Royal College of Nursing urges ministers to improve 3.6% offer to avoid industrial action ballot later this year
Nine out of 10 nurses have rejected a 3.6% pay award for this year and warned they could strike later this year unless their salaries are improved.
In an indicative vote among members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 91% said the 3.6% rise was not enough.
Continue reading...Warning: this article contains graphic and distressing testimony and images
Research documents ‘horrific and extreme’ attacks by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces and warns that impunity has meant such atrocities are expanding to new regions
Hundreds of health workers across Tigray have documented mass rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and sexual torture of women and children by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers, in systematic attacks that amount to crimes against humanity, a new report has found.
The research, compiled by Physicians for Human Rights and the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH), represents the most comprehensive documentation yet of weaponised sexual violence in Tigray. It reviewed medical records of more than 500 patients, surveys of 600 health workers, and in-depth interviews with doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and community leaders.
Continue reading...Chinese media said more than 100,000 were members of Telegram group that shared pictures taken without consent
Anger is growing on Chinese social media after news reports revealed the existence of online groups, said to involve hundreds of thousands of Chinese men, which shared photographs of women, including sexually explicit ones, taken without their consent.
The Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily published a report last week about a group on the encrypted messaging app Telegram called “MaskPark tree hole forum”. It said it had more than 100,000 members and was “comprised entirely of Chinese men”.
Additional research by Lillian Yang and Jason Tzu Kuan Lu
Continue reading...Aid agencies, governments and UN’s food security monitor report evidence of worsening starvation, particularly among under-fives
Humanitarian experts and doctors are warning that children, elderly people and those with pre-existing health conditions are most at risk of famine in Gaza.
Pro-Israeli activists and Israel’s foreign ministry have tried to challenge the veracity of shocking pictures that have appeared in the international media, despite widespread and well-documented evidence of growing and worsening famine under conditions of Israeli restrictions on aid.
Continue reading...Changes to welfare reforms not enough to protect newly sick and disabled people from financial hardship
About 50,000 people who become disabled or chronically ill will be pushed into poverty by the end of the decade because of cuts to incapacity benefit, despite ministers dropping the bulk of its welfare reform plans, MPs have warned.
The work and pensions select committee report welcomed ministers’ decision earlier this month to drop some of the most controversial aspects of its disability reforms in the face of a parliamentary revolt by over 100 Labour backbenchers.
Continue reading...American Medical Association writes to health secretary after reports he aims to overhaul taskforce for being ‘woke’
A top US medical body has expressed “deep concern” to Robert F Kennedy Jr over news reports that the health secretary plans to overhaul a panel that determines which preventive health measures including cancer screenings should be covered by insurance companies.
The letter from the the American Medical Association comes after the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Kennedy plans to overhaul the 40-year old US Preventive Services Task Force because he regards them as too “woke”, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Continue reading...Modified images of minors appear on social media account allegedly owned by 17-year-old
Police in eastern Spain are investigating a 17-year-old boy on suspicion of using artificial intelligence to create and share fake nude images of his female schoolmates that he intended to sell online.
Guardia Civil officers in the Ribera Alta area of Valencia began investigating in December last year after a female student reported the creation of a social media account in her name that featured an AI-generated video.
Continue reading...Event becomes biggest of its kind as more than 100,000 turn out to support its ‘existence and resistance’ theme
More than 100,000 people took to the streets for London Trans+ Pride 2025 on Saturday, making it the biggest such event in the world, organisers said.
The route wound through the centre of the capital’s most famous sites, taking in Regent’s Street, Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square. It concluded at Parliament Square with speakers including Heartstopper and Doctor Who actor Yasmin Finney.
Continue reading...The BMA says resident doctors have seen their pay fall by a much greater amount in real terms since 2008-09 than the rest of the population
The Conservatives have accused Labour of having “opened the door” to fresh resident doctors’ strikes with a “spineless surrender to union demands last year”.
Shadow health secretary Stuart Andrew said: “They handed out inflation-busting pay rises without reform, and now the BMA are back for more.
It is hard to believe that, yet again, we are going into industrial action by our resident (formerly junior) doctors. It has only been a year since the last round of strikes and the length of this one – five days at two weeks’ notice over the summer when people are away – is designed to send a message.
Consultants were, by and large, supportive of the previous rounds of strikes. There is a recognition our residents have it harder than we did. There is more financial hardship than there used to be, their salaries don’t go as far as ours did when we were training, and they have amassed more student debt.
Continue reading...Beeban Kidron says it is not ‘nanny state’ to prevent firms investing billions on making platforms addictive from targeting under-18s
A leading online safety campaigner has urged the UK government to “detoxify the dopamine loops” of addictive social media platforms as tech companies prepare to implement significant child protection measures.
