Matt Hood says shoplifting increasingly seen as crime with no consequences with rise in organised gangs looting stores

The boss of the Co-op grocery chain has called on the police to take shoplifting more seriously and says he is frustrated by a lack of action against thieves who cost the business £33m in the first half of 2023.

Matt Hood, the chain’s managing director, said shoplifting was becoming a major issue for UK comm

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Venables, 41, was jailed in 2017 for possession of child abuse images and will have a parole hearing in November

The mother of James Bulger has said the prospect of Jon Venables’s release from prison has left her in “a state of shock”.

Venables, now 41, could be freed from prison before Christmas after it was confirmed that he would have a two-day parole hearing in November.

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It is a crime that can leave victims financially and emotionally crushed - yet is very rarely solved by police. Is anything being done to stop it?

It took thieves just 47 seconds to steal Rosie Wetherhill’s ebike from outside a Chinese takeaway.

Wetherhill, a 23-year-old bike courier from Leeds, had considered locking her bike to the railing when she went in to collect the order, but she knew the takeaway was fast. So she locked the back wheel with a D-lock instead. A mistake. As she saw her £1,300 ebike disappear around a corner, Wetherhill felt a sense of dread. “I knew I would probably never see that bike again,” she says. “Because I know how it is.” The bike wasn’t insured. She’d only had it for two months.

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Parole Board confirms that Venables, who was turned down for parole in 2020, has been listed for review in November

Jon Venables, one of the killers of James Bulger, has been granted a parole hearing, the Parole Board has said.

James was murdered by the then 10-year-olds Venables and Robert Thompson in 1993 after they snatched the two-year-old from a shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside.

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As on-campus sexual misconduct cases escalate, there are increasing calls to talk openly with young people about sex, pleasure and consent

Among the stalls encouraging students to sign up for rock climbing, parkour, the law society, and inevitably the pub crawl group, university freshers’ fairs have for many years now given out free rape alarms to young women. This conjures up the image of an attack by a stranger, perhaps on the way home from a night out.

But this gesture perhaps distracts from an urgent and rapidly escalating problem taking place much closer to home – that of increasingly violent sexual assault on campus. In most cases the male student accused of wrongdoing is in the same friendship group as the young woman reporting him, often studying on the same course. They may live just down the corridor in halls or even in the same flat.

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The brutality of the attack on Lin, Megan and Josie Russell in a country lane 27 years ago was unforgettable. This three-parter talks to those involved – except, notably, for the family

The Russell Murders: Who Killed Lin & Megan? is a three-parter that promises a “definitive” and “granular” account of the horrific events that occurred on a quiet country lane in Kent in the summer of 1996, and the subsequent police investigation into it. In 2017, the BBC broadcast its own documentary, The Chillenden Murders, in which a team of experts re-examined the evidence that led to the conviction of Michael Stone, but given the true crime boom of recent times, it’s surprising that there have not been even more documentaries about such a shocking and unforgettable case.

Little wonder, then, that this documentary series has arrived now. Stone was convicted of murdering Lin Russell, 45, and her daughter Megan, who was six, and attempting to murder her other daughter, Josephine, who was nine. He has served 25 years of a life sentence, but he is launching a fresh attempt to clear his name; earlier this year, the serial killer Levi Bellfield signed a statement “to take responsibility” for the killings, though Bellfield has previously confessed and retracted his statement . In July, the Criminal Case Review Commission said that they saw no real possibility that Stone’s conviction would be overturned.

The Russell Murders: Who Killed Lin & Megan? aired on Sky Documentaries and is available on NOW

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Peter seemed harmless at first, just another overfamiliar stranger. But this felt different, more personal …

It is hard to remember when it began. Years ago now. At first he was an inveterate “liker” on Twitter, and soon this gathered into comments. After a while came a request to follow him back; there was a work-related matter he needed to discuss.

I’m going to call him Peter. It is not his name. In those early days, I could tell very little about Peter from his profile, but he seemed harmless enough; just another of the familiar strangers I had often encountered on social media over the years.

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Robert Brown, who bludgeoned Joanna Simpson to death in 2010, is due to be released in November

The family of a woman bludgeoned to death by her estranged husband have called on the justice secretary to take urgent action, after learning that he will be released from prison at the start of November.

Robert Brown, who killed Joanna Simpson in October 2010, will be released after serving half of his 24-year sentence.

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Shop thefts have more than doubled in the past three years, costing retailers £953m a year, according to the British Retail Consortium

In recent months, David, the manager of a Leeds Co-op store, and his staff have been threatened with razors, knives, screwdrivers, needles and hammers by shoplifters who have become more brazen and aggressive.

“It feels like these offenders can simply come in and take what they want, and do what they want,” the 36-year-old said. “Not one or two items – they come in with bags, sacks or clothing, which can conceal hundreds of pounds’ worth of stock – coffee, meat, wine, laundry gel, anything that can be re-sold. It is looting. They are known in the city centre as repeat offenders … They know the police don’t have the resources or can’t attend quickly enough.”

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