Category Archives: Society

Lack of clean drinking water for 95% of people in Gaza threatens health crisis

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Polluted water supplies and salty groundwater are making people ill, with UN warning of threat of child deaths from dehydration

Palestinians who fled to southern Gaza, after warnings from Israel to leave their homes, are standing in line for hours to get contaminated water they believe is making them ill.

Long queues of people waiting to fill jerry cans are now ubiquitous across the territory as water becomes increasingly scarce, a result of restrictions on water and power imposed by Israel.

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Women losing out as couples try to divorce ‘on the cheap’

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Financial security of women in England and Wales put at risk by failure to seek professional advice

Women are losing out on fair divorce settlements because couples are trying to divorce “on the cheap”.

Research has found that most couples have so few assets that the vast majority try to save money by sorting out key arrangements themselves, including agreeing housing, pensions and ongoing maintenance.

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Martha’s rule must be available 24/7, England’s patient safety commissioner says

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Patients and relatives must be able to request second opinion from critical care team at any time of day or night, government told

Patients and their relatives will be able to request a second opinion from senior medics around the clock when the “Martha’s rule” system starts in hospitals in England.

The government’s patient safety commissioner, asked by the health secretary, Steve Barclay, to advise on how to implement the change, has said access to a medic’s opinion must operate 24/7.

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Coventry council used Airbnbs to house ‘vulnerable’ teenage boy accused of rape

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Judge accuses local authority of a ‘lackadaisical’ attitude to the 16-year-old’s care after regulated providers refused to give him a place

A teenage boy who has been accused of multiple rapes was housed in Airbnbs by a local authority after regulated accommodation providers said it would be too risky for them to house him.

Airbnbs and other temporary accommodation have been deployed because no secure placement can be found anywhere in England that is prepared to accommodate the child, who self-harms, makes weapons, assaults staff members, damages property and has been taken to hospital after expressing suicidal thoughts. He has been arrested on numerous occasions.

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Tenant killed himself after landlord failed to resolve repeated noise complaints

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Ombudsman orders UK housing association Clarion to apologise to family in ‘deeply distressing’ case

A tenant killed himself after his landlord dismissed his pleas for help with a noisy neighbour as “whining” and told him he could not expect silence if he lived in London.

Clarion, the UK’s largest housing association, had been warned by the vulnerable resident’s doctor that the effect of noise from the upstairs flat on the tenant’s mental health was such that he had already attempted suicide twice.

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Kemi Badenoch claims Stonewall has been taken over by ‘leftist’ ideas

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Equalities minister says LGBTQ+ charity ‘overreached’ and ‘more extreme ideas’ about trans rights have been defeated

Kemi Badenoch has launched an attack on the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall, describing it as an example of an organisation taken over by “leftist” ideas.

Speaking on stage at an international gathering of conservatives, the business secretary and minister for women and equalities, agreed with the suggestion that the “more extreme ideas” about the rights of trans people had been defeated.

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‘Disturbing’: US infant mortality rises at highest rate in 20 years

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CDC data shows rate rose 3% last year but experts say they are not sure why statistic that has been falling should have risen sharply

The US infant mortality rate rose 3% last year – the largest increase in two decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

White and Native American infants, infant boys and babies born at 37 weeks or earlier had significant death rate increases. The CDC’s report, published Wednesday, also noted larger increases for two of the leading causes of infant deaths – maternal complications and bacterial meningitis.

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One in 10 biggest English councils risk bankruptcy over child protection bill

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County Councils Network says local bodies facing insolvency after increase in children being taken into care and ‘out of control’ costs

“Out of control” increases in child protection spending since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic have put one in 10 of England’s biggest councils at risk of effective bankruptcy in the next few months, a survey has revealed.

Many county councils and unitary authorities are “running out of road” to avoid insolvency as they grapple with high inflation, increases in children being taken into care, and massive bills for children’s homes, the County Councils Network (CCN) said.

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‘There is no ban’: Republicans test-drive new abortion messaging

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Ad released in Virginia part of well-funded effort to portray Democrats as abortion extremists and Republicans as reasonable compromisers

The ad opens with the sound of a fetal heartbeat.

“Most people believe that abortion at the moment of birth is wrong, far beyond any reasonable limit. Not Virginia Democrats,” a female narrator says, just before the sound of a baby cooing and crying. “They fought to make late-term abortions the rule, not the exception.”

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UK ministers to hold Cobra meeting on terrorism threat from Israel-Hamas conflict

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Suella Braverman will meet police and national security officials at No 10 to discuss ‘accelerated’ risk

UK ministers will hold an emergency meeting of its Cobra committee amid concerns that the Israel-Gaza conflict has raised the possibility of a domestic terrorist incident.

The home secretary, Suella Braverman, will meet national security officials and police at No 10 on Monday to assess the security risk after the deadly Hamas attack on Israel more than three weeks ago.

