Roundup Newswires

Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network

‘We need more people to go by bike’: meet Amsterdam’s nine-year-old junior cycle mayor

Posted on February 12, 2019 by Admin

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.

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CCTV could be made mandatory in taxis in England and Wales

Posted on February 11, 2019 by Admin

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.

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Study links heavily processed foods to risk of earlier death

Posted on February 11, 2019 by Admin

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.

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‘Spare innocent men anguish’: India ruling aims to end false rape claims

Posted on February 11, 2019 by Admin

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.

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Suicide rates falling around the world, study says

Posted on February 6, 2019 by Admin

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.

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Salif Keita: ‘Democracy is not a good thing for Africa’

Posted on February 6, 2019 by Admin

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.

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‘County lines’ drug gangs tracking children via social media

Posted on February 5, 2019 by Admin

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.

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Hungary, populism and my Orbán-voting father

Posted on February 3, 2019 by Admin

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.

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‘You will have an emotional reboot’: the ultimate guide to stress at every age

Posted on February 3, 2019 by Admin

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.

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‘Identity is a pain in the arse’: Zadie Smith on political correctness

Posted on February 2, 2019 by Admin

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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‘Getting out of bed is the first hurdle’: how I cope with my anxiety

Posted on February 2, 2019 by Admin

Dread and despair have been a part of my life since childhood – and then I started writing about politics ...

The anxiety is ever-present. Sometimes only as a form of background noise; a voice that tells me I’ve failed at the day before it’s even begun. At other times it’s more insistent. An almost physical presence. A heart-pounding feeling of dread that makes it a struggle to get out of bed. A longed for desire to go back to sleep, to rewind the clock, in the desperate hope that I could start the day again.

I stare at the clock, calculating how long I can leave it before I have to get out of bed and engage with the day. Another 10 minutes maybe? Twenty if I choose to skip breakfast. Hoping that the anxiety will have passed by the time I do get up, while knowing that every delay merely makes it worse. I know it’s a kind of madness. But it’s one to which I invariably succumb.

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UK aid funding must not be privatised | Letter

Posted on February 1, 2019 by Admin

Proposals to refocus aid as private investment could weaken support for vulnerable people worldwide, says Claire Godfrey

Proposals by the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, to refocus UK aid towards for-profit investment risks weakening support for the people who need our help the most, and compromising the work Britain does to make the world a safer, healthier and more just place to live in (Report, 30 January). The Department for International Development has a long-standing history and reputation as a world leader in helping millions of people worldwide to access clean water, healthcare, better jobs and education. DfID’s focus on ending extreme poverty has secured a global reputation that Britain is proud of and one which we continue to champion. Any move to expand the role of private investment in international development must reflect the basic and shared human values underlying charity, humanitarian aid and development, and not prioritise the pursuit of profit over tackling poverty.
Claire Godfrey
Head of policy and campaigns at Bond, which represents over 400 UK NGOs working in humanitarian aid and development

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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‘Trauma packs’ being stockpiled in UK over fears of no-deal Brexit

Posted on January 31, 2019 by Admin

Exclusive: pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson fears border delays could disrupt flow of vital medical supplies

Emergency “trauma packs” flown into the UK during terrorist attacks are being stockpiled in Britain by the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson over concerns of a risk to life from border delays in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

The company said the move was being made due to the danger posed to the “routine and rapid” provision of the vital emergency equipment it provides to the NHS in times of emergency from a distribution plant in Belgium.

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Lisbon’s bad week: police brutality reveals Portugal’s urban reality

Posted on January 31, 2019 by Admin

A viral video of police violence has brought national attention to the long-ghettoised community in Bairro da Jamaica

From time to time, cars of curious people drive slowly though Bairro da Jamaica, craning their necks for a peek at the neighbourhood that’s been in the headlines across Portugal for several days now. None of them step out of their vehicles.

They’re here to look at the broken glass, the smashed roof tiles and the evidence of last week’s violence. The tallest of the bairro’s self-built housing towers is now derelict, fenced off with yellow tape and awaiting demolition; the others are also scheduled to be torn down, but are still occupied for now.

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Vaping twice as likely as gum to help smokers quit, research finds

Posted on January 30, 2019 by Admin

Study shows 18% success rate with e-cigarettes, compared with 10% with other methods

People are almost twice as likely to succeed in quitting smoking if they use e-cigarettes than if they rely on nicotine replacement patches and gums, a new study has shown.

The research, focused on nearly 900 long-term smokers seeking NHS help to quit, was hailed as a landmark by experts in public health in the UK who believe e-cigarettes have already helped bring down the smoking rate. However, there was less enthusiasm in the United States, where there is concern that vaping nicotine is addictive and may cause children to start smoking.

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Penny Mordaunt criticised over call for aid to come from private sector

Posted on January 30, 2019 by Admin

International development secretary says she wants DfID to become more a fundraising than a spending department

Penny Mordaunt has been criticised by charities and MPs for suggesting the government’s international development spending should become more reliant on private sector investment and philanthropy.

The international development secretary told cabinet ministers she would aim for her department to become a fundraising department rather than a spending department, telling them it was unsustainable to continue to meet the spending target with taxpayer cash.

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Chinese city seeks young blood: how ageing Nanjing lures new talent

Posted on January 30, 2019 by Admin

The next 15 megacities #12: The ancient capital of China is pulling out all the stops in a bid to defuse its ticking demographic timebomb

Read the rest of our megacities series here

Tan Jingquan is exactly the kind of person the ancient Chinese city of Nanjing wants to attract. The 38-year-old had been searching rival cities for possible sites for his biotech startup for years – until the Nanjing government finally made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“I visited and explored opportunities in nearly a dozen cities,” recalls Tan, a native of Wuhan in central China. “It turned out Nanjing has the best combination of policy incentives and market potential for small startups.”

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