The traditional seaside town’s weekly street market was shut down earlier this year, but the community rallied together to welcome the new market with open arms
Locals say the return of the market has brought a lively buzz as well as plenty of fresh meat and veg(Image: Getty)
Following its closure earlier this year due to “out of control drinking, drug use, and violence”, the council had issued a call for fresh operators.
The market situated within the Arun District of West Sussex had become dangerous for vendors, but now it’s being completely organised and managed by residents from the classic South Coast resort. The revived market, which reopened in Littlehampton in July, features butchers, bakers, and even the sought-after weekly Community Market Stall for local charities.
Local vendors Andrew Sleeman and Alf Franks, who teamed up to relaunch the market, told the BBC that the market hadn’t simply returned “bigger and better” but provided what residents desired.
Mr Sleeman said: “People wanted butchers, bakers, and fruit and veg stalls, which we have brought in. It’s paying off, and the street is looking busy.”
Generating numerous excited reactions from Littlehampton locals, one popular community page posted on Facebook in August: “Although the market doesn’t start till 9am, I can confirm that for the first time in a very long time, our little town has a green grocer and butchers!”.
One shopper with mobility challenges shared: “It was great to get down to the market today and see it was so busy. I have missed having a stroll around town the past couple of years due to mobility and health issues, and have missed having a wonder, browsing around the market”.
Another reported: “Butchers sold out of sausages, bacon, and chicken by 11am, and the green grocer’s very busy. Amazing to see our town buzzing and alive”. And one more confirmed: “We bought some lovely fruit and veg. The strawberries, though small, are super tasty and sweet.” On the whole, the feedback appears overwhelmingly encouraging.
In a different post from the Littlehampton page, one local resident commented: “More and more shops are coming to the area, the market has created a great vibe and more positivity for Littlehampton.”
Whilst another contributed: “For all the naysayers – think about the glass being half full instead of always half empty. Littlehampton has had a huge upsurge. Rejoice in it and try and support the shops.”
Regarding security concerns, in March, Chief Inspector William Keating Jones, district commander for Arun and Chichester, stated: “Our officers are working hard with partner agencies to address the causes and tackle problems caused by antisocial behaviour and crime.”
He continued: “Our officers are working hard alongside partner agencies to address the causes and to tackle the problems caused by antisocial behaviour and crime.”
“Every Friday, from 9am to 3pm, the High Street comes alive with the bustling market. Just a few days ago, Littlehampton Town Council took to Facebook to encourage locals to “come along, explore the stalls and support all our amazing local businesses!”
Earlier this year, Arun Council put out an online call for new operators, outlining their vision for the revamped market: “The proposed market will offer up to twenty 3m x 3m pitches along the central pedestrianised high street, to assist the revitalisation of the area with a carefully curated selection of stalls that boost the local economy and attract increased footfall.”
Councillor Billy Blanchard-Cooper, Chair of the Licensing Committee at Arun District Council, said: “This is about curating a market offer that enhances what’s already here. We want to create a vibrant, welcoming space that supports local businesses, attracts visitors, and adds real value to the town centre.”
“We’re encouraging quality market operators to come forward and tell us about their offer, and we will only select those who can genuinely contribute to the town’s future and help us build something special for the community.”
Mass Gen Z demonstrations in Nepal bring down the government.
Curfews imposed. Soldiers on the streets. A prime minister forced to resign. After a social media blackout and years of corruption charges, the protests turned violent, leaving dozens dead.
Nepal’s army is now in talks with demonstrators to decide on an interim leader after KP Sharma Oli stepped down during the unrest. Why are so many young people angry — and what comes next for Nepal?
Kyiv, Ukraine – Evhen Ihnatov was a young teenager when Russian forces occupied his hometown.
In the eight months of 2022 when the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was overtaken, his mother was killed and his brother was forcibly held in Russia.
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“We buried her in the countryside. Grandma was beside herself,” Ihnatov told Al Jazeera of the tragedy that befell the family when his mother, Tamara, died. He was aged just 13.
On October 6, 2022, Tamara, 54, had boarded a minibus that was ultimately blown to pieces on a bridge by a misdirected Ukrainian missile.
