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The partner of missing Nicola Bulley has told Sky News she “has to be found safe and well” because “I can’t put those girls to bed again with no answers”, as police today released new CCTV of her on the day she disappeared.

The mother-of-two went missing in Lancashire on the morning of Friday 27 January while walking her dog.

Officers’ “main working hypothesis” is that the 45-year-old fell into the River Wyre near to the village of St Michael’s on Wyre.

But her family and friends have claimed there is “no evidence whatsoever” behind this.

Nicola Bulley
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Nicola Bulley

In a separate statement, released through Lancashire Police on the 10th day since she was last seen, Ms Bulley’s partner, Paul Ansell, said the girls “miss their mummy desperately” and “need her back”.

“This has been such a tough time for the girls especially but also for me and all of Nicola’s family and friends, as well as the wider community and I want to thank them for their love and support,” he said.

In an additional voice note, sent to Sky News, he said: “We have to find her safe and well. I can’t put those girls to bed again tonight with no answers.”

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Voicenote from Nicola Bulley’s partner

Read more:
Independent search team joins hunt for Nicola Bulley
First images released of dog walker on day she vanished

It comes as police released new images from Ms Bulley’s doorbell camera showing her on the day she disappeared.

The pictures show Ms Bulley wearing a long dark coat – believed to be black – and with her dog. Her blonde hair is pulled back in a ponytail.

Ms Bulley was last seen walking her dog a short while later on a footpath near the waterways of St Michael’s on Wyre village.

Lancashire Constabulary said it had carried out searches along the river “all the way to the sea” using specialist search teams, sonar, search dogs, drones and helicopters.

The force said it had also searched the derelict house on the other side of the river as well as any empty caravans in the vicinity.

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Retracing Nicola Bulley’s journey

Officers will now be sending letters to drivers who they believe were travelling down Garstang Road, near to the river, on the morning Ms Bulley disappeared in the hope of obtaining new dashcam footage.

“We can say with confidence that by reviewing CCTV, Nicola has not left the field during the key times via Rowanwater, either through the site itself or via the piece of land at the side,” a force spokesperson said.

“Our inquiries now focus on the river path which leads from the fields back to Garstang Road – for that we need drivers and cyclists who travelled that way on the morning of 27 January to make contact.

“If you receive one of these letters and have dashcam footage, we would urge you to make contact so that a member of the enquiry team can make contact and review your footage to establish whether it assists.”

Specialist team joins the search

On Monday, a dive team from Specialist Group International (SGI) joined the search after the company originally offered its help on social media.

The company’s £55,000 side-scan sonar has a high frequency of 1,800 kilohertz. “We’ve got a very high hit rate,” SGI’s chief executive, Peter Faulding, said.

Police also have a side-scan sonar but “our sonar is probably a bit more superior”, he said, adding: “I’m not sure what frequency they will be using.”

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Nicola Bulley’s family and friends have claimed there is ‘no evidence whatsoever’ Ms Bulley fell into the water.

On Monday night, he said his team had searched “three or four miles” of river but had not found anything.

“It’s a negative search, no signs of Nicola,” he said.

His team will look through another stretch of river “towards where Nicola went originally missing” on Tuesday.

Mr Faulding said it was a “particularly long stretch of river” for police to search “because they’re doubling up as a dive team as well”.

“It is a huge task for the police,” he said.

Mr Faudling said he had worked on hundreds of these cases, and we always, generally find people within the hour in lakes etc”.

“We’re just bringing an extra expertise.”

Read more:
Community ‘in shock’ over Nicola Bulley’s disappearance
What were Nicola Bulley’s movements before she disappeared?

Mr Ansell praised SGI for joining the search, adding: “We are really grateful to Peter and his team from SGI for coming up and helping support the work of Lancashire Police as they continue their investigation.

“If anyone has any information which could help find Nicola, I urge them to get in touch with the police and help us provide the answers we all so badly need.”

How will SGI help?

Mr Faulding said the SGI team are tasked by a police search adviser with looking in a specific stretch of the river.

He explained: “Once he says ‘I want this piece of river searched’ it will be down to me to actually search that piece of river with my team.

Peter Faulding (centre) CEO of private underwater search and recovery company Specialist Group International (SGI), speaks to the media in St Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire, as police continue their search for missing woman Nicola Bulley
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Peter Faulding (centre) CEO of private underwater search and recovery company Specialist Group International (SGI)

“So they won’t tell us how to do it, they will just say ‘this is a stretch of river what we need doing, and can you please do that and report back’.”

He said: “If there is a body in the river, our sonar will detect it.”

SGI carries out all the underwater search operations across the whole of the South East for the police, Mr Faulding said.

He said his sonar will probably start from the weir downwards “and identify any possible targets”. It can generally cover about 10 miles of river a day, he added.

