A Champion Racehorse Is Killed And Served To Unwitting Diners At A Council-Run Soup Kitchen

A champion racehorse was destroyed and served to unwitting diners at a council-run soup kitchen, sparking public anger.

The four-year-old racehorse, called Smart Latch, had been retired with an injury but finished up being served at a soup kitchen in southern Turkey, in the Yenshir district in the Mersin province.

A resident discovered a strange object in his portion of kavurma – a traditional Turkish fried meat dish – while eating at the municipal soup kitchen last month, local media said on Thursday.

Agriculture ministry investigators found out that this was Smart Latch’s microchip – a thoroughbred mare which had won first-place finishes at the hippodrome in the nearby city of Adana and two other career wins.

The food the chip had been discovered in was examined on February 4, and investigators realised it was definitely horse meat on that day and the previous day’s batch of kavurma.

They destroyed 213 kilogrammes of kavurma made at the soup kitchen.

In Turkey, it is forbidden to kill horses for meat, particularly registered racehorses, which are usually rehomed or safeguarded.

Details only emerged this week after almost a month had gone by since the chip was discovered in the food.

The ministry said that the Mersin municipality soup kitchen had been ‘added to the list of unsafe products after testing showed it contained meat from a single-hoofed animal’ – a horse, donkey or mule.

‘We are in distress,’ owner of Smart Latch, Suat Topcu, said on Friday, adding that the horse had begun racing in 2024 but was retired after she broke her leg during her last race on October 14.

Throughout her short career, Smart Latch earned a sum of 1,125,000 Turkish Lira (£19,200) in prize money across her three victories.

Mr Topcu said he had arranged to have her donated to a riding club, using a local transporter he knew.

He said he did not know what had happened to Smart Latch until he was contacted by the agriculture ministry.

He was then fined 132,000 Turkish lira (£2,260) for not formally reporting the donation.

The racehorse owner said, ‘The fine is not important; what’s important is finding those who committed this cruelty.’

Investigators believe the horse ended up at the abattoir rather than the riding club.

They believe the horse’s meat was falsely labelled as ‘beef’ and then sold to the company that supplies the municipality’s soup kitchen.

Horsemeat can be sold legally, but pretending it’s beef is most definitely not permitted.

What it boils down to is this. People should know what they’re consuming. If they are okay with eating horse meat, then fantastic, but I believe that most people would not be okay with eating it. I would have no problem eating horse meat as long as it was destroyed humanely.

But this animal was deserving of better. Due to its injuries, the horse was retired and ought to have been transported to a sanctuary rather than a slaughterhouse, and besides, horse racing is cruel and unethical throughout.

Sadly, racehorse trainers care very little about their horses; it’s all about making money, and then they are put down when they are of very little use. Horse racing is cruel and should be prohibited, but it won’t happen because it’s a giant money-making enterprise.

A tranquil retirement is not a possibility for these animals, as they are a financial drain, so they are put down as soon as the publicity goes away, and I’m sure, in time, humans will go the same way.

A Stowaway Fox Is Taken In By New York Zoo After Travelling 3,000 Miles From The UK Aboard A Ship

A fox that survived a trip across the Atlantic on a vehicle transporter ship is being cared for in a zoo in New York.

A two-year-old male red fox was discovered by customs officers at the Port of New York and New Jersey on February 18, among the cargo of a vessel that had set sail from southern England two weeks prior.

Weighing about 11 pounds, he was taken in by the Bronx Zoo a day later, having ‘gone through a lot’, the zoo’s director of animal programmes said.

Keith Lovett added: ‘He seems to be settling in well.’ 

Cars were being transported across the Atlantic to the US East Coast on the ship that the fox had unintentionally boarded.

A long-term home for the mammal is expected to be found after he undergoes checks. But a spokeswoman for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which runs the zoo, said he appears in good health. 

A statement released by the zoo read: ‘The Bronx Zoo regularly works with officials to help rescue wildlife that is illegally trafficked through nearby ports and airports.