His brother left for a Russian camp on the day she died.
Now 16 and living in Mykolaiv, studying in a college to become a car mechanic and working part time in a pizzeria, Ihnatov has spoken to Al Jazeera about life in occupied Ukraine.
After graduation, he said he might sign a contract with the army.
But that ambition felt impossible when he was living under Russian control, a period he survived with angst, the denial of all things Russian and a sense of dark humour.
Kherson is the administrative capital of the eponymous southern region the size of Belgium, which mostly lies on the left bank of the Dnipro River, which bisects Ukraine.
Russians occupied the region and Kherson city, which sits on the Dnipro’s right bank, in early March 2022 and rolled out in November that year.
According to Ihnatov, other witnesses and rights groups, Ukrainians were mistreated, assaulted, abducted and tortured from day one. Russia regularly denies intentionally harming civilians.
“They beat people, a real lot,” Ihnatov said. “Those who really stood up are no more.”
Plastic ties used for torture and a broken chair are seen in a basement of an office building where Ukrainian prosecutors said 30 people were held for two months during the Russian occupation of Kherson, Ukraine [File: Anna Voitenko/Reuters]
A former Ukrainian serviceman he knew was assaulted so violently that he spent a week in an intensive care unit, Ihnatov said.
In the first weeks of occupation, Kherson city was rocked by protest rallies as Ukrainians tried to resist the new rulers. Moscow-appointed authorities soon packed hundreds of people into prisons or basements in large buildings.
“Detained for minor or imaginary transgressions, they were kept for months and used for forced labour or sexual violence,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a historian with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.
Survivors have said they were forced to dig trenches, clean streets, trim trees and bushes, and haul garbage.
At least 17 women and men were raped by Russian soldiers, Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s prosecutor general at the time, said in May 2023.
Rallies stopped because of the crackdown, but most of the locals remained pro-Ukrainian, Ihnatov believes. He said the fewer pro-Russian locals were mostly elderly and nostalgic about their Soviet-era youth, attracted to the idea of Russia because of Moscow’s promises of higher pensions.
But to him, the Russian soldiers did not look like “liberators”.
He said many drank heavily and sported prison tattoos. In July 2022, the Wagner mercenary group began recruiting tens of thousands of inmates from Russian prisons with promises of presidential pardons and high pay.
“They look at you like you’re meat, like you’re chicken,” Ihnatov said.
He said ethnic Russian soldiers or ethnic Ukrainians from the separatist region of Donbas in the east whom he saw several times a day on patrols or just moving around were often hostile towards Ukrainian teenagers. Ethnic Chechens were more relaxed and gave them sweets or food, he said.
Fearful of Russian forces, the Ihnatovs – Evhen’s seven siblings and their single, disabled mother who occasionally worked as a seamstress – moved to their grandmother’s house outside Kherson. While still occupied, the village was not as heavily patrolled as the city.
There was a cow, some ducks and a kitchen garden, but they were cash-strapped and moved back to the city right in time for the new school year that began on September 1, 2022.
But Russian-appointed authorities were facing an education disaster.
Many teachers had quit to protest against the Moscow-imposed curriculum, and enrolment fell as some parents preferred to take a risk and keep their children in Ukrainian schools online.
A Russian curriculum was introduced in all of Kherson’s 174 public schools, and by August, Russia-appointed officials and masked soldiers began knocking on doors, threatening parents and offering them monthly subsidies of $35 per child who would go to a Russia-run school.
Propaganda newspapers are seen inside a school used by Russian soldiers as a base in the settlement of Bilozerka in the Kherson region on December 2, 2022 [Anna Voitenko/Reuters]
Ihnatov’s eldest sister, Tetiana, enrolled her school-aged siblings.
Students at Ihnatov’s school were herded into the schoolyard to listen to the Russian anthem. But he and his friends “just turned around and went to have a smoke”, he said.
The school was not far from his apartment. He remembered seeing about 50 children staring at Russian flags and coats of arms on the school building.
His class had 22 students. They were surprised by an oversimplified approach of new teachers who treated the students like they knew nothing.
