Latest news with #Cardiff-born
Wales Online
2 days ago
- Business
- Wales Online
Live a life of peace, tranquility and luxury at Riverwood Hollow
A Cardiff-born property developer is launching a stunning selection of five luxury homes in the village of Machen. Karen Collins has always had a passion for creating beautiful, thoughtfully designed homes - and is now bringing her flair to the Caerphilly area. Having helped craft a luxurious five-bedroom pool home in the prestigious Reunion Resort in Orlando, Florida, Karen knows how to deliver the wow factor. The success of this home inspired the building company to further follow her innovative design approach in future developments. Dedicated to quality craftsmanship and creating spaces that complement their natural surroundings, Karen is working to bring her new vision to life in the sought-after village of Machen, nestled between Cardiff and Newport. As well as aiming to create a selection of gorgeous new homes in the area, at the core of this prestigious project is a commitment to preserving the land's natural character while offering modern homes. Live the dream a t Riverwood Hollow (Image: Eli Rose Developments) Working in collaboration with CFW Architects and Mango Planning, Riverwood Hollow is set to become an exclusive five-plot gated community offering you the chance to design and build a stunning luxury home. The stunning homes will embrace the beauty of their surroundings, offering views of Machen Mountain and peaceful woodland landscapes. You'll be able to enjoy peace and tranquillity in your own south-facing garden, listening to the trickle of the Rhymney River that runs alongside this private gated community. Despite feeling worlds away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, Riverwood Hollow is conveniently located a stone's throw away from fantastic local amenities, Cardiff, and some incredible historical sites such as Ruperra Castle. Whether you're seeking a countryside escape, a family home, or an investment* in a premium location, Riverwood Hollow invites you to experience the perfect balance of luxury and nature. Introducing Riverwood Hollow homes for sale Riverwood Hollow will consist of five beautifully designed homes ranging between four and five-bedroom properties. With no further developments to be built nearby, this is a rare opportunity to be a part of this exclusive, secluded community. Only four homes remain at Riverwood Hollow**, so don't miss out on your chance to become an owner of one of these incredible properties. Discover more and register your interest today by visiting *The value of investments can fall as well as rise, which could mean getting back less than you originally put in. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Therefore before deciding to invest, please consult an independent financial adviser to better understand the risks and if such an investment is right for you. **Remaining homes correct at the time of publication.
Daily Mirror
09-06-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
First rugby league player in sport's 130 year history to receive knighthood
Rugby League hero Billy Boston, now 90, will be given the honour at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday, ending the sport's 130-year wait Rugby League hero Billy Boston is set to become the sports first-ever knight at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday. The honour for the Cardiff-born Wigan player will end Rugby League's 130-year wait for the honour. Now aged 90, Boston was a trailblazer for black sports stars when he played for Wigan and Great Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. The honour follows a campaign by his MP and councillors for him to be recognised as well as a campaign calling for the sports' first knighthood. Sir Billy's wife Joan said: 'Billy's family are so proud of him and so excited that everything he's done for the sport and for our community is being recognised. He is a wonderful person who has always loved rugby league and all of the people involved in the sport.' Sir Billy scored a huge 571 tries in a career that ended at the age of 36. He was awarded the MBE in 1996, and was one of the first inductees in the Rugby League Hall of Fame in 1998, joining the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame the following year. He received the freedom of Wigan in 2000 and is immortalised in three statues, in Wigan, Wales and at Wembley. Tony Sutton, the Chief Executive of the RFL, said: 'On behalf of the Rugby Football League, and the sport of Rugby League, it is a privilege to congratulate Sir Billy Boston on his knighthood. 'Sir Billy deserves to be recognised as an iconic figure in the history of British sport, for the way he overcame prejudice in his journey from working-class Cardiff to legendary status in Wigan, and became the most prolific British try-scorer in the 130-year history of Rugby League.' There has been growing frustration over the lack of Rugby League honours, with a group of cross-party MPS suggesting it was down to snobbery. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: 'The first knighthood for a rugby league player is long-overdue recognition for a game that has contributed so much to our national life. "This is the moment we right a historic wrong,' she said.
