A 17-year old boy has been charged with three counts of murder over the attack on a holiday club in Southport.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, will appear at Liverpool City Magistrates Court on Thursday.

Three girls – six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar – died after being hurt during a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop on Monday. Eight other children suffered stab wounds, with five in a critical condition.

Local businessman John Hayes was stabbed in the leg while trying to disarm the attacker and Leanne Lucas, one of the workshop organisers, was seriously wounded while trying to protect the group of children. Both adults remained in hospital after undergoing surgery. 

Police confirmed in a midnight press conference that they had charged a suspect with three counts of murder, ten attempted murders and the possession of a bladed article.

Sarah Hammond, Chief Crown Prosecutor for CPS Mersey-Cheshire, said: “The Crown Prosecution Service has authorised Merseyside Police to charge a 17-year-old male, of Banks, Lancashire, with three counts of murder and ten counts of attempted murder following the tragic incident that took place in Southport this week.

“He will appear at Liverpool City Magistrates’ Court on Thursday August 1, 2024.

“We remind all concerned that criminal proceedings against the defendant are active and that he has the right to a fair trial.

“It is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary, or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”

She added: “Our thoughts remain with the families of all of those affected by these harrowing events.”

News of the charges came as police quelled violent protests which spread across Britain on Wednesday night. 

Hundreds gathered outside Downing Street, in the centre of London, at 7pm for a rally.

In Hartlepool, Co Durham, a number of arrests were made after protesters clashed with riot police in the centre of town as they attempted to march towards a nearby mosque, reports suggested.

The Enough is Enough rally was promoted by Tommy Robinson and actor Laurence Fox as a peaceful demonstration. However, it descended into violence as far-Right protesters clashed with riot police.

The violence broke out amid claims that the police were not telling the truth about the suspect’s background and his motives, with rumours swirling on social media.

It came after social media users incorrectly named the attacker and also wrongly claimed he was an asylum seeker. 

Southport locals described the violent protests as “a disgraceful hijacking of our tragedy, and a failed attempt to divide us”.

Jenni Stancombe, the mother of seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, appealed on social media for the violence to end.

She said: “The police have been nothing but heroic these last 24 hours, and they and we don’t need this. This is the only thing that I will write, but please stop the violence in Southport tonight.”

Suspect is ‘quiet’ teenager 

Neighbours reported seeing a heavy police presence at the semi-detached house where the suspect was living with his parents in the village of Banks, three miles from the scene of the attack,. 

People who knew the teenager described him as an “introvert” who had been interested in karate and theatre, having once performed in a show at a West End theatre.

He was born in Cardiff but later moved to Merseyside with his parents, originally from Rwanda, and his brother.

The siblings went to school locally but also became involved in a performing arts group, where they produced shows and films with other youngsters.

“I was in the same group as him,” a friend told The Telegraph. “He was quite quiet. They kind of just turned up and they said, ‘oh they’ve moved here from somewhere else, they are brand new to the community, they are trying to branch out and make friends and stuff’. That’s what we got told.

“He just kind of turned up one day in class and we were told to make him welcome. He’s come from quite far away.”

The friend said the group involved musical theatre, TV production and “singing and dancing” and also making “making their own movies”, adding that one of the major events was a show in London’s West End.

“It was just working in groups collaborating with people. They’d have a musical every year, like a big production and that would sometimes get done with other groups,” the friend said. “He was at one in London, he went to one in London on the West End.

The friend added: “I was in the same group as him. He was enjoying it, but he was never really… you know how musical theatre kids [are]; they are very extroverted. He wasn’t, he was very quiet. He got involved, but he was a lot quieter.”

‘Didn’t really talk about himself that much’

He added that he “didn’t really talk about himself that much” but did mention his family were originally from Rwanda.

However, he said that his older brother was “more outgoing, he was a lot more talkative, he was more in the crowd”, adding: “His Dad came across quite educated. He presented well.”

The father of the suspect’s friend said that while the suspect appeared to enjoy the theatre group, he was not pushing to be at the front of the stage.

“He wasn’t a normal theatre kid,” he said. “He wasn’t pushing for main leads and stuff like that. When they went to London he’d just got involved [in the group], he enjoyed it.”

The Duchess of Sussex wishes the Duke “could let go of these lawsuits” and “live in the moment”, sources have told a US celebrity magazine.

Meghan is said to want Prince Harry to be “free of all of this”, but knows that “his love” for her and their children means he cannot drop the legal battle about their security.

People magazine has quoted a former employee of the Sussexes’ Archewell Foundation as saying the Duchess “supports Harry 100 per cent, but she wishes he could let go of these lawsuits, be happy and live in the moment”.

“She wants him to be free of all of this, but she also knows that because of everything he’s been through and his love for [her and their children], he can’t.

“She wants him to live in a world where he is not burdened by this.”

Harry is continuing to appeal against a UK High Court decision about his security, after losing several rounds of the case against the Home Office.

The magazine article claims that the Duke’s calls to his father over the issue are going “unanswered”, alleging that he is told the King is “unavailable right now”.

On criticism of Harry’s continued public revelations about the Royal family creating distrust between him and the Palace, his allies claimed he would not need to keep giving interviews to earn money if the King intervened to give him more security.