‘In this case, the Bronx Zoo was able to help with the stowaway red fox found aboard a vessel entering a local port.

‘The fox is currently in the Animal Health Centre at the Bronx Zoo, where it is under the care of the zoo’s animal and veterinary teams. Initial examinations indicate that the fox appears to be in good condition.

‘Veterinarians are awaiting results from additional routine health screening.

‘Once the veterinary team determines that the fox is healthy, the zoo will work with wildlife experts to identify an appropriate long-term home for the animal.’

The spokeswoman said that red foxes are among the ‘most widespread carnivorous mammals in the world’ and are found across Europe, Asia, North America and parts of Africa.

A spokesman for ABP Southampton said, ‘The Port of Southampton handles everything from cars to containers to cruises, but even we were surprised to find a fox had booked itself a Transatlantic crossing.

‘Clearly it fancied swapping the Solent for the Staten Island Ferry, though next time we’d recommend it considers the Queen Mary 2, which offers the Southampton to New York route with considerably more comfort.’

Even the fox wanted to flee Starmer’s authoritarian Britain. Undoubtedly, it had been taking tips from how illegals have been crossing into the UK, but I’d sooner have one uninvited fox arrive than the thousands of uninvited boat people that we get.

The Future Of Food Is 3D-Printed Chocolate And Foie Gras

They hardly sound like the dishes we might dream of, but it appears such dainties as laboratory-grown foie gras and 3D-printed chocolate are on the way.

And, according to a report, some could be in our shopping baskets as soon as 2035.

Foods grown from animal and plant cells in a lab include steak, chicken and duck foie gras – with two products already being risk-assessed by regulators.

Other random dishes could include palatable insects. 

Four species are now for sale under temporary agreements while their safety is evaluated. They can be sold as whole insects or used as additives, such as powders added to well-known meals.

The report from the Food Standards Agency said allergen proteins in crustaceans can also be found in insects, which means people with a shellfish allergy could have a similar reaction to eating bug products.

The FSA also looked at ‘largely conceptual innovations’ such as 3D-printed foods, which would allow manufacturers to build foods such as chocolate or mashed potato out of layering edible ingredients from a printer – though these are not expected to reach a broad market in the next five to ten years.

The report said that the new technologies could help create personalised foods, for example, for people who have difficulty swallowing.

Dr Thomas Vincent, of the FSA, said: ‘The food system is always evolving, and as a regulator, we need to keep pace.’

This is just ‘Frankenstein’ food, along with plastic cheese and plastic sausages.

Cadbury’s chocolate used to be my favourite, but nowadays it tastes like a chunk of wax, and this is just the start of things to come. Eventually, there will be no farms, and nothing will be home-produced.

I thought we were trying to get away from ultra-processed foods – this doesn’t get any more artificial! Our food should be the real deal, or no deal.

All food should be naturally produced or bred, and all this processed slime should be removed from the food chain.

I wonder if there’s any possibility it could print a useful Prime Minister for the UK?

To be fair, I’d rather pierce hot needles in my eyeballs than eat foie gras, lab-grown or otherwise, and of course, this sort of food will be for the bottom feeders, not the ones at the top who will eat normal, healthy food.

At The Age Of Ten, Natascha Kampusch Was Abducted And Held As A Sex Slave For Eight Years

The family of former captive Natascha Kampusch have disclosed she is ‘in her own world’ as she suffers from serious health problems which have left doctors ‘overwhelmed’.

Natascha, 38, was abducted aged 10 in 1998 by Wolfgang Přiklopil while walking to school in Austria and held captive in a hidden basement cell in his home for eight years.

She was beaten, starved and turned into his sex slave before fleeing in August 2006.

Přiklopil, a technician in his 30s at the time who lived in his mother’s house, jumped in front of a train at a nearby station after discovering she had escaped.

Natascha wrote a book about her kidnapping, was the subject of a film and even presented her own TV talkshow in the years afterwards.

