Category Archives: Society

Austerity to blame for 130,000 ‘preventable’ UK deaths – report

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Two decades of public health improvements have stalled, says IPPR thinktank

More than 130,000 deaths in the UK since 2012 could have been prevented if improvements in public health policy had not stalled as a direct result of austerity cuts, according to a hard-hitting analysis to be published this week.

The study by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank finds that, after two decades in which preventable diseases were reduced as a result of spending on better education and prevention, there has been a seven-year “perfect storm” in which state provision has been pared back because of budget cuts, while harmful behaviours among people of all ages have increased.

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‘You get used to the gunfire’ – filming the Libyan women’s football team

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Denounced on TV, they train at secret locations watched by armed guards. We meet the woman from Hastings who made a fascinating film about Libya’s guttsiest football squad

‘Just what our country needs!” rails the imam sarcastically on Libyan TV. “A women’s football team! And what’s more, they chose tall, young beautiful girls for the team – and for months their legs will be exposed.”

Women’s football may be getting its moment in the spotlight with the World Cup about to kick off. But, as the absorbing new documentary Freedom Fields reveals, the Libyan women’s national team has some way to go. As well as that imam, the film also features this statement from extremist group Ansar al-Sharia: “We strongly refute what the supporters of immoral westernisation are doing under the pretext of women’s freedom. This might lead to other sports with even more nudity, such as swimming and running.”

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Belgium investigates right-to-die group offering ‘suicide powder’

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Last Will provides advice to members on how to obtain lethal drug to end their lives

Belgian prosecutors are to investigate a right-to-die group that has been offering advice on the use of a “suicide powder”.

The Last Will group, which has about 23,000 paying members with an average age of 69, was blocked by the Dutch authorities last year from helping approximately 1,000 people purchase the lethal drug but continues to offer advice on legal ways to obtain it.

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Report raises alarm over police detention of vulnerable suspects

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Suspects interviewed without appropriate adult present in over 100,000 cases in England and Wales, charity says

Police officers detained and interviewed vulnerable suspects without an appropriate adult present more than 100,000 times last year in England and Wales, according to a charity report.

The failure by officers to provide assistance, chiefly to those with mental illness, autism or learning disabilities, leaves them at risk of miscarriages of justice, the National Appropriate Adult Network (Naan) has warned.

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Autism symptoms replicated in mice after faecal transplants

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Study aims to discover whether gut microbes play a part in development of the condition

Scientists have induced the hallmarks of autism in mice by giving them faecal transplants from humans with the condition.

The experiments were designed to test whether the communities of gut microbes found in people with autism have a role in their symptoms, an idea that is gaining ground among researchers.

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Ctrl Alt Delete: the pro-choice comedy that’s the bravest TV show in America

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They have been called ‘worse than Nazis’ for their abortion-clinic comedy. But for Roni Geva and Margaret Katch, the hate pales beside the outpouring of gratitude

The makers of Ctrl Alt Delete like to say it’s a typical workplace comedy. “But not your typical workplace,” says co-creator Roni Geva. “Do you come here often?” jokes a woman in the abortion clinic waiting room in the first episode, and from that moment they’re off – in short snappy episodes, the laughs come fast in this pro-choice comedy.

At a time when the debate around abortion in the US is reaching vitriolic and absurd levels – see last month when President Trump said women were giving birth and then deciding, with their doctor, whether to “execute” the baby, and the number of states seeking to restrict abortions, including Alabama’s ban last week – it seems right for a different, more humorous and human, approach.

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Boycott North Korea’s ‘inhumane’ mass gymnastic displays, says ex-diplomat

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Defector calls on European tourists and online viewers to shun cultural displays that take children out of school

The highest-ranking official to defect from North Korea has called for Europeans to stop being an audience for the “child exploitation” in the country’s famous mass games.