“They explained everything, every little thing,” he said.
Communication between students changed. Their conversations became cautious, and they did not discuss sensitive issues, worried others would overhear them.
“Everything was happening outside the school,” he said.
The new curriculum was taught in Russian and emphasised Russia’s “greatness” while Ukrainian was reduced to two “foreign language” lessons a week.
“Everything was about references to Russia,” Ihnatov said.
However, to his clique, Russia’s efforts appeared half-hearted.
Teachers were more interested in fake reporting and just gave away A’s, he said.
“They didn’t force us to study, couldn’t make us,” he said.
“I’d crank up the music in my earphones, didn’t care about what they were saying, because anyway I’d get an A. We got good grades for nothing. They wanted to show that everyone studies well,” he said.
Only his history teacher would confront his group of friends while “the rest were scared,” he said.
Their rebelliousness could have cost them more than reprimands had Russians stayed in Kherson longer, according to observers.
“What they did only worked because the occupation was short term. Had the occupation gone on, the screws would have gotten tighter,” Victoria Novikova, a senior researcher with The Reckoning Project, a global team of journalists and lawyers documenting, publicising and building cases of Russia’s alleged war crimes in Ukraine, told Al Jazeera.
After school, Ihnatov took odd jobs in grocery shops or the city market and hung out with his friends.
Ukraine ‘never existed’
The new teachers paid special attention to history classes. Instructors from Russia or annexed Crimea were promised as much as $130 a day for teaching in Kherson, the RBK-Ukraine news website reported.
New textbooks “proved” that Ukraine was an “artificial state” whose statehood “never existed” before the 1991 Soviet collapse.
The erasure of Ukrainian identity went hand in hand with the alleged plunder of cultural riches.
Russians robbed the giant Kherson regional library of first editions of Ukrainian classics and other valuable folios and works of art after the building was repeatedly shelled and staffers were denied entry, its director said.
“My eyes don’t want to see it. My heart doesn’t want to accept it,” Nadiya Korotun told Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, thousands of children in occupied areas were reportedly taken to summer camps in Crimea or Russia – and never came back as part of what Kyiv calls a campaign of abduction and brainwashing.
Kyiv has accused Moscow of forcibly taking 20,000 Ukrainian children away and placing them in foster families or orphanages.
In 2023, The Hague-based International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the “unlawful deportation and transfer of children”.
Liudmyla Shumkova said she spent 54 days in Russian captivity in Kherson [File: Anna Voitenko/Reuters]
Some of the abducted kids “broke”, a presidential adviser on children’s rights said.
“They are really maximally broken. Russians do absolutely everything to achieve that,” Daria Herasymchuk told Al Jazeera. “There were cases of Stockholm syndrome when [the abducted children] became Russian patriots.”
Ihnatov’s elder brother Vlad, 16 at the time, was among those who went to a camp – and was forcibly kept in Russia for a year until his sister travelled there to get him back.
In an unfortunate twist of fate, he had left for the camp hours before his mother was killed.
He was transported to a summer camp on Russia’s Black Sea coast and then transferred to the city of Yevpatoria in annexed Crimea, where he continued school – and was not allowed to return home.
His sister Tetiana travelled there to spend a week in a “basement” while Russian security officers “checked her”, Ihnatov said.
They returned to Ukraine via Belarus and Poland and “don’t talk much” about the experience, he said.
A month after his mother’s death, Moscow decided to withdraw its forces from Kherson city and the region’s right-bank area.
Ukrainian forces were greeted like long-lost family.
“The liberation was about nothing but joy, freedom and joy,” Ihnatov said.
But Russians holed up on the left bank and began shelling the city and flying drones to hunt down civilians.
“In a week or two, the cruellest shelling began. And then – fear,” Ihnatov said.
His sister decided to relocate the family to the Kyiv-controlled city of Mykolaiv, where they live in a rented three-bedroom apartment.
Olha, 26, said she was beaten, given electric shocks and subjected to forced nudity and torture by occupying Russian forces in Kherson [File: Anna Voitenko/Reuters]
Cardi B has prevailed in a civil lawsuit brought against her by a Beverly Hills security guard after two days of testimony from the rapper that was sometimes colorful and drew laughter from jurors.
