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Britain on alert for deadly new knife with exploding tip that freezes victims' organs Senior police officers have been warned to look out for a new knife which can inject a ball of compressed gas into its victim that instantly freezes internal organs. The 'wasp knife', which can deliver a ball of compressed gas capable of killing its victim at the press of a button, may be heading for Britain, the Metropolitan Police fear. A needle in the tip of the blade shoots out the frozen ball of gas which instantly balloons to the size of a basketball, freezing organs....

The scourge of knife crime gripping Britain has reached new depths with six murders across the country in less than 24 hours. Four of the killings were in London in an appalling day of bloodshed. Meanwhile, another teenager is in hospital in serious condition tonight after being stabbed outside a branch of Blockbuster Video in Bolton. The outburst of violence has prompted Gordon Brown to pledge he would introduce new measures to tackle the epidemic. Describing the 'terrible stabbings' in the past week as 'shocking and tragic', the Prime Minister promised new enforcement tactics and 'tough' parenting programmes. Scotland Yard...

The Government will announce further measures to tackle knife crime on Monday following several knife-related deaths this week. Speaking in a Downing Street statement, the PM said that he had been in contact with Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair and asked to be kept up to date on investigations. Mr Brown said the stabbings are "shocking and tragic" and offered his condolences to the friends and families of those hurt. He then revealed that the Government will be publishing the first ever cross-government youth crime plan later next week. The plan will contain new enforcement measures, improvements to sentencing,...

Like a plague, murder by knife has taken London by storm. Gang members have said that killing someone is like a status symbol. It's in fashion. Taking little to no provocation this so called fashion of knife murders gives no warning.

The most common knife used in teenage stabbings is taken from the kitchen, Sir Ian Blair has said. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner unveiled some of the deadly weapons seized during a two-week blitz on knife-carrying criminals at New Scotland Yard. Sir Ian revealed that the majority of those weapons discovered on the streets of the capital were ordinary domestic knives. He said more than 4,000 operations have been undertaken by his officers using arch metal detectors and handheld scanners. As a result, more than 200 people have been arrested and almost 200 weapons have been seized. Speaking hours after this...

Police are to be issued with mobile airport-style metal detectors to help them clamp down on knife crime, it has been revealed. The move, part of a Tackling Violence Action Plan to be unveiled by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith on Monday, will also include measures designed to prevent binge drinkers moving on to commit crimes of violence. Ms Smith will announce new resources for hundreds of metal-detecting arches and search wands in local communities. It is understood that the mobile arches will be collapsible and small enough to be taken in the boot of a police car for use outside...

When U.S. authorities got their hands on terrorist Mohammed Mansour Jabarah in May 2002, he agreed to inform on some of the most influential al-Qaeda leaders. So instead of being sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or a high-security CIA detention facility, Jabarah was housed with relatively lax security at Fort Dix, N.J., where he was allowed to watch television and movies, speak to his family in Canada by telephone, go for walks and even make his own meals, all under 24-hour FBI watch. That arrangement soon proved to be a major problem for the bureau. In court papers filed in...

A nationwide campaign to educate people about the dangers of carrying knives has been unveiled at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. The weaponry museum says its NTK - No To Knives campaign aims to cut the number of knives on the streets. It has set a target of getting one million young people to make a pledge on its website not to carry knives. Youth Justice Board research shows that one in three young people will carry a knife for protection at some stage. Records from 37 police forces across the UK for the months of April, May and June...

More than 3 percent of 17 million crimes reported from 2000 through 2004 occurred at schools, colleges and universities, with knives being the most commonly used weapon, according to an FBI study released yesterday. The Crime in Schools and Colleges study, which gathered data from about a third of the nation's law enforcement agencies, showed that the most commonly used weapon in more than 558,000 campus-related crimes over the five-year span was a knife -- not counting fists and feet, which accounted for most of the incidents. Almost 11,000 incidents included a blade, while more than 3,400 included some type...

Ten years ago, a crazed gunman killed 16 students and their teacher at a school in Dublane, Scotland. The British government responded with what are regarded as some of the toughest gun restrictions in the world. According to the latest government report, gun crimes in Great Britain have almost doubled since then, to the point where even juvenile and teenage thugs have figured out guns give them a great advantage over citizens disarmed by their government, ostensibly for their own protection. This year, London police alone have shot and killed six armed teen hoodlums, including an 11-year-old during an attempted...

