Romania’s capital has a buzzing nightlife with plenty of options for a romantic night out – unless you’re LGBT
Continue reading...Category Archives: Society
Condom handouts in schools prevent disease without encouraging sex
UN study finds misgivings over impact of condom distribution in secondary schools are misplaced
Making condoms available to teenagers at school does not make them more promiscuous – but neither does it reduce teenage pregnancy rates.
According to a major review by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), giving out condoms in secondary schools does not increase sexual activity, or encourage young people to have sex at an earlier age.
Continue reading...Measles: WHO warns cases have jumped 50%
Falsehoods spread by ‘anti-vax’ movement in part to blame for ‘backsliding’ in progress against potentially deadly illness, experts warn
The World Health Organization has warned that efforts to halt the spread of measles are “backsliding”, with case numbers worldwide surging around 50% last year.
The UN health agency pointed to preliminary data showing that the disturbing trend of resurgent measles cases was happening at a global level, including in wealthy nations where vaccination coverage has historically been high.
Continue reading...New drug raises hopes of reversing memory loss in old age
Toronto researchers believe the drug can also help those with depression, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s
An experimental drug that bolsters ailing brain cells has raised hopes of a treatment for memory loss, poor decision making and other mental impairments that often strike in old age.
The drug could be taken as a daily pill by over-55s if clinical trials, which are expected to start within two years, show that the medicine is safe and effective at preventing memory lapses.
Continue reading...Trump’s unseemly haste shows World Bank must no longer be in thrall to US
The race to head the World Bank opened with the US candidate already known. Other countries must stand up and be counted
With characteristic lack of restraint, the Trump administration last week jumped the gun on the World Bank presidential election process by naming David Malpass as its preferred candidate to succeed Jim Yong Kim.
The formal nomination process, which did not begin until the following day, is based on selection principles agreed in 2011 that put the emphasis on an “open, merit-based and transparent” appointment. It is high time those principles were put in practice.
Continue reading...Same-sex couples in Japan launch Valentine’s Day bid for marriage equality
Five lesbian and eight gay couples seek damages from government for denying them same rights as heterosexual spouses
Chizuka Oe and Yoko Ogawa have been together for 25 years, but when they submitted their marriage registration at a Tokyo town hall they knew it would be rejected.
“We were told that they cannot accept our registration because we are both women,” said Ogawa, standing in the winter sun outside the building in Nakano in western Tokyo.
Continue reading...Breast-ironing: UK government vows to tackle abusive practice
Home Office says ritual is child abuse and should be prosecuted under assault laws
The government has vowed to confront the practice of breast-ironing, calling it child abuse and saying the police should prosecute offenders under assault laws.
In a written parliamentary statement following Guardian revelations that the abusive practice was spreading in the UK, the Home Office said it was committed to challenging the cultural attitudes behind all “honour-based abuse”, but gave no indication it would legislate.
Continue reading...Austerity causing stress and trauma to officers, say police
Call for more government funding as survey finds 80% of officers felt stress in past year
Police officers have reported being driven to breaking point by the dual pressures of staffing cuts and rising demands, with a survey finding eight out of 10 had felt stressed in the past year.
The survey by the Police Federation is part of a campaign to pressure the government to fund more officers on the beat after years of cuts.
Continue reading...‘We need more people to go by bike’: meet Amsterdam’s nine-year-old junior cycle mayor
As the world’s first junior cycle mayor, Lotta Crok wants to draw attention to the obstacles kids on bikes face – and inspire other children to cycle
During Amsterdam’s chaotic rush hour, nine-year-old Lotta Crok cycles to a very busy junction. “Look,” she says. “There’s traffic coming from everywhere. Four trams from four different directions. For a child on a bike that’s really confusing!”
Lotta is the first junior cycle mayor in the world and her working area is the Dutch capital. It is her mission to inspire children to cycle every day and draw attention to the obstacles that kids on bikes are facing.
Continue reading...CCTV could be made mandatory in taxis in England and Wales
Licensing law proposals also include more rigorous regime on driver background checks
Taxis and minicab drivers in England and Wales could be forced to install CCTV in their vehicles under government proposals to tighten up licensing laws.
Local authorities might also have to conduct enhanced criminal record and background checks on every driver.
Continue reading...Study links heavily processed foods to risk of earlier death
French research involved more than 44,000 people over a period of seven years
Eating a lot of heavily processed foods is linked to a risk of earlier death, according to a study.
A team in France worked with more than 44,000 people in a study running from 2009 called NutriNet-Santé. They looked at how much of their diet – and calories – was made up of “ultra-processed” foods – those made in factories with industrial ingredients and additives, such as dried ready meals, cakes and biscuits.
Continue reading...‘Spare innocent men anguish’: India ruling aims to end false rape claims
Judges have moved to ensure that women driven by revenge and self-interest will no longer be able to make spurious allegations when relationships end
Their romance began at work. She asked him out for coffee with her friends. He took her out for lunch. Dinners and walks in New Delhi’s Lodhi Gardens followed. Then, for 18 months, they were in a sexual relationship.
