New Rio de Janeiro law requires public hospitals to display anti-abortion signs

Opponents view the controversial act as part of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict abortion access

A new law has just come into force in Rio de Janeiro requiring all public hospitals and clinics run by the municipal government to display anti-abortion signs bearing messages such as: “Did you know that the unborn child is discarded as hospital waste?”

Reproductive rights activists view the act as the latest example of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict access to abortion in a country that already has some of the world’s most restrictive laws.

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MPs back bill to end criminal penalties for abortion in key vote – as it happened

Parliament votes on biggest shake-up to reproductive rights in England and Wales in 60 years

Casey says in the past government has talked relentlessly about the need for better data sharing between departments.

But she says there is a need to consider making this mandatory.

I was there when the tragedy of Soham happened. We knew at that point that if we had had better data sharing there’s a possibility that we might have saved those girls’ lives. There’s certaintly an absolute clarity that intelligence would have been much faster in either avoiding it or or actually finding that dreadful human being earlier.

And we’ve known that forever onwards. And so I think there is also an issue that the Home Office can’t drag their feet on, looking at police intelligence systems, given we’ve living in the 21st century. Probably everbody in this room can connect within seconds. Yet we had Befordshire police finding a young boy that was being, in my mind trafficked to London. But the data intelligence system did not make it easy for them to find that he was in Deptford and being circled and dealt with by predators.

I feel very strongly on issues that are as searing as people’s race, when we know the prejudice and racism that people of colour experience in this country, to not get how you treat that data right is a different level of public irresponsibility.

Sorry, to put it so bluntly, I didn’t put it that bluntly yesterday, but I think it’s particularly important if you are collecting those sorts of issues to get them 100% right.

When we asked the good people of Greater Manchester Police to help us look at the data we also collected – I think it’s in the report – what was happening with child abuse more generally, and of course … if you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it’s disproportionately Asian heritage. If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, and it is white men.

So again, just note to everybody, really outside here rather than in here. Let’s just keep calm here about how you interrogate data and what you draw from it.

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Calls for abortion law change grew louder as number of prosecutions rose

While parliament was moving towards more liberal abortion laws more women were being arrested or investigated

Calls for decriminalisation of abortions have been growing louder in recent years – in line with a growing number of women being prosecuted for terminating their pregnancies.

Until 2022, it is believed that only three women had ever been convicted of having an illegal abortion in the 150 years since 1861, when the procedure was made illegal under the Offences Against the Person Act.

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MPs vote to decriminalise abortion in step forward for reproductive rights

Amendment to crime and policing bill will change law to end prosecution of women who terminate pregnancies

British MPs have voted to decriminalise abortion, marking the biggest step forward in reproductive rights in almost 60 years.

In an amendment to the government’s crime and policing bill, parliament voted to change the criminal laws that govern abortion in England and Wales so that women procuring a termination outside the legal framework cannot be prosecuted.

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South African woman’s murder prompts anger at country’s high level of femicide

Olorato Mongale, allegedly killed by man she went on date with, is latest victim of violence against women

A wave of anger and frustration has gripped South Africa after the murder of 30-year-old Olorato Mongale, allegedly by a man she went on a date with. It is the latest in a series of high-profile cases of violence against women and children in the country.

Friends of Mongale, a former journalist who had been studying for a master’s degree in ICT policy, raised the alarm when she stopped checking in with them while on a date in Johannesburg on 25 May. Her body was found that day.

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Syria asks women to dress modestly on beaches but says bikinis still allowed

Women advised to cover up on public beaches, prompting concerns about freedoms under new government

Syria’s government has asked women to wear “burkinis” or more modest swimwear while visiting public beaches this summer, although it later clarified there will be no legal consequences for those who wear bikinis.

A government directive on Tuesday asked women to wear a “burkini or swimwear that covers more of the body”, and loose-fitting clothing when out of the water. The decree also asked men not to be shirtless when not swimming.

