Amnesty says social media firm must do more to support users who report harassment
Human rights campaigners have called for action after a survey revealed that more than half of the reports that women lodge about harassment on Facebook are met with no action from the social media company.
The Survation poll, commissioned by the feminist campaign group Level Up, found that 29% of the 1,000 women who took part had been harassed on Facebook.
Continue reading...Leia and Caroline Carrico found ‘safe and sound’ by fire captain and firefighter who followed tracks from pink rubber boots
Armed with some outdoor survival training, granola bars and pink rubber boots, two sisters aged five and eight survived 44 hours in rugged northern California wilderness before they were found dehydrated and cold but in good spirits on Sunday, authorities said.
A fire chief and firefighter from a local volunteer department found Leia and Caroline Carrico in a wooded area about a mile and a half from their home in the small community of Benbow, where they had last been seen on Friday afternoon, Humboldt county sheriff William Honsal said.
Continue reading...The likely cost of £2.7bn to the taxpayer due to Chris Grayling’s incompetence will ring hollow to the parents of disabled pupils in Leicestershire and across the country, who have been informed that their council can no longer provide transport to special schools and colleges post-16 due to lack of funds. The implications for these families, who already face substantial additional burdens of care due to cuts in respite and other services, may place another group in the foodbank queue.
Kate Warner
Claybrooke Parva, Leicestershire
• If Donald Trump genuinely believes that Kim Jong-un did not know of the brutal treatment of Otto Warmbier which led to his death (Report, 2 March), has he asked Kim to investigate the matter? And if not, why not?
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords
The labels we give ourselves can be helpful but restrictive too. Let’s embrace diversity by celebrating fluid identities
We were excited young filmmakers, sitting in one of our first pitch sessions, a panel of executives lined up against us. They had flicked through our script, looked at our mood boards and praised our song choice for the sizzle reel (Man! I Feel Like A Woman). Then the question dropped: “Which one of you is the alphabet person?”
I realised I was the only one holding my hand in the air. Then the guessing game began, as the executives ran through the letters – LGBTQIA+ – until they landed on one that gave them some understanding of who I am.
Continue reading...Crisis networks report rise in number of farmers distressed by uncertainty over future
Charities have said British farmers are increasingly at risk of suicide owing in part to uncertainty over Brexit and the impact of bad weather.
Distressed farmers have made dozens of calls to crisis networks and some have been placed on “suicide watch”, according to the National Farmers’ Union (NFU).
Continue reading...Khadija Shah gave birth to daughter Malaika, now 6, while serving a life sentence for smuggling heroin
A six-year-old girl who has spent her entire life inside a Pakistani prison after her British mother was convicted of drug trafficking has been released and returned to the UK.
Khadija Shah, 32, gave birth to her daughter Malaika while serving a life sentence inside the notorious Adiala prison in Rawalpindi, in the Punjab province.
Continue reading...For Xu Meiru, 38, the thought of having a second child is exhausting. Her days typically begin at 5am, don’t end until 11pm, and are filled with shuttling her nine-year-old son to school, helping him with his homework, preparing meals and running an online clothing business.
“It’s hard to find time even to sleep for a few minutes in a chair,” she says, sitting in a McDonald’s while her son plays a game on a phone, the detritus of a Happy Meal in front of him.
Continue reading...The Welsh government has given Sophie Howe statutory powers to represent people who haven’t yet been born
Sophie Howe is a public servant with a particularly tricky constituency. The people she represents are remote and unresponsive and they never show up to voice an opinion or tell her if she’s doing a good job.
They don’t even vote. That’s because they haven’t yet been born. Howe is the world’s first – and only – future generations commissioner with statutory powers. She’s there to represent the unborn citizens of Wales.
Continue reading...Ceon Broughton imprisoned for eight and a half years for manslaughter of Louella Fletcher-Michie
A musician who supplied his girlfriend with a lethal dose of drugs and filmed her as she lay dying at a music festival has been jailed for eight and a half years.
Ceon Broughton, 30, gave Louella Fletcher-Michie, 24, the party drug 2C-P at Bestival in Dorset in September 2017. Jurors at Winchester crown court were shown footage in which Fletcher-Michie repeatedly shouts at Broughton to phone her mother but he dismisses her, telling her to “put your phone away”.
Continue reading...Unicef calls for improved vaccination as study shows Ukraine, Brazil and the Philippines among 10 worst affected countries
Cases of childhood measles are surging to shocking levels around the globe, led by 10 countries that account for three-quarters of the rise.
Amid warnings of “disastrous consequences” for children if the disease continues to spread unchecked, a worldwide survey by the UN children’s agency, Unicef, said 98 countries around the globe reported a rise in measles cases in 2018 compared with 2017.
Continue reading...Chair of inquiry ‘deeply disturbed’ by allegations from young offender institutions
Children in custody are still not safe from sexual abuse after more than 1,000 attacks were alleged from 2009 to 2017, a statutory inquiry has found.
Prof Alexis Jay, the chairwoman of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, said on Thursday she was deeply disturbed by what the inquiry found as it published a report that described the scale of alleged abuse in young offender institutions (YOIs) and secure training centres (STCs) as “shockingly high”.
Continue reading...Campaigners condemn authorities who ignored girl’s plea ‘to remove what the old man put inside me’
An 11-year old girl who became pregnant after being raped was forced to give birth after Argentine authorities refused to allow her the abortion to which she was entitled.
The authorities ignored repeated requests for an abortion from the child, called “Lucía” to protect her identity, as well as her mother and a number of Argentine women’s right activists. After 23 weeks of pregnancy, she had to undergo a caesarean section on Tuesday. The baby is unlikely to survive.
Continue reading...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.
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