Reading branch of US chain to close after protests over stance on same-sex relationships
A US fast food chain is to close its first branch in the UK after protests and boycott calls by LGBT campaigners.
Chick-fil-A faced demands to “cluck off” when the fried chicken outlet opened in a shopping mall in Reading this month.
Continue reading...Surfers Not Street Children is transforming the lives of homeless children and vulnerable youths. Ilvy Njiokiktjien’s 12-year project Born Free: Mandela’s Generation of Hope documents the lives of the first generation born after apartheid
Tell us: how have South African cities changed in the 25 years after apartheid?
“I wanted to get that fresh air,” says 21-year-old Nonjabulo Ndzanibe, explaining why she ran away from her unhappy childhood home to the coastal city of Durban. “I just needed space for myself.”
Having grown up with a distant father – who spent part of her youth in prison – and a mother whom she didn’t feel loved by, it seemed like a welcome escape when a friend invited her to come and stay in Durban. In reality it would be a long time before she would eventually find refuge through surfing.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson concludes his Churchill biography with splutters against historians who insist the “story of humanity is not the story of great men and shining deeds”. The story of Winston Churchill, he cries, “is a pretty withering retort to all that malarkey. He and he alone made the difference.”
The story of Boris Johnson withers too. He is shrivelling Britain: making it cramped, poor and irrelevant. Modern historians may sniff at the 19th-century notion that “the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men” to use Thomas Carlyle’s words. The rest of us should not be so complacent and register the capacity of catastrophic men and women to change the world for the worse.
Continue reading...MPs point to lack of progress on promised safeguarding improvements for whistleblowers and survivors
MPs have accused aid organisations of “dragging their feet” over combating sexual exploitation and abuse in the sector, despite safeguarding pledges made in 2018 after the Oxfam abuse scandal.
Work to improve protection and support for whistleblowers has “stalled”, and more needs to be done to protect survivors, a report by the UK international development committee (IDC) has said.
Continue reading...An NGO has recut and overdubbed a Venezuelan telenovela to raise awareness of sexual health
Uganda has one of the highest birth rates in the world. It also has some of the most dedicated soap opera watchers anywhere in Africa.
Now a group of enterprising Ugandans is aiming to tackle the former through the medium of the latter. Soap operas are expensive to make, however, so they plan instead to “hack” a Venezuelan import, recutting the existing series and overdubbing it with Ugandan actors.
Continue reading...South Korean-based site accepted digital currency for access to videos, with victims rescued in US, UK and Spain
Hundreds of people have been arrested in a worldwide operation over a South Korea-based dark web child sexual abuse site that sold videos for digital cash.
Officials from the United States, Britain and South Korea described the network as one of the largest operations they had encountered to date.
Continue reading...About 90,000 people in America have dwarfism. The writer and podcaster Cara Reedy takes us on a journey to reflect on what it means to be a person with dwarfism – and why America's obsession with little people has left lasting damage
Continue reading...An international summit next year will tackle the world’s most enduring crisis – hunger. Radical action is needed
Hunger is the most awful and profound expression of poverty. It exists in every country. It is something that most people can identify with on some perhaps primordial level. It is innate. The fear of hunger is etched into our DNA, passed down the generations from hungry, scared ancestors. It is in our bones. It is in my Irish bones.
First, the good news. For several decades global hunger has been decreasing. This is mostly thanks to the sweat and ingenuity of the 500 million smallholders who produce 80% of the food consumed in the developing world. It is also thanks to the work of exceptional NGOs, to economic growth and to the innovation of businesses all along the supply chain. It’s thanks, too, to the support of governments and international organisations. And it’s to increased political stability in some places.
Continue reading...Unicef report finds poorest children at greatest risk, while price of healthy food in rich nations drives food poverty
At least one in three children under five are either undernourished or overweight, and one in two lack essential vitamins and nutrients, the UN children’s agency has warned.
The Unicef report laid bare the alarming rate at which poor diets and a “failing” food system are damaging children, saying that “millions are eating too little of what they need and millions are eating too much of what they don’t need: poor diets are now the main risk factor for the global burden of disease”.
Continue reading...UK lawyers say more women are coming forward, but are police and prosecutors ready?
The clearest impact of the #MeToo movement on the British justice system has been a sharp rise in the number of complaints made to police of rape and sexual assault over the past two years.
That surge, however, has coincided with a chaotic response by police and prosecutors, who have been engulfed in problems over disclosure and allegations they have refined their approach to the crime in order to improve conviction rates, although this has been denied by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Continue reading...Heavier sentences for violent criminals among policies aimed at wooing Labour voters
Violent and sexual criminals as well as foreign national offenders who return to the UK will face drastically heavier penalties under measures that will form the centrepiece of a Queen’s speech aimed at wresting the agenda away from the delicate Brexit negotiations.
With just days to go before the deadline for Boris Johnson to clinch a last-ditch Brexit deal in Brussels, the Queen will on Monday set out his government’s priorities for a new session of parliament, including 22 new bills.
Continue reading...To mark International Day of the Girl, we asked teenage girls around the world how they learned about sex and relationships
A quarter of a century ago, a landmark conference recognised reproductive rights and women’s equality as central to sustainable development. But many girls worldwide still face a struggle to access information about sexual and reproductive health, with far-reaching consequences.
