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When one drug dealer couldn’t resist sending a cute picture of his French Bulldog to another gangster he had no idea he would be sealing his gang’s fate.

National Crime Agency detectives intercepted a message on a social media platform used by drug gangs and zoomed in on tiny Bob’s nametag.

Upon magnification, they could make out trafficker Danny Brown’s partner’s phone number proving an undeniable link to the dealers looking to send 448kg of amphetamine worth £45m to Australia.

Bob’s accidental role helped unravel his owner’s “sophisticated” plan to hide Class As in the arm of an excavator that led to the entire gang being jailed for a combined 163 years.

Gangsters Stefan Baldauf, 64, and Philip Lawson, 63, had even rigged an auction to ensure the drugs went to the correct customer in Australia.

But Baldauf, of Midhurst Road, Ealing dobbed himself in by sending an accidental selfie on EncroChat, revealing his reflection in a brass door sign.

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Baldauf, who was jailed for 28 years in December 2022, was ordered to repay £1,007,637 on Monday at Kingston Crown Court. He has given three months to pay or will receive an extra seven years in jail.

Lawson who arranged a welder to cut the digger open and then seal it up again was sentenced to 23 years and ordered to pay £182,476.

He also has three months to pay with failure resulting in the imposition of another three years on his sentence.

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Bob’s owner Danny Brown of Kings Hall Road, Bromley, Kent was jailed for 26 years and will face a confiscation hearing later in the year.

William Sartin, 63, of Timberlog Lane, Basildon, Essex who hid the excavator in his industrial unit was sentenced to 23 years.

Chris Hill, who led the NCA investigation, said: “These criminals did not care about the misery and exploitation that the supply of illegal drugs bring to UK and Australian communities.

“All they cared about was money.

“So these proceedings are immensely painful for them, hitting them in their pockets and are a crucial way of showing other organised criminals that the consequences do not end when the prison door slams shut.

“The NCA continues to do everything possible, working at home and abroad, to protect the public from the threat of illegal drugs supply.”

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp faced tough questioning today over the previous Government’s failure to prevent the Southport dance class murders, after it emerged killer Axel Rudakubana had been referred to counter-extremism programme Prevent three times.

GB News presenter Ellie Costello directly challenged Philp, asking: “How did you fail to stop this man?”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Despite this loss, Aston Villa have been in good form lately, winning seven of their last 12 games in all competitions.

As well as competing in Europe, Villa are also battling for a top-four finish in the Premier League and key to their performances at home and abroad are strikers Ollie Watkins and Jhon Duran.

Watkins has scored 10 goals in all competitions so far this term while Duran has 12 but Emery has mostly opted to rotate the two, having been unable to get them to play effectively as a partnership.

Watkins started against Monaco with Duran joining him in attack in the 57th minute but neither were able to really threaten the hosts before full time.

“The last 20 minutes we played with two strikers and with two strikers we are not being organised with the positioning like I want,” Emery said.

“We have two good strikers. Playing with two strikers is my challenge. Both are very good players but today it didn’t work well.

“I made a mistake when I decided to play with two strikers. Until that moment we were more or less controlling the game.”

According to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, the Southport attack was “clearly intended to terrorise”.

But officially it wasn’t, and still isn’t, considered a terror attack because the police couldn’t identify the killer’s motive, so it falls outside the definition of terrorism.

Axel Rudakubana even admitted a terror charge – possessing a training manual useful to a terrorist – but without a motive it’s still not terrorism, apparently.

No wonder the public is confused – suspicious even that the government wanted to cover up the failure of its Prevent anti-extremism scheme, which Home Secretary Yvette Cooper now admits should have identified Rudakubana as a threat, especially as he was flagged three times.

The manual was found at his home a couple of days after the attack, but he wasn’t charged with the terror offence for another three months.

Again, easy to see why some people cried “cover-up”.

When asked about his decision to withhold information about the Southport attacker by Sky News political editor Beth Rigby, Sir Keir said he knew details about Rudakubana, as they were emerging, but it “would not have been right to disclose” them.

It’s easier to understand why other details of the police investigation were not revealed.

