distinct constitutional arrangements. In my remarks, I was simply highlighting that there is no consensus for an independence referendum in Scotland and nor is there a clear basis to suggest that a majority of people in Northern Ireland presently wish to separate from the United Kingdom.

“Unlike the situation today, ahead of 2014 such a consensus did exist across both the Scottish Parliament and the UK Parliament, across all political parties and across civic society. In that referendum the people of Scotland made clear their continued commitment to Scotland remaining part of the UK.

“The 2024 manifesto which Labour secured its parliamentary majority was unambiguous: ‘Labour does not support independence or another referendum’. As I made clear to you personally when we met recently in Glasgow, independence and a referendum are off limits as it would take our focus away from growing the economy and helping families with the cost of living.”

Burnham continued: “I and my Government are keen to work with you and the Scottish Government to ensure Scotland, as part of the UK, is rewired to work for people.”

The BIG Walk will return to Wearside’s Herrington Country Park on Sunday, September 27, with four routes available, including a gentle three-mile stroll and a more challenging 13.5-mile trek.

The longer walks extend beyond the park, following footpaths through open countryside, ancient woodland and along the River Wear near Sunderland.

Councillor Jonathon Emerson, cabinet member for health, wellbeing and adult services at Sunderland City Council, said: “We’re delighted to welcome the BIG Walk back for 2026.

“It’s a fantastic event that encourages people to get active, explore some of Sunderland‘s beautiful countryside and spend quality time with family and friends.

“Whether you’re taking part for your health, for fun or to support a charity, the BIG Walk promises to be a great day out and I’d encourage everyone to sign up, challenge themselves and be part of this fantastic community event.”

All routes begin at 10am from near the park’s amphitheatre and skate park.

Entry is open to individuals, families and groups, with more than 400 people taking part last year.

Walking can help improve fitness, reduce stress, increase energy levels and provide a great opportunity to spend time outdoors with family and friends, especially before the winter weather sets in.

Entry prices start from £7.50 per person, and all participants will receive a finisher medal.

A statement from the police says that seven people have been arrested following the attack.

It reads: “At around 14:15hrs on Thursday, 10 September, officers were called to reports of an altercation on Bromley High Street.

“Officers attended the scene alongside the London Ambulance Service and London’s Air Ambulance and found four men with stab wounds. Three of them were taken to hospital where they are receiving treatment for non-life-threatening injuries. One is in critical condition.