Coronation Street Star In Drink-Drive Arrest

Coronation Street actress Barbara Knox has been arrested on suspicion of drink-driving.

The 80-year-old, who plays Rita Tanner in the soap, was held after arriving at a police station to meet her daughter who had earlier been arrested for the same offence.

A spokeswoman for Cheshire Police said: "Police stopped a car in Hollow Lane, Knutsford, and a 56-year-old woman from Gloucestershire was arrested on suspicion of drink-driving.

"An 80-year-old woman from Knutsford arrived at Knutsford police station and was also arrested on suspicion of drink-driving.

"She was bailed pending further inquiries."

The Sun reported that the actress and her daughter Maxine Ashcroft had been out for the afternoon and were pulled over by police as Ms Ashcroft drove her home.

Knox later confronted officers at the station, asking "Do you know who I am?", the paper said.

Ms Ashcroft was later charged with "driving when the alcohol level was above the limit".

She is due to appear at Macclesfield Magistrates' Court on April 2.

Knox is due to answer bail on April 4.

This year marks 50 years since she first appeared in the show as an exotic dancer.

A spokeswoman for ITV told Sky News the arrest was a "private and personal matter".

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Brit Found Dead Near Burning Boat In Caribbean

By Richard Williams, Sky News Online

A British man has been found dead near a burning boat in the Caribbean, prompting a police hunt for his Norwegian partner.

Police in St Vincent told Sky News that 53-year-old John Edward Garner was discovered with head injuries and leg injuries just off the coast of the island after reports a yacht was on fire.

He was travelling with a Norwegian woman, Heidi Hukkelaas, who is believed to have been his partner.

St Vincent police commissioner Michael Charles told Sky News "foul play" was a possibility but added: "At this stage we are certainly looking at all lines of inquiry."

Winston Simmons, who knew Mr Garner and his family, said he believed there had been an accidental explosion on the yacht caused by a gas bottle.

He said Ms Hukkelaas left the island on Tuesday to return to Norway, where the couple lived.

Diver Kay Wilson was one of the first to arrive at the burning yacht.

Mr Garner had permission to say in St Vincent until April 19

She told Sky News the flames had "completely engulfed the vessel" by the time she arrived.

"I was out with a group of divers," she said. "We'd gone out to do a dive trip and one of my crew members saw the smoke on the horizon.

"We made our way over there ... When we reached about a quarter of a mile off we saw a flashing light, which we would normally associate with a life jacket.

"We approached cautiously and we found somebody in the water, with the life jacket around their neck, approximately 150 to 200 feet away from the yacht at the time."

Ms Wilson added Mr Garner had also been spending time on the Grenadines island of Bequia with a family member, dropping them home before planning to travel to Antigua.

Mr Garner's body was found around 15 nautical miles west of Buccament, in the southwest of the island, on Wednesday afternoon.

He was pronounced dead upon arrival at Milton Cato Memorial Hospital, in Kingstown.

Initial reports suggested Mr Garner had been found on the vessel itself, reportedly named Asante and registered in Gibraltar.

Mr Charles said Mr Garner and Ms Hukkelaas arrived on the island on January 19 and had secured permission to remain there until April 19.

The Foreign Office told Sky News they were aware of the death of a British national in St Vincent and were providing consular assistance to the family.

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Nurse Held Over Stepping Hill Hospital Deaths

A nurse has been rearrested in connection with a number of deaths at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport in 2011.

Victorino Chua, 48, is being held on suspicion of three counts of murder, 18 counts of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and offences of poisoning under Section 24 of the Offences Against the Person Act.

He was arrested last year on suspicion of tampering with medical records at the hospital.

He was due to answer bail next week but reports say he was rearrested after new evidence came to light.

The deaths of Tracey Arden, 44, Arnold Lancaster, 71 and Alfred Derek Weaver, 83. are being treated as murder.

Five other people poisoned by contaminated products later died.

The deaths took place at Stepping Hill in 2011

They were: William Dickson, 82, Linda McDonagh, 60, John Beeley, 73, Beryl Hope, 70, and Mary Cartwright, 89.

The police investigation began after hospital staff noticed "unexplained" low blood sugar levels in patients.

Police later found a number of saline drips had been deliberately contaminated.

Chua was first arrested in January 2012 and later released on bail.

The father-of-two from Stockport has been rebailed on several occasions.

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Bank IT Failures Probe Launched By Watchdog

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

The City regulator will next week launch a probe into the resilience of high street banks' IT systems following a series of glitches which have threatened to further undermine the industry's image.

Sky News can reveal that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will set out on Monday its intention to conduct a review of the systems of major lenders, just weeks after the partly state-owned Lloyds Banking Group saw an IT glitch shut down half of its cash machines for several hours.

