Fare dodger faces jail over 112 unpaid rail tickets

A man described as one of Britain’s most prolific train fare dodgers is facing prison over 112 convictions for unpaid train tickets.

Charles Brohiri, 29, pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates’ Court to evading more than £3,000 in fares on Govia Thameslink services over a period spanning nearly two years, concluding last November.

Dressed in all black, Mr Brohiri entered dozens of guilty pleas, repeating the word “guilty” in a soft, low voice as each charge was read out by the court legal adviser. The process reportedly took around 20 minutes.

Brohiri “now could face a custodial sentence because of the number of offences he has committed”, said District Judge Nina Tempia.

He also faces the prospect of having to pay back tens of thousands of pounds in unpaid rail fares, costs, and court fees that have accrued in the legal proceedings.

In addition, Brohiri, from Hatfield in Hertfordshire, is accused of failing to pay fines worth £48,682 from separate prosecutions brought through the courts between August 2019 and April 2025.

Judge Tempia adjourned sentencing until February 11 so that a pre-sentence report can be drawn up on Brohiri.

According to court documents, Brohiri could be told to pay back all the unpaid fares, totalling £3,266, as well as the cost of £15,120 of bringing the 112 prosecutions.

He is also accused of continuing to dodge Thameslink fares in late November and December last year, as well as days before Thursday’s court appearance.

The charges he has admitted related to unpaid fares on journeys from London to Brighton in Sussex, and on the Thameslink lines into Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

The court was told Brohiri continued his campaign of fare dodging after being banned last April from entering Thameslink stations as part of his bail conditions.

In August, a judge drew up a bail condition to specifically ban Brohiri from getting on to a Thameslink train, telling him: “It’s very important you take these bail conditions seriously – you don’t get on any train without having the money.”

But Brohiri’s offending is said to have continued unabated, with the last allegation of fare dodging recorded three days ago – on January 12 this year.

Brohiri has pleaded guilty to 76 charges of failing to pay for a rail ticket.

He was convicted in his absence in August 2024 of a further 36 charges.

On Thursday, Judge Tempia dismissed Brohiri’s bid to have those convictions overturned on a legal technicality.

He argued that the prosecutions were unlawful because they had not been brought by a qualified legal professional.

But handing down her judgment, the judge concluded: “There has been no abuse of the court process.”

At sentencing, Brohiri is also likely to ask for a further seven offences to be taken into consideration, so that all his offending could be dealt with together.

Brohiri has been set free on bail until sentencing.

A GTR spokesperson said: “We welcome the court’s decision to uphold the earlier findings of guilt on 36 offences and we note that, following the 76 guilty pleas he entered today, he now stands convicted of 112 fare evasion offences.

“Through the careful use of prosecutions, targeted ticket checks, focused action at known hotspots, and better reporting tools for staff, ticketless travel on our network is at its lowest level since 2022.”

Trump threatens Insurrection Act if Minnesota doesn’t stop ‘attacking ICE agents’

President Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota if state lawmakers fail to stop protesters “from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E.”

The president posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, Thursday morning that protesters — who he referred to as “professional agitators and insurrectionists” — were attacking agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and demanded “corrupt politicians” stop the attacks.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump wrote.

Anti-ICE protests have taken place in Minneapolis and other large cities across the U.S. in the days after an ICE agent fatally shot 37-year-old mother Renee Good. Trump administration officials have said the shooting was justified because Good allegedly “weaponized” her vehicle by making contact with the officer as she attempted to drive away from a group of agents who were swarming around her.

The protests escalated late Wednesday after another ICE officer in Minneapolis shot a migrant in the leg after what the administration says was an altercation where the officer was attacked while attempting to make an arrest.

“He feels like that has been part of the plan of creating this surge so that he could have his authoritarianism be fully carried out,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) told The Independent. “He’s a wannabe dictator who’s trying to claw as much power as he can. And I think a lot of this, this chaos, this brutality, this confusion, is really to wear down the American people so that he can tear them down.”

The Trump administration has deployed thousands of ICE and Border Patrol officers to Minneapolis, the North Star State’s most populous city, as part of its effort to combat fraud by Somali immigrants and arrest “the worst of the worst” so they can be deported. The massive contingent of federal immigration enforcement personnel have spent the last few weeks roaming the city’s streets in unmarked vehicles and aggressively confronting people they believe may be in the U.S. illegally — a practice critics say is little more than racial profiling — while simultaneously surveilling and often arresting protesters.

