MPs debate Labour motion that would set aside parliamentary time to pass Labour’s water quality (sewage discharge) bill
Rishi Sunak is seeking to capitalise on his improved relations with the EU with hopes of an agreement to allow British passport holders to use e-gates when travelling in the bloc, Lisa O’Carroll reports.
On small boats, Starmer told This Morning that he wanted to stop the boats. Labour would focus on two policies in particular, he said.
Continue reading...Greg Williams offered transportation for women seeking out-of-state care after the supreme court’s Dobbs decision last year
About three weeks after the US supreme court last year struck down the federal right to abortion, Greg Williams, a volunteer pilot for a group that provides free flights to people who need to travel for medical care, posted a Facebook message.
“If any women need to make an unexpected trip from the south to, say, Illinois or New Mexico or Virginia for reasons that are none of my business, I can provide safe, private air transport that would get you where you need to go and back the same day at a price that will work for you,” Williams wrote, on 28 June 2022.
Continue reading...High profile male politicians, sports stars and businessmen attended Scottish-themed lunch at National Gallery of Victoria – but not their female counterparts
There were bagpipes, tartan-clad security guards and plenty of kilts, but there was one thing conspicuously missing from billionaire trucking magnate Lindsay Fox’s 86th birthday party: women.
The Scottish-themed private lunch at the National Gallery of Victoria, to which the Fox family donated $100m last year, was a men-only affair attended by several prominent politicians, sportsmen and businessmen.
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PMQs is starting in five minutes.
The Cabinet Office has just published the revised list of ministers’ interests. This is the document that is supposed get updated every six months, but which has not been updated for around a year – partly because it’s the job of the No 10 independent adviser on ministes’ interests (aka, the ethics adviser), and for months the post was empty because two of Boris Johnson’s resigned, and then he gave up trying to find a replacement.
The prime minister’s wife is a venture capital investor. She owns a venture capital investment company, Catamaran Ventures UK Limited, and a number of direct shareholdings.
As the prime minister set out in his letter to the chair of the liaison committee on 4 April 2023, this includes the minority shareholding that his wife has in relation to the company, Koru Kids. The guide to the categories of interest (section 7, pages 4-6) sets out the independent adviser’s approach to the inclusion of interests declared in relation to spouses, partners and close family members within the list. The prime minister’s letter of 4 April is available at https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/38992/documents/191876/default/
Continue reading...Exclusive: Melissa Green, CEO of the organisation, says it won’t be part of ‘toxic’ debate on trans membership
The Women’s Institute will continue to “celebrate” the lives of the transgender women enriching its membership, the head of the organisation said on Tuesday, following reports that it was facing a bid to overturn inclusive policy.
Melissa Green, CEO of the the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI), said the organisation did not want to enter into a “toxic and divisive” row that sought to sow discord among women, but instead foster sensible discourse and reflect the lives of all its members – including those that are transgender.
Continue reading...Officials say it will leave in May if Taliban cannot be persuaded to let local women work for organisation
The UN is ready to take the “heartbreaking” decision to pull out of Afghanistan in May if it cannot persuade the Taliban to let local women work for the organisation, officials have said.
The warning comes after UN officials spent months negotiating with the group’s leaders in the hope of persuading them to make exceptions to a hardline edict this month barring local women from working for it, according to the head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Achim Steiner.
Continue reading...Temporary pause on lower court rulings gives court additional time to consider a longer stay
Danco Laboratories has said that they will continue to distribute the abortion pill, according to an email from the company.
Reuters reported that the company emailed a statement confirming that they will still continue to dispense Mifeprex to its customers.
Continue reading...Underfunded services resulting in more women choosing cheaper at-home abortion pill, study finds
Overstretched and underfunded abortion services in England and Wales are leaving women feeling pressured into opting for the cheaper at-home pill rather than a surgical procedure, according to research.
The proportion of medical abortions – using pills – rose from 47% in 2011 to 87% in 2021, while very few abortions are now administered surgically, finds research from the London School of Economics.
Continue reading...Women who break Islamic dress code will be identified, warned on first instance and then taken to court
Police in Iran plan to use smart technology in public places to identify and then penalise women who violate the country’s strict Islamic dress code, the force said on Saturday.
A statement said police would “take action to identify norm-breaking people by using tools and smart cameras in public places and thoroughfares”.
Continue reading...Sir Mark Rowley vows to ‘lift the stone’ – but says rooting out every unfit police officer could take years
Scotland Yard is battling its biggest corruption crisis since the 1970s, its commissioner has warned, as new evidence emerged of the widespread bungling of sexual and domestic abuse claims against officers.
The review of past allegations was triggered by the David Carrick scandal, where the force missed repeated clues that the Metropolitan police firearms officer was a threat to women, while he attacked at least 12 victims over a 20-year period, committing 85 serious crimes.
Checks on 10,000 of the Met’s 50,000 officers and staff against police databases showed 38 cases of possible misconduct and 55 cases of a potential association with a criminal, all of which will be investigated further.
Gross misconduct investigations, which can lead to sackings have risen 62% to 431, with such hearings taking less time to be held.
A total of 144 officers were suspended from duty, double that from September 2022, with 701 on restricted duties.
There has been a 70% increase in those dismissed – or leaving before they could be sacked – in the last six months.
