Child had been taken by her family to have the procedure, still prevalent in the country despite new laws to combat it
A doctor has been arrested after the death of a 12-year-old girl he had performed female genital mutilation (FGM) on.
Nada Hassan Abdel-Maqsoud bled to death at a private clinic in Manfalout, close to the city of Assiut, after her parents, uncle and aunt took her for the procedure.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak defends policies amid backlash over early release of Streatham attacker
The chief secretary to the Treasury has rejected the idea that cuts to prison and probation services have made it harder to rehabilitate or monitor terrorism suspects after a man who left prison days ago was shot dead by police after he stabbed two people in London.
Rishi Sunak declined to reveal the measures that Boris Johnson or the home secretary, Priti Patel, would announce on Monday after the attack by Sudesh Amman on Streatham High Road.
Continue reading...For Hong Kong people, the memories of the Sars outbreak are still fresh. In 2003 there were 1,755 Sars cases and 299 deaths (according to the World Health Organisation). With the threat of the coronavirus outbreak declared a global emergency, Hongkongers are taking all precautions. Most people are wearing masks, others goggles or double masks. Airports and the subways are screening passengers for high temperatures. People are buying masks, hand sanitiser and even food in bulk
Continue reading...Call for inquiry into CPS as prosecutions fall by a quarter and convictions by a fifth
Rape victims are finding it increasingly difficult to access justice as police refer fewer cases to the Crown Prosecution Service and fewer allegations of rape are being prosecuted and convicted, according to new figures.
The number of cases referred by the police for charging decisions fell by 32% in the year to September 2019, while prosecutions by the CPS fell 26% and convictions dropped 21%, according to quarterly CPS prosecution data across a range of crimes.
Continue reading...Rural areas worst hit as massive fall in food production causes severe hunger for a quarter of country’s population
Tšepo Molapo gazes into space, worrying about where the next meal will come from. Next to him, his two-year-old granddaughter plays, oblivious of their desperate situation.
Molapo’s children all died at illegal mines in neighbouring South Africa, where they had trekked in search of work.
Continue reading...Exclusive: attempts to tackle crisis fail because gender issues are not addressed, report finds
Climate breakdown and the global crisis of environmental degradation are increasing violence against women and girls, while gender-based exploitation is in turn hampering our ability to tackle the crises, a major report has concluded.
Attempts to repair environmental degradation and adapt to climate breakdown, particularly in poorer countries, are failing, and resources are being wasted because they do not take gender inequality and the effects on women and girls into account.
Continue reading...Hearing on teen who later killed herself could lead to first standard for protection from sexual violence at schools in Latin America
An international court hearing that involves the alleged sexual abuse of an Ecuadorian schoolgirl between the age of 14 and 16 by her deputy head could transform girls’ rights across Latin America.
In a region where 30% of students between 13 and 15 claim to have experienced sexual harassment while at school, it is hoped that the case, heard on Tuesday at the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACHR) in Costa Rica, will establish the first international standards to protect girls from coercion and sexual violence in school.
Continue reading...MPs call for inquiry into case of Errol Graham, 57, who weighed 28.5kg when he was found dead
MPs and campaigners have called for an independent inquiry after it emerged a disabled man with a long history of mental illness starved to death just months after welfare officials stopped his out-of-work and housing benefits.
Errol Graham, a 57-year-old grandfather, and in his younger days a keen amateur footballer, weighed just four and a half stone (28.5kg) when his emaciated body was discovered by bailiffs who had broken down his front door to evict him for non-payment of rent.
Continue reading...A study is looking into the coercive practice in Uganda, amid calls for the government to address the issue
Jane’s* husband likes breast milk. “He says he likes the taste of it, and that it helps him in terms of his health. He feels good afterwards,” said the 20-year-old from Uganda, who has a six-month-old baby.
Jane said her husband started asking for her milk the night she came home from the hospital after giving birth. “He said it was to help me with the milk flow. I felt it was OK.”
Continue reading...World Health Organization chief travels to Beijing as more than 2,700 cases reported in China. Follow the latest news about the outbreak.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $10m (£7.6m) to tackling the virus.
The money will be split between China and countries in Africa.
One supermarket shopper was unfazed by the visit to Wuhan of China’s prime minister Li Keqiang, Keith Zhai from Reuters reports.
While Chinese Premier Li Keqiang delivering his speech in a Wuhan super market, this auntie in front can’t stop getting her groceries done. “Nothing can stop me from buying veggies” #coronarvirus video from internet pic.twitter.com/A7CePMfis0
Continue reading...Housing officers are using their local knowledge to spot abuse and exploitation, particularly ‘cuckooing’ of vulnerable residents by drug gangs
Housing associations are playing a growing role in tackling county lines crimes, using their knowledge of local communities to spot early signs of abuse and exploitation.
In the north west of England, the exploitation of young people by drug gangs – known as “county lines” crime – is a serious problem, not just in poorer areas but in York, Harrogate and places with good transport links. Now lawyers, housing associations and police are building networks of support to try and provide innovative solutions to the crisis.
