Schools, universities, solicitors, estate agents and financial advisers are elements of a growing industry of ‘gatekeepers’ to the UK for foreign money launderers. Currently hundreds of law firms across the country are undergoing checks from their regulator into how much care they take to keep out the criminals, because an international anti-money-laundering body, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), will soon visit the UK. FATF has become increasingly concerned about the rising number of legal actions being taken in London by foreign nationals, who have become a huge source of earnings, particularly for big city law firms. Fraud experts say much of this action is funded by laundered money from Russia and former Soviet republics. Analysts expect the inspectors from the Solicitors Regulation Authority to run into stonewalling as lawyers claim professional client privilege to keep information about their clients secret. A similar exercise on UK banks found guidelines breached.

More than a million pensioners are still living in poverty, partly due to their failure to claim benefits, the charity Age UK has claimed. In a new report it said, 1.6m pensioners in the UK are living below the poverty line, and are ‘floundering’ on low incomes. It conceded that the numbers living in poverty had fallen since 2000, but said progress had now stalled. The government said it was trying to help pensioners claim their benefits. The report, called How We Can End Pensioner Poverty, said that many pensioners ‘had been walking a tightrope in recent years,’ as food and utility bills have risen. But the biggest cause of poverty is that people are missing out on £5.5bn worth of public support. Age UK said, ‘It is nothing short of a scandal that there are still so many vulnerable older people in the UK living in poverty.’

Nelson Mandela said, ‘No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.’ The UK prison and probation ombudsman said he is ‘troubled’ and ‘appalled’ by the rising rates of prison suicide (125 inmates killed themselves between January 2013 and August 2014. 26% of those were on remand awaiting trial. The chief inspector of prisons expressed concern about prisoners spending too long in their cells with nothing constructive to do and Frances Crook of the Howard League for Penal Reform called plans for a super-jail for children a ‘recipe for child abuse’. When all else fails prison is an opportunity to intervene and attempt to put right what has gone wrong. Prisons are a tool for society and across the country churches are running Alpha for Prisons. Men and women prisoners are being given the opportunity to know Jesus through participating in this specially adapted course followed by caring for ex-offenders to keep them from re-offending. See

British Ebola survivor Will Pooley is returning to Sierra Leone where he contracted the virus, despite being told he may not be immune to it. Being a nurse Mr Pooley said that returning to help the crisis in West Africa was the 'right thing to do'. No one has ever been recorded catching Ebola twice and it is thought Mr Pooley will have at least short term immunity against this strain of the disease but this has never been tested. He has said he will act as if he is not immune and take the same precautions as other British staff in Freetown, the capital. Mr Pooley is flying out to Sierra Leone on Sunday evening and will join a team from the King's Health Partners, a coalition of three NHS hospital trusts in London. ‘I chose to go before and it was the right thing to do then and it’s still the right thing to do now,’ he said.