Murder Probe After Shopkeeper Stabbed

A murder investigation has been launched after a shopkeeper was stabbed to death in Rotherham.

Emergency services found one man dead and a second man seriously injured, South Yorkshire Police said.

The incident follows sightings of a man brandishing a machete in Eastwood and Rotherham town centre.

The injured man has been taken to hospital where he is undergoing treatment.

A 27-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder and is currently in police custody.

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Two Teenagers Killed After Car Hits Deer

Two teenage girls have been killed in a road crash after their car hit a deer and caught fire.

Hertfordshire Police said the collision occurred on the northbound carriageway of the A10 between Ware and the A120 Puckeridge exit at around 7.45am on Tuesday.

The Citroen C1 car in which the girls, aged 17 and 18, were travelling hit a deer and then a Volvo V40 collided with their car, which caught fire.

The girls died at the scene while the driver of the Volvo, thought to be in his 50s, was taken to hospital with leg injuries.

An air ambulance attended the accident, and the road remained shut into the afternoon.

As many as 74,000 deer are thought to be involved in vehicle collisions every year. More than 450 people are injured every year in such accidents.

:: Anyone with information should contact Sergeant Richard Cruse at Herts Police on 101.

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Mark Duggan Inquest: Marksman Gives Evidence

By Tom Parmenter, Sky News Correspondent

The police marksman who killed Mark Duggan has said he had "an honestly held belief" that the suspect was about to shoot him.

Known only as V53, the experienced firearms officer was giving evidence at the inquest in London.

He described how he was part of a Metropolitan Police operation tracking Mark Duggan through London on August 4, 2011.

Intelligence reports had said that Mr Duggan had gone in a minicab to pick up a gun from an associate.

The inquest saw dummy images of where the shots entered Mr Duggan's body

After the "hard stop" of the minicab Mr Duggan moved out of the vehicle.

V53 told the inquest: "He has an object in his right hand, he has a handgun in his right hand."

Shouts of "liar" were heard from the public gallery.

Many of Mr Duggan's family and loved ones have cast doubt on the police version of events.

V53 went on: "The world just stopped in my head like a freeze frame moment, the only thing I was focusing on was the gun.

"I've assessed that at that time he's not posing a threat to me. I'm hoping he's going to drop it. The next thing he does, he starts to move the gun away from his body.

"He's raised the weapon, moved it a couple of inches away from his body."

He added: "There is a line in the sand now. There is a tipping point ... because he's moved it away from his body I now have an honestly-held belief that he is going to shoot me."

V53 was carrying a taser, a Glock gun and a larger MP5 firearm. He described how he used the MP5 to shoot Mr Duggan in the chest.

He said: "This is happening in a split second. I've brought my weapon up and I've discharged one round and I'm aiming for the central body mass because I'm looking to shoot to stop."

V53 said the first bullet hit Mr Duggan in the chest and caused him to flinch, and the alleged gun was then pointing towards the marksman.

He then fired a second shot, which hit him in his right biceps.

Police carried out a 'hard stop' as Mr Duggan travelled in a minicab

Mr Duggan fell to the pavement where V53, as a trained medic, began first aid.

Paramedics later arrived but Mr Duggan had suffered fatal injuries.

One of the bullets that passed through Mr Duggan went on to hit and injure another police officer who was at the scene.

Crucially, V53 could not explain why the alleged handgun was later found 10-20ft away behind some railings.

It was found by a senior colleague and the weapon was wrapped in a sock, a common criminal tactic to prevent gunshot residue being left at a crime scene.

V53 described himself as "a good marksman" but admitted that in fast-moving real-life scenarios officers could not be as accurate as they are in training.

When quizzed about how he lost sight of the handgun after he had opened fire, V53 said: "I would love to be able to say I saw the gun fly over a fence after the second shot but I won't put down what I haven't seen.

The gun allegedly carried by Mark Duggan

"I didn't see what happened to the gun."

Leslie Thomas, representing the Duggan family, suggested that there was no gun in Mr Duggan's hand V53 replied: "Mr Thomas I appreciate you have to put it across but it is complete rubbish.

"This moment has lived with me for the last two years. Mark Duggan had a gun, he presented a threat to me and the only option I had was to open fire."

The driver of the minicab previously told the inquest that the police officer who fired the shots looked "very angry, like someone who had lost his senses".

The inquest aims to establish the truthful timeline of events and to dispel any false theories about the shooting, which led to riots and looting in London and other cities around England.

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Immigration: Brit Workers 'Against The World'

By Ed Conway, Economics Editor

Immigration is changing Britain. This is not merely a theory - it's statistical fact. Back in 2004, less than a decade ago, one in 11 of those living in Britain were born abroad. Today the proportion is one in eight - 12.4%.

