Each week, Ben Hopkinson looks back at a serious, crazy, and happy news story from the past week.
Serious News
The Metropolitan Police are to scale up their use of Live Facial Recognition (LFR) camera technology, after no arrests since the false alert 12 months ago.
Between September 2024 and September 2025, 962 people were arrested using the technology according to the force.
A report was published by the police force which states that the total amount of arrests were in excess of 1,400, with more than 1,000 being charged or cautioned.
Big Brother Watch are launching a campaign against the use of the technology as it makes “London feel like an open prison”.
However, the lead for LFR use at The Met, says: “This is a powerful and game-changing tool, which is helping us to remove dangerous offenders from our streets and deliver justice for victims. We remain committed to being transparent and engaging with communities about our use of LFR, to demonstrate we are using it fairly and without bias”.
The biometrics are immediately permanently deleted if an individual walks past and are not wanted.
Crazy News
A piece of space-rock has been following our planet for past 60 years, and scientists are not sure where it came from and why it hasn’t been noticed before.
It is not officially our second moon, as it orbits the Sun and not the Earth, but is indeed a quasi-moon – a piece of space body that looks to us that it follows the planet when indeed orbiting the Sun.
It's not the first time that we have had something similar happen – in August last year we had some space rock orbit Earth, so was classed as a mini-moon.
Quasi-moon usually tend to stick around longer than mini-moons too
Happy News
A woman has found her long-lost dad and a whole family, including 11 half-siblings.
Louise Walters was 8-years-old when she found out that who she thought was her dad was indeed not – her mother told her that her real dad was irresponsible, and either in prison or dead. So in 2010, an advert was placed in the Lost Touch column in the Brighton Argus.
One of her half-siblings lives in Sweden, another is a monk in Thailand. Louise has grown a close bond to Leslie, Zoe and Marie-Ann.
Despite not seeing each other, Gary told Louise that he loves her and she “feels complete”, adding: “We just hit it off straight away. I feel like I’ve known him forever”.
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