A “chance” meeting with strangers on a night out led to the “callous attack” and murder of a young deaf woman in Romford, last summer, by a man nicknamed “Nasty”, a court has heard.

Zahwa Mukhtar, 27, was by herself socialising outside a pub in Stoke Newington Road, Hackney, when she first encountered Duane Owusu, 36, and a group he was with in the early hours of Saturday 16 August 2025.

Within a few hours, Zahwa was dead, having suffered a fatal head injury after being punched in the neck and assaulted by Owusu, who had first thrown her out of a parked car.

Her tragic murder, described as a “senseless killing of a vulnerable young woman” by prosecutor Henrietta Paget KC, was captured on CCTV outside Chadwell House care home, in Romford, and shown to jurors at the Old Bailey on Tuesday.

Owusu, of Althorne Way, Dagenham, denies murder and manslaughter.

Zahwa Mukhtar: killed last year

Ms Paget told the court how Zahwa had gotten into a silver Mercedes with Owusu and four others, including two women, who had driven from a “rave” in another area of Hackney.

Ms Paget said:

The occupants of the vehicle had been drinking and taking drugs, Ms Mukhtar included.

You will hear evidence that she was behaving erratically within the car, flirting with the boys and picking fights with the girls. Nobody knew her, and it appears that her behaviour was causing increasing annoyance.

The group were making their way towards Dagenham with Zahwa sitting on Owusu’s lap in the overcrowded car.

As they neared Chadwell Heath, she began filming with her mobile phone. The footage was brief, Ms Paget explained, but was a “trigger” for Owusu, who had been “agitated and acting aggressively” earlier that night according to one of the group.

Jurors saw roadside CCTV footage of him sucking nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas” from a balloon before the car journey, and were told that Zahwa had popped one of the occupant’s balloons inside the car.

After telling the driver to stop, Owusu threw out her phone before pushing her from the car. She “landed on her backside on the pavement”.

As Zahwa shuffled backwards, the defendant left the car and aimed a kick towards her face and then a second “savage kick towards her head”. One of the group who tried to intervene, a woman, was swung out of the way, leaving Owusu free to deliver the “blow that killed [Zahwa]”.

Ms Paget said Owusu “punched her hard, to the neck, knocking her to the ground where she lay motionless”. She suffered “a fractured skull and fatal brain injury” having fallen backwards.

Instead of helping her, he allegedly got into the car, shouted at others to do the same, and told the driver to drive off, Ms Paget said.

“There was no stopping him”

When Zahwa Mukhtar was attacked, jurors heard Owusu was “so mad there was no stopping him”:

Ms Mukhtar was scared and pleading with him to stop.

A minute later the car returned to the scene in Chadwell Heath Lane, where Zahwa lay motionless, “with headlights illuminating her”. The car stayed for only a few seconds and nobody left it.

The court heard there was a discussion about Zahwa, and helping her, but nobody did.

She was eventually found unresponsive by a police officer at 5.31am on Saturday morning when two separate passersby alerted police to a woman lying in the road. They thought she was either drunk or had fallen asleep. Despite the efforts of the emergency services Zahwa was pronounced dead at the scene less than an hour later.

Before reaching Zahwa, officers had spent 50 minutes with Owusu and the group in the Mercedes nearby after stopping the car on suspicion of drugs at about 4.40am.

Police found nitrous oxide canisters in the boot of the car, a small amount of cannabis in the defendant’s gilet pocket and a “man bag” with a “small bag of white powder in it”. No arrests were made, but officers told the group to find alternative ways home.

While Owusu and the Mercedes driver waited for a taxi, their conversation was picked up by neighbourhood security systems, the court was told.

The case continues

Ms Paget said:

Far from showing any concern for Ms Mukhtar, [Owusu’s] concern was that their presence in the area had come to the attention of the police.

The pair began to blame one another and Owusu “berates” the driver for not being “militant”, calling him “soft” and a “weak link”. In response, Owusu was told he “can’t control his emotions”.

The defendant was arrested for Zahwa Mukhtar’s murder on 17 August 2025 and answered no comment to questions during his interview.