The FCA will disclose its intention to carry out the work in its annual business plan, which details the key areas of focus for the regulator during the following 12 months.

The robustness of banks' IT systems has become an urgent priority for watchdogs amid concerns that repeated glitches are damaging already fragile consumer trust in the banking sector.

In December, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) suffered a systems outage on the busiest online shopping day of the year, the third time in about 18 months that such a problem had prevented customers from using cards, cash machines and online banking services.

Clive Adamson, director of supervision at the FCA, told Sky News that the IT resilience work would be a top priority for the regulator this year:

"To access and manage our money we depend on the banks' IT systems being reliable. But IT outages continue, interrupting key banking services. 

"We want to make sure that the banks have resilient IT systems in place that are able to cope with consumer demand, so customers aren't left financially stranded or disadvantaged."

The regulator has the power to impose swingeing financial penalties on banks whose systems are defective, with RBS the subject of an ongoing investigation by the FCA's enforcement division into an IT crisis during the summer of 2012.

The FCA's new work will be carried out in conjunction with the Prudential regulation Authority and the Bank of England, and will examine how banks and building societies manage their exposure to IT risks.

It will also look at the level of engagement by bank boards on the issue as well as whether directors are sufficiently knowledgeable to challenge executives.

Industry sources expect the FCA's work to hasten the collective spending of billions of pounds required to modernise banks' IT systems, which have suffered from years of under-investment.

RBS has already said that it will increase its £2bn annual IT budget by £450m, with other major lenders looking at similar hikes.

The regulator, which expects its work to conclude early next year, signalled in a report last year that the growth of mobile banking by customers has outpaced banks' investment in their IT systems..

The RBS problems in 2012 prompted the FCA's predecessor, the Financial Services Authority, to write to the chairmen of the nine biggest banks and building societies to request information about their critical infrastructure and banking processes.

Industry insiders expect the watchdog to take tough action if insufficient progress is deemed to have been made on the issue since then.

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Girls Lured Into UK Gangs 'In Desperation'

By Afua Hirsch, Social Affairs And Education Editor

Thousands of girls are being subjected to sexual exploitation, weapons and drug running at the hands of male-run gangs, a new report warns.

A brutal gang culture is increasingly seeing girls and young women passed around different male gang members for sex, with rape used as a weapon in conflicts between rival gangs, and initiation ceremonies in which both girls and boys suffer sexual abuse, the report adds.

Edward Boyd, deputy policy director of the Centre for Social Justice, which co-wrote the report together with the charity XLP, said: "We are often unsighted about the desperate plight of girls embroiled in gangs.

"They live in a parallel world where rape is used as a weapon and carrying drugs and guns is seen as normal."

The report's authors say that despite previous reports on the vulnerability of girls in gangs, the Government lacks a coherent, long-term vision for dealing with the issue.

The report cites estimates that 12,500 girls and young women could be involved in gangs, but says too little is known about how gang life affects girls' education, families, friends and communities and their own offending.

Former gang members speak to Sky News about their experiences

One 16-year-old gang member, who is being helped to rebuild her life, told Sky News she was let down by adults when she first became involved in gang activity.

"At that time I had no mother, no one to depend on. At that time my mother was a drug addict, I was on my own," said Charlene (not her real name).

"The people that came into my life, they would come into my life and just leave again.

"The main reason I wanted to associate with people around me was that I wanted to be protected. But I was wrong. To this day I'm having trouble with police because of it."

"With the school that I was in, they didn't really help," Charlene added.

"If I went to school and something was bothering me, they didn't even help me with that.

"They would be quick to move me out of the school because of the reputation of the school, they didn't want to ruin it. So they wouldn't help, they would just send you to an alternative school."

The report also claims headteachers have turned a blind eye to gang activity to protect their school's reputation.

But one former gang member said problems in the home and widespread family breakdown was a root cause of the problem.

An estimated 12,500 girls and young women could be involved in gangs

Mona, who now works with charity St Giles Trust to help gang members change their lives, said her own experience of involvement and sexual exploitation in a gang as a teenager was also linked to problems in her home life.

"I had two different types of initiation (into the gang)," said Mona.

"There's one where I had to fight the girls that were gang members, to prove my worth to them. And then there was being passed around by the boys, and that happened to me.

"I wanted to be accepted, and they fed on that acceptance. I had issues at home with my schooling, with my behaviour, I'd run away from home, I was out by myself, hooking up with a load of older people, and they abused me."

Today's report comes after several previous attempts to reveal the extent of girls' involvement in gangs since the issue first came to prominence a decade ago.

But some warn that social pressure and the increasing sexualisation of young women has changed the nature and severity of the problem.