Mr Faulding also cautioned: “Sometimes you can get deep pools of water where the sonar can’t quite get to and that’s where you have to put the diver in, but this river winds around and there’s deep pools, there’s shallow bits, so it’s a lot of work.”

“We will work a long day and continue until we’re finished,” he explained.

How did SGI get involved?

Mr Faulding said that SGI originally offered its services on Facebook.

“We just said we will assist if required, but they [the family] came straight back and then they went to the police and the police, via that, contacted us.

Peter Faulding (centre) CEO and workers from private underwater search and recovery company, Specialist Group International, using a 18kHz side-scan sonar on the river in St Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire, as they assist in the search for missing woman Nicola Bulley
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Workers from Specialist Group International assist in the search

“And so we’ve had very productive conversations. We work with the police all the time.”

Ms Bulley’s friend Emma White said SGI’s work will “give us answers” but hoped “they uncover nothing”.

She told BBC Breakfast: “Following the hypothesis of the police that Nicola was in the river, we need some evidence to back that up either way and I feel Peter and his amazing bit of kit… is going to come and sweep the river bed and give us answers.”

Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Ms White added: “We hope they uncover nothing, like the police have done for the last 10 days, and we hope Nicola is not in that river.”

Ms White, who has known the mother-of-two for 10 years, also told Radio 4’s Today programme how she “came across one of the interviews” with Mr Faulding.

She added: “They’ve got expertise, equipment and manpower and they search rivers in extreme detail, so the quest to bring Peter to St Michael’s began.”

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Four charged after £7m of damage caused to aircraft at RAF Brize Norton

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Four charged after £7m of damage caused to aircraft at RAF Brize Norton

Four people have been charged after £7m of damage was caused to two Voyager aircraft at RAF Brize Norton.

The investigation into the incident early on Friday 20 June was led by counter-terror police.

They have been charged with conspiracy to enter a prohibited place knowingly for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK – and conspiracy to commit criminal damage.

Two Voyager aircraft at RAF Brize Norton were damaged. PA file pic
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Two Voyager aircraft at RAF Brize Norton were damaged. PA file pic

The four charged have been identified as:

• Amy Gardiner-Gibson, 29, of no fixed abode

• Daniel Jeronymides-Norie, 35, from London

• Jony Cink, 24, of no fixed abode

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• Lewie Chiaramello, 22, from London

They will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court later today.

Brize Norton

A 41-year-old woman arrested last week on suspicion of assisting an offender has been released on bail until 19 September.

Meanwhile, a 23-year-old man detained on Saturday was released without charge.

Last month’s incident at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire was claimed by the activist group Palestine Action.

Yesterday, MPs voted to proscribe the group as a terrorist organisation.

The legislation passed with 385 MPs voting in favour, while 26 were against.

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No 10 backs Chancellor Rachel Reeves and says she ‘is going nowhere’ after tearful appearance in Commons

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No 10 backs Chancellor Rachel Reeves and says she 'is going nowhere' after tearful appearance in Commons

Rachel Reeves has not offered her resignation and is “going nowhere”, Downing Street has said, following her tearful appearance in the House of Commons.

A Number 10 spokesperson said the chancellor had the “full backing” of Sir Keir Starmer, despite Ms Reeves looking visibly upset during Prime Minister’s Questions.

Politics latest: ‘A moment of intense peril’ for PM

A spokesperson for the chancellor later clarified that Ms Reeves had been affected by a “personal matter” and would be working out of Downing Street this afternoon.

Politics latest: Reeves looks visibly upset in Commons

UK government bond prices fell by the most since October 2022, and the pound tumbled after Ms Reeves’s Commons appearance, while the yield on the 10-year government bond, or gilt, rose as much as 22 basis points at one point to around 4.68%.

Downing Street’s insistence came despite Sir Keir refusing to guarantee that Ms Reeves would stay as chancellor until the next election following the fallout from the government’s recent welfare U-turn.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch branded the chancellor the “human shield” for the prime minister’s “incompetence” just hours after he was forced to perform a humiliating U-turn over his controversial welfare bill.

Emotional Reeves a painful watch – and reminder of tough decisions ahead

It is hard to think of a PMQs like it – it was a painful watch.

The prime minister battled on, his tone assured, even if his actual words were not always convincing.

But it was the chancellor next to him that attracted the most attention.

Rachel Reeves looked visibly upset.

It is hard to know for sure right now what was going on behind the scenes, the reasons – predictable or otherwise – why she appeared to be emotional, but it was noticeable and it was difficult to watch.

To read more of Ali Fortescue’s analysis, click here

Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Ms Badenoch said: “This man has forgotten that his welfare bill was there to plug a black hole created by the chancellor. Instead they’re creating new ones.”

