Exclusive: London mayor says poverty, alienation and ill health must be tackled to prevent crimes, after London sword attack

Too many people with mental health issues who have committed violent crimes missed out on treatment as a result of cuts to support services, Sadiq Khan has warned.

In an interview with the Guardian ahead of this week’s local elections, he said such crimes were preventable and said years of austerity has left NHS mental health provision on its knees.

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Police ask to be given time to probe apparently random attack that left boy, 14, dead and four people wounded

Detectives are urgently investigating why a man armed with a sword went on a 22-minute rampage in east London, killing a 14-year-old boy and wounding four other people in an apparently random attack.

The teenager was fatally injured when the suspect swung at him with the 30cm-long weapon on Tuesday morning.

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Sudanese man being held in Croydon after arriving for routine sign-in believed to be first potential deportation under new law

An asylum seeker who turned up for a routine Home Office appointment on Monday was detained and told that he was being sent to Rwanda, a charity has said.

In what is believed to be the first potential deportation case since Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill received royal assent, the Sudanese man was held in Croydon, south London, the charity Soas Detainee Support told the Guardian. The man told charity workers he had arrived to sign in but was informed that he would be deported to east Africa.

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This model of devolution should be the start of a bigger conversation about power and democracy, not the end

This Thursday, around 20 million voters in 10 regions in England go to the polls to elect metro mayors, which largely did not exist before 2017. Today these local politicians are national figures. With Labour riding high in the polls, the party could even see a remarkable clean sweep in the 10 contests, potentially winning the first-ever elected mayoralty of York and North Yorkshire in Rishi Sunak’s back yard. Such is their importance that the loss of the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, Ben Houchen, and his West Midlands counterpart, Andy Street, could hasten the end of Mr Sunak’s premiership.

Devolution is working. There have been signature policies such as Steve Rotheram’s high-speed broadband plan for Liverpool. Andy Burnham in Manchester has rolled out bus franchising to address the damage done by decades of deregulation. Mr Rotheram, Mr Burnham and West Yorkshire’s Tracy Brabin collectively are a powerful northern voice to counterbalance the south. Research from the More in Common thinktank suggests mayoral races are not a proxy for national politics. The race between the independent candidate Jamie Driscoll and Labour’s Kim McGuinness to be north-east mayor is too close to call. Mr Driscoll, who resigned from Labour after being blocked from standing as its candidate, clearly benefits from his outsider status.

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George Georgiou gave British rave culture its smiley face. Now he’s placing plaques where hardcore clubbers sweated till dawn. Our writers joins the designer – and DJs Danny Rampling and Nicky Holloway – on a face-melting trip

‘I remember this street being covered with hundreds of these all over the floor,” says George Georgiou, handing me an original smiley-face flyer he designed for the acid house club night Shoom. “I wish I’d picked them up because now they sell for up to a grand.”

The doorway we’re standing outside in London Bridge is one of many locations we’ll visit today, as Georgiou places acid house heritage plaques outside buildings that were once home to clubs such as Shoom, Raw and Sin. These locations are then tagged on an interactive acid house map on his website. We kick off the day 15 minutes’ walk away on Tooley Street, where the Special Branch club began life in 1984. It was here that resident DJs Nicky Holloway and Pete Tong lured suburban soul boys and Soho trendies to an old pub to get sweaty, while Gilles Peterson kept the footworkers busy by spinning jazz-funk in the other room.

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The king spoke about the need for early diagnosis during a visit to University College Hospital in London

King Charles told patients that he was well during a visit to a London cancer treatment centre where he also spoke of the “shock” of receiving a cancer diagnosis.

On his first public-facing engagement since his diagnosis, he and the queen met cancer specialists and patients receiving chemotherapy at the University College hospital’s Macmillan cancer centre in a visit aimed at highlighting the importance of early diagnosis.

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In letter ahead of vote, signatories say their relations with female colleagues have been damaged and threaten to quit club

The musicians Sting and Mark Knopfler have co-signed a letter with leading theatre producers and actors, warning that they will be obliged to resign their memberships of the men-only Garrick Club if members refuse to approve a decision to admit women in a vote next Tuesday.

The letter, seen by the Guardian, was also signed by the actor Stephen Fry, the West End and Broadway theatre producer Karl Sydow, and Matthew Byam Shaw, an executive producer on The Crown television series and co-founder of Playful West End theatre production company.

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The jukebox musical based on the 1994 film follows a string of high-profile early closures with producers saying the show has faced ‘difficult times’

An immersive jukebox musical production based on the 1994 Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is to close more than four months early in the West End. Priscilla the Party! had been booking until the end of September but will now have its last performance on 26 May. In a statement, the producers said that it was “no longer sustainable” to support the show financially and that “the production has been facing difficult times”.

Billed as an “all-singing, all-dancing immersive party and musical theatre extravaganza”, the show is running at London’s £1bn Outernet complex in the Here venue with an audience capacity of just over 700. Theatregoers can join in the show on the dancefloor or choose a seated ticket including dining options. The show’s website reveals “good availability” for all but one of the remaining 23 performances. Prices start at £45.

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Met Police say incident does not appear to be terror-related after reports of vehicle being driven into house in Thurlow Gardens area

The London fire brigade (LFB) said it was called to assist at the incident in Hainault. A 36-year-old man is in custody and police believe the incident is not terrorism-related.

An LFB spokesperson said:

Firefighters were mobilised to assist police and London ambulance service colleagues at an incident near Hainault underground station.

Crews supported London ambulance service crews in the provision of immediate emergency care.

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