Manchester

A police officer has been suspended after footage shared on social media showed a suspect being kicked in the head and stamped on at Manchester Airport.

The suspect has been named as Fahir in an Instagram video where he appears alongside his lawyer Akhmed Yakoob.

The lawyer is also representing a second man who was arrested in the incident at Manchester Airport and names him as Amaad.

Mr Yakoob, who is the only one who speaks in the video, does not confirm whether Fahir and Amaad are brothers but says they will be making a formal complaint accusing Rochdale Police of assaulting them and "their elderly mother".

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) had been responding to reports of an assault at Terminal 2 at 8.25pm on Tuesday before the footage of the police officer stamping on Fahir was filmed.

The force has said three officers were injured in a subsequent altercation and there was a "clear risk" of firearms being snatched from officers who were carrying weapons.

A conspiracy theorist being sued by two survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing is "perfectly entitled" to believe the deadly attack was an "elaborate hoax", his lawyer has told a court.

Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve, then 14, were among the hundreds of people injured when 22-year-old Salman Abedi detonated a homemade bomb at an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017.

Mr Hibbert was paralysed from the waist down, while his daughter suffered a severe brain injury in the attack, which killed 22 people.

They are suing self-styled journalist Richard Hall for alleged harassment and breaches of data protection laws in a civil trial at the High Court in London.

Mr Hall has claimed that the attack was faked by government agencies using "crisis actors" and has published a book and videos claiming the bombing was a "hoax" - as well as "secretly filming" Miss Hibbert and her mother outside their house.

A multimillion-pound luxury penthouse flat named after the revolutionary socialist thinker Friedrich Engels is the latest example of Manchester repurposing its radical history for profit, local people have said.

The apartment is in the east tower in Deansgate Square, where the developer Renaker says its vision for the “New Jackson” skyscraper district “is to create a sustainable and attractive neighbourhood where people feel proud to call home”.

The tower stands just off Deansgate, in what was once a slum area of Manchester, where families lived in squalid and cramped homes, and grinding poverty. It is also just a few hundred metres from a statue of Engels, which stands outside the Home arts centre.

The German philosopher spent more than two decades in Manchester in the mid-19th century, from where he researched his seminal work The Condition of the Working Class in England.

The book is a study on the Victorian industrial working class, which highlighted the issue of overcrowded housing, as well as high mortality rates and poor working conditions.

Today, there is incredibly high demand for affordable housing in Manchester, with more than 15,000 applications on the waiting list for social housing.

According to the property website Rightmove, the average price for a property in Manchester is £300,521, with the average selling price for flats at £200,652.

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The 290 sq metre (3,126 sq ft) flat is listed on the developer’s website as a showhome, but in promotional material it was advertised with a price tag of £2.5m.

A second penthouse apartment, “The Turing” – presumably named after the University of Manchester computer scientist Alan Turing – is also on the market for £2.5m.

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“It’s just another iteration of that thing that Manchester’s been very good at doing, which is reabsorbing radical elements of its history into a brand,” said Isaac Rose, from Greater Manchester Tenants Union.

“[Engels] deliberately fled the life of the bourgeoisie to live and be among the working class, but maybe he’d have found it ultimately amusing that things have got this mad that they were naming penthouses after him.”

The images capture a woman in a hauntingly familiar pose. On one of Manchester's grandest streets, outside a department store, she is bent as if she's trying to pick something up.

Almost touching her toes, she remains motionless for minutes. Before long, she collapses to the ground, and bystanders are calling police for help.

The disturbing scene is eerily reminiscent of another time. The time when the Manchester Evening News first reported on a scourge that was leaving vulnerable people frozen in 'zombie-like' states across the city centre.

The sight of people wasted on synthetic cannabinoids would become so familiar, seven years ago, that national headlines would go on to dub the city 'Spicechester', home of the 'living dead'.

Survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing have instigated legal action against MI5, it has been confirmed. Lawyers representing more than 250 people caught up in the atrocity at the Ariana Grande concert on May 22, 2017 say they have submitted a claim.

In a joint statement, Hudgell Solicitors, Slater & Gordon and Broudie Jackson Canter, the three lead firms representing the group said: "Legal teams representing injured survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 can confirm that they have collectively submitted a group claim on behalf of more than 250 clients to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

"As it is an ongoing legal matter, we are unable or provide any further details, or comment further, at this stage."

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal is an independent judicial body which provides right of redress to anyone who believes they have been the victim of unlawful action by a public authority using covert investigative techniques.

Manchester has been named the best city in the UK for beer - despite charging higher prices for pints than the likes of Birmingham and Glasgow.

As part of a study of Europe’s best cities for beer lovers, Manchester was the highest-ranking city in the UK and the only one to make it into the top 20 list. The list, from travel expert and ferry operator DFDS, ranked each European city based on beer quality, its highest-rated bar and pubs, their prominence on social media, and the average cost of a pint.