Man arrested over stabbing deaths

Detectives arrested the estranged husband of a woman after she and her mother were found stabbed to death.

The man, named locally as Sergei Zolotovsky, was found hiding in the loft of a burning home in Beckton, east London, after attempting to slash his throat.

Police went to the house in Leamouth Road after his former partner Svetlana was fatally stabbed near a bus stop in nearby Stansfeld Road.

They found the victim's mother, aged in her late sixties or early seventies, with fatal knife wounds on the ground floor of the home.

Firefighters extinguished a fire believed to have been deliberately started in one of the bedrooms.

Air strike damaging, warns Cameron

David Cameron has warned that strike action by thousands of airport workers would achieve nothing "apart from damage".

As the Unite union prepared to announce the result of a strike ballot of 6,000 staff employed by airports operator BAA, the Prime Minister said that he hoped there would not be any stoppages.

"These sorts of strikes never achieve anything apart from damage - damage to business, damage to jobs, damage to the interests of tourists who want to come to visit Britain, or people who want to leave Britain and have a holiday overseas," he told reporters at No 10.

Policewoman charged over 'tip-off'

A policewoman has been charged after being accused of tipping off a person about a potential raid by officers.

Pc Grania Hale, 34, was suspended from her duties with Sussex Police after being charged with misconduct in public office.

A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said: "In her role as a serving police officer she is alleged to have alerted a member of the public to the fact that a search warrant may be executed."

Hale, who is attached to the neighbourhood response team at Haywards Heath, West Sussex, was granted conditional bail by Sevenoaks magistrates in Kent on Tuesday.

Town centres like Wild West - PM

David Cameron has signalled support for councils in Greater Manchester wanting to ban shops and bars from selling cheap alcohol, saying many town centres at weekends resembled the Wild West.

The Prime Minister said plans to introduce a minimum price per unit of 50p in Greater Manchester would be looked at "very sympathetically".

Ten local authorities want to pass by-laws to address public disorder and health issues caused by binge-drinking.

The approach was backed by doctors and health experts, but the Government - which would have to agree the local regulations - was previously lukewarm.