But her family have tragically disclosed she now seems to be ‘in a kind of prison again’ as her 20th anniversary of freedom beckons.

In a new documentary, produced by Austria’s public broadcaster ORF, her sister Claudia Nestelberger reveals she is ‘completely gone’.

She said: ‘Everyone knows how Natascha used to speak in front of the camera. That’s completely gone now.

‘She’s mostly in her own world. She’s in a kind of prison again. It’s heartbreaking, and we feel helpless.’ 

In 2023, Natascha admitted she was ‘positive and hopeful’ about her future prospects.

She was creating her own jewellery collection and was involved in building a hospital in Sri Lanka.

‘I spend a lot of time in nature and with my horse,’ she said.

Previously describing her time in captivity, Natascha said she was kept in a trapdoor in a garage which was just five by five metres, soundproofed and windowless.

She was beaten ‘up to 200 times a week’, chained to a bed at night and made to clean while half-naked.

She said from age 12 she imagined breaking out but regressed ‘to the age of a dependent toddler,’ asking to be tucked in and read bedtime stories.

Walking to school by herself on March 2, 1998, Natascha remembered how she noticed a strange Priklopil waiting by his white minivan.

‘I thought I don’t want to pass him,’ she said. ‘I thought, “That’s strange, why is this person waiting there?” It didn’t make sense.

‘That’s when I wanted to switch to the other side of the road just to be safe. But then I thought, “No, I have to do this”, so you can say, “Okay, you had the courage to walk past him.”

However, as she went past him, Priklopil grabbed her and put her in the back of the vehicle before taking her to his home, where he kept her in a dungeon under the floor of his garage. 

When she became a teenager, Priklopil would sometimes keep her upstairs with him to sleep, but would tie her to the bed so she couldn’t escape.

‘He seemed to think it was his right to control me and use violence,’ said Natascha, who suggested her captor at this point imagined they were husband and wife.

She was warned by her kidnapper that there was no way out of her ordeal, with Priklopil saying he would kill her if she ever tried to escape.

Her mother, Brigitta Sirny, was originally accused of killing her child and admitted she ‘wanted to end it all’ after the allegations.

Brigitta previously said: ‘(A) private investigator said I killed her and threw her in the lake. That made me even more upset. It was very hard to go through all that. I stood outside on the balcony, and I wanted to jump.

‘I wanted to end it all. Thank God I went back inside. But then I didn’t go on the balcony for three months. It caused very deep wounds.’ 

What the poor girl had to go through and the absolute fear she endured for many years, and even now, her life will never be normal, and even her mother was a victim as well.

Any trauma can mess a person’s life up. One can seem to turn their life around, and then out of nowhere, you can take a thousand steps back. Just one minuscule trigger and you are back to where you started. There is no cure; it’s with you for life, it’s just hoping that you have more good days than bad days.

Nobody else who has not gone through what this poor woman went through can ever imagine an ordeal like this – the brain doesn’t function to these depths of depravity.

Natascha and her family were dealt a harsh hand. They must have been outraged, especially when this monster believed he had the right to simply choose a child off the street and subject them to such abuse.

The Fears Surrounding Harvey

Katie Price worries her son Harvey will ‘end up dying of a heart attack’ if he doesn’t lose weight soon.

The star’s eldest son, 23, has Prader-Willi syndrome, which sparks a persistent urge to eat food and an enduring sense of hunger, which leads to obesity.

He also battles a string of debilitating conditions, including autism, septo-optic dysplasia, ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder.

In April 2025, his weight had reached nearly 30 stone before modifications to his diet helped him lose 1.5 stone.

Last year, Katie said she had a plan with Harvey’s medical team to put him on the weight loss jab Mounjaro, but in an update, the mum expressed her frustrations that he still hasn’t been prescribed it.

‘I’ve been on the case to doctors about putting him on the Mounjaro,’ she explained to her sister Sophie on the latest episode of their podcast The Katie Price Show.

