The former Congolese vice-president, Jean-Pierre Bemba, has been found guilty in the first trial at the international criminal court to focus on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. The 53-year-old warlord commanded a militia that committed mass murder, rape and pillage in the neighbouring Central African Republic, the court ruled at…
Author: The Guardian
Millennials will make up half of the global workforce by 2050. Although generalisations are not helpful, broadly speaking members of this generation, born between 1980 and 1994 and also known as Generation Y, are bound together by the fact they have come of age during a severe financial crisis, have been both the pioneers and…
When women become mothers one of their biggest fears is that they will lose themselves. Rather than seeing pregnancy and birth as a learning experience or a series of opportunities, women often feel they have to prove that nothing has changed. That they’re still exactly the same person they were before having a child. For…
His alleged victims were humiliated, abused, raped and kept quiet. They were supposed to be able to trust him. Monsignor Francis McCaa spent nearly 40 years in the ministry, and for 25 of them, he was a serial abuser of young boys in his care, some as young as eight years old, according to a…
Too little sleep may bring on a form of the marijuana “munchies”, say scientists who found that sleep-deprived people craved crisps, sweets and biscuits far more than healthier foods. The US researchers believe that skimping on sleep alters brain chemicals in much the same way as the hunger-boosting ingredient in cannabis, which has long propped…
The charge could not be more damning: we now know that one of the UK’s most admired institutions allowed a hugely prolific sexual predator to flourish in its midst for almost half a century. Dame Janet Smith’s report into the crimes committed by Jimmy Savile in connection with his work at the BBC has identified…
If you craned your neck you could just catch a glimpse of mum, lying on her back looking a little ruminative but well enough, tucked cosily away in a corner of Bristol zoo’s gorilla house. Baby was upstairs, already full of character and life and trying to heave herself upright though she is only 11…
Kentucky lawmaker Mary Lou Marzian introduced a bill to ban men from accessing Viagra unless they had a signed note from their wife, two doctor visits and a sworn promise that they’d only use the drugs with their spouse. The registered nurse wanted to highlight the difference in politics between men and women’s health regulations….
Six years after its subject swept the board at the Grammys, winning five awards including record of the year and song of the year, Amy, the documentary about the life and death of Amy Winehouse, has won the singer another Grammy. Asif Kapadia won a Grammy award for best music film for Amy in Los…
When a group of computer science students decided to study the way that gender bias plays out in software development communities, they assumed that coders would be prejudiced against code written by women. After all, women make up a very small percentage of software developers – 11.2% according to one 2013 survey – and the…
It is the year of our Beyoncé 2016, and I am a 33-year-old lesbian. I started realising that boys did not excite me like they did my friends when I was about 11 years old, and I have now been completely comfortable saying the words “I am a lesbian” for 10 years. I don’t know…
It was bound to happen. A pop-up shop for a debate on egg-freezing, designed to respond to “growing public interest” in “social” egg-freezing – ie the freezing of a woman’s eggs before there is any medical reason to do so, and before she has any plans to start a family. “Social egg-freezing is a relatively…
With references to the Black Lives Matter movement, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, Beyoncé’s half-time show at the Super Bowl on Sunday might be the most radical political statement from the superstar in her 20-year career. Backing dancers wearing Black Panther-style berets and clad in black leather were photographed after the performance posing with…
Toni Morrison wants everyone to know that she hates the title of her newest novel, God Help the Child. The original title, Morrison said last week at Congregation Beth Elohim in New York, was The Wrath of Children, and in her opinion it was wonderful. It provided more clarity about a key theme of the…
For every benefit of the internet of things, such as being able to unlock a garage door with your mobile phone, or find your car keys by sending them a text message, there’s a downside. From web-connected smoke-alarms that can be “unintentionally deactivated” with the wave of a hand to smart light fixtures that, after…