Revolutionary HeartFlow technology turns CT scan into 3D image, allowing treatment five times faster
Patients with life-threatening coronary heart disease will be treated five times faster thanks to 3D scans being introduced on the NHS that allow for a diagnosis in just 20 minutes.
The revolutionary technology can turn a regular CT scan of the heart into a 3D image, allowing doctors to diagnose them rapidly, NHS England said.
Continue reading...Even short, temporary increases in airborne particles can damage brain health, research suggests
Temporary rises in air pollution may impair memory and thinking in older men, according to research that indicates even short-term spikes in airborne particles can be harmful to brain health.
Scientists found that the men’s cognitive performance fell following rises in air pollution during the month before testing, even when peak levels remained below safety thresholds for toxic air set by the World Health Organization and national regulators.
Continue reading...Lack of research into area means children are being sent away from A&E and parents told they are overanxious
On Christmas Day, Gail Jackson’s 16-year-old daughter said she was in so much pain she thought she would die. Liliana had been briefly admitted to hospital with Covid in September. Her symptoms never went away and, as time went on, new ones had emerged.
“For months she had a relentless, agonising headache, nausea, tinnitus, fatigue and insomnia, but the worst thing was the agonising nerve pain,” said Jackson. “I couldn’t even touch her without her screaming in pain.”
Continue reading...Building an arts centre in Uganda, in a pandemic, was never going to be easy but it’s crucial to our post-Covid future
I’ve been raising funds for a building project: not a hospital, not a school, but an arts centre.
It’s not an easy sell at the best of times but add in a pandemic and the fact that I’m in Africa and, according to the current rules of financial engagement, art is the verylowest of priorities.
Continue reading...A series of federal cases over the pharmaceutical industry’s push to sell narcotic painkillers which created the worst drug epidemic in US history
The trial of the three biggest US drug distributors for illegally flooding West Virginia with hundreds of millions of prescription opioid pills, and driving the highest overdose rate in the country, is due to open on Monday.
Related: Empire of Pain review: the Sacklers, opioids and the sickening of America
Continue reading...Some blame new residents and second-home owners not keen on sight and sounds of ‘local’ vessels
The spot could hardly be more idyllic. A Cornish creek fringed by apple trees where boats bob at high tide and dogs and children frolic in the mud at low.
But there is trouble in the parish of Feock after a string of acts of vandalism aimed at those bobbing boats led to a wave of anger, fear and suspicion.
Continue reading...He was the inventor of ‘art brut’ who rebelled against his parents, his teachers and then art itself. Yet the impact of his wild provocative paintings, often culled from graffiti, can still be seen today
Which great artist of the 20th century has been most influential on the 21st? Neither Picasso nor Matisse, as they have no heirs. And not Marcel Duchamp, however much we genuflect before his urinal. No, the artist of the last century whose ideas are everywhere today was a wine merchant who took street art and fashioned it into something extraordinary more than 75 years ago.
After four years of Nazi occupation, you’d think Parisians would have been unshockable. But in 1944, the newly liberated city was sorely provoked by the antics of Jean Dubuffet. Even as the last shots were fired, he was creating newspaper collages bearing the fragmentary graffiti messages he saw in the streets: “Emile is gone again”, “Always devoted to your orders”, “URGENT”. In the next couple of years, he unveiled shapeless, childlike paintings that abandoned all pretence at skill.
Continue reading...The shooting and stabbing of a teenager in broad daylight on a street in Canning Town is just the latest chapter of what has become Britain’s most violent gangland feud
Rachid has no idea what the future holds, apart from the certainty that he’ll never visit east London’s Canning Town. “If I set foot there, I’ll get stabbed.” He has just turned 19, and two of his friends have already been murdered on the streets.
A trip to the nearest corner shop has become a daunting ordeal. “You’re constantly looking around, at the same time making sure you avoid looking at people. You don’t know what can happen. Anything can,” says the teenager, a former well-known gang affiliate who lives a seven-minute walk from Canning Town.
Continue reading...Australians trying to return home from India could face fine or jail; Indian government ignored warnings on variant, scientists say
That’s it from the global blog team. Thanks for following our coverage..
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Some programmes will have their funding cut by 85% or more as the UK reduces its spending
Britain announced last year that it would cut aid spending from 0.7% of national income to 0.5% – a reduction of more than £4bn. The cuts are not split evenly, with some programmes having funding reduced by 85% or more.
The Foreign Office said it would still spend more than £10bn this year to fight poverty, tackle the climate crisis and improve global health and would return to its 0.7% target when economic circumstances allowed – but it did not give a date or criteria for this. Among the cuts so far are:
Continue reading...More than 140 rights groups call for repeal of 1973 Helms amendment widely misinterpreted as total ban on funding abortion services overseas
Joe Biden is being urged to clarify a longstanding US law restricting overseas aid that has been misinterpreted by successive administrations as an outright ban on funding abortion for any reason.