The headline in the Daily Mail is a grabber: "Stab-proof school uniforms go on sale to protect pupils from knife attacks "Parents are sending children to school in stab-proof uniforms to guard against knife crime, it has emerged. "They are paying a firm which makes body armour to line blazers and jumpers with a stab-resistant material called Kevlar. The precautions are aimed at protecting pupils from knife attacks as street crime spills over into schools." According to a spokesman for the manufacturer, BladeRunner "From what I can gather and from speaking to parents it's just peace of mind for them....

Should there be a minimum sentence for thugs carrying knives? Yes 2172 76% No 677 24%

25% of Businesses Surveyed Fined for Making Illegal Box Cutter Sales During DCA Sweep As part of an ongoing effort to prevent illegal box cutter sales, the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) issued violations to over a dozen businesses for selling box cutters to minors during an enforcement sweep, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Consumer Affairs Commissioner Jules Polonetsky announced today. Consumer Affairs inspectors cited 13 businesses for making illegal box cutter sales and also issued violations to stores which openly displayed these potential weapons. From February 13th to March 8th, the minors worked undercover with DCA inspectors and were...

A Problem Solvers investigation into Transportation Security Administration screening policies has Washington talking and could prompt changes in the future, according to Local 6's Mike Holfeld. The Local 6 report into the TSA's no-screening policy of its staff was presented to Rep. Ric Keller on Feb 2. The undercover report showed TSA officers bypassing screening at OIA security checkpoints. "We found this was the norm after TSA officers returned from break," Holfeld said. "In fact, a TSA spokesman confirmed it." The Local 6 video report prompted a letter from Keller to TSA administor Kip Hawley, citing what Keller deemed "serious...

Story in full A HIGH-PROFILE blitz on knife crime has failed to cut the number of people carrying lethal weapons on Scotland's streets. The Safer Scotland anti-violence campaign was launched in March. At its centre was the country's first ever national knife amnesty, which saw almost 13,000 weapons handed in over five weeks last summer. But an investigation by The Scotsman shows that the five-week amnesty made no impact on the number of people caught carrying a blade. The amnesty ran from 24 May to 30 June. In the first half of the year, 1,910 offences of carrying a knife...

A samurai sword wielding vigilante has come to the rescue of two Police officers when they were attacked by an armed gang in South Shields, England. A group of men had forced their way into a house and were ransacking the place when passing plain-clothes officers were alerted by a woman inside screaming. The criminals outnumbered them and were armed with a hammer, knives and chains and attacked the Police officers. As one of them stabbed at a Policeman with his knife, a mysterious do-gooder appeared from nowhere and attacked him with a samurai sword. One of the burglars began...

Knife amnesties have no real impact on reducing knife crime, according to a Metropolitan Police report. An eight-week Met Police amnesty over the summer showed that, after a slight dip in knife-related crime, levels were back to normal within weeks, it said.

If the American midterm elections go against President Bush, a tumultuous couple of years are in viewFOR FOUR DECADES the October Surprise has loomed large in the US electoral landscape. Every two years, in presidential and midterm congressional campaigns, as we approach the electoral witching hour of the first Tuesday in November, parties scan the horizon nervously for the unexpected event that suddenly shifts voters’ well-laid plans. The original October Surprise was one that backfired. In 1968 President Lyndon Johnson hoped a late breakthrough in the Paris peace talks would end the Vietnam War just in time to produce a...

Serious knife injuries are increasing, say trauma experts at the Royal London Hospital in a letter to this week's BMJ. Several recent deaths have fuelled the perception that forensic knife injuries have become an epidemic, resulting in a knife amnesty and government discussion of new punitive measures, write Charles Knowles and colleagues. An increase in such injuries is supported by data from regional police forces and the Home Office, with 1200 reported attacks in London last year and 30% of homicides caused by knife injury. Crimes defined as "more serious wounding or other act endangering life" almost doubled nationally from...

KNIVES are no different than guns -- they both are "tools of death," says the mother of stabbing murder victim Andrew Moffitt. Paulette Moffitt has not failed to notice that knives have been used in two major crimes making headlines this week -- the brutal attempted murder of Karen Parker who was found in Britannia Park and the slaying of Sami El-Ghazal in a parking lot. "A knife and a gun, the only difference is that the gun makes noise. They both take lives," she said, yesterday during a dedication ceremony of a plaque to honour her son. The Moffitt...