Beeban Kidron, a crossbench peer, asked the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, to use the Online Safety Act to bring forward new codes of conduct on disinformation and on tech features that can lead to children becoming addicted to online content.
Continue reading...The warning comes after a string of shows by women comedians joking about men went viral
Chinese provincial officials have warned comedians against stirring up discord between the genders, instructing them to criticise constructively rather than “for the sake of being funny”.
The warning came from authorities in eastern Zhejiang province on WeChat over the weekend after a comedian referred to her allegedly abusive marriage in a performance that went viral on Chinese social media.
Continue reading...Cutting aid budget to 0.3% of national income will hurt many African countries, says FCDO impact assessment
Labour’s deep aid cuts will hit children’s education and increase the risk of disease and death in some African countries, according to the government’s own impact assessment.
Keir Starmer announced earlier this year that he would reduce the aid budget to 0.3% of national income, from 0.5%, to fund increased spending on defence.
Continue reading...Wes Streeting says move shows ‘disdain for patients’ while BMA insist pay demands not taken seriously in talks
Wes Streeting has condemned the decision by resident doctors to “recklessly and needlessly” press ahead with strike action, saying it is “completely unprecedented in the history of British trade unionism”.
In a fiery statement after the British Medical Association (BMA) said there was no offer on the table that could avert the industrial action on Friday, the health secretary said resident doctors were offered changes to working conditions and career progression but chose to continue with industrial action.
Continue reading...Student midwives working thousands of hours unpaid in NHS fear lack of vacancies despite staff shortages
A student midwife who fears she will be unable to get a job after completing 2,300 hours of unpaid placement work in the NHS is calling for guaranteed posts for newly qualified midwives who otherwise will be forced to abandon the profession before their careers begin.
Aimee Peach, 43, is due to complete her training next summer, but says the promise of a job at the end of her three-year degree course has “collapsed”, despite severe shortages of midwives across the country.
Continue reading...Cornelius Taylor was killed during a sweep of a homeless encampment in city’s preparation for MLK weekend
The family of a man who was killed after city workers crushed his tent with a bulldozer during a sweep of a homeless encampment in Atlanta, Georgia, filed a lawsuit against the city on Friday over his death, calling it “tragic and preventable”.
The lawsuit filed by Cornelius Taylor’s sister and son alleges that city employees failed to look to see if there was anyone inside the tents in the encampment before using a bulldozer to clear it in the 16 January sweep. Taylor, 46, was inside one of the tents and was crushed by the truck when his tent was flattened, the lawsuit says.
Continue reading...As part of president’s end to foreign aid, destruction of the long-acting contraceptives will cost US taxpayers $167,000
The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need.
A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000. The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives. It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July.
Continue reading...Managers described as ‘reckless’ over supervision of Melissa Mathieson’s killer, who had history of sexual violence
A “catalogue of failures” resulted in the murder of a vulnerable young woman who was strangled to death in a care home by a fellow resident with a history of sexual violence, a coroner has concluded.
Senior managers at the care home in Bristol where Melissa Mathieson, 18, died were described as “reckless” by the coroner for not effectively supervising her killer, Jason Conroy.
Continue reading...Justice Collins Rice says it is for politicians and not courts to change rules around two-child benefit cap
Two women who conceived their eldest children while they were in violent and controlling relationships have lost a legal challenge to the rules around the two-child benefit cap.
A high court judge said the accounts of the abuse the women faced when they were “vulnerable girls barely out of childhood” were “chilling”.
Continue reading...Charity Commission criticised for endorsing transfer of about £5.7m to high school in illegal village of Susya
Two UK charities have transferred millions of pounds to an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank with the endorsement of the charities regulator, the Guardian can reveal.
Documents show that the Kasner Charitable Trust (KCT), via a conduit charity, UK Toremet, has donated approximately £5.7m to the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva high school in Susya, in the Israeli-occupied territory.
Continue reading...Case that exposed France’s rape culture and shocked the world has been made into play to be shown in Avignon, where trial was held
A stage play based on the trial of the men who drugged and raped Gisèle Pelicot will be staged this week in the southern city of Avignon, as France continues to debate the lessons for society from the country’s biggest ever rape trial.
The three-hour performance, The Pelicot Trial: Tribute to Gisèle Pelicot, has been created by Milo Rau, the Swiss director and playwright acclaimed for his theatre interpretations of court proceedings, including the Moscow trial of the Russian punks Pussy Riot and the trial of the Romanian despot Nicolae Ceaușescu.
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