If the matter of security were resolved, they said, it could be “swords down”.

The cover story follows a landmark interview in People in 2019, entitled “Meghan Markle’s best friends break their silence”, in which five of the Duchess’s friends used its pages to “stand up against the global bullying we are seeing and speak the truth about our friend”.

This week’s issue features Harry on the cover, with a story disclosing the “real reason” he and the King are “no longer speaking”. It promises: “For the first time, insiders open up about what has made a reconciliation between Prince Harry and King Charles impossible.”

Harry recently told an ITV interviewer that he “won’t bring my wife back to this country” over “genuine concerns” over security.

Earlier this year, a High Court judge ruled that he had “comprehensively lost” a “frankly hopeless” bid to appeal against a Home Office decision about his UK security.

He had sought a judicial review over a decision made by the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (RAVEC) to remove his right to automatic police protection after he left the working Royal family. He still receives protection when he returns to Britain in specific circumstances, but is obliged to give 28 days’ notice on his plans.

Responding to an offer to pay the Metropolitan Police for security, government lawyers told the court that officers could not be used as “private bodyguards for the wealthy”.

Harry is said to believe that his father should intervene in the security issue to ensure his younger son and family are fully protected when in the UK.

Royal sources regularly point out that it is not the King’s decision to make, and that it would be inappropriate for him to be seen to intervene in government or police matters.

They also note that Harry’s many public pronouncements about his family, from the Oprah Winfrey interview to his Netflix documentary and tell-all memoir, have damaged trust.

Harry is reported to believe that his father could help with the security decision if he wanted to. The dialogue between father and son, the friends told People, has now moved from frustration to “complete silence”.

“He gets ‘unavailable right now’,” a source described as “a friend of Harry’s” said.

“His calls go unanswered. He has tried to reach out about the King’s health, but those calls go unanswered too.”

Claiming nothing “would give [Harry] more happiness than being able to rekindle his bond with his father”, they added: “You can’t undo bloodlines.

“He’s not asking his dad for a nicer house or nicer cars. He’s asking because of the reality of the situation. He is at risk.”

They added that the Sussexes felt the “only option” was to leave Britain “for their sanity”, saying: “I do think they thought if they got out of this bubble, there would be less focus on them.”

After leaving the working Royal family and settling in America, Harry and Meghan gave their famous interview to Oprah Winfrey, starred in a six-part Netflix documentary about their troubles, gave multiple interviews, and Harry wrote his bestselling memoir.

Harry has made several short trips back to the UK, including after his father was diagnosed with cancer. His last visit, in May, did not include a meeting with the King, with a spokesman for the Sussexes putting it down to the monarch’s “full schedule”.

Buckingham Palace does not comment on security issues or Harry’s legal case, and declined to comment on the magazine article.

A source said it would be “wholly inappropriate” for the King to attempt to influence RAVEC.

Ukraine has flown its first combat missions with an F-16 after the American-made fighter jets’ long-awaited arrival.

The Telegraph understands the modern warplanes have only been used in an “air defence” capacity so far.

A Ukrainian air force official did not deny this.

A report by the Bloomberg news wire first revealed that a small, but unspecified, number of F-16s had been delivered to Kyiv.

Soon after, a pixelated picture purporting to be an F-16 in the skies above Ukraine was shared on social media and by Ukrainian media outlets.

Kyiv has not officially confirmed receipt of the jets.

Ukraine is expecting to receive 79 F-16s from Belgium, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands.

An international coalition to support the deliveries and training of Ukrainian pilots – which also includes the US and UK – had pledged to have the first jets flying by the end of July.

The process to upgrade Kyiv’s ageing Soviet warplanes was given the go ahead in July last year, when Joe Biden signed off on the donations of F-16s.

The much-vaunted arrival of the jets will be met by significant fanfare given their potential role in Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion.

Oleksii Neizhpapa, the commander of Ukraine’s navy, said the jets would help challenge Russia’s “full dominance” of the skies over the Black Sea.

But Western aviation experts have cautioned against the warplanes being a war-winning silver bullet for the Ukrainians.

A report last week by the Washington Post said only six Ukrainian pilots had qualified to fly the F-16, meaning only a limited number of sorties could be flown each day.

There are also expectations that the jets will be limited to an air-defence role because of the threat posed by Russian surface-to-air missile systems closer to the front lines.

News of the F-16s’ arrivals came after Russia launched one of its largest drone barrages against Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

Ukrainian forces intercepted 89 drones and one missile in the long-range raid that lasted for more than seven hours.

Most of the Russian munitions were aimed at Kyiv, with Serhii Popko, the capital’s administrative chief, describing it as “one of the most massive drone attacks on Ukraine during the entire war”.

Authorities said none of the drones reached their final targets, but debris from the interceptions did damage 13 hours in the wider Kyiv region.

Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky conceded on Wednesday that the US elections, which Donald Trump is favourite to win, poses a “challenge” to Ukraine.

Washington is Kyiv’s chief military backer, donating tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons.

A lawyer serving on a crown court jury has become the first person to take the oath swearing on a river.

