Barrister urges landmark appeal hearing for courts in England and Wales to set aside decision that father should be allowed contact with child
A family court judge has come under fire for “wholly inappropriate” comments made to a young mother during a private hearing on child contact arrangements.
Judge Richard Scarratt made the mother “fearful” and put pressure on her to accept that the child have contact with her father, a barrister representing the mother has claimed.
Continue reading...Natsiraishe Maritsa saw so many friends being forced into marriage that she started a campaign to drive out the practice.
It is 11am on a Sunday and Natsiraishe Maritsa, 17, is running through some workout drills with a group of sweating teenage girls from her neighbourhood in Epworth, a poor township nine miles (15km) south-east of the capital, Harare.
On a normal Sunday, Maritsa and her friends would be attending church, but the strict 30-day lockdown imposed by the government earlier this month has banned religious gatherings – so it’s time to catch up on a taekwondo training session.
Continue reading...Society of Jesus admits 81 children and 21 adults were sexually abused by 96 of its members since 1927
The Jesuit order in Spain has admitted that 81 children and 21 adults have been sexually abused by 96 of its members since 1927, and has apologised for the “painful, shameful and sorrowful” crimes.
In a report released on Thursday, the Society of Jesus, whose members often work as teachers, said most of the abuse had taken place in schools “or was related to schools”.
Continue reading...As new Covid variants emerge, scientists advise use of FFP masks that filter inflow and outflow of air
Scientists have urged Britons to wear medical-grade masks when they cannot physically distance, amid growing concerns of faster-spreading Covid-19 variants – but said that any face covering is better than none at all.
This week French health officials advised people to wear surgical masks rather than homemade fabric ones as these afford greater protection against highly contagious new variants.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Adapted single-deckers with seats removed and oxygen onboard will transfer patients
NHS staff are preparing to transport patients using two London buses that have been converted into makeshift ambulances, in another sign of the strain Covid is putting on the capital’s health services.
Most of the seats on the single-decker buses have been removed so that each can carry four patients, in an attempt to relieve the intense pressure on hospitals and the London ambulance service.
Continue reading...UK study investigates impact of individuals’ moods within shared social network
Teenagers can “catch” moods from their friends and negative moods appear to be more contagious than positive, a study has found.
The study by Oxford and Birmingham universities investigates “emotional contagion” among teenagers, to see the impact of individuals’ moods within a shared social network.
Continue reading...Britain records biggest ever daily increase for second day in a row, as new cases rise sharply
The daily number of coronavirus deaths has reached 1,820, the highest since the pandemic began.
The number of new cases rose sharply to 38,905, after initially falling earlier in the week, which prompted hopes that lockdown restrictions were working.
Continue reading...With university online and no job to go to thanks to Covid, it has become easier to spend hours in front of the mirror berating my appearance
Name: Melis Layik
Age: 21
I increased my dosage of antidepressants today. With the loosening of Victoria’s Covid restrictions and the surge of New Year’s weight loss marketing, my eating disorder has once again overwhelmed me with feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing.
Continue reading...Half of referrals for child sexual abuse material could be falling under the radar after changes to EU e-privacy directive
The children’s charity NSPCC has called on Facebook to resume a programme that scanned private messages for indications of child abuse, with new data suggesting that almost half of referrals for child sexual abuse material are now falling below the radar.
Recent changes to the European commission’s e-privacy directive, which are being finalised, require messaging services to follow strict new restrictions on the privacy of message data. Facebook blamed that directive for shutting down the child protection operation, but the children’s charity says Facebook has gone too far in reading the law as banning it entirely.
Continue reading...Low uptake fuelled by fears over safety of vaccine and spread of misinformation
India’s Covid-19 vaccine drive has been hampered by turnout as low as 22% in some states, as fears over the safety of the vaccine and the spread of misinformation has fuelled widespread hesitancy.
On Saturday, India launched the world’s largest vaccination programme as it began the massive task of vaccinating its 1.3 billion citizens against coronavirus.
Continue reading...Celebrate the life and work of Robert Burns on 25 January with a traditional scotch. But there’s more you can do with whisky than drinking
Traditionally, Burns Night ,which takes place on 25 January, celebrates the life and work of the poet Robert Burns. With Covid restrictions in place, the usual gatherings full of poetry, revelry and haggis will have to be curtailed, but it is still a convenient excuse to drink whisky on a weeknight.
Continue reading...Family lawyers hope test appeals involving allegations of partner rape and coercive control will help update approach of family courts
A landmark hearing in the court of appeal is under way to examine how cases of domestic abuse are handled by judges in the family courts.
It concerns four conjoined appeals which feature allegations including marital or partner rape and coercive control, which emerged during private proceedings to address disputes centred on access to children.
Continue reading...When I damaged my vocal cords, I was forced to change the way I spoke – and discovered how much our voices reveal who we are
Some years ago, I was invited by my then boss, Jann Wenner, the owner of Rolling Stone, to be the lead singer in a band he was putting together from the magazine’s staff. I had just turned 41, and I jumped at the opportunity to sustain the delusion that I was not getting old. “Sign me up!” I said.
