All posts tagged: prevent

School Prevent referrals rise – but fewer get support

School Prevent referrals rise – but fewer get support

More from this theme Recent articles Schools are increasingly referring children to the government’s anti-terrorism programme, but fewer than one in ten youngsters got support through the Prevent scheme, data seen by Schools Week reveals. Earlier this week it was revealed that Axel Rudakubana, the teenager who murdered three little girls in Southport last summer, was referred three times to Prevent. He was this week jailed for a minimum of 52 years after pleading guilty to the killings. Although his violent behaviour was concerning, Rudakubana was judged on each occasion not to pose a terrorism risk. Government data seen by Schools Week shows his is not an isolated case. In the year to April 2024, two in five school referrals were found to involve a vulnerable child, but one deemed not to be driven by a terrorist ideology.  That meant more than 1,000 cases from schools were classed as “vulnerability present but no ideology or CT [counter-terrorism] risk” – an increase of 140 per cent since before Covid. It was the highest of any Prevent …

NSS urges Parliament to prevent increase in selective faith schools

NSS urges Parliament to prevent increase in selective faith schools

The National Secular Society has urged a parliamentary committee to ensure a new bill will not lead to a new wave of highly selective faith schools in England. Responding to a call for evidence by the committee for the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the NSS said proposed changes to how new schools are opened must safeguard against the proliferation of faith schools which can select all pupils based on religion. The new bill will end the presumption that new schools should be ‘free school’ academies. Free schools with a religious character can select up to 50% of pupils based on religion if they are oversubscribed. But no longer requiring new schools to be free schools would make it easier for voluntary aided (VA) faith schools to open. Unlike free schools, VA schools can select 100% of pupils based on religion when oversubscribed. Recent research has revealed that as well as fostering religious and ethnic segregation, faith schools are more socially selective, create barriers for looked-after and previously looked-after children, and admit fewer pupils with …

What Is a Calculus Bridge? And How to Prevent One on Your Teeth

What Is a Calculus Bridge? And How to Prevent One on Your Teeth

Experts have linked oral health to general health and well-being, meaning your teeth can tell you a lot about the rest of your body. For instance, poor oral hygiene can contribute to problems like heart issues. That’s why it’s important to focus on your oral hygiene and pay attention to what’s going on with your teeth. One sign that your mouth isn’t as healthy as it could be is if a calculus bridge forms. To learn more, we consulted dentists for their expert insights. The difference between dental plaque and calculus  From talking fridges to iPhones, our experts are here to help make the world a little less complicated. To understand calculus bridges, it helps to start with understanding the substance that makes them up. Calculus is, in short, hardened plaque. You’re probably familiar with plaque, the sticky film that can make your teeth feel fuzzy. Plaque contains bacteria that make acid, which can eat away at your enamel (the hard outer coating on your teeth). Having plaque on your teeth is a natural result …

The human factor: How companies can prevent cloud disasters

The human factor: How companies can prevent cloud disasters

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Large companies work very hard to make sure their services don’t go down, and the reason is simple — significant outages will hurt your brand and drive customers to competing products with a better track record.  Building a reliable internet service is a hard technical problem, but for company leaders it also presents a human challenge. Motivating your engineering teams to invest in reliability work can be difficult, because it is often perceived to be less exciting than developing new features. At scale, incentives dominate. The top tech companies employ thousands of employees and operate hundreds of internet services. Over the years, they have come up with clever ways to ensure their engineers build reliable systems. This article discusses human engineering techniques that have worked at scale across the most successful tech companies in history. You can apply these to your company, whether you’re an employee or a leader. Spin the wheel The AWS operational review …

More children are getting ACL injuries – here’s what could be done to prevent them

More children are getting ACL injuries – here’s what could be done to prevent them

There’s no doubt that for children and teenagers, taking part in physical activity and sport is hugely beneficial. It improves their health and wellbeing, creates opportunities for social interaction and builds resilience and leadership skills for life. However, playing sport can also lead to injury. One particularly nasty sporting injury is damage to the ACL – the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee, which attaches the thigh (femur) and shin (tibia) bones. ACL injuries have rocketed among children in England, and our researchsuggests that one cause of this is that children are not developing basic movement skills, such as jumping and hopping. Rising injury cases The ACL plays an important role in providing stability to the knee joint. In particular, it helps prevent excessive forward movement of the tibia and knee joint rotation during movements, such as quick changes of direction during sprinting, pivoting and jump landings. All of these movements are key to many sports. ACL injury is debilitating at any age, but an ACL rupture experienced during childhood can have lasting consequences for …