Aspiring accountant, Zahwa, worked as a financial assistant at the Young Vic theatre in the Waterloo area of London. Ms Paget described her in court as “bright, bubbly, enthusiastic and very eager to learn”.

She was deaf in one ear as a result of contracting meningitis at three years old — so she wore a hearing aid — but “coped well and was adept at lip reading” as well as British sign language.

Zahwa, from Hackney, came from a traditional background, but wanted to live like any other young person in their twenties, the court heard.

“She had tattoos, piercings and enjoyed food and travel, and remained close to her siblings, especially her younger sister,” Ms Paget added.

The Old Bailey trial continues.

Featured image via the Canary

Keir Starmer’s Labour party has deselected three Labour councillors and blocked them contesting May’s local elections — punishment for demanding:

an independent inquiry into the election of a paedophile councillor.

When Clare Johnson, one of the three, successfully overturned the centralised deselection, she says the party orchestrated the local branch’s selection vote to ensure she couldn’t stand.

The councillors’ primary crime appears to have been to demand the debate on Labour’s 2023 selection of paedophile Tom Dewey. Party officials already knew, when they confirmed his candidacy, that Dewey had been charged for possessing the “most serious” categories of child-rape images.

Dewey subsequently admitted the offences and was convicted and added to the sex offender register. When local women party members tried to discuss the issue, Labour locked them out of its systems to prevent them.

Dewey was an organiser for right-wing pressure group ‘Labour First’, which supports Keir Starmer and is rabidly pro-Israel. Hackney mayor Philip Glanville was later suspended and forced to step down after images surfaced of him partying with Dewey after Dewey’s arrest.

Starmer is still reeling from his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as his senior adviser — and ambassador to the US — knowing Mandelson had was close to the convicted serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson’s protegee Morgan McSweeney resigned last week as Starmer’s chief of staff in an unsuccessful attempt to take the heat off his boss. And the heat is well deserved. Under Starmer, Labour has a deep and ongoing paedophile and sex offender problem.

Starmer followed his Mandelson fiasco with another ‘Labour nonceberg’ scandal over his decision to award a peerage to his former adviser Matthew Doyle. Starmer knew, when he recommended Doyle, that Doyle had campaigned for the election of notorious Scottish Labour paedophile Sean Morton.

Earlier this month, female MPs complained to Starmer that Labour is now known as a party of paedophiles — without mentioning the victims. Labour’s ‘white feminists‘ have routinely ignored the plight of victims. Meanwhile, Starmer’s record as Labour leader is an appalling continuation of the impunity of celebrity paedophiles when he ran the CPS.

Diagnostic

As well as the cases of Mandelson and Doyle/Morton, Starmer:

This issue is so endemic among Starmer’s right-wing, pro-Israel faction as to be basically diagnostic:

Sacked whistleblower

Perhaps most seriously, Starmer and his then-sidekick David Evans covered up Jewish whistleblower Elaina Cohen’s allegations of serial abuse of women by a party staffer.

Cohen repeatedly warned Starmer and Evans that a staffer working for then-Perry Barr MP Khalid Mahmood — and allegedly Mahmood’s lover — was engaged in ‘sadistic’ and ‘criminal’ abuse of vulnerable Muslim women. The victims were fleeing domestic violence, allegedly inflicted through the now-defunct domestic violence ‘charity’ that she ran. Starmer and Evans did nothing. Mahmood remained on Starmer’s front bench and Cohen was sacked from her role as parliamentary aide.

One of the victims gave evidence at Cohen’s successful wrongful dismissal tribunal. She spoke of the horrific abuse she and others  suffered. This included blackmail and sexual exploitation. Her evidence was not challenged by Mahmood or his lawyers. At the tribunal, Mahmood admitted under oath that he’d personally made sure that Starmer was aware of Cohen’s allegations.

Labour’s sex offender problem is mountainous, as is Starmer’s protection of them and his contempt for their victims. All of this has been almost entirely ignored by ‘mainstream’ media.

