Tag Archives: London

Exclusive: After Grenfell fire, same builders rehired to replace dangerous cladding, Reuters finds

Exclusive: After Grenfell fire, same builders rehired to replace dangerous cladding, Reuters finds

By Tom Bergin

LONDON (Reuters) – Some building companies that installed dangerous cladding on social housing blocks across Britain are now winning new contracts following the Grenfell Tower blaze to remove their original work and install panels that can pass safety tests, a Reuters review shows.

The safety of high-rise buildings has come under scrutiny since the Grenfell disaster in June which killed 71 people. The British government, which ordered a series of tests to establish which types of cladding panels met fire safety rules, said those on the London tower block did not comply.

A Reuters review identified 65 other towers with cladding of a type that was approved by local building inspectors, but which government tests found did not comply with the statutory regulations. The towers were clad by major builders including French groups Engie <ENGIE.PA> and Bouygues <BOUY.PA>, and Britain’s Galliford Try <GFRD.L>, Forrest, Wates Group, Rydon Group and Willmott Dixon.

The Reuters review was based on publicly available building planning permission documents, which detail the work carried out and the materials used, as well as visits to the towers and statements from housing providers and builders.

For 29 of the buildings, the same builders that installed the cladding have won new contracts to remove or replace the panels, according to the owners of the buildings, who said they were paying millions of pounds for the work. The rehired companies are Willmott Dixon, Wates and Engie.

Willmott Dixon and Rydon said their cladding work complied with safety regulations, but did not say how. Wates, Bouygues, Galliford Try and Engie declined to answer questions on whether their work complied with regulations.

“Following the Grenfell tragedy, we have been supporting the relevant councils, and removed the cladding where requested. Our primary concern is to ensure all residents in these buildings are secure and safe,” said an Engie spokesman.

In the wake of Grenfell, the government ordered an independent review into building regulations and fire safety, and the way the rules are complied with and enforced. The review is due to report its findings early next year.

The 65 towers in question are owned by local governments – known as councils – or housing associations, which are publicly funded, non-profit bodies that provide housing intended for low-income people.

At the time all the panels were installed, building inspectors – usually council workers but sometimes staff of inspection firms licensed by councils – signed off the work as being compliant with safety regulations, according to the owners of the blocks and the building firms involved.

Chris Blythe, CEO of trade body the Chartered Institute of Building, said builders hired to carry out high-rise cladding projects used many subcontractors and advisers, and that this could lead to misunderstandings, with one party thinking another had ensured work was compliant.

“The business model we have is almost geared up for potential failure,” said Blythe, adding that if fewer parties were involved, there would be less room for confusion over responsibilities.

For all 65 blocks identified by Reuters, the councils or council-licensed firms whose inspectors approved the work as compliant either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to comment while the independent review was ongoing.

The government has already acknowledged problems with the inspection process, with Fire Service Minister Nick Hurd saying in July there was a “system failure, built up over many years” in the area of regulation enforcement.

However a spokeswoman for the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), which ordered the cladding tests and regulations review, said sign-off by inspectors did not absolve contractors of responsibility to meet safety standards.

FIRE TESTS

Cladding systems are panels put up on the outside of buildings to improve their aesthetics and energy efficiency.

Since 2006, building regulations have required materials used in cladding on high-rise buildings to be able to pass the “BS 8414 test” which measures combustibility.

After Grenfell, the DCLG ordered a series BS 8414 tests to establish which types of cladding met fire safety rules. It said that, of around 600 social housing towers in England that had cladding, 161 had systems of a type that failed the tests. But it did not name the towers.

Reuters identified 60 blocks which, since 2006, had been cladded with aluminum panels with polyethylene cores – a form of cladding that failed the DCLG’s test, and which the prime minister and three other ministers have said breaches safety regulations when used in tall buildings. Five other blocks, also cladded since 2006, had combinations of panel and insulation board that failed the test.

