Johannes Kongsnes Natland, 19, was arrested in Huddersfield with two guns and live ammunition

A teenage hitman who travelled from Norway to the UK with the intention of carrying out a murder on behalf of an Iran-backed international crime gang has been jailed for 20 years.

Johannes Kongsnes Natland, 19, a talented footballer, had agreed to shoot an unknown target in return for €25,000 (£21,500).

Graham Brougham, 74, was one of a number of men invited to sexually assault victim while she was unconscious

A man from Cheshire has pleaded guilty to the rape of a woman whose husband drugged her and invited other men to sexually assault her while she was unconscious.

Graham Brougham, 74, pleaded guilty to rape at a hearing at Manchester Minshull Street crown court on Thursday afternoon.

Rapper to visit Lincolnshire town 16 years after saying he had never been there in his hit Pass Out

The rapper Tinie Tempah has said he will finally visit Scunthorpe – 16 years after he announced to the world that he had never been to the town in his number one hit Pass Out.

His decision follows a campaign by fans, led by Ben Johns, a Scunthorpe resident, who carried a cardboard cutout of the artist around the Lincolnshire town and encouraged people to pre-save Tempah’s new album.

Yvette Cooper acknowledges ‘unthinkable pain’ caused by practice between 1930s and 1980s after campaign by Wirral woman and others

The health secretary, Yvette Cooper, has issued a “profound apology” for the “unthinkable pain” caused to parents whose stillborn babies were buried in mass graves.

Parents spent decades not knowing where their babies were buried, owing to a practice in which stillborn babies were taken from mothers at hospital and buried in communal graves.

Even though a man was mauled to death by a tiger and three-year-old was attacked in crocodile enclosure, experts say public protection is robust

On a busy Saturday afternoon at a zoo in Yorkshire, visitors looked on in horror as a man climbed into a tiger habitat, minutes after posing for a photograph beside it.

Eyewitnesses said he scaled a metre-high viewing barrier, before dropping into the enclosure below, overpowering a woman who tried to pull him back.

Bev Craig pledges £2m in funding to nurture local artists by improving access to rehearsal and production space

The Manchester mayor, Bev Craig, has said the city’s music scene is about more than just Oasis, as she announced funding to nurture a diverse range of local artists, be they “guitar bands or not”.

Craig pledged the £2m investment funding in Greater Manchester, as the city region hosted a conference for the creative industries at MediaCity in Salford.