To mark International Day of the Girl on Friday, we’ve asked teenage girls around the world about their experience of sex education. How did they learn about sex and how did this shape their view of relationships? Can they access contraceptives? Are they able to resist pressure to have sex?
Continue reading...After an earthquake struck in 2010, the US pledged to help rebuild the Caribbean country. A decade later, nothing better symbolises the failure of these efforts than the story of a new port that was promised, but never built. By Jacob Kushner
When Bill and Hillary Clinton travelled to the Caribbean nation of Haiti as newlyweds in 1975, they were enchanted. Bill had recently lost a race for Congress back home in Arkansas, but by the time they returned to the US, he had set his mind to running for Arkansas state attorney general, a decision which would put him on the path to the White House. “We have had a deep connection to and with Haiti ever since,” Hillary later said.
Over the next four decades, the Clintons became increasingly involved in Haiti, working to reshape the country in profound ways. As US president in the 1990s, Bill lobbied for sweeping changes to Haiti’s agricultural sector that significantly increased the country’s dependence on American food crops. In 1994, three years after a military coup in Haiti, Bill ordered a US invasion that overthrew the junta and restored the country’s democratically elected president to power. Fifteen years later, Bill was appointed United Nations’ special envoy to Haiti, tasked with helping the country to develop its private sector and invigorate its economy. By 2010, the Clintons were two of Haiti’s largest benefactors. Their personal philanthropic fund, The Clinton Foundation, had 34 projects in the country, focused on things such as creating jobs.
Continue reading...Top child psychiatrist appeals to Johnson over Home Office’s ‘almost callous’ decision
A leading children’s psychiatrist plans to quit the NHS and move to Australia because of the Home Office’s “almost callous” refusal to let his mother stay in Britain.
Dr Nishchint Warikoo, the lead psychiatrist for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) in Hampshire, said he and his family were being “forced to leave” the UK in order to stay together.
Continue reading...Frank Laws’s Hopperesque watercolours depict the individual character of east London’s most impressive – and everyday – buildings, as gentrification threatens their very existence
From Mike Leigh’s film Meantime to the TV show Top Boy, the social housing estates of east London have provided rich subject matter for writers and artists exploring the human stories intertwining in their communities. In the paintings of east Londoner Frank Laws, however, there isn’t a person in sight. The only signs of life are curtains flapping at open windows and the luminescent glow emanating from inside a home. Blocks of flats that teem with life in, say, Plan B’s film and album Ill Manors, stand eerily quiet and vacant in Laws’s images.
Laws was born in a village in Norfolk but hated the rural quiet. “I was always scared of the dark in the countryside,” says the 37-year-old. “I’m still scared of it.” It’s this fear, and Laws’ love of film noir, that informs the dramatic, Edward Hopperesque lighting in Laws’ meticulously detailed watercolour and acrylic paintings.
Continue reading...Use of cryptocurrencies allows children’s agency to bypass fees of moving cash overseas quickly and increase financial transparency
The UN children’s agency, Unicef, has announced it is accepting and disbursing donations through cryptocurrencies ether and bitcoin.
Unicef’s new Cryptocurrency Fund is the latest in a series of efforts by aid organisations to experiment with “blockchain” currencies, which have the potential to transform charitable giving and increase financial transparency.
Continue reading...A scheme training people to host outsiders is creating alternative livelihoods that will help build resilience against climate crisis and stem migration for Indian families
Datta Kondar leads a group of tourists through his village in Maharashtra to view the firefly spectacle for which it is so famous. With the arrival of the monsoons in June, thousands of fireflies emerge at twilight and perform an elaborate courtship ritual, signalling to prospective mates with their glowing bodies in a mesmerising show.
Being a tour guide is not what Kondar, 36, had planned. In 2003, he took the typical route of many rural Indians, travelling to the city in search of work. But he found himself unable to cope with the gritty realities of life in Mumbai and returned to his village, Purushwadi, within a year.
Continue reading...Operation could have corrected vision of many ‘overnight’, while 800 million struggle because they lack access to glasses, according to WHO
More than 1 billion people are needlessly losing their sight because of a lack of simple eye care, according to a landmark report on vision by the World Health Organization.
The research has revealed a wide inequality gap for sight and eye conditions. Rates of blindness in low- and middle-income countries are up to eight times higher than in wealthy countries, with people living in rural areas, ethnic minorities, women and older people suffering disproportionately.
Continue reading...As reports of sexual harassment on the London underground soar, studies say the issue is the number-one safety risk facing girls and women worldwide
It’s 8am at Oxford Circus tube station and the Central line platforms are teeming with people. Stony-faced business types, rucksack-touting tourists and yawning schoolchildren jostle for space in the rush-hour crush.
But among the crowds of commuters is another group waiting to board the train – a covert patrol of plainclothed officers looking to catch sexual predators in the act.
Continue reading...Model from Eindhoven University will surround baby with fluid and deliver oxygen and nutrients via umbilical cord
Attempts to create an artificial womb for premature babies have been given a boost by the award of a €2.9m (£2.6m) grant to develop a working prototype for use in clinics.
The model, which is being developed by researchers at the Eindhoven University of Technology, would provide babies with artificial respiration. However, unlike current incubators the artificial womb would be similar to biological conditions, with the baby surrounded by fluids and receiving oxygen and nutrients through an artificial placenta that will connect to their umbilical cord.
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