That’s normal when there is expected to be a criminal trial in which a jury must decide its verdict purely on what it hears in court, untainted by anything it might have heard or read before.

Read more:
‘Nothing off the table in Southport inquiry’
Missed opportunities to stop Southport killer
How people of Southport are trying to make sense of horror

The traditional media usually sticks to that rule because to flout it could land journalists in prison for breaching the Contempt of Court Act 1981.

A lot of information has emerged since Rudakubana pleaded guilty to murder on Monday, scrapping the need for a trial, but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has still stopped some known details being published ahead of Thursday’s sentencing.

Of course, many social media users aren’t aware of, or simply don’t care about, the contempt laws and post in ignorance or malevolence some vital facts – plus the rumours and gossip – the rest of us have to keep schtum about.

Jurors are always warned to forget anything they read or hear outside the courtroom.

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Crime hacks often think the Contempt Act is too restrictive in limiting what we can report. We hope it will be eased when the Law Commission reports on its ongoing review of the legislation.

The prime minister is not the first to highlight the growing threat from young misfits like Rudakubana; alone with a computer, their heads full of violent images and evil thoughts and hell-bent on achieving notoriety but without the fixed ideology of recognised terror groups.

The bosses of MI5 and counter-terror policing have both warned recently of the risks they pose without any direct influence from organisations like Isis and al Qaeda.

Sir Keir has vowed to consider changing the terrorism laws to accommodate such individuals and to try to rid the internet of extreme violence.

He should find the first of those ambitions rather easier to realise than the second.

Sir Keir Starmer has said there’s a new terror threat facing the UK – from “loners, misfits and young men in their bedroom” who carry out extreme violence and are fixated on it “seemingly for its own sake”.

The prime minister made his announcement the day after Axel Rudakubana pleaded guilty to the murder of three young girls in Southport last summer. A public inquiry into the failings that allowed the crime to take place is also under way.

After his guilty plea, it emerged Rudakubana was referred to the Prevent programme, a government-led agency set up to stop the spread of terrorism in the UK, three times in the 17 months before the attack, but a judgement was made that he did not require intervention.

New security threats on the rise

Data from the Prevent programme suggests that this trend isn’t new.

Prevent categorises the people who are referred to it by their belief system, for example Islamists, the far-right, incels, or people inspired by school massacres. There are also a handful of categories of people with either no clear ideology, or whose personal ideology sometimes takes on conflicting parts of different ideologies.

More people are already categorised as “vulnerable [to radicalisation], but with no ideology or counter-terror risk”, than any other category, including those with far-right or Islamist views. They were 36% of all referrals in 2023/24, up from 25% in 2019/20.

But only a small number of those cases are taken on by Channel, a deradicalisation programme that is effectively the next stage in the Prevent process, for people who are assessed to be most in need of intervention.

Dame Sara Khan, a former counter-extremism commissioner, told Sky News: “This is not a new phenomenon. If many of these individuals did not meet the threshold for Channel, what support or counter-radicalisation interventions did they receive – if any?

“There is no effective system in place to deal with such individuals and they will continue to pose a serious concern.”

The growth of ‘pick and mix’ extremism

A mix of factors is driving the growth in extremist ideologies that don’t fit into specific ideological brackets – what some experts call “pick and mix” extremist ideologies. The spread of misinformation and ease of access to radical information online is undoubtedly one of them.

A recent survey by anti-racism campaign group HNH showed that nearly three quarters of 16 to 24-year-olds say they had come across content that is either hateful, violent, extremist or terrorist online.

But the offline world is part of the cause too. Dame Sara’s recent report on extremism highlights how issues like immigration or the cost-of-living crisis could create a social climate that makes more people susceptible to extremism.

The public inquiry into the Southport attack could expose the flaws in Prevent’s system of working. The programme was originally created to deal with traditional terrorism and experts suggest that its mechanisms don’t work with the complexities of self-initiated radicalisation based on the internet.

Dr Joe Ondrak, an expert in online radicalisation, pointed out that this is not the only recent case where a perpetrator has followed this path to extremism, saying “Rudakubana and cases like Cameron Finnegan… they are different. But the mechanisms and the ingredients for that kind of radicalisation, they’re picking from the same supermarket shelves of self-initiated radicalisation”.