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Australian rental vacancy rate falls to record low, data shows

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Limited supply and strong demand prompts national median weekly advertised rents to rise 14.6% over the year

Tenants are continuing to struggle with rising rents and limited supply, with new data showing the total number of rental listings has fallen to a record low.

PropTrack data shows the number of new rental listings declined 5.7% in the year to September, with the fewest new listings in September for more than a decade. The total number of rental listings fell 7.1% on the year before to hit a record low.

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Afghans who fled Taliban to UK ‘set to be made homeless at Christmas’

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Home Office has imposed a 15 December deadline to eject people who worked for UK in Afghanistan from hotels, say councils

More than 1,000 Afghans in the UK face being made homeless days before Christmas after the Home Office imposed a fresh deadline to eject them from hotels.

The Local Government Association (LGA) revealed the number of at-risk Afghans, which includes families, after the Home Office last week imposed the new deadline of 15 December.

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Biggest private children’s homes in England made £300m profit last year

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Fee income for 20 largest operators – many private equity-owned – soars as councils struggle to meet costs

The biggest private providers of children’s homes in England made profits of more than £300m last year, as concern mounts over the conditions some children are being placed in and the spiralling costs for councils.

Fee income for the 20 largest operators of independent children’s homes totalled £1.63bn last year, a 6.5% increase on the previous year. And 19% of that – £310m – was recorded as profit, according to an independent analysis. Half of the top 20 providers have some private equity or sovereign wealth fund ownership.

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‘Misleading’ A&E figures in England hiding poor performance

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Emergency doctors say figures are aggregated with those of minor injury centres to get closer to targets

NHS bosses are using misleading figures to hide dangerously poor performance by A&E units in England against the four-hour treatment target, emergency department doctors claim.

Some A&Es treat and admit, transfer or discharge as few as one in three patients within four hours, although the NHS constitution says they should deal with 95% of arrivals within that timeframe.

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Dementia could affect 1.7m people in England and Wales by 2040, data finds

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Figure is 42% higher than previous estimates and would pose ‘enormous threat’ to healthcare systems

Dementia poses an “enormous threat” to healthcare systems and the general public in England and Wales, experts have warned, as data suggests 1.7 million people will have the condition by 2040.

It is already known to be among the most serious health and social care threats and a new analysis shows the total number affected could be 42% higher than previously estimated.

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UK public warned over dangers of fake weight loss medication pens

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Pre-filled injection devices claimed to hold Ozempic or Saxenda may contain other substances, regulator says

The UK medicines regulator has issued a public warning about fake and potentially harmful weight loss pens after seizing hundreds of devices sold by illegal traders.

The pens, with which the traders’ drugs are injected, are claimed to contain the medications Ozempic (semaglutide) or Saxenda (liraglutide), which are used for weight loss. However, these pens are thought to contain other substances.

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Italian woman wins court case to evict her two sons, aged 40 and 42

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The bamboccioni (big babies) refused to fly nest and ‘did not contribute’ – in country where most under-35s still live with parents

The proportion of Italian adults still living with their parents has long been high but one mother was forced to take drastic action after her two sons – both in their 40s – refused to abandon the comforts of the family home.

The woman, 75, from the northern city of Pavia, had grown weary of having to maintain her sons, 40 and 42, and on several occasions tried to convince them to find a more autonomous living arrangement, especially as each had a job. “But neither of them wanted to know,” she said, according to a report in the local newspaper La Provincia Pavese.

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Japan court rules mandatory sterilisation of people officially changing gender unconstitutional

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Judges reject requirement for trans people to remove reproductive organs for state-recognised gender change

Japan’s top court has ruled that a legal clause requiring people to undergo sterilisation surgery if they want to legally change their gender is unconstitutional.

Several international organisations including the European court of human rights, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and UN had said the requirement was discriminatory and infringed on human rights.

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Young Europeans more likely to quit driving and have fewer children to save planet

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Exclusive: Poll shows young people willing to make big lifestyle changes but baulk at smaller gestures

They are willing to have smaller families, stop using cars and – albeit in smaller numbers – go vegan for the planet, but abandoning single-use plastics and growing a few more plants could be a step too far.

Across Europe, according to a seven-country survey, it seems young people are more willing than older generations to make big lifestyle changes that would help combat the climate crisis – but are less convinced by smaller gestures.

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High-risk prisoners sit GCSE English – and many outperform peers on outside

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Inmates at HMP Frankland in County Durham, some of ‘hardest to reach people in society’, did course in a year with no internet access

Inmates serving long sentences at one of the UK’s most secure prisons have been allowed to study GCSE English for the first time and have outperformed many of their peers on the outside.

More than three-quarters of the small cohort of prisoners who sat the exam at HMP Frankland in County Durham secured a pass at grade 4 or above – equivalent to a C – which is almost three times the success rate in further education colleges in England.

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