The Nazis’ Atlantic wall that failed to prevent D-day | Second world war

The Nazis’ Atlantic wall that failed to prevent D-day | Second world war

Fearing an allied invasion of occupied Europe, Adolf Hitler in 1942 ordered the building of a 5,000km (3,100 mile) coastal defence system studded with bunkers, gun emplacements, tank traps and other obstacles. More than 20 million cubic metres of concrete and 1.2 million tonnes of steel went into building thousands of fortifications linked by barbed wire along the Atlantic and North Sea shores, from France, through Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark to Norway. More than 300,000 workers of all nationalities worked on the French part alone, some of them prisoners press-ganged into labour but also hard-up people desperate for work or German factory workers. Entire communities were forced off their land to make way for Hitler’s biggest defence project, which took two years to build. A blockhaus from the Atlantic wall built between mountain and ocean at Eggum, Lofoten, northern Norway. In the Dutch capital of Amsterdam, thousands of homes, seven schools, three churches and two hospitals were demolished in the name of defending “fortress Europe”. In 1944, with an allied invasion appearing imminent, German …

Safeguards needed to prevent AI ‘hauntings’ in the Digital Afterlife

Safeguards needed to prevent AI ‘hauntings’ in the Digital Afterlife

Deadbots, AI-driven chatbots, have sparked a heated debate over their ethical implications and potential psychological impacts. (CREDIT: Upload. Amazon Studios/Prime Video) In the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, a new technology has emerged that could forever change how we mourn: ‘deadbots’. These AI-driven chatbots, designed to mimic the language and personality of deceased individuals using their digital traces, have sparked a heated debate over their ethical implications and potential psychological impacts. “Deadbots present a high risk in AI application, requiring urgent attention to their ethical design,” said Dr. Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska, a co-author of the study. The researchers at Cambridge highlight three potential scenarios that illustrate the risks of poorly designed afterlife AI platforms. The first scenario involves a service called “MaNana,” where a user can create a chatbot of their deceased grandmother without the grandmother’s prior consent. The initial comfort provided by the chatbot fades when it starts to push advertisements, causing emotional conflict and distress over the manipulation of their loved one’s memory. “People might develop strong emotional bonds with such simulations, which will …

FDA announces that eating yogurt can help prevent type 2 diabetes

FDA announces that eating yogurt can help prevent type 2 diabetes

The FDA found credible evidence suggesting that yogurt consumption could be associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes. (CREDIT: Creative Commons) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently issued a statement regarding the potential health benefits of yogurt, particularly in relation to reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes. This announcement follows the evaluation of a petition by Danone North America, advocating for health claims that link regular yogurt consumption with a decreased likelihood of developing this chronic condition. Health claims on food labels are tools used by manufacturers to inform consumers about potential health benefits related to their products. These claims must be grounded in scientific evidence and are categorized into two types: authorized health claims and qualified health claims. Authorized claims require robust evidence and consensus within the scientific community, while qualified claims are supported by preliminary evidence but do not meet the stringent criteria of significant scientific agreement. In its review of the evidence provided by Danone and other relevant studies, the FDA found credible but limited evidence …

To Prevent A Banking Crisis, The Fed Must Cut; But…

To Prevent A Banking Crisis, The Fed Must Cut; But…

Via SchiffGold.com, In 2009, 140 banks failed, and a recent report from financial consulting firm Klaros Group says that hundreds of banks are at risk of going under this year. It’s being billed mostly as a danger for individuals and communities than for the broader economy, but for stressed lenders across America, a string of small bank failures could quite quickly spread into a larger bloodbath — especially in an economy with hot inflation and a feverish addiction to ultra-low interest rates. Data Source: FDIC.gov Most at-risk firms are smaller banks representing assets under $10 billion, with a handful of larger regional ones. Some might be able to avoid closing by halting expansion plans or offering fewer services. Others might save themselves by merging with larger banks. But with inflation too high for the Fed to cut now, “higher for longer” interest rate policy is looking increasingly likely, and banks with high exposure to troubled commercial real estate are at particular risk of starting a domino effect of small collapses that lead to bigger ones and bleed into becoming a …

End majority jury verdicts to prevent more justice ‘horror’, says Malkinson | UK criminal justice

End majority jury verdicts to prevent more justice ‘horror’, says Malkinson | UK criminal justice

Andrew Malkinson says he could have been spared “20 years of darkness and despair” if the jury system had not been changed to allow majority verdicts. Malkinson was exonerated of rape last summer, two decades after a jury wrongly convicted him by a majority of 10 to 2. In an interview to coincide with the launch of research on the role of majority verdicts on miscarriages of justice, he said that reintroducing jury unanimity was one of several reforms he wanted to campaign for as a result of his experience. The law was changed in 1967 to allow convictions when a jury is unable to reach a unanimous decision. The practice was overturned in the US for serious cases in 2020 because of the risk of miscarriages of justice. Malkinson said if the law had remained the same “then none of this horror that has befallen me would have taken place”. He said research from the legal charity Appeal showed that the legislation needed urgent review. “People shouldn’t be sent to prison for life on …