House fire parents on murder charge

The parents of six children killed in a house fire are due back in court charged with their murder.

Mick Philpott, 55, and his wife Mairead, 31, will appear at Nottingham Crown Court charged with murder following the blaze at the house on Victory Road in Allenton, Derby, on May 11.

Jade Philpott, 10, and brothers John, nine, Jack, eight, Jessie, six and Jayden, five, all died in the fire. Duwayne, 13, died in Birmingham Children's Hospital two days later.

Mr and Mrs Philpott will not be attending the funeral service for the six children to be held on Friday in Derby, church officials have said.

In a statement issued to local media, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nottingham confirmed the funeral service would be followed by burials at Derby's Nottingham Road Cemetery.

Father Alan Burbidge, the family priest who will be conducting the service, said the funeral will take place at St Mary's Catholic Church at 11am.

"The family have chosen that church as a venue because they are Catholic children and they wanted a full Requiem Mass in a Catholic church," he added.

The Prison Service has not confirmed whether Mr and Mrs Philpott applied for leave to attend the funeral but said a risk assessment would be carried out if an application was made.

A spokeswoman said: "We do not comment on the movements of individual prisoners. Prisoners can apply for escorted visits to attend the funeral of a close relative, but it will always be subject to a strict risk assessment."

Mr and Mrs Philpott, who are in custody, will appear for a preliminary hearing at Nottingham Crown Court later today.

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Pc to face Tomlinson death charge

The trial of a police officer accused of killing newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests in central London is due to begin.

Pc Simon Harwood, 41, is set to appear at Southwark Crown Court accused of Mr Tomlinson's manslaughter during the demonstrations in April 2009.

The 47-year-old, who was homeless, collapsed and died near the Royal Exchange Buildings in the City of London after being hit with a police baton.

He was caught on CCTV and in film captured by police and members of the public falling to the ground and then staggering away.

Mr Tomlinson eventually collapsed and died minutes later.

Father-of-two Harwood, from Carshalton, Surrey, denies manslaughter.

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Special Report: Mob Justice In South Africa

Sky News has obtained disturbing footage of township vigilantes brutally beating suspected criminals in South Africa.

The "punishments", which often result in death, are regular occurrences in the impoverished townships across South Africa.

South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world and those in townships are taking matters into their own hands - despite police calls to hold back.
We visited Diepsloot, a sprawling township on the northern edge of Johannesburg.

Here, all the residents we met spoke of the high crime rate coupled with the apparent inability of the police to deal with cases.

Many preferred to turn to the community thugs to sort out their problems rather than rely on the police.

And we were shown incident after incident, recorded on mobile phones or cameras, which demonstrated just how the "community" dished out their punishments.

In one incident, a man from Malawi is seen naked and bleeding, sitting in the centre of a pack of men, as the camera is recording everything.

The men around him are clearly holding sticks, some have stones and others have bricks in their hands.

The man is pelted with rocks which bounce off his head and his bare back.

He is kicked and whipped and when he tries to run away, he's felled and yet more stones are thrown at him.

They leave him to recover and then he's hauled in front of the mob again only to be beaten further.

At one stage you can see two women whipping him - deliberately aiming for his genitalia as the crowd yells encouragement to them.

He had been found with a gun on him and in Diepsloot that is interpreted in only one way: you're a criminal and up to no good.

The man pleads and begs for his life. You see him repeatedly shake his head as the vigilantes shout questions at him. "No, no," he is saying.

The footage goes on for 20 minutes. His torture probably went on for a lot longer.

Witnesses tell us he has lost consciousness by the time the police and medics arrive and he dies in hospital.

I ask several of the residents if they agree with this form of "justice". They all do, to every man and woman we ask.

Bessie Tsimo is 47 with six children. "If someone broke into your house or attacked you, who would you call," I ask her.

"The community would come," she says. "And you would want that?" I ask.

"Yes, I support it," she says. "Because if the police arrest them, they will only be freed and then they may come back to hunt me. But if I blow my whistle, the community will come and deal with them."
We manage to track down some of those who've been beaten but managed to escape after neighbours intervened.

Mary sobbed telling me how she and her friends had broken into a shack store and stolen food. "We were hungry and desperate," she said.

A crowd of about fifty at first came to their shack and found them eating some of their stolen goods.

"They said we had to be punished. And I thought well, this is my punishment. I must just accept it," she said.

I asked what they did. "Kicking....others using hands, using sticks, others pouring water on your body. So there's nothing you can do," she said.

