Saturday, February 15

Day: May 8, 2018

How universal credit rules force women into abortions
Featured, United Kingdom

How universal credit rules force women into abortions

    When Sally came round from the anaesthetic her cheeks were already wet with tears. She had been fully sedated while the doctors terminated her four-month pregnancy, a pregnancy she had desperately wanted to continue. I was crying when wheeled me in, she says. They kept asking ‘are you sure you want to do this? and I couldn’t even answer, I just had to nod my head. Sally is not her real name but she says she could not bear for family and friends to know what she went through. She and her partner discovered, almost halfway through the pregnancy, that the government no longer paid out child tax credit and the child element of universal credit for more than two children. The rule applies to babies born after 6th April 2017 and it’s been widely condemned by women’s rig...
Uber self driving car spotted pedestrian killed in the first fatal crash
America, Featured

Uber self driving car spotted pedestrian killed in the first fatal crash

    A self-driving Uber may have spotted the pedestrian killed in the first fatal crash with a driverless car but ignored her anyway. The self-driving car which killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg in Phoenix, Arizona in March saw the pedestrian as a false positive, causing its on-board system to decide to ignore her rather than swerve to avoid the crash, according to The Information. The car's sensors detected the pedestrian, but according to Uber's internal investigation into the crash, the self-driving car had been tuned to ignore obstacles it didn't deem a risk. Self-driving cars have been having problems with so-called false positives avoiding small objects that human drivers would normally ignore or drive over. The car had been programmed to ignore more of these w...
New plagiarism row for Melania Trump
America, Featured

New plagiarism row for Melania Trump

    A booklet published by Melania Trump’s new campaign for children’s online safety bears an uncanny resemblance to a document released under Barack Obama’s administration. Donald Trump’s wife gave an opening night address at the Republican National Convention in 2016 that was partly plagiarised from a speech by then first lady Michelle Obama. Later, in an apparent damage limitation exercise following a backlash on social media, the website’s language was updated to describe the pamphlet as a Federal Trade Commission booklet, promoted by First Lady Melania Trump. Visitors who click on the link are taken to a pdf file of a booklet that is almost identical to one first published by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2014 under the title: Net Cetera Chatting with Kids...
Household wet wipes will be banished in the UK
Featured, United Kingdom

Household wet wipes will be banished in the UK

    Household wet wipes will be banished in the UK as part of Michael Gove’s drive to crack down on plastic being thrown away and damaging ecosystems, the government has said. If they are outlawed, shoppers will no longer be able to buy the wipes, which are mostly made of polyester and contain millions of microfibres impregnated with chemicals. Tens of thousands of wet wipes are sold in Britain each year, and despite public awareness campaigns, many are still flushed into lavatories, where they end up clogging mains sewers, and go on to kill fish in rivers and other marine life as the fibres are released. We are continuing to work with manufacturers and retailers of wet wipes to make sure labelling on packaging is clear and people know how to dispose of them properly a...
Trump to announce Iran decision
America, Featured

Trump to announce Iran decision

    President Trump will announce on Tuesday whether he will pull the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear agreement, one of his biggest foreign policy decisions as president. The reality-TV-star-turned-president sought to build anticipation about his decision in a Monday afternoon tweet. I will be announcing my decision on the Iran Deal tomorrow from the White House at 2:00pm, Trump wrote. The president faces a May 12 deadline to decide whether to extend sanctions relief under the Obama-era deal, a pact he has derided as the worst deal ever. Trump has repeatedly signaled that he will exit the agreement unless substantial changes are made, but he has faced growing pressure from European allies to remain in it. Johnson said we need to find a way of fixing the agreement and ar...