Katie said she was going to resort to asking any doctors among her Instagram followers for help.

‘I’m actually going to put something up on Instagram to say, is there any private doctors out there? Because the NHS are so much… I’m not slagging the NHS off, but they know he’s in the obese category.’

‘When he sleeps, I worry because he’s snoring and wheezing. And then sometimes he holds his breath, and I’m like, he’s massive. He’s just getting bigger, and he’ll end up dying of a heart attack.’ 

‘They’ve already told me years ago that if he don’t lose weight, he’s prone to a heart attack.’

Katie added that she ‘just feels so bad’ and said she was determined to help but pointed out: ‘I’m not going to inject him myself because that’s not medically right to do for him, but something needs to be done. He’s just huge.’

In November, Katie said doctors were keen for Harvey to be put on a new weight loss drug ‘in the new year’ after it had completed clinical trials, but added that ‘if he goes on Mounjaro first and then goes onto this new one, it will work a lot quicker’. 

At the time, she explained that ‘the reason he hasn’t started Mounjaro yet is because they were trying to get him to lose weight through his diet, to try all avenues’.

In the most recent episode of her podcast, Katie also updated her listeners on Harvey’s living circumstances.

This woman can afford to buy Mounjaro, so I’m not sure why she isn’t. Also, it sounds like Harvey has sleep apnea, so why does he not have a sleep apnea machine?

If she stopped all her surgeries, holidays, cars and men, then she could afford to buy Mounjaro, and get him in to see a private doctor.

Sadly, Prader-Willi syndrome is complex, and one of the symptoms is an insatiable appetite, and it’s like they are a constant dustbin.

The life expectancy for people with Prader-Willi syndrome can vary greatly based on various factors, but the median age of death for those with PWS is about 30 years old. However, some have lived longer.

A Fifth Of The UK’s Aid Budget Is Spent On Housing Migrants

A fifth of the UK aid budget is spent on housing migrants in the UK, the aid watchdog has said in a report.

Using funds meant to help those overseas on those in the UK poses a ‘serious risk to value for money’, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) warned.

It said that in 2024, £2.8 billion was spent on hosting migrants and asylum seekers – £1 billion more than on humanitarian aid, despite crises in Gaza and Sudan.

Aid spending is expected to fall from 0.5 per cent of UK gross national income (GDP) to 0.3 per cent from 2027, with the saved money redirected to defence.

Spending on foreign aid has long been plagued by accusations of waste and fraud, as well as claims that it has aided terrorist organisations.

The report found that setting a figure for aid spending as a proportion of GDP and including asylum costs ‘undermined value for money’.

It warned that any rise in spending on the unpredictable cost of hosting migrants meant funding would automatically be taken from overseas spending.

It also said that the Home Office’s ability to charge an uncapped amount of spending on migrants had ‘not encouraged long-term planning to secure improvements in value for money.’

This means that the UK’s spending on housing migrants is ‘double or triple’ that of other comparable countries, and the highest cost per head, it said.

In 2023, when spending on migrants peaked at 28 per cent of the total aid budget, the report said that this represented a ‘perverse outcome’ for overseas aid.

It has called for the two to be separated due to the demand-driven nature of support for migrants.

International aid regulations allow certain expenses, such as lodging, food, medical care, and children’s education, to be deducted from aid expenditures during a migrant’s first year in the UK.

But the report found that these costs have increased dramatically in recent years, largely due to a steep rise in the costs per head of support.

Increased arrivals of migrants – including Afghans following the Taliban resurgence and Ukrainians following Russia’s invasion – added to a backlog of undecided asylum claims, it said.

A lack of accommodation has meant the Home Office has needed to house migrants in costly rented hotels.

It said that based on Government figures in the 2025 Spending Review, it expects spending on migrants to continue to take a fifth of the aid budget.

Our government has destroyed our once beautiful and thriving country.