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London mayor reverses TfL ban on ads calling for abortion decriminalisation

Sadiq Khan seeking ‘urgent review’ of decision to ban adverts from British Pregnancy Advisory Service

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has stepped in to reverse a ban on adverts on the London transport network calling for abortion to be decriminalised.

It is understood that the mayor is seeking an “urgent review” of a Transport for London (TfL) decision to ban the adverts from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas) charity on the grounds they may bring the Metropolitan police into disrepute.

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Miss World organisers accused of being ‘vindictive and bitter’ towards ex-contestant

Milla Magee, the reigning Miss England, left over claims she had been used as window dressing

Their mantra is “beauty with a purpose”. But the organisers of the Miss World pageant have been accused of something altogether uglier: being “vindictive and very bitter” towards a contestant who left over claims she had been used as window dressing.

The reigning Miss England, Milla Magee, said she agreed to take part in the 2025 Miss World pageant because she believed it would be a platform to promote her campaign to have CPR included in the school curriculum. But she said the reality was very different.

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Polish election: Tusk party urged to show it is not ‘deceiving women’ on abortion

Five years after near-total ban on abortion, campaigners say Sunday’s elections will be critical to see if promised change happens

Poland’s presidential elections are a “historic, groundbreaking” chance for Donald Tusk’s centrist party to show it was not trying to “deceive women” when it promised to change some of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws, campaigners have said.

Voters across Poland will head to the polls on Sunday in the first round of the elections to replace Andrzej Duda, the current president who is aligned with the former rightwing government and has veto power over legislation.

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Legacy of Diane Sindall’s murder lives on as 1987 conviction is overturned

As Peter Sullivan is released after serving 38 years for a crime he didn’t commit, efforts turn to finding the killer

People still lay flowers at the granite memorial stone close to the place in Birkenhead where Diane Sindall met her horrific, shocking death. It reads: “Murdered 2.8.1986 because she was a woman. In memory of all our sisters who have been raped and murdered. We will never let it be forgotten.”

On Merseyside, the killing has a legacy that is still felt today. For nearly four decades, many assumed justice had been served and the right man had been convicted. On Tuesday, that was turned on its head when the court of appeal ruled Peter Sullivan was an innocent man.

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Irish camogie players don shorts in protest against skorts diktat

Players have had enough of rule 6(b) of the sport’s code, which requres a ‘skirt/skort/divided skirt’

They are called skorts – a portmanteau of shorts and skirts – and the Irish camogie players who are obliged to wear them have had enough.

Players from Dublin and Kilkenny instead wore forbidden shorts before a provincial game on Saturday, in a coordinated protest that has won support from politicians and commentators who say the dress rules for the female-only sport are archaic.

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Badenoch says more children, not immigration, will help with ageing population

Conservative leader’s remarks to BBC suggest she may develop policies that encourage women to have more children

People should be having more children rather than the UK relying on immigration to deal with an ageing population, Kemi Badenoch has suggested.

The Conservative leader said the UK needed to answer the question of how we “make sure we can deal with [an] ageing society, people not having enough children”.

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Trump’s first 100 days supercharged a global ‘freefall of rights’, says Amnesty

World now in era of repressive regimes’ impunity, climate inaction and unchecked corporate power, says report

The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency have “supercharged” a global rollback of human rights, pushing the world towards an authoritarian era defined by impunity and unchecked corporate power, Amnesty International warns today.

In its annual report on the state of human rights in 150 countries, the organisation said the immediate ramifications of Trump’s second term had been the undermining of decades of progress and the emboldening of authoritarian leaders.

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Shabana Mahmood warned of risk to pregnant women in halting Sentencing Council guidelines

Exclusive: Stopping pre-sentencing reports could put more pregnant people behind bars, groups tell justice minister

Shabana Mahmood risks putting more pregnant women behind bars through her bill to prevent new guidelines which highlighted the need for pre-sentencing reports based on “different personal characteristics” including age, sex and ethnicity, charities have warned.

The justice secretary introduced the bill as emergency legislation after the Sentencing Council’s guidelines provoked claims of a “two-tier” justice system, with Mahmood saying she “would not stand for differential treatment before the law like this”. The council suspended the guidance hours before it was due to take effect in response to the backlash.