Continue reading...Officials announce new measures to contain disease, including wildlife trade ban and bus suspensions, as confirmed death toll reaches 56
Jonathan Ashworth, the UK’s shadow health secretary, urged the government to reassure the public it is sufficiently prepared as the NHS is already struggling in the flu season.
He told the Guardian:
The NHS is currently under immense strain this winter with staff already working flat out and hospitals overcrowded. We need urgent reassurance from ministers they have a plan to ensure we have capacity in place to deal with Coronavirus should we need to,
Continue reading...Leicester workers allegedly paid £3 an hour in ‘miserable conditions’, with other serious labour abuses suspected in the north-west
Concerns over the ongoing situation of up to 10,000 garment workers in Leicester, who are feared to be trapped in conditions of modern slavery and paid £3 an hour, have been raised in Parliament.
Andrew Bridgen, MP for North West Leicestershire, raised a question on Tuesday about the continuing state of working conditions in factories supplying the UK’s booming fast fashion industry, and sought a meeting with business secretary Kelly Tolhurst for clarity over enforcement of the national minimum wage.
Continue reading...Whether it is local ‘cat-seducers’, out-and-out thievery or marauding toms, our feline friends are prompting furious rows and rivalries between neighbours
Forget teenagers with asbos or improperly demarcated boundary fences. Cats are the great neighbourhood menace of our age, as likely to rip apart once-harmonious communities as Japanese knotweed. They pad between homes, destroying civic feeling, pitting us against each other in our search for their devotion. Think politics creates division? Cats are worse.
Last week, it was reported that a Hammersmith couple, John and Jackie Hall, had waged a legal battle to prevent a nearby resident, Nicola Lesbirel, from stealing their maine coon, Ozzy. The Halls accused Lesbirel of repeatedly feeding Ozzy, taking him into her house and replacing Ozzy’s collar with one that had Lesbirel’s phone number and the words “My home” on it.
Continue reading...Government-appointed investigators failed to meet alleged victims living in Bangladesh
A Myanmar government-backed inquiry that dismissed allegations of genocide against the Rohingya has been condemned as a deeply flawed cover-up, after it failed to interview a single victim of rape.
The full report of the panel inquiry, which has been criticised by the UN, was not made publicly available. It is not clear how many Rohingya were interviewed by the panel.
Continue reading...Rapidly growing sector could prove lucrative as Britain seeks post-Brexit trade opportunities
UK investors could seize a $24bn investment opportunity by helping to connect millions of people without access to electricity to off-grid home solar power systems.
The market for pay-as-you-go home solar packages is expected to boom in Africa, where millions of homes are using mobile technology to rent low-cost solar panels.
Continue reading...Children’s charity Plan International UK and photographer Joyce Nicholls travelled across the UK talking to young women about the issues important to them in 2020: public safety, body image, social media and feminism. Their research found that girls are fed up and frustrated with the lack of real progress on gender equality.
Continue reading...The pioneers who struggled for legalisation in the 60s are seeing the same battles being fought all over again
The telephone sat in the dormitory hallway, and when it rang it might have been for any of the residents – young women in their teens and early 20s, all students at the University of Chicago. Calls came from family and friends and boyfriends, from colleagues and classmates and clubs. But sometimes the voice at the end of the line would ask for “Jane”.
This was 1965, and in Chicago the social justice movement was gathering pace – a new era that encompassed civil rights, student rights, women’s rights and resistance to the war in Vietnam. Among those involved was Heather Booth, a 19-year-old social sciences student from New York. Booth had spent the summer of 1964 in Mississippi, volunteering as part of the Freedom Summer project, an attempt to register as many African American voters as possible. It was an experience that had galvanised her and taught some valuable lessons: “One is that if you organise, even in what seem like the most hopeless circumstances, you can change the world,” she says. “Number two: sometimes you have to stand up to illegitimate authority.”
Continue reading...Efforts by policymakers to bolster the population after decades of strict family planning seem to be failing
China’s birthrate has fallen to the lowest level since the Communist country was founded in 1949, in a sign that efforts to head off a demographic crisis have so far failed.
There were 14.6 million births in China in 2019, a drop of about 500,000 from the year before and the third year in a row that the number of births fallen, according to a report from the National Bureau of Statistics published on Friday. It was the lowest number in seven decades, with the exception of 1961, the last year of a famine that left tens of millions dead.
Continue reading...Experts fear numbers affected may be higher than first thought as US begins screening passengers arriving from Wuhan
More cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in the Chinese city of Wuhan and a second person has died, according to local authorities. It comes as disease-modelling experts warned that far more people may have been affected by the previously unknown virus than thought.
The Wuhan municipal health commission said in a statement that four patients diagnosed with pneumonia on Thursday were in a stable condition, taking the total number of cases to nearly 50. The statement released in the early hours on Saturday is the first confirmation of new cases by the commission in nearly a week.
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