We are told that we are lacking in housing, but we’re not. What we do have is a glut of foreign migrants, with more crossing the Channel every day.

Nearly every other country in the world deports illegal migrants, but for some reason, Starmer finds it incomprehensible. Human Rights are extremely profitable, and our government needs to keep that money flowing by rolling out the red carpet to migrants.

Migrants speak of the very nice life they have been given at expensive 4-star hotels, which are being paid for by you, the taxpayer.

Migrants staying at an exclusive four-star hotel close to Heathrow Airport have spoken of being housed in ‘very nice’ accommodation.

The Crowne Plaza, London Heathrow off the M4 motorway in West Drayton, Middlesex, boasts 465 rooms, a swimming pool and gym, but instead of paying guests, the hotel is being used to accommodate hundreds of asylum seekers, despite our Labour Government’s promise to end the use of hotels for migrants.

And in the meantime, while our elderly die on hospital gurneys in corridors, migrants are getting everything they want. It now appears that our Government despise its British people.

No money should be spent by our government unless it is for UK citizens who were born in the United Kingdom, because it’s disgraceful that our government prioritises those who have no right to be here over those who do have a right.

Of course, there is an ulterior motive. Labour for votes!

In my opinion, there should be no aid budget when our pensioners can’t even heat their homes, and a lot of families can’t afford to feed their children, or afford winter coats for them. We should not be supporting other countries that have never put a penny into the system when our own go without.

TRIBUTE: Jack Osbourne And His Wife Name Their Newborn Daughter!

Jack Osbourne and his wife Aree have welcomed their daughter and have named the baby after his late father Ozzy Osbourne. 

Taking to Instagram on Wednesday, the couple shared the joyful news as they posted a black and white photo of their daughter alongside a ‘Hello world’ card confirming she was born on March 5.

Revealing her name, Jack captioned the post: ‘Introducing Ozzy Matilda Osbourne’ in a heartfelt tribute to the late rockstar.

He added on his Story: ‘She’s arrived and she’s perfect’ as friends and fans rushed to the comments to send their congratulations. 

Jack’s father, Ozzy, died at the age of 76 on July 22, 2025, just 17 days after he performed a finale concert with his band Black Sabbath in England, which saw Jack and the entire Osbourne family travel from Los Angeles to Birmingham.

In December, soon after Jack’s stint on I’m A Celeb, Jack and Aree revealed they were expecting their second child together. They already have a three-year-old daughter named Maple.

Sharing a picture of them embracing and cradling her baby bump, the soon-to-be father-of-five wrote, ‘oops I did it again!’

The media personality was formerly married to Lisa Stelly from 2012 to 2019. The exes share daughters Pearl, 13, Andy, 10, and Minnie, seven.

Speaking with The Sun, the podcaster opened up about preparing to become a dad for the fifth time.

‘We’re super excited. It was sort of planned, I should say. It was maybe a little earlier than expected.

‘But it’s definitely something that we were wanting to pursue, and somehow it happened, miraculously,’ he said.

Jack also explained that his unborn child had become a beacon of light as he mourned his father.

‘I think it’s been partly a healthy distraction, partly healing — probably in that kind of “full cycle” category, in a weird way,’ he reflected.

He added, ‘It’s very much taken energy out of the grieving side of things and parked in a bit more hopefulness.’

The newborn’s birth comes just days after Jack opened up about his father’s final weeks before his death. 

Appearing on an episode of the HATE TO BREAK IT TO YA podcast, where he reflected on the final weeks of his father’s life, Jack shared a conversation he had with Ozzy the night after the Sabbath farewell show that left him with a devastating realisation.

While putting Ozzy to bed, Jack, who was getting ready to return to LA, said his father confessed to him that he wanted to ‘cut [his] hair off’.

‘Right before I left, I was putting him to bed, and he was like brushing his teeth or whatever,’ Jack recalled. ‘He was looking at himself in the mirror, and he goes, “I think I’m going to cut my hair off.”

