BRITAIN TODAY: Sentence cut; CRIME.

FOUR of the five teenagers involved in "chilling, random and mindless brutality" against a couple because they were dressed as Goths lost sentence challenges yesterday.

But the Court of Appeal allowed an appeal "to a very limited extent" by one member of the gang serving life for the murder of gap-year student Sophie Lancaster.

The judges announced that the minimum term to be served by Ryan Herbert, 16, of Bacup, Lancashire, was to be reduced from 16 years and three months to 15 years and six months because the sentencing judge did not give enough allowance for his plea of guilty.