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UK politics: Reform UK on course to win in two mayoral contests – as it happened

Polling predicts victory for party in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull/East Yorkshire with the Greens possibly taking West of England

There are six mayoral elections next week. Two of them are for single-authority mayors (Doncaster and North Tyneside), but the others are for combined-authority mayors (or regional mayors – like metro mayors, but not just covering city regions). Today YouGov has released polling covering all four of these contests and it suggests Reform UK is on course to win two of them easily. And the Green party is narrowly ahead in a third, the poll suggests.

Here are the polling figures.

In theory the Tories should be winning in Lincolnshire as they hold most of the parliamentary seats in the area and have dominated local politics forever. But it’s also the most Reform-friendly part of the country. It contains Richard Tice’s constituency and numerous seats in which they came second. Plus their candidate is a former Tory MP – Andrea Jenkyns, famous for her Boris Johnson obsession and making a middle finger gesture at a crowd outside Downing Street. She is, by all accounts, quite a few sandwiches short of a picnic but, nevertheless, is strong favourite to win. Large chunks of local Conservative parties, including several councillors, have already defected.

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Badenoch declines to criticise Jenrick over Reform coalition comments – as it happened

Spokesperson for Tory leader says she agrees with colleague that ‘we need to bring centre-right voters together’. This blog is closed

Rosie Duffield, the independent MP who left Labour after the election in part because she felt her gender critical views made her unwelcome in the party (although her resignation letter focused on welfare issues), has claimed that Keir Starmer no longer arguing a trans woman is a woman shows he is a “manager rather than a leader”.

Speaking on LBC, Duffield said:

It’s just another sign of the prime minister’s lack of leadership skills. I’m bound to say that, he’s a manager rather than a leader. He responds and reacts rather than leads from the front, and this is what we’re seeing again from him.

Nigel Farage is peddling a dangerous fantasy by claiming the UK can be self-sufficient in gas.

After sixty years of drilling, the truth is the UK has already burned most of its gas. That’s down to geology, not politics, and no amount of hot air from Farage will change that.

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Number of births in US increased by 1% in 2024, according to CDC data

Small increase amounts to 3.6 million births and an increase in the women aged 40-44 giving birth

The number of births in the US increased slightly in 2024 to roughly 3.6 million, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The small increase of 1% in the number of births comes amid a long-term decline that began during the Great Recession, in about 2008. The provisional data was released on Wednesday.

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Badenoch says Labour’s claims to have always defended single-sex spaces are a ‘shameless work of fiction’ – UK politics live

Minister for women and equality makes statement after supreme court ruling on gender recognition

Some MPs and peers are calling for President Trump not to be invited to address parliament when he visits the UK. In 2017, during Trump’s first presidency, the then Speaker, John Bercow, vetoed a proposal for Trump to address parliamentarians in Westminster Hall.

In an interview with Times Radio this morning, Stephen Morgan, an education minister, said Trump should be allowed to give a speech in parliament. Asked if Trump should be allowed to address MPs and peers, Morgan said:

I look forward to the US president addressing parliament in due course.

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Gender critical campaigners win at UK supreme court over definition of woman

Judges rule that Equality Act definition excludes transgender women holding gender recognition certificates

Gender critical rights campaigners have won their supreme court challenge over the definition of a woman.

Five judges from the UK supreme court ruled unanimously that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 did not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates (GRCs).

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One in four women in England have serious reproductive health issue, survey finds

Exclusive: Racial disparities highlighted as researchers estimate 10 million women have conditions such as fibroids or endometriosis

More than a quarter of women in England are living with a serious reproductive health issue, according to the largest survey of its kind, and experts say “systemic, operational, structural and cultural issues” prevent women from accessing care.

The survey of 60,000 women across England in 2023, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and analysed by academics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, found that 28% of respondents were living with a reproductive morbidity, such as pelvic organ prolapse, uterine fibroids, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, or cervical, uterine, ovarian or breast cancer.

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