Laura Barton Sales of hand sanitisers rose 71% in 24 weeks during the 2009 swine flu outbreak. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian Bakersfield, California, is a large city about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Founded on recovered swampland by Colonel Thomas Baker, it is today famed for oil, gas and agriculture, as...
Susie Orbach ‘Fat people are so rarely included in visual culture that fat is perceived as a blot on the landscape of sleek and slim’ … The Venus of Willendorf sculpture at the State Museum of Prehistory in Dresden, eastern Germany. Photograph: Norbert Millauer/AFP/Getty Images A new study shows significant levels of discrimination towards...
Karen McVeigh in New York The federal government has cut off Medicaid funding to Texas because of the law. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters A federal judge has blocked plans by Texas authorities to stop Planned Parenthood from receiving state funds through its Women’s Health Program. US district judge Lee Yeakel agreed with the healthcare provider...
Ed Halliwell US marines stationed near Fallujah, in Iraq. ‘Meditation practice improved working memory and mood among US marines in the period before deployment to Iraq.’ Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images “A quiet revolution is happening in America.” So says Tim Ryan, Ohio congressman and author of A Mindful Nation, which documents the spread of...
Janice Raymond Secret service agents walk around Cartagena on Saturday. The suspension of 11 agents over alleged misconduct in Colombia has the summit. Photograph: Fernando Llano/AP Tired of yet one more political prostitution scandal caused by men who can’t keep it in their pants? And now, the elite guard of the US president’s secret...
Kate Smurthwaite The anti-abortion group 40 Days for Life picketing outside a family planning clinic. Photograph: Susannah Ireland/Rex Features In the past five weeks 2,500 attempts have been made to hack into private data at the abortion provider The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), according to a BBC report. Though none of these attempts...
Deborah Orr Thankfully, the “culture wars” in Britain have never been as savage as in the US. Hopefully, they never will be. There, Republican politicians feel pressure to stay away from “gay issues”, at the very least. Here, a Conservative mayor, Boris Johnson, is eager to distance himself from homophobic adverts on buses. There,...
Editorial Like a prehistoric creature trapped in amber, the refusal by the US Masters golf club Augusta National to offer its traditional honorary membership to the chief executive of IBM, one of the tournament’s main sponsors, is a freezeframe of a moment in the long cold war against discrimination. Gina Rometty is excluded because...
Esther Addley Pro-choice protesters chant slogans at supporters of the 40 Days for Life campaign group taking part in a anti-abortion vigil in Bedford Square, London. Photograph: Ian Nicholson/PA It made a strange chorus: on the one side, a small crowd of Catholics, intoning the rosary and singing Ave Maria, while, a few metres...
Jeevan Vasagar, education editor A vigil outside a branch of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service abortion clinic Photograph: Andrew Winning/Reuters Anti-abortion campaigners in Britain are making controversial claims that abortions are linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, in a presentation to children in school which has been obtained by the Guardian. Pupils...