The three companies that were rehired to replace the cladding on 29 of the towers had all originally fitted aluminum panels with polyethylene cores.

Wates secured contracts with Westminster council in central London and One Manchester housing association to reclad 14 towers it covered in 2007 and 2010.

Willmott Dixon has received contracts from Oxford council and west London’s Octavia housing association to replace panels it installed on three blocks early this year and in 2013.

Engie has been hired by Barnet Homes in north London to replace cladding on three blocks it clad in 2012. It also has a contract to remove cladding from nine blocks in Salford, north England, owned by the local council that it clad around 2016.

Engie has been hired to remove panels from 12 blocks it clad in 2012 and 2016, and install new cladding on three of them. The contracts are with housing associations Barnet Homes in north London, and Pendleton Together in Salford, north England.

The three building companies declined to comment on how much the contracts were worth.

However five of the six owners of the buildings told Reuters how much money they were paying for the work.

Oxford council said about 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) for its two blocks; Octavia said about 2 million pounds for one block, Westminster council said about 6 million pounds for six blocks; and Barnet Homes said 8.2 million pounds for three blocks.

Salford council said it expects to spend up to 25 million pounds in total for the removal and recladding work on nine blocks. Engie has been hired to remove its original panels, but the recladding contractor has not yet been named.

One Manchester declined to comment on how much its recladding work would cost.

The building companies declined to comment on the figures.

LEGAL ACTION

Jonathan Raynes a partner with law firm Steptoe & Johnson said councils or housing associations who paid contractors for cladding that turned out to be non-compliant could sue the contractor for the cost of replacing the cladding.

“The contract will almost certainly have a provision that says the contractor must build in accordance with statutory requirements,” he said, adding that if the contract didn’t say this, a requirement to act legally could be deemed implicit.

Raynes and Adam Creasey, a solicitor with Lewis Nedas, said the fact building inspectors signed off on work did not remove the builder’s responsibility to adhere to building regulations. Creasey added a builder could conceivably try and reclaim any money awarded against it from the body which provided the inspection sign-off.

Reuters contacted the owners of all 65 blocks with cladding of a type that failed the government tests – seven local councils and 10 housing associations – and asked if they were considering legal action against contractors to recover the money spent on cladding, or to cover the cost of replacement.

Only Camden council in north London said it was considering legal action. It declined to elaborate on its plans.

Barnet said it was not seeking any money from its contractor, Engie, over the original cladding but declined to say why. Westminster council said it was not seeking any money from its contractor, Wates, because it believed the original work was compliant with the rules in place at the time.

Oxford council said it had not sought money from Willmott Dixon over the original cladding and would only consider taking legal advice after the independent review was completed.

One Manchester said it would not talk about seeking recompense while the review was on-going.

(Reporting by Tom Bergin; Editing by Pravin Char)

Briton accused of terrorism offences posted picture of Prince George: court

LONDON (Reuters) – A British man posted a picture of Prince George, 4, and the address of his London school as part of a series of possible targets for Islamist militants, a court heard on Wednesday.

Husnain Rashid, 31, is accused of posting information on the Telegram messaging service to encourage jihadis to carry out attacks along with information to help them with possible targets such as stadia.

Prosecutor Rebecca Mundy told London’s Westminster Magistrates Court that this included posting a picture of Prince George, son of Queen Elizabeth’s grandson Prince William and Kate and destined to be the future king, next to a silhouette of a jihadi fighter.

The post included the address of his school in southwest London which he started attending in September and was accompanied with the caption “even the royal family will not be left alone”, the court heard.

Rashid, from Nelson in Lancashire, northern England, is charged with preparing terrorism acts, which involved plans to travel to Syria to engage in fighting, and preparing to assist others to commit terrorist acts.