"You just tell yourself, I'm dying."

She and her female friend and two men were beaten and hit for about four hours they say before members of the unofficial, self-appointed community "police" intervened.
Morris Manarhela was the head of the group who saved them. He has taken the group with their assorted children (about half a dozen) to camp in a shack near his.
"I will protect them. If the mob come again I will hear the screams and come and save them with my friends," he says.

It is rough brutal justice but for those in Diepsloot, it is justice they don't feel they can get elsewhere.

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CCTV: Woman underground worker is pushed onto live tracks (before attacker is punched in face by incensed passenger)

It is a shocking scene which could so easily have ended in tragedy.

This extraordinary CCTV footage was captured from a Metro track in St Petersburg, Russia.

It shows passenger Yevgeny Borodin arguing with a female worker, which, at first, appears under control.

But nobody could have predicted what happened next.

As the argument escalates, Mr Borodin suddenly pushes the woman onto the live tracks.

She can be seen falling slowly back onto the rail lines - just seconds before a train was due to arrive at the platform.

The shocking incident clearly infuriates another passenger - as he lands an enormous punch onto Mr Borodin's face.

The passenger who attacked Mr Borodin then goes back to the track to help the woman, who manages to clamber herself up with the help of the man.

After checking that she is not injured, the passenger, who is clearly still furious, decides to chase after Mr Borodin who attempted to escape.

Thankfully, Mr Borodin was caught and is now facing jail.

He is being interviewed by detectives over attempted murder and GBH charges.

A man who witnessed the attack after hearing the shouting said: 'I was standing quite a way away at the other end of the platform. There was a heated debate going on and three people standing there including the metro employee.

'It was getting more and more heated, I could hear them shouting at each other but I didn't know what it was about - and then a man suddenly pushed her onto the tracks.

'Really hard - there was no way she could have saved herself. The other man then thumped the attacker in the head before helping the woman back onto the platform.

'Everything happened so quickly. I often see fights on public transport or on the streets here but I have never witnessed something so horrific. He could have killed her.

'Right after he pushed her a train came into the platform, if it had been a second later the woman would have been run over by the train and died. She was shaken and clearly groggy but lucky to be alive.'

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Woman, 24, admits leaving one-year-old to drown in a bath while she spent 45 minutes drinking with a neighbour

Danielle Reeves, 24, from Caterham, Surrey accepted she consumed some wine but said she 'wasn't drunk'

A woman has admitted letting a toddler drown in a bath by leaving him alone while she had a 45-minute drink with a friend.

Danielle Reeves, 24, had been looking after the one-year-old boy at a house in Surrey.

She admitted a charge of manslaughter after dramatically changing her plea when she appeared before a judge at Guildford Crown Court.

Her voice trembled as she stated 'guilty' after her barrister had asked for the charge to be put to her again.

The judge ordered reports to be compiled on Reeves by the Probation Service and a psychiatrist before he sentences her later this summer.

Emergency services were called to a house in September last year after the boy was found lifeless in the water.

Police arrested the defendant amid suspicions she had been drinking at the time.

She initially denied the allegations against her but admitted she was to blame when she appeared in the dock.

Judge Christopher Critchlow was briefly told that Reeves was making her admission on the basis that she had left the youngster for around three-quarters of an hour and had been talking to a neighbour and that the boy was just out of sight.

She also accepted she consumed some wine but 'wasn’t drunk.'

The guilt was on the basis of 'gross negligence,' the court was told.

'She has attended court today in full knowledge that she was going to enter a plea to this serious charge,' she said.

'She’s aware that a sentence for a case such as this is likely to be a sentence of immediate imprisonment.'

She added that her client’s appointments with probationers and psychiatrists would be much easier to carry out on bail rather than in prison.

Judge Critchlow agreed to postpone the sentencing and told the defence and prosecuting counsel, Ruby Selva, that he would deal with the matter on July 30.

He re-admitted Reeves, of Stirling Drive, Caterham, Surrey, to bail on the same conditions as previously - a night time curfew, electronic tagging and that she does not go within 400 metres of a specific address in Redhill, Surrey or contact or attempt to contact prosecution witnesses.

He added a further requirement, that she comply with the Probation Service in preparing the report.

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Girls as young as 11 'expect' to perform sex acts on rows of boys for 2 hours in some parts of Britain, shocking child abuse report finds

Horrendous: Thousands of children the country are being sexually exploited, stunned MPs were told today (picture posed by model)

Girls as young as 11 'expect' to have to perform sex acts on rows of boys for up to two hours at a time in parts of London, a watchdog said as they warned child abuse is rife across Britain.

