Thieves may have got away with a record haul of diamonds after a brazen heist in London's diamond district netted an estimated £200 million worth (275 million euro, $300 million) of gems, media reported Wednesday.

Burglars broke into a vault at a safe deposit centre in Hatton Garden, where many jewellers had left their stocks over the long Easter weekend, and cracked open 70 secure boxes, the police said.

Earlier reports put the number of boxes raided at 300.

A security guard heard an alarm go off on Friday, a bank holiday when the shops would have been closed, but shut it off when he failed to spot any sign of a disturbance, media reported Wednesday.

The Sun newspaper quoted a Hatton Garden insider saying: "It is estimated that around £200 million in diamonds, jewels and cash were stolen."

Hatton Garden is the centre of London's jewellery industry and has been home to hundreds of shops and manufacturers since the 19th century. The De Beers diamond company also has offices there.

One jeweller, Michael Miller, feared he may have lost up to £50,000 of uninsured jewellery and watches in the raid, only discovered Tuesday after the holiday break which coincided with Passover, when many of the area's Jewish diamond cutters and dealers were also away.

"There is a double-door entry and a locked system to go in. You have to go through two doors to get in the place and then get into the vault," he told reporters.

He added: "I have a collection of watches I was going to give my son and that is irreplaceable."

Published: 12 April 2015

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Former redhead Sansa remains a brunette. Tyrion grows a beard. East and West shall meet. And, once again, more will die gruesome deaths.

Welcome to season five of the cult TV series "Game of Thrones," which premieres Sunday worldwide to a rapturous global following.

So popular is the medieval-flavored saga of blood, sex and treason that HBO is airing the new season simultaneously in 170 countries.

New York fans who tune in Sunday at 9:00 p.m. will thus see the same action as counterparts in London who stay up into the wee hours of Monday.

The globe-girdling simulcast is HBO's response to "Game of Thrones" being the world's most pirated TV program.

The season four finale was illegally downloaded eight million times, according to file-sharing news site TorrentFreak, a nightmare for HBO's marketers but a tribute to the show's appeal.

Adapted from the "A Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy saga by George R.R. Martin, "Game of Thrones" revolves around a ruthless power struggle between noble families who covet the Iron Throne in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

Lovers, warriors, princesses, eunuchs, dragons and zombies, among many others, take their turn in a multi-plot narrative in which the only common denominator is death.

So much so, in fact, that it had the second-highest body count of any US television show in 2012, with an average of 14 deaths per episode, according to Funeralwise.com. (Gladiator schlock-fest "Spartacus" was first at 25.)

Going into season five, the plot "just keeps getting bigger and bigger," said David Benioff, who co-created the show with Dan Weiss.

"For four seasons, you've had all these characters who've been separated by geography — from Daenerys and her band of warriors roaming around to everyone in Westeros," he said.

"Now, these storylines are starting to merge. It's going to be a big East-meets-West season."

Published: 11 April 2015

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British police said Wednesday its counter-terrorism unit is investigating the killing of a Syria-born Muslim cleric who was shot dead in London.

London's Metropolitan Police said Abdul-Hadi Arwani, 48, was found in a parked car with gunshot wounds to his chest in the Wembley area. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

Arwani was former imam at the An-noor mosque in west London.

A statement posted at the building Wednesday read: "We have with great sadness heard of the unfortunate death of Shaykh Abdulhadi Arwani ... He will be sadly missed."

The police force said "detectives retain an open mind regarding the possible motive."

Published: 09 April 2015

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Britain must urgently rebuild defence capabilities abandoned after the Cold War to face growing global threats, including from Russia, a committee of lawmakers warned on Tuesday.

The Commons Defence Committee, which examines the spending and policy of the defence ministry, said nuclear capacity, tanks, warships and aircraft were needed to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"The world is more dangerous and unstable than at any time since the end of the Cold War," the report said, referring to Russia's annexation of Crimea and seizure of territory by Islamic State and Boko Haram militants.

"But the UK's current defence assumptions are not sufficient for this changed environment... The UK must rebuild its conventional capacities eroded since the Cold War."

The report comes as a truce between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian forces was tested in east Ukraine, in a conflict that has damaged relations between Russia and the West and has claimed 6,000 lives since April.

