Disruption at London Waterloo as SWR issue ‘do not travel warning’

A major signalling failure at London’s Waterloo station has caused commuter chaos this morning, with disruption expected for the remainder of the day.

South Western Railways has urged customers “do not travel this morning” due to 14 platforms at the busy station being out of service due to the failure.

In a statement on X, the railway operator said: “Engineers are on sit attempting to restore the use of the platforms, but with very few trains able to move in and out of London Waterloo and crew already displaced, services across the network are severely disrupted.”

They added that while they were hoping to restore some services later on Monday, they would still likely be subject to delays and alterations.

Due to the level of disruption, any unused tickets will be valid for Tuesday.

Tickets are also being accepted Great Western Railway services between Salisbury, Westbury, Weymouth and Reading, CrossCountry services between Reading and Bournemouth, and Southern services between London Victoria, Portsmouth Harbour and Southampton Central.

According to National Rail, the incident was first reported shortly after 5.30am.

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Pope condemns ‘barbarity’ of Gaza war as dozens reported killed queuing for aid

Pope Leo XIV has condemned the “barbarity” of the Gaza war and called out “collective punishment” as officials said dozens more Palestinians were killed queuing for aid on Sunday.

The pontiff renewed his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, asking the international community to respect international laws and the obligation to protect civilians.

It came as Gazan officials said 85 refugees were killed after witnesses claimed Israeli soldiers and tanks fired on crowds queuing for food in northern Gaza.

“I once again call for an immediate end to the barbarity of this war and for a peaceful resolution to the conflict,” Pope Leo XIV said.

“I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law, as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations.”

Around 67 of those killed were gunned down trying to reach aid entering through the Zikim crossing with Israel, according to the health ministry and local hospitals.

“Tanks surrounded us and trapped us as gunshots and strikes rained down. We were trapped for two hours,” said Ehab Al-Zei, who had been waiting for flour. “I will never go back again. Let us die of hunger, it’s better.”

Israel’s military said soldiers had shot at a gathering of thousands of Palestinians in northern Gaza who posed a threat, and it was aware of some casualties.

On Saturday, witnesses said at least 32 Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops while queuing for food distributed by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

The shootings occurred near hubs operated by the US and Israeli-backed GHF, which launched operations in May this year.

The US and Israel seek to replace the traditional UN-led aid distribution system in Gaza, asserting that Hamas militants siphon off supplies. The UN denies the allegation.

While the GHF says it has distributed millions of meals to hungry Palestinians, local health officials and witnesses say Israeli army fire has killed hundreds of people as they try to reach the hubs since May.

The organisation’s four sites are in military-controlled zones. Israel’s army secures them from a distance, but does not operate them.

Pope Leo also expressed his “deep sorrow” for the Israeli attack on the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, which killed three people and wounded 10 others, including the parish priest.

The shelling of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza also damaged the church compound, where hundreds of Palestinians have been sheltering from the Israel-Hamas war, now in its 21st month.

Israel expressed regret over what it described as an accident and said it was investigating. “We need to dialogue and abandon weapons,” the pope said earlier on Sunday, after presiding over Mass at the nearby Cathedral of Albano.

Gaza’s population of more than two million Palestinians are in a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, now relying largely on the limited aid allowed into the territory.

Many people have been displaced multiple times. Hamas triggered the war when militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage.

Fifty remain in Gaza, but fewer than half are thought to be alive. Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 58,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

UK could see half a month’s rainfall in under 24 hours

Parts of the UK could be battered with half a month’s worth of rainfall in less than a day, the Met Office warned.

The forecaster said Northern Ireland could experience some of the worst of a heavy spell of rainfall on Sunday evening into Monday.

It comes as new amber-level rain warnings were put in place for the eastern counties of Northern Ireland, as well as several counties south of the border.

The warning applies for Antrim, Armagh and Down between 11pm on Sunday until 8am on Monday. But as there remains some uncertainty regarding the extent of the heaviest rain, a wider yellow weather warning for rain remains in place in Northern Ireland from 6pm on Sunday to 6pm on Monday.

The expected rainfall carries a risk of flooding, power cuts and dangerous driving conditions. Forecasters also warn there is a small chance that some communities could be cut off by flooded roads, while fast-flowing or deep floodwater could pose a danger to life.

Met Office forecaster Simon Partridge said: “It looks like Northern Ireland is the place where we could see the most rainfall and certainly the most impactful rainfall. They could see 50 to 75mm of rain within 12 to 18 hours.”