Deputy Children’s Commissioner Sue Berelowitz said there 'isn’t a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited'.

In one vile abuse case she uncovered, boys aged 14 and 15 were 'summoned' via BlackBerry Messenger to the gang rape of a 'very, very young girl' which lasted several days.

She told MPs today: 'Boys were being called while some were raping the girl to say "come, come, come, you can join in too" and they were arriving and elbowing each other out of the way to rape her.'

Ms Berelowitz said the recent sex abuse case in Rochdale - which involved mostly men of Pakistani origin abusing white girls - was just part of a wider picture of exploitation involving victims and abusers of all races and cultures.

Giving evidence to the Commons home affairs committee, she said: 'What I am uncovering is that sexual exploitation of children is happening all over the country.
'As one police officer who was the lead in a very big investigation in a very lovely, leafy, rural part of the country said to me: "there isn’t a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited".

'The evidence that has come to the fore during the course of my inquiry is that that, unfortunately, appears to be the case.

'We should start from the assumption that children are being sexually exploited right the way across the country.

'In urban, rural and metropolitan areas, I have hard evidence of children being sexually exploited. That is part of what is going on in some parts of our country. It is very sadistic, it is very violent it is very ugly.'

Her report into the scale of child abuse is due out in September.

Giving examples from the capital, she said: 'There are parts of London where certainly children expect to have to perform oral sex on line-ups of boys, up to two hours at a time from the age of 11.

And it was 'quite common' for girls to be lured via internet chat rooms to meet a friend, only to be met by a group of boys and gang raped in a park.
'Then another group of boys come, they take her to another part of the park and she is serially raped again,' Ms Berelowitz told MPs.

'I wish I could say to you that such things are uncommon but I’m afraid they are quite common.'

In the Rochdale case, nine Muslim men, mainly of Pakistani origin, were found guilty of plying girls as young as 13 with drink and drugs so they could use them for sex.

Horror: Children are being targeted on Facebook - and in one instance word of a gang rape was spread by BlackBerry messenger

But while it may be true that some Pakistani men saw white girls as 'easy meat' - as suggested by a number of high-profile politicians - that was only one pattern among many, she said.

'I regret to say that there are parts of every single community - white, Pakistani, Afghan, Gypsy and Romany travellers, you name it - who are seeing children as easy access in terms of sexual exploitation. And in terms of victims we are seeing the same sort of profile.'

Ethnic minority victims were 'too often missed out'.

The deputy commissioner told the visibly-stunned MPs that 'what is being done is so terrible that people need to lay aside their denial' or risk victims being disbelieved.

Victims numbered in the thousands not the hundreds, she said.

She said she was 'extremely concerned' about the role being played by the internet in enabling and fuelling abuse, and ridiculed the idea that parents could prevent access.


Young people were acting out scenes they saw in online pornography and even organising abuse via social networking sites and messaging systems, she said.

One police force showed her a list of more than 1,000 girls aged between 12 and 14 whom a man in his 40s masquerading as a boy had managed to make his 'friends' on Facebook.

'We have gathered quite a lot of evidence to show that there is no doubt that social networking sites can be a source of real problems for this,' she said.
She said easy access to extreme pornography was a particular concern.

'We’ve had boys say to us - some of the boys I’ve spoken to who’ve been involved in sexual exploitation - "it was like being in a porn movie".
'They have watched things and then they’ve enacted them.

'Parents may think they can control what’s going on because they can have a blockage on the computer but the reality is children can get anything they like on their mobile phones.

'And they are. It has definitely affected children’s thresholds of what they think is normal.'

In another case, older men were using young male gang members as a 'front line' in a wider abuse network, and had even forced two of the boys to have sex and filmed it on a mobile phone to ensure their compliance.

Speaking about the race issue, she told the committee she had visited a 'racist' estate in the north of England where there was routine sexual abuse of children within an all-white community.

'I have been to gang-associated areas in the north of England.

'I am thinking of one particular estate which is exclusively white, because it is such a racist estate, where there is a very strong and identified pattern of the white males on that estate sexually exploiting the white females on that estate.

'So it is really important to hold all of it in mind.

