Inayat Bunglawala was born in northwest England, speaks English as his native language and only once visited his ancestral homeland, India. That makes him bridle at a proposal being floated in the government to start calling him Indian-British to strengthen his bond to Britain.
The chase to sign England striker Michael Owen is hotting up after Real Madrid revealed that both Manchester United and Newcastle United have joined the list of clubs expressing an interest. However, Manchester United have denied they are set to sign the former Liverpool star who appears on his way out of Real after just one season.
Doctors fear that the identity of a mysterious mute pianist found wandering on an English beach in April might never be known, a British newspaper reported on Monday. ”We have discounted a lot of the names and continue to look at those which remain. But there is no obvious lead,” said an official at the Little Brook Hospital in Dartford, Kent.
Haroon Aswat, a Briton apprehended in Zambia two weeks ago reportedly wanted in connection with last month’s deadly bomb attacks in London, was arrested on his arrival in Britain on Sunday after being deported from Lusaka, Scotland Yard announced. Aswat was deported — and not extradited — to Britain from Zambia.
Free from the British detention centre where he had been on the brink of despair, a Zimbabwean asylum seeker has £10 () to his name — not enough for the train fare needed to report to immigration officers, which could mean another trip back to detention.
Saudi Arabia officially warned Britain of an imminent terrorist attack on London just weeks ahead of the 7 July bombings after calls from one of al-Qaeda’s most wanted operatives were traced to an active cell in the United Kingdom. The Saudi official said: ”It was clear to us that there was a terror group planning an attack in the UK.”
Coach Jose Mourinho has backed Peter Kenyon after the Chelsea chief executive’s comments that the club would comfortably defend their Premiership title this season. Kenyon was accused of arrogance after he said that the wealthy London side had no realistic rivals for the title.
Colin Montgomerie has not given up hope of competing in next week’s United States PGA championships despite sustaining a hand injury that forced him to withdraw from the Johnnie Walker tournament at Gleneagles. The big Scot bruised three fingers in hitting what he called ”one of the worst shots I’ve ever hit”.
Human rights experts and a radical Islamic group have blasted a raft of new powers to combat terrorism in Britain unveiled by Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday, while mainstream Muslims applauded them. The measures include the banning of certain hard-line Islamic groups.
Failed asylum seekers in the United Kingdom will not be sent back to Zimbabwe until the high court considers new evidence on whether it is ”safe” to resume deportations, a judge ruled on Thursday. The British home office also agreed to consider releasing 30 Zimbabweans in detention awaiting being sent back to Harare.
Thierry Henry doesn’t plan to follow Patrick Vieira out of Arsenal. The star striker instead wants a new contract with Arsenal to coincide with the captaincy he inherited from Vieira. He’ll lead his team on Sunday when the FA Cup winners meet league champions Chelsea in the Community Shield.
South African mining giant Anglo American posted on Thursday record earnings for the first half of the year, driven by strong coal and base metals prices. Headline earnings, the group’s favoured measure of calculating net profit, rocketed by 42,9% to ,784-billion compared with the same period a year earlier.
A 52-year-old Ethiopian refugee detained for six days in connection with the London bombings claimed in an interview published on Thursday that British police beat and humiliated him as he was arrested. Girma Belay, a Christian who has lived in London for 12 years, was arrested on July 22, a day after the failed bomb attack on the city.
Champions of Europe, but only the second-best team in Liverpool. With their Champions League final triumph over AC Milan now history, Liverpool face the reality that they still have a long way to go to catch Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United in the Premier League race.
Two years without a league championship. Not a single trophy last season. A contentious American takeover and a turbulent preseason. The aura surrounding Manchester United isn’t what it used to be. Alex Ferguson’s team finished in third place last season — 18 points behind Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea.
Britain secretly supplied the 20 tonnes of heavy water to Israel nearly half a century ago which enabled it to make nuclear weapons, according to Whitehall documents which have been discovered at the Public Records Office. According to the files, officials in the Macmillan government deliberately concealed the deal from the United States.