The region records an average of 89mm of rain in July, meaning more than half a month’s rainfall could hit Northern Ireland in less than a day.

Chief meteorologist Andy Page added: “This high intensity rainfall can lead to flooding, with impacts on properties, transport networks and power outages.

“The heavy rain comes at the start of a new working week, so expect disruption to the Monday morning commute and check the flood risk in your area to protect your property.”

A yellow-level thunderstorm warning was in place for the western half of Northern Ireland between midday and 8pm on Sunday.

Across much of Wales and south-west England, the Met Office warned of a “danger to life” as thunderstorms were forecast in the regions on Sunday.

On Monday, the thunderstorm warning moves to much of Scotland and England. It is in place between 3am and 9pm.

Rain continues to affect Scotland and Northern Ireland overnight, while further heavy showers spread into the South, but drier with clear spells across Wales and central England. Feeling fresher in the South, but remaining rather muggy for northern areas.

Another cloudy, damp start, particularly for the South East and across Northern Ireland. Brighter elsewhere, though showers soon return: heavy, thundery, and with a risk of hail by the afternoon.

Sunny spells and scattered showers remain the theme this week as low pressure continues to bring unsettled conditions. Less showers, more sunshine by Thursday, with temperatures around the seasonal average.

Ukraine latest: Putin unleashes mass drone attack on Kyiv

Russia launched a new barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine in an overnight attack on Monday, killing at least one person and causing multiple fires in the capital Kyiv, city officials said.

The attack came after Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed Russian president Vladimir Putin was open to peace with Ukraine.

Speaking after Donald Trump gave Russia a 50-day deadline to end its invasion, Peskov said Moscow had not given up on its strategic goals.

In Kyiv, residents spent a tense and sleepless night, rushing to take shelter in underground stations amid the aerial barrage from Russia. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said rescuers and medics were working on sites across four districts of the capital. A subway station in central Kyiv, commercial property, shops, houses and a kindergarten were damaged, city officials said.

Later this morning the UK and Germany are chairing a meeting to discuss Donald Trump’s plans for Nato allies to provide Ukraine with weapons, a week after he said deliveries would arrive in Ukraine within days.

Man wearing metal necklace dies after being sucked into MRI machine

A man who was pulled into an MRI machine in New York after he walked into the room wearing a large weight-training chain around his neck has died, according to the police.

The man, 61, had entered the MRI room while a scan was underway Wednesday afternoon at the Nassau Open MRI. The machine’s strong magnetic force drew him in by the metallic chain, according to a release from the Nassau County Police Department.

He died on Thursday afternoon, but a police officer who answered the phone at the Nassau County police precinct where the MRI facility is located, said the department had not yet been given permission to release his name.

The man was not supposed to be in the room, according to the police.

His wife told News 12 Long Island in a recorded interview that she was undergoing an MRI on her knee when she asked the technician to get her husband to help her get off the table. She said she called out to him.

Her husband was wearing a 20-pound (9kg) chain that he uses for weight training, an object they’d had a casual conversation about during a previous visit, according to the report.

When he got close to her, she said the machine pulled him in. “I said: ‘Could you turn off the machine, call 911, do something, Turn this damn thing off!’” she recalled, as tears ran down her face.

She said the technician helped her try to pull her husband off the machine but it was impossible.

She said he suffered a series of heart attacks after he was freed from the machine.

Earlier, police said the man suffered a “medical episode” and was taken to a local hospital for treatment. He was last described as being in critical condition, PIX11 reported.

It wasn’t the first New York death to result from an MRI machine.

In 2001, a six-year-old child from Croton-on-Hudson was killed at the Westchester Medical Center when an oxygen tank flew into the chamber, drawn in by the MRI’s 10-ton electromagnet.

In 2010, records filed in Westchester County revealed that the family settled a lawsuit for $2.9m.

MRI machines are designed to find ailments in the body using powerful magnets. The magnets create a strong magnetic field which is used in scanning bodies.

The machines can then produce an image of a person’s soft tissue that allow doctors to look for abnormalities, like tumors, or damage to internal organs, according to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

“The magnetic field extends beyond the machine and exerts very powerful forces on objects of iron, some steels, and other magnetizable objects; it is strong enough to fling a wheelchair across the room,” the institute explains.

This is why MRI technicians are thorough when making sure that patients have no metal on their person – or inside their bodies – before they are imaged using an MRI machine.

