Drugs campaigner Peter Krykant dies, aged 48
A Police Scotland Sotland spokesperson said: "Around 5.15pm on Monday, 9 June 2025, police attended an address in Graham Avenue, Larbert following a report of a concern for person."The body of a 48-year-old man was found within. His next of kin has been informed."Mr Krykant started taking drugs when he was 11 and began to inject heroin at the age of 17, but stopped using drugs for 11 years.He went on to open a mobile unit in a converted van with the aim of preventing overdoses and the spread of blood-borne viruses among users in Scotland.He was arrested in 2020 after launching his "safe space" where users could take their own drugs under medical supervision. Charges against him were later dropped.Earlier this year The Thistle, the UK's first and only drug consumption room opened in the East End of Glasgow in an effort to reduce drug deaths.Krykant ran for election as an independent candidate in the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, campaigning on drug policy issues.He later said the "cut-throat" world of politics along with the pressure of running the consumption bus caused him to relapse into drug use.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Tuesday briefing: What the fraught talks to reach a ‘Paris agreement for plastic pollution' could bring
Good morning. Not only does plastic waste clog up waterways, beaches and strangle sea life, it also causes havoc inside the human body. Tiny fragments – invisible to the human eye – are probably swimming around your lungs, blood and liver right now. This represents a 'growing and underrecognised danger' to human health, the latest report in the Lancet warns, as 10 days of tense talks kick off in Geneva today, with 179 countries due to hash out a kind of 'Paris agreement for plastic pollution'. These talks – which have been going on since 2022 – have been dogged by deep disagreements. More than 100 nations want a legally binding cap on plastic production, while petrostates want to keep things vague, and maybe promise to, errrrr, do some more recycling, perhaps? It's possible talks will collapse with no reference to cuts to plastic production. I spoke to the Guardian's environment correspondent Sandra Laville about why the sixth (and hopefully final) round of talks are likely to be so fraught and what a good deal could look like. Weather | Gusts of more than 100mph from Storm Floris have brought travel disruption, power cuts and the widespread cancellation of events across large parts of the UK. Disruption to the rail network in Scotland is expected until around 4pm on Tuesday, ScotRail has said. UK news | A member of the House of Lords urged ministers to crack down on Palestine Action at the request of a US defence company that employs him as an adviser. Police are planning to arrest anyone demonstrating in support of Palestine Action this weekend. Politics | The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, is not telling the truth about the 'real failures of 14 years of Conservative government', the former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss has said. Tommy Robinson | The far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson has been arrested by British police on suspicion of grievous bodily harm after a man was allegedly assaulted at a London railway station. Gaza | More than 100 critically ill and injured children in Gaza hope to come to the UK as soon as possible after the government announced a scheme to provide those in severe need with NHS care. The United Nations agreed to create a treaty on plastic in 2022. Since then, five separate negotiations have failed to secure an agreement. Initially, the idea was for the treaty to address the whole life cycle of plastics, but plans have since been watered down. The last round of talks – held in Busan, South Korea – broke down at the end of last year. 'There was some concern we wouldn't even get another meeting,' says Sandra Laville. Country representatives are resuming today for 10 days of talks in Switzerland. Although plastic is often seen as a cheap material, it's expensive when you factor in the cost of cleaning up the damage it causes – the latest report found it is responsible for at least $1.5tn (£1.1tn) a year in health-related damages. And almost all plastic is made from fossil oil and gas. Producing all of this plastic results in greater emissions than those produced by Russia – the world's fourth-largest polluter. According to the University of Oxford's Our World in Data, plastic production has increased sharply over the past 70 years. In 1950, the world was producing two million tonnes of plastic to more than 450m tonnes today. Less than 10% of the world's plastic is recycled, and more than 40% is stuck in landfill. 