The sexualisation of women adds to the problem, according to Isha Nembhard

"When I was in school we was more boisterous. It was a girl gang. There was no boys in our gang," said Isha Nembhard, 25, a former gang member who now works with Foundation 4 Life which helps girls currently involved in gangs.

"We had male affiliation, but they was in their own group. What we went out and done, it was for ourselves ... Girl rap was more tomboyish. Nowadays girl rap is more sexualised. People like Nicki Minaj and Rihanna sexualise themselves a lot more.

"That makes a girl in a gang weak because they look at these girls only as a sex object."

Former gang members describe exposure to sex on social media, the desire for material wealth, and the lack of parental or community support as a counter-influence as key factors in driving young girls into relationships with male gang members.

The report's authors said that without more research into the extent of the problem, girls would continue to suffer from abuse and lasting damage to their futures.

"The biggest issue with girls in gangs is that we simply don't know the full extent of the problem," said Patrick Regan, chief executive officer of XLP.

"The data we have is merely the tip of the iceberg and at XLP there is no doubt that we see increasing numbers of girls dragged into this appalling world of exploitation, criminality and hopelessness."

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'Beautiful Woman In Chains' In Mystery Death

A female 'carer' found dead at her home has been described as a "beautiful woman in chains" as police launched a murder inquiry.

The woman, named locally as 41-year-old mother-of-three Alison Taylor, had looked after her wheelchair-bound husband, according to neighbours.

Police discovered her body at a three-bedroom semi-detached house in Mulberry Walk, Maidenhead, Berkshire, at 8.17pm on Friday.

A 42-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder and remains in custody.

A post-mortem examination has been carried out but was unable to establish a cause of death.

It is being treated as unexplained and toxicology tests have been ordered to examine possible causes.

A resident of the quiet cul-de-sac said Mrs Taylor had four children who were in their early 20s and late teens.

She said: "Nobody knows the circumstances yet. There were flowers left outside the house earlier.

"They kept themselves to themselves mostly, I only knew them because their children used to hang around with mine.

"She wasn't disabled but her husband was and she would look after him."

A note on a bunch of flowers left outside the house said: "Alison, RIP. A beautiful woman in chains. XXX"

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Hackney Shooting: Three Held After Girl Killed

Three teenage boys have been arrested after a girl, believed to be around 15, was shot dead in east London.

Scotland Yard murder detectives are investigating after the victim was shot inside a building on Eastway, near the Olympic Park in Hackney.

Police were called shortly before 4pm and attended the scene with London Ambulance Service and London's Air Ambulance.

The victim was pronounced dead at the scene near Victoria Park, which would have been packed with families at the time of the shooting. 

The shooting happened on the outskirts of London's Olympic Park

Officers believe they know the identity of the victim and are informing family while they await formal identification.

A post-mortem examination will be held in due course.

Three males, all aged under 18, were arrested near the scene.

They were taken to an east London police station, where they remain in custody.

Detectives from the Met's Homicide and Major Crime Command are investigating.

Anyone with information that may assist the investigation should call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

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Dewani Extradition Date Set By South Africa

Shrien Dewani is to be extradited to South Africa on April 7 to face trial for plotting the murder of his new wife on their honeymoon.

Dewani is due to appear in court on April 8, the following day, South Africa's Department of Justice spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga announced on Sunday morning.

It comes after Dewani lost his latest legal battle to block his extradition, exhausting his appeal rights - three High Court judges rejected all of his current grounds of appeal against removal from Britain.

Dewani is detained under the Mental Health Act

The 33-year-old is accused of arranging the murder of his new wife, Anni, in November 2010 during their honeymoon in Cape Town.

Authorities in South Africa say Dewani paid for others to hijack their taxi, throw him out and shoot the 28-year-old before abandoning the vehicle. Dewani, who is compulsorily detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act, denies any involvement in his wife's death.

The couple dancing at their wedding

Speaking after Dewani's latest court battle to remain in the UK on the grounds of his mental illness, Anni's father Vinod Hindocha said: "We are quite happy with the decision and we hope to get the answers that we have been seeking for the past three and a half years.

"I really don't know what happened to my daughter. We need answers. We hope to get justice."

So far three men have been convicted over Mrs Dewani's death.

It has been three-and-a-half years since Anni Dewani was murdered

South African Xolile Mngeni was convicted of premeditated murder for shooting her.

Prosecutors claimed that he was a hitman hired to carry out the killing.

Taxi driver Zola Tongo was jailed for 18 years after he admitted his part in the killing, and another accomplice, Mziwamadoda Qwabe, also pleaded guilty to murder and was given a 25-year prison sentence.

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