How restrictions are being eased varies in the UK’s four constituent parts
The lockdown is being gradually eased in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but the details of how and when this is happening vary in the four constituent parts of the UK.
Continue reading...ONS estimates 1.1m people in community had ongoing symptoms in four weeks to 6 March
More than a million people in the UK were experiencing “long Covid” in a recent four-week period, according to new survey figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Statisticians estimate that 1.1 million people in the community had ongoing symptoms in the four weeks up to 6 March after contracting the disease at least three months beforehand.
Continue reading...New guidance for England and Wales welcomed but critics say it fails to address perpetuation of rape myths and ‘contact at all costs’ approach
The family courts should prioritise the issue of coercive and controlling behaviour when considering disputes between parents in domestic abuse cases, court of appeal judges have advised.
Three senior judges set out fresh guidance on how these sensitive cases should be approached as part of a 47-page judgment after hearing four linked appeals brought by mothers over child contact.
Continue reading...Bernardo Catchura spent a last desperate night seeking treatment in the healthcare system he had spent decades campaigning to improve. His wife is still unsure how he died
In their 15 years together, Maimuna Catchura had not known her husband to be ill. But one night in late January, 39-year-old lawyer, activist and musician Bernardo Catchura could not sleep, and complained of severe stomach pain.
The pain forced Catchura from his bed at his house in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau’s capital. That night he would navigate the country’s medical care maze, visiting pharmacies, clinics and hospitals. Before the night was through, he even considered crossing the border into Senegal to get help.
Continue reading...Twelve months after the pandemic struck the Guardian’s economic tracker reveals real risk of lasting damage
When Boris Johnson announced the first stay-at-home order, effectively shutting down whole sections of the economy, it was hoped the tide could be turned within 12 weeks. As many months later, lockdown measures are being relaxed for a third time and Britain still faces a lengthy road to recovery from the worst recession for 300 years.
As restrictions ease, the chief economist at the Bank of England, Andy Haldane, warned that despite the reopening of the economy, the risk of a “jobs equivalent of long Covid” remains for workers across the country.
Continue reading...Murders of two volunteers and a nurse come one day after relaunch of national vaccination campaign
Two female volunteers and a nurse working door to door to vaccinate children against polio were shot dead by gunmen in two separate incidents in the Afghan city of Jalalabad on Tuesday.
On the same day, government officials confirmed that an explosion had rocked Jalalabad’s health ministry headquarters but no casualties were reported.
Continue reading...How is it that those with the power to inflict most harm are blind to the consequences of their actions?
It is a truism to say that everyone knows violence when they see it, but if one thing has become clear in the past decade, it is that the most prevalent, insidious forms of violence are those that cannot be seen. Consider, for example, a photograph from January 2017. A group of identical-looking white men in dark suits looked on as their president signed an executive order banning US state funding to groups anywhere in the world offering abortion or abortion counselling.
The passing of the “global gag rule” effectively launched the Trump presidency. (It was scrapped by Joe Biden soon after his inauguaration a few weeks ago.) The ruling meant an increase in deaths by illegal abortion for thousands of women throughout the developing world. Its effects have been as cruel as they are precise. No non-governmental organisation (NGO) in receipt of US funds could henceforth accept non-US support, or lobby governments across the world, on behalf of the right to abortion. A run of abortion bans followed in conservative Republican-held US states. In November 2019, Ohio introduced to the state legislature a bill which included the requirement that in cases of ectopic pregnancy, doctors must reimplant the embryo into the woman’s uterus or face a charge of “abortion murder”. (Ectopic pregnancy can be fatal to the mother and no such procedure exists in medical science.)
Continue reading...Analysis: experts split on whether easy access to porn has fuelled sexual harassment, abuse and assault among young people
The harrowing reports of sexism and assaults in schools detailed on the everyonesinvited.uk website has fuelled concerns of a “rape culture” in educational settings.
The disclosures have raised concerns that easy access to pornography is part of the problem.
Continue reading...Results show increase in self-diagnosis accuracy after participants searched for advice online
That throbbing headache just won’t go away and your mind is racing about what may be wrong. But Googling your symptoms may not be as ill-advised as previously thought.
Although some doctors often advise against turning to the internet before making the trudge up to the clinic, a new study suggests that using online resources to research symptoms may not be harmful after all – and could even lead to modest improvements in diagnosis.
Continue reading...Norwegian Refugee Council says move to pull funding for its legal support programme will leave many in ‘destitution’
Tens of thousands of Syrians will no longer receive legal support, leaving many “in utter destitution” without documents they need to work, travel or return home, after the British government pulled £4m in funding from a charity programme, according to its director.
News of the cut to a Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) project supporting refugees and internally displaced Syrians, comes amid reports of a planned 67% aid reduction in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) budget for Syria, which would place hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.
Continue reading...Gulf state’s male guardian rules deny women right to wed, travel, work or to make decisions about their children, report says
Women in Qatar are living under a system of “deep discrimination” – dependent on men for permission to marry, travel, pursue higher education or make decisions about their own children, according to a new report.