SIERRA VISTA — Certain knives tell stories. But, unfortunately, many of these stories remain mysteries. “Trapper Jon” Carpenter has a number of special knives made by World War II GIs, each with some kind of story behind its making. He once had a knife that was tailored for or by some soldier. It was different, Carpenter said. The handle was personal. On the butt of the handle, underneath Plexiglas, was the photo of a GI’s family, he said. “I wanted to know about that family and the person who carried it (the knife),” Carpenter said. Today, there is an increase...

(Windsor Locks-WTNH, Aug. 25, 2006 Updated 2:56 PM) _ State police tell News Channel 8 that this morning a passenger reported a prohibited item on an inbound U.S. Airways flight from Philadelphia to Bradley International Airport. The crew was alerted to the item just as it was scheduled to land; the plane landed safely around 9:00 a.m. on Friday. There were 50 passengers and five crew members onboard. All remained onboard for about 20 minutes as officials searched the airplane. A utility knife was found on one of the seats of the plane. Transportation Safety Administration and state police are...

The Herring family is all too familiar with the ruthless, unimaginably violent actions of a girl gang that has taken to terrorizing Dorchester in recent months. In March, 8-year-old Daryus Herring - that’s right, a little 8-year old boy - was surrounded and stomped by the girls that call themselves the Crown Path gang. The attack left the child unconscious with four broken ribs. Days later, the same girls tried to beat up the boy’s big sister - 13-year-old Shaquice Herring - after she asked them, “Which one of you jumped my brother?” The wannabe girl gangsters responded by throwing...

Actions by Advocates The North American Muzzleloading Hunting Association has filed a civil rights complaint alleging discrimination against the fish and game departments of fifteen states that do not permit the use of "sight correcting magnification" (riflescopes) during their special muzzleloader hunting seasons. According to the complaint, big game hunters in the United States are becoming older as a group. With that maturation, NAMHA holds, there is a natural deterioration of vision. Due to that accepted fact, it should be only reasonable that older hunters be provided the equipment to see more clearly. In fifteen jurisdictions across the United States,...

One of the region's top cops has called for a ban on pointed blades so that they cannot be used as lethal weapons. The Chief Constable of Northumbria police Mike Craik said he would like to see implements like kitchen knives only being sold with rounded ends to make them safer. He explained: "You rarely get victims who are sliced to death . . . they are usually stabbed. "So, the problem is pointed knives. If you ask chefs how many times they need to use pointed knives they'll tell you they don't need them at all." Mr Craik spoke...

One in four shops is caught selling knives to children under 16 By David Derbyshire, Consumer Affairs Editor (Filed: 21/06/2006) More than a quarter of shops that stock knives are illegally selling them to children under 16, according to a survey by trading standards officials. Despite concerns about rising knife violence, a significant number of shopkeepers are failing to check the ages of teenage customers or are wilfully turning a blind eye. Richard Beckett, 14, shows knives bought by teenage volunteers However, there was some evidence that the recent spate of stabbings and the Home Office amnesty may finally be...

Knife amnesty nets 17,700 weapons Over 17,700 weapons were handed in during the first week of the national knives amnesty, the Home Office said. Machetes, meat cleavers and axes as well as knives were among the haul of 17,715 surrendered to the 43 police forces across England and Wales. Home office minister Vernon Coaker said the results were "encouraging". The five-week amnesty, running until 30 June, allows people to surrender knives at police stations without fear of punishment. Mr Coaker urged those who had not yet handed in their weapons to do so. "The initial figures for the first week...

In 1997, Great Britain outlawed private ownership of handguns, and by 2003, gun crimes had doubled and violent crime had increased markedly. Those numbers continue to rise. Now knife crimes are increasing in Britain. For the most recent one-year period for which government records are available, 29 percent of homicides -- twice the rate of the United States -- were committed with "sharp instruments": knives, switchblades, etc. London had 12,589 knife-related crimes, most involving teenage boys. Knives are becoming the weapon of choice for young people, criminologists say, because they're easier to get and "less illegal" than guns. It's not...

Fridays were the most scary. 'Twenty kids would wait for me at the school gates and beat me up. Once they put me on the floor and stamped on my head. It started when I was 12.' A group of Somali boys were sitting outside a cafe on Stratford Road in Birmingham talking about their experience of school. Modqtar, now 17, was beaten up twice a day and picked on for having poor English. The perpetrators were often Asian gangs. Five years after his family fled Somalia, the teenager was petrified about travelling around his adopted homeland. 'I have to...

