Category Archives: Society

Shares in 888 fall as it removes CEO and suspends Middle East VIP accounts

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Online betting firm finds best practices not followed in some areas, including anti-money laundering processes

Online betting group 888 has removed its chief executive and suspended VIP customer accounts in the Middle East amid an internal investigation into a failure to follow anti-money laundering processes.

Shares in the Gibraltar-headquartered group, which last year acquired William Hill’s operations outside the US in a £2.2bn deal, plunged by more than a quarter as investors fuelled 888’s biggest drop in share price since 2006. Its market value has slumped more than 70% over the last year.

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Rishi Sunak set to unveil emergency care plan to slash NHS waiting times

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Experts warn plan does not address staff vacancies and £1bn fund pledged is not new money

Rishi Sunak will vow to rapidly slash long waiting times for urgent NHS care with a promise of thousands more beds, 800 new ambulances and an expansion of community care backed by a dedicated fund of £1bn.

The health service is engulfed in its worst-ever crisis, with urgent and emergency care in particular under unprecedented pressure in recent months. The prime minister will describe his blueprint for resolving the problems as “ambitious and credible”.

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Gove admits ‘faulty’ guidance partly to blame for Grenfell fire

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Minister says he wants to abolish ‘outdated, feudal’ system of home ownership by end of this parliament

Michael Gove has admitted that “faulty and ambiguous” government guidance was partly responsible for the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The UK housing secretary said lax regulation allowed cladding firms to “put people in danger in order to make a profit”.

Gove’s remarks come more than five years after the tower block fire that killed 72 people.

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‘Mental torture’: six years after Grenfell, UK residents still live in fear as cladding deal falters

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A government agreement with developers was meant to solve the fire safety crisis in affected buildings – but the wrangling goes on

In June 2021, Charlotte Meehan received a safety inspection report for her block of flats as part of the nationwide checks after the Grenfell Tower fire. It made for grim reading, warning that the block had been built with combustible cladding and insulation.

Last April, the government announced a “wide-ranging” agreement with developers to fix the crisis of unsafe tall buildings, but Meehan, 34, and her fellow residents in the four-storey block in east London, are among tens of thousands still waiting for their homes to be made safe.

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Plant toxin hailed as ‘new weapon’ in antibiotic war against bacteria

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Scientists say albicidin has allowed them to take a giant step forward to creating a powerful new range of antibacterial drugs

Scientists have discovered a plant toxin whose unique method of dispatching bacteria could be used to create a powerful new range of antibiotics. The prospect of developing new antibacterial drugs this way has been hailed by doctors, who have been warning for many years that the steady rise of multidrug-resistant pathogens such as E coli now presents a dangerous threat to healthcare across the planet.

The new antibiotic – albicidin – attacks bacteria in a completely different way to existing drugs, a group of British, German and Polish scientists have revealed in a paper recently published in the journal Nature Catalysis. This suggests a new route could be exploited to tackle bacterial disease, they say.

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Revealed: child migrants racially abused and threatened with violence at Home Office hotel

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Whistleblower tells of threats and illegal detention in fresh revelations about failures that drove children into hands of criminals

Children seeking asylum in the UK were threatened and subjected to racist abuse by staff at a Home Office-run hotel, a whistleblower has claimed as pressure grows on the government to act over the growing crisis in the system.

The source, who worked in the Brighton hotel for more than a year, said that in such an environment of “emotional abuse”, scores of children, who had arrived in the UK without parents or a carer, were driven on to the streets and into the hands of criminals.

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Family of woman found ‘mummified’ say privacy laws kept them in the dark

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Laura Winham lay dead in her flat for three years before her brother discovered her body

The family of a severely mentally ill woman who lay dead and undiscovered in her flat for more than three years said they were unable to have any contact with her because of privacy laws.

Laura Winham, 38, had schizophrenia, struggled to look after herself and had become estranged from her family, who she thought were trying to harm her.

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Domestic abuse charges in England and Wales halved since 2015, as offences doubled

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Exclusive: Domestic abuse charges authorised by CPS declined from 82,158 to 43,836 in 2021-2022, Labour party reveals

The number of charges related to domestic abuse has halved since 2015, figures for England and Wales uncovered by the Labour party have revealed, while similar offences recorded by police have more than doubled.

Domestic abuse charges authorised by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have steadily declined from 82,158 in 2015-2016 to 43,836 in 2021-2022, the data shows. Over the same period, the total number of domestic abuse-related crimes recorded by the police has soared by 116% from 421,185 in 2015-2016 to 910,980 in 2021-2022.

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‘Holding cell’: Melbourne family with disabled son stuck in ‘transitional’ housing for a decade

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Rosalie Dow asked department for modifications to home but was told the policy was to transfer dwellings – which is yet to occur

When Rosalie Dow moved into transitional housing in Melbourne with her two young children in 2013, she thought it would only be for a few months.

Dow’s son, Mayer, was two, and showing signs of what would soon be diagnosed as Coffin-Lowry syndrome, a rare and often debilitating genetic condition with complications including intellectual disability, seizures, hearing impairment, sensory and behavioural issues, and an inability to walk.

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Covid lockdowns created ‘online backdoor’ for child abusers, says charity

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Internet Watch Foundation reports rise in UK children aged seven to 10 manipulated into abusing themselves on camera

Internet predators have exploited a rise in online activity during lockdown to manipulate primary school age children into abusing themselves on camera, with reports of such imagery rising by more than 1,000% in the UK since 2019.

The Internet Watch Foundation received reports of 63,050 webpages containing images and videos of children aged seven to 10 sexually abusing themselves on camera last year, an increase of just over 1,000% on the year before the coronavirus pandemic.

