Arrests made in drunken assault, theft of beloved Paddington Bear statue
Two 22-year-old men who were reportedly intoxicated when they vandalized and stole a statue of Paddington Bear eating marmalade sandwich on a park bench in Newbury, England have been issued steep fines and sentenced to community service, according to multiple media reports.
In surveillance footage of the March 2 incident posted by NBC News, the two British Royal Air Force engineers can be seen kicking the statue, albeit with a lack sharp motor-skills, breaking it apart and getting away with a portion of the beloved bear that rode with them in a taxi back Royal Air Force Odiham shortly after 2 a.m.
It turns out that Newbury is the wrong place to pick a fight with Paddington Bear, drunk or not.
According to the New York Times, the town is the birthplace of Michael Bond, the creator of the children's book series.
The two men, identified by Thames Valley Police as Daniel Heath and William Lawrence, were tracked by the town's neighborhood policing team to the air force barracks later the same day and arrested.
'The Paddington Bear statue is a beloved part of Newbury so we did everything we could to locate it and bring the offenders to justice,' Inspector Alan Hawkett of the Newbury Policing Team, said. 'After a short stay at Newbury police station, we handed the statue back to its owners so it can be restored.'
Both men admitted to removing the Paddington statue and pleaded guilty to a count of criminal damage in court. In return, the pair were fined the equivalent of $3,500 U.S. dollars and sentenced to one year of community service.
The brutalized Paddington Bear, which got to ride in a police car and hangout at the station for a little while, was one of 23 statues depicting the character installed in concert with the release of the latest film, 'Paddington in Peru.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Opinion - What the US can learn from Ukraine's remarkable Operation Spider Web
Operation Spider Web, the brilliantly audacious Ukrainian drone attack on several Russian airbases located thousands of miles from the battlefield, has been largely lauded as a major tactical and strategic success. Many supposed lessons are being drawn — some, no doubt, applicable, but others hastily jumped to and unwarranted. The spycraft involved in this attack was extraordinary — hiding drones in the tops of boxes loaded on Russian trucks whose drivers were unaware of their cargo and then released on signal ranks with the greatest of exploits. While Pearl Harbor is an inappropriate comparison, as Ukraine has been at war for over three years, Jimmy Doolittle's daring B-25 raid over Tokyo in April 1942 is a good parallel. After all, who would have thought B-25 bombers could fly off a carrier deck? Perhaps the best analogy is Britain's Special Air Service, created in 1941 by then-Major David Stirling to conduct hit and run raids on Nazi bases in the North African campaign. Mounted in jeeps, the Special Air Service crisscrossed the desert delivering not just one but multiple surprise attacks on German airbases, physically destroying with bullets, hand grenades and explosive charges more enemy aircraft than the Royal Air Force would ultimately shoot down. To begin, the lesson learned was that the process must distinguish between what may be valid or not in the attacks against five Russian airbases: Olenya, Belaya, Dyagilevo, Ivanovo Severny and an attempted strike on Ukrainka. The real damage was reportedly done at Olenya, where eight Tupolev TU-95-MS bombers loaded with KH-101 stealth air-launched cruise missiles were destroyed. This struck at the heart of the Russian strategic air force. Given the low operational readiness rates due to maintenance issues, this may have crippled about 70 percent of the force, even though only about one third of the aircraft were physically destroyed. While the other raids reportedly accounted for seven TU-22M3 bombers, two A-50 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft and one An-12 transport aircraft, the operational impact was not nearly as great. But no matter: Spider Web was an instant victory. However, the larger consequences are yet to take hold. In a phone call with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin vowed revenge. The question is, short of nuclear weapons, what more damage can he inflict on Ukrainian cities than he is doing now? In 1940, to save the Royal Air Force that was being eviscerated on the ground and in the air by superior Nazi numbers, Winston Churchill ordered the bombing of Berlin. Enraged, Hitler ordered the bombing of British cities and a 'Blitz' that would continue with V-1 and V-2 rockets until the war's end in 1945, thus saving the Royal Air Force's air bases and enabling the winning of the Battle of Britain. It is not clear what Putin will do. There is talk in Ukraine of a major Russian summer offensive. If true, that offensive could fizzle as the others have. Or it could succeed. Success could be Putin's means of retaliation and vengeance for Operation Spider Web. While it is unlikely Russia's summer offensive will lead to the destruction or neutralization of the Ukrainian military, it could achieve one major breakthrough: surrounding and blockading Odesa. Closing the port and, in essence, sealing off Ukraine from the Black Sea, would have major implications, and not only for Kyiv, which is dependent on the trade and export of its grain. Importers of grain would also be hit hard. That might give Putin added leverage because outside states could impose pressure on Kyiv to negotiate and thus lift its blockade. Since Ukraine has no navy and Russia's is hiding out of range, it would be drones and missiles designed to attack the bridges of cargo ships that would be the deus ex machina, along with sea mines to close the port. This would be followed by or preceded with massive attacks on Odesa and its port. One knee-jerk reaction is to sound the alarm over U.S. military bases' vulnerability to this form of attack. But didn't 9/11 teach us anything? Surprise works. And attacking U.S. bases from within would be a given in time of war. In fact, we have seen shootings and other acts of violence taking place on many bases. But let's not panic. Common sense prevails. Let's not isolate the military even more because of this alleged vulnerability and the Ukrainian raid. What should be taken from Operation Spider Web is how we might shock and awe our potential adversaries through innovative actions. That is the place to focus. But will we? Harlan Ullman, Ph.D., is UPI's Arnaud deBorchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior advisor at Washington, D.C.'s Atlantic Council, the chairman of two private companies and the principal author of the doctrine of shock and awe. He and David Richards are authors of a forthcoming book on preventing strategic catastrophe. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