It is the first national knife amnesty for more than a decade A five-week amnesty aimed at tackling knife crime across Britain - the first of its kind in a decade - has begun. Until 30 June people can hand in knives at police stations in England, Scotland and Wales without fear of penalty. But police have warned that once the amnesty is over, tough action will be taken on those found armed with knives. However, some families of victims of knife crime have questioned the effectiveness of an amnesty, calling instead for tougher sentencing. The initiative - which is...

<p>An arsenal of exotic weapons - including a sniper rifle, a spear and a set of 8-inch metal claws - were seized from a 23-year-old Jersey City man after his worried father called cops. When South District cops responded to the Greenville home yesterday morning, they found the sniper rifle - with a powerful scope and a laser sight - as well as three Glock handguns and more than 1,200 rounds of ammunition, reports said. Among the bullets were illegal "hollow-point" rounds, police said. In addition to the spear and metal claws, cops found a number of savage-looking knives, including one that had blades coming out of each end of its carved wooden handle. The owner of the weapons lived with his father, his brother and two younger brothers, police said.</p>

THESE horrifying knives have been taken off the streets of Coventry in the last 10 days. They are examples of the kinds of blades police and the Evening Telegraph are trying to banish from the city during the One Knife One Life campaign. The campaign, which was launched in the city last week, aims to teach youngsters - and particularly teenage boys - the dangers of knives. Police say young people carry knives to make themselves feel more secure, or because they know other people do. They say they don't think about the potentially devastating consequences carrying a knife can...

A MEXICAN couple were recovering separately after a marital spat got out of control and saw them firing guns, throwing knives and hurling homemade bombs, Mexican daily Milenio said yesterday. In scenes taken straight out of hit romantic comedy Mr and Mrs. Smith starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Juan Espinosa and Irma Contreras fought until their house blew up in a homemade gasoline bomb explosion, the paper said. Police called to the home in the indigenous Mayan Indian town of Oxkutzcab in the southeastern state of Yucatan arrested Mr Espinosa. Ms Contreras was taken to hospital with third-degree burns....

They have the heft of an ax, a blade nearly as long as a sword, and the intimidation power to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Cheap and easily bought, machetes in America have commonly been reserved for underbrush and sugar-cane cutting. But now, in a spreading trend that so far has drawn little national attention, criminals are using machetes as weapons, striking fear in cities and towns across the country. Witness these recent incidents: In the heartland Indiana city of Evansville in February, a robber pulled a machete on a convenience-store cashier, who put...

DETROIT -- A Detroit judge said Wayne State University police should not have arrested a student for carrying a knife. The knives are part of his Sikh religious beliefs. Sukhpreet Singh Garcha was arrested in August for carrying a 10-inch knife, known as a kirpan, on his hip. Police said the knife violated the city's weapons laws. Carrying a kirpan at all times is a basic tenet of Sikhism, an Indian-based faith with an estimated 25 million followers worldwide. The judge ruled last month that the knife ordinance is intended to apply to people carrying a weapon for some unlawful...

Sikhs in B.C. are cheering the Supreme Court of Canada's decision that upholds the right of Sikh children to wear a ceremonial dagger to school. The case involved a Montreal student who wasn't allowed to wear his kirpan to school. Schools in B.C. have long permitted orthodox Sikh students to wear the ceremonial dagger. In its 8-0 judgment, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a total ban infringed on Gurbaj Singh's guarantees of religious freedom under the Charter of Rights.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Multiculturalism and religious freedom trumped safety concerns in a Canadian Supreme Court decision on Thursday that will allow orthodox Sikh students to carry traditional daggers to school. In its decision, the court noted that Sikh orthodoxy requires the wearing of the daggers, known as kirpans, even though they are banned from airplanes and some courtrooms. "Religious tolerance is a very important value of Canadian society," Justice Louise Charron wrote in reasons for the decision after a court case that involved 12-year-old Gurbaj Singh Multani, who was prevented from carrying his kirpan at a Montreal school. "If some...

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Sikh students can carry ceremonial daggers to class and that doing so does not pose an undue danger to others in the schools. The top court overturned Thursday morning a Quebec Court of Appeals ruling that had barred the kirpan from schools in the province. The Quebec court had said a limit on religious freedom was reasonable, given the safety concerns from carrying the daggers to school. "Religious tolerance is a very important value of Canadian society," the top court judges wrote in their decision. "A total prohibition against wearing a kirpan...