Emani Ellis sued Cardi B for $24 million, accusing her of assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress in the aftermath of a confrontation in a hallway outside of an obstetrician’s office. Ellis claimed that, during the set-to, the rapper scratched her with a long nail extension, leaving a facial scar.
The hip-hop star was found not liable on all counts by jurors after less than an hour of deliberations.
“I swear to God, I will say it on my deathbed, I did not touch that woman,” Cardi B said outside the courthouse following the conclusion of the trial. She added that she had missed her kids’ first day of school because of the civil trial.
“I want to thank my lawyers,” she said, “I want to thank the jurors, I want to thank the judge, and I want to thank the respectful press.”
Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar, testified that she never touched, scratched or spat at the security guard, who she believed was taking video of her with her cellphone. The rapper was four months pregnant and had an appointment on the day of the incident — Feb. 24, 2018.
Ellis worked as a security guard at the Beverly Hills building where Cardi B had her medical appointment, and she testified that she was doing her rounds when she saw the celebrity exit the elevator. She testified that she was overcome with excitement and declared, “Wow, it’s Cardi B.”
Ellis alleged that the performer then turned to her and said, “Why the f— are you telling people you’ve seen me?” Cardi B then accused her of trying to spread news about her being at the doctor’s office, she testified during the four-day trial.
Cardi B cursed at her, used the N-word and other slurs, called her names, threatened her job, body-shamed her and mocked her career, Ellis said. She alleged Cardi B spat on her, took a swing at her and scratched her left cheek with a 2- to 3-inch fingernail.
The rapper blasted the plaintiff in an Alhambra courtroom, saying she was looking for a payout. Cardi B said the pair went chest-to-chest and exchanged angry words but nothing more.
She told jurors that she said to Ellis: “B—, get the f— out of my face. Why are you in my face? Why are you recording me? Ain’t you supposed to be security?’
“I’m thinking to myself, ‘Girl is big!’” she testified.” “She’s got big black boots on. I’m like, ‘D—, the hell am i gonna do now?’”
The rapper said that she’s 5 feet 3 and was 130 pounds and pregnant at the time of the incident. She wouldn’t have tried to fight the guard, who was far larger, she said.
Asked if she was “disabled” during the incident, Cardi B’s comments drew laughter in the courtroom: “At that moment, when you’re pregnant, I’m very disabled,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “You want me to tell you the things I can’t do?”
Tierra Malcolm, a receptionist for Dr. David Finke, with whom Cardi B had an appointment that day, told jurors that she saw Ellis corner the celebrity. The receptionist said she then got between them, and the guard reached for the rapper. Malcolm said she ended up with a cut on her own forehead.
Finke testified that he saw the guard cause that injury and also hit the receptionist’s shoulder. He further said that Ellis had no injuries. Both testified they never saw Cardi B hit Ellis.
During closing arguments on Tuesday, Ellis’ attorney, Ron Rosen Janfaza, told jurors, “Cardi B needs to be held accountable.” “There was no video camera … so really it comes down to one thing — do you believe, Ms. Ellis, a guard with a good record? She is a model citizen,” he told jurors.
Rosen Janfaza noted that, under cross-examination, the rapper acknowledged that she and Ellis were chest-to-chest as expletives were exchanged, and that alone is an unwelcome touch and battery on his client, he said. He told jurors that the receptionist and doctor did not see the 40 to 50 seconds where Cardi B labeled his client fat, spat on her and took a swing at her.
He said his client suffered for seven years, and “this was a violent attack.”
Cardis B’s attorney, Peter Anderson, said jurors needed to employ common sense to reject the security guard’s story and that the preponderance of evidence showed his client did nothing more than yell and curse, and “that isn’t something you can sue over.”
“The question is whether Cardi ever struck the plaintiff,” Anderson said. And the evidence is overwhelming that she did not, he said. Anderson said that the guard testified that she never made a police report, did not seek immediate medical attention, did not even use a Band-Aid on the scratch, but went home and took a nap.