He did not apply for bail and indicated he would plead not guilty to the charges. He was remanded in custody until Dec. 20 when he will appear at London’s Old Bailey central criminal court.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison)

Panic on London’s Oxford Street after reports of shooting

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) – Panic erupted among Christmas shopping crowds on London’s Oxford Street on Friday evening as armed officers raced to respond to reports of shots being fired in the area but police said later they had found no evidence of gunfire or casualties.

Oxford Street, with its festive window displays and hundreds of overhead lights, was crammed with shoppers taking advantage of the Black Friday sales when the incident happened shortly after dusk.

London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement they had found no evidence of gunfire, casualties or any suspects and that the incident, which lasted for just over an hour, had been stood down.

“Given the nature of the information received, the Met responded in line with our existing operation as if the incident was terrorism, including the deployment of armed officers,” they said in a statement.

A Reuters witness said panicked shoppers had fled Oxford Street and Oxford Circus underground station.

The witness saw an elderly lady and a man carrying his child knocked over in the rush. “There were people running in all directions. I didn’t know which way to run,” the witness said.

Britain’s transport police said they had received a report of one woman suffering a minor injury in the panic.

The capital’s transport operator, Transport for London, said Oxford Circus and Bond Street stations, which had been briefly shut due to the incident, had later reopened.

(Additional reporting by David Milliken, William Schomberg and James Davey; Writing by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison)

Rookies and robots brace for first UK rate rise since 2007

Office lights are on at dusk in the Canary Wharf financial district, London, Britain,

By Fanny Potkin and Polina Ivanova

LONDON (Reuters) – Financial markets braced this week for what could be the Bank of England’s first rate rise in a decade – a step into the unknown for a generation of young traders who started work after 2007 but also for the state-of-the-art technology they use.

After a decade that included a global financial crash, numerous investigations into market collusion and relentless automation, trading floors at banks in London have been transformed in ways not obvious at first glance.

The newest kid on the block is not necessarily the rookie trader with a PhD in physics but the latest computer model or algorithm. How these models will perform under the almost novel circumstances of tightening monetary policy is as much a question as how the human neophytes will react.

Using past market data, assessments of demand, valuation models and even measures of how upbeat news headlines are, computers crunch the numbers, game the scenarios and buy or sell in the blink of an eye.

But shocks such as Brexit have shown that computer-driven trading can end in stampedes, or so-called flash crashes.

“You’ve got to weigh up the strength of the traders and the strength of the algorithms that have been developed and whether they can manage this kind of a process when the rate hike does come in,” said Benjamin Quinlan, CEO of financial services strategy consultancy Quinlan & Associates.

At Citibank’s expansive trading floor in London, the dealing room doesn’t look much different from a decade ago with traders hunched in front of banks of screens, the odd national flag perched on top, and television screens on mute.

But beneath the outward appearance, foreign exchange trading has undergone a seismic shift: more than 90 percent of cash transactions and a growing proportion of derivatives trades in the global $5 trillion a day FX market are done electronically.

So-called smart algos, or fully automated algorithmic trading programs that react to market movements with no human involvement, were virtually non-existent in 2007. Now, almost a third of foreign exchange trades are driven solely by algorithms, according to research firm Aite Group.

“Most of these algorithms haven’t really been tested in a rising interest rate scenario so the next few months will be crucial,” said a portfolio manager at a hedge fund in London.

To be sure, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s first rate rise in a decade in 2015 provided a dry run for this week’s UK decision – but the two economies are in very different positions and the knock-on effects on the wider financial markets of a Bank of England move are hard to predict.

 

ROOKIES AND ROBOTS

Much has changed since the Bank of England raised rates by 0.25 percent on July 5, 2007 to 5.75 percent. The first iPhone had yet to reach British shores, the country’s TVs ran on analogue signals and Northern Rock bank was alive and well.

Where once lightning decision-making and a calm head in a crisis were at a premium, the bulk of trading today is done by machines and the job of a foreign exchange sales trader is often little more than minding software and fielding client queries.

