Young people in England’s coastal towns three times more likely to have a mental health condition

They are suffering disproportionately and without help, say researchers, and unless they are given a voice, problems will continue to mount up

Young people living in the most deprived stretches of England’s coastline are three times more likely to be living with an undiagnosed mental health condition than their peers inland, according to new research.

This “coastal mental health gap” means that young people in these towns, which include areas of Tendring on the east coast and Blackpool and Liverpool to the west, are suffering disproportionately, often alone and with no help, said the researchers who conducted the study.

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Continue ReadingYoung people in England’s coastal towns three times more likely to have a mental health condition

Across Europe, the financial sector has pushed up house prices. It’s a political timebomb | Tim White

We’ve been living in a great experiment: can finance provide basic human rights such as housing? The answer is increasingly no

“The housing crisis is now as big a threat to the EU as Russia,” Jaume Collboni, the mayor of Barcelona, recently declared. “We’re running the risk of having the working and middle classes conclude that their democracies are incapable of solving their biggest problem.”

It is not hard to see where Collboni is coming from. From Dublin to Milan, residents routinely find half of their incomes swallowed up by rent, and home ownership is unthinkable for most. Major cities are witnessing spiralling house prices and some have jaw-dropping year-on-year median rent increases of more than 10%. People are being pushed into ever more precarious and cramped conditions and homelessness is rapidly rising.

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Continue ReadingAcross Europe, the financial sector has pushed up house prices. It’s a political timebomb | Tim White

Anne Reid on fame, desire and ambition at 90: ‘The most wonderful things have happened since I was 68!’

In her 20s, the actor says, casting directors didn’t rate her. In her 60s, she got her big break. She discusses fun, family, optimism, regrets – and wild sex on screen with Daniel Craig

Anne Reid wants to get one thing straight from the off. She adores working with the director Dominic Dromgoole. “He treats actors like grownups. Some directors feel as if they’ve got to play games and teach you how to act. But a conductor doesn’t teach a viola player how to play the blooming instrument, does he?” She talks about directors who get actors to throw bean bags at each other and go round the room making them recite each other’s names. “Blimey! I want to be an adult. I think I’ve earned it now.” She pauses. Reid has always been a master of the timely pause. “You can’t get more adult than me and be alive really, can you, darling?”

Reid turned 90 in May. She celebrated by going on a national tour with Daisy Goodwin’s new play, By Royal Appointment. I catch up with the show at Cheltenham’s Everyman theatre. She’s already done Bath. Then there’s Malvern, Southampton, Richmond, Guildford and Salford. I feel knackered just thinking about it, I say. She gives me a look. “Oh, they send me in cars. I don’t have to toil much!”

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Continue ReadingAnne Reid on fame, desire and ambition at 90: ‘The most wonderful things have happened since I was 68!’

Netanyahu returns to White House holding all the cards in Gaza talks

Joint attack on Iran puts Israeli PM in powerful position as he dangles prospect of Trump-brokered ceasefire deal

Donald Trump will host Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington DC on Monday as the US president seeks again to broker a peace deal in Gaza and the Israeli prime minister takes a victory lap through the Oval Office after a joint military campaign against Iran and a series of successful strikes against Tehran and its proxies in the Middle East.

Netanyahu and Trump have a complex personal relationship – and Trump openly vented frustration at him last month during efforts to negotiate a truce with Iran – but the two have appeared in lockstep since the US launched a bombing run against Iran’s nuclear programme, fulfilling a key goal for Israeli war planners.

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Continue ReadingNetanyahu returns to White House holding all the cards in Gaza talks

‘They threw us out like garbage’: Iran rushes deportation of 4 million Afghans before deadline

Thousands of lone women forced to return face extreme repression and destitution under Taliban laws that forbid them to work or travel without a male guardian

Women forced back to living under the Taliban’s increasingly repressive regime have spoken of their desperation as Iran accelerates the deportation of an estimated 4 million Afghans who had fled to the country.

In the past month alone, more than 250,000 people, including thousands of lone women, have returned to Afghanistan from Iran, according to the UN’s migration agency. The numbers accelerated before Sunday’s deadline set by the Iranian regime for all undocumented Afghans to leave the country.

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Continue Reading‘They threw us out like garbage’: Iran rushes deportation of 4 million Afghans before deadline

A rogue fertility clinic, stolen eggs, and an unlikely friendship – podcast

Jenny Kleeman reports on the IVF clinic in the US that stole women’s eggs to get other women pregnant

In 1995, Renée Ballou received a call from a reporter at the Orange County Register. The reporter asked if she was alone, and suggested she would need to sit down.

Ballou says: “She said, we’re breaking a story tomorrow. We have some records here that the FBI has released, and we have every indication that your eggs were stolen and that you have a child that was born from the stolen eggs.”

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Continue ReadingA rogue fertility clinic, stolen eggs, and an unlikely friendship – podcast