“The static magnetic field of the MRI system is exceptionally strong. A 1.5 T magnet generates a magnetic that is approximately 21,000 greater than the earth’s natural field,” according to the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging.

The department noted in a write-up about the potential hazards of MRI machines that magnetic metal objects “can become airborne projectiles”. Even small objects – like paper clips or hairpins – can reach a terminal velocity of 40mph when pulled by an MRI’s magnets.

In addition to the potential dangers from flying metal, MRI machine magnets can also erase credit cards, destroy phones, and shut down pacemakers.

The Independent has reached out to Nassau Open MRI for comments.

When my friends were facing cancer, a community of people stepped up

When I was younger, I used to worry incessantly about my parents getting cancer. I’d lay awake at night, ruminating on what would happen to my brother and I if they did. Who would support us? Thankfully, both are still cancer-free, well into their seventies.

However, now that I’m a parent myself, I worry about my children. Many people believe that cancer only really happens to people in old age, but that’s just not true. One beloved friend’s daughter died of leukaemia in 2020, aged just five; an unthinkable horror that changed the lives of everyone who knew her and her family.

And with Macmillan Cancer Support reporting that almost 3.5 million people in the UK are living with cancer, I also worry about my friends – parents themselves, their lives touched by cancer. One friend sat me down in our favourite local café, our toddlers playing at our feet, to break the news that she was about to undergo a double mastectomy. We cried together.

Another friend, Sarah, a single parent to two teenage girls, was diagnosed with breast cancer the day before we heard that King Charles had cancer, and a month before the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, announced her own diagnosis in March last year. It seemed like cancer was everywhere.

As a result, Sarah put 2024 on hold – she missed her daughter’s last sports day and last concert at primary school and had to find a whole new way of co-ordinating family life.

“I’m lucky in some ways that my children are teenagers, so they are able to look after themselves to some degree – but I’m also a single parent, so there are some things that they can’t do, or struggle with, due to their age,” she tells me.

“I have even set up multiple alarms on our Alexa reminding them to put their packed lunches in their bags or leave for school, just in case I can’t get up.”

Sarah says she thought she knew quite a lot about cancer prior to her diagnosis, but now admits she “really didn’t”. She explains: “There are so many terms and procedures to understand – stages and grades, not to mention over 100 different chemotherapy drugs.”

Sarah tells me about the exhausting cumulative effect of chemotherapy, which she endured every three weeks during her cancer treatment: “After the very first lot, I slept for a few hours and felt much better pretty quickly. For my last rounds, I slept for 48 hours solid and even days later, I needed to have a nap in the middle of the day and was in bed by 8pm.”

Sarah’s now finished chemotherapy and, a year on from her diagnosis, is turning 50. She’s throwing a huge party to celebrate not only the birthday milestone, but getting over this “annus horriblis” – a year she couldn’t have gotten through without the people around her.

“People can do so much for us when we are unwell – and I am forever grateful,” she says. “I’ve been really overwhelmed by the support that my friends have given me; from ferrying around my children to and from after-school events and sleepovers when things get bad, to my 75-year-old neighbour mowing the lawn. One friend popped round with a huge pot of pasta sauce and I even had a gift box from a recruiter at work.”

What talking to my strong, resilient friends about their cancer journeys has made me realise most, is the power of community: for when we receive the worst news imaginable, what we need is people around us to see us through. A community of other women: friends, school mums, neighbours.

They had people willing to make them food, pick up their children, go shopping for them or to just sit with them and listen. They had support when they decided to raise money for cancer support charities, when they did fundraisers such as hosting a Macmillan Coffee Morning.

It takes a village to raise a child – and that village will be with you every step of the way when you need them most.

Find out how you can help raise vital funds by hosting a Macmillan Coffee Morning. Sign up now on the Macmillan website

Macmillan Cancer Support, registered charity in England and Wales (261017), Scotland (SC039907) and the Isle of Man (604). Also operating in Northern Ireland.

Inquiry to uncover truth of violent clashes at Orgeave miners’ strike

A public inquiry to uncover the truth of what happened during violent clashes between police and striking miners in Orgreave is set to begin in the autumn, the government has announced.

The statutory inquiry, promised in Labour’s election manifesto, will get to the bottom of one of the “most controversial episodes in policing history”.

It comes more than 40 years after 120 people were injured during skirmishes between police and miners in the Battle of Orgreave at a coking plant in South Yorkshire on 18 June 1984.

