Category Archives: Society

White House refuses to sign on to Christchurch call to combat online extremism – live

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White House said in response to an international agreement to to curb hate speech that ‘productive speech’ is the best tool to defeat it

The White House has criticized House Democrats’ investigation into obstruction of justice by the president as serving “political theater.” In turn, the lawmaker in charge of those investigations called the White House position “preposterous” in an interview.

The letter was sent by White House council Pat Cipollone, in response to a March request by Congressional investigators for documents. In a 12-page letter, Cipollone asked the committee to narrow its “sweeping” request and provide a legislative reason why the documents should be released, according to Reuters.

The White House will not participate in the committee’s ‘investigation’ that brushes aside the conclusions of the Department of Justice after a two-year-long effort in favor of political theater pre-ordained to reach a preconceived and false result,” Cipollone’s 12-page letter said.

The documents requested relate to everything from the contents of Trump’s meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin to his communications with former White House counsel Donald McGahn, the firing of former White House national security advisor Michael Flynn and former FBI director James Comey, and possible pardons for Trump associates who pleaded guilty to crimes stemming from the probe.

The committee also seeks documents aimed at probing whether Trump has used the White House to enrich himself in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

Jameela Jamil, formerly a presenter on BBC Radio 1 and now one of the stars of the sitcom The Good Place, opened up about an abortion she had when she was young.

Jamila called it the “best decision I have ever made.”

I had an abortion when I was young, and it was the best decision I have ever made. Both for me, and for the baby I didn’t want, and wasn’t ready for, emotionally, psychologically and financially. So many children will end up in foster homes. So many lives ruined. So very cruel.

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Misogyny, violence, racism, classism: the toxic forces behind our shameful poverty rates

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How does poverty remain entrenched while wealth bounds on? The answer isn’t only about economics, but also about culture

Australia is now the wealthiest country in the world and yet our poverty rates have remained persistently high over decades of economic growth.

Why does poverty remain entrenched while overall wealth bounds on? How is it that this is tolerated, let alone reinforced, by government policies? The answer isn’t just about economics, it’s also about culture. There are dark forces at play that allow the experience of poverty to persist despite being surrounded by wealth.

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Behind the bloodshed: the chilling untold stories about Charles Manson

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Tarantino’s epic is the big draw at Cannes. But there are other Manson movies around – including one about what ultimately happened to the young women who fell under the murderer’s spell

Over the last half century, one villain has loomed large over Hollywood. The gruesome murders committed by Charles Manson and his followers in the summer of 1969 have filled countless films and documentaries about stardom and the debaucheries of the 1960s. But his malign influence extends far beyond the screen. Aside from murdering eight people, Manson and his disciples – the Family – have been blamed for wiping out the counterculture, free love, communes and hippies.

Three new films are making fresh attempts to reckon with “the symbol of animalism and evil”, as Rolling Stone magazine called him. The biggest is Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, about to premiere at the Cannes film festival. Set in Los Angeles during the Manson era, the film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a fading TV western star and Brad Pitt as his stunt double, both attempting to make the leap to the big screen. Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate – the actor and wife of director Roman Polanski – who was brutally murdered by the Family. Manson, a background figure in the film, is played by Damon Herriman.

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Ebola in the DRC: everything you need to know

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Key facts about the second largest outbreak of the disease in history

With more than 2,577 confirmed cases and more than 1,803 confirmed deaths, the outbreak in the eastern DRC is the second largest in history. It has a 67% fatality rate and 11 months after it began, the case numbers are still escalating. It is disproportionately affecting women (55% of cases) and children (28%).

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Dementia: eat better, exercise, and reduce smoking and drinking to cut risk

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WHO research highlights lifestyle factors linked to increased risk of disease

Taking better care of ourselves could be the best long-term strategy to tackling the growing problem of dementia, according to a new report.

Research by the World Health Organisation (WHO) found dementia affects 50 million people worldwide, costs $818bn (£632bn) annually to treat, and diagnoses are likely to triple by 2050.

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UK politicians accused of racist rhetoric against Travellers

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MPs and councillors have branded group illiterate and violent over past two years

Politicians have been accused of using racist rhetoric against Travellers to help push through sweeping bans against unauthorised encampments.

