Category Archives: Society

‘Just write STOP’: the teenager helping Polish women flee abuse

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Schoolgirl’s fake cosmetics site helps hundreds of women as domestic violence rises during Covid

In April 2020, weeks after Poland went into its first Covid-19 lockdown, Krysia Paszko, a 17-year-old high school pupil, watched a TV report about Europe’s surge in domestic violence cases, which had increased by up to 60% on 2019, according to the World Health Organization. Poland’s largest women’s rights centre, Centrum Praw Kobiet (CPK), had reported a 50% increase in calls to its domestic violence hotline in March.

Learning from the report that France had implemented a scheme in pharmacies that women could use to report domestic violence using the codewords “Mask 19”, Paszko had an idea. With help from a graphic designer friend, she created a Facebook page for a fictitious cosmetics company.

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Pandemic periods: why women’s menstrual cycles have gone haywire

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A majority of menstruating women have experienced changes to their cycle over the last year, surveys suggest. One of the main culprits? Persistent stress

We will not look back on the past year as a vintage one for the human body. Since March 2020, many of us have experienced physical manifestations of stress that correspond to living through a global pandemic. From low energy and headaches to changes in mood and disrupted sleep, our rhythms are deeply upset. And many women have experienced changes to a fundamental rhythm: the menstrual cycle.

Rachel Burns has always experienced premenstrual syndrome (PMS), but it has been even more difficult to navigate in the past 12 months. “I always have a few days of feeling quite withdrawn before my period, but this has morphed into me feeling unreachable and anxious for over a week,” says the 36-year-old from Kent. “My partner says the change is significant.” Before Christmas, her PMS made her feel as if she were “going mad, like a panic attack I couldn’t come down from”. The effects of her period drag on now. She feels fluey, achy, “completely depleted, physically and emotionally”. As a result, it can feel like she “only has one ‘good’ week” a month. “It’s like being at sea within yourself,” she says.

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UK singled out for failing to export Covid vaccines to EU

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European commission revising export authorisation mechanism ‘to ensure vaccination of EU’

Britain has been singled out for failing to export Covid vaccines to the EU as Brussels empowered officials to prohibit shipments of doses to countries with a better vaccination coverage than within the bloc.

Valdis Dombrovskis, a European commission vice-president, said the commission was revising its export authorisation mechanism in order to “ensure vaccination of our own population”.

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Abandoned: gangs in Guatemala replace families – photo essay

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Decades of migration to the US left generations of children behind for whom gangs are substitute families

Photographs and text by Ignacio Marin

Since she arrived in Guatemala City a few decades ago, she has lived in the same humble home. Between bare concrete walls and under a tin roof, she raised three children. Now Berenice is raising her 15-year-old grandson since his mother left for the US and his father was murdered.

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Facebook guidelines allow users to call for death of public figures

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Exclusive: public figures considered to be permissible targets for otherwise-banned abuse, leaked moderator guidelines show

Facebook’s bullying and harassment policy explicitly allows for “public figures” to be targeted in ways otherwise banned on the site, including “calls for [their] death”, according to a tranche of internal moderator guidelines leaked to the Guardian.

Public figures are defined by Facebook to include people whose claim to fame may be simply a large social media following or infrequent coverage in local newspapers.

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‘No more shame’: the French women breaking the law to highlight femicide

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Alarming rates of violence have inspired a poster campaign that has spread beyond France to more than 15 countries


On a weekday evening, in between coronavirus lockdowns and curfews, Camille, Natacha and Cindy are out with a bright yellow plastic bucket of glue, two large brushes and a wad of A4 paper, each sheet covered with a single letter.

The women, all in their 20s, stop on the main road of this Paris suburb by the wall of what looks like a former bank.

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Prince Harry joins $1bn Silicon Valley startup as senior executive

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Duke of Sussex’s first formal role since ending royal duties involves ‘meaty role’ as chief impact officer at BetterUp

Prince Harry has been given a job by a $1bn (£730m) Silicon Valley startup which provides professional coaching, mental health advice and “immersive learning” as its chief impact officer.

The Duke of Sussex said he hoped to be able to use his own experiences using the “the power of transforming pain into purpose” to help BetterUp’s clients with “proactive coaching” for personal development, as well as achieve “an all-round better life”.

