“It was plundered in the Fourth Crusade, sold to French royalty and has spent the past 200 years in safekeeping at a British public school. Now a relic claimed to be a thorn from Jesus’s crown is to go on display at the British Museum. And while no one can doubt the item’s rich history, there is less evidence to support the claims of its provenance… The Jesuits brought it with them to the college and it has been kept at the Ribble Valley college ever since. Now it is to be loaned to the British Museum in London for a new exhibition, Treasures of Heaven, inspired by saints, relics and devotion in medieval Europe. Jan Graffius, curator at Stonyhurst, said: ‘It is an incredible object and we are really delighted that it will form part of the British Museum exhibition. It is a priceless treasure.” w/ photos

“It looks like any other bakery, with giant metal tubs to knead the dough and industrial ovens belching out heat. Except this bakery is surrounded by razor wire, the fridge is nicknamed Fort Knox – and the slicing blades are carefully counted before anyone is allowed to leave. Its workers are all inmates of Rikers Island, New York, who earn $31 a week making the prison’s bread. The 20 offenders start work before dawn to produce 36,000 loaves of wholewheat bread, enough to feed the 13,000 inmates behind bars at one of America’s biggest jail complexes. Security is tight at the mammoth bakery – violence can flare up quickly at Rikers, where in December a guard had part of his thumb bitten off by an inmate. At 6am each day, the 20 bakers climb in a van and are driven across the 413-acre island and through the double row of barbed wire surrounding the factory. They are supervised by a team of correction officers with a warden and a deputy, who keep an eagle eye on the bakers in the noisy, fast-moving environment filled with industrial machinery.” w/ photos