International
Man dies after falling from 39th of 46-floor London Sushi Samba restaurant
• Heron Tower in the City of London stands 750ft tall and has 46 stories, with Sushi Samba on the 39th
A man fell to his death from the 39th floor of a fashionable City restaurant after clambering over a six-foot-high barrier, it is believed.
The person who died is understood to have been on the open terrace of the Sushi Samba restaurant that boasts panoramic views across London.
An eye witness has told how she saw a man on the edge of the building – the second tallest in London – before stepping off.
The restaurant and offices in the Heron Tower were placed in lockdown while emergency services rushed to the scene.
The Sushi restaurant and another on the 40th floor of the building, Duck and Waffle, in Bishopsgate are popular with office workers and tourists.
Eye witness Keisha Des Vignes was sitting by one of the floor to ceiling glass windows of the restaurant when she saw the man step off the edge of the building around 2pm on Thursday.
Writing on Twitter the make-up artist said:’ I can’t believe what I witnessed.
‘Today…a man calmly walked over the edge of the building at Sushi Samba…I couldn’t even comprehend nor eat after seeing that.
‘He calmly climb over the railing and just walked off. I am shaken and keep seeing it.’
In an earlier tweet she said:’ I was right there by the window at Duck and Waffle and saw someone walking on the glass roof at Sushi Samba.
‘He was calmly walking and I actually thought he was doing work or something..before I knew it he just walked off the edge..I felt sick. Just one split second!’
Photos on the website for the Sushi Samba show the outside terrace is on the 39th floor of the skyscraper.
A five-foot-high glass barrier is topped by a fence-like structure that takes it to over six feet high.
A member of staff at the other restaurant in the building, Duck and Waffle, said: ‘We were just told to close soon after the incident. No one knows what happened or who the person was.’
The staff member said the person who fell from the building would have had to climb over a series of the metal wires on top of a glass barrier.
‘There has never been anything like this before,’ said the staff member who asked not to be named.
‘The barriers are there and obvious so there is no chance of someone just falling. They would have had to clamber over the wire.’
The outside terrace at the 230m high Heron Tower boasts of being the highest outdoor terrace in Europe.
The restaurant website says:’ Located on the 38th and 39th floors of the Heron Tower at 110 Bishopsgate, SUSHISAMBA London features the highest outdoor dining terraces in Europe, offering unparalleled, 360 degree views of the City.
‘Two panoramic glass elevators whisk patrons from the ground to the 39th floor, opening up London from inside-out as the lifts climb further and further upwards.
Workers in Heron Tower, which was built in 2011 at a cost of £89m, took to Twitter to describe how they were placed in lockdown.
Police sealed off Bishopsgate to traffic while emergency services were rushed to the scene and members of the public were told to avoid the area.
Staff working in nearby shops described the pandemonium after the incident.
‘There were blue lights everywhere and we heard someone had fallen from the building opposite us. It is lucky that no one else was hurt,’ said the shop worker.
One office worker who tweeted a photo of the body was condemned by other Twitter users for being insensitive.
Chief Superintendent Rob Atkin said: ‘Officers from the City of London Police are currently dealing with at an incident on Houndsditch.
‘Police arrived on scene at around 2pm.
‘Cordons are currently in place and the public are urged to avoid the area if possible while emergency services remain in attendance.’
A spokesman for the London Ambulance Service said: ‘We were called at 2.02pm today to reports of an incident on Bishopsgate, City of London.
A City of London police spokesman said an update on the incident would be issued later.
A spokesman for City of London Coroner said they had been informed about the death of a male person at Heron Tower.
No date has been set for an inquest opening.
Staff at the Sushi restaurant refused to comment.
(Daily Mail)
There are grave fears for the passengers of a private plane that suddenly vanished mid-flight, sparking a major search off the coast of the US.
US authorities say the Gulfstream G100 lost contact with air traffic control about 2am local time on Saturday (4pm Saturday AET) while flying from L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda to Boston Logan International Airport.
The US Coast Guard said the Federal Aviation Administration alerted it after contact was lost with the aircraft – which plummeted from 23,500 feet to 11,000 feet in just three minutes, according to FlightAware data.
“We are praying for a safe outcome,” a spokesperson for Latitude Air Ambulance, which operates the missing plane, told City News.
A search is now under way off Nantucket in the air and on water as crews work to locate the missing jet, the Coast Guard said. Data from FlightRadar24 showed a number of aircraft searching south of the island.
Six people are missing after a private jet vanished, sparking a major search off the coast of Nantucket in the US.
The plane was en route from Bermuda to Boston when it vanished.
“Air & surface crews have launched in search of the aircraft. Updates will be provided here as info becomes available,” the Coast Guard Northeast District said on X.
