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Ukip leader Nigel Farage claimed the party is on its way to winning the Conservative seat of Thanet South as polls showed him holding a wide margin over his opponents.

Mr Farage also accused Labour and the Conservatives of indulging in negative campaigning and insisted his party would focus "on the politics of hope and inspiration".

Father Anthony McSweeney has been convicted for sexual abuse of a boy between 1979 and 1981 at Grafton Close Children's home in Hounslow, Metropolitan Police said.

The security services may have made a "slipped up" in their handling of the Islamic State terrorist known as "Jihadi John" because they were too busy, the independent review of terror legislation said.

David Anderson QC said he was not surprised that Mohammed Emwazi, who left for Syria in 2013, was not under tighter controls despite being on MI5's radar because the UK's spies and counter-terrorism police were "very busy".

He told the BBC that "perhaps they did slip up in this case" but it was "difficult not to have sympathy" with the agencies because of the scale of the challenge they face.

"I'm afraid it's not surprising to me at all, because I do spend time with the intelligence agencies and with the police," he told Radio 4's World at One.

"They are very busy at the moment and they were very busy then."

Nine people have reportedly been found dead after an apparent shooting spree in the US state of Missouri.

The dead included the suspected gunman, according to a highway patrol officer quoted by the Houston Herald.

The body of the apparent shooter was found in a parked vehicle in south-central Shannon County.

A local sheriff said at least four of six possible crime scenes were located in the rural community of Tyrone.

Boris Johnson has accused advocacy group Cage of amounting "an apology for terror" after it suggested MI5 may be partly to blame for Mohammed Emwazi turning to violence.

"It was incredible that people could stand up and pretend that somehow it was the fault of the security forces for trying to apprehend and impede these guys and that that could somehow cause them to be radicalised," the Mayor of London said.

"I think that is beyond satire and amounts to nothing less than an apology for terror. I hope they will be rethinking their position."

Downing Street earlier said Cage's claim was "reprehensible".