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Pray| Showing page 9 of 52 1... 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 ...52 | Last update: Wednesday 25th March |
| Record numbers of NHS doctors are being investigated for poor performance, raising doubts about the safety of medical care. In the first five months of this year, 317 GPs and hospital specialists were referred to the National Clinical Assessment Authority (NCAA) because of concerns they could be putting patients at risk. Cases include surgeons who have botched operations and doctors accused of bullying colleagues. The referrals, disclosed at a board meeting of the NCAA, bring to 1,400 the total number of doctors investigated since the authority was set up in April 2001 - more than 1% of the medical workforce. This year the authority is predicting 750 doctors will be referred for investigation, nearly a 50% increase on the 526 referrals in 2003-04. | |
| Health | The Independent – 5 October 2004 |
| There are now 1.8 million people in the UK with diabetes - an increase of 400,000 in just eight years, a report revealed today. Experts fear the number will surge further in coming years as the population becomes older and fatter. By the end of the decade, it is estimated that three million people in the UK could be suffering from the condition, according to charity Diabetes UK. | |
| Health | The Sentinel – 7 October 2004 |
| Burglaries in Stoke-on-Trent fell by almost one third in the past six months, figures have revealed. Police say it is partly due to Operation Keepsafe launched earlier this year in which community police have personally delivered crime prevention advice to more than 12,500 households. And forensic experts are covering more break-in scenes than ever - resulting in almost 25% being solved. Overall, crime in the Potteries has fallen by 11% although violent crime continued its upward trend with 4,329 offences compared to 3,960. | |
| Crime | The Sentinel – 7 October 2004 |
| The music industry is to sue 28 people in London and the South-east alleged to have illegally swapped music over the internet, mimicking tough legal action in the US which saw a 12-year old girl sued for downloading songs. Criminal and civil court cases are being filed against 50 alleged uploaders in France, 100 in Austria, 174 in Denmark and 100 in Germany. In Italy, home to one of the toughest copyright protection laws in the world, police have raided the premises of seven alleged large-scale file-sharers. | |
| Crime | The Independent – 8 October 2004 |
| Trace amounts of industrial chemicals have been found in the blood of children in a study carried out by the environmental pressure group WWF (World Wildlife Fund). Some of the children in the study had higher levels of certain chemicals in their blood than adults, prompting WWF to warn of the potential hazards to future generations. | |
| Health | The Independent – 8 October 2004 |
| Around 40,000 women across the UK are diagnosed with breast cancer each year, and ten women in the West Midlands are diagnosed with the disease every day. | |
| Health | The Sentinel – 8 October 2004 |
| According to the latest Home Office figures, 90 million people arrived at British ports last year. In 2002 the UK's net population gain through immigration was 153,400 people -up by about 15,000 since 1998. | |
| Social Issues | The Independent – 9 October 2004 |
| The most sexually explicit film in the history of mainstream British cinema has been passed without any cuts for an adult audience, the censors announced yesterday. The Michael Winterbottom film 9 Songs, which featured real sex scenes including fellatio, ejaculation and cunnilingus, some in close-up, did not contravene any of the current classification guidelines, the British Film Classification Board said. The movie provided a storm of sensational headlines when it premiered at the Cannes film festival in May. It featured a young couple in London. Matt and his American girlfriend Lisa, and more than half the scenes involve them having sex. But the BBFC said the sex occurred in the context of the development of a relationship between two people and did not raise issues of harm or sexual violence. When the public had been consulted about sex on screen, most had said it should be a matter of choice whether to see it as long as there was no violence or illegality. "Some people may find such explicit images shocking or unexpected in a cinema film," a spokeswoman said. "The board's guidelines allow the more explicit images of sexual activity if they can be exceptionally justified by context. The board has concluded in this case that adults should be free to choose whether or not to see the film." | |
| Entertainment | The Independent – 19 October 2004 |
| Air fresheners and aerosols used in the home can cause diarrhea and earache in youngsters and depression in their mothers, research suggests today. A study following 14,000 children since birth found that frequent use of fresheners and aerosols, during pregnancy and early childhood, was linked to higher levels of illness. | |
| Health | The Sentinel – 19 October 2004 |
| Growing numbers of British women are trying to reconcile the conflicting demands of motherhood and professional life by turning to the controversial technology of egg freezing, allowing them to start a family long after their biological clock has stopped ticking. Clinics around the country report that up to a third of their patients are now citing lifestyle, rather than medical reasons, for wanting to undergo the procedure, which involves extracting eggs from their ovaries and freezing them in liquid nitrogen until the woman is ready to conceive. The latest figures from Birmingham-based Midland Fertility Services, one of the latest IVF units in the UK, reveal that 8 out of 26 egg freezings carried out between January 2002 and December 2003 were for lifestyle reasons. | |
| Health | The Independent – 17 October 2004 |
| In the days after Danielle Beccan's death - the 14 year old caught in the crossfire of a Nottingham gun attack - there were at least 31 gun crimes in Britain, an average of one every five hours. There have been 370 shooting incidents in Nottingham this year alone, 30 resulting in death or injury. The statistics for UK gun crime might not rival the United States but they are growing. There were more than 10,000 offences in England and Wales involving the use of firearms in 2003-4 - more than double the figures of a decade ago. Supplying illegal firearms is a lucrative business in the UK. Earlier this year two career criminals who ran Britain's biggest firearms conversion business were jailed for six years. Stephen Herbert, 47, and Gary Beard, 45, bought 574 replica and blank-firing guns worth £344,000 and converted then into deadly weapons and sold them to London's gangs at the rate of one a day. The sources of illegal firearms into the UK are diverse. Customs say many come from within the EU, but also the US, Australia, Israel and even Argentina. In more recent years, customs officers have seen an increase in the number of weapons smuggled in from central and east Europe. Even hand grenades and Semtex have been intercepted on their way to London's criminal gangs. Last year customs officers seized 126 handguns, 102 rifles and 36 shotguns being brought illegally into the country. | |
| Crime | The Independent – 17 October 2004 |
| More than 60% of Staffordshire teenagers are failing to achieve a grade C pass or above in English, maths and at least three other GCSEs, it emerged today. The lowest achieving pupils at GCSE are still generally boys - there is now a gap of more than 11% between male and female students. | |
| Education | The Sentinel Sunday – 17 October 2004 |
| Children in North Staffordshire are still the most protected against three potential killer diseases compared to infants in other parts of Britain. The proportion of parents volunteering their children to have the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is considerably higher than the national average. Just over 90% of children received the triple vaccine in the 15 months up to June this year, compared to a figure of 80% nationally. | |
| Health | The Sentinel Sunday – 17 October 2004 |
| Window cleaning is the most dangerous job in the UK, while being a vicar is one of the safest, according to a new report. The threat of falling off a ladder was given as the main reason by Churchill Insurance for ranking the job so highly in a league table of risky professions. | |
| Work/Employment | The Sentinel Sunday – 17 October 2004 |
| A global study revealed yesterday that almost a third of amphibians face extinction - and pollution is cited as the biggest cause. The 3 year survey, involving 500 scientists form more than 60 countries, has found that a third of the 5,743 known species on the planet are threatened with being wiped out and at least 427 are so critically endangered that they could disappear tomorrow. The figures in the survey are almost certainly underestimates because more than 22% of the known amphibian species are too poorly understood for the researchers to reach a reliable conclusion about what is happening to them. Populations of more than half of the known amphibian species are in decline. While 32% of birds and 23% of mammals are in the same position. The latest study estimates that up to 122 species have gone extinct since 1980. | |
| Environment | The Independent – 15 October 2004 |
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