The wife of a Tory councillor has pleaded guilty to publishing written material to stir up racial hatred following the Southport stabbings
Childminder Lucy Connolly, appearing via videolink from HMP Peterborough, admitted making the post about asylum seekers at Northampton Crown Court after she was previously arrested and re-arrested in the first half of August.
She published a post on her X account, which she later deleted, which read: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f*****g hotels full of the bastards for all I care… If that makes me racist, so be it.”
Connolly wrote the post on the day of the knife attack in Southport, Merseyside, when a group of children attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance class were attacked.
False information claiming the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker spread online and led to riots across the UK.
Three young girls were killed in the attack on 29 July, while eight other children and two adults were injured.
Image: Rioting broke out in Southport (pictured) then across the UK after the fatal stabbing of three girls. Pic: PA
Connolly, from Northampton, later apologised for acting on “false and malicious” information and appeared to have subsequently deleted her X account.
She is the wife of Conservative West Northamptonshire councillor Raymond Connolly.
Speaking outside the court, he said he was “relieved” it was over as it had been “traumatic” for his wife and three children.
Mr Connolly said she was “an upset housewife” and “just a middle aged mother” who got dragged into the situation by misinformation spreading online.
“The stuff I hear is not really Lucy, she’s probably the opposite of what she’s having to admit to but she knows she’s overstepped the mark and there’s consequences for it,” he said.
“Hopefully she’ll be able to learn from this and move on with her life.”
Mr Connolly added that their son had died so when his wife sees any child get harmed “she will kick off”.
And he said she feels the “Tory tag” is unfair but “she will cope with whatever they throw at her, she’s got strong resilience, she’ll come back a bigger person”.
Their son, Harry, died aged 19 months in 2012 from dehydration after a series of basic errors by NHS medics, an inquest found.
His parents took the toddler to hospital with severe diarrhoea and vomiting, where he was wrongly diagnosed with a stomach upset and sent home before they returned two days later and medical staff turned them away.
Then a GP failed to diagnose the real problem and Mr Connolly woke up at 4am to Harry not breathing.
Image: Elsie Dot Stancombe, Alice Dasilva Aguiar and Bebe King were killed in the attack. Pic: Merseyside Police
People accused of violence or inciting violence during the riots have been fast tracked through the justice system.
In Manchester, the sentencing of a 12-year-old, who cannot be named due to his age, twice involved in the violence was adjourned because his mother has gone on holiday to Ibiza.
District Judge Joanne Hirst told Manchester Magistrates’ Court she was “frankly astonished” that the boy’s mother had decided to fly abroad for a five-day sunshine break, with her son due in court having admitted two counts of violent disorder.
The mother has been issued with a parental summons to appear before the court when the judge passes sentence on 11 September.
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The boy, who was accompanied by his uncle, earlier admitted being part of a mob that attacked a bus outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Manchester on 31 July.
Days later he was part of a group filmed kicking the windows of a vape shop and throwing a missile at a police van.
Former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf has attacked Sir Keir Starmer for his “dog whistle” stance on immigration after the prime minister said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers”.
In a piece penned by Mr Yousaf for LBC, the former leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) repeated claims the prime minister’s recent remarks on immigration were a “modern echo” of Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 Rivers Of Blood speech.
The prime minister stirred controversy earlier this week when he argued Britain “risked becoming an island of strangers” if immigration levels were not cut.
In the LBC piece published on Saturday, Mr Yousaf said: “Powell’s 1968 speech warned of immigration as an existential threat to ‘our blood and our culture’, stoking racial panic that led directly to decades of hostile migration policies.
“Starmer’s invocation of ‘strangers’ is a modern echo – a dog-whistle to voters who blame migrants for every social ill, from stretched public services to the cost-of-living crisis.
“It betrays a failure to understand, or deliberately mask the fact that Britain’s prosperity depends on migration, on openness not building walls.”
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Sir Keir made the comments at a news conference in which measures were announced to curb net migration, including banning care homes from recruiting overseas, new English language requirements for visa holders and stricter rules on gaining British citizenship.
The package is aimed at reducing the number of people coming to the UK by up to 100,000 per year, though the government has not officially set a target.
The government is under pressure to tackle legal migration, as well as illegal immigration, amid Reform UK’s surge in the polls.
Mr Yousaf concluded his article saying the UK was “on the brink of possibly handing the keys of No 10 to Nigel Farage”.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has held discussions with Everstake, one of the largest non-custodial staking providers globally, to explore clearer regulatory definitions around staking in blockchain networks.
The meeting, which also involved the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, comes at a time when over $193 billion in digital assets are staked across major proof-of-stake (PoS) networks.
