The UK is set to enjoy more warm weather this week – and today could be the hottest day of the year so far.
Temperatures in some parts of the South East could reach as high as 29C (84.2F).
The previous hottest day of the year was on 2 June, when temperatures reached 28.3C (82.9F) in Northolt, northwest London.
Met Office meteorologist Annie Shuttleworth said: “We are forecasting that 29C could be the maximum.
“If we do see that 29C, it would be the warmest day of the year so far and it would be in the South East.
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“It will be another day of warm weather and it could be just one degree warmer.”
There will be a north-south split with “very strong sunshine” in parts of England and Wales, but further north it will feel cooler with stronger winds, she said.
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The Met Office had predicted Sunday the warmest day of the year but temperatures fell just shy, hitting 28C at Heathrow and St James’s Park in London.
England beat Croatia at Wembley on Sunday afternoon in sweltering heat at Wembley Stadium but Scotland’s opening match against the Czech Republic at Hampden Park in Glasgow on Monday will be much cooler, with the temperature forecast to be 14C (57.2F).
However, the warm weather is set to continue for a couple more days before it turns wet with the potential of travel disruption.
Some areas could see “intense thunderstorms” with the risk of flooding, with yellow weather warnings issued for large parts of England and Wales from 6pm on Wednesday until 6am on Friday.
A Met Office spokesman said “torrential rain, hail, frequent lightning and strong gusty winds” could occur during this period.
There is “significant uncertainty” about the specific location and timing of the thunderstorms but they are expected to move north-east across parts of England and Wales.
Some areas could see 30mm of rainfall in an hour, and others 50mm in two to three hours, but these would be fairly isolated occurrences, forecasters said.
A man wrongly jailed for 17 years for a rape he did not commit has said it is “too little too late” after receiving an apology from the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).
Andrew Malkinson was jailed in 2003 but eventually released in December 2020.
His charges were quashed last year after new DNA evidence potentially linked another man to the crime.
The CCRC has now offered Mr Malkinson an unreserved apology after the completion of a report from an independent review by Chris Henley KC into the handling of the case.
But reacting to the apology, Mr Malkinson said the time for CCRC chairman Helen Pitcher OBE to apologise was when he was exonerated last summer.
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Malkinson: Wrongly imprisoned for rape
“The CCRC’s delay in apologising to me added significantly to the mental turmoil I am experiencing as I continue to fight for accountability for what was done to me,” Mr Malkinson said.
“The CCRC’s failings caused me a world of pain. Even the police apologised straight away. It feels like Helen Pitcher is only apologising now because the CCRC has been found out, and the last escape hatch has now closed on them.”
He said his lawyer had written to Ms Pitcher last September requesting an apology, to which she refused.
He added: “It is hard for me to see the sincerity in an apology after all this time – when you are truly sorry for what you have done, you respond immediately and instinctively, it wells up in you.”
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Earlier on Thursday, Ms Pitcher released a statement saying: “Mr Henley’s report makes sobering reading, and it is clear from his findings that the commission failed Andrew Malkinson. For this, I am deeply sorry. I have written to Mr Malkinson to offer him my sincere regret and an unreserved apology on behalf of the commission.
Addressing beliefs that she was unwilling to apologise, Ms Pitcher added: “For me, offering a genuine apology required a clear understanding of the circumstances in which the commission failed Mr Malkinson. We now have that.
“Nobody can ever begin to imagine the devastating impact that Mr Malkinson’s wrongful conviction has had on his life, and I can only apologise for the additional harm caused to him by our handling of his case.”
Mr Malkinson had applied for his case to be reviewed by the CCRC in 2009, but at the conclusion of its review in 2012 the commission refused to order further forensic testing or refer the case for appeal, amid concerns over costs.
Critical DNA evidence had been available since 2007, but no match was found on the police database at the time.
Since Mr Malkinson had his conviction quashed, dozens of rape and murder convictions from before 2016 are set to undergo fresh DNA testing to identify potential miscarriages of justice.
The CCRC said it has re-examined nearly 5,500 cases that it previously rejected in the light of improvement in DNA analysis techniques.
Its initial trawl last summer found around a quarter of the cases are those where the identity of the offender is challenged.
Focusing on those, it says there are potentially several dozen cases where DNA samples could be retested using the DNA 17 technique, first introduced in 2014.
Dozens of people around the world have been arrested after police disrupted a UK-founded website scamming victims on an industrial scale.
LabHost, a site set up in 2021, tricked as many as 70,000 UK victims, obtaining 480,000 card numbers and 64,000 PINs worldwide, the Metropolitan Police said.
It was created by a criminal network and enabled more than 2,000 users to set up phishing websites designed to steal personal information such as email addresses, passwords and bank details.
Criminal subscribers could log on and choose from existing sites or request bespoke pages replicating those of trusted brands such as banks, healthcare agencies and postal services.
The website even provided a tutorial to cater for wannabe fraudsters with limited IT knowledge, with a robotic voice saying at the end: “Stay safe and good spamming”.
Those subscribing to worldwide membership – meaning they could target victims all around the world – paid between £200 and £300 a month.
Since it began, the site has received just under £1m in payments from criminal users.
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But just after it was seized and disrupted, its 800 customers got a message telling them that police knew who they were and what they were doing.
Thirty-seven people were arrested around the world, including some at Manchester and Luton airports, as well as in Essex and London.
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Detectives have also contacted up to 25,000 UK-based victims to tell them their data has been compromised.
Police began investigating LabHost in June 2022 after they were tipped off by the Cyber Defence Alliance – a group of British-based banks and law enforcement agencies which share intelligence.
Dame Lynne Owens, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, said: “Online fraudsters think they can act with impunity. They believe they can hide behind digital identities and platforms such as LabHost and have absolute confidence these sites are impenetrable by policing.
“But this operation and others over the last year show how law enforcement worldwide can, and will, come together with one another and private sector partners to dismantle international fraud networks at source.”
Adrian Searle, director of the National Economic Crime Centre in the NCA, said: “This operation again demonstrates that UK law enforcement has the capability and intent to identify, disrupt and completely compromise criminal services that are targeting the UK on an industrial scale.”