For more on the Epstein Files, please read the Canary’s article on how the media circus around Epstein is erasing the experiences of victims and survivors.

Featured image via the Canary

(Illustration by Tracy Worrall)

6 min read4 hr

Donald Trump says they are for “losers”, Kemi Badenoch thinks they are destroying jobs and Nigel Farage says he will put the whole lot in the bin.

But not every critic of the government’s commitment to decarbonise the UK’s electricity supply – heavily reliant on wind farms – is on the right. Tony Blair, or at least the institute that bears his name, is among those calling for a rethink.

In October, the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) issued a report calling on the government to “reform” its 2030 green power target – arguing that when the target was established it was “right for its time but circumstances have changed”.

Speaking to The House, TBI senior policy adviser on climate and energy policy Tone Langengen, who authored the report, says the Clean Power 2030 target “will not be met” and that it would be “damaging to try to meet it”.

“What the voters will care about the most is lower energy bills, and that is basically the way that you maintain consent for net-zero,” says Langengen.

“And secondly, the real challenge for the UK is not the supply side… The problem is the demand side. It is the electrification challenge.”

The Warm Homes Plan was, she says, “an important step in the right direction, because it’s starting to focus on how you actually electrify homes. But I am afraid that having a mission towards clean power, you could risk doing the opposite of lowering bills.”

The analyst adds that it is “more important that the transition is done right” and “where you bring the public along with you” instead of prioritising meeting the target as rapidly as possible.

The government has already watered down some pledges on green power, over concerns about achievability and desirability from the sector. Ahead of the 2024 election, Labour said it was committed to the 2030 target to phase out the sale of new, combustible vehicles in the UK. But the government has already made significant concessions in this area – with its election pledge on sticking to the phasing out of the sale of new combustible vehicles by 2030 partially abandoned.

In April, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander in a ministerial statement said: “In our manifesto, we promised to reimplement the phase-out of all new cars powered solely by internal combustion engines from 2030, restoring the certainty that has been sorely lacking. This response finalises that intention, confirming that from 2030 all new cars will need to be hybridised in some manner – or be zero emission. From 2035, all new cars and vans will be zero emission, and everything we do must now support manufacturers in reaching that end point.”

The UK is not alone in a shift on EVs, with the European Commission announcing a more substantial watering down of its electrical vehicles target than the UK. It declared in December that 90 per cent of new cars sold from 2035 would be required to be zero-emission – instead of 100 per cent.

Langengen is far from alone in her scepticism that the government will be able to meet its targets. Adam Berman, director of policy and advocacy at Energy UK, tells The House that while the clean power mission has “really focused minds within Whitehall” and “accelerated the pace” of the rollout of green infrastructure, it is unclear whether the 2030 target will be met – or should be met – from a practical perspective.

The 2030 target was always a political target – it wasn’t necessarily rooted in the engineering of the energy system

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“We’ve got a hell of a lot further with the target than without the target, and it has meant they have removed blockages to planning and permitting,” Berman says.

“They have accelerated the pace of the rollout of generation infrastructure and network infrastructure. They have really put a lot of effort into moving faster than we ever would have otherwise – and so credit where credit is due there.

“I genuinely do think that there is a question as to what we do now; which is that the 2030 target was always a political target – it wasn’t necessarily rooted in the engineering of the energy system, or what was best for emissions. It was an eye-catching political target.”

Berman tells The House that “squeezing the last bit of gas out of the electricity system is probably less preferential than really focusing your energies on: how can you maximise the potential of a clean power we have now built?”.

“There is a moment now for the government to consider how can they pivot from really accelerating the ramp-up of clean power infrastructure – which they’ve done really well – to now prioritising thinking about how to actually use that infrastructure to decarbonise the rest of the economy and to bring bills down where they can,” says Berman.

Despite uncertainty about the achievability of the clean power target among stakeholders, a source close to Energy Secretary Ed Miliband tells The House the government remains committed to achieving clean power by 2030, pointing to decisions in planning and a recent successful renewable bidding auction as proof.

