Home news in brief
Families evacuated as landslide casues wall to crumble
Five families were evacuated from their homes in Nottingham after a landslide caused a 70ft-long wall to collapse yesterday. There had been heavy rain in the area at the time. Emergency services rescued the families from four separate properties in Sneinton after their bathrooms and kitchens flooded. A crumbled wall fell inches from the houses as piles of rubble blocked a stairway between the houses. Nottinghamshire Police said no one was injured and evacuees returned to their homes at 6am yesterday.
Teenage killers win bid for lifelong anonymity
Two teenage killers who murdered a vulnerable alcoholic in her home won a High Court bid yesterday to keep their identities secret for life. The girls were aged 13 and 14 when they put 39-year-old Angela
Wrightson through a five-hour ordeal at her Hartlepool home in 2014 while posing for Snapchat selfies. They were handed life sentences at Leeds Crown Court in 2016 and told they must serve a minimum of 15 years behind bars. At the end of the trial, judge Mr Justice Globe refused to lift reporting restrictions preventing the media from identifying the killers, due to their vulnerability. Their anonymity automatically expired when they turned 18, leading their lawyers to ask a High Court judge in October last year to grant them lifelong anonymity.
Chinese state-owned TV network has UK licence revoked
A watchdog has stripped a Chinese network of its licence to broadcast in the UK after an investigation found it is ultimately controlled by the Communist Party. Ofcom announced yesterday that China Global Television Network (CGTN), an international English-language news channel, had broken its guidelines.
UK laws state that broadcast licenses must have control over their service and cannot be controlled by political bodies. Ofcom’s probe found that Star China Media Limited, which holds the UK licence, did not have editorial responsibility for the channel’s output.
An application to transfer the licence to another entity, China Global Television Network Corporation (CGTNC), was denied because “crucial information was missing from the application”, and because the company “is controlled by a body which is ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party”.
Boy who shouted at Whitty has PlayStation confiscated
A teenager who filmed himself shouting abuse at England’s chief medical officer has had his PlayStation taken away by his mother. Professor Chris Whitty was seen in the footage calmly waiting outside a food stall while the 15-year-old boy accused him of “lying” about Covid-19 cases and repeatedly calling him a “liar”.
His mother said she has told her son to make another video apologising to Prof Whitty. Speaking to the MailOnline, she was quoted as saying: “I was horrified when I saw how rude my son was to Mr Whitty. I have taken away his PlayStation, which is the thing he loves the most. I have not grounded him because he is already suffering enough from the lockdown and does not go out as much as he used to,” she said.