Camra awards Wonston Arms pub of the year after landlord left job in marketing to save it
A small pub in Hampshire saved from closure by the community four years ago has been named pub of the year, with the landlord saying he was “flabbergasted his little pub has beaten off the big boys”.
The Wonston Arms, which looked likely to be lost to developers, won the prize at the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) awards 2019.
Continue reading...UN security council officials clash over ‘politicised’ aid to troubled country as peace-building chief warns of ‘grim realities’
Infant mortality in Venezuela has soared by roughly 50% during the prolonged political crisis in the country.
Briefing the UN security council, the UN’s political and peace building chief, Rosemary DiCarlo, depicted a devastating collapse in Venezuela’s health system. She warned that 40% of medical staff had left the country and said hospital stocks of medicine had dwindled to 20% of the required level.
Continue reading...Dominant donors to record appeal to alleviate suffering of civil war will include countries leading aerial bombing campaign
The international community will gather on Tuesday to try to raise more than $4bn to help alleviate the suffering and famine caused by Yemen’s civil war, but will find itself heavily dependent on three combatants in the conflict – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the US – to reach its fundraising target for 2019.
The $4.2bn (£3.2bn) target for 2019 – the largest sum sought for any single year since the start of the civil war in 2015 and an increase of 33 % on last year – will be the focus of an all-day pledging conference in Geneva.
Continue reading...Surges in measles cases map tightly to countries where populism is on the march
Scepticism about the use of vaccines for children has risen across Europe in line with votes for populists, according to a study, which proposes that public health officials should track populist parties in opinion polls as a proxy signal for vaccine hesitancy.
Big surges in the number of measles cases and deaths map to countries where populist parties have become prominent – in particular, Greece, Italy and France.
Continue reading...People turn to tiny structures that can be placed in the gardens of family or friends’ properties
The sale of portable cabins is booming in New Zealand, where a housing crisis means hundreds of thousands of Kiwis can no longer afford a home, or even a rental.
Soaring property prices in New Zealand’s largest cities and a slow pace of new builds has seen many low and middle income New Zealanders struggling to afford basic housing, with some forced to sleep in shipping containers, tents and cars.
Continue reading...The first drug-checking service licensed by the Home Office will allow users to have their illicit substances tested without fear of being arrested in a move that could be rolled out nationally if it is shown to save lives.
The year-long pilot project, which had a soft launch in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, last Friday but begins in earnest this week, will allow anyone over the age of 18 to take their drugs to the clinic, run by the charity Addaction. Testing the content will take about 10 minutes, during which time the user will complete a short questionnaire to allow harm reduction advice to be tailored to them.
Continue reading...A coalition of human rights groups is pressing the home secretary to scrap his new measures to tackle knife crime, branding them “deeply counterproductive”.
Sajid Javid’s knife crime prevention orders place a range of curbs and curfews on suspects, but groups working with young people including Liberty, the Runnymede Trust and the Children’s Society, say they have “profound human rights concerns”.
Continue reading...Sex education shake-up in secondary schools means learning about grooming, forced marriage and domestic abuse
The dangers of female genital mutilation will be taught to all secondary school pupils in England from 2020 as part of a bold shake-up of relationships and sex education.
New proposals will be presented to parliament on Monday which would see the curriculum reformed to include relationship education for primary age pupils and health education for pupils of all ages in state-funded schools. Secondary school pupils will also be taught about grooming, forced marriage and domestic abuse.
Continue reading...Conservative Christianity becomes a political force in referendum on state’s new constitution
A thousand parishioners gathered in the Methodist church in the Vedado district of Cuba’s capital on a recent Sunday morning. After the revival music and conga drums had faded, the dancers had come off stage and the faithful had lowered outstretched arms, Pastor Lester Fernández rounded off his sermon on the ruinous consequences that the legalisation of gay marriage would bring.
“The Cuban church, as an essential part of society, is worried, and therefore has a right to a public voice,” he hollered into his microphone. “Amen,” replied the flock.
Continue reading...Darwin Zerpa is among those who have fled to Peru to get the antiretrovirals he needs. Now he counsels others with the virus
By day it is one of Lima’s grandest squares. By night the Plaza San Martín becomes a magnet for nightclubbers and bag-snatchers, as well as a haunt for male sex workers and their clients.
It is here just before midnight that 29-year-old Darwin Zerpa and other volunteers set up shop. Pulling up in an out-of-service ambulance and folding out a table on the pavement, they mark out a spot where passersby can get HIV finger-prick test results in less than 10 minutes.
Continue reading...Stalled relief supplies for Venezuela at the Colombian border are a stark illustration of Trump’s crudely transactional approach to aid
In their grey livery, the US Air Force C-17s shuttling into Camilo Daza airport in Cúcuta, Colombia, look more belligerent than friendly – which is, perhaps, the point.