Itay Tuchman, head of global FX trading at Citi and a 20-year market veteran, said while the bank employs roughly the same number of people in currency trading as over the last few years, fewer are dedicated to business over the phone.

“We have an extensive electronic trading business, powered by our algorithmic market making platform, which is staffed by many people that have maths and science PhDs from various backgrounds,” said Tuchman, who heads trading for Citi’s global developed and emerging currency businesses.

London is the epicenter of those changes with the average daily turnover of foreign exchange trades executed directly over the phone down by a fifth to $566 billion in just three years to 2016, according to the Bank of England.

At Dutch bank ING’s London trading room, Obbe Kok, head of UK financial markets, said the floor now has about 165 people but the bank wants to make it 210 by the end of the year – searching mainly for traders attuned to technological innovations and keen on artificial intelligence.

The proportion of people employed in trading with degrees in mathematics and statistics has increased by a 58 percent over the last 10 years, Emolument, a salary benchmarking site, said.

“What banks have started to do is trade experience for technological skill and with electronic platforms growing, the average age on the floor is a bit younger,” said Adrian Ezra, CEO of financial services recruitment agency Execuzen.

 

TAPER TANTRUM

The increasing use of technology means traders can gauge the depth of market liquidity at the click of a button or quickly price an option based on volatility – a major change from a few years ago when they had to scour the market discreetly for fear of disclosing their interest to rivals.

Ala’A Saeed, global head of institutional electronic sales and one of the brains behind Citi’s trading platform FX Velocity, said its electronic programs process thousands of trades per minute.

Most of the currency trading models used by banks incorporate variables such as trading ranges, valuation metrics including trade-weighted indexes and trends in demand based on internal client orders to get a sense of which way markets are moving – and the potential impact of a new trade.

Nowadays, the models also incorporate sentiment analysis around news headlines and economic data surprises.

These electronic trading platforms also have years of financial data plugged into them with various kinds of scenario analyses, but one thing they have sometimes appeared unprepared for is a sudden change in policy direction.

Witness the market mayhem exacerbated by trend-following algorithms when Switzerland’s central bank scrapped its currency peg in 2015, or the taper tantrum in 2013 when the U.S. Federal Reserve said it would stop buying bonds.

Or Britain’s vote last year to leave the European Union.

Indeed, the biggest risk for financial markets cited by money managers in a Bank of America Merrill Lynch poll in October was a policy misstep from a major central bank.

 

EASY CREDIT, LOW VOLATILITY

One concern is that the rise in automation has coincided with a prolonged decline in market volatility as central banks from the United States to Japan have kept interest rates close to zero and spent trillions of dollars dragging long-term borrowing costs lower to try to reboot depressed economies.

While central banks have been careful to get their messages across as they end the years of stimulus, there are concerns about whether quantitative trading models can capture all the qualitative policy shifts.

For example, a growing number of investors expect the Bank of England to raise its benchmark interest rate to 0.5 percent on Nov. 2, and then leave it at that for the foreseeable future.

But futures markets are expecting another rate rise within six to nine months, injecting a new level of risk around interest rate moves and potentially boosting volatility.

Neale Jackson, a portfolio manager at 36 South Capital Advisors, a $750 million volatility hedge fund in London, said young traders have never seen an environment other than central banks supporting markets, and that has fueled risk-taking underpinned by the belief that “big brother has got our backs”.

“The problem these days is that there’s a whole generation of traders who have never seen interest rates, let alone interest rates hikes,” said Kevin Rodgers, a veteran FX trader and the author of “Why Aren’t They Shouting?”, a book about the computer revolution within financial markets.

 

(Additional reporting by Maiya Keidan and Simon Jessop; writing by Saikat Chatterjee; editing by Mike Dolan and David Clarke)

 

Eleven injured in car crash near London museum, terrorism ruled out

Police officers stand in the road near the Natural History Museum, after a car mounted the pavement injuring a number of pedestrians, police said, in London, Britain October 7, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – Eleven people were injured on Saturday when a car collided with pedestrians near London’s Natural History Museum, in one of the capital’s busiest tourist areas, but police doused fears it was a terrorist attack, saying it was a road traffic incident.