“We’re on track to clean power by 2030. We just had this massively successful offshore renewable auction last week where people expected us to get four or five gigawatts of power – we ended up getting eight,” they say.

“We’re massively going gangbusters on that, and at the same time something like two-thirds of all planning consents that have been made under this government have been made in Desnz [the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero].”

The source adds that while they accept the clean power by 2030 target is “very restricting”, the government is “confident” that it is on the right track to meet it.

“We feel that in the next year, you’ll begin to see projects being built because of planning decisions we’ve made and because of the procurements we’ve done that actually give us a really good chance of reaching the target,” they say.

“We’re really committed to it, we think that it’s the right thing to do, and we think we’re going to do it – and we’re feeling quite confident about it.”

A government spokesperson tells The House: “We are on track to deliver clean power by 2030, as shown by our recent record offshore wind auction, which secured enough clean energy to power the equivalent of over 12 million homes.

“Our clean power mission will protect household energy bills from volatile fossil fuel markets, drive clean energy investment and create thousands of jobs around the country.”

The more upbeat sentiment on reaching the targets is shared by Shaun Spiers, chief executive of Green Alliance, who tells The House it is important that the government remains committed to the 2030 clean power target.

“It seems to be pretty well on track, and the reason for going for it hasn’t changed: which was basically to drive energy security… lower costs in the long run, but also get us off the rollercoaster of dependence on fossil fuels,” says Spiers.

“With Donald Trump behaving so erratically, you really don’t want to be dependent on international gas prices – you don’t want to be dependent on imports of liquefied natural gas from the States. The quicker we can get to energy independence – clean power, energy independence – the better.” 

3 min read3 hr

A luxury we can only afford to improve if we achieve economic growth. A service for which we must make so-called “tough choices” and perhaps cut to make it more affordable.

I believe that this way of thinking is entirely back-to-front. Far from being a national luxury only afforded to a growing economy, our community mental health and social care services are key investments that create the very growth this government claims to seek. Paying to keep our people healthy is what saves us from the much greater costs of a society without quality healthcare for all.

When people get ill and need hospital treatment, we rightly focus on the personal impact that has on them and their family and the medical care they receive. But that can mean we overlook the impact on the wider community and the economy. When people become unwell over the long term, that means they can fall out of the workforce, they can struggle to pay bills, rent or their mortgage. They may come to rely on family members or state support to get by. It may have a knock-on effect and require families to reduce their hours or leave paid employment in order to provide care work to their loved one.

Without adequate support, what might have been a small or short-term financial difficulty for a family can escalate into major economic harm.

In Winchester, we’ve seen how much difference it makes when we join the dots properly. At Melbury Lodge, our local mental health hospital run by Hampshire & Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, staff work in partnership with Citizens Advice Winchester District to help inpatients manage their finances and practical affairs while they’re still in hospital. That means when someone is finally well enough to be discharged, they don’t go home to a pile of unopened bills, eviction notices or court letters they were in no state to deal with.

The project has now helped around 600 people across Hampshire, preparing them for life in the community, free from the stressors that had been impacting their mental health. The main advice areas were around finance and housing, but the holistic service provided by Citizens Advice meant people could address a wide range of issues affecting their lives.

The research on this project found that for every £1 spent, around £14 was saved for the hospital Trust largely from shorter lengths of stay, fewer readmissions, reduced medication and better engagement in community services. With this incredible return on investment, a service like this should stop being thought of as a luxury that would be unaffordable to fund publicly. It’s smart, evidence-driven policy that also treats people like human beings – and provides good value for public finances.

This government has been desperate to find economic growth under the difficult economic circumstances left to them by the Conservatives – limiting their ability to spend or borrow.

That’s why I believe we need to boost ‘Spend to Save’ solutions just like this, which both generate a strong economic return for the economy and do so while following a more affordable cost path than the alternative of allowing people to fall further into debt and economic hardship.

Debt and in-work poverty ruins lives. It saps the joy from life, puts strain on relationships, and contributes towards our growing economic and mental health crises. But by supporting initiatives like this across the country, we can begin to tackle both crises together.

