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Ken Livingstone is planning a "massive festival" across London to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution. The event, to be staged in 2009, will involve street parties, sports venues and some of London's leading museums as well as the closure of Trafalgar Square. Although the Mayor's office refused to provide budget estimates, it could cost up to £2 million. The festival was agreed on the Mayor's controversial trip to Cuba last month. But Mr Livingstone's lavishing of public money to honour one of the last dictatorships in Latin America was condemned today. "Forking out to celebrate a...

Left-wing London Mayor Ken Livingstone has launched an astonishing anti-US rant while sunning himself in Cuba. He praised communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro and denounced President Bush. And he claimed Cuba had 'been able to give its people the best standard of health care, brilliant education', despite an 'illegal economic blockade by the US'.

London mayor blasts US during Cuba trip Reuters    Havana: Like many events in communist Cuba, a cricket match for children on Saturday turned into a denunciation of the United States, but this time from London's leftist Mayor Ken Livingstone, not Cuban leader Fidel Castro.While Cubans played a game that is a novelty in their baseball-mad homeland, Livingstone praised Castro and blasted US policy toward the small nation 145km off its shores."What's amazing here is you've got a country that's suffered an illegal economic blockade by the United States for almost half a century and yet it's been able...

Michael Stone, the most infamous hitman of the Northern Ireland conflict, has confessed to planning to murder Ken Livingstone. The former Loyalist assassin has revealed in an interview how he stalked London's Mayor when he was leader of the GLC in the Eighties. He was within three days of carrying out the plan, he said, but it was called off because the operation had been penetrated by an informer. Stone, 51, has never told the full story of the plot, although it was known Mr Livingstone had been a target of Loyalist paramilitaries because of his support for the Republican...

Trafalgar Square will be hosting celebrations to mark the Muslim festival of Eid. Live entertainment, a street bazaar and exhibitions and displays will feature at the free event which is taking place between 1300 and 1700 BST. The event has been organised by the Muslim Council of Britain and the Mayor of London. Eid marks the end of Ramadan - the month of fasting observed by millions of Muslims worldwide.

The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, today said the row over whether Muslims should wear veils had parallels with the hounding of Jews in Nazi Germany. Speaking at the launch of the first ever report into Muslims living in London, Mr Livingstone said much of the ongoing debate about Muslim dress implied the community "was somehow at fault" for being at the centre of the storm.... It is quite clear that the problems we have in Britain are not because Muslims wish to be separate ... I think the entire debate has been totally lopsided as though Muslims were somehow...

The Mayor of London has condemned what he said was greater publicity given to Muslim extremists over and above non-Islamic groups. Ken Livingstone told BBC radio too much emphasis was placed on Muslim extremism while the vast majority of faiths wanted to live together in harmony. He said a situation had been reached where any comment by politicians on Muslims had "front page coverage". His claims were endorsed by a spokesman from the London Muslim Centre. The Mayor told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "There's a small - we're talking about a couple of hundred, no more than that...

Ken Livingstone last night sensationally accused the head of Britain's main race relations body of flirting with the BNP. London's maverick mayor said Trevor Phillips was "pandering to the Right" by criticising the failings of multiculturalism. He took the Commission for Racial Equality boss to task for speaking out against decades of Government-led attempts to promote differences between ethnic groups. Mr Phillips, a prominent figure in London Labour circles, has infuriated his political friends with his willingness to challenge some of the most cherished beliefs of the left. He is one of several prominent black Britons, including Archbishop of York...

LONDON -- Like much of Europe, Britain's demographic composition is changing radically and very fast. At the most conservative estimate, its population of sixty million will rise over the next three decades by six or seven million, with 83 per cent of that new growth coming from immigration and most of that from the third world. The undesirability of such a drastic -- and never debated -- development is one of Britain's great Unmentionables. For decades, immigration has been a taboo subject in Britain. Large scale immigration from the 1960s onwards, first from the Caribbean and then from the Asian...

It is the ultimate list of rogue states: the countries whose diplomats repeatedly refuse to pay the congestion charge stumped up by every ordinary motorist in London. And it is no surprise to the mayor, Ken Livingstone, that the serial offender topping the non-payment charts for the last six months is the United States, whose ambassador he memorably likened to a "chiselling little crook" for his refusal to pay the £8-a-day charge. Narrowly ahead of other paragons of international respectability - Nigeria, Angola and Sudan - the US embassy racked up £271,000 in fines over the last six months, according...

