04/04/2017 London News

Eight further people, including a 15 year-old boy,

have appeared in court in connection with an alleged attack on a teenage

The 17-year-old Kurdish-Iranian boy is still in intensive care.

As Ayshea Buksh reports, the incident has left

He came to the UK in search of a better life, but is now

in hospital recovering from an alleged violent

17-year-old Reker Ahmed is an asylum seeker who fled

He travelled across Europe and arrived on his own in Croydon

He made friends with Dilshad Mohammed, a fellow Kurd from Iraq.

He was with him at the time of the alleged attack on Friday.

TRANSLATION: We was all wishing to come here,

freedom, college, get visa, working...

But now, after what happened to us, we are not happy

Many asylum seekers have passed through Croydon.

Lunar House is the Home Office centre for processing asylum claims.

Earlier this year, the local Citizens UK group organised

a welcome for unaccompanied children arriving from Europe,

after the so-called Calais jungle was disbanded.

We had children, refugee children from Europe coming to Lunar House

here and just behind me almost every day there were sort of 200 people

out here from local schools, from local churches,

local mosques, just ordinary people from the local community,

out here to say that refugees are welcome.

So I think that is the true spirit of Croydon, that people

On the night of the alleged attack, Reker and Dilshad were on their way

to hang out with fellow Kurds in west Croydon.

Other young Kurdish men I spoke to off-camera told me they have had

some problems with locals before, but never anything this extreme.

Dilshad says he's still shaken up by what happened and wants to go

TRANSLATION: When we was kids, we were hoping

Reker Ahmed is still in hospital with a fractured spine and eye

Fundraising websites have been set up to help in his recovery.

Tonight, a football ground fell silent to honour the police

officer who was killed in the Westminster attack.

PC Keith Palmer was a life-long fan of Charlton Athletic,

and this evening the club and fans paid tribute to him.

Tonight they came to pay their respects, and to say a proper

One of the reasons I'm down here tonight, you know,

to show my respects, and obviously get behind

the team, but do my bit, tip my hat so to speak.

A scarf was left on the seat from where he watched the last

home game against Bradford on March 14th, and so many

Today the scarf was removed and the seat was replaced by a white

one, embossed with PC Keith Palmer's warrant number.

That will stay in place until the end of the season,

at which point a permanent memorial stone will be built

Before kick off, PC Palmer's stepbrother led the teams out.

The players were then joined by 22 of his former police colleagues,

as the entire stadium fell silent in his memory.

These players tonight have played in front of Keith this season.

They are also husbands and fathers themselves, and when they heard

about it, they were moved, because they wanted to send

a message and give something towards a grieving family.

In this corner of south-east London, and indeed throughout the capital,

and the country, PC Keith Palmer will never be forgotten.

Charleton SC paying tribute to PC Keith Palmer. -- Charlton paying

tribute. Drivers could be hit by a new daily

charge under the Mayor's plan He's previously announced plans to

create an ultra-low emissions zone. Today, we learned when its coming

in and how much motorists will pay. You can't see it,

but the air in London, A stark warning from the mayor

to these schoolchildren He compared today's air

to the great smog in 1952, which led to the government passing

the Clean Air Act. If you opened your front door,

you would step out and you couldn't see in front of you,

so it was incredibly visible. This was a smog that lasted not one

day, not two days, but four days, But the really, I suppose

the critical element was that The mayor has put cleaning up

London's air at the heart of his mayoralty and today he set

out a timetable for his plan. On top of the current

congestion charge of ?11.50, from October this year a further

T-Charge of ?10 will hit those But from April 2019 that will become

the ULEZ, and that charge And by 2021, that's to be extended

out as far as the North and South circulars for the most polluting

cars, and it will be charged across the whole of Greater London

for lorries and buses, Nowhere else in the

world has done this. What we're doing is the ultralow

emissions zone for central London by 2019, subject to consultation,

that's the quickest we can go. We're going to go London wide

for lorries, coaches and buses by 2020, subject to consultation,

and the earliest we can do up to the South circular

and North circular is 2021. We've got to give people a chance

to move away from diesel. That's an adjustment

that will be difficult for some business owners,

like Jeremy, who runs this It's going to make a huge

impact to the business, because it means virtually changing

the entire fleet. The five we've changed her body cost

just under ?750,000 and to upgrade the rest of the fleet will cost

about ?2 million. Not the sort of money you keep

in your back pocket. But for green campaigners it falls

short of what the Mayor I was absolutely

expecting much more. We were hoping that heavy

goods vehicles, lorries, buses and coaches would all have

to be ULEZ compliant by 2019. That's been pushed back to 2020,

and that means more people being exposed to more dirty

air for longer. The mayor hopes that introducing

the ULEZ will lead to a 50% cut There will now be a public

consultation on the plans. So as we've heard former

Mayor Ken Livingstone has been suspended from the Labour Party

following a disciplinary hearing It's not the first time

the outspoken politician has fallen It was 31 years ago that

Ken Livingstone waved goodbye He'd been its leader for five years,

building a reputation on keeping fares down and courting controversy

with some of the company he kept But he wasn't out of power

for long, becoming MP Never far from the headlines,

London's former lead politician decided he'd have a tilt at the top

job again, when Tony Blair's government decided

that capital needed a mayor. Folk hero to some, dangerous

extremist to others, Ken Livingstone's always been

a colourful character. Only Tony Blair didn't

want Ken Livingstone. I think that would be disastrous

for the Labour Party, Frank Dobson was selected

as Labour's candidate, You can say now, are you going

to support me or are you going Ken Livingstone leaving

the Labour Party, to I have been forced to choose

between the party I love and who I've given 31

years of my life to, and upholding the democratic

rights of Londoners. He won easily, back

running London once more. As I was saying before I was so

rudely interrupted 14 years ago... And before long, the Labour

Party let him back in. It looks very much as if red Ken

is having the last laugh. He went on to win the mayoral race

as Labour's candidate the following year, but in 2005

became involved in a high profile anti-Semitism row,

after these comments to a newspaper reporter one

night outside City Hall. It led him to being temporarily

suspended from office a year later, and at the next election he lost

to Boris Johnson. Ken Livingstone was proudly rolled

out as one of Sadiq Khan's early backers when he decided to run

for mayor, but after the outburst that got him into trouble,

Labour's candidate for City Hall I'm disgusted and appalled

by what Ken has been saying. Of course there has to be

due process, but he's Tonight Ken Livingstone's been

suspended from the party for two years, one of

which he's already served. But let's get a check

on the weather with Wendy. Thank you, Mrs T in Brentford

spotted a fleeting glimpse of blue sky today. I think we will see a few

more sunny spells through this week and in those it will feel quite

warm, but not tonight. We are going to have clear skies. Almost clear

completely out there at a moment and the temperature will fall back, 6-7,

a little bit lower for some. There could be a touch of frost in

sheltered spots. A sunny start tomorrow and a common theme in the

next few days, rather more cloudy afternoon. Average temperatures up

to about 14 degrees. This Thursday we'll be chasing some cloud around,

some sunny from time to time and it will take one of those to get

temperatures up to about 15 degrees. Light winds and dry again. On the

outlook, more of the same for Friday and into the weekend it warms up a

bit from the south, so we could