
Man, 20, found dead next to overturned quadbike with burned out BMW discovered in nearby town: Police arrest five amid murder probe
Ethan Powell of Brynmawr, was found deceased on the A465, between Rhymney and Downlais, south Wales in the early hours of May 31 following a fatal crash.
Officers also believe a white BMW which was found 'burnt out' miles away from the collision in the Downlais area, may have been involved.
The police force have made five arrests in connection with the incident, which includes two men, aged 43 and 34, were arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice and assisting an offender and are currently in police custody.
A 41-year-old man from was also arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice and assisting an offender. He was released on conditional bail but he was recalled to prison in connection with an unrelated enquiry.
A 40-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder and driving whilst unfit through drink and driving while unfit through drugs. A 37-year-old was arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice and assisting an offender.
Both were later released on conditional bail as enquiries continue.
Mr Powell's heartbroken family have since paid a touching tribute to the 'adventurous' and 'forever loved' youngster, who was 'the kindest of souls'.
'Ethan had the kindest of souls, the biggest of hearts and enough love to give to absolutely anyone he came across in life,' his family said.
'He was the funniest of characters and always managed to light up a room. He will forever live on through his sisters Eleanor and Isabella with our family remembering him every second of every day.
'Our family is truly heartbroken at the news, a young life taken far too soon with so much ahead of him.
'We would like to thank everyone for the overwhelming support which we have had since Saturday.
'It brings a bit of comfort to see how loved and well thought of he really was, but we would now like to ask for privacy and space to grieve following this unimaginable loss to our family. Ethan; forever 20, forever loved.'
Others online described Ethan as 'a kind boy' who 'could light up a room with his character' while others dubbed him a 'sweet lad who always had a smile on his face.'
Officers investigating the tragedy on the main A465 on the Heads of the Valleys road in South Wales found a burnt-out BMW in the Dowlais area of Merthyr Tydfil.
Detective Chief Inspector Matthew Edwards, the senior investigating officer, said: 'We're keen to speak to anyone who was travelling along the A465 between the hours of 2am and 5am on Saturday morning, especially motorists with dashcam, as they could have details that might assist our enquiries.
'It is still our view that a second vehicle – a white BMW that was found burnt out in the Dowlais area – may have been involved in the collision.
'If you have any information about this car, then please get in touch.'
Anyone with information has been urged to call 101, or contact the force via their website quoting reference 2500171434.
Alternatively, you can contact Crimestoppers anonymously with information by calling 0800 555 111 or going to their website to report online in confidence.
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Telegraph
11 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Here is Eighties New York, in all its brash, seedy glory
In Jonathan Mahler's vivid and compelling history of New York in the 1980s – The Gods of New York – one incident in particular stands out for its combination of hubris, corruption and grand Guignol horror. It concerns the investigation into Donald Manes, the president of the city's borough of Queens, for his part in a multi-million dollar kickback scheme – an investigation conducted by Rudy Giuliani, then the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. To get to Manes, Giuliani cut a deal with an underling, Geoffrey Lindenauer – a man whose colourful past included running an unlicensed psychotherapy institute with his mother, where he occasionally prescribed sexual relations with himself as the most efficacious form of treatment, and who had subsequently risen to the august position of deputy director of the parking violations bureau. Faced with 39 counts of extortion, racketeering and mail fraud, 'Lindy', as the tabloid press took to calling him, spilled the beans on his boss. Confronted with a newspaper headline – 'Manes Accused of Extortion' – the borough president took his own life while on the phone to his psychiatrist, cradling the phone between his neck and shoulder, pulling an 8-inch knife out of a kitchen drawer and plunging it into his chest. Jonathan Mahler coins a useful euphemism, 'crisis opportunists', for the cast of this book: a catalogue of crooks, chancers and grifters, firebrand activists, rap stars, politicians scrambling up the greasy pole and falling back down again, people on the make – and Donald Trump. As Mahler puts it, in the 70s, New York, the place 