Attempts to stop prison drone drug deliveries hampered by crumbling Victorian walls

Weak and crumbling walls in Victorian prisons are hampering attempts to halt drones from delivering drugs and weapons to inmates.Plans to install tougher netting and window grilles to stop drones from entering have been hampered because the walls have been unable to take the extra weight, prison governors said.Recent attempts to fix anti-drone netting at HMP Pentonville, the Victorian prison in north London, were stalled after they found that the bricks were too soft, sources have said.Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales, said last month that the Prison Service had “ceded the airspace above many of our prisons to serious organised crime”, resulting in a “national security threat”.The number of incidents at prisons involving drones has risen by more than 1,000% over four years, with gang members able to fly packages carried by drones direct to cell windows

MPs v the manosphere: ministers battle misogyny as they take a different message to men and boys across Australia

“Gender equality isn’t women versus men or a zero-sum game,” Ged Kearney says.“It delivers better outcomes for everyone. It’s important that, as we engage with men and boys, we make that really clear.”But as the assistant minister for the prevention of family violence sets off on a national listening tour with the special envoy for men’s health, Dan Repacholi, they are up against a pervasive and very different conception of how men and women relate, fostered by the loud voices of the manosphere and men’s rights activists.For decades, those activists have called for Australia to have a minister for men

Black people in England twice as likely to suffer stroke as white counterparts

People from black backgrounds in England are twice as likely to experience strokes as their white counterparts, while also being less likely to receive timely care, according to the largest study of its kind.The study, conducted by researchers at King’s College London and presented at the European Stroke Organisation conference, analysed 30 years of stroke incidents from the South London Stroke Register, one of the longest-running population-based stroke registers in the world.The register is unique due to the fact that unlike clinical trials, it recruits every single person who has had a stroke in a defined area.Within a population of 333,000 people, according to the analysis, 7,726 strokes occurred. And while stroke incidence fell by 34% between 1995-99 and 2010-14, the rate rose again by 13% between 2020 and 2024

Prosecutors to ‘fast-track’ hate crime cases in England and Wales after spate of attacks

Prosecutors in England and Wales have been told to “fast-track” hate crime prosecutions after a spate of antisemitic attacks that the prime minister on Tuesday called a “crisis for all of us”.Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, issued guidance to his staff on Tuesday telling them to bring forward prosecutions against any sort of hate crime as quickly as they could, rather than waiting until they had gathered all possible evidence.Keir Starmer urged groups including universities, arts groups and charities to do more to tackle antisemitism during a summit in Downing Street.As well as imposing new reporting requirements on universities and the Arts Council, the prime minister threatened “consequences” against Iran if it was found to have been behind last week’s stabbing in Golders Green, north London.Parkinson said in a statement on Tuesday: “The acts of extreme violence and criminal damage that we have seen against the Jewish community in recent months have been deplorable

Ann Barrett obituary

In 1968, when Ann Barrett qualified in medicine, the fast-changing specialty of oncology was a magnet for young doctors as new drugs and technology were beginning to nudge up survival rates. In her distinguished 40-year oncology career, Barrett, who has died aged 83, played a key part in improving cancer outcomes, particularly for children, becoming a world authority on paediatric radiotherapy.As chair of radiation oncology first at the University of Glasgow and then at the University of East Anglia, she was highly influential in the profession with more than 150 published academic papers. She had a significant impact on student education and was a leading contributor to several textbooks that are still “go-to” classics, including Practical Radiotherapy Planning (1985, now in its fifth edition, 2023), and Cancer in Children: Clinical Management (1975, now in its seventh edition, as the Oxford Textbook of Cancer in Children, 2020).After training at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London and various junior doctor posts, in 1977 Barrett became a consultant at the Royal Marsden hospital, a world leader in cancer research; Barrett specialised in brain tumours in children and in irradiating the central nervous system (the brain and spine)

Dame Shirley Porter obituary

There was a time in the late 1980s when Shirley Porter was the second most famous and powerful female politician in Britain: “the Iron Lady of the town halls”. Like her heroine, Margaret Thatcher, she was a grocer’s daughter, though the family business, Tesco, was somewhat bigger than the prime minister’s corner shop. Porter’s eventual fall from grace was devastating both for her personal reputation and for Thatcherism’s perceived way of doing things. She was, simply, the most corrupt politician of her time.Porter, who has died aged 95, was pursued by the district auditor from her power base at Westminster city council, where she was leader for eight years, 1983-91, and eventually found to have acted illegally in selling council houses with the aim of increasing Conservative votes, in what became known as the “homes for votes” scandal