In the city itself, the planes’ cargo – boxes labelled USAid and intended for distribution by the Venezuelan opposition just across the border – are accumulating in the town’s warehouses.
Continue reading...Constant hunger and thirst haunt those stranded in the desert, where escape means paying vast sums to smugglers
Between the southern border of Syria, Jordan and Iraq lies a stretch of land akin to purgatory. More than 40,000 people are stranded in Rukban, almost 300km from Damascus.
Families here are cut off from the world, facing hunger and lacking healthcare, transport and education.
Continue reading...Campaigners say resurgence of deadly virus threatens despite huge successes of vaccination drive
The unmonitored movement of people across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan threatens efforts to eradicate polio from the two countries, as the year’s first cases of the virus are recorded in the volatile region.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative said people travelling through unchecked crossings is believed to be one of the main causes of the spread of the disease in the area.
Continue reading...Plastic is everywhere, and it’s not going anywhere – potentially posing serious risks to our health. A crew of scientists and activists is conducting a hands-on investigation
When I arrive at the marina in Victoria on a late-July morning, the sky and water are complementary shades of azure. On the deck of the 72ft shiny-bright Sea Dragon, moored here in the island capital of British Columbia for just one day, are four young women, part of the crew of the research voyage “eXXpedition”. They’re hauling buckets of black sludge up to the deck from the ocean floor.
The team will meticulously pack the wet sand from the harbor floor into little glass jars. These jars will be added to a library of sand, water, and air samples that they’ve collected over the past six weeks from across the north Pacific. They’ll ship some of those samples off to Plymouth, England, to be analyzed by eXXpedition’s marine scientist Imogen Napper. The idea is that by cataloging this library, she and the team will begin to get a better sense of what kind of plastic is out there in the ocean.
Continue reading...Doctors could use Crispr tool to inject benign virus into foetus’s brain to ‘switch on’ key genes
Scientists are developing a radical form of gene therapy that could cure a devastating medical disorder by mending mutations in the brains of foetuses in the womb.
The treatment, which has never been attempted before, would involve doctors injecting the feotus’s brain with a harmless virus that infects the neurons and delivers a suite of molecules that correct the genetic faults.
Continue reading...Two former military pilots, a customs officer and celebrity bodyguard among the accused
Sitting on the asphalt at Punta Cana international airport in the Dominican Republic, the private plane was about to take off for an overnight flight to Saint-Tropez in France when police swooped.
Inside the aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 50, officers found four Frenchmen – two pilots and two passengers – along with 680kg of cocaine, with an estimated street value of €20m (£17.5m), in 26 battered suitcases.
Continue reading...The latest World Health Organization report on measles epidemics shows that cases jumped by 50% last year. In one of the poorest and least connected countries in the world, Madagascar, nearly a thousand children are reported to have died after a measles outbreak in the countryside. The real figure is likely to be much higher, because of difficulties of reporting. An emergency programme of vaccination seems to have contained that epidemic for the moment but it is a reminder of how devastating the disease can be against unprepared populations. In the rich world, meanwhile, previously prepared populations are having their defences dismantled from the inside.
The discovery of ad campaigns against vaccination on Facebook that are carefully targeted at pregnant women is unusually worrying. It shows how the widespread availability of sophisticated advertising techniques is going to give considerable power to people who previously had no way of getting their message across to large numbers. In the most recent US campaigns against vaccination, 147 different advertisements have been used and some viewed more than 5m times. There is an arms race under way, whether we like it or not.
Continue reading...Artist brands planned donation from pharmaceutical family to National Portrait Gallery unethical over OxyContin link
The National Portrait Gallery will be forced to turn down a gift of £1m from members of the multibillionaire Sackler family if it goes ahead with a prestigious new exhibition of the work of US artist Nan Goldin.
The photographer and activist is threatening to boycott the gallery if it accepts the donation from the owners of the American pharmaceutical company that makes the addictive painkiller OxyContin, the Observer has learned.
Continue reading...Justice secretary says leaving EU without deal would have ‘very adverse effect’
The justice secretary has said he has grave concerns about the prospect of leaving the European Union without a deal, saying it would have a “very adverse effect” on the UK’s economy, security and union with Northern Ireland.
David Gauke said the government was planning for the contingency of no deal, but suggested he would support extending article 50 if a deal between the UK and EU was not reached, since a no-deal Brexit was not in the national interest. He added that he expected the government to act responsibly if the current deadlock prevailed.
Continue reading...Thousands of young people take time out of school to join protests across the country
Some wore school uniform, with ties askew in St Trinian’s fashion, others donned face paint, sparkly jackets and DM boots. The youngest clutched a parent’s hand as people gathered in the sunshine in Parliament Square in London, a few metres from the politicians they say are letting down a generation.
They carried homemade placards, with slogans full of humour, passion and hope that the voices of thousands of children and young people would be heard.
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