Continue reading...Abortion legislation needs to move through house before gaining DeSantis’s likely signature while gun-carry law enacted today
Florida took another step to the right on Monday when the state senate approved a bill to ban abortions after six weeks, a measure supported by Republican governor and expected presidential candidate Ron DeSantis – who on the same day signed into law a bill allowing the public to carry concealed guns without a permit.
The latest proposal to restrict reproductive rights must still be approved by the house in the state legislature before it reaches the governor’s desk. Florida currently prohibits abortions after 15 weeks.
Continue reading...Palestinian women are fighting back, despite personal losses and scarcity of opportunities in the conservative territory
Rouzan al-Najjar, a paramedic from the Gaza Strip, knew that her work saving lives during the 2018 protests on the frontier with Israel challenged assumptions in the highly conservative Palestinian territory about the role of women.
“Being a medic is not only a job for a man,” the 21-year-old said in an interview shortly before she was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper.
Continue reading...Country’s chief justice says unveiled women will be prosecuted ‘without mercy’ after defiance
Two women have been arrested in Iran for not covering their hair in public after having a tub of yoghurt thrown over them.
Video footage that went viral on social media showed two female customers being approached by a man who engages them in conversation.
Continue reading...Sadai Banowan violated ‘laws and regulations of the Islamic emirate’, says local Taliban official
A female-run radio station in Afghanistan’s north-east has been shut down for playing music during the holy month of Ramadan, a Taliban official said.
Sadai Banowan, which means women’s voice in Dari, is Afghanistan’s only female-run station and started 10 years ago. It has eight staff, six of them female.
Continue reading...Inspectors say ‘deeply troubling’ behaviour found at fire and rescue services across England may be ‘tip of the iceberg’
Every fire brigade in England is plagued with bullying, harassment and discrimination complaints, a damning report has found, and officials have called for drastic measures to clean up the service.
Inspectors urged bosses to carry out background checks on every firefighter, with those who fail being sacked, after long-awaited findings shone a light on “deeply troubling” behaviour in the emergency service.
A senior officer accused of calling a black colleague the N-word dismissing it as simply “having a laugh”.
A firefighter reporting a superior for making a racist comment, only to find his account dismissed because the alleged offender “wouldn’t behave in such a way”. The senior officer in question then threatened “to make his life hell”.
Two male firefighters mockingly told a female colleague they were “going to rape her”, before simulating it with her.
Some staff being reluctant to speak up after being told it would be “career suicide” to do so.
Continue reading...Matiullah Wesa, head of Pen Path, beaten and arrested outside a mosque after prayers
The founder of a project that campaigned for girls’ education in Afghanistan has been detained by Taliban authorities in Kabul, his brother and the UN have said.
The Taliban government last year barred girls from attending secondary school, making Afghanistan the only country in the world where there is a ban on education.
Continue reading...Slashing funding to the programme from a promised £7m to just £1m sends a ‘stark message to the world’, says Save the Children
The UK government has cut almost £6m in funding to a programme in Afghanistan supporting vulnerable women and girls.
Save the Children said it has been told by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office that it will receive just over £1m of a promised £7m to support more than 100,000 people to access essential basic services such as healthcare and education.
Continue reading...Human rights court hears seriously ill woman denied procedure as advocates call for change in region with world’s most restrictive abortion laws
Human rights activists in Latin America hope that a historic court hearing over the case of a Salvadoran woman who was denied an abortion despite her high-risk pregnancy could open the way for El Salvador to decriminalize abortions – and set an important precedent across the region.
The inter-American court of human rights (IACHR) this week considered the historic case of the woman, known as Beatriz, who was prohibited from having an abortion in 2013, even though she was seriously ill and the foetus she was carrying would not have survived outside the uterus.
Continue reading...Lingerie and sex toy chain’s boss tapped into the female market by embracing Britain’s peculiar erotic humour
When Jacqueline Gold arrived to shake up Ann Summers, the company had already been in the family for a decade, bought by her father, David, and uncle Ralph Gold. They had made the initial leap from sex shop to what they styled as a “lingerie boutique”; it would be more accurate to say they took it from a shop women never went into to a shop women did go into, while still selling the same sex toys and lucky knickers.
The impact of Jacqueline Gold, who has died aged 62, went far beyond the shops themselves or even the operation. The irony is that British culture in the 80s was hardly a stranger to images of women in their underwear, but these images were pretty well always used to sell random things to men. The notion of erotic imagery and shop frontage aimed at women was quite novel, and freighted with innuendo – this is one sense in which I can just about allow that Britain is exceptional, the peculiar humour it derives from sex: that Carry-On, seaside postcard, slightly mirthless and dutiful performance, where anyone revealing a sexual identity is considered to make themselves ridiculous, becoming the butt of some inexpressible joke. It was not cost-free, therefore, for women to go browsing in Ann Summers, and Gold attacked this from two directions.
Continue reading...Mixed group to take over duties of Escolania choir at Montserrat monastery one weekend a month
Women and girls are to be admitted to a choir at the Montserrat monastery near Barcelona, home to the famous Escolania all-boys choir, for the first time in its 700-year history.
The new chamber choir, made up of a mix of about 25 boys and women and girls aged 17 to 24, will be separate from the Escolania, which comprises 45 boys aged nine to 14.
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