NATIONWIDE knife amnesty to end the carnage on our streets was launched yesterday. The five-week initiative, running throughout the UK, is aimed at repeating the success of Operation Blade, which took thousands of weapons off the streets of Strathclyde in 1993. Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson yesterday vowed it would be just one of many measures to battle knife crime in Scotland. Victims of the scourge have included policeman Lewis Fulton, knifed through the heart in Glasgow in 1994 as he tried to arrest a teenage schizophrenic. Knives are becoming an increasing menace in the hands of young girls, too. Kirsty...

2/6/2006 Jennifer_Otto@link.freedom.com A poker game took an unusual turn last week when one Navarre man turned a steak knife on another. Jace Moore, 22, confronted Dustin Danner, 23, about money he was owed from a recent poker match. When Danner did not pay up, the situation got ugly. Moore grabbed a steak knife and attempted to stab Danner in the chest. When his attempts failed, Moore took the knife below the belt. He proceeded to stab Danner four times in the buttocks. Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office deputies received the call on Feb. 1 and immediately dispatched to the scene....

What's new about knife crime? This campaign to raise awareness is a ludicrous waste of time I was perambulating across Camberwell Green - one of the five most dangerous spots in Britain and the most dangerous in London - when a policeman approached me. There was something atrocious about how fresh and clean he looked, as if he'd sold his unborn siblings to the devil. "How do you feel about knife crime?" he asked. "None of it was me," I hazarded. "No, no, madam, this is an awareness-building campaign. Does knife crime worry you?" "Not as much as gun crime,"...

WASHINGTON - Airline passengers will be allowed to carry small scissors and tools onto planes, reversing a rule that led to confiscation of many thousands of sharp objects at airports since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, a Homeland Security Department official said Wednesday. Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley on Friday will announce changes to the list of items prohibited in carry-on luggage and to the airport screening process, according to the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the plan has yet to be announced. With federal air marshals on planes, bulletproof cockpit doors, armed pilots and...

PLANTATION, Fla. - Jane Scarola's veterinarian thought the X-ray was a joke. He's seen strange items get into the stomachs of dogs before, things like kebab skewers and small utensils. But a 13-inch serrated knife that somehow was swallowed by a 6-month-old puppy? That was a new one. "I was just flabbergasted," the vet, Jon-Paul Carew of Imperial Point Animal Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Elsie, a Saint Bernard puppy, apparently had the blade between her esophagus and stomach for about four days before it was removed earlier this week in a 2-hour operation. The puppy...

As some of you know, The group of friends here at Free Republic known as the Hobbit Hole thread, have been contributing to a small project to buy pocketknives and other needed tools for our deployed soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It started out as care and comfort packages, and grew into pocketknives because we learned that while sweets and snacks were good, there were very practical tools, such as a good pocket knife, that our troops didn’t have unless they purchased them themselves. Handy items that would actually help them do their job. Since we started we have...

Consider the following domestic scene and see if you can spot what might be wrong with it: Husband: “I think I’ll add a little more oregano to the sauce.” Wife: “No, I think it has enough already.” Husband: “DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!” [while stabbing wife to death] Did you catch how wrong that was? There was a knife in that kitchen. That is pretty much the conclusion of a British physicians’ group regarding “knife crime” in Britain, as reported by the BBC last week.

The A&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing. A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings. They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon. The research is published in the British Medical Journal. The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all. They consulted 10 top chefs...

But Brits also have bare fists, and there is the rub. Technology may provide a solution. Perhaps in 50 years Brits will be required to have their hands surgically altered so a man can neither beat nor strangle somebody to death. If they go far enough, fast enough, people throughout Britain will be allowed to have NO self-control whatsoever. It will be a sort of padded asylum where everybody runs around trying to bash one another’s heads in- forever foiled by the bumper car bumpers surgically connected to their hip bones, and by the jelly molded/injected over every sharp and/or...

It's time to ban long kitchen knives because they serve no good purpose except as weapons, write doctors in the British Medical Journal. The doctors, as part of their research into ways to reduce violence, say they consulted with leading chefs who said long knives were not needed for cooking.

A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings. They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon. The research is published in the British Medical Journal. The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.