But last year, when Pavan Gupta* turned 24, his parents began pressuring him to marry. When they introduced him to a girl he liked, Gupta ended his relationship with his girlfriend, Geeta Jain, telling her he could not disappoint his parents. “I liked her but I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with her. I always told her I was an only child and would have to go along with my parents’ choice,” says Gupta.
Continue reading...Bloody brilliant: new emoji to symbolize menstruation welcomed
The red blood droplet with a period-positive message is hailed as a step forward but some see it as a half-measure
The newest emoji made crimson waves across the internet upon its unveiling this week – and that was exactly the point.
Plan International UK’s fight for the cartoon red blood droplet – an emoji meant to symbolize menstruation – was almost poetically symbolic to the message it was trying to convey with it: that periods aren’t shameful.
Continue reading...Instagram bans ‘graphic’ self-harm images after Molly Russell’s death
Social media site announces action following criticism from British teenager’s father
Instagram has announced it will ban all graphic self-harm images from its platform after the father of British teenager Molly Russell said it was partly to blame for her death.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said “no graphic self-harm image” would in future be allowed on the platform.
Continue reading...Suicide rates falling around the world, study says
Researchers say the overall trend is down thanks to poverty reduction and better healthcare
Suicides have fallen globally by more than a third since 1990, according to a far-reaching analysis that highlights profound differences in the number of men and women taking their own lives.
In results published in the BMJ journal on Thursday, a study estimates that 817,000 people killed themselves in 2016 – a slight increase of 6.7% since 1990.
Continue reading...Salif Keita: ‘Democracy is not a good thing for Africa’
The ‘golden voice of Africa’ has just released his final album. And though he is visibly tired, he is still in love with his guitar
Salif Keita, Mali’s most famous musical son, is going home. “I’m returning to the land,” he says. “I was a farmer’s son. I am a farmer’s son. Now, I will go back to the country and cultivate.” Cultivate what? I ask, not for the first time. Keita does not answer, not for the first time. He closes his eyes and falls silent. When he does speak, it is bursts of a few words and short, stilted answers.
I am in a modest hotel suite in the north of Paris with one of the greatest musical talents the African continent has ever produced. Keita, known as the “golden voice of Africa”, has enjoyed a career spanning more than half a century. Now nearly 70 years old, he is known not just for his extraordinarily powerful and passionate voice, but for the genetic condition he has called albinism that has made him, he says, “white of skin and black of blood”. He has sung for Nelson Mandela, and in aid of Ethiopia. He continues to sing to highlight the desperate plight of those with albinism across Africa, giving his time and talent to raise funds.
Continue reading...‘County lines’ drug gangs tracking children via social media
Warnings on coercion and blackmailing over smartphones went unheeded, say experts, as child exploitation spirals
A failure to grasp how technology and social media is being used to coerce, control, blackmail and track the movements of children as young as 11 by “county lines” drug gangs has seen an epidemic of child criminal exploitation spiral out of control in the UK.
“For the past seven or eight years we have been warning the government, the authorities, teachers, anyone who would listen, that technology is the central organising feature of the county lines business model,” said Sheldon Thomas, a consultant on gang behaviour through his organisation Gangsline.
Continue reading...Hungary, populism and my Orbán-voting father
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s far-right prime minister, is at the forefront of a nationalist surge in Europe, and his anti-migrant rhetoric has brought condemnation from the EU. The Guardian’s John Domokos went to find out the attraction Orbán holds to Hungarian voters, including his own father. Plus: how one woman is campaigning to prevent her frozen eggs being destroyed
What makes a person vote for Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán? It was a question intensely personal to the Guardian’s John Domokos, whose Hungarian father is a believer in economic nationalism, and supports Orbán.
John took a road trip through the country for a Guardian documentary, in the hope of understanding his father’s politics and to try to overcome their differences. He tells Anushka Asthana what he learned, while Kim Lane Scheppele, an expert on Hungary at Princeton University, discusses how far Orbán has strayed from Europe’s democratic norms.
Continue reading...‘You will have an emotional reboot’: the ultimate guide to stress at every age
Every life stage brings its own pressures, from worrying about exams to juggling the needs of family. Here are the best coping tactics for each generation
Triggers
“Children are really the canaries in the mineshaft of human society. They are the individuals within our cultures that are the most sensitive to the difficulties – and stresses – that societies experience,” Tom Boyce tells me. Professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of California, he specialises in the treatment of three- to eight-year-olds. Major stressors in this age group include marital conflict, violence in the home, violence in the community, problems with parental mental health – a mum or dad who is depressed – maltreatment and disciplinary behaviours that become punitive.
‘Identity is a pain in the arse’: Zadie Smith on political correctness
At Hay Cartagena festival author questions role of social media in policing personal development
The writer Zadie Smith laid into identity politics in a headline session at the 14th Hay Cartagena festival, insisting that novelists had not only a right, but a duty to be free.
Asked how she felt about cultural appropriation, she told an audience of nearly 2,000 at the festival in Colombia on Friday: “If someone says to me: ‘A black girl would never say that,’ I’m saying: ‘How can you possibly know?’ The problem with that argument is it assumes the possibility of total knowledge of humans. The only thing that identifies people in their entirety is their name: I’m a Zadie.”
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