London’s Burning actor John Alford dies in prison aged 54

An investigation has been launched into the death of the actor John Alford after he died in prison two months into a sentence for sexually assaulting two teenage girls.Alford, 54, was jailed for eight and a half years in January after he was found guilty of the assaults, which occurred during a party at a friend’s home.The actor, who appeared in the ITV drama London’s Burning and the BBC show Grange Hill, died at HMP Bure, Norfolk on Friday, the Prison Service said.The cause of his death has not been released. A Prison Service spokesperson said: “As with all deaths in custody, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will investigate

Australia’s pornography age-verification: a victory for advocates or a gateway to ‘darker corners of the internet’?

When porn sites began blocking Australians from access, it also meant X began age-checking users before they could look at adult content on the social media site.But it asked some users to send a video selfie every time they wanted to look at a single picture or video.“Almost every post on my alt account has a content warning and asks me [for a] selfie for age verification,” one Australian porn consumer, Joe*, told Guardian Australia. “It’s maddening.”Others said they were moving away from sites that have verification

Unpaid carers ordered to repay benefits despite DWP knowing rules were unlawful

Unpaid carers have been issued with demands to repay thousands of pounds for allegedly breaking benefit rules even though officials knew the decisions were based on unlawful and discredited policy guidance.About 1,400 carers are understood to have been sent letters by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in January asking them to repay sums relating to breaches of carer’s allowance earnings rules that had been scrapped four months previously.Campaigners have demanded to know why the DWP went ahead with issuing the overpayments – causing distress and hardship to carers – rather than waiting and reassessing the decisions under the new guidance.It is thought some carers may have already repaid the sums, or agreed monthly repayment schedules. Most will have also received a £50 civil penalty imposed for negligence

Fetuses likely have more ‘forever chemicals’ in blood than thought – report

New peer-reviewed research shows fetuses likely have much higher levels of Pfas “forever chemicals” in their blood than previously thought.Testing of umbilical cord blood typically looks for a small number of common Pfas compounds, like Pfoa and Pfos. However, thousands of Pfas exist, and a new Mount Sinai study tested 120 umbilical blood cord samples that were previously found to contain up to four compounds.The expanded “non-targeted analysis” identified 42 Pfas compounds across the 120 samples, and the total level of Pfas in the blood was much higher than previously found.The findings suggest “babies are exposed to many more Pfas than we previously thought”, said Shelley Liu, a study co-author and associate professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Casey’s review of adult social care offers hope | Letters

Louise Casey may have the power of words behind her (The blistering speech that tells me Britain’s social care deadlock can finally be broken, 10 March), but what she’s uncovered is a truth that local authorities have been voicing for years: the national care service will fail unless ministers stabilise the local systems that underpin it.Key Cities (a cross-party network of UK local authorities) has long been calling for an urgent funding reset for the social care system. And while the Casey commission’s reforms are welcome, what’s still missing is the transition plan to enable councils to make this happen. A key part of the government’s NHS 10‑year plan must be a significant expansion of joint commissioning, across regional and national scales. This collaboration will finally end the costly push‑pull between those who fund and those who deliver care and, vitally, lay the foundations for effective transformation from local to national provision

Give mayors more powers to tackle youth unemployment crisis, says Alan Milburn

Mayors across England should be given greater powers to tackle the youth unemployment crisis and avoid the “long-term scarring” of regions outside London, the government’s work tsar has said.Alan Milburn, who is leading a major review into increasing inactivity among Britain’s young people, said the issue could not be solved by Whitehall alone.Most of the nearly 1 million young people not in work, education or training (Neets) are in the north and Midlands. Eight of the 10 local authorities with the highest number of Neets are in these two regions.In an interview with the Guardian, Milburn said: “Local authorities and mayors have an absolutely critical role to play because they’ve got convening power – they can bring together schools, the colleges, the employers in an area