'where you went to make it,' had become 'a place where you got the hell out of if you could'. The city was on its knees, and Washington had refused to help. As the famous Daily News headline put it, '[President] Ford to City: Drop Dead.' But by the 80s, the wheel had turned. Financial deregulation had promoted a soaring stock market, and a corporate takeover craze. As Wall Street boomed, what Mahler calls a 'guilt-free consumerism' blossomed, and skyscrapers grew like mushrooms. The personification of the city was Ed Koch, who governed as mayor between 1978 and 1989. Small and pugnacious, the son of furrier who had arrived at Ellis Island in 1909, Koch was a Second World War veteran who had risen through local politics by a combination of guile, wit and iron-clad self-belief, who boasted, 'I am not the type to get ulcers; I give them.' Cardinal John O'Connor, the Archbishop of New York described Koch as the 'only man I know who speaks to God as an associate'. He needed all the help he could get. Over the course of his 12 years as mayor, Koch would be assailed by a daunting multitude of problems arising from the growing gulf between the ultra-rich and the poor. These included homelessness, a soaring crime rate, a series of gruesome murders, local government corruption, racial strife, a growing crack epidemic and the rising tally of deaths – greater than any other city in America – from the Aids epidemic. The demands from activists for increased funding to deal with the crisis proved particularly problematic for Koch, a closeted homosexual who lived in constant fear of being outed. Mahler's book offers vivid portraits of the characters woven into the chaotic tapestry of the city. There was the legendary tabloid journalist Jimmy Breslin, a 'gruff fire-hydrant of a man', who embodied the tabloid form 'to rumpled shambolic perfection', chronicling the venality of New York's rich and powerful and the desperation and dignity of its poor and powerless, and who described the essence of his job as 'climbing the tenement stairs'. Spike Lee was a struggling film director until his 1989 film, Do The Right Thing, provided a vivid portrait for an international audience of the simmering tension between black and white residents in Brooklyn. (The scene where a policeman chokes the character Radio Raheem to death with his night-stick, sparking a riot, was to prove eerily prophetic of George Floyd's death in 2020.) Then there was the man who came to define the image of New York as a limitless cash-register for those brash and audacious enough to seize the opportunity. Trump's rise to become the most powerful property developer in New York – his unabashed glorification of wealth and shameless self-promotion overshadowed any question marks over his creative accounting practices – had made him catnip for the media. In 1976, the New York Times was lionising him as 'tall, lean and blond, with dazzling white teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford'. Trump Tower, built in 1983, became the city's tallest residential building. Twenty storeys higher than its original zoning allowed, after Trump had acquired unexploited 'air rights' from the neighbouring Tiffany store, the Tower was a shimmering symbol of New York's economic revival, and a testament to Trump's soaring hubris. To lure buyers, he numbered the floors to make them seem higher than they actually were. The first residential floor, which was 20 storeys above street level, was labelled the 30th floor. Among the eager buyers were a high-ranking member of a Russian crime family, a notorious cocaine dealer and the mob-connected head of a numbers racket. Unfazed by his failed attempts as a casino operator to make Atlantic City a rival to Reno, Trump had fixed his eye on bigger things. While announcing he would not be running for President in 1988, he made no secret of his political ambitions, proposing that America should invade Iran, 'a horrible, horrible country', in order to capture its oil fields. 'It is easy to dismiss Mr Trump's political showboating for the barstool demagoguery it is,' the St Louis Post-Dispatch editorialised, adding, prophetically as it turned out, that 'given [his] money and self-assurance, the odds are that he has not made his last political appearance.' The Rev Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, was someone whose facility for self-promotion almost rivalled Trump's. Caricatured in Tom Wolfe's satire on Eighties New York, The Bonfire of the Vanities, as the Rev Reggie Bacon, Sharpton was an erstwhile boy preacher and bagman for the soul singer James Brown who, amidst the rising racial tensions in New York, became a confrontational and incendiary presence at the front line of any conflict in a city. His portly figure, pompadour hairstyle and predilection for colourful tracksuits, often worn with a gold medallion bearing the image of Martin Luther King, served as a beacon for reporters and tv crews. In 1987, Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old