Police said it was believed the car had mounted the pavement outside the popular attraction in west London and collided with a number of pedestrians. Officers had arrested a man at the scene and he was now being questioned.

Britain has suffered five attacks blamed on terrorism so far this year, three of which involved vehicles, and the incident in an area packed with tourists at the weekend had prompted concerns that the collision had been a deliberate act.

“The incident is a road traffic investigation and not a terrorist-related incident,” a police statement said.

London’s ambulance service said they had treated 11 people, mostly for head and leg injuries, with nine taken to hospital. Police said none of the injuries were life-threatening or life-changing.

Unverified footage from the scene showed a man being pinned to the ground by what appeared to be four security guards or police officers.

The Natural History Museum is located on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, one of the British capital’s most upmarket districts and home to a host of other museums, restaurants as well as university buildings.

It is the fourth most popular tourist attraction in the United Kingdom, with 4.6 million visits during 2016, according to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions.

The collision brought the area to a standstill as police cordoned off a wide area whilst they carried out their investigation.

“My thanks to the first responders at this incident this afternoon and the actions of members of the public. My thoughts are with the injured,” Prime Minister Theresa May said on Twitter.

Britain is on its second highest security alert level, meaning an attack by militants is considered highly likely.

In March, a man drove a car into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge killing four before stabbing a police officer to death in the grounds of parliament.

Three Islamist militants drove into people on London Bridge in June before stabbing people at nearby restaurants and bars, killing eight. The same month, a van was driven into worshippers near a mosque in north London which left one man dead.

(Editing by Alison Williams and Peter Graff)

Britain to limit acid sales after steep rise in assaults

Britain's Home Secretary Amber Rudd speaks at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) – Britain will limit sales of sulphuric acid and outlaw the sale of such corrosive substances to children after a spate of assaults and its possible use to make bombs, interior minister Amber Rudd said on Tuesday.

Much to public alarm, the number of incidents where assailants have used acid has risen sharply, with police figures suggesting there had been more than 400 corrosive substance attacks in the six months to April this year.

Many victims were left with serious, life-changing injuries as a result.

The proposed new laws will make it illegal to sell the most harmful corrosive substances to under-18s while the carrying of acid in public without good reason will be banned.

“Acid attacks are absolutely revolting,” Home Secretary Rudd told party activists at the Conservative Party Conference in the northern English city of Manchester. “You have all seen the pictures of victims that never fully recover; endless surgeries, lives ruined.”

Rudd said she also intended to “drastically” limit the public sale of sulphuric acid because of its use in making the highly volatile triacetone triperoxide (TATP), known as “mother of Satan”, which is often used as a detonator in home-made explosives.

Police say TATP was used in an attempted bombing on a packed London underground train last month which injured 30 people. The bomb engulfed a carriage in flames but failed to explode fully.

At the moment, businesses that sell sulphuric acid have to tell the police of any theft or loss, but the new law would mean anyone wanting to buy it above a certain concentration would have to have a Home Office license.

Rudd also announced plans to further restrict the online sale of knives to under-18s following a significant increase in the number of stabbings.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Stephen Addison)

British police feel strain from attacks after latest London bombing

Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner chats to armed officers as she walks along the Southbank in London, Britain, September 16, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

By Alistair Smout

LONDON (Reuters) – Two of Britain’s most senior officers said the pressure on the police forces was not sustainable after last week’s attack on a packed London train became the fifth major attack this year.

Fewer officers could make it harder to prevent future attacks and it will force difficult choices about where to put police resources, they said.

A homemade bomb engulfed a train carriage in flames at Parsons Green underground station in west London last Friday injuring 30. Cressida Dick, London’s police Commissioner, said it could have been much worse.