In a range of documents and speeches, Travellers have been branded illiterate, violent and lawless by MPs and councillors over the last two years, as a deepening housing crisis has led to an increase in roadside encampments.

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What does Archie tell us about mixed-race Britain?

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The new royal baby is part of the UK’s fastest growing ethnic group. So what does it now mean to be black?

The arrival of the new royal baby reminds us that not only are mixed-race people the UK’s fastest-growing ethnic group; it also underlines that what it means to be mixed race is changing. Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor will join the ranks of those second-generation mixed-race people who challenge our very perceptions of ethnicity and black identity.

In fact, the changing face of mixed-race Britain is something we barely notice even as we are looking directly at it. Perhaps that is the point. Back in the early 2000s we were vaguely aware that young celebrities, such as the late reality TV star Jade Goody or footballer Ryan Giggs, had a black grandparent. But they rarely discussed it or talked of how they perceived themselves.

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Jess Phillips calls on social media sites to end hate speech profits

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Labour MP also calls for political candidates to be banned from discussing raping politicians

The Labour MP Jess Phillips has called for social media companies to stop hate preachers from profiting, calling for political candidates to be banned from discussing raping politicians.

YouTube stripped the Ukip candidate Carl Benjamin’s account from its ability to earn money on Friday, after he joked about raping Phillips.

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‘Prostitution is seen as a leisure activity here’: tackling Spain’s sex traffickers | Annie Kelly

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It’s staggeringly big business in Spain, where demand is being met by traffickers. Can a groundbreaking team turn the tide?

On a sunny morning in Madrid, two young women duck down a side street, into a residential block and up to an apartment front door. Then they start knocking. Marcella and Maria spend a lot of time banging on doors and yelling through letterboxes all over the city. Most of the time, these doors never open. When they do, the two women could find themselves in trouble. Their job on the frontline of Spain’s fight against sex trafficking is a dangerous one; both have been assaulted and threatened. Yet they keep on knocking, because they have been on the other side of those doors, forced to sell their bodies for a handful of euros, dozens of times a day, seven days a week.

To say that prostitution is big business in Spain would be a gross understatement. The country has become known as the brothel of Europe, after a 2011 United Nations report cited Spain as the third biggest capital of prostitution in the world, behind Thailand and Puerto Rico. Although the Spanish Socialist party, which two weeks ago won another term in government, has promised to make it illegal to pay for sex, prostitution has boomed since it was decriminalised here in 1995. Recent estimates put revenue from Spain’s domestic sex trade at $26.5bn a year, with hundreds of licensed brothels and an estimated workforce of 300,000.

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The age of rage: are we really living in angrier times?

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In a world in which populists whip up anger that spreads on social media, it’s easy to conclude we have never been more furious

It’s a standard observation that the world is getting angrier – but the truth is that taking the emotional temperature of an entire era is a mug’s game. For one thing, it’s almost impossible to get the necessary historical perspective: road rage, for example, feels like a modern phenomenon, until you learn that in 1817, Lord Byron was reported to the police for delivering a “swinging box on the ear” to “a fellow in a carriage, who was impudent to my horse”. It’s also easy to overlook the ways you’ve changed as an individual: I certainly remember life in the early 80s as less frustrating, but that’s surely just because I lived a child’s life of leisure, all expenses paid.

Still, the best data we have suggests that, overall, we are indeed getting angrier. Last year, 22% of respondents around the world told the Gallup organisation they felt angry, a record since the question was first asked in 2006. And something else, even harder to measure, feels like it’s different as well: it’s as though our anger has curdled, gone rancid. As a society, we seem not to express it and move on, but to stew in it – until, at the extremes, it hardens into violence and hate.

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Social media boycott ‘may be only way to protect children’

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Police’s top child protection officer says fines would be ‘drop in the ocean’ to tech firms

A public boycott of social media may be the only way to force companies to protect children from abuse, the country’s leading child protection police officer has said.

Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on child protection, said tech companies had abdicated their duty to safeguard children and were only paying attention due to fear of reputational damage.

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One-off injection may drastically reduce heart attack risk

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Doctors hope to trial gene therapy on people with rare disorder in next three years

Doctors in the US have announced plans for a radical gene therapy that aims to drastically reduce the risk of heart attack, the world’s leading cause of death, with a one-off injection.

