It wasn’t all bad

A pioneering police scheme in Durham has slashed reoffending rates by 15% after two years. Under the scheme, more than 2,660 offenders who had committed offences such as burglary and assault avoided prosecution if they agreed to take part in a four-month rehabilitation programme; if they walked away from it, they were prosecuted in the normal way. It has won global praise, and at least five other forces across the UK are considering similar programmes.

A teenager travelled more than 4,000 miles from Canada to have her first pint in the British pub where she was born 18 years ago. Isobel Casey’s mother unexpectedly went into labour at the Hartford Mill pub in Wyton, Cambridgeshire, on 14 February 2002, and gave birth next to the ball pit for toddlers. The family moved to Vancouver in 2006, but vowed to return to the pub for the coming-of-age moment, which they did last week. Casey, who hopes to study in the UK next year, was shown how to pour her own pint at the pub to mark the occasion.

A woman attending an art exhibition about marine plastic waste in Stockholm stumbled upon a mixtape she had made in 1993, and had lost while on holiday on the Costa Brava in Spain. Stella Wedell, from Berlin, thought the tape and the track list, which included songs by Shaggy and UB40, looked familiar, so checked it when she got home against the CD from which, aged 12, she had made the tape. The list was identical. The artist, Mandy Barker, who found the tape washed up on the Canary Islands in 2017, has promised to return it.