Britain had previously faced four deadly incidents since March which killed a total of 36 people.

“In the long run, if we continue with this level of threat, which is what people are predicting … this is not sustainable for my police service,” Dick said in an interview on LBC radio.

Six men have been arrested and four remain in custody since the Parsons Green attack.

“That was a very very dangerous bomb. It partially detonated, it had a large quantity of explosive and it was packed with shrapnel. So it could have been so much worse,” Dick said.

While the bombing at Parsons Green was not deadly, the aftermath of the attack still saw extra police on the streets and the threat level raised a notch to critical.

Interior minister Amber Rudd has announced an extra 24 million pounds ($32.55 million) of funding for counter-terrorism policing following the bombing, in addition to 707 million previously announced support for 2017/2018.

But while the government has committed to increase the overall spend on counter-terrorism by 3 billion pounds, Sara Thornton, head of National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), said that not enough of the budget would support frontline officers.

There are about 20,000 fewer officers than there were when Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives came to power in 2010 and Thornton said numbers were at levels last seen in 1985 despite a 10 percent rise in crime last year.

“Every time there’s a terror attack, we mobilize specialist officers and staff to respond but the majority of the officers and staff responding come from mainstream policing,” she wrote in a blog post on the NPCC website.

“This puts extra strain on an already stretched service.”

(Additional reporting by Elisabeth O’Leary; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

Manslaughter charges possible in London tower block fire disaster: police

FILE PHOTO: A member of the emergency services works inside the Grenfell apartment tower block in North Kensington, London, Britain June 17, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) – The criminal investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire that killed about 80 people in London in June could result in manslaughter charges, but any prosecutions could be months away due to the complexity of the forensic work, police said.

The 24-storey social housing block, home to a poor, multi-ethnic community, was destroyed on June 14 by a fire that started in a fourth-floor flat in the middle of the night and rapidly engulfed the whole building.

Police have formally identified 60 of the victims, but painstaking forensic work to find human remains, some of them tiny fragments, among tonnes of debris inside the charred ruin is ongoing.

Commander Stuart Cundy, who has overall control of police operations at Grenfell Tower, told reporters on Tuesday it was likely the final death toll would be a little below 80.

Detective Chief Inspector Matt Bonner, in charge of the criminal side of the police investigation, said a forensic examination of the tower would continue into 2018 and would be followed by lengthy laboratory analysis.

“I will seek to identify and deal with whatever offences come to light during that investigation,” he said.

“The kind of stuff that I would envisage we may come across would involve offences perhaps of fraud, misconduct offences, health and safety breaches, breaches of fire safety regulations and of course offences of manslaughter whether that be on a corporate or an individual level,” he added.

However, Bonner said this should not be taken as an indication that police had already found evidence to support any such charges.

The building, which was completed in 1974, was owned by the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, one of London’s richest, and managed by an organization that ran social housing on the borough’s behalf.

Bonner said police had so far identified 336 companies or organizations that were involved in the construction, refurbishment and management of the tower and officers had recovered as many as 31 million documents from all of those.

Police were now also investigating allegations of thefts from some of the less damaged flats in the lower levels of the building. There had been one confirmed theft of a considerable amount of money from one of the flats and three further allegations of theft, they said.

The thefts had come to light when former residents had been let into their apartments to pick up treasured possessions and say goodbye to their homes. Cundy said police had been shocked.

“All of us here, working down on Grenfell Tower or working on it anywhere, are just so disappointed that something like that can happen on the back of such a huge tragedy,” he said.

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Stephen Addison)

British police arrest second man over London train bomb

The scene where a man was arrested in connection with an explosion on Parsons Green Tube station, in Hounslow, London, Britain, September 18, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

By Paul Sandle

LONDON (Reuters) – British police arrested a second man over the bombing of a London commuter train on Friday that injured 30 people and the security services lowered the threat level for an attack from its highest setting.