It is an unusual spat, to say the least: four places in Scotland all vying to be the recognised home of someone not even due to be born for another 200-plus years. Nonetheless, a spat has broken out over boasting rights to fictional <i>Star Trek</i> engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott following the death last month of the actor who played him.
A new novel about a mixed-race teenage girl who trains to become a suicide bomber is flying off the shelves in Britain and is well on its way to becoming a best-seller, press reports said on Wednesday. Checkmate, by award-winning children’s book author Malorie Blackman, was published in June, before the July 7 suicide bomb attacks on London’s transport system.
It’s the never-ending season. Summer used to mean a three-month break in European soccer. Now the hiatus is down to a few weeks. League seasons already have resumed in France and Scotland, the German season starts on Friday and the English Premier League begins on August 13.
Newcastle United have joined Manchester United in the chase for Michael Owen after the England striker was officially put up for sale by Real Madrid. The Spanish club want £16-million — double the price they paid Liverpool a year ago — but it is believed they will settle for £12-million.
Police briefly sealed off part of central London on Tuesday after smoke was seen billowing from a double-decker bus, but lifted the alert after nothing alarming was found, a spokesperson said. The incident reflected jitters in the British capital since July 7 bombings that left 56 dead, followed by failed copycat attacks two weeks later.
Arsenal without their talismanic skipper Patrick Vieira are still in the running to win the Premiership title, veteran defender Dennis Bergkamp claimed on Monday. The 36-year-old Dutch international believes the Gunners have sufficient quality with the likes of youngsters Cesc Fabregas and Mathieu Flamini to offset the sale of Vieira.
Recently, the World Trade Organisation kicked off yet another attempt to put back on track stalled talks that aim to reform the rules governing world trade in everything from sugar through manufactured goods to services such as insurance. WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi recently said he was pressing the panic button because the talks were in danger of failing.
Stocks of a small, herring-like fish that provides omega-3 essential fatty acids for supplements taken by millions of people could be endangered because of the Western world’s obsession with health foods, conservationists warn. At risk is the future of the menhaden fish, which breeds in Chesapeake Bay and lives along the United States’s eastern seaboard.
World oil prices jumped above per barrel on Monday, mainly on concerns about possible supply shortages during the fourth quarter, as markets shrugged off the death of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in September, climbed to ,02 per barrel in electronic dealing.
Police in the north of England on Sunday arrested a 17-year-old in the Liverpool suburb of Huyton in connection with a racist attack in which a black student was bludgeoned to death with an axe. The 18-year-old student, Anthony Walker, was left with the axe embedded in his skull in the ”vicious and unprovoked” assault near his home in Liverpool.
Super-sized mice on an island in the South Atlantic are eating seabird chicks alive, according to alarmed wildlife watchers. The mice, three times the size of those normally found in Europe, attack at night and are devouring more than one million petrel, shearwater and albatross chicks on Gough Island every year.
England striker Michael Owen, who has dropped further down Real Madrid’s hierarchy after recent signings, will be allowed to leave the Spanish first-division club, a Real source told the Sunday Times. Madrid’s recent purchases of Santos striker Robinho and Sevilla’s Julio Baptista has meant Owen is in fifth spot for a starting place.
British police on Saturday interrogated at least three suspected bombers wanted for the July 21 London attacks as they tried to crack any wider terrorist network and trace the masterminds behind the operation. A fourth suspect was, meanwhile, fighting an extradition request in Italy, where he was arrested on Friday.
The arrested fugitives from the botched July 21 London bomb attacks faced an intense grilling as police were congratulated on Saturday for seizing all four suspects in a massive international manhunt. Dramatic raids in London and Rome left the alleged bombers in police custody.
London’s metropolitan police said on Friday they have arrested three men during two raids in the west of the capital, while refusing to confirm that among them were suspected bombers who targeted the city last week. On Friday, armed police launched two raids in west London and shut down one of the city’s main stations.
A massive police hunt for the remaining fugitive London bombers appeared to be paying off on Friday as officers launched a massive raid in the capital, reportedly targeting another of the wanted men. Residents of the White City suburb saw police swiftly seal off streets before a large explosion was heard, followed by a series of smaller blasts.