The committee said it would be necessary for Britain to stick to its NATO commitment to spend two percent of GDP on defence, but that this would "not be sufficient".

"It is vital to rethink the fundamental assumptions of our defence planning, if we are to help arrest the descent into chaos, which threatens to spread from the Western Mediterranean to the Black Sea," the report said.

Published: 29 March 2015

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London office workers are coming face-to-face with the history hidden beneath their feet, as 3,000 skeletons dating back to the 16th century are dug up to make way for a new railway line.

Between the glass and steel towers of the City of London financial district lies the Bedlam burial ground, the final resting place for thousands of people who died between 1569 and 1738.

As archaeologists carefully brush soil off the bones, bankers, lawyers and other professionals take time out from hitting deadlines and sealing deals to wonder about the area's past residents, who had to contend with plague, civil war and the Great Fire of London.

"I would have walked along this street so many times in years gone by -- walking on all this history," said Mark Bugeja, 48, who works at a management consultancy.

"There are probably a lot of sad stories about the people who were there. Probably a lot of them needn't have died by today's standards."

The Bedlam burial ground -- built on land bought from the nearby Bethlem psychiatric hospital, known as Bedlam -- was used as a graveyard for people who died during the Great Plague of London in 1665-66.

Londoners who could not afford a church burial, criminals and members of non-conformist religious movements were also buried there.

From 2018, the burial site will host the new ticket hall at Liverpool Street station for Crossrail, an east-west rail link scything its way across the city.


- 'A respectful process' -


Before construction starts, archaeologists have a couple of months to excavate the skeletons.

As well as piecing together a microcosm of old London, they also hope that DNA from people who died of outbreaks of plague can be tested by researchers for clues about how to fight the disease.

A register published on the Crossrail website featuring 5,000 of the 20,000 people buried at the site helps piece together who the dead were.

James Lawson, a sketch maker buried in 1584, is said to have "died of thys new disease", thought to be the plague.

Published: 24 March 2015

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A group of British medical students of Sudanese origin who went missing after travelling to Turkey are feared to have crossed into Syria to join the Islamic State (IS) group as doctors, reports and sources said on Sunday.

The families of the students have travelled to the Turkey-Syria border in a desperate appeal for them to return home before it is too late, a Turkish opposition MP said.

According to reports in Britain's Guardian newspaper and the BBC, the nine young British medical students flew to Istanbul from the Sudanese capital Khartoum on March 12 and then overland towards Syria.

They have been joined by two other medics from the United States and Canada, also of Sudanese origin, the BBC said.

A Turkish MP from the Republican People's Party (CHP) Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, who represents the Hatay region bordering Syria, wrote on his Facebook page that he was helping the families in their search.

"Eleven doctors -- nine British and two Sudanese -- came to Turkey a week ago to join ISIS," he said, using another name for IS.

"The families of the young people have been in Turkey to search for them and bring them back," he added.

"Our greatest hope is to save the doctors from ISIS and reunite them with their families."

Ediboglu said the families had travelled to the city of Gaziantep, which has been seen as a key gateway for militants travelling to Syria.

He posted photographs of the nine British citizens -- five men and four women -- some proudly posing in academic dress on graduation day.

Ahmed Babikir, students' dean at Khartoum's private University of Medical Sciences told AFP five students university were missing after travelling to Turkey.

"They all have British passports and are of Sudanese origin," he said.

Published: 22 March 2015

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Turkey on Thursday said it had detained an intelligence agent working for one of the nations in the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State (IS) for helping three British teenage girls cross into Syria to join the jihadists.

The surprise revelation by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu appeared aimed at deflecting sustained criticism from Western countries that Turkey is failing to halt the flow of jihadists across its borders.

"Do you know who helped those girls? He was captured. He was someone working for the intelligence (service) of a country in the coalition," Cavusoglu told the A-Haber channel in an interview published by the official Anatolia news agency.

A Turkish government official told AFP that the agent was arrested by Turkey's security forces 10 days ago, and added that the person was not a Turkish citizen.

"We informed all the countries concerned," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"It's not an EU member, it's also not the United States. He is working for the intelligence of a country within the coalition," Cavusoglu added, without further specifying the nationality of the detained agent.