Jack remembered asking him why, and Ozzy replied: ‘I’ve retired. I’m not a rock star anymore.’

He also recalled how his father only ever cut his hair short once and shaved his head ‘once to p*** my mom off’ in the 80s.

‘And so I think about that, and I’m like, “Yeah, he was done. He was okay with his journey.”

Jack also talked about the last day of his father’s life.

‘I think we do have a choice to a degree,’ he explained while offering a philosophical perspective.

‘If you’re sick, if your body’s primed and in a place, where it’s like, “Hey, you’ve got a choice here,” on a deep spiritual level, I do think that maybe, rather consciously or subconsciously, you have a choice where you’re like, “Okay, I’m ready to move on.”

But when the late star died, Jack admitted that it had been ‘a surprise’.

‘Obviously, everyone knew he was sick… but we weren’t expecting it to be as quick as it was. He was up, he was doing his thing, had some breakfast, and that was it.’

Last month, Sharon and her daughter Kelly made a heartfelt speech in honour of the late Ozzy as he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the BRITs. 

Congratulations to Jack and his family. He seems like an upright bloke who is kind, caring and a wonderful father, and a new baby is just what the family needs to help with the healing, and Ozzy is a fantastic name, but some people have taken to social media with some extremely hostile remarks.

Ozzy is a gender neutral name that is on the rise. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the name, and it’s a fantastic tribute to a wonderful celebrity.

Ozzy is a cool name, especially if she builds her own business or becomes a singer herself one day.

A Mother Throws Out Her Amazon Alexa Device After It Asked Her Four-Year-Old Daughter An Incredibly Creepy Question

A mother has removed all Amazon Alexa devices from her Texas home after the AI assistant asked her four-year-old daughter what she was wearing. 

Christy Hosterman, 32, was using the device to help with a dinner recipe last month when her daughter Stella asked it to tell her a silly story, a feature on the device that children typically use.

When the story was concluded, Stella asked the AI if she could narrate her own tale.

Alexa agreed, but interrupted the child halfway through to ask ‘what she was wearing and if it could see her pants,’ Hosterman revealed in a Facebook post.

Screenshots of the interaction shared by the concerned parent show that when Stella told the device ‘I have a skirt on,’ it asked her to ‘let me take a look.’

The AI then corrected itself, saying: ‘This experience isn’t quite ready for kids yet, but I am working on it!’ 

Hosterman then confronted the device, stating that she did not approve of the remarks.

Alexa apologised and said it ‘cannot actually see anything’ because it lacked ‘visual capabilities.’ The device added that its response was ‘confusing and inappropriate.’

Hosterman is now urging other parents to ‘be aware when your child talks to Alexa’ and says she has permanently removed the device from their home.

‘I flipped out on the Alexa, it said it made a mistake and doesn’t have visual capabilities, but I don’t believe that. No more Alexa in our house,’ she shared. 

The concerned parents submitted a ticket to Amazon over the inappropriate interaction, WXIX reported.

An Amazon spokesperson claimed the device misunderstood Stella’s request and tried to launch a feature, the Show and Tell feature, which ‘lets Alexa+ describe what it sees through the camera.’

‘Because we have safeguards that disable this feature when a child profile is in use, the camera never turned on — and Alexa explained the feature wasn’t available,’ the spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

Amazon claims the response likely stemmed from a ‘feature misfire that our safeguards prevented from launching’.

The company said the interaction demonstrated a technological issue that its team ‘worked quickly’ to correct.

Alexa will no longer attempt to launch the Show and Tell feature when a child profile is in use, the spokesperson added. ‘Alexa will simply respond that this feature is not available.’

But Hosterman says Amazon’s explanation does not address her concerns.

‘My concern is that it recognised she was a child to begin with — and with or without the child profile, it should not have been asking that,’ she told the outlet.

Tech expert Dave Hatter has made a chilling suggestion that a predator may have accessed the device and been influencing the conversation.