Opaque rules on male guardianship leave women without basic freedoms, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has analysed for the first time the way the system works in practice.
Continue reading...Many middle-aged American women are selling up and shipping out, taking to the roads alone in their mobile homes
Sarah Gabriel found her life’s meaning in a small town in Kansas on a cold autumn morning in 2020. It was the hour before dawn in a Walmart car park and the 63-year-old rolled back the strip of floor underlay that serves as makeshift curtains on the windows of her 2008 Honda minivan to the awesome sight of a full moon looming above the spectral white of Walmart’s security lights.
“Here I was in Kansas, you know, like Dorothy, and the moon was doing her thing like I was doing my thing,” she recalls. “‘Hey Sarah,’ she seemed to say, ‘you’re in your seventh decade and now it’s time for your big adventure.’”
Continue reading...Freedom of information data will increase calls for country to be granted debt amnesty
When Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, was in Sudan in January he offered £40m in aid to help its poorest people, who are facing unprecedented food scarcity in a debt-laden country where austerity is deepening.
Sudan, ruled by an unelected military-led transitional government after longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir was deposed in 2019, owes the UK almost £900m. But the Observer can reveal that almost 80% of that was accrued from interest, leading to calls for an unconditional debt amnesty.
Continue reading...Vaccines minister says first booster doses will go to the top four priority groups, which includes care home staff, NHS workers and clinically extremely vulnerable
Northern Ireland’s first minister, Arlene Foster, has received her first dose of Covid-19 vaccine.
The 50-year-old politician was given a shot of AstraZeneca’s vaccine by a GP at Castle Park leisure centre in Lisnaskea in her Co Fermanagh constituency on Saturday morning, according to PA.
There is a really positive community spirit here and across all of our centres in a collective effort to combat Covid-19. I am grateful to all of the wonderful team of medics and volunteers who are making this happen in GP practices and centres across Northern Ireland every day of the week.
Families in Israel are celebrating Passover following a successful vaccine rollout in the country in which more than half of its overall population have received both doses.
Giordana Grego, who immigrated to Israel from Italy, told AP:
For us in Israel, really celebrating the festivity of freedom definitely has a whole different meaning this year after what we experienced. It’s amazing that this year we’re able to celebrate together, also considering that in Italy, everybody is still under lockdown.
Continue reading...Serum Institute boss Adar Poonawalla has rented a Mayfair mansion for £50,000 a week
The AstraZeneca vaccine has made Prof Sarah Gilbert – who led the Oxford team that created it – one of the UK’s most famous modern scientists and turned the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company into a household name.
But almost half of all the AstraZeneca shots, destined for the arms of hundreds of millions of people around the world, are being produced by a 40-year-old Indian billionaire with a penchant for private jets and Picassos.
Continue reading...Six ways to bring some pizzazz to those first socially distanced interactions as restrictions are lifted
From Monday in England, people will be able to meet outdoors either in a group of six (from any number of households), or in a group of any size from up to two households, including in private gardens.
While this is exciting, it may also be a little daunting – many of us will have forgotten how to socialise normally during the long months of lockdown. Here’s a quick refresher course on the art of making conversation under current guidelines:
Continue reading...EU will not be blackmailed over Oxford/AstraZeneca doses, says foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian
The war of words with the EU over vaccines has escalated as France’s foreign minister claimed Britain will struggle to source second Covid jabs but that Brussels would not be “blackmailed” into exporting doses to solve the problem.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, a close political ally of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, claimed that the UK’s success had been built on driving forward with first jabs without having secured the second doses necessary for full vaccination.
Continue reading...Leap of 50% in cases in three months and just 7m jabs across continent ‘infecting 11 health workers an hour’
Rising cases of coronavirus in Africa threaten to overrun fragile healthcare systems and test the continent’s much-touted resilience to the disease, according to the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.
The global health body stated that infections were on the rise in at least 12 countries in Africa including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and Guinea.
Continue reading...Refusal to support measure despite Ursula von der Leyen highlighting 21m doses sent to UK
EU leaders backed “global value chains” rather than support Brussels in using new powers to block Covid jab exports to highly vaccinated countries, despite being told that 21m doses had been sent to the UK.
At a virtual summit, attended briefly by Joe Biden, the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, highlighted the large shipments sent over the Channel, amounting to two-thirds of the jabs given in the UK.
Continue reading...A documentary series about Demi Lovato shows how brutally controlled the singer’s diet once was, and, as other pop performers attest, it’s control that underpins damaging behaviour
For eight years of her life, Demi Lovato was served a watermelon cake for her birthday. This wasn’t a watermelon-flavoured version of a proper cake with all the good stuff like butter, sugar and flour, but rather an actual watermelon with some icing on top.
The reason for this was that her team at the time were “trying to keep her weight down”, according to Lovato’s best friend Matthew Scott Montgomery, who is interviewed as part of Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil, the YouTube documentary series premiering this week. Her team would police what she ate, he says, and those she was with were also required to eat only when Lovato ate, with no snacking outside of meals, in an attempt to “keep her well” and avoid triggering a relapse into the restrictive eating disorders she struggled with as a teenager.
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