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‘A letter tells someone they still matter’: the sudden, surprising return of the pen pal

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In the pandemic, many have rediscovered the sheer pleasure of writing to strangers, with new schemes spreading hope and connection around the world

A few months ago, when the rules had been sufficiently relaxed to allow friends to sit together outside, Liz Maguire had coffee with a woman she had never met. The pair had already been communicating for months, and quickly fell into easy conversation. Later on, this woman tweeted about their meeting, to which another woman replied: “You met Liz Maguire? As in the Liz Maguire?”.

The Liz Maguire is a 27-year-old American expat living in Dublin. Though undoubtedly a celebrity in her chosen field, she is not a professional, but that is simply because she is not paid to do what she loves, which is to write letters to strangers.

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Chariots of steel: Barcelona’s hidden army of scrap recyclers

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Thousands of migrants play a key role in collecting Catalonia’s waste but must live on the margins

They are everywhere and yet they are almost invisible, living below the social radar as they crisscross the city pushing supermarket trolleys piled with metal tubing, old microwaves and empty beer cans.

The chatarreros are Barcelona’s itinerant scrap-metal collectors, and there are thousands of them. Most are undocumented migrants and so there is no official census, but Federico Demaria, a social scientist at the University of Barcelona who is conducting a study of the informal recyclers in Catalonia, believes there are between 50,000 and 100,000 in the region. About half are from sub-Saharan Africa; the rest are from eastern Europe, elsewhere in Africa and Spain.

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‘I’ve lost who I was’: UK pauses to reflect on year of Covid

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Twelve months after the first lockdown, bereaved relatives and long Covid survivors on how things can never be the same

A year to the day since the UK went into a historic lockdown to combat a frightening and deadly new pandemic, the nation looks back in disbelief and horror. One hundred and twenty six thousand dead. A decimated economy. The reckoning will take decades to pick over.

Tuesday’s day of reflection, organised by the cancer charity Marie Curie and backed by over 110 organisations, will be observed across the nation. A minute’s silence at midday is followed by a doorstep vigil at 8pm. Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer, Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford are expected to mark the occasion. Prominent buildings and national landmarks will be illuminated in yellow, to commemorate the dead.

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Sturgeon welcomes ‘official, definitive, independent’ ruling she did not breach ministerial code – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. For more on this story, you read the news report here

The army’s increased deployability and technological advantage will mean that greater effect can be delivered by fewer people. I’ve therefore taken the decision to reduce the size of the army from today’s current strength of 76,500 trade trained personnel to 72,500 by 2025.

The army has not been at its established strength of 82,000 since the middle of last decade.

Related: Coronavirus live news: Germany extends partial lockdown; Irish PM speaks out against vaccine export ban

Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, has said that Nicola Sturgeon is not “free and clear”, despite being exonerated by the independent adviser on the ministerial code, because the Scottish parliament’s committee has not yet published its report on her. In a statement he said:

The first minister has been given a pass because it has been judged her ‘failure of recollection’ was ‘not deliberate’.

I respect Mr Hamilton and his judgment but we cannot agree with that assessment. Nicola Sturgeon did not suddenly turn forgetful.

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Can the UK avoid a third wave of Covid?

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Analysis: as lockdown restrictions ease, the country now faces a race between vaccination and infection

Britain’s latest lockdown has dramatically reduced cases of coronavirus, and the number of people being admitted to hospital and dying from the disease. What the country faces now is essentially a race between vaccination and infection: can we protect people faster than the virus spreads as restrictions are eased?

This was always going to be a balancing act. The UK vaccination strategy of prioritising the most vulnerable people and moving down the age groups is intended to save lives first and slow transmission second. This means that as the country unlocks, infections are likely to rise, primarily in younger people who have more social contacts and have not yet been vaccinated. Hospitalisations and deaths are expected to rise too, though not as sharply: even though vaccine coverage has been high in vulnerable groups and older people, not everyone has the vaccine and it will not protect all those who do.

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Kenyan police officers to go on trial accused of British aristocrat’s murder

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Alexander Monson, son of Lord Monson, died in 2012 after allegedly being beaten in a police cell

Four Kenyan police officers will stand trial for murder after a judge ruled they had a case to answer in the death of the British aristocrat Alexander Monson, who died in 2012 a day after allegedly being beaten in a police cell.

The ruling, handed down by a high court judge in Mombasa, follows a years-long legal battle by his family after the 28-year-old died after he was arrested outside a nightclub at the Diani beach resort on suspicion of smoking cannabis.