black girl who had been missing from her home for four days, was found seemingly unconscious, lying in a garbage bag, her clothing torn, her body smeared in faeces, with the initials KKK scrawled on her body in charcoal. She alleged that she had been kidnapped and sexually abused by a group of white men. Sharpton stepped forward, orchestrating the media coverage, describing Brawley as 'the symbol of the cause' and, as the investigation ground on, inflaming the situation even more by suggesting that the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia were conspiring with the authorities in a cover-up. After 10 months, a Grand Jury ruled there was no evidence of Brawley being being abducted and abused, and had made up the story of abduction and rape to avoid facing her mother's violent boyfriend. Sharpton simply shrugged his shoulders, brushed the verdict aside as a miscarriage of justice, and moved on to his next agitation. Between crime, corruption, Aids and racial conflict, a beleaguered Koch was fighting on all fronts. But few of the many thorns in his side were more painful than a homeless woman named Joyce Brown, who had taken up residence on the pavement outside an ice-cream parlour in Midtown Manhattan, shouting obscenities at passers-by and responding to the kindness of strangers who gave her dollar bills by urinating on the money. In 1987, Brown became the first person to be incarcerated in Bellevue hospital, under an emergency programme introduced by a desperate Koch to forcibly commit the mentally disturbed homeless to psychiatric hospitals. Her incarceration became a cause célèbre, with thousands of homeless people marching through Midtown, chanting her name and demanding more affordable housing. Released from hospital, she appeared on TV shows, addressed a packed audience at Harvard Law School and taunted Koch in interviews, accusing him of having a 'personality disorder', while her lawyers fielded calls from publishers and movie agents. On a visit to Moscow, President Reagan cited Brown's successful campaign to be released and return to her spot on the pavement as a symbol of America as a free country. 'How far can we go in impinging on the freedom of someone who says this is the way I want to live.' Brown was unimpressed. 'Rather than talking about me', she was quoted as saying, 'why doesn't the President assist me in getting permanent housing?' Being painted as the heartless persecutor of a mentally disturbed homeless person was another dent in Koch's fading reputation. Despite having promised to 'keep my big mouth shut' if he won re-election, in 1989 he lost to David Dinkins, who became the city's first black mayor. That's where Mahler's book ends. But the story continues. Dinkins was to prove a one-term mayor. And waiting in the wings was Rudy Giuliani. A workaholic who subsisted on a diet of cheeseburgers by day and martinis by night, with a complexion so pallid a judge had once urged him to 'sit at Coney Island and get some colour', as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Giuliani had achieved the apparently impossible. His tenacious pursuit and successful prosecution of the bosses of New York's most powerful Mafia families led Time magazine to describe him as resembling 'a quattrocento fresco of an obscure saint'. Meanwhile in 1986, he aided in the prosecution and imprisonment, on charges of insider trading, of the crooked arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, who had been involved in almost every major takeover of the previous five years, as well as the successful prosecution of the investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, which served as a welcome corrective to what Mahler describes as the 'greed-soaked, rule-bending era' on Wall Street. Giuliani had always nursed political ambitions and having run unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate in the 1989 mayoral elections, four years later he succeeded Dinkins as New York's mayor. In 2001, he went one step better, being lauded as 'America's mayor' for his leadership after 9/11. Then came the fall. The man who had made his name rooting out corruption ended up paying fealty to Donald Trump, representing him in the multitude of lawsuits Trump filed following the 2020 election, claiming the election had been rigged from an improvised podium in front of a porn store, hair dye leaking into his eyes. In 2023, Giuliani lost a $148-million defamation lawsuit after accusing two election workers in Georgia of lying to help steal the 2020 presidential contest from Donald Trump. In court, Giuliani pleaded poverty, telling a judge he had no car, credit card or cash. Mahler's account of corruption, riots and fortunes and reputations made and lost will stand as the definitive account of New York in the 80s, and proof that the feet of the gods, or those who believe they are, are indeed made of clay – but that still doesn't stop one of them becoming the most powerful man in the world.


