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The founder of an activist group which has been putting Union Jack and St George's Cross flags on lampposts has been charged with a string of offences including racially aggravated harassment, threatening behaviour and assault.

Ryan Bridge, 45, of Blackwell, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, has been erecting flags in the Midlands and the south of England since last summer as part of Raise the Colours.

Thames Valley Police said Bridge had been charged with 14 offences from a two-month period in Oxfordshire earlier this year.

He is due to appear at Oxford Magistrates' Court on 3 November.

The offences are:

• Seven counts of using threatening words or behaviour to cause harassment, alarm or distress
• Three counts of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause fear of, or provoke, unlawful violence
• Two counts of racially aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress
• One count of racially aggravated fear of violence
• One count of common assault

In July, Oxfordshire County Council was granted a High Court injunction to stop people placing flags near highways because of safety concerns, trespass and obstruction.

Reform UK’s top media presenter has worked for a Chinese state propaganda channel within the past year, the Guardian can reveal.

Ray Addison, who presents the political party’s in-house podcast and social media campaigns, fronted films about Xinjiang province – where the Chinese government is accused of committing genocide – for state media in September 2025.

In the videos, entitled Raymond’s Xinjiang Stories, some of which praise Chinese infrastructure, Addison described himself as a CGTN correspondent. The series was made after Addison left GB News in 2024, where he had worked as a news presenter and reporter.

Xinjiang province has attracted international attention because of alleged human rights abuses against the region’s Muslim Uyghur population by the Chinese state, including claims of forced labour, sterilisation, re-education and mass surveillance.

Addison’s work for China contrasts with the hard line Reform has taken on Chinese issues ranging from industrial relations to suspected Chinese state espionage within Westminster.

In a social media video posted by GB News in January, Nigel Farage said of the UK’s relationship with China: “I’m very, very nervous about the extent to which China has effectively spied on us, stolen many of our industrial secrets. I’m worried about the extent to which they’ve infiltrated, using money, British universities. We must be cautious about the relationship.”

The videos presented by Addison for CGTN are publicly available on YouTube and carry a warning stating that “CGTN is funded in whole or in part by the Chinese government”.

CGTN lost its licence to broadcast in the UK in 2021 after the regulator Ofcom determined it was ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist party.

Four men have pleaded guilty to destroying four Jewish community ambulances in an arson attack causing £1m of damage in north-west London.

Hamza Iqbal, 20, Rehan Khan, 19, Judex Atshatshi, and Saif Ali, both aged 18, pleaded guilty to a charge of destroying or damaging property being reckless whether life would be endangered.

The attack, which took place in the early hours of 23 March, saw four vehicles operated by the charity Hatzola set alight in Golders Green.

Prosecutors had said they believed the incident was a targeted attack against the Jewish community.

Sentencing is expected to follow in spring 2027.

Bradley Townsend was among a small number of UK nationals fighting for Russia in Ukraine, but he is the first known British fighter to have died on the Russian side since Putin’s forces first invaded the country in 2014.

Bradley Townsend left his home in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, in April this year, telling his family he was going to Romania, according to a friend. 

They later discovered that the fisherman had travelled to Moscow, where he was met by British pro-Russian fighters Aiden Minnis and Ben Stimson, who reportedly recruited him online, before signing a contract to fight on the Ukrainian frontline, despite having no military experience. 

Just 10 weeks later, on June 10, Townsend was killed in a “storm operation” by a remote controlled FPV drone in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, near the city of Lyman, according to a Russia-linked social media account seen by LBC, which referred to him by his callsign “Badger.” 

The account, known for repeating Russian propaganda, described Townsend as a “warrior in a holy war” who had “sacrificed his life for the cause".

The Isles of Scilly have been named as the friendliest place in England as part of a major study into social division across Britain.

All 296 local authority areas have been ranked in a new index using government data from the community life survey, measuring how often people chat to neighbours, feelings of loneliness and belonging, local pride, and levels of participation in civic life.

Scilly was followed by South Hams in south Devon, West Devon, Derbyshire Dales and Richmond upon Thames.

The area named the least friendly in England was Barking and Dagenham. The remaining areas in the bottom five were Stoke-on-Trent, Ashfield, Mansfield and Ipswich.

The index is intended to encourage people to share how their experience compares with the data, as part of the National Conversation, an engagement project that has already captured what thousands of British people think unites and divides us.

The views collected in the survey will inform a report later this year by the Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion, which was set up to tackle what it describes as “the converging crises of social disconnection and division” in the UK.

Co-chaired by the former Tory home secretary Sajid Javid and the former Labour policy coordinator Jon Cruddas, the commission says its mission is to better understand the country’s state of connection and cohesion and create a shared vision for how we can live well together.

Sainsbury's has suspended its use of live facial recognition technology at one of its London branches after a customer was wrongly challenged as a shoplifter and asked to leave.

Matt Arnold, 46, was buying items at the East Dulwich store when he was stopped by management at a self-service till.

Describing the experience as a "terrifying glimpse of the future," he has warned that retail surveillance tech risks humiliating customers and creating a system where staff feel compelled to follow automated alerts without applying human logic.

The supermarket said it had apologised to Arnold and claimed the mistake was "caused by human error", but critics have called for the technology to be scrapped.

The incident happened on 6 August as Arnold - a comedy promoter getting supplies for a stand-up event hosted at the next door Dulwich Hamlet Football Club - was waiting for a staff member to approve an alcohol purchase.

Having already scanned his items alongside his Nectar loyalty card, he said he had waved an attendant over.

Instead, he said he was approached by two of the management staff and told he could not be served due to an incident "earlier in the week".