A group of between 30 to 50 critically ill and injured Palestinian children will be evacuated from Gaza to the UK for medical treatment in the coming weeks, the BBC understands.
They would be the first children brought to the UK for treatment as part of a government operation being coordinated by the Foreign Office, Home Office and Department of Health.
The children will be selected by the World Health Organization and will travel with family members via a third country, where biometric data will be collected.
It comes after some MPs wrote a letter to the government urging them to bring sick and injured children from Gaza to the UK “without delay”.
Some Gazan children have already been brought privately to the UK for medical treatment through an initiative by the organisation Project Pure Hope (PPH), but the government has so far not evacuated any through its own scheme during the conflict.
Earlier in August, the government said that plans to bring more children to the UK for medical treatment were being carried out “at pace”.
It is unclear which third country the children will transit through on their way to the UK, exactly how many children will be involved or whether further groups will follow.
Given the challenge of returning children to Gaza, it is understood some may enter the asylum system after completing treatment.
More than 50,000 children have been killed or injured since the war in Gaza begun in October 2023, according to the UN charity Unicef.
Since the start of the war, the UK has provided funds so that injured Gazans can be treated by hospitals in the region and has also been working with Jordan to airdrop aid into the territory.
The Home Office previously said biometric checks would be carried out before children and carers before they travel.
Severely ill Palestinians have been evacuated from Gaza to other countries since the start of the war, including more than 180 adults and children to Italy.
The UN has warned of widespread malnutrition in Gaza, with experts backed by the organisation warning in a report last month that the “worst-case scenario” of famine is playing out in Gaza.
Israel has insisted there are no restrictions on aid deliveries into Gaza, and has accused the UN and other aid agencies of failing to deliver it.
More than 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military operation began, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Israel launched its offensive in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
The Lionesses arrived back in the UK to continue their celebrations, after becoming the first English team to win a major football tournament on foreign soil.
England cemented their place in history on Sunday with a stunning penalty-shootout victory over Spain to retain their European title at Euro 2025.
The triumphant team were welcomed back at Southend Airport by jubilant fans, before taking a coach to No 10 Downing Street, for a special reception hosted by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.
Defence Minister John Healey says about 4,500 people are in Britain or in transit under the secret programme.
The United Kingdom set up a secret plan to resettle thousands of Afghan people in Britain after an official accidentally disclosed the personal details of more than 33,000 people, putting them at risk of reprisals from the Taliban, court documents showed.
A judge at London’s High Court said in a May 2024 judgement made public on Tuesday that about 20,000 people may have to be offered relocation to Britain, a move that would likely cost “several billion pounds”.
Britain’s current Defence Minister John Healey told Parliament that around 4,500 affected people “are in Britain or in transit … at a cost of around 400 million pounds [$540m]” under the programme known as the Afghan Response Route.
The government is also facing lawsuits from those affected by the data breach.
A Ministry of Defence-commissioned review of the data breach, a summary of which was also published on Tuesday, said more than 16,000 people affected by it had been relocated to the UK as of May this year.
The breach revealed the names of Afghans who had helped British forces in Afghanistan before they withdrew from the country in chaotic circumstances in 2021.
The details emerged after a legal ruling known as a superinjunction was lifted. The injunction had been granted in 2023 after the Ministry of Defence argued that a public disclosure of the breach could put people at risk of extra-judicial killing or serious violence by the Taliban.
The data set contained personal information of nearly 19,000 Afghans who had applied to be relocated to Britain and their families.
It was released in error in early 2022, before the Defence Ministry spotted the breach in August 2023, when part of the data set was published on Facebook.
The former Conservative government obtained the injunction the following month.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s centre-left government, which was elected last July, launched a review into the injunction, the breach and the relocation scheme, which found that although Afghanistan remains dangerous, there was little evidence of intent by the Taliban to conduct a campaign of retribution.
Healey said the Afghan Response Route has now been closed and apologised for the data breach, which “should never have happened”.
About 36,000 more Afghans have been relocated to the UK under other resettlement routes.
British troops were sent to Afghanistan as part of a deployment of the United States-led so-called “War on Terror” against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
At the peak of the operation, there were almost 10,000 British troops in the country.
