A devoted father with a zest for life, he was given an indeterminate sentence in 2006. He is still locked up – and losing hope that he will ever be released

In 2006, Martin Myers got in a scrape over a cigarette. He asked a young man if he had a spare fag. The man declined to give him one. Myers came from a well-known Traveller family. The man, Myers says, made a derogatory comment about Travellers, so Myers gave up the niceties. He threatened to punch him if he didn’t hand him a cigarette.

The young man ran away. He then went to the police in Luton and told them what had happened. The police were familiar with Myers. He had previous convictions for dangerous driving, assault, theft and burglary. Myers was arrested, charged and convicted of attempted street robbery. On 8 March 2006, he was given a tariff – the minimum time he could serve – of 19 months and 27 days.

Campaigners say loss of £200m from active travel budget is illegal and resulted from Treasury pressure

Swingeing cuts to public spending on cycling and walking in England should be overturned as government expenditure was already insufficient to meet legally binding climate targets, the high court has been told.

Campaigners are challenging a decision in 2023 to cut more than £200m from Department for Transport’s active travel budget for the following two years.

Nicaragua brought plea to court, arguing sales of weapons make Berlin complicit in alleged war crimes

The International court of justice has rejected a request by Nicaragua to issue Germany emergency orders to desist selling arms to Israel, by 15 votes to one.

The decision, according to the judgment read in court in The Hague, is largely based on a significant decrease in recent German arms sales to Israel, the largely defensive nature of arms recently sold, and the extensive internal German government processes to consider if arms would be used to prosecute war crimes or genocide.

Asylum seekers are our neighbours, not political pawns for failing politicians. If MPs cannot resist the Rwanda plan, activists will

Laws that are unjust will inevitably be broken. Here is a basic reading of our history, and indeed how numerous rights and freedoms were secured in the first place. Ruled as we are by a desperate man lacking a moral compass, our sinking government has brought forward plans to detain asylum seekers across the UK in preparation for their deportation to Rwanda. After both the European court of human rights and the supreme court declared the government’s scheme unlawful – not least because Paul Kagame’s authoritarian regime could plausibly deport them to the country from which they fled – the government railroaded through legislation, absurdly declaring Rwanda to be safe. Here is the very definition of a law to be disrespected: one drawn up to override the courts and thus the separation of powers, to turn a lie into a legal fact, in support of an unworkable and immoral scheme that imposes pain on the traumatised purely to bolster a prime minister’s imploding administration.

Civil disobedience will take many forms. Asylum seekers will simply avoid reporting to the authorities, disappearing from the system altogether: indeed, the Home Office reports it cannot locate more than six in 10 migrants identified for deportation. But a network of activists across the country is poised to take action. We have lived through a decade of protests , speaking to a growing willingness to take to the streets to defy authority. Social media plays a pivotal role, not least when it comes to migrants’ rights: Anti Raids Network, for example, uses X to promote calls by local groups to mobilise activists to stop deportation raids. One such callout in Solihull yesterday asked for help stopping a deportation van: “There are unmarked enforcement vans in the car park, and we think these people could be at risk of being taken to detention.”

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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Researchers say issue ‘urgently needs scrutiny’ after rap and drill music used as evidence against 252 defendants over three years

Rap and drill music was used as prosecution evidence for serious charges including alleged gang-related murders against at least 252 defendants in England and Wales over a three-year period, a study has found.

The researchers at the University of Manchester, who found 68 cases involving rap evidence covering the 252 charged individuals, said the issue “urgently needs scrutiny” as there was no meaningful regulation nor even monitoring of how the criminal justice system used rap as criminal evidence.

The contaminated blood and Post Office scandals have resulted in politicians and Whitehall both dodging accountability

How much money should go to those given infected blood in the 1970s and 80s? And how much to the wronged subpost office operators? Such questions surge periodically into the daylight and then subside. Last month it was the subpost office operators’ turn, stirring a burst of public rage. Today, an amendment to a bill demanding expanded compensation for victims of infected blood is expected to pass.

Both cases are heartbreaking. They tell of lives ruined through gross errors by public bodies. Both have been lurking for decades in Whitehall attics, lost in a world of lavish public inquiries and dodged political accountability. Two infected blood inquiries have so far consumed £100m in fees, without challenge or value audit. Legal fees now consume a quarter of the £2.6bn paid by the NHS in 2021-22 to victims of negligence.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Exclusive: First study of its kind finds prisoners are 28% less likely to receive treatment for cancer

Prisoners diagnosed with cancer are more likely than people in the general population to die of the disease, according to research .

A study has calculated that compared with cancer patients in the general population, patients in English prisons are 28% less likely to receive treatment for cancer, particularly surgery to remove tumours, and have a 9% increased risk of death – half of which is due to treatment differences.

Public opinion ‘overwhelmingly in favour of change’, says broadcaster as MPs debate law in Commons

Jonathan Dimbleby has urged MPs to “get off the fence” on the issue of assisted dying.

Public opinion was “overwhelmingly in favour of change”, the broadcaster said. After his younger brother, Nicholas, died with debilitating motor neurone disease, earlier this year, Dimbleby said the current law was “ anachronistically cruel ”.

The Israeli prime minister has good reason to worry, and the defenses he has offered so far are unlikely to help him

The Israeli government believes that the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague is about to file war crimes charges against Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials. We can’t know for sure – the ICC has kept its plans close to the vest – but the Israeli prime minister has good reason to worry, and the defenses he has offered so far are unlikely to help him.

ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s most likely target is Netanyahu’s starvation strategy for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Because the Israeli government has refused to let ICC staff enter Gaza, it will take time for Khan to complete the detailed investigation required to demonstrate other possible Israeli war crimes, such as indiscriminately bombing civilian areas and firing on military targets with foreseeably disproportionate civilian consequences. But the facts surrounding Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian aid are readily available.