The Sun
11 minutes ago
- The Sun
I lost 6st on Mounjaro but hate my body more – I feel disgusting & seeing myself naked is worse than when I was bigger
FOR many people, weight loss jabs like Mounjaro provide the chance to shift some weight and feel more confident. However, for one woman, Lucy Davies, from Pontypridd, South Wales, the jab has left her hating her body more than ever, despite losing six stone. 7 7 7 The 32-year-old insurance consultant said she now feels 'disgusting' after going from a size 22 to a size 12, due to having loose skin around her tummy. Speaking to Fabulous, she shared how she started using Mounjaro in September 2024 after trying 'many diets' over the years. The jab is similar to Ozempic, but packs an even bigger punch when it comes to appetite control. Lucy said: 'Mentally I couldn't diet as I was an emotional eater and dependent on food to make myself feel better. 'It was definitely stress and life events that started the emotional eating and I would use food as a tool to make me feel better.' She signed up to get the weight loss jab from Med Express, an online pharmacy, and quickly started seeing results - and felt 'motivated' and 'more confident' in clothes. Since starting the jabs, she has gone from 16 stone 11lbs to 10 stone 6lbs, but despite this, a recent family day out at Legoland left her feeling terrible about her self-image. She explained: 'I wore high waisted denim shorts, a vest top, and a shirt. 'It was so hot so I had to take the shirt off, so I just had the shorts and the vest top on. 'And I've never felt so disgusting in all my life. 'So I've got a gun, and if anyone who doesn't know what that is, in Wales, we call the baby belly pouch that hangs down, we call it a gun. 'And I got that still, even though I've lost six stone. 'It's a lot of excess skin around my stomach as well, because my stomach was massive. 'But what was I thinking wearing high waisted shorts? I don't know— never again. 'Because I've never felt so uncomfortable in all my life. "I felt more comfortable six stone heavier than what I did yesterday.' 7 7 She admitted that her critical thoughts 'ruined the day' and made her realise that she has a 'long way to go'. Lucy explained: 'I've lost a lot of weight, but I'm not happy. 'I've got a lot of excess skin and I've done loads of walking throughout— still doing a lot of walking— but it's time to do weights now. I hate my loose skin around my stomach and I'm feeling really down about that. I'm more self conscious now than when I was bigger Lucy Davies 'I hate my loose skin around my stomach and I'm feeling really down about that. I'm more self conscious now than when I was bigger. 'I would consider surgery in the future but it's not on the cards at the moment.' Although she enjoys that she can 'buy clothes more easily now', she said she is more self conscious now than when she was bigger. In a bid to make her feel better about her body, she plans to get into the gym to tone up and will keep calorie counting. 7 7 Lucy added: 'As much as I hate the gym, I think it's time to actually get in the gym because I really felt like crap all day yesterday, and I don't wanna continue feeling like that. 'So yeah, this Monjaro journey's been amazing, I don't regret anything, but it's come to a point now where I'm more unhappy with how I look naked than I was when I was bigger. 'Because nothing's toned, and around my stomach is a lot of excess skin.' She also offered a word of advice for people thinking of taking Mounjaro, saying: 'I would definitely say to people it's not a quick fix, especially mentally. 'It's about changing your life.' What to do if you lose too much weight too quickly whilst on Mounjaro IF you're losing too much weight too quickly while on Mounjaro, it's important to take action to avoid potential health risks like muscle loss, malnutrition, dehydration, and fatigue. Here's what you can do: Evaluate Your Caloric Intake Mounjaro reduces appetite, which can make it easy to eat too little. If you're losing weight too fast (more than two to three lbs per week after the initial adjustment period), try: Tracking your food intake to ensure you're eating enough calories (apps like MyFitnessPal can help). Increasing protein intake to preserve muscle mass (aim for 0.6–1g per pound of body weight). Adding healthy fats and complex carbs (e.g., avocados, nuts, whole grains) for balanced energy. Adjust Your Dosage (With Doctor's Approval) If your weight loss is too rapid or causing side effects, your doctor may: Pause dose increases or lower your dosage. Adjust your treatment plan to stabilise your weight loss. Strength Training & Exercise To prevent muscle loss: Incorporate resistance training at least two to three times per week. Stay active with low-impact exercises like walking or yoga. Hydrate & Manage Electrolytes Drink enough water (Mounjaro can reduce thirst). Electrolytes matter - Consider adding magnesium, sodium, and potassium if you feel weak or fatigued. Monitor for Malnutrition & Deficiencies Rapid weight loss can cause vitamin/mineral deficiencies (especially B12, iron, and electrolytes). If you experience: Fatigue, hair loss, or dizziness, ask your doctor about supplements. Consider Further Medical Guidance If your weight loss is excessive or causing health concerns, speak with your healthcare provider. They might adjust your dosage, diet, or exercise plan to help stabilise your weight loss.


