Findings could lead to use of calorie-free caffeinated drinks to cut obesity and type 2 diabetes – but more research needed
Having high levels of caffeine in your blood may lower the amount of body fat you carry and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, research suggests.
The findings could lead to calorie-free caffeinated drinks being used to reduce obesity and type 2 diabetes, though further research is required, the researchers wrote in the BMJ Medicine journal.
Continue reading...Justyna Wydrzynska sentenced to community service after telling court she sent pills to victim of domestic violence
A court in Poland has convicted an activist for helping a pregnant woman access abortion pills, sentencing her to eight months of community service in a landmark case over abortion rights in the predominantly Catholic country.
“I do not feel that I am facing the court alone,” said Justyna Wydrzynska at the hearing on Tuesday. “Behind me are my friends and hundreds of women I have not had the luck to meet yet.”
Continue reading...‘Fueling vaccine hesitancy undermines effort’ to protect lives, warns letter to Dr Joseph Ladapo sent by FDA and CDC
US health agencies have sent a letter to the surgeon general of Florida, warning that his claims about Covid-19 vaccine risks are harmful to the public.
The letter was sent to Joseph Ladapo on Friday by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was a response to a letter Ladapo wrote to the agencies last month, expressing concerns about what he described as adverse effects from Covid vaccines.
Continue reading...More knowledge needed about whether vaping is a ‘stepping stone’ to smoking and to raise awareness of harmful effects among youth, premier says
The Queensland parliament will hold an inquiry into the health risks, use and prevalence of e-cigarettes, amid concerns that some vaping products marketed as “nicotine free” actually contain the addictive chemical.
Queensland laws allow the sale of nicotine-free vaping devices in tobacco shops. E-cigarettes containing nicotine are only available with a prescription.
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Continue reading...Some advisers and civil servants speaking to the Guardian say an ‘anti-lockdown filter’ has been placed on events
The mass leaking of thousands of Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages have laid bare in the starkest terms the extent of the divisions inside the cabinet and among advisers and civil servants handling the deadliest pandemic in modern times.
But some who worked in Number 10 and across Whitehall, as well as bereaved families, have been angered by what they see as a rewriting of history by some cabinet ministers and by the framing of some of Hancock’s texts.
Continue reading...The disease, which has killed 1,500 people since last March, has been aggravated by heavy rains and an overburdened health system
Malawi’s cholera outbreak is the country’s deadliest on record, claiming more than 1,500 lives, according to the UN.
More than 50,000 cases have been detected in the landlocked country in south-east Africa since an outbreak was declared in March last year, triggered by two devastating tropical storms that hit the region. Almost 200 children have died.
Continue reading...Kate Forbes, Ash Regan and Humza Yousaf take part in debate hosted by Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy
Lucy Frazer won’t be happy. (See 10.40am.) Interviewed by reporters leaving home this morning, Gary Lineker said that he had had a conversation with the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie. He would not reveal what was said. “We chat often,” was all Lineker said.
But Lineker did not look chastened. In fact, he was smiling like a Cheshire cat. Asked if he regretted sending his tweet, he replied “No,” and, asked if he stood by what he said, he replied, “Of course.”
Continue reading...After pharmacy giant pledged not to dispense abortion medicine in states that restrict its use, Gavin Newsom cancels agreement
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday withdrew a $54m contract with Walgreens after the pharmacy giant indicated it would not sell an abortion pill by mail in some conservative-led states.
Newsom ordered state officials to not renew a contract with Walgreens to purchase specialty pharmacy prescription drugs for California’s prison healthcare system, including antiviral and antifungal drugs and medication used for congestive heart failure. Walgreens has received about $54m from the contract, which expires 30 April.
Continue reading...GMB union calls findings based on views of more than 1,200 NHS ambulance workers in England and Wales ‘utterly terrifying’
More than half of ambulance workers have seen a patient die because of a delay in reaching them after a 999 call or overcrowding in A&E, a new survey has found.
The findings, from a survey of frontline paramedics and other ambulance staff, are another stark illustration of the patient safety risks created by the crisis in NHS urgent and emergency care.
Continue reading...‘Shocking’ analysis reveals only three trusts managed to treat 85% of patients within two months of urgent referral
Patients are being warned of a “shocking gap in cancer care” as new figures reveal that fewer than 3% of England’s NHS trusts met a key waiting-times target last year for cancer patients to be treated within two months of an urgent GP referral.
Of 125 hospital trusts in England analysed, only three (2.4%) hit the standard of treating 85% of patients within 62 days after an urgent referral in 2022. Some trusts have not hit the standard for at least eight years.
Continue reading...World Health Organization’s director general says the politicisation of research into Covid’s origins was making the scientific work harder
The World Health Organization has urged all countries to reveal what they know about the origins of Covid-19, after claims from several US government agencies that a Chinese lab leak was behind the disease were furiously denied by Beijing.
