Not a United Kingdom

Former British fighter pilots are training the Chinese to shoot down Western aircraft, officials warned last night. Up to 30 pilots have recently moved to China after securing £250,000-a-year contracts to teach Western flying procedures, it was revealed.

Nicola Sturgeon today claimed the UK is 'fundamentally on the wrong path' as the SNP leader continued her fresh push for Scottish independence. The Scottish First Minister insisted an independent Scotland would be able to have its own Scottish pound and dismissed suggestions that Scots would be required to use passports to get into England as 'utter nonsense'. But Ms Sturgeon admitted there would be other border checks for trade between Scotland and England.

A primary school teacher who lost her job after she refused to address an eight-year-old pupil with male pronouns has launched legal action against the school's governors and the local council. The anonymous teacher is bringing a judicial review after she was sacked by the school earlier this year, with the case to be heard in the High Court in Birmingham next week.

Wheelie bins could be a thing of the past as councils across the UK consider whether to roll out European-style 'super-bins' after a successful launch in Liverpool. The huge underground bins, a common feature in European cities such as Amsterdam, can hold up to 5,000 litres of waste - equating to a week's worth of rubbish from 20 houses.

A massive £5.5bn was set aside for the Ajax light tanks . But the programme has been a disaster that has been plagued by glitches, with prototypes having damaged the hearing of the troops who tested it and made other personnel sick . Now, with £3.2bn of taxpayers' cash having been pumped into the scheme - which has so far failed to deliver a single one of the promised 589 tanks into service - fresh question marks are swirling whether it is time for the Ajax to be axed entirely. It comes as the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, today warned 'there will be more difficult decisions to be made on both tax and spending' following his predecessor's disastrous 'mini-budget' last month, which caused financial chaos and led to pound plummeting in value.

Three thugs caught on CCTV fleeing a shooting where a 13-year-old boy was left paralysed after being shot in the spine with a homemade gun have been jailed for life. Zidann Edwards and Diago Anderson, both 20, and 17-year-old Tafique Thomas gunned down the schoolboy after he 'strayed onto their turf' in Birmingham. The victim and his friends were on their way to get food when he was attacked in an underpass at Hockley Circus on November 18 last year. A court heard the teen was shot because he crossed into the territory of a notorious gang called Armed Response. Following the chilling attack, Edwards even made a drill rap music video expressing his regret that he had failed to kill the young boy. The victim managed to call 999 despite his injuries to tell the ambulance service he had been shot.

Albanian migrants are working at cannabis farms within three days of crossing the Channel, an investigation has found. The men are being actively recruited by drug lords to cultivate cannabis in empty houses and industrial buildings that have been converted into production sites following their release from detention.

Eco zealots Just Stop Oil blocked Park Lane and sprayed paint over an Aston Martin showroom in their latest display - hours after they were branded 'thugs and vandals' by the Home Secretary.

A group of geology students almost became history after they risked their lives by standing under a fragile cliff prone to rockfalls. The 15 university students ignored warning signs about getting too close to the 150ft sandstone cliff at West Bay in Dorset during a field trip to the Jurassic Coast. Wearing yellow hard hats, the group huddled together by the cliff face to examine some of the 180 million year old rocks seemingly oblivious to the danger they were in. A shocked resident observed them for about 20 minutes.

A family has revealed how their beloved three-year-old chihuahua was mauled to death by two 'vicious' dogs while out on an early morning walk. Tracey Logan, 51, was out for a walk with her chihuahua Belle on Wednesday morning when two dogs raced around a corner and attacked her pet. Her dog suffered a punctured lung and died at the scene in Seacroft,

More than one in ten clamps attached to the wheels of untaxed vehicles in the last five years have been forcefully removed or damaged when vigilante motorists have tried to extract them, according to official figures.1.

CCTV captured the horrific moment a motorcyclist hit three young schoolgirls while driving nearly double the speed limit in a hit-and-run. Oskars Bolsteins, 27, has been jailed after ploughing into the trio while driving 55mph in the 30mph in Southampton on August 1.