General secretary of TUC calls Reform proposal ‘a smokescreen for slashing women’s rights’
A law proposed by Nigel Farage to “strengthen women’s rights” could cost female workers money by removing equal pay for work of equal value, unions have said.
A proposal, made by Reform UK days before the Makerfield byelection, to introduce a “women and motherhood protection act” that it says will restore equality before the law has been described as “shameless and deceptive”.
Continue reading...‘Pointless’ reviews are wasting public money and ‘significantly harming’ the mental health of claimants, charity says
Disabled people with lifelong conditions are repeatedly being put through “pointless” benefit reassessments, contrary to official guidance, new analysis suggests.
A study by the anti-poverty charity Z2K has found that hundreds of thousands of disabled people are going through “unnecessary” personal independence payment (Pip) reviews, “wasting” public money and “significantly harming” the mental and physical health of claimants.
Continue reading...Cases reported in 83 countries, with at least 10,600 students and staff killed, injured, abducted or arrested, GCPEA says
Attacks on education globally have surged by 40% with more than 8,556 recorded incidents and 10,600 students and staff killed, injured, abducted, arrested or otherwise harmed in 2024 and 2025, according to new research.
Attacks were reported in 83 countries, with the highest incidences recorded in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Palestine and Ukraine.
Continue reading...Study of mothers in Seattle underscores ‘widespread, systemic problem’ of chemical contamination, experts say
Breast milk samples from mothers in Seattle contain alarming levels of dangerous hormone-disrupting chemicals, including BPA, BPS, melamine, cyanuric acid, and triclosan, new peer-reviewed research has found.
The chemicals present a serious risk to infants because they likely interfere with hormones that are critical to newborns’ proper development, and have been found to be harmful at very low levels of exposure. About 92% of 50 samples were contaminated with at least one of the anti-microbials or plasticizers for which researchers checked.
Continue reading...Chris Farrell was given benefit for six months despite his repeated requests for payments to stop
A former unpaid carer has urged welfare officials to “get their act together” after they continued to pay him carer’s benefit for six months after the death of his husband, potentially landing him with debts of more than £1,300.
Chris Farrell, 65, who claimed carer’s allowance for four years while providing full-time care for his late husband repeatedly tried to get the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to stop paying him the £86.45 a week benefit.
A carer who has accumulated more than £2,000 of unwanted carer’s allowance since their mother went into a care home 10 months ago. They said they had contacted the DWP to cancel the benefit five times, by phone and online form, to no avail.
A carer who found it impossible to get the DWP to stop carer’s allowance payments despite reporting over a year ago she had taken on a new work contract and was no longer eligible for the benefit. She had been overpaid more than £2,650.
A man trying to manage work and care for his father, who claimed carer’s allowance for several months after being made redundant, has been unable to stop the benefit despite telling officials repeatedly he no longer needed it after finding a new job.
Continue reading...Doctors say therapy that genetically modifies person’s T-cells could offer cure for chronic autoimmune disease
Five lupus patients in England are in remission after being treated with a revolutionary therapy that genetically modifies their own cells, in a medical breakthrough that could offer people a cure, doctors have said.
CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell therapy involves removing a type of white blood cell also called T lymphocytes, which are crucial for hunting out infected or damaged cells, and engineering them to spot and destroy disease. The T-cells are then fed back into the patient via an infusion to reset their immune system.
Continue reading...Report says confidence among 16- to 21-year-olds has fallen sharply as they doubt hard work will be rewarded
Young people in England are increasingly “losing faith in their futures” according to a report, as record numbers fear long-term unemployment.
Analysing survey data, including from the Office for National Statistics, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said 16- to 21-year-olds were less confident about being successful than a decade ago.
Continue reading...One-off programme to begin in July after recent MenB outbreaks in Kent, Dorset and Berkshire killed three people
Teenagers in their final school year and young people starting university will be offered two doses of a vaccine to protect them against meningitis B, the government has announced.
The one-off vaccination programme, which will begin in late July, comes after an unprecedented outbreak of meningitis B in Kent earlier this year along with clusters of cases in Dorset and Berkshire that, together, led to the deaths of three young people.
Continue reading...MP Melanie Ward calls on Charity Commission to look into 32 organisations she says have given at least £28m
Thirty-two charities in England and Wales have donated at least £28m to Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law, an MP has said.
Labour’s Melanie Ward said that if gift aid were claimed against the donations in the usual way, it would mean taxpayers had subsidised illegal settlements to the tune of £5.6m, a situation she described as deplorable. The foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced on Tuesday that the Charity Commission has been tasked with investigating UK charities’ links to settlements.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: With Keir Starmer expected to announce Australia-style restrictions, further problems – including AI chatbots - are on the horizon
Good morning. Keir Starmer’s expected speech next week about young people’s access to social media will be analysed as much for how it benefits the outcome of a certain byelection, as its safeguarding of children’s synapses.
After issuing an ultimatum to tech firms yesterday to block children’s phones from sharing nude images, the government is expected to make another major announcement about social media within days. Briefings suggest it will stop short of a blanket ban on under-16s accessing social media. But it will still amount to radical regulation, with Downing Street insisting that Starmer is up for a fight with big tech.
