Vehicles suspected of carrying explosives zipping across Britain, entirely unbeknownst to authorities, is a disconcerting prospect. Initially, it seemed precisely this had occurred in Gloucestershire early on Sunday. A major attack on RAF Fairford appeared to have been scuppered by “pure luck”, a local farmer said, after she noticed suspicious vans and masked men on an otherwise deserted country lane.
Had she not tipped off police, the vigilant villager believes the five men arrested on terror offences would not have been apprehended. That account prompted questions about whether police and security services had been caught off guard. Bu new details emerging suggest there are competing, if not conflicting, versions of how events unfolded in the Cotswolds this weekend.
So what exactly happened in the early hours of Sunday morning? In today’s First Edition, we’ll explore this, and some other unanswered questions, with the help of Guardian international security correspondent Jason Burke. Before that, this morning’s headlines.
Energy | Andy Burnham will take his first major step to putting Britain’s utility companies into public control when, at the Labour conference, he announces a new government-backed body to invest in the electricity grid. Immigration | Home secretary Shabana Mahmood has signalled she is considering watering down her plans to make it harder for foreign workers to claim permanent residence in the UK, amid growing demands for a U-turn from cabinet colleagues and unions. AI | Two of the “godfathers” of modern AI and senior executives at OpenAI and Anthropic have warned governments to prepare for an AI “intelligence explosion”, which they say could be the most consequential technological development in history.
Petrol | The price of diesel on UK forecourts has hit an all-time high average of 199.18p a litre, as the conflict in the Middle East continues to drive the cost of fuel to record levels. Ebola | A senior member of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s ruling party was beaten to death on Sunday after appearing on a radio programme to raise awareness about the Ebola outbreak, a party representative has said. In the early hours of Sunday, a farmer from the village of Whelford was travelling home from a party along quiet rural roads.
She was about to drop off a friend, while her husband dozed in the passenger seat. Around 1am, however, she encountered three vans “parked in a really weird fan shape” blocking the path to her farm, close to RAF Fairford, an airbase operated by the US air force. Forced to turn around, she then described seeing “a large group of hooded and masked men” at a nearby junction, who quickly dispersed.
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