Category Archives: Society

The white stuff: why Britain can’t get enough cocaine

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Britain snorts more of the drug than almost anywhere in Europe, more young people are taking it and deaths are rising. Why?

The moment Dan (not his real name) realised he had a problem with cocaine, he had been off work for a week, sick with flu. His phone buzzed. It was his cocaine dealer, calling to check he was OK. When Dan, one of his favoured customers, hadn’t been in touch to buy the cocaine he usually took several times a week, the dealer knew something was wrong.

“I don’t like thinking about that,” Dan says, shaking his head as we sit in a London pub. Now 36, Dan estimates he has spent £25,000 on cocaine. Lines in the pub on a Friday night after work. Lines on a Wednesday evening at a friend’s house while earnestly discussing 90s hip-hop. Lines at house parties, weddings, birthday parties and for no reason at all, other than that cocaine – the white powder that makes no one a better version of themselves, but that many of us continue to do anyway – is everywhere and freely available.

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Welsh health board criticised after worker killed woman while under investigation

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Independent review into ABMUHB highlights string of concerns about Kris Wade

A health board has been criticised over the case of a nursing assistant who murdered a neighbour in a sexually motivated attack while under investigation for abusing three patients with learning disabilities.

Kris Wade had been suspended from work for three years after the allegations of sexual abuse when he murdered his neighbour, Christine James, at her flat on Cardiff Bay in south Wales.

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Breast-ironing: British peer to raise issue in parliament

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Leading QC Alex Carlile hopes to force wider scrutiny of the practice after Guardian revealed ‘dozens’ of girls subjected to abusive custom

A British peer is to table questions in parliament on the secretive practice of “breast-ironing”, after the Guardian revealed that the abusive intervention is spreading in the UK.

Alex Carlile, one of the UK’s leading QCs who is a former deputy high court judge and a member of the House of Lords, told the Guardian that he hoped to trigger a wider scrutiny of the practice in the UK.

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‘We are afraid’: Brazilian women alarmed at relaxation of gun laws

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Bolsonaro’s move allowing more people to own firearms is causing unease in a society where domestic violence is rife

A pledge to make it easier for “good citizens” to buy guns for self-defence helped sweep Jair Bolsonaro to power. But there is alarm that the Brazilian president’s decree loosening firearms laws will make pervasive violence against women even worse – and more deadly.

“I believe this is a very negative measure that will lead more women to be threatened by violence,” said Maria da Penha, the women’s rights activist whose case changed Brazil’s domestic violence laws. “This decree should be reviewed.”

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Genes linked to antibiotic-resistant superbugs found in Arctic

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Discovery of genes, possibly carried by birds or humans, shows rapid spread of crisis

Genes associated with antibiotic-resistant superbugs have been discovered in the high Arctic, one of the most remote places on earth, showing the rapid spread and global nature of the resistance problem.

The genes were first identified in a hospital patient in India in 2007-8, then in surface waters in Delhi in 2010, probably carried there by sewage, and are now confirmed in soil samples from Svalbard in the Arctic circle, in a paper in the journal Environment International. They may have been carried by migrating birds or human visitors, but human impact on the area is minimal.

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Ex-mercenary claims South African group tried to spread Aids

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New documentary details unit’s disturbing obsession with HIV

A South Africa-based mercenary group has been accused by one of its former members of trying to intentionally spread Aids in southern Africa in the 1980s and 1990s.

The claims are made by Alexander Jones in a documentary that premieres this weekend at the Sundance film festival. He says he spent years as an intelligence officer with the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), three decades ago, when it was masterminding coups and other violence across Africa.

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Scientists are working on a pill for loneliness

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Modern life has led to greater isolation, which can fuel an array of disorders. If there are medications for social pains like depression and anxiety, why not loneliness?

Loneliness is part of the human condition. A primeval warning sign, like hunger or thirst, to seek out a primary resource: connection. Millions of years of evolution have shaped us into creatures who need social bonds in the same way that we need food and water.

And yet we increasingly find ourselves isolated. Loneliness is no longer a powerful enough driver to break us out of the silos created by modern life. Like our insatiable love of high-calorie foods, what was once an adaptive tool has become so misaligned with the way we live that it’s causing, in the words of the former surgeon general Vivek H Murthy, an “epidemic”.

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Orkney rated Britain’s best place to live in terms of quality of life

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Scotland and north of England dominate top five as measured by housing, crime and schools

Orkney is the best place to live in the UK, with cheap houses, low crime, good schools and a population who are among the happiest and healthiest in the country, according to the annual Halifax quality of life survey.

The survey found that all the top five best places to live in the UK were in Scotland or the north of England. Richmondshire in the north of the Yorkshire Dales came second, while the appropriately named Eden district in Cumbria was third.

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The joy that comes from embracing trans identity shouldn’t be so rare | Andy Connor

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‘Gender euphoria’ is a concept whose time has come, and at this year’s Midsumma festival we got a chance to see it in full flight

As the chorus of voices lifted in the final kaleidoscopic song of Gender Euphoria, the first mainstage all-transgender show in Australian history, something rare and vital was communicated. So many trans stories are tragedies; it’s easy to miss the triumphs. So much of the world is still so stigmatising and cruel to trans people that it’s easy to overlook the joy. More than just relief at having escaped something, the show tells us, being trans is also about having found something. “Goodbye gender dysphoria,” proclaimed cabaret star Mama Alto, “Hello gender euphoria!”

Related: Shantay, you play: the drag queens of gaming

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‘These children are crucial’: teaching forgiveness in CAR’s besieged camps

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With peace talks starting this week in Khartoum, a quarter of the population of the Central African Republic have had to leave their homes – some into camps where makeshift teaching facilities offer hope to a potentially lost generation

Marie was fast asleep when the rebels came. “They wanted to kill all the men,” she says, “and to destroy our homes.”