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Birdsong boosts mental wellbeing for 90% of people, UK poll finds

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RSPB shares results as Britons encouraged to spend an hour counting birds in annual Big Garden Birdwatch

Watching birds and hearing birdsong have a positive impact on wellbeing for more than nine in 10 people, according to a survey to mark the largest garden wildlife count in the world.

People are being urged to boost their mental health and help scientists by spending an hour this weekend counting the birds in their garden or local park for the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.

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UK ban on laughing gas sale or possession poised to go ahead

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Suella Braverman pushing plan to change law on nitrous oxide as part of crackdown on antisocial behaviour

The Home Office is preparing to introduce a long-mooted ban on the sale or possession of nitrous oxide, one of the most popular recreational drugs among young people, as part of a wider crackdown on antisocial behaviour.

The plan is being pushed by the home secretary, Suella Braverman, according to officials, and would lead to people found with laughing gas, which is usually inhaled from balloons filled via small metal cylinders, facing prosecution.

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Children go hungry at Kenya refugee camp as malnutrition numbers soar

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MSF charity reports 33% rise in malnourished patients at giant Dadaab complex after influx from drought-stricken Somalia

Malnutrition among children in one of the world’s largest refugee camps has surged over the past year as concerns grow at worsening conditions at the site in Kenya.

Médecins Sans Frontières said its health facility in Dagahaley, a camp in the Dadaab refugee complex, has treated 33% more patients – mainly children – for malnutrition over the past year, while the rate of malnourishment in the camps grew by 45% in the last six months of 2022.

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Trans woman guilty of raping two women remanded in female prison in Scotland

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Politicians, campaigners and UN special rapporteur concerned by case of Isla Bryson, who offended before she had transitioned

Politicians, campaigners and a UN special rapporteur have all expressed grave concerns that a transgender woman found guilty of raping two women before transitioning is being remanded in a female prison.

Opponents of the Scottish government’s gender recognition reforms – which the UK government has blocked from going for royal assent because of “safety issues for women and children” – said that the case vindicated their concerns about lack of safeguards in the bill.

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Guinea worm disease could be second ever human illness to be eradicated

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As cases fall, the condition that once affected millions of people in Africa and Asia could also be the first to be wiped out without medicines

The number of cases of a painful and debilitating tropical illness fell last year to a record low, fuelling hopes that it will soon become the second human disease in history to be eradicated.

Only 13 cases of guinea worm disease were reported worldwide in 2022, a provisional figure that if confirmed would be the smallest ever documented, the US-based Carter Center has said.

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‘Potentially risky’ people being released after years on remand, watchdog warns

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Growing number of offenders on remand in England and Wales not offered support before being freed, prisons inspector says

Potentially dangerous prisoners are spending years on remand before disappearing into the community after their release without being properly monitored, the prisons watchdog has warned.

Charlie Taylor, HM’s chief inspector of prisons, said a restructuring of probation services last year failed to address the growing number of offenders held on remand who are not offered support before being freed.

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Probation service and ministers have ‘blood on hands’, say Zara Aleena’s family

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Watchdog report uncovers series of failings in supervision of Jordan McSweeney, who murdered the law graduate last year

Ministers and the probation service have been accused of having “blood on their hands” after a watchdog uncovered failings which left a violent, woman-hating racist free to murder the law graduate Zara Aleena.

Jordan McSweeney should have been seen by probation officers as a high-risk offender with a long history of misogynistic and racially aggravated incidents and recalled to prison after missing appointments, the chief inspector of probation, Justin Russell, said.

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C of E leaders call for tax rises to fund NHS-style social care system

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Archbishops of Canterbury and York say ‘national care covenant’ needed with stronger role for state

England’s most senior church leaders want tax rises to fund a new NHS-style universal social care system that could cost an extra £15bn a year.

In a challenge to the government to overhaul support for 1 million elderly and disabled people, the archbishops of Canterbury and York have called for a “national care covenant” with a stronger role for the state and citizens delivering more care.

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Minister unable to say whether Zahawi was telling truth when he first said taxes were fully paid – as it happened

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Labour MP asks whether Zahawi statement in the summer was untrue, with Cabinet Office minister saying he does not know the answer

Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative party chair, has welcomed the decision by Rishi Sunak to ask the No 10 ethics adviser to investigate his case. “I am confident I acted properly throughout,” Zahawi said.

Zahawi seems to be using a narrow definition of “properly”. In the statement he issued yesterday, he accepted that his original decision not to pay the tax that HM Revenue and Customs subsequently concluded he should have paid was down to a careless error. He said:

Following discussions with HMRC, they agreed that my father was entitled to founder shares in YouGov, though they disagreed about the exact allocation. They concluded that this was a ‘careless and not deliberate’ error.

Integrity and accountability is really important to me and clearly in this case there are questions that need answering …

That’s why the independent adviser has been asked to fully investigate this matter and provide advice to me on Nadhim Zahawi’s compliance with the ministerial code, and on the basis of that we’ll decide on the appropriate next steps.

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MPs urge asbestos company to pay £10m to fund cancer research

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All-party group including peers backs campaign by victims’ group, saying Cape ‘knowingly put people in danger’

MPs and peers have written to one of the biggest manufacturers of asbestos, calling on it to make a £10m donation towards mesothelioma research “for knowingly putting people in danger”.

In a letter to Altrad, parent company of Cape, the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on occupational safety and health says that documents released after a long-running court battle show that Cape historically “provided misleading reassurance about the dangers of asbestos”.

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