Former Arsenal footballer Thomas Partey has been charged with five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault.

The offences are reported to have taken place between 2021-2022, the Metropolitan Police said.

The charges involve three women with two counts of rape relating to one woman, three counts of rape in connection to a second woman and one count of sexual assault linked to a third woman.

The contract of the 32-year-old footballer, from Hertfordshire, ended with Arsenal on Monday after playing with the team since 2020. BBC News has contacted the team for comment.

The charges follow an investigation by detectives, which started in February 2022 after police first received a report of rape.

Det Supt Andy Furphy, who is leading the investigation, said: "Our priority remains providing support to the women who have come forward.

"We would ask anyone who has been impacted by this case, or anyone who has information, to speak with our team. You can contact detectives about this investigation by emailing CIT@met.police.uk"

Mr Partey is expected to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Tuesday 5 August.

He joined Arsenal for £45.3m from Atletico Madrid in October 2020, made 35 top-flight appearances last season and scored four goals as the London club finished second in the Premier League.

He also played 12 times in the Champions League as the Gunners reached the semi-finals before being knocked out by eventual winners Paris St-Germain.

Overall, he made 130 Premier League appearances for Mikel Arteta's side, scoring nine goals.

A council has removed all transgender-related books from the children's sections of its libraries, its leader has announced.

In a post on social media, Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran said the books were to be removed with immediate effect in a "victory for common sense in Kent".

Paul Webb, Reform UK's communities portfolio holder who oversees libraries, said the move came after a "concerned member of the public" contacted him.

The Liberal Democrat leader of the opposition, Antony Hook, said: "It is bizarre that the leader of the council is making announcements on social media, rather than to the council."

It is unknown how many books are to be removed or how the council will classify transgender-related books.

The authority runs 99 community libraries and five mobile library vans.

Defending the decision, Webb said: "In our society, children are quite rightly and properly protected from items and actions that could cause them harm – for example alcohol, cigarettes and gambling.

"My fellow Reform members and I believe that our young people should be protected from exposure to potentially harmful ideologies and beliefs such as those held by the trans lobbyists."

When the BBC asked if Reform UK had carried out an assessment to understand the impact of removing the books, Webb said: "As far as impact assessments are concerned, I would have thought that question should have been asked before these books were placed in the children's section to begin with."

Ms Kemkaran added: "Telling children they're in the wrong body is wrong and simply unacceptable."

Hook said he had written to the head of Kent library services to ask for an update on what books were to be removed.

He said: "The announcement made by Ms Kemkaran is vague. She does not specify what books she is referring to. This needs to be properly explained."

Meanwhile, Labour MP for Chatham and Aylesford Tristian Osbourne has called the decision "unedifying gender baiting of the LGBT community".

'Unsafe, unwelcome and silenced'

Steven Pullen, founder and director of Swale Pride, described the move as "deeply upsetting".

He said: "It emboldens anti-trans rhetoric and contributes to a culture where marginalised people feel unsafe, unwelcome, and silenced."

And Erin Strawbridge, the manager of the Folkestone Bookshop, an LGBTQ+ bookshop, told BBC Radio Kent: "Censorship does not stop people from learning information but it does send the message, and it's sending a message to the young people of Kent that they're not safe and they're not welcome if they're LGBT or trans.

"It just pushes kids into the closet, into worse mental health situations. It's just going to scare young people."

Jeremy Corbyn has said "discussions are ongoing" after ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana announced she was quitting the party to co-lead a new left-wing party with him.

The ex-Labour leader congratulated Sultana on her "principled decision" to leave and said he was "delighted that she will help us build a real alternative".

He said "the democratic foundations of a new kind of political party will soon take shape" but stopped short of providing details as to who would lead it.

Talks have been going on under the radar for some time to turn the small group of independent pro-Gaza MPs, co-ordinated by Corbyn, into an actual political party which could stand candidates at next year's local elections.

But the BBC has been told the question of leadership and the exact timing of the announcement had not been settled when Sultana made her declaration on Thursday evening.

Some of those behind the project wanted a democratic conference to decide the leadership question.

Some Labour MPs on the left of the party have praised Sultana but so far none has said they will be joining the new set up.

Ian Lavery, Labour MP for Blyth, told the BBC's World at One: "Perhaps she thinks she hasn't left the Labour party, but the Labour party has left her.

"People are really fed up of the two party system with regards to Labour and with regards to Conservatives."

"And I think that there is a huge appetite for a left wing alternative to the two mainstream parties."

Responding to Sultana's decision, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the MP had "always taken a very different view" from the Labour government on a range of issues.

Defending the government, she pointed to falling NHS waiting times, additional neighbourhood police officers and extending free school meals as examples of "real changes that have a real impact on people's lives".

A brawl filmed at Manchester airport last summer followed an attack on a member of the public at Starbucks, a jury has heard.

Brothers Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 20, and Muhammad Amaad, 26, are said to have used a "high level of violence" in assaulting three police officers in Terminal 2 on July 23.

Police were at the airport responding to an earlier incident at the Starbucks cafe where Amaaz headbutted a man and punched him, Liverpool Crown Court heard. Both brothers, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, deny the allegations.

Opening the prosecution case on Friday, Paul Greaney KC said police later traced the brothers at the terminal's car park payment area.

Three officers, PC Zachary Marsden and PC Ellie Cook - both armed - and PC Lydia Ward, unarmed, approached the defendants, he said.

Mr Greaney went on: "The officers attempted to move Mohammed Fahir Amaaz away from a payment machine in order to arrest him, but he resisted, and his brother Muhammad Amaad intervened."

He said they both assaulted PC Marsden.

"In the moments that followed, the first defendant also assaulted PC Cook and then PC Ward too, breaking her nose," Mr Greaney said.

"The defendants used a high level of violence."

Amaaz is alleged to have assaulted PC Marsden and PC Ward, causing them actual bodily harm.

He is also accused of the assault of PC Cook and the earlier assault of Abdulkareem Ismaeil at Starbucks.

Amaad, 26, is alleged to have assaulted PC Marsden, causing actual bodily harm.

Mr Greaney said the defendants had travelled to the airport with their young nephew to collect their mother who was due to arrive back on a flight from Qatar.

He said it was clear that "something happened" involving Abdulkareem Ismaeil, who was on the same flight as the pair's mother, that "made [her] unhappy".

She pointed out Mr Ismaeil, who was in Starbucks with his family, to her sons as they were walking through the terminal.

"At just after 8.20pm, the defendants entered Starbucks and confronted Abdulkareem Ismaei," Mr Greaney said.

"During that confrontation, Mohammed Fahir Amaaz delivered a headbutt to the face of Abdulkareem Ismaeil and punched him, then attempted to deliver other blows, all in front of a number of children.

"The prosecution case is that this was obviously unlawful conduct."

Mr Greaney told jurors the prosecution's position was this was "not a complicated case" as the events were captured on CCTV.

"So you will not have to depend only on the recollections of witnesses. You will also be able to see with your own eyes what happened," he said.

Mr Greaney said the defendants would say "that at all stages they were acting in lawful self-defence or in defence of the other".

"Our prediction is that you will readily conclude that the defendants were not acting in lawful self-defence and that their conduct was unlawful," he added.

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