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Discuss and debate today’s biggest talking points, directly with our journalists. | | Police at Kingsbury High School in north-west London |  | Samuel Montgomery News Reporter | The fear and panic was palpable in Brent last night as the community tried to make sense of a double stabbing at Kingsbury High School.
Londoners may have become numb to the knife crime epidemic in the capital but, as one parent told me: “It is really scary. We send our children to school and we expect them to be safe.”
A 13-year-old boy, thought to have been a suspended pupil from the school, is understood to have scaled a wall and made his way into a classroom and launched an attack on a 12 and 13-year-old.
Armed with a weapon, he stabbed two boys inside what is believed to be a science classroom, with terrified pupils seen banging on the windows and calling for help.
Simon Theodorou, a martial arts teacher who has a child at the school, said: “Apparently one of the two pupils saw what was going on and pulled the fire alarm to get help. That boy is a hero.”
Shailesh Sayta, a delivery driver who is a parent of a pupil at the school said his son had heard that someone “stabbed a boy in the neck with a fork and he was bleeding”.
“My son said a guy came out holding his neck with blood all over his white shirt,” he said.
The attacker then fled and the school was locked down as police helicopters whirred overhead and police cars arrived in droves outside the school gates.
Children, many in tears, were sent home without their bags, coats and jackets.
Officers tracked down the suspect and arrested him on suspicion of attempted murder, but the incident was quickly handed over to the counter-terror unit. Detectives said the attack had not been declared a terrorist incident, but that the step was taken because of the “surrounding circumstances”.
Last night, both injured boys were in a “serious” condition and receiving “urgent care”. We’ll bring you the latest developments from this troubling story today.
Read the full story here ➤ |  | James Rothwell Berlin Correspondent | With Nato in crisis, you would be forgiven for thinking that now is the time for Europe to stand together – with cool heads and determination. You would be wrong.
This week, an extraordinarily vicious row has broken out between France and Germany over their long-delayed, and now possibly doomed, fighter jet project.
In 2017, the Future Combat Aircraft System (FCAS) was hailed as the future of aircraft battles: it consisted not only of an advanced jet, but also a swarm of drones and a data “cloud” linking them together. | The Future Combat Air System, unveiled by France and Germany in 2017 | However, over the past 10 years, huge differences between the French and German defence companies in charge of delivering the project have been exposed. These include the basic fundamentals, such as who can be trusted to build the jet and the purpose it would actually serve.
It is a serious blow to Europe’s defences at a time when – as General Sir Nick Carter, the former head of the British Armed Forces, has warned – the Continent needs to become a military superpower.
To underline his sense of urgency, he said that Europe’s slowness to respond to global threats was “no longer merely inefficient, it is dangerous”.
He may well have been thinking of the FCAS when he uttered those gloomy remarks. Now Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has been forced to defend the project – but perhaps not even he has the political will to salvage it.
Read the full story here ➤
Europe ‘must become military superpower’ to survive without US ➤
The fallen King of Davos has a plan to save Europe from Trump ➤ | | Ambrose Evans-Pritchard The destructive fools of Westminster are needlessly pushing Britain towards a gilts and sterling crisis Continue reading ➤ Allison Pearson Anyone who thinks Rayner is the answer to Britain’s problems needs their head examined Continue reading ➤ Gareth Roberts Sorry Keir, giving in before a fight isn’t the same as winning Continue reading ➤ | | To make sure you don’t miss our newsletters when they land in your inbox, click here. | | Flooding in Somerset, which has experienced 40 consecutive days of rain | | Elizabeth Vartkessian: ‘Each case I work on could be described as a life that’s fallen through a crack’ | | Elizabeth Vartkessian’s clients are some of the most evil people on Earth. She is not trying to prove their innocence – “the murders my clients committed were often brutal, extreme and irrational”, she admits.