Paul Powlesland, 38, took the oath at a major London crown court with his fingers dipped into a cup of water taken from the river Roding, in Barking, east London, where he lives on a houseboat.

As he did so, he said: “I swear by the river Roding, from her source in Molehill Green to her confluence with the Thames, that I will faithfully try the defendant and give a true verdict according to the evidence.”

Mr Powlesland is a barrister at Garden Court Chambers, who specialises in nature protection, employment and housing law.

He told The Telegraph: “When I was called for jury duty, I was thinking of the thing that was most meaningful for me – something that I would truly feel bound to if I gave an oath on it. I realised it was the river.”

He took a small bottle containing the river water with him to court and was asked by security staff to take a sip from it – a test required of everyone taking drinks into court to prove the contents are not harmful.

Mr Powlesland, who set up a trust to clean up the river in 2019, complied but added: “I didn’t swallow any. I love my river, but I’m not entirely confident about what Thames Water might have put in it.”

The judge looked at him with a “slightly perplexed, but friendly” expression when he told him he wanted to swear on a river but accepted provided he made an affirmation to tell the truth. An affirmation is an alternative non-religious oath.

Mr Powlesland told the judge that nature was his god and that he treated the River Roding with the same “reverence, sacredness and love in action as many religious people give to their holy book”. 

He said that he was neither Christian nor an atheist, but compared his belief as being “adjacent to Christian spirituality”.

“I relate to nature as divine and believe our society needs to as well if we are going to stop destroying nature and ultimately ourselves,” he said.

Pilgrim’s progress

Last month, he completed a five-day pilgrimage, walking from London to Canterbury with no money, tent or phone and sleeping in hedges or taking sanctuary in church porches during rainy nights.

On reaching Canterbury Cathedral, he received a blessing from the vice-dean and visited the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, where he “gave thanks for my journey and the blessings that had been bestowed”.

He said: “I believe one of the reasons our society is so destructive towards nature is because we’ve lost the idea of it being sacred.”

But, he said that he manifests that reverence for nature in the way that he lives his life and cares for the river through physical action, removing rubbish from it, planting trees nearby, campaigning against water pollution and working to bring back public access.

According to his chambers’ website, Mr Powlesland specialises in “upholding the rights of environmental activists to protest and protect the natural world, and uses environmental law and regulations to defend trees, rivers and wildlife”.

During the lunch break, he went for a dip in Eagle Pond, in the grounds of the court, which he said he was delighted to discover fed into a stream that flows into the Roding, which is the third biggest river in London.

Jurors can swear to tell the truth according to their own religion. A Hindu would substitute Gita for Almighty God, a Muslim Allah, a Sikh Guru Nanak.

Even if a juror has no religious belief, taking an oath using a Bible, for example, “shall not for any purpose affect the validity of the oath”, according to the Oaths Act of 1978.

Anyone who objects to being sworn is allowed to make a “solemn affirmation” instead of taking an oath.

A Labour council has been accused of launching an attack on British farmers with a “draconian” meat and dairy ban.

Calderdale council, in West Yorkshire, has become the latest in a string of town halls to implement “100 per cent plant-based catering” at events to reduce its carbon footprint.

The move, agreed at a meeting of the council last week, provoked a backlash from countryside campaigners, who urged Steve Reed, the Environment Secretary, to condemn the policy.

An increasing number of local authorities, including Labour-controlled Enfield in London and Oxford city council, have introduced meat and dairy bans or signed so-called plant-based treaties in a bid to be more environmentally friendly.

But the trend has been resisted by some rural communities, with 10 councils – including Suffolk, Cornwall and Dorset – voting in favour of an alternative motion from the Countryside Alliance to keep meat and dairy on the menu.

The policy agreed by Calderdale last week states that catering provided at meetings and events hosted by the council on its own premises must be “100 per cent plant based”. It should also be “focused on wholefood which is minimally processed, and where possible should be locally sourced and seasonal”.

‘Attack on farming’

The ban specifically covers catering funded by the council, and does not apply to food purchased by staff for their own consumption, or for individuals, such as children in care.

Drinks are also exempt, although plant-based alternatives to milk should be provided at council events.

Mo Metcalf-Fisher, director of external affairs at the Countryside Alliance, said: “It is incredibly concerning to see a Labour council introduce such a draconian and anti-livestock farming policy. This represents an attack on farming and freedom of choice, which I only hope Steve Reed and the Labour Party condemn utterly.

“If the council truly cared about achieving net zero, it would commit to reducing emissions from food miles by sourcing local produce – be it meat, dairy, or plant-based – at all events, following on from many other councils across the UK.”

The plans, first endorsed by cabinet members in June, prompted concerns from the National Farmers Union, which argued that “removing certain products from our diets misses the point of a sustainable food system”.

‘Too simplistic’

In a letter to the council’s leader and chief executive, Rachel Hallos, the union’s vice-president, said: “Many organisations need to consider how they can play their part in our collective climate change challenge, just as farmers like myself across the country are doing.

“But banning all red meat and dairy, regardless of where and how it is produced, is too simplistic an approach for such a complex issue.”

Calderdale council has been approached for comment.