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Girl, 14, 'groomed and raped at drugs den by gang of men who treated her with contempt'

Mohammed Suleman Farooq (left), 22, denies sexual assault, engaging in sexual activity with a child and witness intimidation. Also pictured are Omar Mazafar (centre) and Mohammed Zishan Amjad, arriving at Burnley Crown Court

A 14-year-old girl was repeatedly raped at a drug den by a gang of men who treated her with 'indignity and contempt', a jury has heard.

The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was taken to the house in Brierfield, Lancashire, and allegedly passed around for their sexual gratification.

The 'principal defendant', Mohammed Imran Amjad, 25, bore the 'greatest responsibility for the corruption and abuse of the victim in this case', said the Crown Prosecution Service.

He befriended the girl when she was 12 or 13 and frequently took her for drives in his cars, it is alleged.

Prosecutor Alaric Bassano told Burnley Crown Court: 'It was him who took her on many occasions to the house and him who assisted, encouraged and incited others to rape and sexually assault this girl.

'On one occasion, he raped the girl himself. Over a period of time he subdued her will and coerced her into submission.'

He said three other men raped her and one man subjected her to a sexual assault.

The alleged victim was about 12, the prosecutor said, when her general behaviour deteriorated.

She could be aggressive, disobedient towards her mother, refusing to go to school and staying out late at night, he added.

The girl told police that her mobile telephone number was given to Imran Amjad, known to her as 'Immy', by another, and he called to ask to meet up.


She first met up with him when she was aged 13 and was driven around the streets of Burnley in his car every few days, she said.
Her mother became concerned she spent so much time in his company and confronted him.

Mr Bassano said the defendant’s response typified his 'arrogance', which he said would emerge in the trial.

He said: 'When she told him about her age, and when she advanced her accusation that he was involved in an inappropriate relationship with her, he simply shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

'It is to be noted that he did not deny the allegation.'

Her mother contacted the police in December 2009 to report her concerns about her daughter’s welfare at the hands of 'Immy', he said.

Mr Bassano said the girl made no complaint at the time and continued to mix with Immy who, undeterred, went on to commit the numerous offences against her in 2010.

All six defendants are from Brierfield.

Imran Amjad denies abducting a child, rape, engaging in sexual activity with a child, aiding and abetting rape, and witness intimidation.
He is also accused of intentionally encouraging or assisting the rape of the girl by a man known as 'Saj'.

Haroon Mahmood, 22, denies rape and engaging in sexual activity with a child.

Mohammed Zishan Amjad, 24, also denies rape and engaging in sexual activity with a child.

Mohammed Suleman Farooq, 22, denies sexual assault, engaging in sexual activity with a child and witness intimidation.
Shiraz Afzal, 25, and Omar Mazafar, 21, both deny aiding and abetting rape.

All the sexual offences are said to have been committed between April and October 2010.

In summary, Mr Bassano said: 'This case concerns the sexual exploitation and abuse of a 14-year-old girl. A number of men were involved in this abuse which involved planning and, on occasions, offenders acting together.

'The girl was groomed over a period of time and on many occasions she was taken to a house in Brierfield.

'That house was used as a den at which young men attended and brought or invited girls and young women in order to drink alcohol, take drugs and engage in sex.

'It was to this house that the girl was taken and at this house where she was sexually assaulted and raped by several adult males.

'During these times the girl was being passed between the men to be used for their own sexual gratification. The Crown contends that this girl was treated with indignity and contempt by them.

'All six defendants were involved, to a greater or lesser extent, in this sexual abuse.'

The trial, expected to last six weeks, continues.

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Nigeria's Bayero University in Kano Attack - 6 Killed

At least six people have been killed in a gun and bomb attack at a university in Nigeria's northern city of Kano, witnesses and police said.

A bomb squad and military units are searching for the gunmen who mounted the attack at Bayero University.

Reports suggest the violence may have targeted Christian students who were holding a religious service in one of the lecture theatres.

An army spokesman said several wounded people had been taken to hospital.

Lt Iweha Ikedichi told the Associated Press news agency: "There were casualties, but I don't have exact figures. Some have been rushed to local hospitals."

He said soldiers and police had surrounded the university and were searching for the gunmen.

The AFP news agency said its reporter had counted six bodies at the university, and local police said the death toll could be higher.

No group has said it launched the attack, but the Islamist militant Boko Haram group is active in Kano.

Boko Haram carried out a bombing in Kano in January that killed about 150 people, its deadliest attack to date.

Nigeria's central government has struggled to contain the militant group, which operates mainly in the predominantly Muslim north, but has also struck as far south as the capital, Abuja.

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