And, just as is the case for economic growth and productivity, the immigration picture varies throughout the country. Some 42% of London's population was born outside the UK, compared to just 5% in the North of England.

Though more attention tends to be focused on the flows of immigration - in other words people entering and leaving the country, the gradually-changing make-up of the UK population represents a significant shift - both in social and economic terms.

On the one hand, there's the question of how much immigrants cost Britain's welfare state. A quarter of new-born babies in Britain last year had non-UK-born mothers - the highest proportion since records began in 1969.

But you can only really get a clear sense of the absolute impact by taking a step back and comparing the cost of immigration with the related income - the taxes these new members of the population pay.

Research from the OECD shows that immigrants actually bring in over £7bn more than they cost. That's the equivalent of a penny off the basic rate of income tax.

There are other economic arguments in favour: Free movement of labour is usually good news for businesses, since it allows them to attract workers from all over the world, not merely locals.

But there are clearly challenges as well. Immigration increases GDP (though not necessarily GDP per capita), but it also increases the demand for housing - a real problem in a country facing a chronic shortage of property. And more potential workers means more competition for British employees.

In pure statistical terms, immigrants work harder than their UK counterparts. Some 71% of foreign nationals are economically active, compared with 67% of UK nationals. They are better-qualified: 38% of non UK-born people in Britain have degrees, compared with 30% of UK nationals.

And contrary to popular opinion, they are not just plumbers. The biggest proportion of immigrants actually work in finance, followed by health, then retail, then manufacturing.

According to the OECD half of all immigrants hired in Britain are high-skilled - and the proportion is increasing.

This has had an undeniable impact on Britons' job prospects. Since the start of the crisis in 2008, seven British workers have lost their jobs for every one non-British worker to have lost theirs.

Some are likely to see this as an argument against immigration. However, the economic message is just as significant. Britons need to work harder if they want to compete. That's the inevitable consequence when you're competing against a whole world's worth of workers, rather than just one country.

:: Immigration UK: A week of special coverage on Sky from October 14 to 18 - watch on Sky 501, Virgin Media 602, Freesat 202, Freeview 82, Skynews.com and Sky News for iPad

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House Prices: Record High For The UK

UK house prices hit a new record high in August, largely driven by soaring demand across London and south east England, official figures show.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) recorded an increase of 3.8% in the 12 months to August 2013, up from a 3.3% rise in the 12 months to July 2013.

It measured growth as being stable across most of the UK - with a year-on-year increase of 4.1% for England over the period being driven largely by growth in London.

There was annual growth of 1.1% measured for Northern Ireland, 1% for Wales though a fall of 0.7% was recorded in Scotland.

It left the average property price in the UK at £247,000, the ONS said, meaning its measure surpassed a previous peak recorded in January 2008.

While growth in London and the South East continued to drive the record performance for house prices, the pace of growth eased slightly over the month - possibly because of the summer holidays.

The housing market is expected to see the heat of demand from would-be buyers turned up further over the coming months, following the launch of the Government's new Help to Buy scheme, which offers state-backed mortgages to people with deposits as low as 5%.

RBS, NatWest, Halifax and Bank of Scotland started offering loans under the initiative last week and have reported strong interest so far, while more lenders including HSBC, Barclays and Santander have also confirmed their plans to come on board.

Some sharp increases in property prices in recent months have fuelled fears that the country could be heading for a property "bubble", with the new phase of Help to Buy pushing up demand for homes at a time when the number of properties for sale is in relatively short supply.

Howard Archer, chief European and UK economist for IHS Global Insight, said: "While the strength of house price rises in London is becoming an increasing concern and pushing up the overall national increase in house prices, we are currently a long way off from an overall housing market bubble emerging."

A Treasury spokesman said of the figures: "We're encouraged to see signs that house prices are recovering from a low base alongside the wider economy.

"However, the Government understands that the housing and mortgage markets are yet to return to their long run levels, leaving too many people - especially first-time buyers - struggling to afford historically high level of deposits.

"That's why the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee is a vital tool to give young people the same opportunity to get a foot on the property ladder as previous generations."

Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, warned that the Government's efforts to kick-start the market could actually result in properties being pushed further out of some people's reach as house prices increase.

He said: "Our rollercoaster housing market may make headlines, but these days rising house prices don't have the feel-good factor, and for good reason.

"Nobody wants a return to the bad old days of house prices rising then crashing," he concluded.

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Hard Work And Ambition Pay Off For Immigrant

Labour 'Was Wrong' On Immigration

Updated: 5:59am UK, Tuesday 15 October 2013

By Jeff Randall, Sky News Business Presenter

Since Ed Miliband became leader, the Labour Party has tried to reformulate its stance on immigration.