LONDON, England (AP) -- The U.S. ambassador to Britain was behaving "like some chiseling little crook" in a dispute over whether embassy cars should pay the capital's £8 ($14) toll, London's mayor said Monday. The embassy stopped paying the fee last July, shortly before Ambassador Robert Tuttle took up his post. It argues that the toll on those driving in central London during business hours is a tax that diplomats should not have to pay. Mayor Ken Livingstone's office says the fee, known as the "congestion charge" and aimed at cutting traffic, is a payment for a service, not a...

London's mayor has become embroiled in a new row after criticising two Jewish businessmen involved in building a key facility for the 2012 Olympics. Ken Livingstone attacked David and Simon Reuben for their role in an ongoing dispute about the Stratford City development in east London. He suggested the brothers "go back (to their own country) and see if they can do better under the ayatollahs". The mayor made the comments during a speech at City Hall. 'Major problem' The mayor's office said there was nothing further to add. The mayor is understood to think the consortium behind the project,...

London -- BRITISH JOURNALISTS were hammering Prime Minister Tony Blair at his monthly press conference at No. 10 Downing Street Thursday for his role in some political scandal. While commentators were mulling whether the latest news spelled The End of Tony Blair -- a question they pose monthly -- I asked the prime minister about Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London. Last month, the three-man, unelected Ajudication Panel of England suspended Livingstone for four weeks, starting March 1, because Livingstone was "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" when he likened a Jewish reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard. Livingstone brought the...

LONDON (AP) -- Terrorists tried to attack London eight times between the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and last July 7, when suicide bombers killed dozens on the city's transport system, London's mayor said Monday. Ken Livingstone said there had been two attempted attacks since July 7, including a failed attack on the transport network on July 21. Livingstone did not provide details of the attempted attacks, but said those who threaten London comprise small groups of disaffected people who are fairly disorganized.

A leading Islamic organisation was today kicking off its nationwide awareness week in the capital in an effort to promote better understanding of the religion and its historical links with Britain. Mayor Ken Livingstone was launching Islam Awareness Week at a ceremony at City Hall with the message "One London". Guest speakers at the ceremony include author and leading historian Professor Nabil Matar and secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain Sir Iqbal Sacranie. Shafeeq Sadiq, national co-ordinator of Islam Awareness Week, said: "We need to remember the positive spirit that embraced the nation, and especially the capital, after London...

Wednesday, 2 November 2005, 14:04 GMT Mayor blames rap for gun deaths The behaviour of rap stars who glamorise violence is leading to children being killed on Britain's streets, London's mayor has said. Ken Livingstone said the actions of some rappers made carrying guns and knives fashionable. He was speaking on Wednesday at the Calling the Shots campaign launch. More than 300 secondary schools in London have been sent multi-media packs encouraging youngsters to develop a lifestyle away from gun culture. Mr Livingstone said violent crime was the only type of offence that had not fallen in the last couple...

Mayor in row over memorial service ANGUS HOWARTH A ROW broke out yesterday over calls for the families of the 7 July suicide bombers to be invited to a national memorial service for the victims. Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, said it would be wrong to turn the bombers' parents and relatives away if they wanted to share the grief of Londoners. He was backed by the former hostage Terry Waite and by two Church of England bishops, who said the invitation would send a message of reconciliation to the Muslim community. But furious Whitehall officials in charge of...

Support the police, treat Muslims with respect and pull out of Iraq Ken Livingstone Thursday August 4, 2005 The Guardian It is four weeks since bombers indiscriminately killed and maimed ordinary Londoners. Protecting London from terrorists requires the best possible policing - which, in turn, needs the greatest possible flow of information from all communities. It also demands that we shrink the pool of the alienated that bombers draw on by treating all communities as equal parts of British society - not only theoretically, but in reality. And it means withdrawing from Iraq. All are interrelated. Acceptance that the invasion...

LONDON MAYOR Ken Livingstone was positively Churchillian in his response to the July 7 bombings. Rather than blaming British or Israeli policies for terrorist attacks on innocent civilians -- his usual M.O. -- Livingstone condemned the bombings as "mass murder" aimed "at ordinary working- class Londoners" on the day of the attacks. This week, even before Thursday's attempted bombings, Livingstone was back to his old nasty self. On Wednesday, he told BBC where he placed blame for the bombings: "We have just had 80 years of Western intervention in predominantly Arab lands, because of the Western need for oil." Red...

(Matthew d'Ancona is deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph) Alas for Mr Livingstone, his stab at humour on the Today programme went disastrously wrong. The mayor's point was that the media should end their fixation with what he called "the most minority strand amongst the Muslim community, people whose followers are numbered in tens, not even hundreds". The militants, he said, represented mainstream Muslim opinion no more than E L Wisty's World Domination League "represented the English People". This was in answer to a question about pictures on the front page of yesterday's Daily Telegraph. The two Muslims depicted were...