Three militants burst into her room then moved to the next house, leaving her screaming in terror but unscathed. In a conflict zone where rape is routinely used as a weapon of war, other girls were less fortunate that night. She was just 12.

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‘I’ve absolutely had enough’: Tory MP embarks on anti-austerity tour

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Heidi Allen joins former Labour MP Frank Field on mission to highlight the poverty caused by her party’s policies

Heidi Allen and Frank Field make an odd partnership at first glance. Allen, 44, the Conservative MP for one of Britain’s richest constituencies, and Field, 76, a Labour MP for 39 years until he resigned over antisemitism in the party, have bonded across the Commons over a shared outrage at poverty. Now they have embarked on a nationwide tour in search of the “other England” shaped by the austerity policies pioneered by Allen’s party. It is proving emotional.

Visits to the poorest corners of Newcastle, Glasgow, Morecambe and Cornwall beckon, but they have started in London and Leicester, where on Thursday they heard stories of an illiterate man sanctioned so often under universal credit that he lives on £5 a week; a man so poor he sold all but the clothes he was wearing; and someone being told to walk 44 miles to attend a job interview, despite having had a stroke, to save the state the cost of a £15 bus ticket.

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Police arrest 19 people over FGM gang attacks on women in Uganda

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Critics say police should have acted earlier on reports of forceful mutilation of more than 400 women in a month by armed groups

Sixteen men and three women have been arrested for allegedly aiding and abetting female genital mutilation (FGM) in eastern Uganda after reports of gangs attacking women in the region.

The suspects were taken into custody earlier this week after joint police and military operations in Kween district. The arrests followed local media reports of more than 400 women, some as young as 12, being mutilated by force by local gangs in the past month.

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Which is the world’s most LGBT-friendly city?

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Even when cities seem progressive on the surface, the lived experience of members of the LGBT community can tell a dramatically different story

Amid a mass of colour and pounding Latin rhythms, revellers at this year’s Bogotá Pride march waved banners stating “not one step back”. They were among tens of thousands who took to the streets to celebrate and support Colombia’s LGBT community.

Many annual Pride marches that were once solemn protests against repression have become celebrations of now-existing rights or progress, reflecting the strength of LGBT communities.

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How can we take power away from criminal gangs? Legalise drugs | Martin Drewry

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Prohibition makes our world a more dangerous place, trapping people in poverty

I have spoken out on many issues during my career, but there is one that leaders in poorer countries passionately lobby me to campaign on: the prohibition of drugs.

The “war on drugs” is harming the most vulnerable and criminalising poverty. It is not a war on drugs – despite decades of prohibition, drug production and consumption is on the increase globally – it is a war on the poor. Prohibition damages people and the planet.

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Blood test could detect Alzheimer’s more than 10 years earlier – study

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Changes in levels of a protein might reveal onset of disease long before symptoms appear

Changes in levels of a protein in the blood could help shed light on damage in the brain more than a decade before symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease develop, researchers have revealed.

While there is no drug to stop the progression of Alzheimer’s, or cure it, the researchers said the study findings could be used by doctors to help anticipate when patients might start to show symptoms of the disease.

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World’s oldest man dies in Japan aged 113

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Masazo Nonaka, who enjoyed watching sumo wrestling and eating sweets, died at home

The world’s oldest man has died at his home, a hot springs on Japan’s northern main island of Hokkaido, at the age of 113.

His family said Masazo Nonaka died peacefully from natural causes in the early hours of Sunday while sleeping in the inn in Ashoro, which has been run by his family for four generations.

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Senior WHO official accused of using Ebola cash to pay for girlfriend’s flight

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World Health Organization launches inquiry after claims of ‘legendary’ corruption, including racism and sexism

Claims that a senior employee at the World Health Organization misused Ebola funds to fly his girlfriend to west Africa are among a tide of allegations under investigation by the agency.

An internal inquiry has been launched by the WHO following a series of anonymous whistleblower emails that alleged widespread racism, sexism and misspending.

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Oxfam failed to address sexual misconduct and bullying, finds review

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Independent commission says charity lacked robust safeguarding policies and was inconsistent in dealing with complaints

A damning interim review has highlighted Oxfam’s failure to tackle an environment at the charity that allowed sexual misconduct and bullying to go unchecked.

The report, produced by an independent commission, warned that no uniform system exists for dealing with complaints and said there are “drastic inconsistencies” in the way safeguarding issues are handled across the 90-plus countries in which Oxfam International operates.

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‘We kept the trauma to ourselves’: Christophe Honoré on the idols lost to Aids

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The French writer-director talks about his highly personal new show, a ‘dance of the dead’ that pays tribute to artistic heroes including Jacques Demy

Director Christophe Honoré still looks pained at the memory of the protests against gay marriage that rocked France seven years ago. The adoption of same-sex marriage in the country, a flagship policy that President François Hollande had campaigned on, was supposed to have been a smooth process. It became law in 2013, but only after a protracted backlash that saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets – more overall than the recent gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement.

“I realised there was still a cloud of suspicion hanging over gay citizens,” says Honoré, best known internationally for comedies and musical films including 2007’s Love Songs. “I felt hurt, but also responsible, because in my work I’d never thought that gay visibility might still be important. I felt like I’d failed, like I’d deserted the fight the generation before me had led.”

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Wales has highest incarceration rate in western Europe – study

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Prison population in 2017 was 154 per 100,000 in Wales, compared with 141 in England

Wales has the highest rate of imprisonment in western Europe, the first study of its kind has revealed.

Sentencing and Immediate Custody in Wales: A Factfile found that in 2017 (the latest figures available) there were 154 prisoners per 100,000 of the population of Wales, compared with 141 per 100,000 of England.

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