However, despite the massive scale of participation, staking remains in a legal gray zone in the US as regulators wrestle with its classification under existing securities law.
The previous SEC administration also took enforcement actions against major players such as Kraken, Coinbase, and Consensys due to their staking services. The agency, under pro-crypto President Donald Trump, has recently dismissed these enforcement actions.
During the meeting, Everstake told the SEC that non-custodial staking should not be classified as a securities transaction. The company said that users maintain full control over their digital assets throughout the staking process and do not transfer ownership to a third party.
They argued that this makes staking a technical function, not an investment product.
“Our main assertion is that staking is not a financial instrument or security transaction, but rather a technical process, a base-layer protocol mechanism—akin to an oracle in a database—that maintains the integrity and functionality of decentralized networks,” Everstake founder Sergii Vasylchuk told Cointelegraph.
Everstake team meeting with the SEC. Source: Everstake
In a letter submitted to the SEC’s Crypto Task Force on April 8, 2025, Everstake asked the agency to extend regulatory clarity to non-custodial staking and custodial and liquid staking models.
In the letter, which came in respond to Commissioner Hester Peirce’s call for input on regulatory treatment of blockchain services, Everstake argued that non-custodial staking should not be considered a securities offering.
It claimed that non-custodial staking, where users retain control of their tokens, does not involve the pooling of assets or the expectation of profits from managerial efforts.
In its model, Everstake said users delegate only validation rights while maintaining ownership of their digital assets. The staking rewards are algorithmically distributed by the blockchain network itself, and the firm merely provides technical infrastructure.
The letter also details why non-custodial staking fails each prong of the Howey test. Users do not make an investment of money in a common enterprise, do not expect profits from Everstake’s efforts, and are not dependent on the company’s management for financial returns.
Instead, any rewards come from network-level incentives and fluctuate with the market value of the underlying asset.
Everstake proposes specific criteria that should exempt non-custodial staking from securities classification. These include user asset control, absence of pooled funds, permissionless unstaking, and the provision of purely technical services.
It likens non-custodial staking to proof-of-work mining, which the SEC has previously ruled out as a securities transaction.
Margaret Rosenfeld, Everstake’s chief legal officer, also told Cointelegraph that “with non-custodial staking, there’s no handover of assets, no investment contract, and no third-party risk.” She added:
“Treating it as a securities offering undermines the decentralized model and risks chilling innovation in the blockchain sector.”
Nevertheless, the SEC has so far withheld a definitive stance. Rosenfeld said that the agency did not make any “specific commitments” on staking guidance. However, it continues to listen to industry stakeholders.
“The Task Force is actively engaging with a range of stakeholders—including those involved with non-custodial staking, ETFs, and broader blockchain infrastructure—to gather input.”
In an April 30 letter to the SEC, nearly 30 crypto advocate groups led by the lobby group the Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) asked the agency for clear regulatory guidance on crypto staking and staking services.
A man from Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, has been arrested in connection with an FBI-led investigation into a global cryptocurrency fraud operation that allegedly stole $450 million New Zealand dollars ($265 million).
According to New Zealand Police, the man is one of 13 individuals charged after authorities executed search warrants across Auckland, Wellington, and California over the past three days.
The charges stem from allegations that members of an organized criminal group manipulated seven victims to obtain large amounts of cryptocurrency, which was then laundered through multiple platforms between March and August 2024.
The US Department of Justice has indicted the man under federal law, including charges of racketeering, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, per the announcement.
Scammer used stolen funds to purchase luxury vehicles
Prosecutors allege the stolen funds were used to purchase $9 million worth of luxury vehicles and spent lavishly on high-end goods, including designer handbags, watches, and clothing, as well as services such as nightclub access, private security, and rentals in Los Angeles, Miami, and the Hamptons.
The accused appeared in Auckland District Court and was granted bail with interim name suppression. He is scheduled to reappear on July 3.
“We have worked closely with our law enforcement colleagues in the United States in support of their investigation,” the police stated. They added:
“Today’s search warrant and arrest reflects the importance of international partnerships where criminals are operating across borders.”
Digital asset thefts skyrocketed in April 2025, with nearly $360 million stolen across 18 separate hacking incidents, according to data from blockchain security firm PeckShield.
The figure marks a staggering 990% jump from March when reported losses stood at just $33 million. The sharp rise was largely attributed to a single unauthorized Bitcoin transfer that accounted for the bulk of the month’s losses.
On April 28, blockchain analyst ZachXBT identified a suspicious $330 million BTC transaction. The incident was later confirmed as a social engineering attack that targeted an elderly US resident, resulting in one of the largest individual crypto thefts to date.