‘Day of the Jackal' author Frederick Forsyth dies at 86
For a half-century, Mr. Forsyth was one of the most successful authors of the cloak-and-dagger circuit. He wrote more than 20 novels, short stories and other works, reportedly selling more than 75 million copies in more than a dozen languages. Many of his books, featuring high-stakes action and protagonists pitted against seemingly impossible odds, were made into movies or TV dramas. Unlike John le Carré, a contemporary who delved into the moral ambiguities of Cold War espionage, Mr. Forsyth never pretended to be anything other than, by his own description, 'just a storyteller.' Book critics were generally kind, often praising his blistering plot pace and meticulous attention to detail. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Born in Kent, in southern England, in 1938, Mr. Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent. He covered the attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, which provided inspiration for 'The Day of the Jackal,' his political thriller about a professional assassin. Advertisement Published in 1971, the book propelled him into global fame. It was made into a film in 1973 starring Edward Fox as the Jackal and more recently a television series starring In 2015, Mr. Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the Advertisement Although Mr. Forsyth said he did other jobs for the agency, he said he was not paid for his services and 'it was hard to say no' to officials seeking information. 'The zeitgeist was different,' he told the BBC. 'The Cold War was very much on.' He wrote more than 25 books including 'The Afghan,' 'The Kill List,' 'The Dogs of War,' and 'The Fist of God' that have sold over 75 million copies, Lloyd said. His publisher, Bill Scott-Kerr, said that 'Revenge of Odessa,' a sequel to the 1974 book 'The Odessa File' that Mr. Forsyth worked on with fellow thriller author Tony Kent, will be published in August. 'Still read by millions across the world, Freddie's thrillers define the genre and are still the benchmark to which contemporary writers aspire,' Scott-Kerr said. Material from The Washington Post was used in this obituary.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Private sector wages should not be the business of Government
For far too long, British politicians have created laws and systems that outsource decisions to the courts. All of this has been done with the best intentions, but too little consideration has been given to the unintended consequences, and the outcomes have been perverse. Thanks to a spate of absurd rulings, including the Albanian criminal allowed to stay in the UK partly because his son will not eat foreign chicken nuggets, many are aware of the impact on efforts to control our borders. But the problem is much broader, impacting everything from planning to energy. Increasingly, tribunal judgments are even telling businesses what they should pay their workers. If that sounds crazy, it's because it is. All jobs are different; all people are different too. In theory, setting pay is hard, because the pros and cons of different roles depend on individual preferences. In practice it's easy. You don't have to sit down and work out a weighted aggregate of a job's different pros and cons to different people; the market does that for you. You can start hiring, and you'll find out pretty quickly how much you need to pay to fill a role. This is so obvious that it almost isn't worth saying. But it's not what our laws say. The Equality Act, passed in 2010, mandates 'equal pay for equal work', doubling down on the Equal Pay Act of 1970. But what is 'equal work'? According to the Equality Act, it isn't where two people do the same job. It's not even where two people do similar jobs. In fact, the Equality Act says, the only way to tell if two jobs are 'equal' is to conduct a 'job evaluation study'. Rather than letting the job market determine fair pay, bureaucrats and judges use a host of arbitrary criteria to decide what a role is worth. What does that look like in practice? Last August, a six-year case concluded against the retailer Next. The company was sued by three women, current and former workers, who insisted that store staff (mostly women) should be paid as much as warehouse workers (slight majority male). Any of the store staff could have moved to the warehouse if they wanted more money. In fact, Next were desperate for them to – the company had a recruitment drive for the warehouse among store employees. But very few people wanted those roles because working on the shop floor was pleasant and working in the warehouse was not. One of the women who brought the case admitted that she would only have considered moving to the warehouse for 'a lot more money.' Incredibly, Next lost. The court decided the two roles should be paid the same. The same thing is happening to Asda. And Birmingham council was effectively bankrupted by an equal pay claim brought by (mostly female) cleaners complaining they weren't paid as much as the (mostly male) binmen. We should be grateful anyone is willing to do work that's backbreaking, dirty or dangerous. They deserve to be paid fairly; often more than people who don't want to do that. But now bureaucrats have come in to fix what isn't broken and insist that what is fair is actually unfair. This undermines our economy and it needs to stop. Katie Lam is the Conservative MP for Weald of Kent Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