In total, 95 picketers were arrested and initially charged with riot and violent disorder, but all charges were later dropped after evidence was discredited.

Announcing the inquiry, home secretary Yvette Cooper admitted events at Orgreave had “cast a shadow over communities in Yorkshire and other mining areas”.

She added: “The violent scenes and subsequent prosecutions raised concerns that have been left unanswered for decades, and we must now establish what happened.”

The inquiry, which will have the powers to compel people to provide evidence, will be chaired by the Rt Rev Dr Pete Wilcox, the Bishop of Sheffield.

It follows years of campaigning from the Orgreave Truth & Justice Campaign (OTJC), which welcomed the news, saying: “We have waited a long time for this day.”

Campaigners said they are determined to find out who was responsible for “organising and ordering the deployment of multiple police forces, including mounted police armed with truncheons, shields and dogs, against striking miners”.

They also want to find out why “other evidence had been destroyed or embargoed until 2066 and 2071”, after it emerged Northumbria Police had destroyed two boxes of documents relating to the strike in April last year.

OTJC secretary, Kate Flannery, said: “We now need to be satisfied that the inquiry is given the necessary powers to fully investigate all the aspects of the orchestrated policing at Orgreave, and have unrestricted access to all relevant information including government, police and media documents, photos and films.”

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary, Chris Kitchen, said the inquiry was “hugely welcome”.

Mr Kitchen added: “The events at Orgreave, and throughout the strike, destroyed the trust between the police and mining communities even now, 41 years later.

“It is vital that this trust is won back and the NUM believe this inquiry will go some way to rebuilding that trust.”

Kevin Horne, a miner arrested at Orgreave, said: “It is now over 41 years since a paramilitary style police operation was planned at Orgreave and it is important to remember that some of the miners attacked and arrested there are now dead and many others are old and ill.

“We need a quick and thorough inquiry with a tight timescale so that surviving miners can at last obtain the truth and justice they have been waiting for.”

South Yorkshire’s mayor, Oliver Coppard, described the events at Orgreave as one of the most controversial in policing history.

“The violent clashes, the arrest of 95 miners, the collapse of the subsequent trial after revelations about police conduct, and the absence of any investigation or accountability scarred those involved, and people across our entire community,” he said, adding that the inquiry is a “landmark moment for justice and accountability”.

“It’s a step towards setting the historical record straight, ensuring lessons are learned, and restoring public trust,” he continued.

“We owe it to the miners, their families, and our communities to ensure that the events of Orgreave are finally understood.”

The Home Office said formal consultation between the home secretary and the Rt Rev Wilcox on the inquiry’s terms of reference has begun.

The Rt Rev Wilcox, who is working with the government to identify experts to support him on an independent panel, said he did not “underestimate the weight of expectation or the significance of the task”.

He added: “I expect the panel to begin its work in the autumn, and we will endeavour to deliver an inquiry which is thorough and fair, and which will uncover what happened at Orgreave as swiftly as possible.”

Four remain in hospital after Somerset school bus crash

Four people are still in hospital after a school bus crashed in Somerset on Thursday, police said in an update.

A 10-year-old boy died after the bus left the A396 at Cutcombe Hill near Minehead and slid down a 20ft slope.

Between 60 and 70 people were on board the bus, which was heading back to Minehead Middle School after a day trip for year 5 classes to Exmoor Zoo.

Two children were taken to Bristol Royal Hospital for Children by air ambulance following the incident, while four other children and three adults were taken to hospital in Somerset.

On Sunday, Avon and Somerset police said two children remained in hospital in Bristol and two adults were still in hospital in Somerset.

Minehead Middle School, which caters for pupils aged between nine and 14, and is five days away from the end of term, remained closed on Friday.

A stream of people went to the school to pay respects the day after the crash, leaving dozens of floral tributes, balloons and messages at the gates.

Many were visibly upset and could be seen hugging and supporting each other.

Speaking outside the school gates, the Rev Philip Butcher, the vicar of Minehead, said the community was in shock.

“It was absolutely numbing, there are no words to describe what happened yesterday,” he said.

“It’s an absolute tragedy, and one that’s still very much unfolding. We’re just standing firm with the school, with the families at this time, just to be with them in this time as a point of support.”

Fundraisers have also been set up for affected families, which have raised tens of thousands of pounds so far.

Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer issued a statement after the crash, saying: “There are no adequate words to acknowledge the death of a child. All my thoughts are with their parents, family and friends, and all those affected.”