According to a recent academic study, the Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip does not stop at mass murder and the destruction of infrastructure, but extends – according to American researcher Henry A. Giroux – to the systematic targeting of education, culture, collective memory and Palestinian identity.

In his study entitled “Scholasticide: Waging War on Education from Gaza to the West,‘ published in the Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, Giroux proposes the concept of ’scholasticide” as an analytical framework for understanding war as a structural project that is not limited to physical destruction, but also targets the intellectual and cultural foundations of Palestinian society.

Israel is targeting the conditions for survival in Gaza

The study argues that military operations are not isolated events or incidental consequences of the conflict, but part of an integrated process that strikes at the conditions for the survival of society, including the institutions that produce and transmit knowledge: schools, universities, libraries, museums, and cultural centres.

Giroux writes:

War crimes do more than destroy bodies; they erode morality, memories, and the deeply rooted habits of public consciousness. The brutality of Israel’s military actions in Gaza is painfully evident in the images of children’s bodies, torn apart amidst bombed mosques, hospitals, and schools.

His work ties the destruction of Gaza – in all its many facets – with the broader aim of Israel normalising such destruction. That normalisation comes in the form of arrests, house demolitions, widespread bombing and the targeting of civilian facilities, including schools and hospitals, are presented, according to his analysis, as routine measures or security necessities, creating a cultural and ethical climate that accepts and reproduces oppression.

He also points out that any attempt to document violations or legally characterise them as war crimes is met with smear campaigns and ready-made accusations, which negatively affects freedom of expression, especially in the academic sphere:

The ideological assault on free speech and academic freedom lays the groundwork for the physical destruction of institutions essential to critical education as a practice of freedom and liberation

Figures reveal the extent of educational losses

The study is based on UN and human rights reports that point to widespread destruction in the education sector, including:

• A large proportion of schools in the Gaza Strip have been damaged.
• All universities in the Strip have been bombed or vandalised, resulting in the suspension of studies for tens of thousands of students.
• Large numbers of students, teachers and university professors have been killed or injured.

Giroux believes that these facts cannot be interpreted as collateral damage, but rather as part of a policy that effectively undermines the knowledge structure of society and threatens its ability to recover.

Definition of ‘cultural genocide’

Giroux defines cultural genocide as the systematic destruction of education, culture and intellectual infrastructure with the aim of erasing collective memory and preventing society from producing and transmitting knowledge. This process includes:

• The destruction of educational institutions, archives and libraries.
• Killing or displacing teachers and intellectuals.
• Targeting cultural and historical sites.

He adds that this pattern is not limited to the Palestinian context, but extends, according to his analysis, to universities in the United States and Europe, where controversy over freedom of expression and the punishment of academics and students for their political positions is growing, reflecting, in his view, a broader crisis in the independence of education.

Focus on children

The study pays particular attention to children, arguing that depriving them of education in the aftermath of war has profound psychological and social consequences. Giroux describes this impact as ‘slow violence’ because it does not immediately manifest itself in images of destruction, but leaves long-lasting scars on the fabric of society and its hope for the future.

The study also addresses the relationship between some Israeli universities and the military establishment and security industries, arguing that this entanglement contributes to the transformation of knowledge into a tool that serves the military system and influences the nature of the academic discourse produced about the conflict.

A global test of the meaning of education

Giroux concludes that what is happening in Gaza is no longer a local issue, but has become a global test of the value of education and human rights. When schools are targeted and the right to education is undermined, the question becomes broader than geography: what is the meaning of justice if the very conditions of knowledge are destroyed?

He emphasises that defending education and freedom of research is not a narrow political position, but a moral obligation to protect the future of societies, warning that silence on the destruction of knowledge could open the door to a world reshaped on the foundations of oppression and ignorance rather than justice and human dignity.

Featured image via the Canary

The neoliberal system leaves 40 percent of Britons with less than £25 at the end of each week, a survey by the Cost of Living Action (COLA) group has found. This is pittance and unlikely to stretch far under the cost of living crisis, where even employed people are finding themselves out of pocket.