My chief attributes as a singer included impressive volume and an ability to stay more or less in tune, but I was strictly a self-taught amateur. I had, for instance, never done a proper voice warmup, and had certainly never been informed that the delicate layers of vibratory tissue, muscle and mucus membrane that make up the vocal cords are as prone to injury as a middle-aged knee joint. So, on practice days, I simply rose from my desk (I was finishing a book on deadline and spent eight hours a day writing, in complete silence), rode the subway to our rehearsal space in downtown Manhattan, took my place behind the microphone and started wailing over my bandmates’ cranked-up guitars and drums.
Continue reading...Director-general warns of ‘catastrophic moral failure’ if richer countries hoard treatment
The world is on the edge of a “catastrophic moral failure” in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, with just 25 doses administered across all poor countries compared with 39m in wealthier ones, the head of the World Health Organization has said.
It was the sharpest warning so far from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus about the dangers of vaccine hoarding since inoculations started being administered in 49 mostly high-income countries.
Continue reading...Nadhim Zahawi says over-70s being invited for jabs and hints teachers could be prioritised in next phase
The first 24-hour vaccination centres will be piloted in London before the end of January, the UK’s vaccines minister has said.
Nadhim Zahawi said that by the beginning of February the scheme would be under way in hospitals in the capital and also pledged that 50 large vaccination centres would be open. He said that at present about 140 people a minute were being vaccinated against Covid-19.
Continue reading...India launches bid to vaccinate 300m people amid fears over efficacy of domestically produced vaccine
Emerging from Holy Family hospital in New Delhi, Ram Verma, a sanitation worker, breathed a deep sigh of relief. As one of the first in India to receive a coronavirus vaccine on Saturday – marking the start of the world’s largest vaccination programmes – he had been feeling a little jittery.
“I must admit I was nervous,” said Verma, who had received his Covaxin jab in a centre set up in the hospital car park. “A lot of us were. I thought I might faint or have side-effects. After all, it is something totally new. But I’m fine. There is nothing to worry about.”
Continue reading...The author of The Case for Keto argues that conventional approaches to tackling obesity and diabetes aren’t working, and that low-carbohydrate diets could be the way forward
Over the past two decades, the UK’s rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes have spiralled, something that has invariably been blamed on our intake of saturated fat. Conventional nutrition science argues this leads to elevated cholesterol levels and a greater risk of heart disease, but journalist Gary Taubes believes we need to rethink this idea. Over the past 20 years, Taubes has suggested that fat has been unfairly demonised, and instead our excessive carbohydrate and sugar consumption is to blame for many of these societal health problems, a concept that has begun to interest increasing numbers of scientists. In his new book, The Case for Keto, Taubes discusses the potential benefits of the ketogenic diet, a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet that is being studied as a potential treatment for a range of diseases, from obesity and diabetes, to even cancer and Alzheimer’s.
You’ve long been one of the biggest advocates for the benefits of low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets. How did this all begin?
I did an investigative piece for the journal Science back in 2001 on dietary fat and heart disease. I interviewed around 140 researchers and administrators, and I concluded that there was never really compelling evidence for this low-fat diet we’d all been told to eat since the mid-1980s. When writing the story, I had a National Institute of Health administrator say to me: “When we told everyone to go on low-fat diets, we thought if nothing else they’d lose weight, because fat is the densest calorie in the diet. And instead they started eating more carbohydrates and everyone got fatter.” So I always had it my head that one of the main things that caused the obesity epidemic was this switch to a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.
Coaches, charity workers – and the footballer himself – reveal what drives the man who twice tackled Boris Johnson on child hunger and won
Show me the child at seven and I will show you the man, the old wisdom says. But in football terms, you never know, not really, which kids are going to make it as players at that age and which are not. Still, looking back at his memories of Marcus Rashford, Dave Horrocks, his first football coach, does remember one thing about him very clearly.
Rashford had first come along to Horrocks’s community club, Fletcher Moss Rangers, as a scrawny five-year-old. From the beginning, Horrocks recalls, he was the kid who left absolutely every atom of energy out on the pitch. Whenever the coach gave him a lift home from training, Rashford would get in the back of the car and – unlike other livewire boys – immediately fall into a deep sleep. When the car pulled up outside his house, Rashford would then jump out, refreshed, pick up a ball, and start practising some more on the patch of grass outside.
Continue reading...Experts agree that the impact of the jab will vary regionally and among different groups
Analysts are involved in an urgent effort to gauge the impact of Britain’s mass Covid-19 vaccine campaign and to pinpoint dates when lockdown measures can be eased.
More than 3 million people – most of them elderly or vulnerable individuals or health workers – have already been given jabs. Now researchers are trying to establish when the first fruits of the mass vaccination programme may be seen as the government heads towards its target of immunising more than 13 million people by 15 February.
Continue reading...Peter Turchin, an entomologist-turned-historian, offers insight into the battle between elites
Peter Turchin is not the first entomologist to cross over to human behaviour: during a lecture in 1975, famed biologist E O Wilson had a pitcher of water tipped on him for extrapolating the study of ant social structures to our own.
It’s a reaction that Turchin, an expert-on-pine-beetles-turned-data-scientist and modeller, has yet to experience. But his studies at the University of Connecticut into how human societies evolve have lately gained wider currency; in particular, an analysis that interprets worsening social unrest in the 2020s as an intra-elite battle for wealth and status.
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