Thae Yong-ho, the former deputy ambassador to the UK, who defected in 2016, said travel companies and tourists should boycott the cultural displays, which attract large numbers of visitors and social media viewings. He said North Korean children already faced appalling rates of malnutrition, brainwashing and forced labour and the displays were yet another act of cruelty.

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Childish Gambino choreographer urges fans to step up for young rural Africans

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Sherrie Silver, who was behind acclaimed video This is America, launches virtual dance ‘petition’ to promote investment in farming

She made a name for herself as the choreographer behind one of the most controversial yet critically acclaimed music videos of last year.

Now Sherrie Silver, the creative force behind the dance moves in Childish Gambino’s This Is America, is using her success to drive a social media campaign promoting investment in young people in rural Africa.

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UK refuses to back ‘game-changing’ resolution on drug pricing

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Global agreement urges governments to share information on actual cost of medicines, with aim of making them more affordable

The UK government has refused to sign up to a global resolution on greater transparency for drug pricing.

The resolution urges governments and others buying health products to share information on actual prices paid, and pushes for greater transparency on patents, clinical trial results and other factors affecting pricing from laboratories to patients.

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Sexism, slander, hatred: Sri Lanka’s culture of online abuse

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From politicians to members of the LGBTQI community, social media in Sri Lanka is a hotbed of harassment and hostility

The threats began after Jegatheeswaram Jeyachandrika decided to contest local government elections.

Clutching a file of printouts, Meena, as she is known, points to a Facebook post in which she is pictured, circled in red, among a group of people.

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‘People aren’t disabled, their city is’: inside Europe’s most accessible city

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From flattened cobbles to threshold ramps, the Dutch city of Breda has much to teach its neighbours

When I arrived at Breda station last month to find out why this Dutch city was recently named the winner of the 2019 Access City award, I did something I have not done while travelling in a long time. Instead of taking a taxi, I independently pushed the two kilometres to the hotel, to see whether lack of access for wheelchair users like me is as big a problem here as it is in most other cities.

Usually, a journey like that would be a nightmare, particularly in older European towns like Breda, a city of just under 200,000 people that was an important centre during the Holy Roman Empire. Medieval city centres and cobble-stoned markets are a recipe for broken castor wheels and painful pressure sores for wheelchair users.

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A sweet tale: the son who reinvented sugar to help diabetic dad

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The natural substitute helps diabetics, combats obesity and tackles climate change

Javier Larragoiti was 18 when his father was diagnosed with diabetes. The teenager had just started a degree in chemical engineering in Mexico City. So he dedicated his studies to a side project: creating an acceptable alternative to help his father and millions of Mexicans like him avoid sugar.

“It’s only when you know someone with this sickness that you realise how common it is and how sugar intake plays a huge role,” he says. “My dad tried to use stevia and sucralose, just hated the taste, and kept cheating on his diet.”

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World’s rivers ‘awash with dangerous levels of antibiotics’

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Largest global study finds the drugs in two-thirds of test sites in 72 countries

Hundreds of rivers around the world from the Thames to the Tigris are awash with dangerously high levels of antibiotics, the largest global study on the subject has found.

Antibiotic pollution is one of the key routes by which bacteria are able develop resistance to the life-saving medicines, rendering them ineffective for human use. “A lot of the resistance genes we see in human pathogens originated from environmental bacteria,” said Prof William Gaze, a microbial ecologist at the University of Exeter who studies antimicrobial resistance but was not involved in the study.

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Top UK scientist urges people to take vitamin D supplements

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Geneticist Steve Jones, formerly a sceptic, says case for doing so is overwhelming

One of Britain’s leading scientists has urged people to take vitamin D supplements, particularly children, who spend an hour less outside than they did 10 years ago.

The geneticist Steve Jones told the Hay literary festival in Wales the health case for taking them was now overwhelming. “I never thought I would be a person who would take vitamin supplements, I always thought it was absolute nonsense, it’s homeopathy. I now take vitamin D every day,” he said.

