Hundreds of eligible offenders are set to leave prisons in England and Wales as the government’s early-release scheme took effect Thursday. The scheme was introduced after the prison system came close to running out of capacity in the summer of 2024, with fewer than 100 spaces remaining. Under the new rules, eligible offenders serving sentences of up to 19 months can be released after serving a third of their term. The government has faced criticism over the plan, with the main opposition Conservative Party warning that dangerous criminals could be released under the early-release scheme. Read: UK rapper gets 12-year jail term for hit-and-run killing “I think what would make the public less safe is if we had no prison capacity in which to put people who are arrested, suspected of crimes, today,” Treasury minister James Murray told Sky News. Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s office said last month that more than 3,200 prison places had already been bui...
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Thursday hailed the “expulsion” of the US from Iraq, saying the move marks the beginning of a broader US withdrawal from the region. In a statement marking the completion of the US withdrawal from Iraq, the IRGC said the development was “the herald of West Asia’s liberation from the yoke of the Great Satan’s domination.” The IRGC said the US departure from Iraq was the result of the “will of the Iraqi people,” as well as "resistance and action by the Iraqi government," describing it as a “historic victory.” It called on Washington to leave the region and “leave the management of security to the peoples of its countries.” The statement said the US presence in Iraq “lasted for two decades” and was a “first step toward the full expulsion of American forces” from the region. Read: US forces exit Iraq after two decades...