Alarm in health service over Palantir staff being given NHS email accounts

Health service staff have expressed alarm that engineers working for controversial tech company Palantir have been given NHS email accounts.Employees using NHS.net email accounts have access to a directory with the contact details of up 1.5 million staff. Sources believe Palantir staff were granted the same access

Scientists develop AI tool to spot heart failure risk five years before it strikes

Oxford scientists have developed a simple AI tool that can predict the risk of heart failure five years before it develops.More than 60 million people worldwide have the condition in which the heart cannot pump blood around the body as well as it should. Spotting cases before they develop into heart failure would be a big step forward, experts say. Doctors could prepare better for and manage the condition at an earlier stage or even prevent it entirely.The AI tool, developed by a team at the University of Oxford, looks for signs in fat around the heart that indicate whether it is inflamed and unhealthy

Landlords evicting tenants before law to prevent practice comes into force in England

Increasing numbers of landlords are evicting tenants at the last minute before the law changes to outlaw the practice in next month, charities have said.The renters’ union Acorn told the Guardian that no-fault evictions made up one in five of the reports they received from members in October, rising to nearly one in three by January.The Renters’ Rights Act, which was in development last year and will come into effect on 1 May 2026, will abolish section 21 of the existing Housing Act, which allows landlord to evict without providing a justification to the court.“This isn’t a coincidence. Landlords are clearly rushing to force through last-minute evictions before the ban comes into force

Treat jailed drug dealers like radical extremists, says prisons watchdog

Jailed criminals who are flooding prisons with drugs should be isolated like radical extremists and “assertively managed”, the England and Wales prisons watchdog has said.Charlie Taylor, HM inspector of prisons, said major dealers were living “consequence-free” in jail when they should be separated from the majority of inmates, subjected to regular searches for phones, and punished and rewarded according to their behaviour.Taylor’s demands for a radical rethink follow concerns from MPs about how to break a cycle of violence and chaos caused by the large-scale importation of drugs into “long-term high-risk” prisons, which hold England and Wales’s most dangerous inmates.In an interview with the Guardian, Taylor said: “Some serious organised crime gang members are coming into prison and their feet just don’t touch the ground.“They’re running operations and making a lot of money almost from the moment they get into the jail

World held hostage by reliance on fossil fuels, Christiana Figueres warns – and climate health impacts are ‘mother of all injustices’

Countries are being “held hostage” by their reliance on fossil fuels, a former UN climate chief has warned, describing the health impacts of climate change as “the mother of all injustices”.Christiana Figueres, an international climate negotiator who helped deliver the Paris agreement signed in 2016, made the comments as she was announced on Wednesday as co-chair of a Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality.Lancet Commissions are international collaborations that analyse major global health issues and influence policy. This commission will examine legal frameworks to hold countries accountable for the health harms of sea-level rise. It will report by September 2027

Charity cleared after false claims online over migrant welcome project

A refugee charity subjected to vicious social media attacks over a migrant welcome project in schools has been cleared of wrongdoing after watchdogs found allegations it encouraged pupils to send Valentine’s Day cards to asylum seekers were misleading and false.City of Sanctuary UK came under fire last year after rumours spread online that under its schools programme, children were being “forced” to write heart-shaped welcome cards to adult migrants, including cards addressed to “my fiance”.The Tory MP Gavin Williamson made a formal complaint against City of Sanctuary last August in the wake of the online attacks, claiming the charity had acted inappropriately and breached the law by acting in a “highly politicised” manner.However, in a finding published on Tuesday, the regulator rejected Williamson’s complaint and said the charity had been the victim of a baseless misinformation campaign that resulted in its staff and trustees receiving threats.Helen Earner, the director of regulatory services at the Charity Commission, said: “In this case, concerns about the charity’s work were fuelled by online misinformation, something charities are increasingly subject to and a concern for us as regulator