As the US president marked his first 100 days in office on Friday, more than 140 human rights and global health organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International US and the Global Justice Center, signed a letter asking him to confirm that US aid can be used for abortion care in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is in danger.
Continue reading...UNFPA says £130m being withheld would have helped prevent 250,000 child and maternal deaths in poorest countries
The British government is slashing its funding to the UN population fund (UNFPA) in a move described as “devastating” for women and girls.
The agency confirmed on Wednesday that the UK, its largest donor, is cutting funding for contraceptives and reproductive health supplies by 85% this year – from £154m to £23m – and cutting core funding from £20m to £8m.
Continue reading...Scale of aid cut emerges in leaked FCDO memo, prompting experts to describe it as ‘a national shame’
The UK is to slash funding for lifesaving water, sanitation and hygiene projects in developing nations by more than 80%, according to a leaked memo.
The cuts have been described as “savage”, “incredible” and “a national shame” by experts highlighting that sanitation and handwashing is a key line of defence during the coronavirus pandemic. The reduction to the bilateral aid budget was revealed as details emerged of cuts in the foreign aid budget.
Continue reading...While some point to the number of teenage boys jailed for consensual sex, others fear gender equality gains could be lost
Kenya’s judges and child welfare organisations are embroiled in a fresh debate on whether to lower the age of consent.
Some members of the judiciary believe the age of consent should be lowered from 18 to 16 for heterosexual acts (gay sex is criminalised at any age, punishable by up to 14 years in prison) because boys and girls have “reached the age of discretion and are able to make intelligent and informed decisions about their lives and their bodies”.
Continue reading...Research from Public Health England suggests that protection conferred a fortnight after vaccination
A single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine can slash transmission of the virus by up to half, according to a Public Health England study.
The PHE finding offers further hope that the pandemic can be brought under control as it indicates that vaccinated people are far less likely to pass the virus on to others.
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For Democrats it has been a hundred days of sweeping legislation, barrier-breaking appointments and daring to dream big. For Republicans, a hundred days in the political wilderness.
The party that just four years ago controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress now finds itself shut out of power and struggling to find its feet. As Joe Biden forges ahead with ambitions to shift the political paradigm, Republicans still have a Donald Trump problem.
Related: Republicans still orbiting Trump dark star fail to derail Biden’s first 100 days
Senate Democrats are pushing Biden to admit more refugees into the US.
Biden’s announcement earlier this month that he would not increase refugee admissions from the record low cap of 15,000 that Donald Trump set before leaving office. After intense pushback from advocates and Democratic lawmakers, Biden said he’d increase the cap by 15 May.
Related: Biden walks back refugee admissions policy after outcry and will lift cap in May
Continue reading...Former minister Lady Sugg also accuses Foreign Office of cutting key sexual health programmes
Lady Sugg, a former Foreign Office minister, has challenged her onetime boss Dominic Raab to admit he is cutting the UK aid budget for girls’ education by more than 40% as the foreign secretary also suggested UK bilateral aid to Africa would be reduced to a third of what it was two years ago.
She also claimed the government was planning to close its flagship Women’s Integrated Sexual Health programme and impose cuts of about 70-80% to spending on the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition.
Continue reading...Fatima Khalil school has given some children the first taste of education – and love – in their lives
Laughter and excited chatter burst out of the colourfully painted classrooms. In a quiet garden schoolhouse amid the jam-packed Afghan capital, Kabul, pupils run around, study and play in the country’s first official school for children with disabilities.
It’s a far cry from what most of these children have previously experienced. For many, it’s the first time in their lives they feel loved and accepted.
Continue reading...From Quito to Kathmandu, millions will be endangered by cuts affecting planning for floods, earthquakes and fires, experts say
UK aid cuts to a programme working to reduce the disaster risk to poor communities around the world could endanger millions of lives and slam shut a brief window of opportunity to build safer cities for centuries to come, experts have warned.
Professor John McCloskey, from Edinburgh University, said the 70% cut to this year’s budget for the Tomorrow’s Cities project was an act of “vandalism” that had wrecked the past two years of collaboration with scientists, NGOs, authorities and communities in Ecuador’s capital Quito, Nairobi, Kathmandu and Istanbul.
Continue reading...Donna, 42, was a devoted and popular member of the teaching staff. Yet at the height of the second wave, working conditions left her terrified of doing the job she loved
The joke went: it was impossible to get Covid at Burnley College. The virus didn’t exist there. All through September, October, November and December 2020, as more and more people came down with Covid yet the further education (FE) college stayed open, Donna Coleman would make this gag to her sisters, Steph Coleman, 38, and Vicki Coleman, 45. She spoke to them on the phone every day. “It was a running joke,” Steph says. “‘Who’s come down with Covid now?’”
Although the sisters laughed about it, in truth they were alarmed. Donna was a member of the teaching staff at the college in Lancashire. She worked with teenagers who had been kicked out of school, as well as long-term unemployed people, helping them to continue their education or find work. (Steph and Vicki had previously worked at the college, too, although they had left by September 2020.)
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