Confirmation follows progress at talks over government support for switch to less polluting technology

The owners of British Steel are to keep the blast furnaces at its Scunthorpe site running past Christmas amid talks over government support for a switch to less polluting technology.

The government is thought to be considering aid for British Steel at the same level or even higher than the £500m pledged to Tata Steel, which closed its two blast furnaces in Port Talbot in September . However, no decisions on the shape of a package have been made.

• Shortstop held by police over incident on Sunday
• Player facing separate charges over sexual abuse claims

Police in the Dominican Republic have arrested Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Wander Franco after an altercation involving firearms.

ESPN reported that authorities held Franco and an unnamed woman for questioning on Monday after an incident in the parking lot of an apartment complex on Sunday “in which guns were drawn.”

The answer to today’s Inca-nundrum

Earlier today I set you a puzzle about a ‘khipu’, the Incan method of recording numbers with knots on string that features in Paddington in Peru. Here it is again with the answer.

Incans used khipus to record dates, taxes and measurements, among other things. Knowledge of how khipus represented numbers was lost after the Spanish conquest, until a high school maths teacher in Brooklyn worked it out in 1912. Today’s puzzle asked you you to repeat his decipherment.

Our cat expert guides you through everything you need to keep your feline friends purrfectly happy – and the kit that’s not worth your money

Cats’ stock may have fallen some way since being worshipped in ancient Egypt, but the domesticated kind still live pretty rarefied lives. Cat kit is big business, despite reassuringly few cats being trusted with credit cards of their own.

But what do you actually need to keep your pet feline safe and happy? I live with three of the furry little simpletons, Hamilton, Brando and Ripley, so have hopefully gleaned some insights. I’ve outlined some must-buys below, along with a few things I think can be safely avoided.

The high drama at Chelmsford could have been avoided if a new system for halting races was in place

Racing came perilously close to a calamity on Saturday evening, and had events unfolded differently after nine runners set off for the most valuable race of the night at Chelmsford, this column might well have opened with the words “Racing is still in shock …” instead.

The start of the Essex track’s 8.30 race was entirely unremarkable, but what happened next was, in the words of a racecourse spokesperson, “unprecedented”. The tractor used to pull the starting stalls off the track failed, and the gate was still in the middle of the home straight as the runners began to turn for home with their riders starting to stoke them up for the final run to the line.

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While Football Daily only has two hands and needs both of them to type this drivel every day, we can’t help but feel the pair of them would have been snapped or bitten off if we’d offered Liverpool fans a five-point lead at the top after 11 games before a ball had been kicked in this season’s Premier League. While the denizens of Anfield had no particular reason to believe Arne Slot wouldn’t do a decent job as successor to Jürgen Klopp, the managerial shoes into which he was stepping were undeniably huge. And if they needed proof that follicly-challenged Dutchmen are capable of making a pig’s ear of managing an elite English club in their first big job outside of the Netherlands, well … let’s just say they didn’t have to travel too far to seek it out.

The craziest game I have ever been involved in and I can’t imagine it ever being topped … there can’t have been a greater comeback in the history of football – four goals in the last five minutes to win the game” – Yarm manager Stephen Jackson calms down just enough to reflect on his side’s wild 6-5 win against Sunderland West End who, wait for it, were 5-2 up after 90 minutes.

Readers respond to the government’s proposals to reform the Mental Health Act and end injustice in the treatment of severe mental illness

I read your editorial on the proposed reforms to the Mental Health Act with interest ( 6 November ). The act serves as the balancing point between the state’s negative duty not to interfere with individual liberty without good reason and its positive duties to prevent harm to vulnerable people and the wider public. The criteria for detention represent the threshold at which both of those duties are triggered: detention under the MHA is also a gateway to rights to proactive care and support both during and after detention. We may argue about whether the existing criteria for detention strike the right balance between the state’s positive and negative duties, but it is at least the same balance for everyone.

The draft bill sets a much higher threshold for detention unless a person has committed a crime, and while this will lead to fewer people suffering the trauma and indignity of being detained, it will also mean fewer people receiving the positive support and protection of the state – that is unless they commit a crime. Even leaving aside the unexplored equalities implications of such a perverse incentive, it can surely be neither less restrictive of the individual nor more caring of the state to force people into the criminal justice system in order to receive the help they need.
Michael Chalmers
Associate director of mental health law, North London NHS foundation trust

Too many men are being diagnosed late, says Oliver Kemp, especially those in high-risk groups

Wes Streeting’s order to review prostate cancer screening guidance could not come at a more important time ( Report, 5 November ). Prostate cancer is the second-most deadly cancer among men. High-risk groups, including those with a family history and black men, are twice as likely to die from it. The existing “informed choice” system, which requires men to request testing, is failing. As a result, too many are being diagnosed late – as Chris Hoy was – which drastically reduces their chances of survival.

A screening programme for high-risk groups could reverse the rise in late-stage diagnoses and deaths. We also have data to prove that, for these groups, the advantages of screening and subsequent treatment outweigh the risks of overtreatment by a factor of four. A national screening programme would move the UK from being one of the worst performers on prostate cancer in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to one of the best.

Southbank Centre, London
Two concerts, including the UK premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s fiercely challenging Viola Concerto, showcased the versatility and communicative skills of Lawrence Power

The viola player Lawrence Power is a resident artist at the Southbank Centre this season. As well as playing concertos and chamber music, he’s exploring less conventional performances, and the first of those, Lawrence Power’s Lock-in , was a mix of video, live performances and spontaneous poetry readings, in which Power included music that he had commissioned during the Covid lockdowns.

Some of those miniatures were screened in the performances that Power had streamed in 2020. Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Objets Trouvés runs through a collection of string tropes before alighting on a fresh, original idea; Garth Knox’s Quartet for One imagines a deconstructed string quartet and has the viola play the four instrumental parts in succession, while Thomas Adès’ tiny Berceuse for viola and piano is extracted from his opera The Exterminating Angel. Two more substantial new pieces were performed live. Fazil Say’s Sonata for solo viola is a two-movement memorial to the Turkish viola player Roşen Güneş, its first movement a set of variations on a insistent keening theme, while Héloise Werner’s Mixed Phrases takes lines from a poem by Rimbaud, which a soprano (Werner herself) atomises into syllables and isolated phonemes as the viola urges her on, creating a witty to-and-fro.