Al Baker, managing director at Prose Intelligence, an open-source intelligence company that researches extremist activity on Telegram, says it could be “a long overdue rethinking of what our counterterrorism strategy should look like in the age where self-radicalisation is a lot more normal”.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open-source information. Through multimedia storytelling, we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

Donald Trump has officially been sworn in as the forty-seventh President of the United States of America.

Despite a long list of lawsuits, an assassination attempt, and the best efforts of the democrats and their many celebrity backers, Donald swept the US election, winning all swing states and with it the keys to the White House.

A manhunt is under way after a woman was killed in a “targeted” incident in Luton.

Police have begun a murder investigation after being called to Turners Road North around 11.45am on Monday to reports of an altercation.

Emergency services attended, but a 46-year-old woman died in hospital and another woman in her 20s was injured. Detectives say the suspect escaped on a black and red electric scooter.

Bedfordshire Police say they are searching for Jacob Clark, 25, as part of their investigation.

They have described him as “very slim”, around 5ft9 to 5ft10, dressed all in black, with a hood.

“We understand Jacob to have close-cropped hair, which may mean he looks different from the image provided,” said Detective Inspector Adam Bridges.

“It is absolutely imperative that we locate the person responsible as soon as possible,” added DI Bridges.

“This is a murder investigation, and as such I would urge anyone who knows where Jacob is to contact police immediately. If you believe you have seen him, please do not approach him and dial 999 straight away.

“I would like to remind the public that we are treating this as a targeted attack and we are maintaining a high police presence in the area for additional reassurance.”

Read more from Sky News:
Dangerous winds to hit UK
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The scooter used to flee the scene was recovered and people are asked to call 999 and quote Operation Wroxham – or contact Crimestoppers anonymously – if they have information.

An increased police presence is in place at the property and surrounding area, police added.

Watch the moment Donald Trump was left exasperated during a prayer service at Washington National Cathedral as a bishop directly confronted him over LGBT rights and immigration policies.

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde used the interfaith service on Trump’s first full day back in office to make an impassioned plea for mercy towards vulnerable communities.

READ THE FULL STORY

Residents have described their “shock” at waking up to discover an 80ft-long mound of rubbish blocking the only road to their Staffordshire village.

Jeremy and Tammie Roney, who own the Mercia Distillery, were among those blocked in due to the huge, 10ft-high waste pile on Watery Lane, near Curborough.

Speaking to Sky’s Sarah-Jane Mee on The UK Tonight, the couple said the pile was made up of “household waste [and] building waste” – and even included needles.

“It’s quite shocking really,” Mrs Roney said. “You have to see it to believe it. It’s a mixture of different materials.”

The village’s only other access road is currently shut due to roadworks.

The authorities have been “brilliant” and while residents thought the removal process could take a week, they’ve managed to clear the 30-tonne mound of waste in just two days, she added.

Officials are now turning their attention to working out who is responsible for the fly-tipping.

Mr Roney said staff from the council “really went through” the “astonishing” mound of waste in a bid to find any documents or paperwork that could reveal names linked to the incident.

“They had stacks and stacks of paperwork from each area of the tipping so we’re very confident they’ll find somebody,” he said.

More from Sky News:
Southport attacker’s family ‘moved by police’
Manhunt under way after woman’s death

Lichfield District Council believes the waste was dumped in two drop-offs – one at 11pm on Sunday night and a second at 12.45am on Monday.

It is appealing for dashcam footage of two tipper-like lorries caught on CCTV in the area. Anyone with information is being urged to contact the council.

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Sir Keir Starmer has warned that “terrorism has changed” and Britain faces a new kind of threat, as the prime minister addressed the nation over the Southport attack.

A public inquiry was announced on Monday into the murder of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in July, after Axel Rudakubana – then aged 17 – pleaded guilty to the knife attack which sparked a wave of far right-inspired race riots across swathes of the UK.

As legal restrictions protecting the integrity of the trial were lifted, it emerged that Rudakubana – who also admitted producing the deadly poison ricin and posessing an al-Qaeda training manual – had previously been referred three times to the anti-extremism programme Prevent.