State and local officials have denounced the massive federal presence as an “occupation” and have accused the president of deliberately seeking to escalate and inflame the situation and use any resulting unrest as a pretext for a violent crackdown.

“The irony of it is that they came to terrorize the Somali community, but it is our Latino neighbors that are being terrorized,” Omar, who came to the United States from Somalia, said. “It’s our Asian neighbors that are being terrorized, and it’s everyday people on the streets that are being terrorized by federal law enforcement. It feels like it’s a state sanctioned violence. And this shouldn’t be happening in the United States of America.”

The deployment of immigration officers to Minneapolis the latest example of Trump’s push to use federal resources to make a show of force against Democratic-led cities and states in hopes of provoking a response that will give him cause to crack down further by sending in active-duty troops under the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that allows the president to utilize active duty military or federalize National Guard troops in order to suppress uncontrollable protests or other civil disturbance situations in states.

“It’s terror act in our communities, and it is decreasing public safety,” Rep. Kelly Morrison (D-Minn.) told The Independent. “So we need to do the opposite of that. ICE needs to leave Minnesota.”

While Trump claimed in his Truth Social post that “many” past presidents had invoked the law, it has been used only on a few select occasions in the last century. The last time it was invoked was more than three decades ago, when then-president George H.W. Bush sent the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division into Los Angeles to quell riots that erupted after a group of police officers were acquitted of charges stemming from the videotaped beating of a Black man, Rodney King, following a car chase.

Bush invoked the act via an executive order on the third day of the riots at the request of then-California governor Pete Wilson and subsequently sent thousands of active duty soldiers to back up the many thousands of National Guard troops already deployed there.

It was the second time Bush invoked the act; the first was in 1989, to help put a stop to rioting in the US Virgin Islands after Hurricane Hugo.

President Lyndon Johnson also invoked the law in 1967 to send thousands of paratroopers from the army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions into Detroit after then-governor George Romney asked for help because state and local forces were overwhelmed by rioting that ultimately left more than 40 dead. Johnson’s two immediate predecessors, presidents John F Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower, also used the law without the consent of state governors to protect students integrating colleges and high schools in Mississippi and Arkansas.

While his predecessors only used the centuries-old law reluctantly or at the request of state officials, Trump has openly sought an opportunity to use active-duty forces — who are ordinarily forbidden from being deployed in the United States to enforce domestic laws — to occupy and pacify cities led by Democrats and inhabited largely by people who did not vote for him.

His preoccupations with Minnesota’s largest city — and the Insurrection Act — date to his first term, when the videotaped murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a Minneapolis police officer touched off racial justice protests across the U.S. that occasionally turned into limited civil unrest.

When the protests reached Washington, Trump openly mused to aides about having soldiers violently put the protestors down.

In his 2021 book Frankly, We Did Win This Election, journalist Michael Bender reported that Trump told aides he wanted troops and police to “beat the f**k out” out of the protesters and “crack skulls.”

He also told top military and law enforcement officials that National Guard soldiers who’d been deployed to Washington should “just shoot” the protesters.

When then-Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Gen. Mark Milley and then-Attorney General William Barr pushed back on the suggestion, Trump reportedly moderated his request.

“Well, shoot them in the leg — or maybe the foot,” Trump said. “But be hard on them!”

Since returning to office, he has repeatedly threatened to use the Insurrection Act to send troops into other Democratic-led cities, including Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago.

Within hours of Trump’s bellicose social media post, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters at the White House that she’d discussed the Insurrection Act with him but declined to say whether she views the unrest in Minneapolis as an “insurrection.”

“I describe it as [a] violent violation of the law in many places,” she said.

Noem stressed that Trump “certainly has the constitutional authority” to invoke the law while expressing hope that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis officials would “start to work with us to get criminals off the streets.”

Asked whether she’d recommended invoking the act to Trump, Noem replied that she had not done so.

“We just discussed it, that it was one of the options that he had constitutionally, and we talked about the fact that we’re going to continue our operations in Minneapolis and have the resources that we need to get the job done,” she said.

Harry Styles announces fourth album – Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally

Harry Styles has announced that he will release his new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, on 6 March this year.

