News

Emergency service workers were using hovercrafts and motorboats to inspect the scene of the bridge collapse in Washington as the sun came up today.

Scuba-divers and a helicopter were also taking part in the operation.

Three people were removed from the water with injuries following the incident but no-one was killed, according to the Seattle Times.

• World
• USA
• Seattle

Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, told Daybreak there is "always a risk that extremists will do stupid and unpleasant things".

• UK
• London
• Woolwich

A four-lane bridge in the US state of Washington collapsed because a truck with an "oversized load" hit a steel beam above the lane, the Washington Times reports citing a police sergeant.

The newspaper reports that the bridge was classified as being “fracture critical” by the National Bridge Inventory, meaning that it was vulnerable to collapse if any part of the structure was damaged.

See pictures of the collapsed bridge here.

• World
• USA
• Seattle

Sue Berelowitz, Deputy Children's Commissioner told ITV's Daybreak that is it clear there is a "correlation" between children who witness violent images and children who carry out violent acts.

But she said it is not clear "which is the chicken and which is the egg".

She said: "Clearly children are influenced by what they see, so the evidence from this report is that when children view extreme and violent images, it is affecting their thresholds around risky behaviours."

• UK
• children

The former head of counter-terrorism at MI6 has said he believes it would have been "incredibly hard" to prevent the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

Both Woolwich suspects were known to security services, government sources confirmed yesterday to ITV News UK Editor Lucy Manning.

Richard Barrett told BBC Two's Newsnight programme that two suspects "probably didn't have any intention to commit a crime like this until relatively recently".

I assume that these people are probably coming out of a small group without, necessarily, any overseas connections or any other broader connections in the United Kingdom which could come to the attention of the security services more than they did.

When does a person who expresses radical views, who joins a radical group, flip over to over to be a violent extremist?

To find the signals, the red flags as it were, I think is enormously hard.

• UK
• MI6
• London

Russia's top online social network, VKontakte, has been put on a 'black list' that bans it from distributing content in the country, according to a posting on the communications regulator's web site.

VKontakte has 210 million registered users, of whom 47 million log on daily dwarfing Russian Facebook users.

Pavel Durov the social media sites founder fled Russia last month after being implicated in a bizarre traffic incident that preceded the sale of a large stake in the business.

VKontakte spokesman Georgy Lobushkin told Reuters he did not have any information regarding the decision by regulator Roskomnazdzor. VKontakte's web site (www.vk.com) was still working. Roskomnadzor had no immediate comment.

• World
• Russia

A former British Army captain and ex-chairman of the Armed Forces Muslim Association has said he agrees with the Prime Minister that the murder of a soldier was in no way representative of Islam.

Afzal Amin said: "There are three million Muslims in Britain...a fully integrated body of people so there's no way this attack is representative of what it means to be British and Muslim".

Mr Amin, a prospective Conservative candidate at the next election, also told Daybreak that the Armed Forces were at the "heart" of what it means to be British and that serving men and women should be able to wear their uniforms in public.

• UK
• Woolwich Attack
• Lee Rigby

Mike Dixon from Citizens Advice said the charity is concerned that council tax benefit cuts could see a rise in the number of bailiffs cashing in on people who are struggling.

He said: "[We have] a bailiff market that is frankly just out of control, so we've got rogue bailiffs threatening people bullying people's children, taking things they're not allowed to, we've got a real problem here that in the next few months is just going to crystallise."

• UK