So why does she take their cases? As a mitigation specialist, her job is to collect evidence to prevent people from being sentenced to death, or to get their sentences commuted to life without parole. Her reason: “Why are we so desperate to kill people? It’s grotesque to me that this is how people spend their time, energy and money.” Could this specialist skill be a revolution for death row? Jessamy Calkin meets with the lawyer. Continue reading ➤ | |  | | On the face of it, the British Medical Association vote last week was conclusive – 93 per cent in favour of further industrial action by junior doctors. Crucially, though, the turnout was only 52 per cent. Here, two dissenting voices explain why they won’t be joining the picket line and are calling for the union to compromise. Continue reading ➤ | | | Michael Crawford, who played Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, helped choreograph Torvill and Dean’s Bolero | | As Britain misses a Winter Olympics medal yet again, cast your mind back 42 years to Torvill and Dean’s Bolero routine. Behind its success was the decision by the ice skaters to hire a theatrical consultant. Their choice was surprising: Michael Crawford, best known in Britain as the comedy wimp Frank Spencer. This is the story of an unlikely – and brilliant – collaboration. Continue reading ➤ | | | As university graduates battle ballooning student debt and a difficult jobs market, apprenticeships look ever more appealing. Not only can you finish a placement without owing money, you’ll also get paid while you learn – and there can be promising earning opportunities. Try our tool to see which apprenticeships can lead to the highest-paying jobs. Continue reading ➤ | | | Grey skies hang over Aberdeen’s city centre | | For many in Aberdeen, there is an irony to strolling down Sunnyside Road. The city hasn’t seen a single ray of sunshine since January 21, prompting desperate locals to book tanning salons and Caribbean cruises. On the waterlogged links, golfers are resorting to neon-yellow hi-vis balls to combat the darkness. A freak meteorological quirk has turned the Silver City into a land of perpetual grey. Continue reading ➤ | | | Elektrozavodskaya station, a classic symbol of the Moscow Metro | They may be functional chunks of transport infrastructure, but metro networks also give you a revealing glimpse of the city you are visiting. We’ve chosen 10 systems that are the stuff of travel dreams, from Stockholm, where the bedrock has been left on show with dramatic effect, to Tokyo, known for its white-gloved railway staff who prod commuters through half-closed doors. How many have you ridden? Read the full list ➤ Below are two more helpful articles for you this morning: | .png) | Jessa Crispin | Omid Scobie is best known for his controversial book Endgame, a 2022 “exposé” of Royal family in-fighting that seemed astonishingly sympathetic to Team Sussex (he happens to be a confidant of the Duchess).
Now he has turned to fiction with a rom-com called Royal Spin, co-written with Robin Benway, a writer who specialises in novels for young adults. It revolves around a loveable but clumsy American woman (is there any other fictional kind?) who relocates to London to work at Buckingham Palace as a communications director and, in the process, teaches those stuffy British aristocrats about love – and diversity. So, can Scobie write? Absolutely not. His novel reminded me of sitting in a dentist’s waiting room, forced to watch a reality television show in which people with too much cosmetic surgery sell luxury goods to the gullible. The publishing industry seems afraid that AI innovation will tear its heart out. If this is what passes for that heart, bring on the robots.
Read the full review here ➤ | Little rascals In our Devil’s Advocate column on Sunday, Shauna Brown questioned the acceptance of children in all public spaces. Today, she’s standing in for Orlando Bird to pull out the best of your opinions and stories. Shauna writes...
Thank you to everyone who responded to my column. I was prepared to be vilified as one of those childless cat ladies, so I was pleasantly surprised that many of you agreed with me.
It seems a number of readers have also fallen victim to restless little legs in the air. DS said: “I had a three-year-old start kicking the back of my seat on a plane, and that’s before we’d taken off. I politely asked them to stop and the father told me: ‘He’s only three.’
“Fortunately the mother took him onto her lap and stopped it. My parents didn’t impose me on strangers until I was old enough to know better, but then that was the 1950s when people knew how to behave!”
They’re not only attacking from behind, as John Hyslop discovered after giving his window seat to a first-time flyer. “He spent four hours looking out of the window while I spent four hours having his wife apologise for his young son climbing all over me to get to his dad. Never again – I always book the aisle seat now.”
While I disagree with little ones in galleries, Mary Birch shared a lovely anecdote about taking three children to an exhibition of French 19th-century painting. “While we were looking at a landscape, a Frenchman came over, asked if he could speak to the children, and explained that he lived where the picture had been painted. Are the French more tolerant or their children generally better behaved?”
I think the simple answer is that French children are not really children. They are small adults with better table manners and more sophisticated palates than most British adults. Isabel Wood was also impressed with les enfants en France: “Oh, how I agree! Anyone who has seen well-behaved children in a French restaurant, eating oysters or moules expertly, will agree, too.”
Of all the responses, Roy Terry put it best. “Modern parents refuse to behave as parents but insist on dragging their offspring with them, whilst continuing to behave like childless adults. This is the same culture which causes parents to take their children out of school for holidays.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, Roy. Send your responses here, and the best of the bunch will feature in a future edition of From the Editor PM, for which you can sign up here.
Please confirm in your reply that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name. | | Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including PlusWord, Sorted, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.
Yesterday’s Panagram was NORTHWARD. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle. | | Thank you for reading. Have a fulfilling day and I hope to see you tomorrow. Chris Evans, Editor
P.S. I’d love to hear what you think of this newsletter. You can email me your feedback here. | |
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