What happened
Andy Burnham has suspended the planned early release of thousands of prisoners while the government urgently reviews the policy. The decision follows widespread criticism after it emerged that two men convicted of the manslaughter of PC Andrew Harper could be among those eligible for release under the scheme.

About 6,000 inmates had been due to leave prison in stages from September through measures designed to reduce overcrowding. The pause leaves officials scrambling to reconsider release plans as prisons continue to face severe capacity pressures.

Who said what
“No prisoners will be let out under this policy until we have conducted an urgent review and done everything we can to minimise risk to the public,” said the prime minister.

Prison officers and victims’ groups have welcomed the review, although officials and unions warned that changing course at short notice could create disruption across the entire prison system.

What next?
The government has not said when, or if, the scheme will resume. “Could the scheme now be scrapped?” asked Dominic Casciani on the BBC. “That would need a vote in Parliament – and Parliament is on holiday for the summer.” In theory, Burnham could delay its implementation, “but the problem then is that this would mean the prison population would begin to head towards crisis point as cells fill up again”.

What happened
Dubai will provide financial incentives to residents who can convince family members and friends to travel to the emirate in a bid to revive tourism numbers, which have plummeted since the US-Israel war on Iran began. The government’s Dubai Invite Scheme allows people to nominate non-UAE residents to arrive on a tourist visa, and offers benefits worth more than 3,000 UAE dirham (about £610) to the sponsors if the visit goes ahead.

Who said what
Residents will receive a “benefits package” including hotel stays, dining deals and attraction tickets, said Visit Dubai’s website. Local media reported that the scheme had attracted more than 10,000 applications within the first 48 hours.

Some of Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Gulf states hit Dubai’s famous Fairmont hotel and international airport, “shattering” the image that the city had sold of “a gilded playground” safe from regional volatility, said The Guardian. There are reportedly “massive hotel vacancies” and revenue declines; some of the most famous hotels have “shut entirely”.

What next?
Each resident is eligible for a maximum of three packages for visitors arriving before 31 October, but the benefits can be redeemed until December.

Biphasic sleep means two distinct sleep periods in 24 hours instead of one. Some researchers suggest that it may be a more natural rhythm, even if the biological reasons for it are still being debated.

The concept has “captured the interest of many today”, according to MediaFeed, and a number of people are “experimenting with segmented sleep patterns”. Its supporters say the benefits include “improved restfulness and better management of insomnia”.

During pre-industrial times people often slept in two blocks. Professor Roger Ekirch, a historian at Virginia Tech, found that sleeping in two halves was the “predominant pattern” in the Western world until the mid-19th century. A “typical family” would “go to bed around nine, wake naturally after midnight for an hour or so – for prayer, chores, conversation – then sink back into what they called their second sleep”.

This changed when artificial light transformed the “economics of the night” and gas lamps “began lighting London’s streets in 1807”. As a result, “people stayed up later, and the gap between the two sleeps narrowed and eventually closed”.

But Ekirch believes that the old approach hasn’t fully disappeared because the prevalence of “middle-of-the-night insomnia” represents a “persistent echo, a relic of this earlier pattern of sleep”.

A study in 1992 sought to discover whether, without industrialisation, humans would have remained natural biphasic sleepers. But the experiment drew criticism. In 2023, Dr Niall Boyce wrote in the journal Medical History that its findings were “dubious” and suggested that the participants were simply restless.

Other experts have warned that biphasic sleep could have health risks, including those resulting from the disruption of circadian rhythms. However, Dr Line Victoria Moen, a researcher at Norway’s National Institute of Occupational Health, points out that all existing research on the topic is “fragmented” because some studies treat biphasic sleep as “one long sleep plus a brief nap”, but others “count only two equal periods”, so there is “no agreed definition”.