“If any country has information about the origins of the pandemic, it’s essential for that information to be shared with WHO and the international scientific community,” the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Friday.
Continue reading...Care homes hard hit while overall cases up 24% on pre-Covid five-season average
Cases of norovirus among people over 65 in England have reached their highest level in a decade, with care homes hard hit by the winter vomiting bug.
According to data released by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), there have been 4,551 positive norovirus laboratory reports this season up to the week beginning 13 February, which is 24% higher than the five-season average for the same period before the Covid pandemic struck.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Several NHS organisations have asked unqualified medics to provide support during strikes later this month
Unqualified medical students are being urged to provide clinical support in English hospitals when tens of thousands of junior doctors go on strike this month, the Guardian can reveal.
The NHS faces the prospect of unprecedented disruption to services from 13 March when junior doctors strike for 72 hours in an increasingly bitter row over pay, morale and safe staffing levels.
Continue reading...Australia, the US, India and Japan join to ‘counter new and emerging forms of terrorism, radicalisation to violence and violent extremism’. This blog is now closed
‘A broken promise writ large’
Opposition leader Peter Dutton was also on the Today show (which has clearly been busy this morning).
They want to tax you on the profit before you actually sell the shares, which is unbelievable. And I think it continues to go from disaster to disaster for the government.
You can’t as a prime minister look people in the eye and tell them one thing and do the complete opposite, a broken promise writ large.
It is a modest change ... It only affects people if you have $3m in your superannuation fund. That’s about 0.5% of superannuants.
We inherited a budget from Peter [Dutton] and his crew which was a trillion dollars in debt. There’s nothing to show for it. We need to be responsible. That’s what we’re trying to do.
Continue reading...Rachel Reeves tasks chancellor with finding money to double England’s doctor and nurse training places
Rachel Reeves has challenged Jeremy Hunt to find the money for Labour’s plan to double training places for doctors and nurses – pointing out he said he wanted to “nick” the opposition’s policy just two weeks before becoming chancellor.
The shadow chancellor said NHS shortages were causing 1.5 million people in need of medical treatment to say their work was suffering, with new analysis showing it was costing the economy about £700m a year.
Continue reading...Minister for women and equalities dismisses suggestion government should pilot menopause leave for women
PMQs is about to start.
Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s chief whip, has said that he thinks the Stormont brake – the mechanism at the heart of Rishi Sunak’s deal to revise the Northern Ireland protocol – will turn out to be “fairly ineffective”.
Let’s not underestimate the fact that when the EU introduces new laws in the future, it will have an impact on Northern Ireland. And the point of the brake was meant to be to give a means for unionists to oppose that. I think it will have to be used on lots of occasions, though I suspect to be fairly ineffective.
As long as it takes us to get, first of all, the analysis, and secondly, the answers from the government, before we make that decision, that’s the time we’ll take.
But the one thing I’ll say to you is that we will not have a knee-jerk reaction to this deal. It means too much to us. And we have got to give it real consideration.
Continue reading...Researchers have secured £1m to refine method of scoring potential organs by comparing images
Artificial intelligence could help NHS surgeons perform 300 more transplant operations every year, according to British researchers who have designed a new tool to boost the quality of donor organs.
Currently, medical staff must rely on their own assessments of whether an organ may be suitable for transplanting into a patient. It means some organs are picked that ultimately do not prove successful, while others that might be useful can be disregarded.
Continue reading...Patients in New Brunswick with array of symptoms ‘show signs of exposure to glyphosate’, says neurologist
A neurologist who believes his patients are suffering from a suspicious illness has pleaded with the Canadian government to carry out environmental testing he thinks will show the involvement of the herbicide glyphosate.
For more than two years, dozens of people in the Canadian province of New Brunswick have experienced a distressing array of neurological symptoms, initially prompting speculation that they had developed an unknown degenerative illness – and that figure is believed to be far higher than official reports.
Continue reading...Japanese company Denka, along with US chemicals giant DuPont, have operated the plant that produces cancer-causing chloroprene
The US justice department has sued the two petrochemical giants behind a facility in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” responsible for the highest cancer risk rates caused by air pollution in the US in a major federal lawsuit that seeks to substantially curb the plant’s emissions.
Unveiled on Tuesday, the lawsuit alleges emissions at the Pontchartrain Works facility in Reserve, Louisiana, violate the Clean Air Act and “present an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and welfare”.
Continue reading...Although the case was decided on a technicality, a dissenting judge on panel said the court should have rejected the claim on its merits
A Florida appeals court denied an attorney’s attempt to have a woman released from jail ahead of trial by arguing that her fetus was being illegally detained without charge – but the attorney says he plans to continue the legal battle.
Florida’s third district court of appeal dismissed without prejudice a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by attorney William M Norris on behalf of the “unborn child” of Natalia Harrell.
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