Sky News Today with Jayne Secker

Hundreds of prisoners across England and Wales began being released early from today under a scheme to free up space in the prison system. Some inmates will be freed after serving a third of their sentence instead of half, while more serious offenders will be released at the halfway point instead of after two-thirds. Around 5,000 inmates are expected to be released over the next year, with about 700 released early on the day. Exclusions apply to crimes including manslaughter, rape, child grooming and serious sexual offences. Those released will need monitoring by probation and police and support alongside victims, and concerns have been raised by victims, the probation service and police. At Wandsworth Prison, reporters spoke to people leaving, some of whom described overcrowding, conditions, cockroaches and drones bringing in drugs.

SpaceX launched its next astronaut crew for NASA to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral on a Falcon 9 rocket. The four-person crew, commanded by Jessica Watkins and including Luke Delaney, Josh Kutryk of Canada and Sergei Teteryatnikov of Russia, is beginning a six-month mission. The launch had earlier been delayed by a propellant leak on the Dragon spacecraft and was still subject to weather checks before liftoff. The first stage later landed back at Cape Canaveral for reuse. The crew is due to relieve a three-person crew that has been aboard the ISS since February, and its work will include research on stem cells, Parkinson's disease and growing crops. SpaceX was also described as preparing possible further launches within a 13-hour window, including a Falcon 9 from California and a spy satellite launch from Florida.

In Tennessee, death row inmate Christa Pike survived two lethal injections after a court fight over her scheduled execution. She had been due to become the first woman executed in the state in 200 years, after the US Supreme Court overturned an earlier reprieve. The first injection did not work and a second was administered; journalists said they could hear her snoring when asked to leave, and paramedics later arrived. Governor Bill Lee said the process had been used more than 100 times and that the state needed to find out why the outcome was different this time, and he halted executions for the rest of the year. Pike was convicted in 1995 of killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a girl she had met at a camp for troubled teenagers. A campaigner, Margot Ravenscroft, said the case was shocking and highlighted questions about secrecy over execution drugs and Pike's history of bipolar disorder, PTSD and abuse.