N Ireland policedefuse car bomb
Northern Irish police defused a bomb in a car on Saturday close to where G8 leaders will meet at a summit in June and said that the device was likely to have been intended for a police station nearby. Army bomb disposal experts defused the device after a security operation that lasted almost 36 hours in the county Fermanagh town of Enniskillen. The Group of Eight leaders meet just outside the town in three months’ time. A senior Northern Irish officer said police believed the bomb was en route to a police station in a town nearby and would have killed or injured people if it had not been intercepted.
Police watchdog begins probe into custody death
The death of a man in custody is being investigated by the police watchdog. The 34-year-old man was arrested by Northumbria Police for being drunk and disorderly and taken to a police station in South Tyneside. The Independent Police Complaints Commission said he was booked into custody at 8.25pm on Friday night and was subject to 15 minutes of checks. At 10.06pm the man was found in his cell not breathing. He was pronounced dead at South Tyneside General Hospital at 11.44pm. IPCC commissioner Nicholas Long said: “Any death in custody is a very serious matter and we will investigate to establish exactly what has happened in this case.”
Horsemeat sold as ‘diced beef’
Horsemeat weighing 40kg has been sold to shoppers while wrongly labelled as beef, the Food Standards Agency said. The meat was part of a consignment of 100kg of equine flesh labelled as “diced beef” which was imported from Hungary and discovered by Lancashire County Council. It was imported by Hungarian Food in Preston, Lancashire, and sold in its market stall in the town and by a deli, Taste of Hungary, in Merseyside. Attila Fabian, the manager of the deli in Waterloo, Merseyside, said he ate some of the meat thinking it was beef. He said he was shocked to have discovered he had been selling the meat when environmental health officers visited the shop.
Mother and toddler killed by train named
A woman and her three-year-old son who died after they were struck by a train in the morning rush hour have been named. Donna Oettinger, 41, and Zachary died at Riddlesdown rail station near Purley, south London at around 8.20am, according to the British Transport Police (BTP). “Medics from the London Ambulance Service also attended, but Donna and Zachary were sadly pronounced dead at the scene,” a BTP spokeswoman said. Detective chief inspector Iain Miller, the senior investigating officer, said: “Officers are continuing to work to establish the full circumstances of what happened, although early indications show that no one else was believed to have been involved.”
Trumpet player Watkins dies at 68
Derek Watkins, the British trumpet player who played on every James Bond film soundtrack apart from Skyfall, has died aged 68, his close friend said yesterday. The lead trumpet player, who was described by the great Dizzy Gillespie as ‘Mr Lead’, died on Friday at home in Reading following a lengthy illness, Philip Biggs, editor of the Brass Herald said. Watkins was “widely considered to be the foremost British Big Band trumpet player ever to grace the stage”, Biggs said. After turning professional aged 17, he enjoyed a lengthy career in which he played with The Beatles, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Frank Sinatra, the London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.