'Single-use plastic is the big earner for lots of companies and the petrochemical industry,' says Sandra. There were a record 220 fossil fuel and chemic industry lobbyists at the December talks in Busan. That was far more than even the host nation's delegation of 140 and was three times the number of independent scientists. Hotel and flight costs make the treaty negotiations expensive to attend, which is why rich industrial interests can flood the talks with lobbyists while smaller countries, scientists and NGOs struggle to find the funds. Why is this such a pressing problem for human health? Plastic is, in many ways, a wonder material, but the most rapid increase in production is for single-use plastics, things such as drinks bottles and fast-food packaging, which we sometimes use for a matter of minutes before chucking away. This sort of plastic may be a big earner for companies, but it is not essential for human wellbeing, and the drawbacks are significant. The latest review, published in the leading medical journal the Lancet, was carried out by leading health researchers and doctors. They found plastics cause disease and death from infancy to old age because they are laced in more than 16,000 chemicals such as fillers, dyes, flame retardants and stabilisers which have been known to damage human health. The most vulnerable in society are the most at risk. The analysis found that foetuses and infants were subject to harms such as increased risks of miscarriage, stillbirth, birth defects, impaired lung growth, childhood cancer and fertility problems later in life. What are delegates going to achieve? There are two groups battling it out in Geneva. One is comprised of more than 100 countries – including the EU – which support legally binding global reductions in plastic production and the phasing out of single-use plastic products. The other camp are countries with large fossil fuel industries, such as Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, who say they don't want any suggestion of tackling plastic production. The latter group want the agreement to focus on better management and recycling of waste, and for countries to implement voluntary or national measures. 'Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China have moved the discussion away from production towards, 'Oh we just need to manage the waste better, oh we just need to recycle more',' says Sandra. Since 2022, these divisions have become more entrenched. Countries such as Egypt and Malaysia have plastic industry representatives in their national delegations. Meanwhile, the 100 high-ambition countries are not going to fold – the evidence shows we have to reduce plastic production to reduce pollution. 'That's why it all collapsed in Busan in December,' says Sandra. The nature of any agreement is still up the air – it's possible a meaningful treaty will be agreed, or they have further meetings, or some countries agree to pursue a 'coalition of the willing' treaty outside the UN. Greenpeace is calling for at least a 75% reduction in plastic production by 2040. But if an agreement can be reached, it would be the equivalent of getting the Paris agreement for climate negotiations. 'You can argue the Paris agreement hasn't done much, but there has been an agreement, and we just haven't had one on plastic pollution. So this is the kind of vacuum that needs to be filled,' says Sandra. What does this say about international environmental diplomacy? 'I think there was this real optimism in 2022 when the idea of a treaty was agreed,' says Sandra. Scientists were saying that getting a good agreement could be a gamechanger for cutting plastic pollution. But the winds appear to have changed. 'By last November that optimism had all gone.' The US – which is the world's second-largest producer of plastic after China – has flip-flopped positions during negotiations, but now appears to be aligned with other major fossil fuel producers and is supporting the least ambitious option. China and Iran are also among the countries looking for less ambition, an option they describe as 'realistic'. It comes as the Trump administration in the US rolls back environmental policies, including a longstanding finding on greenhouse gas emissions endangering health. Andrés del Castillo, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), a non profit providing legal counsel to some countries attending the talks, said oil states were questioning even basic facts about the harm to health caused by plastics. 'We are in a moment of revisionism, where even science is highly politicised,' he says. Hopes for a 'last-chance' ambitious global treaty to curb plastic pollution are looking dim – but a weaker agreement still shows international diplomacy functions. 'It doesn't feel as if the world is ready to address any of this,' says Sandra. 'I do think that any treaty – as long as it's not really weak – is a good thing to hold up.' Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Nels Abbey is compelling in this column on Kemi Badenoch's 'comedic, but sadly revealing' rejection of her Nigerian heritage – not least, he writes, because her life 'hardly describes the general Black experience'. Charlie Lindlar, acting deputy editor, newsletters Someone in Teesside has (or had) been sharing their house with a rat the length of a carry-on luggage bag. Rats are getting bigger and bolder as cash-strapped local authorities can't deal with pest control. 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BBC News
3 hours ago
- BBC News
Man arrested after Stone of Destiny glass broken at museum
The stone returned for permanent display in Scotland in 1996 at Edinburgh Castle and last year it moved to its current home in Perth. A spokesperson for Culture Perth and Kinross said: "We can confirm there was an incident at Perth Museum where a man was arrested. "Perth Museum was evacuated as a precaution and there was no damage to any artefacts on display." "We are assisting Police Scotland with their inquiries." A Police Scotland said the 35-year-old man would appear at Perth Sheriff Court on Monday.
