BBC Weather

Tonight will be cold with clear periods and patchy cloud. The south-easterly wind will ease a little later in the night.

Minimum temperature: -3 to 0°C (27 to 32°F).

The New York Times is sent thousands of tales of accidental eye contact on the Tube and badly made tea.

The mother of a 14-year-old boy who died while playing football has said she is "in awe" of her son.

Luca Campanaro died after colliding with another player while in goal for Bedgrove Dynamos in Hillingdon, west London, on Sunday.

Weeks before his death, Luca had decided he wanted to donate his organs after watching Channel 5 transplant programme Gift of Life.

His mum, Jo Camapanaro, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, said she knew it was a serious injury "from the minute he went down and didn't get back up".

Image source, Met Police

Two teenagers have been charged with murder following a fatal stabbing in south-east London.

Ayodeji Habeeb Azeez, 22, from Dagenham, died of his wounds after the attack in Samos Road, Anerley, Bromley, on 4 November.

A girl, 16, and a boy 17, have were charged on Thursday.

They are to appear at Bromley Magistrates’ Court later.

Previously:

Two men aged 21 and 23 were previously charged. Both will appear at the Old Bailey in early 2019.

A 19-year-old man and a 21-year-old man who were also arrested have been released under investigation.

The RMT union says South Western Railway workers will hold 24-hour strikes on 27 and 31 December.

Brentford appoint former captain Kevin O'Connor as the new assistant to head coach Thomas Frank.

A man has been injured after a crane collapsed at Westferry Circus, Tower Hamlets.

Police were called to the scene by the London Ambulance Service (LAS) at around 12:39 GMT where they found a man suffering from injuries to his leg.

He was taken to a nearby hospital. His condition in currently unknown.

No arrests have been made.

Oluwadamilola Erogbogbo sexually assaulted a fellow student at Cambridge University.

Inside Croydon

In the past three years, cash-strapped Croydon Council has made “golden goodbye” payments totalling £166,994.88 to just six senior members of council staff who have left their jobs.

Full story, external

Tim Donovan
BBC London, Political Editor

Image source, PA

The Met Police, which has a budget of £3.3bn, is to get an extra £14m to help with the recent rise in violent crime in the capital.

The figure was announced by police minister Nick Hurd as he spoke about the new funding settlement for all UK police forces which is worth up to £970m in 2019/20.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said the amount was a "tiny fraction" of what the force needed.

“We’ve had months of warm words from the home secretary about the desperate need for more government funding in order to tackle violent crime, but the government have fundamentally failed to back that up with real money," he said.

The return of Mary Poppins saw the Royal Albert Hall transformed into Cherry Tree Lane for its European premiere.

We've been asked to point out that Peter Whittle AM resigned from UKIP last week and as an Independent has formed the Brexit Alliance with David Kurten, who remains a UKIP member.

We are happy to clarify this.

BBC London News

Image source, Jason Hawkes

We used this wonderful photo by Jason Hawkes of Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park as our banner, but we want a new picture every day to show off the capital.

Have you taken a photo of your part of London which you think would be suitable? If so, email it in high resolution (2048 x 1152 or 1680 x 945) to london.locallive@bbc.co.uk.

BBC Weather

This afternoon will be dry but chilly with some bright or sunny spells. Dry and chilly this evening with broken cloud. Brisk easterly winds.

Maximum temperature: 3 to 6°C (37 to 43°F).

As primary school league tables are published, we reveal how long it will take for poor pupils to catch up.

Local Democracy Reporting Service

Plans to transform the former Royal London Hospital into a town hall have ballooned by £15m after the building was found to contain “phenomenal” amounts of asbestos.

Preliminary work on the new civic centre, in Whitechapel Road, revealed “unprecedented” quantities of the banned building material, according to Tower Hamlets mayor John Biggs, who has increased the project’s budget to £120million.

The scheme – which has courted controversy – aims to transform what was once the largest hospital in the country into offices for council staff by 2022.

The site was bought from Barts Health NHS Trust for £9m three years ago by the borough’s disgraced former mayor Lutfur Rahman.

At the time the scheme was criticised as his vanity project and dubbed “Lutfur’s palace”.

It was initially given a given a £77m budget.

Mr Rahman was forced from office for electoral fraud in 2015 and the new administration re-examined the costs and allocated £105m.

Tower Hamlets council has insisted the project will eventually save money. But it has faced criticism for its rising costs in one of London’s most deprived boroughs.

Image source, Metropolitan Police

Police have released the images of two people wanted in connection with an unprovoked assault on a London bus.

A woman was beaten with a metal pole and spat on by four suspects who were travelling on a Route 344 bus on Battersea Park Road close to Latchmere Road at 02:30, police said.

As they were getting off the bus, they attacked a 29-year-old female passenger.

Two girls - aged in their mid-teens - were interviewed in October in connection with the assault. They have since been released under investigation.

Det Con Jim Morrison, 26, was off duty when he chased a handbag thief and was stabbed outside the Indian High Commission in Aldwych, central London.

With reports that temperatures in the capital could drop to below zero, the London mayor's office has announced emergency cold weather shelters will open.

Sadiq Khan has agreed with London councils that severe weather shelters will now open London-wide if the temperature is predicted to drop below zero anywhere in the capital.

The mayor has also worked with boroughs to sign up to the ‘In For Good’ principle - a promise that, when a rough sleeper goes to an emergency shelter, they will be accommodated there until a support plan is put in place to help them off the streets for good.

Sean Coughlan
BBC News, education correspondent

Image source, PA

Among university applicants who got three D grades at A-level, 80% were successful in getting places in 2018, according to admissions figures.

This was a year with fewer 18-year-olds, which saw universities competing to attract students.

The Ucas admissions data shows Northern Ireland had the highest entry rate among the UK's four education systems.

But London was by far the highest region for university entry - a third more than elsewhere in England.