Cavusoglu said he had informed his British counterpart Philip Hammond of the development.

"He told me 'just as usual'," said Cavusoglu, without explaining further.

Close friends Kadiza Sultana, 16, and 15-year-olds Shamima Begum and Amira Abase, crossed into Syria after boarding a flight from London to Istanbul on February 17.

They took a bus from Istanbul to the southeastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa close to the Syrian border, from where they are believed to have crossed the frontier.

The disappearance of the girls has alarmed Britain and raised questions about what motivates such young people to go to Syria.

Published: 16 March 2015

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A record number of visitors flocked to top British tourist attractions in 2014, with Scottish venues and London seeing the biggest surges, new figures showed on Monday.

The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA), which comprises 57 of the UK's most popular museums, galleries, heritage sites and zoos, said tourist numbers jumped 6.5 percent to more than 123 million in 2014 compared with a year earlier.

Stalwarts such as the British Museum, the National Gallery and Edinburgh Castle continued to draw impressive crowds, but one-off events and blockbuster exhibitions also boosted numbers, the ALVA said.

London's Tate Modern gallery saw a record number of visitors after holding a Matisse exhibition, while the World War I centenary commemorations -- including the sea of ceramic poppies outside the Tower of London -- drew visitors to related museums, ALVA said.

The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow also saw tourists flock to the city's other attractions.

Published: 16 March 2015

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The British government's final budget before a May election contains perks for older voters and a "Google tax" on companies that shift profits overseas, according to Sunday newspapers.

Chancellor George Osborne's budget due to be announced Wednesday will end restrictions on the sale of annuities, allowing pensioners to swap regular retirement incomes for lump sums, the reports said.

"The chancellor will set out sweeping reforms to allow five million pensioners to trade in their savings for cash," the Sunday Telegraph reported.

The Observer said the current tax penalties of up to 70 percent would be removed, describing it as "a highly populist move designed to woo older voters into the arms of the Tories".

The move is an extension of reforms due to come into effect next month affecting people yet to retire, now extended to those who have existing annuities.

The Sun reported that the budget would include a 25 percent "Google tax on firms accused of diverting profits abroad to avoid tax", a move that follows criticism of the tax arrangements of companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google.

Published: 15 March 2015

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A statue of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi was unveiled on Saturday at the symbolic heart of the British establishment that once loathed him for his campaign against imperial rule.

Gandhi joins figures including Britain's World War II leader Winston Churchill, who described him as a half-naked "fakir", in London's Parliament Square, opposite Big Ben and the House of Commons.

Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley unveiled the bronze statue at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister David Cameron, Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan -- who gave a speech quoting Gandhi's principles -- and Gandhi's grandson, Shri Gopalkrishna Gandhi.

Hundreds of people gathered to watch, while a band played Indian classical music and Indian flags flew around the square.

Despite such pomp, Gandhi was historically resented by many in Westminster as the leader of the non-violent campaign for Indian independence from Britain, which was granted in 1947.

In a speech at the event, Cameron hailed Gandhi as "one of the towering figures in the history of world politics" and said that the statue would give him "an eternal home in our country".

The unveiling marks the latest step in Britain's efforts to recast both its past and present in India, once known as the "jewel in the crown" of the British empire.

In 2013, Cameron became the first British premier to visit the site of a notorious massacre in Amritsar in 1919 where troops under British control gunned down hundreds of unarmed protestors.

He described the killings as "shameful" but stopped short of a public apology.

Cameron has also made boosting economic ties between India and Britain -- home to some 1.5 million members of the Indian diaspora -- a priority.

When he came to power in 2010, he said he wanted to double trade with India by this year.

Jaitley, who has described the relationship with Britain as a "partnership of equals", said the unveiling marked the coming together of the world's oldest and largest democracy.

But he noted the irony of Gandhi's statue being located so close to that of Churchill, who was fiercely opposed to Indian independence.

- 'Should be trampled by elephant' -

The statue, which stands nine feet (2.7 metres) high, is by respected sculptor Philip Jackson and is based on a photograph of Gandhi taken when he visited London in 1931.

Published: 15 March 2015

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