Drug use in England spikes during heatwaves and big sports events, research finds

Traces of illicit drugs in wastewater in England show spikes in usage during bank holiday weekends, heatwaves and sports events, while the Eurovision song contest ranks as one of the most drug-fuelled nights of the year.Tests at water treatment plants across the country found clear patterns in drug taking through the week and changing seasons, and revealed particularly high levels of cocaine and ketamine use compared with other European countries.Ketamine is a powerful anaesthetic that can be fatal and is especially dangerous when taken with other drugs. It can damage memory and cause serious bladder problems that can require surgical repair or even lead to removal of the organ.The project, led by Imperial College London for the Home Office, is one of the most detailed investigations to date into drug use in a single country

People in UK spend fewer years in good health than a decade ago, study finds

People in the UK are spending fewer years in good health than a decade ago, prompting concern that the population’s health is “going backwards”.The sharp decline in Britain’s healthy life expectancy, the amount of time someone spends free of illness or disability, is in sharp contrast to its recent rise in most other rich countries globally.The UK population’s health is poor, getting worse and not undergoing the same steady improvement seen in countries such as Japan, Norway and Spain, according to a new analysis of healthy life expectancy in 21 countries by the Health Foundation thinktank. It went up by an average of four-tenths of a year across the 20 other comparable countries.Healthy life expectancy for men in the UK has fallen from 62

Britain is undermining the care workers it depends on | Heather Stewart

“We are deflated, we are sad. We feel the government is trying to pull the rug from under our feet,” says David. “It is like we are being criticised for working in a sector which the government called for us to come help with.”David – not his real name – is a care worker for adults with learning disabilities. He came to the east of England from Nigeria in 2022 with his wife as the Conservative government turned to migration to tackle the social care recruitment crisis

Suicide-related callouts to fire services triple in England in a decade

Suicide-related callouts to fire and rescue services in England have tripled in the last decade, with Samaritans now calling for mandatory training for firefighters, who they say are struggling to deal with the increase in traumatic incidents.New figures show that fire services in England attended 3,250 suicide callouts in the year ending September 2025, the equivalent to 62 callouts a week. This was up from 997 callouts in 2009-10 when records began.Samaritans said firefighters were often among the first on the scene when someone was in suicidal crisis, and despite having to make rapid, life-saving decisions, received no formal mandatory training on how to intervene.Elliot Colburn, public affairs and campaigns manager at the charity, said: “People with this experience are telling us they don’t feel equipped with the training on dealing with someone in suicidal crisis

Baby died after NHS trust failed to warn mother of ‘unsafe’ home birth, coroner finds

A mother who lost her baby a week after an “unsafe” home birth that went against medical advice was failed by the NHS, an inquest has found.Poppy Hope Lomas was seven days old when she died at University College hospital in London on 26 October 2022 after complications during a home birth that, according to her mother, was encouraged by midwives at Barnet hospital.An inquest into Poppy’s death at Barnet coroner’s court concluded that she probably died from a lack of oxygen reaching her brain in the 30 minutes before she was born.The senior coroner Andrew Walker said the Royal Free London NHS foundation trust had agreed to support Poppy’s mother, Gemma Lomas, with an “unsafe home delivery that was against medical advice” and had failed to address “an accumulation of risk factors”.After the inquest concluded on Thursday, Lomas said outside the court: “Nothing will ever bring her back, but hearing the truth today acknowledged means everything to us

Three men guilty of repeatedly raping woman on Brighton beach in ‘predatory, callous’ attack

Three men have been found guilty of repeatedly raping a woman on Brighton beach in a “cynical, predatory and callous” attack after she became separated from her friends on a night out.The woman was targeted by the men as she was incapacitated in the early hours of 4 October last year, the trial at Hove crown court was told.Two of the men took her behind a beach hut where they raped her and the other went to the location moments later and filmed it.On Thursday, Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, an Egyptian national, and Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, an Iranian national, were found guilty of two counts of rape.Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, an Egyptian national, was also found guilty of all four counts of rape as a secondary party by encouraging and filming the ordeal