The new album will feature 12 tracks, the artist revealed on Thursday. The artwork depicts the 31-year-old pop star in sunglasses, crouching beneath a disco ball that appears to hang from the night sky. Limited edition vinyls, CDs, exclusive merchandise, box sets, and more are available to pre-order through the singer’s website.

Rumours had been brewing that one of the UK’s biggest pop stars would make his hugely anticipated return this year after mysterious billboards – bearing the message “We belong together” – popped up in cities around the world, including New York, Manchester, Palermo and São Paulo.

Disco, Occasionally is executive-produced by Kid Harpoon, who won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and the Brit Award for Songwriter of the Year for his work on Styles’s last album, Harry’s House. The 2022 album featured hits like “Watermelon Sugar” and “As It Was”, and ranked as the second most-streamed album on Spotify that year.

In 2022, Styles also starred in two films: the psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling, and the romantic period drama My Policeman.

Noise of the former One Direction star’s impending musical comeback has been accompanied by suggestions that Styles could headline Glastonbury in 2027, when the festival returns after its traditional fallow year. The New York Post has reported that he has signed a deal for a residency at the city’s Madison Square Garden, where he previously performed for a consecutive 15 nights.

There are also suggestions that he could play a UK residency at Manchester’s Co-op Live arena, of which Styles is a significant investor. The venue will host this year’s Brit Awards – marking the first time the ceremony has been held outside London – next month.

Styles’s return comes after a period of dominance in pop by women, including Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, Olivia Rodrigo and Tate McRae. He is the latest One Direction star to announce new music following the loss of bandmate Liam Payne, who died after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires in October 2024.

One Direction formed on the reality TV show The X Factor in 2010. Despite coming in second place, Styles, Payne and bandmates Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan went on to become one of the most successful boy bands of all time, selling millions of records and achieving a string of hit singles before splitting indefinitely in 2016.

Tomlinson is currently preparing to release his latest album, How Did I Get Here?, on 23 January, and filming a Netflix documentary with Malik – due to air later this year – that will follow their travels around the US. Horan shared last year that he was back in the studio working on a follow-up to his 2023 album The Show.

Met Office issues yellow fog warnings as parts of UK battered by rain

A yellow fog warning is in place across parts of the UK after swathes of the country were battered with heavy rain.

The Met Office issued an overnight warning across north-west England, Wales and the West Midlands, with concerns that fog may cause some disruption to travel during Thursday evening and overnight. The alert has been put in place between 8pm and 7am.

Fog patches are set to become more widespread and dense in places during Thursday evening, with visibility falling below 100m in some places. The fog will then thin and lift into low cloud late in the night or early on Friday morning.

The forecaster reminded people to avoid delays potentially caused by the thick fog by checking road conditions if driving, leaving extra journey time, or amending plans if necessary.

“Make sure you know how to switch on your fog lights, and check they are working before setting off on your journey,” the Met Office advised.

Bus and train services, as well as flights and ferry travel, may also be affected by the fog, as the Met Office advised people to be prepared for the weather warnings to change and follow advice from relevant travel companies.

It comes as rain pelted parts of the UK, stretching from the East Midlands down south. Outbreaks of rain spread during the day, becoming persistent and heavy at times, before clearing to the North East through the evening and night. Parts of the country saw 20 to 30mm of rain, in some places falling in just a few hours. A few more isolated areas in southern England saw 40 to 50mm.

Five flood warnings were issued along the River Severn, the River Ouse, and Kidbrooke Stream amid the downpour, as the Environment Agency warned flooding was expected. Flooding remained a possibility elsewhere as the agency issued 117 alerts across the country.

The wet and foggy weather follows a cold start to the year as freezing temperatures hit the country, with a number of weather warnings for snow, rain, ice and wind across the UK.

A rare red wind weather warning was put in place across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly last week as the French-named Storm Goretti swept through parts of the country.

Parts of Scotland saw snow so heavy that children were unable to go to school for a week as wintry showers disrupted life.

Temperatures have since returned to average for this time of the year, and low pressure remains in charge of the weather.

Overnight

Rain and strong winds in the South East will clear eastwards from England during the first part of the night, leaving clear spells across the UK with showers in the west. Some frost and fog developing with icy stretches in Scotland.

Friday

Early frost and fog clearing to leave sunshine and showers. Showers heaviest and most frequent in the West and South West, with hail and thunder possible. Breezy, especially in the South West.