UK politics | Volodymyr Zelenskyy has revealed that he plans to invite King Charles on a state visit to Ukraine as early as this year, which would make him the most senior royal to travel to Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Middle East | Fears of a return to a full-scale regional war in the Middle East eased on Monday as Israel and Iran said they had halted attacks on each other after an appeal from Donald Trump to “immediately stop shooting”.
UK news | A report has found “widespread and concerning evidence” of bias and victim-blaming in the family courts – primarily disadvantaging women.
US news | Donald Trump was loudly booed when he was shown on the video screens at Madison Square Garden on Monday night at the NBA finals.
Unemployment | A government-funded pilot of “hyperlocal” job support in 10 neighbourhoods across England has shown “promising early signs of effectiveness”, including for young people, and could be scalable nationwide, a new evaluation has shown.
Continue reading...Proposals considered by government would strengthen protections for parents forced to become full-time carers
Thousands of parents who are forced to become full-time carers after their child becomes seriously ill would be entitled to financial support and job protections under new “Hugh’s law” proposals being floated by the government.
Hugh’s law is named after Hugh Menai-Davis, who was six when he died in 2021 just under a year after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and undergoing 10 months of intensive treatment, much of it in hospital.
Continue reading...One in five of the 1.92m patients on list wait longer than six weeks for tests such as CT and MRI scans, analysis shows
A record number of people are waiting for a diagnostic test on the NHS, triggering fears that delays in accessing CT and MRI scans could endanger patients’ health.
A total of 1.92 million patients in England are waiting to have a test to diagnose their illness such as by an ultrasound scan, assessment of their hearing, bone scan or various tests for cancer.
The diagnostic waiting list has grown by 500,000 since 2022.
It is 83% higher than before the Covid pandemic.
On current trends the waiting list will hit 2 million in March 2027.
Continue reading...Marnie Lovejoy hopes to inspire other women to fish, protect England’s rivers and lift up the ‘beautiful’ grayling
With its iridescent pink scales and elegant dorsal fin, the grayling is known to anglers as the “lady of the stream”, yet the society fighting for its protection has never been led by a woman, until now.
Angling, and fly-fishing in particular, has always been a very male-dominated sport. The fly-fisher’s club in Mayfair, London, where anglers meet to lunch on dover sole and drink fine wine, did not allow women to cross the threshold even as guests until 2024.
Continue reading...Draft treaty claims sexual and reproductive health and rights are an existential threat to the African family
An African treaty that rejects longstanding international human rights obligations moved a step closer to becoming policy this week as governments across the continent met in Ghana.
The draft African charter on family, sovereignty and values, seen by the Guardian, asserts that African values and culture are under attack from “foreign ideologies” and urges states to withdraw from any agreements that do not align with the principles of the charter, including the 2003 Maputo protocol, which promotes gender equality and protects the reproductive and health rights of women and girls.
Continue reading...PM says Britons are ‘reasonable, tolerant people’ and backs MP’s legal action against Grok firm over fake sexualised images
Elon Musk is “interfering in our politics” and attempting to create division, Keir Starmer has said in a significant toughening of government language about the X owner.
The prime minister’s comments come after weeks of posts by Musk on his social media platform about the murder of Henry Nowak, many of which have used far-right themes and talking points.
Continue reading...Elahere is first new drug for chemotherapy-resistant ovarian cancer to be approved by NHS for 20 years
Hundreds of women with hard-to-treat ovarian cancer can now be offered a new life-prolonging treatment, after NHS England approved its introduction. It is the first new drug for resistant ovarian cancer to be approved for more than 20 years.
Ovarian is the 18th most common type of cancer globally, affecting more than 300,000 women a year. More than three-quarters of patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage, making it harder to treat.
Continue reading...Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the virus ‘had a big head start’ but that the response was catching up
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo could have begun as early as January, the head of the World Health Organization said, giving the virus “a big head start”.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said the response was being hindered by blanket travel restrictions and highlighted high levels of community mistrust and low levels of contact tracing as key concerns.
Continue reading...Health secretary announces expansion of Transform trial but does not back population-wide testing
Thousands more black men will be invited to take part in a prostate cancer screening trial as the health secretary insisted he was “following the science” in not backing population-wide testing.
James Murray accepted a recommendation from the UK national screening committee (UKNSC) that will result in only a few thousand high-risk men with a gene mutation being screened for the disease.
Continue reading...Research for Roundhouse in London shows 87% of 18- to 30-year-olds believe they have fewer artistic opportunities
Rising costs, the disappearance of third spaces and reduced access to artistic opportunities are causing young people to feel “disconnected, isolated and locked out of creativity”, according to research commissioned by a youth arts charity.
The Roundhouse, a multi-arts venue in north London that reopened in 2006 with a focus on running youth programmes, has released the findings to coincide with the publication of its 20-year impact report on Monday.
Continue reading...Refugee charities say the numbers revealed in freedom of information data are ‘shocking’
Lone children were held at UK-run detention centres in France on nearly 300 occasions last year, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Data obtained by the Guardian shows they are part of about 900 instances when unaccompanied minors have been detained at British short-term facilities near Calais and Dunkirk over the last four years.
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