Wales Online
07-06-2025
- Wales Online
Notorious Cardiff-born killer's basic life in prison with 'minimum legal entitlements'
Notorious Cardiff-born killer's basic life in prison with 'minimum legal entitlements' Southport killer Axel Rudakubana is serving 52 years behind bars and is being held at HMP Belmarsh Axel Rudakubana is serving a lengthy jail term after carrying out one of the most heinous crimes in modern memory (Image: Merseyside Police ) Southport killer Axel Rudakubana receives the basic minimum legal requirements while serving his jail term in a Category A prison. That means the 18-year-old is permitted to purchase items from the HMP Belmarsh canteen, using money either earnt at the prison or sent to him by family members, but spends limited time outside of his cell and is brought items to where he is staying, the Liverpool Echo has learned. The Cardiff-born teenager, currently serving his 52-year term at the London jail alongside around 700 other inmates, killed three children in Southport on July 29 last year when he walked into a Taylor Swift-themed workshop shortly before midday. The then-17-year-old stabbed 11 children, killing three girls and injuring the rest, as well as attacking two adults in the rampage. Following his arrest at the scene, ricin was found in his bedroom at his family home in Banks, Lancashire, as well as a plethora of weapons and a second identical knife to that he used in the attack wrapped in his duvet. It further transpired how the murderer had previously been reported to Prevent on three occasions as well as being stopped by his own dad from getting in a taxi destined for Range High School just seven days prior to the attack on Hart Street, Southport. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in January this year with him being kept in HMP Belmarsh, which is a high-security Category A facility. This article explains why despite the severity of his crimes he was not eligible for a whole-life jail term. But since being locked up the killer has allegedly attacked a prison officer, hospitalising him and forcing him to take time off work. Article continues below Rudakabana was in his prison cell at the time of the incident and allegedly used boiling water from a kettle in the room, as reported by Sky News. He then allegedly threw the boiling water over the officer through a hatch in his cell door. The prison officer was taken to hospital as a precaution but only suffered minor injuries. Since then Rudakubana has been given the legal minimum entitlements a prisoner can have, which restricts the amount of time he spends outside his cell and what he has access to. It is understood the legal minimum means he can still purchase items from the canteen using money either earnt at the prison or sent to him by family members but spends limited time outside of his cell and is brought items to where he is staying. National chair of the Prison Officers Association, Mark Fairhurst, said: "It is normal for every prisoner to have access to prison canteen items that they may purchase from private cash or prison earnings. "Restricting this would probably lead to a legal challenge under the Human Rights Act so the service would not be able to remove these privileges from prisoners." A Met Police spokesman said: "The Met is investigating after a prison officer was subject to a serious assault at HMP Belmarsh on the afternoon of Thursday, May 8. Article continues below "The prison officer was taken to hospital where he was assessed before being discharged later the same day. "The investigation is being led by officers from the Prison Investigation Team on the Met's South East Command Unit."
Euronews
27-05-2025
- Euronews
Experts praise swift release of details about Liverpool crash suspect
Misinformation and online safety experts have praised Merseyside Police for swiftly sharing the details of the ethnicity and nationality of the man who has been arrested after a car ploughed into a crowd in central Liverpool. On Monday evening the police force said they had arrested a "53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area." While police forces do not usually publish this much detail about a suspect who has been arrested, it comes after rumours began to circulate about the man's identity following the attack, which the force also quickly said was not being treated as a terrorist incident. Liverpool's mayor, Steve Rotheram, said the police had managed to "dampen down" the spread of misinformation by sharing such information rapidly. "The police, with their messaging, were able to stem and to dampen down some of that wild speculation," he told BBC Radio 5 Live, while acknowledging the existence of "nefarious groups that are only interested in stirring up hatred." The potential for hatred spreading will have been at the forefront of the force's mind following the riots that engulfed England last summer, driven by rampant misinformation and disinformation in the wake of the Southport attack in July, in which a 17-year-old murdered three young girls. Far-right activists, fake news websites and conspiracy theorists advanced falsehoods about the killer's identity, with some circulating a fake name and falsely claiming that he was Muslim and an asylum seeker. For legal reasons, the only details that Merseyside Police had initially released about the Southport suspect were that he was a Cardiff-born 17-year-old from the village of Banks in Lancashire. The UK has strict contempt of court laws, which limit which details can be published about suspects in criminal cases before trial. Suspects are not named by the press until they have been charged and under-18s are usually not named at all. A judge went on to allow the Southport killer, Axel Rudakubana, to be named, partly to correct the "misinformation" that had been spreading. Sander van der Linden, a professor of social psychology in society at Cambridge University and an expert on information ecosystems, told Euronews that plugging information gaps is crucial to halting the spread of misinformation. "Information voids are almost a gravitational force for conspiracy theorists. Whenever there's an information void, people will fill in the gaps themselves and aided by the virality that you see on social media, that often turns into speculation, rumour, unverified theories, and sometimes harmful misinformation," he said, adding that this had been the case with last year's riots, though he noted that the suspect's age had been a "complicating factor" in that case. Van der Linden has been in talks with police forces about the dangers of information voids. "I've been talking about how important it is to try to pre-bunk, rather than debunk, and pre-emptively release details, when they can, to make sure these kinds of rumours and speculations don't have time to accumulate." "In this case, it's good – they quickly released the information … There's an opportunity for bad actors to exploit the information void with ideologically motivated rumours that then get traction and go viral on social media and turn into offline violence." But he noted that it would not be possible to always release such details and recommended that police are transparent about this. Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, also welcomed Merseyside Police's intervention. He told Euronews: "The police are having to react to a rapidly evolving information environment. Given what happened in Southport, it's sensible, proportionate and welcome, that they're trying things to ensure that disinformation is spiked before it can go viral." "That said, what they can't do is deal with the source of the problem – platforms' refusal to deal with disinformation on a systemic level." He noted that the platforms had increasingly slashed safety features and moderation. "Things have been getting worse for the last couple of years. We see platforms rolling back safety features, bad actors becoming more sophisticated, frequency of events. Part of the problem is we now have a much more complicated and unpredictable threat environment, in part caused by the way in which social media has become an incredibly dynamic breeding ground for new conspiracy theories, malignant ideologies and the mobilisation of people for violence." Ahmed said that while police had responded to "rapid speculation" about the ethnicity of the attacker in this case, he did not see it as setting a precedent. "I think it's an experiment, not a precedent. I expect to see police using different tools as the situation demands. Given that they did see rapid speculation about the ethnicity of the attacker, it makes complete sense – you don't need hard and fast rules when it comes to dealing with dynamic and unpredictable situations." "[The conspiracy theories] that go viral are not in the hands of the police, they're in the hands of platforms and their algorithms. They need to have a range of tools available that they can deploy depending on the situation." The suspect in a knife attack at a festival in the German city of Solingen has appeared in court on murder and terrorism charges and acknowledged his guilt as proceedings opened. Three people were killed in the 23 August attack at a "Festival of Diversity" marking the 650th anniversary of the city in western Germany. The Syrian man, who has been identified only as Issa Al H. in line with German privacy rules, was arrested a day after the attack. He is charged with three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and membership of a foreign terrorist organization, the so-called Islamic State group, in the trial at the state court in Düsseldorf. There are no formal pleas in the German legal system. However, the suspect admitted responsibility for the attack in a statement read by his lawyers, German news agency dpa reported. "I have brought severe guilt upon myself. I am prepared to accept the verdict," he said. "I killed innocent people, not infidels." The Solingen incident was one of several deadly attacks in the months leading up to Germany's national election in February that involved immigrant suspects, pushing migration to the forefront of the political agenda in that vote. It highlighted problems with returning rejected asylum-seekers to the first country where they entered the European Union, as is supposed to happen under EU rules. The suspect was supposed to be deported to Bulgaria in 2023 but reportedly disappeared for a time and avoided expulsion. Murder charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison in Germany. The Düsseldorf court has scheduled trial sessions until late September.
Press and Journal
23-05-2025
- Business
- Press and Journal
Tv personality Jason Mohammad to attend this year's Aberdeen cHeRries Conference
This year's cHeRries Conference takes place on Thursday June 12 at the P&J Live. Some Press and Journal online content is funded by outside parties. The revenue from this helps to sustain our independent news gathering. You will always know if you are reading paid-for material as it will be clearly labelled as 'Partnership' on the site and on social media channels. This can take two different forms. This means the content has been paid for and produced by the named advertiser. This means the content has been paid for and approved by the named advertiser but written and edited by our own commercial content team. The conference endeavours to support human resources professionals and business leaders nurture excellence in people and organisational effectiveness across Scotland. Delegates at this year's conference will engage in workshops, panel discussions and networking sessions focusing on the topic of Shaping the Future: Awareness, Empowerment and Preparation for Change. The event is in association with wealth management company Mattioli Woods and supported by independent law firm Burness Paull as well as human resource consulting firm Hunter Adams. Sean Westwood, employee benefits team director at Mattioli Woods, says: 'We are delighted to be the headline sponsor of the cHeRries Conference again in 2025. 'This year we look at shaping the future – having awareness, empowerment and being prepared for change. This day should have something for everyone.' One speaker you won't want to miss is Cardiff-born TV and radio presenter Jason Mohammad, best known for his role on BBC One's fast live football scores show Final Score, and flagship football show Match of the Day and MOTD2. Given his unique ability to chair, present and interact, Jason has presented numerous shows on television and radio, working with major brands including EE, HP, Jaguar Land Rover, UEFA, Mercedes and Maserati. Jason is the CEO of a media company that he founded and has recently created his own TV academy as part of that – nurturing the next generation of broadcasters. Jason is excited to attend this year's cHeRries Conference both as a speaker and a host of the evening awards ceremony. In his keynotes presentation, Jason will discuss how in any business or organisation you need momentum, how his work with sports teams has highlighted the need and importance for leadership, teambuilding, understanding and patience. As the former captain of a football, cricket and basketball team, Jason's keynote will also discuss the importance of leading from the front, listening to feedback and dealing with difficult situations. Jason said: 'I'm thrilled to be back in Aberdeen again this year for the cHeRries and I'm delighted to be speaking at the conference during the day. 'I'm looking forward to hearing from our three session sponsors and taking part in the workshop discussions. It really does sound like an interesting day indeed.' Read more: Aberdeen cHeRries Conference tackles employee wellbeing amid transitions