Hatter, who has 25 years of software writing experience, alleged there is a ‘slim’ chance that AI would alter its script this drastically.

‘It feels to me like a potential predator — seeing there’s a child accessing this and gauging where the conversation is going — that’s more of a human being trying to steer down this direction,’ he said.

Amazon denied Hatter’s claim, telling the Daily Mail: ‘It is functionally impossible for Amazon employees to insert themselves into a conversation and generate responses as Alexa. All technical evidence points to a feature misfire that our safeguards prevented from launching.’

It’s the best eavesdropping experiment ever; they are listening to everything we say.

Every time I purchase something online or look at something online, it will then bring up ads on Facebook, but the most bizarre thing is when I am talking to my kids about something, it appears on my TV as an advert or on my pc. We are not safe even in our own homes anymore.

The simple answer is, don’t trust AI. It will be our destruction.

No one needs these devices. They push them as a convenience, and people believe them. Honestly, I am in a wheelchair, but I still don’t need AI to turn on my lights. I can do that by myself, and I’m happy that I can.

These devices make people slothful. It can induce mental illness, and that’s why mental illness is booming. People don’t do anything, and that is why their minds are turning to sludge, and I definitely don’t think that children should be talking or listening to Artificial Intelligence.

Apple, Samsung, And Google Are Given An Ultimatum By Police Chiefs

Britain’s largest police force has given an ultimatum to tech giants over the mobile phone theft epidemic.

Scotland Yard’s commissioner said Apple, Samsung and Google had until June to ‘design out’ thefts by installing a kill switch that would turn stolen phones into an ‘unusable brick.’ 

If the firms missed the deadline, Sir Mark Rowley said he would ask the Government to implement legislation forcing them to act. 

The commissioner has been in discussions with manufacturers for two-and-a-half years, but criticised the tech giants for being ‘polite but not serious.’ 

‘I’m setting a clear public marker, if by the first of June, industry has not come to the table in a genuinely serious and solution-focused way, with concrete commitments on stolen mobile phones… the Met will formally write to the Home Secretary to ask that she legislates,’ he told the International Mobile Phone Crime Conference in central London. 

Sir Mark, who referenced the Mail’s investigation into stolen phones being resold in Hong Kong at the event, said he could not understand why telecoms giants had not done more to protect their customers from theft.

‘For nearly three years we have sought meaningful engagement with phone manufacturers and their response to date does not match the scale of harm and risk to their customers,’ he added. 

The international trade in stolen phones is worth millions, with devices stolen in London worth more in countries such as China because it has none of the government restrictions put in place by the authorities. 

The Mail revealed last month that British children as young as 14 are being recruited on social media to steal mobile phones before school for £400 each.

Gangs shipping stolen phones to Algeria, China and Hong Kong use Snapchat to target children to swipe the devices – offering vast sums plus £100 bonuses to the most prolific phone snatchers. 

‘The exploitation of children in this trade is not just about individual offences,’ Sir Mark said. 

‘It’s an entry point into organised crime.

‘Children recruited to snatch phones for quick cash are being groomed into criminal networks, normalised into offending behaviour and pushed further into exploitation. 

‘What begins as one device on a street corner becomes a pathway into debt, coercion, violence and deeper criminality.’ 

The Met wants anti-theft protection switched on by default, stolen phones to be rendered unusable, and better access to IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) data to make it easier to return devices to their owners.

Figures released under Freedom of Information legislation show only a fraction of devices taken in London are returned to their owners. Between 2017 and February 27 2024, a total of 587,498 phones were stolen in London, excluding the City, 13,998 of which were recovered, and 573,500 were not.

The police undoubtedly cannot deal with this phone theft, or they just don’t see it as a priority. However, if phone theft stopped tomorrow, criminals would just move on to something else, such as laptops, wallets, watches, jewellery, and handbags, because organised theft will always redirect its targets.