The new approach contains an admission that the last government "got it wrong", largely because it did not listen to the people's concerns, in particular those of Labour supporters such as Gillian Duffy, who was dismissed by Gordon Brown as a "bigoted woman" simply for airing her anxieties.

That ghastly moment grabbed the headlines, but the flaw in the Blair-Brown immigration policy was far more fundamental than the casual traducing of a Rochdale voter who dared to challenge an angst-ridden Prime Minister.

From 2002 to 2010, Labour opened the United Kingdom's doors to more than 500,000 legal incomers a year.

At the same time, it launched a propaganda offensive to persuade us that immigration on this scale would not only make us all better off, because it expanded national output by £6bn a year, but also help solve our long-term pensions crisis, because diligent newcomers would pay into the nation's retirement pot, which an ageing indigenous population was rapidly exhausting.

These were fallacies masquerading as serious politics. Neither element was true, as a House of Lords report, The Economic Impact of Immigration, made clear in 2008. Its conclusion was, in effect, the British public had been sold a false prospectus.

Yes, mass immigration increases GDP, but not GDP per head, because the expanded cake has to be shared amongst many more people.

As for pensions, the arrival of half a million overseas workers a year merely delays the day of reckoning, because they too will grow old and need retirement care. Expecting ever greater numbers of immigrants to keep the system in credit is to have faith in a Ponzi scheme.

That's not to say immigration changes nothing. For the employer class, it provides a ready supply of child-minders, cleaners and plumbers who are grateful for a job and prepared to work for the minimum wage. Life for the rich improves.

But, as Cambridge University economist Professor Robert Rowthorn points out: "It does not benefit indigenous, unskilled Britons who have to compete with immigrants willing to work hard for very low wages in unpleasant conditions."

What's more, British companies have little incentive to train domestic workers if they able to import foreign staff with higher skills and a stronger work ethic.

Then there is Britain's chronic housing shortage. This is not the fault of immigrants, but it's disingenuous to pretend that 176,000 net arrivals (the figure for 2012) do not make an acute problem even worse. They do, after all, have to live somewhere.

Some arrive with enough wealth to buy homes in desirable neighbourhoods. But the vast majority end up competing for space on the lower rungs of the property ladder, where working-class Britons are already struggling to make ends meet.

It was, says Professor Rowthorn, bizarre that Labour, ostensibly the party of the poor and vulnerable, endorsed a policy which created, as Marx put it, a "reserve army of labour", whose presence ensures that bottom-end pay rates are suppressed.

Ed Miliband, it seems, now recognises his predecessors' blunder.

:: Immigration UK: A week of special coverage on Sky from October 14 to 18 - watch on Sky 501, Virgin Media 602, Freesat 202, Freeview 82, Skynews.com and Sky News for iPad.

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Armed Raiders Push Father-Of-Two Under Lorry

A father-of-two was killed after being pushed under a moving lorry as he defended his shop and wife from a gang of 10 armed raiders.

Shammi Atwal confronted the gang, who were armed with metal bars and a sledgehammer, as they attempted to rob his cash and carry .

Scene of the incident in east London

Scotland Yard said up to 10 men entered the Glen & Co Cash and Carry in Barking, Essex, on Monday morning but Mr Atwal fought them off.

As he chased them from the premises, he was pushed in front of a lorry.

Mr Atwal, who was in his 40s, and his wife, who are co-owners of the business, tried to stop them, causing the gang to flee.

Police Officers prepare to search through drain waste

Detective Chief Inspector Neale Baldock, who is leading the Metropolitan Police murder probe, said: "This was a man trying to stop thieves robbing his business.

"He acted bravely in defence of his wife and managed to chase the robbers from his premises only for him to be pushed in front of a moving lorry.

"People in the community know who committed this appalling and cowardly crime and I would urge them to contact my officers."

A two man forensic team search inside the Glen Cash & Carry warehouse

His 37-year-old widow, who police have not identified, suffered minor injuries and was treated at the scene.

The driver stopped at the scene in River Road and was not arrested.

The suspects are described as white men. It is not known how they got away.

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CJD Study Finds One In 2,000 Carries Protein

By Thomas Moore, Health and Science Correspondent

One in 2,000 people in the UK carries the infectious proteins that cause the human form of mad cow disease, a new study has confirmed.

But the researchers stress that it is still not known how many will go on to develop variant Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) in future.

Scientists from Public Health England and the Institute of Neurology tested 32,000 appendixes that had been removed between 2000 and 2012 in 41 hospitals.