Daily Mail
11 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
I tried to take my own life TWICE after being driven to rock bottom by drugs sting - powerful people wanted to take me out and now I know why, claims Tulisa in unflinching This Morning interview
Tulisa opened up about how she tried to take her own life twice when she was driven to rock bottom after being involved in a drugs sting back in 2013. The 37 year old appeared on the latest instalment of ITV 's This Morning to chat to Emma Willis, 49, and Craig Doyle, 54, about her brand new book Tulisa: Judgement, Love, Trials and Tribulations. In the book she opens up about how she was arrested on suspicion of supplying class A drugs, after then-journalist Mazher Mahmood, also known as the Fake Sheik, tricked her into giving him a contact from which he bought £800 worth of cocaine. Craig pointed out: 'There is a really serious side too... This isn't just about reputation or losing work, or being publicly shamed, and all of those things that have come with this story, but you did attempt to take your own life.' Tulisa bravely said: 'I mean I look back on it now and I feel quite detached from it. Even when I read the book, it's like reading a story about someone else. 'But that is the point that it brought me to.' The 37-year-old appeared on the latest instalment of ITV's This Morning to chat to Emma Willis, 49, and Craig Doyle, 54, about her brand new book Tulisa: Judgement, Love Trials and Tribulations Tulisa (pictured) was a judge on The X Factor between for the eighth and the ninth series in 2011 and 2012 'Sitting in your bathroom with a bottle of vodka and a handful of pills,' Craig replies to her. Tulisa explained: 'So I talk about two attempts, the first attempt was quite light in a sense of I just grabbed a load of pill packets. 'I was very drunk, and what exactly they were going to do wasn't sure. Just go for it. I'd had enough. 'It was actually the second time, which was after the trial had finished. 'I then had the time to really process everything that had happened. 'That was the real kicker, and then surviving that... that was a miracle.' Tulisa claimed there were two main reasons the people who targeted her wanted to take her down a peg - classism and misogny. 'The whole thing was the most intense, chaotic, dramatic period of my entire life. But there's a lot of knowledge to be taken,' she went on. 'There was misogyny involved, I think there was a lot of classism involved. I think when I came into the industry, expecting as the Camden girl, to be up for and do a lot of things that I wouldn't. When it was discovered that I wouldn't play the game, I think I ruffled a lot of feathers of a lot of big wigs in the industry and they thought "We're going to take her out".' Tulisa is leaving no stone unturned in her upcoming autobiography, detailing her battle with addiction, two suicide attempts and her sex tape scandal. The singer vowed to be 'brutally honest' in the tome, titled Judgement: Love, Trials and Tribulations, and has stayed true to her word. According to The Mirror, the N-Dubz star charts her 'year from hell' amid her drug sting trial, which led to two suicide attempts. She penned of the day she found out she was going to be charged on suspicion of being involved with the supply of Class A drugs: 'Why is this happening to me? 'What's the point in being alive just to be miserable? 'How am I ever going to find happiness after this? 'Even if I'm found innocent, I'll be empty inside by the time I get to the end of it, and my life will be ruined.' Thankfully, she was found by former best friend Gareth Varey who called an ambulance after finding her in her bathroom surrounded by empty packets of sleeping pills. While Tulisa was revived, she made a second attempt on her life months later amid her trial, which resulted in her being hospitalised for three days. Throughout any challenging times, Tulisa would try and comfort herself by locking herself in the bathroom. She explained: 'When I was a child, the bathroom was the only room in my house with a lock. I had always locked myself in there in times of distress, whether it was because my parents were going at it like two bulls in a china shop again, or my mentally ill mother was going off the rails. It had always been my place of safety. 'And twenty years later, here I was: back lying on the bathroom floor. Deep-rooted issues, I suppose. When the sex tape had come out, I had slept on the bathroom floor for five days.' Tulisa's ex Justin Edwards - who she had broken up with in 2009 - released a sex tape of her in 2012 during the height of her fame. Revenge porn was not illegal at the time, meaning she only managed to get a court apology from him. Elsewhere in the book, Tulisa also revealed that while she suffered from depression she became addicted to sleeping tablets and benzodiazepines, a habit she broke free from last year after she 'found her peace and faith'. Tulisa's memoir documents her rise to prominence and subsequent fall from grace after being targeted by the disgraced 'Fake Sheikh', Mazher Mahmood. The singer later admitted her life 'fell apart' following an elaborate sting that resulted in her being arrested on suspicion of supplying Class A drugs, an accusation she vehemently denied. As the drama played out in court, Tulisa opted to keep a journal in which she detailed the toll her trial had taken on her personal life, and the devastating impact it had on her career. Released by Blink Publishing for Bonnier Books UK, Judgement is now available to purchase.