However, if this is enforced, major mobile phone companies are not going to like this because when someone has their phone robbed, what is the first thing they do? Buy another one, so if a kill switch were put on mobile devices, these big companies would be out of pocket.

What we should be doing is putting a kill switch on these phone snatchers, and the only way to do that would be if our police actually worked for a living and did their job properly.

Teenager Stabbed In Classroom

A 16-year-old boy has been arrested after a teenage girl was stabbed at a school, which was put into lockdown today, with terrified pupils told to hide under their desks.

Armed police were called to Thorpe St Andrew school near Norwich at around 10.24 am as students were told to hide and turn off their phones while teachers barricaded classroom doors.

About 100 parents arrived at the school grounds after hearing the reports on social media, pleading with police for more information.

 ‘Just f*****g let the kids out,’ one parent screamed at officers.

Another said: ‘If my son is under a table and someone’s coming with a knife, I want him to be aware they’re coming.’

One pupil who was able to make contact with their family sent a text reading ‘I am very scared’, while another sent a message saying they ‘just want to go home’.

Police drones were also on the scene as officers scoured for the suspect, who is believed to have escaped after leaping over a fence, before an arrest was made.

It’s understood that the suspect was on the run for more than an hour, with the arrest being made at about 11.30 am.

Officers arrested a 16-year-old boy on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and have taken him to Wymondham Police Investigation Centre for questioning.

The teenage girl, understood to be a student at the school, has been taken to the hospital with ‘minor injuries’.

While Thorpe St Andrew School is still on lockdown, other Norfolk schools are reportedly keeping kids inside for lunch.

Darren Evans, a father whose daughter is in year eight, told the Eastern Daily Press: ‘The communication from the school has been shocking.

‘If it were not for Facebook and the news, I would have had no idea what was going on.

‘I last heard from my daughter an hour ago. There’s been a total lack of communication.’

Another parent added: ‘To hear nothing from the school, it’s terrifying. Your mind sort of starts wheeling, you’ve got kids in the school, you don’t know what they want.

‘To have no information whatsoever about what was going on, with all this going on in the world right now, your mind instantly goes to the worst.

‘You automatically boot the worst, and think something horrendous has happened. I mean, it has. You automatically think it’s something a hell of a lot worse.’

One teacher at the school said they had been told to stay in the classroom with pupils, telling ITV News Anglia: ‘One of the things you practice, but never think you’ll do’.

One Parent, Adam Howlett, told the news outlet that he had still not heard from his daughter, despite hearing from his son, who is still locked in his classroom.

He said, ‘When it comes to your child, even minor injuries are terrifying. You don’t expect to come to school and get injured. I’m just waiting to find out some news and put my mind at rest.’ 

Another parent, Shantelle Taylor, said she was ‘absolutely fuming’ to hear about the incident through a friend and not through the school.

‘I have managed to get hold of my daughter even though she’s been told she is not even allowed to message me to tell me she’s okay, which I think is absolutely ridiculous,’ she said.

An alarm is still ringing out across the school; however, a member of the security staff at the school told parents waiting outside, ‘don’t worry, everyone is now safe’, the BBC reports.

Sadly, this sort of thing is now a common occurrence in the UK. Of course, back in the day, there was brutality, but it was full of gangs with flick knives and razor blades. The only difference is that there were rules, no children, and no women to be harmed; there was a code of conduct, although there were some exceptions to the rule, but they were dealt with promptly.

Unfortunately, there’s no deterrent for teenagers these days. If one murders or mutilates another person with a knife or weapon, they should be put in jail; it’s as straightforward as that, whether they are a teenager or not. The issue here is that if they are sent to jail, they then associate with other criminals, and the cycle goes on and on. Sadly, if your mind is that way inclined, then there is no other place to go but jail.

The absurd thing is that the actual severity of the situation is concealed; it is far worse than we can comprehend, but it’s not just happening in the UK; it’s happening worldwide. Our governments have become too tolerant, and this has been going on for way too long.

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