Manufactured cost of living crisis

Privatised essentials like energy and extractive supermarket chains are driving the cost of living crisis. British Energy companies alone have accrued £125 billion since 2020, according to the End Fuel Poverty Coalition.

Meanwhile, profits for the German-owned supermarket, Lidl, rose by 297% since 2021. As for Aldi, its operating profit has risen by 50% and 72% since 2020.

While costs have increased due to climate change and other factors, supermarkets are using these  pressures to break even but to fatten profit margins — otherwise known as ‘greedflation’.

In other words, the fuel feeding the cost of living fire is the ‘privatisation tax’ on common essentials — not a natural disaster but a manmade problem.

Public ownership

A publicly owned Green New Deal could tackle the cost of energy. Just 1.2% of the Sahara Desert would be necessary to power the entire world’s energy needs. Solar is gradually replacing oil because of cheaper costs. It does not appear to be happening fast enough to mitigate climate catastrophe.

Plus, energy is an essential service that would be cheaper under public ownership.

What’s more, non-profit supermarkets could dramatically lower the cost of food and alleviate the pinch for ordinary Brits.

Holistic approach

Speaking about the latest survey, Labour MP Yuan Yang, co-convenor of the Living Standards Coalition, articulated the need for a holistic (all hands to the pump) approach.

The Cost of Living Action campaign has identified a critical challenge for those of us in Westminster to grapple with: that we need a holistic approach in order to create growth while tackling the cost of living crisis. As their campaign has correctly identified, this approach requires increasing incomes, reducing costs, and fairer taxation.

Conor O’Shea, campaign coordinator of COLA, spoke of the grating impact of these inflationary pressures on British society.

Millions of people are struggling with sky-high costs, and left in debt or with next to nothing left after paying bills each month. It’s no wonder people are feeling so worried and angry. The government must deliver transformational change that truly responds to the scale of the crisis. That means making the essentials affordable for everyone, ensuring everyone has access to the income they need to live well, and rebalancing the tax system with more and better taxes on wealth.

If these issues are not tackled at the root, Brits will have to tighten their belts — as if they haven’t done exactly that over the past decade.

Featured image via Unsplash/the Canary 

The rate of people not in employment in the UK has risen further to 5.2%, according to new figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). With that in mind, it’s clear why 82% of the UK supports an economic package that includes a Job Guarantee, polling from the Lancet shows. These new figures highlight the ongoing issue of UK unemployment.

Unemployment rises to its highest level yet

Labour’s unemployment crisis is impacting young people the most. More than 1 in 6 people aged 16-24 are unemployed — the highest level in a decade. Overall, the number of people not in employment stands at 1.88 million.

But that’s not the full picture. Another 9.4 million people are economically inactive — meaning they haven’t looked for a job in three months.

At the same time, there are only 734,000 job vacancies. And that’s before one considers if people have the skills for the job. It exposes the flaws in the government’s neoliberal outlook — the view that the market automatically solves everything doesn’t stack up.

This comes into sharper focus when considering 22% of Brits work a 60 hours of more a week, while millions don’t have a job.

Job Guarantee, the solution?

A Job Guarantee could be the solution to a disorganised labour market. To avoid some people doing no work, while almost one in four do 60+ hours, roles could be shared. Previous Canary analysis found that if everyone of working age dedicated just five hours a week to public sector work that would cover the lot.

To be sure, 46% of public sector jobs are specialist that require skills like doctors or firemen. But the five hour figure shows that people could do a small amount of work a week to cover the public sector as it currently stands — which would ease unemployment rates.

Free university training should simultaneously deliver the skills for a strategic jobs of the future such as automation and AI. It doesn’t mean forcing people into roles but finding the balance between a liberal approach and covering necessary roles. Higher pay packets could encourage people into positions that are strategic for the economy.

Meanwhile, a private market of small to medium size businesses should run parallel.

A Job Guarantee could ensure a modern work-life balance while scaling down damaging and unnecessary production, which 82% of the UK also supports, according to Lancet polling.

Featured image via the Unsplash/the Canary