Outlook for Saturday to Monday

A changeable few days. A mix of bright or clear spells and showery outbreaks of rain. Some overnight frost and fog patches, the fog locally freezing and slow to clear.

Why doesn’t the home secretary have the power to fire police chiefs?

The strange case of Craig Guildford, the West Midlands chief constable who confessed to using AI in an official report and lost the confidence of the home secretary, highlights the difficult political dilemmas that arise around any “top cop” when things go badly awry. Indeed, it’s not too strong to suggest that this is actually a pivotal moment for the future of policing in Britain.

Well, they can be sacked, but it’s not easy, and there’s a very good reason for that. Quite aside from questions of fairness and due process, it’s a fundamental principle in a pluralist democracy that those who run the criminal justice system – police officers, judges, prison administrators – have to be independent and free of political pressure. If a home secretary had the power to summarily dismiss any senior police officer, then the scope for abuse is clear – ultimately, the government would be in a position to force the arrest of a political opponent.

It’s all set out in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act of 2011. In England and Wales, it’s down to the elected police and crime commissioner (PCC) for the relevant constabulary. In the mayoralties of Greater London, Greater Manchester, York and North Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire, PCC functions are undertaken by deputy mayors, and in South Yorkshire by the mayor.

The mayoralty of the West Midlands, the force overseen by Chief Constable Guildford, is an anomaly because the attempt to transfer powers to the West Midlands mayor was botched, failed a legal challenge, and was left with the West Midlands PCC. In London, uniquely, the home secretary has a reserve power to require the dismissal of the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

Analogous procedures are in place in Northern Ireland and Scotland. In all cases, a chief constable under pressure is entitled to due process and the right to put their own case, and this also involves the Police and Crime Panel, with strong representation from the local authorities. In the West Midlands this means councillors from Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Wolverhampton,Sandwell and so on, as well as a few independents.

Through the usual disciplinary procedures for misconduct – though it has been suggested (and disputed) that the home secretary maintains reserve powers under the Police Act 1996. In extreme cases, a chief constable could be prosecuted for a crime; they are not above the law, even if they are above politics. Normally they quit when the relevant people say they’ve no confidence in them – as with Cressida Dick in London in 2022, and Simon Byrne at the PSNI in 2023.

Yes. Labour is committed to abolishing the PCC system, so decisions will soon have to be taken as to who will in future be able to hire and fire our most senior police officers, how they will be able to do that, and in what circumstances it can happen.

Such powers can probably be left as they are now with the devolved administrations in Stormont and Holyrood, and the mayors in the big combined authorities. For the areas that previously had a PCC, the logical step would be for other forces to be overseen by their local authority or authorities, through some committee. These would have some democratic accountability.

However, the example of Guildford highlights how local councillors can be involved in decisions on policing events with a “political” dimension, such as demonstrations or a charged sports fixture, and the councillors might thus be compromised in the way they also exercise their duties of oversight. If a home secretary were to be given an ultimate role in this process, to overcome that potential weakness, that would also carry a different risk of politicisation and centralisation, and erode local responsibility, especially in the case of directly elected mayors.

Designing such machinery, preferably with cross-party consensus, and making it durable will be huge challenge for Shabana Mahmood in the months ahead, and she’s unlikely to get much help from her Tory opposite number, Chris Philp. Mahmood has already declared that “when a chief constable is responsible for a damaging failure of leadership, the public rightly expect the home secretary to act. And I intend to restore their ability to do so. This government will soon reintroduce the home secretary’s power to dismiss chief constables.”

The British tradition of independent policing is in some jeopardy.

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Norovirus admissions soar 57% in a week as NHS trusts declare critical incidents

The number of people being admitted to hospital with norovirus has hit the highest level so far this winter, with cases soaring by 57 per cent in a week.

NHS hospitals are facing a surge in cases, with some trusts declaring critical incidents – the highest alert level – and having to cancel operations due to A&E pressures as it battles a combination of flu, vomiting bugs and other winter viruses.

Data released on Thursday revealed an average of 567 hospital beds were filled each day last week by patients with norovirus symptoms, up from the previous week’s average of 361 and the highest figure for norovirus patients so far this winter.

It comes as doctors warn that patients are being left languishing in waiting rooms and corridors for days on end in what is a “dreadful” week for the health service, with patients said to be waiting for up to two days for a bed.

Dr Vicky Price, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, told The Independent that pressures showed an “awful picture nationwide”.