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De Klerk seeks accountability. What about his own?

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Apartheid-era South African president calls for justice for female victims of violence in Guardian article but some say his own record needs scrutiny

South Africans don’t give much thought to FW de Klerk these days. Like Mikhail Gorbachev, his fellow Nobel peace laureate, the last apartheid president is more highly regarded outside his own country than in it.

But some South Africans were taken aback to see De Klerk putting himself forward in a Guardian article on 10 March as an advocate of protecting women from violence and asserting that “holding perpetrators accountable, irrespective of how long ago the crime was committed, is essential to stamping out impunity and preventing future atrocities”.

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Covid: why has the fall in UK infection rate stalled despite vaccinations?

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Hospital admissions and deaths are declining as priority groups vaccinated but number of new diagnoses has stabilised

The UK’s Covid-19 statistics remain encouraging despite continuing rows over vaccine deliveries in Europe. Admissions to hospital and daily deaths from the disease continue to decline with numbers in the latter category now down to double digits while the former have dropped to around a 10th of their total two months ago.

However, one other category – numbers of new diagnoses a day – has reached a plateau with cases, having plunged from 60,000, stabilising at around 5,000 to 6,000. So why has this figure apparently stalled while deaths and hospitalisations continue to decline?

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Inside Vogue, where women have the top jobs but men still rule

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A new account of life at the fashion bible claims that female staff have been undermined and humiliated for decades. The author reveals why she wrote it

As a fashion-obsessed teenager, I dreamed of working for Vogue. What girl didn’t? This was in the 2000s, and smartphones weren’t everywhere yet, so we’d leaf through the latest copy hungrily at the back of the class. I loved the pictures, the clothes, even the adverts. But most of all I loved the masthead and the index. Who were these glamorous humans with lovely-sounding names and exotic job titles?

Mostly, of course, they were women. That’s the thing about a place like Vogue. It’s a huge global corporation with a lot of soft power, yet unlike most such companies, it has always had women at the top. But not right at the top.

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After Covid, will we ever shake hands again?

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The handshake will be back, says Ella Al-Shamahi – we’ve been doing it for 7m years and it’s part of our DNA

The handshake has a serious PR problem. For a long time the go-to, multipurpose, international greeting, it was abruptly banished in March 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world. But has it gone for ever? Is it consigned to history? Have we been shocked into seeing what we should have realised all along: that it is sheer recklessness to indiscriminately touch other people’s dirty paws? The White House Covid-19 taskforce member and immunologist-turned-American hero Dr Anthony Fauci certainly thought so last year when he proclaimed, “I don’t think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you.”

If the handshake is indeed undergoing an extinction event, then who better than a palaeoanthropologist, someone who studies human evolution, to speak at the wake? Except that, as a palaeoanthropologist, I’m refusing to write its obituary. Drawing on multiple lines of evidence, I have come to the conclusion that the handshake is, in fact, the owner of a rich, fascinating story, hiding in plain sight. I think the handshake isn’t just cultural: it’s biological, it’s programmed into our DNA.

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Nine in 10 councils in England see rise in people using food banks

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Local authorities reveal devastating toll of coronavirus on households who have struggled to keep a roof over their heads

A rise in the use of food banks and an increase in family disputes requiring mediation has been seen across most of England, according to new research that uncovers the pressures on families during the Covid crisis.

Most local councils in England have also reported increased numbers of people needing help for homelessness, with warnings that many poorer households will face “disaster” unless emergency support is extended well beyond the pandemic.

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Keeping an eye on the force: life in the real Line of Duty

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As the popular BBC drama returns, a former crime reporter takes a look at the reality of fighting police corruption

Last week, an officer from South Wales police received formal notification that they were under investigation regarding their dealings with a man who had been arrested and held overnight in a cell in Cardiff.

The suspect had been released from custody the following morning then found dead shortly afterwards. The investigation is to focus on whether the level of force used by the officer was “necessary, proportionate and reasonable” in the circumstances.

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Prince Harry writes foreword to book for children who have lost parents to Covid

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Duke writes about his mother’s death in book for bereaved children as part of National Day of Reflection

The Duke of Sussex has reflected on the pain of his mother’s death in a foreword to a book for children of health workers who have died in the coronavirus pandemic.

Prince Harry wrote that the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 when he was 12 had left “a huge hole inside of me” but that it was eventually filled with “love and support”, according to the Times.

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