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Speaking from Downing Street on Tuesday morning, Sir Keir insisted that Southport must be “a line in the sand for Britain” as he vowed “fundamental change” in how the government protects its citizens.

Warning that the UK faces a new threat from lone individuals fixated by extreme violence seemingly for its own sake, the prime minister strongly indicated that the UK’s longstanding legal definition of terrorism – as requiring an ideological motivation – could be overhauled.

Firmly rejecting claims of a “cover-up” which served to fuel the riots, and addressing the criticism that the Southport attack had not been classed as terrorism, Sir Keir said: “The blunt truth here is that this case is a sign Britain now faces a new threat – terrorism has changed.

“In the past, the predominant threat was highly organised groups with clear political intent, groups like al-Qaeda. That threat, of course, remains.

“But now alongside that we also see acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety. Sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups, but fixated by that extreme violence seemingly for its own sake.”

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Likening such killers to school shooters in America, the prime minister vowed not to wait for the inquiry to conclude before taking action, and unveiled Sir David Anderson KC – formerly the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation – as the new commissioner for Prevent.

Sir David will “hold this system to account” and “shine a light into its darkest corners so the British people can have confidence that action will follow words”, Sir Keir said.

The PM’s remarks echoed those of Sir David’s successor, Jonathan Hall KC – the current terror watchdog – who told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday that Prevent “needs to change because of the internet”.

He said: “Prevent will look at individuals who come across their radar, and then counter-terrorism police will be asking themselves, ‘is this the sort of person who we ought to help, given our terrorism remit?’

“You’ll sometimes get cases where counter-terrorism police will say, ‘ultimately, we just don’t think we can say this guy’s on the trajectory to becoming a terrorist, and so he’s not for us’. The question is, who do they then hand the risk over to?”

Speaking to BBC Radio Wales, journalist Lizzie Dearden – author of Plotters: The UK Terrorists Who Failed – said that officials at Prevent would likely argue that they are constrained by the way that the scheme is built around the UK’s current legal definition of terrorism.

Pointing to the mass shooting in Plymouth in 2021, she said: “That was the deadliest shooting this country had seen since the Dunblane massacre. It wasn’t declared a terrorist attack for the same reason [as Southport].”

Ms Dearden expressed surprise that the government was showing an appetite to take on the thorny task of reviewing the current definition, an issue previously the preserve of “disquiet and mutterings among sections of the police and security infrastructure”.

“Clearly this incident – which I should say is actually part of a much wider pattern, and is not out of the blue or really a suprise to the security services in any way – has clearly been enough to tip that discussion over,” she said.

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In his address, Sir Keir also took aim at social media firms as he warned of further questions about how to protect children from “the tidal wave of violence” online, saying: “You can’t tell me that the material this individual viewed before committing these murders should be available on social media platforms.”

Home secretary Yvette Cooper later told the Commons that the Southport inquiry would also consider the wider challenge of rising youth violence and extremism, warning that she had been “deeply disturbed” at the number of teenagers drawn into extremism and serious violence.

There has been a threefold increase in the number of under-18s investigated over involvement in terrorism in just three years, Ms Cooper said – with 162 people referred to Prevent last year over concerns relating to school massacres.

Ms Cooper said: “So many of our teenagers are being exposed to ever more disturbing materials online – an online ecosystem that is radicalising our children while safety measures are whittled away.”

While prosecutors will set out more details in court on Thursday ahead of Rudakubana’s sentencing about the killer’s online activity, Ms Cooper said the government was already contacting technology companies to ask them to remove dangerous material that he accessed.

“Companies should not be profiting from hosting content that puts children’s lives at risk,” she said.

Revealing that Rudakubana had admitted to having carried a knife more than 10 times, Ms Cooper added: “Yet the action against him was far too weak. And despite the fact he’d been convicted for violence and was just 17, he was easily able to order a knife on Amazon.

“That’s a total disgrace, and it must change. So, we will bring in stronger measures to tackle knife sales online in the Crime and Policing Bill this spring.”