The researchers hope to trial the therapy within the next three years in people with a rare genetic disorder that makes them prone to heart attacks in their 30s and 40s. If the treatment proves safe and effective in the patients, doctors will seek approval to offer the jab to a wider population.

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Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island

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In 2001, a smugglers’ yacht washed up in the Azores and disgorged its contents. The island of São Miguel was quickly flooded with high-grade cocaine – and nearly 20 years on, it is still feeling the effects.

By Matthew Bremner

Around midday on 6 June 2001, locals from Pilar da Bretanha, a parish on the northwestern tip of the Atlantic island São Miguel, saw a white yacht, about 40 feet long, drifting aimlessly near the area’s sheer cliffs. None of the villagers had ever seen a boat of this size floating so close to that part of the coast, where the sea was shallow, the tides strong and the rocks razor-sharp. They supposed it was an amateur sailor who had got lost.

In fact, the man sailing the boat was a skilled seaman. Two Italian passports, a Spanish passport and a Spanish national ID card were later found in his possession, all of which showed the same 44-year-old with weathered skin and dark curly hair. But each of the four documents listed a different name. In the previous three months, he had crossed the Atlantic twice, sailing more than 3,000 miles from the Canary Islands, just west of Morocco, to north-east Venezuela, and then back again, to São Miguel, 1,000 miles west of Portugal.

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Audrey Simpson obituary

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My friend Audrey Simpson, who has died aged 83, was a powerful voice in Brighton and Hove, which she had made her adopted city after leaving London in 1978.

Without any previous experience, she bought a small, run-down, 12-room guest house, the Granville, overlooking the West Pier on the seafront, and transformed it into one of Brighton’s first boutique hotels. Later, in an adjacent space, she created a restaurant, Trogs, which met with equal success and became a gourmet mecca.

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Berlin park designates ‘pink zone’ areas for drug dealers

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Repeated attempts by police to clear dealers from Görlitzer Park in Kreuzberg prompts move by park manager

Drug dealers in Berlin are to be given designated spaces in a city centre park to carry out transactions, leading to criticism that authorities have capitulated to criminal gangs.

For years there has been a heated debate about Görlitzer Park, a popular meeting point in the trendy southern Berlin district of Kreuzberg, which has been attracting an ever increasing number of drug dealers. Local people said they were reluctant to let children and pets roam free there.

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Pope issues law to force priests and nuns to report sexual abuse

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All Catholic priests and nuns will be required to report abuse and cover-ups by superiors

Pope Francis has issued a groundbreaking law requiring all Catholic priests and nuns around the world to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups by their superiors to church authorities, in a fresh effort to hold the Catholic hierarchy accountable for failing to protect their flocks.

The new edict provides whistleblower protections for anyone making a report and requires all dioceses to have a system in place to receive the claims confidentially. It outlines procedures for conducting preliminary investigations when the accused is a bishop, cardinal or religious superior.

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Teenager recovers from near death in world-first GM virus treatment

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Bacteria-killing viruses known as phages offer hope of solution to antibiotic resistance

A British teenager has made a remarkable recovery after being the first patient in the world to be given a genetically engineered virus to treat a drug-resistant infection.

Isabelle Holdaway, 17, nearly died after a lung transplant left her with an intractable infection that could not be cleared with antibiotics. After a nine-month stay at Great Ormond Street hospital, she returned to her home in Kent for palliative care, but recovered after her consultant teamed up with a US laboratory to develop the experimental therapy.

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Aid sector action to tackle abuse ‘completely unsatisfactory’, say MPs

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International development committee evidence session on fighting sexual misconduct finds little has changed

Private aid companies and charities will be asked to reappear before MPs, after evidence given on tackling sexual abuse was condemned as “completely unsatisfactory”.

Stephen Twigg, chair of the international development committee (IDC), said he intended to invite representatives of both groups back.

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Aid funding must recognise climate change emergency, say MPs

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‘Extreme, huge, and existential’ threat posed by climate change must be a central consideration when distributing aid

The British government’s aid spending is failing to recognise the “scale and urgency” of the climate change challenge facing the world, MPs warn.

Climate change must be placed at the centre of aid strategy and funding, if it is to address the seriousness of threats facing developing countries, the committee said. It urged a minimum spend of £1.76bn annually and a halt to funding fossil fuel projects in developing countries, unless they can demonstrate they support transition to zero emissions by 2050.

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