Turning to the chancellor, the Tory leader added: “[She] is pointing at me – she looks absolutely miserable.

“Labour MPs are going on the record saying that the chancellor is toast, and the reality is that she is a human shield for his incompetence. In January, he said that she would be in post until the next election. Will she really?”

Not fully answering the question, the prime minister replied: “[Ms Badenoch] certainly won’t.

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Welfare vote ‘a blow to the prime minister’

“I have to say, I’m always cheered up when she asks me questions or responds to a statement because she always makes a complete mess of it and shows just how unserious and irrelevant they are.”

Mrs Badenoch interjected: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

The prime minister’s watered-down Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill, aimed at saving £5bn, was backed by a majority of 75 in a tense vote on Tuesday evening.

A total of 49 Labour MPs voted against the bill – the largest rebellion in a prime minister’s first year in office since 47 MPs voted against Tony Blair’s Lone Parent benefit in 1997, according to Professor Phil Cowley from Queen Mary University.

After multiple concessions made due to threats of a Labour rebellion, many MPs questioned what they were voting for as the bill had been severely stripped down.

They ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to Universal Credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Ms Badenoch said the climbdown was proof that Sir Keir was “too weak to get anything done”.

Read more:
The PM faced down his party on welfare and lost
Labour welfare cuts ‘Dickensian’, says rebel MP

Ms Reeves has also borne a lot of the criticism over the handling of the vote, with some MPs believing that her strict approach to fiscal rules has meant she has approached the ballooning welfare bill from the standpoint of trying to make savings, rather than getting people into work.

Experts have now warned that the welfare U-turn, on top of reversing the cut to winter fuel, means that tax rises in the autumn are more likely – with Ms Reeves now needing to find £5bn to make up for the policy U-turns.

Asked by Ms Badenoch whether he could rule out further tax rises – something Labour promised it would not do on working people in its manifesto – Sir Keir said: “She knows that no prime minister or chancellor ever stands at the despatch box and writes budgets in the future.

“But she talks about growth, for 14 years we had stagnation, and that is what caused the problem.”

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Prosecutors consider more charges against Lucy Letby

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Prosecutors consider more charges against Lucy Letby

Prosecutors are considering whether to bring further criminal charges against Lucy Letby over the deaths of babies at two hospitals where she worked

The Crown Prosecution Service said it had received “a full file of evidence from Cheshire Constabulary asking us to consider further allegations in relation to deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital”.

“We will now carefully consider the evidence to determine whether any further criminal charges should be brought,” it added.

“As always, we will make that decision independently, based on the evidence and in line with our legal test.”

Letby, 35, was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder seven more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital and is currently serving 15 whole-life orders.

lucy letby
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Letby worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital

She is understood to have carried out two work placements at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, where she trained as a student, between October and December 2012, and January and February 2015.

Police said in December that Letby was interviewed in prison as part of an investigation into more baby deaths and non-fatal collapses.

A Cheshire Constabulary spokesperson said: “We can confirm that Cheshire Constabulary has submitted a full file of evidence to the CPS for charging advice regarding the ongoing investigation into deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the neo-natal units of both the Countess of Chester Hospital and the Liverpool Women’s Hospital as part of Operation Hummingbird.”

Detectives previously said the investigation was looking into the full period of time that Letby worked as a nurse, covering the period from 2012 to 2016 and including a review of 4,000 admissions of babies.

Letby’s lawyer Mark McDonald said: “The evidence of the innocence of Lucy Letby is overwhelming,” adding: “We will cross every bridge when we get to it but if Lucy is charged I know we have a whole army of internationally renowned medical experts who will totally undermine the prosecution’s unfounded allegations.”

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Three managers at the hospital where Lucy Letby worked have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.

On Tuesday, it was confirmed that three managers at the Countess of Chester hospital had been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter in a separate investigation.

Read more from Sky News:
‘Catastrophic failure’ that led to Heathrow power outage revealed
Man charged with murder of 93-year-old woman in Cornwall

Police said the suspects, who occupied senior positions at the hospital between 2015 and 2016, have all been bailed pending further inquiries.

There is also an investigation into corporate manslaughter at the hospital, which began in October 2023.

A public inquiry has also been examining the hospital’s response to concerns raised about Letby before her arrest.

In May, it was announced the inquiry’s final report into how the former nurse was able to commit her crimes will now be published early next year.

Earlier this year, Letby’s lawyers called for the suspension of the inquiry, claiming there was “overwhelming and compelling evidence” that her convictions were unsafe.

In February, an international panel of neonatologists and paediatric specialists told reporters that poor medical care and natural causes were the reasons for the collapses and deaths.

Their evidence has been passed to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, and Letby’s legal team hopes her case will be referred back to the Court of Appeal.

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