She said: “The thing that’s so hard is seeing patients waiting for days in a waiting room and on corridors. That has certainly rocketed. It’s almost seen as acceptable now.

“For the people sitting in waiting rooms, once they have exceeded 12 hours, there is no emphasis to move them [onto wards]. We regularly hear about trusts dismissing anything other than ambulance patients because it is so target-driven, not patient-driven. So, patients are sat in waiting rooms waiting for beds for days.”

At least 10 trusts, including those in Kent, Sussex and the Midlands, have declared critical incidents this week.

On Tuesday, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust declared a critical incident warning, adding: “Since Christmas, rising demand, winter infections, and staff sickness have led to significant and unacceptable delays in our Emergency Department (ED) and across our hospital wards.”

The trust said it had experienced its busiest day of the year so far on 7 January 2026 with 550 patients attending A&E.

It added: “Patients are having unacceptable and lengthy waits on corridors. Staff are working under extreme pressure.”

Meanwhile, monthly data on A&E waiting times, also published on Thursday, showed 151,724 patients, 10.5 per cent, waited more than 12 hours to be seen, treated, or admitted, after arriving at A&E in December. The percentage waiting 12 hours is the highest recorded this winter, but lower than in winter 2024 and 2023.

The number waiting at least four hours from the decision to admit to admission also rose, standing at 137,763 last month, up from 133,799 in November.

Some 73.8 per cent of patients in England were seen within four hours in A&Es last month, down from 74.2 per cent in November.

The government and NHS England have set a target of March 2026 for 78 per cent of patients attending A&E to be admitted, discharged, or transferred within four hours.

One emergency care doctor at a major hospital, speaking toThe Independent, described A&E as “dreadful” this week. “We had a nice Christmas, then the cold snap afterwards made us very busy with many, many broken bones.

“And we’ve not recovered from that position.”

They added: “[This week] We were holding 50 plus people awaiting beds in the department on one night with 12 hours wait to be seen.”

But, as norovirus figures soar, the number of people in hospital with flu in England has fallen slightly.

An average of 2,725 flu patients were in the hospital each day during the week ending 11 January, down 7 per cent from 2,924 the previous week.

The figure had climbed as high as 3,140 in the week ending 14 December. Last winter, weekly flu numbers for England peaked at 5,408 patients.

Andrew offered temporary home to speed up Royal Lodge exit

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has reportedly been offered a temporary home at Sandringham to speed up his relocation from the grade II mansion, Royal Lodge, where he has resided for the last two decades.

A more permanent home is being prepared for him on the Norfolk estate, but it is understood the King has offered him temporary property in the hope he would have left Windsor by Easter.

Other sources told The Times the prospect of an interim home could mean the disgraced former prince would be in more modest accommodation by his 66th birthday on 19 February.

Renovation and construction work are currently underway at Marsh Farm, which is expected to eventually become Andrew’s permanent base once it has been completed. It is understood that its security features require updating, with fences and a CCTV system installed ahead of his arrival.

After it was announced that Andrew would be leaving Royal Lodge last year, a no-fly restriction zone was extended in December to cover Marsh Farm, which had previously been held by a tenant farm and had been empty for years.

While few details have been given about the temporary accommodation being offered to Andrew, The Times reports that options include Wood Farm, where the late Prince Philip spent his final years, and York Cottage.

Removal vans have already been spotted at Royal Lodge, where Andrew has paid a peppercorn rent after signing a 75-year lease in 2003.

He was first advised to leave the 30-room mansion two years ago but refused, with Buckingham Palace confirming in October that he had returned his lease after further revelations emerged that he had continued to email convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein beyond when he had stated in his disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview that he had cut all contact with the paedophile in 2010.

As a result of these emails, the King stripped him of his titles and status and forced him to relocate to the Sandringham estate, with the monarch now due to privately fund his new lifestyle.

A source told The Sun: “The snow or rain hasn’t delayed the work on Marsh Farm but it still needs a lot of attention to make it habitable. But one thing for sure is that it is a lot, lot smaller and less luxurious than Royal Lodge.”

His ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, who had resided alongside him at Royal Lodge, is now understood to be separately house-hunting.

Neither she nor Andrew was invited to spend Christmas Day with the royal family and have remained out of the spotlight, while their two daughters, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice, were present at Sandringham over the festive period.