Results show that 16 were positive for the abnormal prion protein that causes the brain disease.

The researchers say that equates to a prevalence of 493 per million population, with an estimate of one in 2,000 likely to be carriers.

The Health Protection Agency released some data from the appendix survey last year, but the full results have now been published in the British Medical Journal.

So far, 177 people have died from vCJD after eating contaminated beef.

Cases have tailed off in recent years with none reported last year and only one so far in 2013.

But previous studies have found that many others are harbouring the infection without developing clinical symptoms.

It has been suggested that people with a slightly different make-up may incubate the disease over a longer period.

To reduce the risk of onward transmission of the infectious proteins there are tight controls on surgical instruments and on who can donate blood.

Dr Graham Jackson, of the Medical Research Council's Prion Unit, said the findings underline the need for more research.

He said: "Given the high levels of infection indicated by this research, it is now crucial we establish how many people in the UK harbour that infection in their bloodstream in order to adequately assess the risks of transmission through contaminated blood donations. 

"Studies to develop new blood tests for CJD must remain a priority to assist with screening and protecting the UK blood supply."

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Pensioner Sea Fall Inquest: Narrative Verdict

By Becky Johnson, North of England Correspondent

A coroner has ruled that failings by rescuers which led to a pensioner being dropped into the Arctic Ocean were a "significant factor" in her death.

Janet Richardson, 72, from Cumbri, was taken ill while on a cruise to Norway from Hull in April 2011.

The inquest into her death at Carlisle Coroners Court heard how as she was being transferred from the ship to a boat waiting to take her to hospital, rescuers dropped the stretcher she was on and she plunged into the "icy" water.

It was a "number of minutes" before she was pulled from the sea. She died three weeks later in hospital.

The pensioner fell into the sea while being transferred off the cruise ship

Fellow passenger on the cruise, Colin Prescott from Lancashire, witnessed what happened and told the inquest there was "abject panic" on board the ship at the time.

He told Sky News that as he watched the stretcher being passed between the boats "the two vessels separated and the three people on board the little rescue craft had no chance of hanging on".

"As the stretcher fell the people on board the cruise ship couldn't hold the handles any longer and she just slipped into the water," he said.

"I was terrified. It was very frightening as you can imagine, someone in that kind of water, it was very, very cold."

The inquest heard that Mrs Richardson had a history of ill health including problems with her kidneys and liver.

The coroner recorded a narrative verdict, noting that Mrs Richardson was not wearing a life jacket and the cruise ship and rescue boat were not tied together.

The lifeboat that was sent for Mrs Richardson

He concluded that although Mrs Richardson died as a consequence of her underlying health conditions, the immersion in cold sea water was a significant factor and accelerated her death.

Mrs Richardson's husband, George, was at the two day inquest and told Sky News the cruise to see the Northern Lights had been "a trip of a lifetime" for his wife.

Speaking after the verdict he said: "There have been serious shortcomings in the way the evacuation of Janet was handled and I hope that lessons have been learnt."

He described his wife as "a very enthusiastic person in everything she did".

The coroner said the incident should never have happened and confirmed he has written to the Norwegian rescue service and the cruise operator to question their procedures.

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British Soldier Killed In Afghanistan

A British soldier has been killed by enemy fire while on patrol in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence has announced.

The serviceman, from 14 Signals Regiment (Electronic Warfare), attached to the Task Force Helmand Brigade Reconnaissance Force, died in Helmand Province.

The death takes the number of UK service personnel who have lost their lives since operations in Afghanistan began in October 2001 to 445 and it is the seventh this year.

It is the first UK death in Afghanistan since Corporal William Savage, Fusilier Samuel Flint, and Private Robert Hetherington died when their Mastiff armoured vehicle hit an improvised explosive device (IED) on a routine patrol on April 30.

The soldier had been on a patrol in the area of Kakaran, north-east of Lashkar Gah.

Despite receiving immediate medical attention, he died from his injuries at the scene, according to the MoD.

The soldier was on patrol in the area of Kakaran, north-east of Lashkar Gah

Task Force Helmand spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Hywel Lewis said: "A fantastic soldier has tragically died defending his comrades. He was the brightest and the best.

"Those who served alongside him were privileged and feel his loss most deeply. Our prayers and thoughts are with his family at this extremely difficult time."

It comes in the week after the last large military handover in Afghanistan, with the 7th Armoured Brigade, known as the Desert Rats, taking over authority for the British mission in Helmand.

Part of its job will be the closure of bases around Helmand and the return of equipment to the UK.

The British presence in Afghanistan will be almost halved by the end of this year to 5,200.

All combat operations in the country should be over by the end of next year, leaving Afghan forces fully in control.

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