Daily Mail
10 hours ago
- Daily Mail
SNP accused of 'betraying' victims of crime as they wait three years for justice
Exclusive by Michael Blackley Victims of crime are now having to wait nearly three years to get justice in the most serious cases, including murder and rape. Growing backlogs of cases in the High Court have resulted in a sharp rise in the time taken to proceed from offence to verdict. Scheduled High Court trials have soared amid rising pressure on the justice system, which has failed to recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Official figures reveal the median time from offence to verdict in the High Court has risen to 1,032 days, almost double the 520 days recorded in the year before the Covid pandemic. New data also shows scheduled High Court trials reached 743 in March and climbed to 818 by June - compared to 390 trials originally projected for the end of 2024/25 by the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service when it carried out modelling in 2021. Liam Kerr, Scottish Conservative justice spokesman, said: 'These damning figures highlight that the SNP is miserably failing to clear the horrendous backlogs in Scotland's courts. 'Thanks to the Nationalists' chronic mismanagement of Scotland's courts, we are still miles away from hitting pre-pandemic backlog levels, despite what was predicted during the Covid period. 'SNP cuts to the justice budget and its failure to get funding to the front line are inevitably leading to mounting backlogs in the system - and that's a shameful betrayal of victims, because justice delayed is justice denied. 'Even victims of the most serious crimes are being betrayed by SNP ministers, as they now have to wait over 1,000 days on average for a verdict in High Court cases.' The figures, revealed by 1919 magazine, show that the median time from offence to verdict in the High Court was 1,032 days in 2023/24, compared to 520 days in 2019/20. In Sheriff Court cases, the median time from offence to verdict in 2023/24 was 564 days, compared to 283 days in 2019/20. Modelling from the SCTS published in March 2021 found that there was expected to be 390 trials scheduled in the High Court and 500 trials scheduled in Sheriff Solemn Courts by March 2025. But the new data shows there were actually 743 scheduled trials in the High Court and 1,004 in Sheriff Solemn Courts, which cover serious crimes like assault and drug offences, at this point. Summary cases, including common assault, domestic abuse, crimes of dishonesty and motoring offences, are also facing delays. Figures from March this year show more than 20,600 cases still waiting, nearly 50 per cent higher than predicted in 2021. The Scottish Police Federation has warned that delays and collapsed trials are wasting valuable resources and draining frontline capacity. An SCTS spokesman said: 'We remain conscious of the impact delays in the criminal justice system have on victims and witnesses. 'That is why our focus has been on striving to reduce the number of cases in the system and the length of time people wait for the outcome of a case. 'SCTS advised the criminal justice committee in December 2021 that we anticipated the backlog created by the Covid-19 pandemic would be cleared by 2026. 'Since then, and through our strong criminal court recovery programme, the number of scheduled trials has reduced from over 43,000 in January 2022 to under 18,000 at the end of June 2025. That is the fewest number of planned scheduled trials since 2018/19. 'However we are now dealing with a substantial increase in High Court business - the most serious criminal cases - which places pressure on a system with finite capacity. 'High Court scheduled trials at the end of June 2025 number 818, far higher than the pre pandemic position of 390. This means maintaining increased capacity is essential to prevent delays for all who use the system.' A Scottish Government spokesman said: 'Scotland is the only part of the UK to have successfully brought court backlog levels back down to below Covid levels - a testament to our comprehensive approach and substantial investment in recovery funding of over £201 million since 2021, which includes £20.3 million to the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service in 2025/26. 'This trend is continuing and we remain committed to supporting justice partners to maintain this progress.'