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Women are happier without children or a spouse, says happiness expert

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Behavioural scientist Paul Dolan says traditional markers of success no longer apply

We may have suspected it already, but now the science backs it up: unmarried and childless women are the happiest sub-group in the population. And they are more likely to live longer than their married and child-rearing peers, according to a leading expert in happiness.

Speaking at the Hay festival on Saturday, Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics, said the latest evidence showed that the traditional markers used to measure success did not correlate with happiness – particularly marriage and raising children.

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How about the ‘pro-life’ lobby get behind these life-positive causes instead? | Hadley Freeman

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Banning abortion isn’t the most effective place to start if you want to save lives

It’s always more fun to be on the winning side, and in the US right now there is no question that the pro-life side is – well, “killing it” seems like the wrong term, so let’s say it’s enjoying some triumphs. Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio have banned abortion from six to eight weeks into a pregnancy – before many women even know they’re pregnant – and last week, 25 men passed a law in Alabama banning nearly all abortions, including in cases of rape and incest, which was then signed by the state’s female governor, Kay Ivey. I encourage all of you to look at a photo of these men and say their names out loud: Jabo Waggoner. Garlan Gudger. Shay Shelnutt. If Martin Amis were writing a book about a bunch of woman-hating morons, he would reject these as just too on the nose.

It must be a real bummer to the smug bros (and Susan Sarandon) who insisted in the run-up to the 2016 election that there was no real difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Well, no difference to them, perhaps. But to millions of vulnerable women in the US, things are a little different. President Trump has effected a rightwing judicial wave across the US, filling the federal court system at all levels with deeply conservative judges. This includes, of course, the supreme court, with the appointments of justices Neil Gorsuch and the famously charming Brett Kavanaugh; “pro-life” law-makers are hoping to take advantage of this and overturn Roe v Wade.

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IVF couples could be able to choose the ‘smartest’ embryo

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US scientist says it will be possible to rank embryos by ‘potential IQ’ within 10 years

Couples undergoing IVF treatment could be given the option to pick the “smartest” embryo within the next 10 years, a leading US scientist has predicted.

Stephen Hsu, senior vice president for research at Michigan State University, said scientific advances mean it will soon be feasible to reliably rank embryos according to potential IQ, posing profound ethical questions for society about whether or not the technology should be adopted.

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Taiwan holds first gay marriages in historic day for Asia

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Parliament became the first in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage last week

Taiwan’s first official same-sex weddings kicked off on Friday in a landmark moment for LGBT rights in Asia and the culmination of a three-decade fight for equality.

Shane Lin and Marc Yuan, a couple who fell in love at college, were the first to arrive at a government office in downtown Taipei.

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Manchester police defend prosecution of two mentally ill people

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Women who tried to kill themselves were charged this year after causing traffic jams

A police force has defended its decision to prosecute two mentally ill women who were charged after they caused traffic jams when trying to kill themselves.

Greater Manchester police (GMP) charged the two this year following the incidents. The force said it would review both cases and stressed prosecution was “rarely a course of action for someone with a mental health condition”.

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‘I even loved his Twankey’: Dench, Hopkins, Mirren and more on Ian McKellen at 80

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Wild parties, stunning performances, silhouette erections and marrying Patrick Stewart twice. As the actor turns 80, friends including Derek Jacobi, Janet Suzman, Michael Sheen, Bill Condon and Stephen Fry pay tribute

Ian has been been very important in my life, even before we became good friends. When I was a young teen I remember watching Walter on the TV and being hugely affected by it. Then at Rada in the early 90s, I finally saw him live, in Richard III at the National. I was blown away. I remember him doing the opening speech while lighting a cigarette one-handed. It was brilliant, so understated. It exemplified his mastery – and his work ethic. To do something so difficult and complicated and make it look so easy. Ian has an innate sense of theatrical audacity, something I think he shares with Olivier. They both did things that would make the audience gasp self-consciously.

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