A Wordle habit probably wouldn’t protect Emma Brockes from dementia (My five-letter reaction to the New York Times taking over Wordle? I quit, 17 February). There is a myth about puzzles and brain health. The human brain is large because we are social beings. Meeting our fellow creatures is more likely to keep us well.…
Franki began living on Auckland’s streets at age 15, shortly after his father died in 2018. He hunted for secret spots to sleep – the backs of buildings and cemeteries. There were times when he was frightened; times when the older street community took him under their wings. He slept rough through New Zealand’s first…
Your editorial (8 February) criticising the draft police bill for further marginalising the already isolated Traveller community is both timeous and accurate. Rather than continued reliance within the bill on the sledgehammer approach of moving the problem of unauthorised encampments from one area to another – a proven costly failure – both central and local…
Thousands of lives could be saved if more people knew the early symptoms of a heart attack, NHS England has said as it launched a campaign urging people to call 999 earlier.Research by NHS England found three in four people confused a heart attack, which has symptoms that do not always feel severe, with a…
Newcastle city council’s leader, Nick Forbes, who is a close ally of Keir Starmer and sits in the shadow cabinet, has been deselected from standing in May’s local elections, putting his political future in jeopardy.Forbes has run the city’s council for more than a decade and also sits on Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC),…
Over half of paramedics are suffering from burnout caused by “overwhelming” workloads, record numbers of 999 calls and the public misusing the ambulance service, a study has found.Frontline crew members also blame lack of meal breaks, delays in reaching seriously ill patients and their shift often not ending when it should for their high levels…
A one-off repayable £200 discount and a rebate on council tax bills have been announced by Rishi Sunak in a £9bn package designed to “take the sting” out of a £700-a-year rise in the average household’s energy bills in April.The chancellor said 80% of households would receive £350 in support this year in response to…
A party in Boris and Carrie Johnson’s flat is one of 12 events being investigated by the Metropolitan police over alleged lockdown breaches, it has emerged, as the Sue Gray report found “failures of leadership and judgment” in No 10.Gray, a senior civil servant, criticised the culture in Johnson’s Downing Street that allowed social gatherings…
A senior official at the Foreign Office has apologised for misleading MPs over whether Boris Johnson’s views had been sought over the evacuation of animals from Kabul during the chaotic retreat from Afghanistan last August.Sir Philip Barton, the Foreign Office’s permanent undersecretary, had told the foreign affairs committee that Nigel Casey, the prime minister’s special…
The Keel, a converted former HMRC office block overlooking Liverpool’s waterfront, is billed as the solution to dull, impersonal renting. Tenants in the block of 240 new flats can fake a sun-kissed glow on video calls by dialling in from its new “Zoom room”. According to its interior designer, Jasper Sanders, the effect created by…
Last Friday, everyone living in London was told to avoid strenuous physical activity. An intense area of high pressure meant pollutants were caught in the air, rather than being blown away as usual. The government forecast the highest level of pollution – band 10 – would be reached, with air pollution at its highest recorded…
When I joined a community mental health team for older people 20 years ago, addiction wasn’t a central part of our work. One of our first referrals was for an alcoholic patient threatened with eviction. It was rejected – it wasn’t relevant to our service, or so I thought. But over the years the referrals…