The plane was carrying out a medical evacuation in Bermuda – a British overseas territory in the north Atlantic Ocean, according to Clarence Togeretz, Director of Flight Operations at Latitude Air Ambulance.
“We always get rather concerned when our crew doesn’t report to us in a timely manner,” he told NBC News.
“But I will say that again, optimistically and positively, that doesn’t mean that the worst has happened.”
Seventeen people were killed when eight gunmen stormed a bar close to Johannesburg on Saturday evening, with 15 more injured.
In a separate shooting in the early hours of Sunday morning, 10 people were killed outside an entertainment venue in a township near Cape Town and a further 11 were injured.
South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world and has struggled to contain gang-related gun violence in recent years. Police have not indicated a motive for either of the latest attacks.
In Johannesburg, gunmen opened fire on customers outside the bar before continuing the attack inside and torching two vehicles before fleeing.
Police said thirteen men and four women were killed.
Deputy provincial police commissioner Maj Gen Fred Kekana said the attack may have been a retaliation for an incident last month, in which one person was killed and another wounded, according to AFP news agency.
Speaking at the scene, he said police had clear pictures and in some cases names for the suspects.
In Cape Town, five victims died at the scene and a further five people died in hospital.
No arrests had been made in either case on Sunday morning.
The two mass shootings came days after 11 people were killed in the city of Duban when gunmen stormed a house in the KwaMakhutha township.
Illegal weapons are prevalent in South Africa and gun violence has been a persistent problem for decades, with about 60 murders recorded every day in the country of 62 million.
But a recent spate of mass shootings has raised fears that the problem is deepening, with violence often linked to turf wars between gangs engaged in drug trafficking and illegal mining.
In February, President Cyril Ramaphosa called organised crime “the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development”.
Earlier this year the military was deployed alongside police in areas with the highest murder rates in an effort to reduce armed violence.
On Saturday a tenth woman’s body was found in Ekurhuleni, to the east of Johannesburg, with local police saying they were unable to rule out a serial killer operating in the area with similarities between the deaths. (BBC)
The United States has deported more than 25,000 people under secretive agreements with 35 countries to take migrants with no ties to those nations, according to an investigation published Monday.
Since US President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, Washington has been signing deals with developing countries to take migrants who cannot legally be sent home.
The investigation by Forbidden Stories found the administration has earmarked $410 million to be paid directly to the receiving countries, or to UN agencies to facilitate the returns.
At least 25,447 people had already been deported to third countries by August 31, 2026, according to data compiled by Forbidden Stories with a consortium of international journalists.
The vast majority — around 20,000 — were sent to Mexico, but the rest were dispersed to 27 other countries across Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific, and agreements have been finalised with seven more.
The deals vary, including over which nationalities can be deported and whether people with criminal records can be accepted.
An AFP investigation earlier this year found Washington is using visa bans and restrictions on African countries to strongarm them into accepting deportees.
Lawyers told AFP that deportees were being thrown into a “legal black hole”, held without charge in countries where they have no ties and few if any rights.
Forbidden Stories said 49 of Africa’s 54 countries had been approached about accepting third-country deportees.
A little-known State Department division called the Office of Remigration, created in May 2025, has handled most of the negotiations and payments, according to Forbidden Stories.
The office is headed by Christian Jove Ehrhardt, a 41-year-old diplomat who previously worked as a security officer.
The report details his visits to Cameroon, which signed a memorandum of understanding with the US in December on accepting deportees. A week later, it also signed a five-year health assistance programme worth nearly $400 million.
The following month, the State Department said it would provide a further $30 million to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Cameroon to “facilitate the voluntary return of refugees and combat illegal immigration.”
The first plane carrying deportees arrived in Cameroon on January 14.
– Payments –
Other agreements have involved direct payments to governments.
Palau, a small Pacific island nation with a population of under 18,000, signed an agreement in December 2025 to accept up to 75 third-country nationals in return for $7.5 million.
However, only three people have so far been sent under the agreement.
In Eswatini, 32 people have arrived since July 2025 out of a possible 160 under an agreement worth more than $5 million. It has accepted deportees with criminal records, the investigation found.
Of the $410 million planned for the agreements, internal State Department records showed that $81 million was earmarked for signatory governments.
The rest was intended for aid organisations, including more than $178 million for the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, and $123 million for UNHCR.
The agencies have faced criticism over their involvement, although UNHCR told Forbidden Stories that it was not party to the bilateral agreements and that US funding was being used in line with its mandate to strengthen asylum systems.
An IOM spokesperson told Forbidden Stories that the agency’s decisions to accept funding rested “on a single question: whether our engagement will improve the lives of the migrants affected. In these instances, we believe strongly it does.”
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