The 21-year-old man was detained under Britain’s terrorism laws in the west London suburb of Hounslow just before midnight on Saturday, London police said in a statement.

Police earlier arrested an 18-year-old man in the departure lounge of Dover port in what they called a “significant” step and then raided a property in Sunbury-on-Thames, a town near London and about four miles (six km) from Hounslow.

The home-made bomb shot flames through a packed carriage at west London’s Parsons Green Tube station during the Friday morning rush hour but apparently failed to detonate fully.

Islamic State claimed responsibility, as it has for other attacks in Britain this year, including two in London and one at a concert by American singer Ariana Grande in Manchester in May.

Interior minister Amber Rudd said on Sunday the second arrest showed it was not a lone-wolf attack but there was no evidence Islamic State was involved.

She said the threat level had been lowered to “severe” from “critical”, meaning another attack was highly likely rather than expected imminently.

“It is inevitable that so-called Islamic State, or Daesh, will reach in and try to claim responsibility. We have no evidence to suggest that yet,” Rudd told the BBC.

“But as this unfolds, and as the police do their investigations, we will make sure that we find out exactly how he was radicalized, if we can.”

 

HOUSE SEARCHES

Police said on Sunday they were searching a home in Stanwell in the county of Surrey near the perimeter of London’s Heathrow Airport, in connection with the Hounslow arrest.

Police continued to search the house in Sunbury nearby but said there were no safety risks to local residents.

Local media said the home belongs to a couple who have fostered hundreds of children, including refugees. The BBC said the couple, 88-year-old Ronald Jones and Penelope Jones, 71, had been honored by Queen Elizabeth for their work with children.

The bomb struck as passengers were traveling toward the center of the British capital. Some suffered burns and others were hurt in a stampede to escape. Health officials said none was thought to be in a serious condition.

Prime Minister Theresa May put Britain on its highest security level late on Friday and soldiers and armed police were deployed to strategic locations such as nuclear power plants.

On Saturday, armed police patrolled the streets near government departments in Westminster and guarded Premier League soccer grounds hosting matches.

The last time Britain was put on “critical” alert was after a suicide bomber killed 22 people at the Ariana Grande concert.

On that occasion, the threat level remained at critical for four days while police established whether the bomber had worked alone or with others. Prior to that it had not been triggered since 2007.

 

(Additional reporting by Andrew Heavens; editing by David Clarke)

 

New York rail operator bolsters security after London bombing

People wait in line to purchase New York subway MetroCards at Pennsylvania Station in New York City, U.S., June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The bombing of a packed London commuter train on Friday prompted officials to beef up security on New York City’s subway system, major commuter rail networks, at airports and other locations.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates mass-transit lines in New York City and the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North commuter lines, said it was closely monitoring the investigation of the fiery blast that injured 29 people in a West London underground station.

The MTA will expand bag screening and deploy extra police patrols on the LIRR and Metro-North, as well as in midtown Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station, “out of an abundance of caution,” spokesman Kevin Ortiz said.

MTA officials were also consulting with New York City police about bolstering security in the subway system, he said.

New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement he had also directed authorities to increase security at airports, bridges, tunnels and other sensitive locations across the state.

“On behalf of all New Yorkers, I condemn the apparent terrorist attack in London today in the strongest possible terms,” Cuomo added.

The NYPD said it has been in contact with London law enforcement officials and has added officers, some heavily armed, and bomb-sniffing dogs to the city’s transit system.

Across the country, Los Angeles police said in a statement they had beefed up their presence on subway, commuter train and bus lines in response to the attack in London.

Amtrak, the country’s nationwide passenger rail carrier, said it was closely following the events in London but was not adding to the layers of security it already has in place.

“Robust security measures are in place at stations, on trains and along the tracks, and partnerships with federal agencies to gather intelligence information are underway,” Amtrak said in a statement.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Dan Grebler and Jonathan Oatis)