The Sun (United Kingdom) a free special issue of "The Sun" was distributed by the Royal Mail to 22 million homes in England. The promotion, which did not include a Page 3 topless model, was announced in mid-May and was believed to be the first such freesheet issued by a UK national newspaper. The boycott in Merseyside following the newspaper's coverage of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 meant that copies were not dispatched to areas with a Liverpool postcode. Royal Mail employees in Merseyside and surrounding areas were given special dispensation by their managers to allow them not to handle the publication "on a
Life imprisonment in England and Wales petition as an attempt to boost its sales on Merseyside, which had plummeted five years earlier due its controversial reporting of the Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 Liverpool F.C. supporters were killed at an FA Cup semi-final. In June 1997, the House of Lords ruled that Howard had acted unlawfully when setting the 15-year minimum terms. This ruling also signalled the end of the Home Secretary's powers to set minimum terms for offenders who committed their crimes before the age of 18. In November 2002, following a European Court of Human Rights ruling that the Home Secretary could no longer