News

Sky has signed a deal with the owner of the O2 network with a view to providing a mobile phone service to complement its TV and broadband packages.

The wholesale partnership with Spanish firm Telefónica means the firm will be able to provide voice and data services to all customers from 2016.

It comes after Telefónica agreed to sell its O2 network to Hutchison Whampoa, which operates Three Mobile in the UK, making it the biggest mobile operator in the country.

Teenager Will Cornick, who murdered Leeds teacher Ann Maguire, has lost a challenge to his 20-year minimum term at the Court of Appeal in London.

Cornick, who was 15 when he carried out the killing, was jailed for life at Leeds Crown Court in November, The judge told him he must serve a minimum of at least 20 years before he is eligible to seek parole and warned: "It's quite possible that day may never come".

Today, a panel of three judges at the Court of Appeal in London, headed by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, rejected Cornick's appeal against the minimum term, saying that on the "disturbing" facts of the case, the sentencing judge came to "entirely the right decision".

Cornick, now 16, stabbed 61-year-old Mrs Maguire seven times from behind as she taught a Spanish class at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds in April last year.

ITV and BBC have written to Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party to explain why they will not be included in TV debates ahead of the General Election.

In the letter, the broadcasters said it would be unfair to include one party from Northern Ireland but no others.

They added that the alternative of including all five major parties in the country - DUP, Sinn Fein, the Ulster Unionist Party, the SDLP and the Alliance Party - would be "disproportionate" and "not in the wider interests of viewers throughout the UK".

At present, the broadcasters have proposals in place to involve party leaders from seven parties: Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Ukip, Green Party, SNP and Plaid Cymru.

The letter noted: "Including all the major Northern Ireland parties in the network programmes would mean having 12 participants - and 97% of viewers in the rest of the UK would not be able to vote for at least five of those twelve parties."

Both the BBC and UTV plan dedicated debates in Northern Ireland involving all the larger Northern Ireland parties.

The number of police officers in England and Wales is at its lowest since September 2001, according to figures released by the Home Office.

As of September 2014, there were 127,075 officers across the 43 forces - down 1,295 or 1.0% on the previous year.

The figures showed police officer numbers have fallen for each of the last five years, but had seen a smaller fall in each of the last three successive years.

Meanwhile the number of police staff also fell to 63,678 in 2014, a fall of 1,023 or 1.6% compared to a year earlier.

And the number of PCSOs fell by 785 or 5.8% to 12,768 in comparison to 2013, the figures showed.