One person dead following city house blaze
A person has died following a house blaze in Hertfordshire.
Four fire engines were sent to Lower Paxton Road in St Albans just before 17:00 GMT on Wednesday.
A person was brought out of the house by firefighters to be given medical attention, but died at the scene.
Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service said it would be working with police on its investigation.
Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Sex offender who followed girl on train jailed
A man who followed a 15-year-old girl on a train and made sexual comments to her has been jailed. Zainal Osman, 31, who was subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order because of a previous offence, approached the girl on a train from York to Sherburn-in-Elmet at about 21:50 BST on 25 May, according to British Transport Police. Osman, of Barlby Road, Selby, pleaded guilty to engaging in sexual communication with a child and to failing to notify police of a change of address, as part of his requirements under the Sexual Offences Act. He was jailed for 32 weeks at York Magistrates' Court on 5 June. He must also sign the sex offenders register for 10 years. Officers said Osman was "visibly drunk" when he approached the girl. "He repeatedly professed his love for her, and despite the girl telling Osman her age he continued to make advances," a force spokesperson said. The girl called the police and a ticket inspector who saw what was happening intervened and helped the girl to safely leave the train. British Transport Police officers met the train at the next stop, Selby railway station, and Osman was arrested and taken into custody. Det Con Liam Brown said: "This was a frightening ordeal for the girl and it is because of her bravery that Osman has been brought to justice." Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North. British Transport Police
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Abrego Garcia due in US court on migrant smuggling charges after wrongful deportation
By Luc Cohen NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) -Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the migrant returned to the U.S. last week after being wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador, is due in court on Friday to enter a plea to criminal charges of taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle migrants into the United States. President Donald Trump's administration has portrayed the indictment of Abrego Garcia, 29, as vindication of its aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration. Before Abrego Garcia's indictment was unsealed on June 5, officials alleged he was a member of the MS-13 gang and said they would not bring him back. The Justice Department's decision to return him to the U.S. to face criminal charges is a potential off-ramp for Trump's administration from its escalating confrontation with the judiciary over whether it complied with a court order to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return. The Republican president's critics say his swift removal without a hearing showed the administration prioritized increased deportations over due process, the bedrock principle that people in the U.S., whether citizens or not, can contest governmental actions against them in the courts. The criminal proceeding will provide Abrego Garcia with due process by giving him the right to contest the charges contained in a grand jury indictment returned in secret on May 21. Still, his lawyers say his return to face criminal charges does not absolve the Trump administration of responsibility for wrongfully deporting him. Abrego Garcia's hearing on the criminal charges is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. CDT (1500 GMT) before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to entering his plea, Abrego Garcia is expected to contest a bid by federal prosecutors to have him detained pending trial. In the indictment, Abrego Garcia was charged with working with at least five co-conspirators as part of a smuggling ring to bring immigrants to the United States illegally, then transport them from the U.S.-Mexico border to destinations across the country. Abrego Garcia often picked up migrants in Houston, making more than 100 trips between Texas and Maryland between 2016 and 2025, the indictment alleges. Abrego Garcia is also accused of transporting firearms and drugs. 'ADMINISTRATIVE ERROR' Prosecutors say Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident whose wife and young child are U.S. citizens, could face 10 years in prison for each migrant he smuggled. That means he could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted, according to prosecutors. They are urging he be detained, saying the potentially hefty sentence means he may try to flee. They also say detention is warranted because he allegedly murdered a rival gang member's mother in El Salvador and solicited child pornography, though those accusations are not part of his indictment. Abrego Garcia's lawyers have called the charges "fantastical" and deny that he is a flight risk. Abrego Garcia was deported on March 15 to El Salvador, despite a 2019 immigration court ruling that he not be sent there because he could be persecuted by gangs. Officials called his removal an "administrative error." In a separate civil case, Greenbelt, Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis is investigating whether the Trump administration violated her order to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return from El Salvador. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld that order. Abrego Garcia's lawyers are urging Xinis to hold administration officials in contempt and impose fines for stonewalling their requests for information about the steps the administration took to facilitate his return. The Trump administration says Xinis should drop her probe because it complied with her order by deciding to bring Abrego Garcia back to face criminal charges. His lawyers disagree and say that for the administration to be in compliance, his immigration case must be handled as it would have been had he not been deported.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Why Syrian antiquities are flooding Facebook Marketplace
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Listed alongside the more familiar knackered sofas and unwanted books are ancient, stolen treasures: Facebook Marketplace has become a profitable hub for the sale of looted and trafficked Syrian antiquities. Since the fall of the Assad regime, "widespread poverty" and the "collapse" of the nation's "once-feared security apparatus" have sparked a "gold rush" of looters, robbing 2000-year-old graves for artefacts to sell online, said The Guardian. Syria's location in the "heart of the fertile crescent where settled civilisation first emerged", means it is "awash" with "mosaics, statues and artefacts" that "fetch top dollar" from Western collectors. Nearly a third of the 1,500 Syrian cases that the Antiquities Trafficking and Heritage Anthropology Research project has documented since 2012 have occurred since December alone. When Assad fell, there was a "huge spike on the ground", said Amr al-Azm, a co-director of the ATHAR project. There was a "complete breakdown" of any of the constraints that used to control looting. "The last three to four months has seen the biggest flood of antiquities trafficking I have ever seen, from any country, ever," said ATHAR's other co-director Katie Paul. This has upset many Syrians and some have protested outside the National Museum in Damascus, demanding the protection of the nation's antiquities from illicit excavations. The "destruction" of our cultural heritage is a "blatant attack on our history", one of them told Syrian news agency Sana, and it must be confronted "by all possible means". The looters, "armed with pickaxes, shovels and jackhammers", come by night to "disturb the dead", said The Guardian. Under "cover of darkness", they dig up ancient graves in Syria's ancient city of Palmyra, searching for historic booty. Once the treasures are "out of the ground", they "make their way online", and Facebook has "emerged as a key hub" for their sale, with public and private groups offering "ancient coins, entire mosaics and heavy stone busts" to the "highest bidder". In one post on Facebook, "a user offered a pile of ancient coins for sale", writing, "I have been holding them for 15 years, Free Syria." In a video "shared in a Facebook group in March", a man with a Syrian accent displays "a mosaic depicting Zeus on a throne, using his mobile phone for scale". "This is the fastest we've ever seen artefacts being sold," said ATHAR's Paul. It used to take a year to sell a mosaic but now they can go in just two weeks. In response, ATHAR is tracking the route of trafficked Middle Eastern antiquities online and building a database of more than 26,000 screenshots, videos, and pictures. But the team wants more help from Facebook. In 2020, the social media behemoth banned the sale of historical antiquities on its platform but Paul says the policy is rarely enforced. So it continues to be used as a "gateway for traffickers", linking "low-level looters" in Syria to "criminal networks" that smuggle the artefacts out of the country and ship them "around the world to create fake bills of sale and provenance". After 10 to 15 years, the treasures make their way into legal auction houses, where collectors and museums, mostly in the US and Europe, "snap them up".
