All posts tagged: urge

Social media ‘soft girls’ depend on men for money – but Sweden once used state ‘influencers’ to urge women to get jobs

Social media ‘soft girls’ depend on men for money – but Sweden once used state ‘influencers’ to urge women to get jobs

Published by skeptic

The idea of becoming a “soft girl” – a woman who embrace values that are seen as soft, such as beauty and family life, at the expense of a career – is an emerging trend among some social media influencers. Soft girls often opt to be financially supported by a boyfriend or husband. In this way, the soft girl can be seen as similar to an aspiring housewife or “trad wife”, another popular role on social media. Even in Sweden, a country famous for its gender equality policies and repeatedly ranked as number one among countries in the Gender Equality Index, soft girls are reportedly on the rise. This has lead to a heated debate in the country over the past year. Soft girl was even recognised as a “new word” by a Swedish government authority, the Institute for Language and Folklore, in December 2024. The influence of this social media trend stands in stark contrast to the movement that stopped housewife from being a common role for women in Sweden by the 1980s, after …

Faith leaders, activists, the pope urge Biden to empty federal death row before Trump term

Faith leaders, activists, the pope urge Biden to empty federal death row before Trump term

Published by skeptic

(RNS) — A group of faith leaders, activists, law enforcement officials and families of murder victims has called on President Joe Biden to spare the lives of about 40 inmates currently on death row in federal prisons. The campaign is prompted by concerns the Department of Justice will lift a moratorium imposed by the Biden administration in 2021 and begin to execute prisoners after President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Thirteen federal prisoners were executed during the first Trump administration — more than four times as many as under all the presidents combined since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988. Among those asking Biden to commute the sentences of death row inmates is the Rev. Sharon Risher, whose mother, Ethel Lance, was one of nine church members killed in the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Risher cited Trump’s promise to restart executions in urging Biden to act. “It is vital that you deny him that opportunity by commuting every death sentence remaining on federal and military …

Six former Observer editors urge Scott Trust to stop sale to Tortoise

Six former Observer editors urge Scott Trust to stop sale to Tortoise

Published by Sam

Former Observer editors (clockwise from top left): John Mulholland, Alan Rusbridger, Paul Webster, Will Hutton, Roger Alton and Jonathan Fenby (credit: Youtube for Fenby) The Scott Trust has been urged to pause the sale of The Observer to Tortoise Media by five former editors and one ex-editor in chief of the title. Paul Webster, who stepped down as Observer editor earlier this month, has been joined by fellow former Observer editors Roger Alton, John Mulholland, Will Hutton and Jonathan Fenby in signing a letter of protest against the plan to transfer ownership of the title to Tortoise. Former Guardian and Observer editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger has also signed the letter. Their protest comes as The Scott Trust, which owns Guardian Media Group, heads into a confrontation with Guardian and Observer journalists who start a first 48-hour strike on 4 December. Journalists are unhappy about a lack of consultation from The Scott Trust over its plan to sell The Observer to Tortoise. They also fear that Tortoise could be a precarious employer for the 70 Observer journalists …

Jewish counter-extremists urge action on schools with no secular education

Jewish counter-extremists urge action on schools with no secular education

Published by skeptic

The Government must legislate to ensure children in strictly orthodox Jewish communities receive an adequate secular education and are protected from unregistered schools, a Jewish counter-extremism group has said. Nahamu, which works to counter threats to civil liberties in Jewish communities, has today published a new briefing highlighting how children in Charedi Jewish communities are being deprived of a secular education which prepares them for adult life. The report says preventing access to “broad and balanced” education is a “systemic” goal of leaders in Charedi communities. It says they fear “integration into wider UK society”, which may result in young people “being afforded access to educational or employment opportunities” outside the Charedi community. Unregistered schools leave boys “wholly unable to speak, write or read English” The report says most teenage boys in Chassidic communities, which are particularly conservative sects within Charedi Judaism, attend unregistered Jewish faith schools (yeshivas). Unregistered schools are institutions which do not register with the Department for Education (DfE) to avoid regulations and inspections, so they can teach a very narrow, religion-based …

Academics urge major reforms to government policy on faith schools

Academics urge major reforms to government policy on faith schools

Published by skeptic

A new book by academics at UCL, the University of Warwick, and the University of Birmingham calls for major reforms to government policy on faith schools in England. Humanists UK, which has long campaigned for a fully inclusive state school system, free from religious indoctrination and discrimination, has welcomed the proposals. These include replacing collective worship with inclusive assemblies, replacing faith-based religious education (RE) with inclusive teaching, and capping religious selection in all state-funded faith schools. In How to Think About Religious Schools, Professors Matthew Clayton, Andrew Mason, and Adam Swift, and Dr Ruth Wareham (who is also Humanists UK’s Education Policy Researcher) argue that practices such as compulsory collective worship and religious instruction place too much weight on the beliefs of parents and threaten the freedom of belief (and developing autonomy) of children and young people. Instead, pupils should be free to explore a range of religious and non-religious worldviews, like humanism, in school. To enable this, the authors suggest that all children (including those educated in private schools and at home) should have …

Teaching unions urge Labour to tackle child homelessness

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More from this theme Recent articles School leaders have urged Labour to quickly alleviate child poverty after new figures revealed a record number of youngsters were living in temporary accommodation. The number of children in temporary housing with their families in England soared to 151,630 as of the end of March, new figures show. This is the highest figure since records began in 2004 and Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the ASCL school leaders’ union, slammed the rise as “a source of national shame”. He warned that living in temporary accommodation is likely to have an impact on the mental health and wellbeing of the children affected, and their educational outcomes. Overall, 117,450 households were in temporary accommodation as of the end of March. Among these, there were 74,530 households with children, up 4.6 per cent from the previous quarter — and up 14.7 per cent jump from March 2023. Labour’s manifesto pledged an “ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty” and Bridget Phillipson, education secretary, is jointly lead a ministerial taskforce develop this plan. “We …

Wildlife experts urge action on pesticides as UK insect populations plummet | Insects

Wildlife experts urge action on pesticides as UK insect populations plummet | Insects

Published by skeptic

The UK’s insect populations are declining at alarming rates and the next government must put in place plans to monitor and reduce the use and toxicity of pesticides before it is too late, wildlife experts say. In recent years, concerns have been raised over earthworm populations, which have fallen by a third in the past 25 years. A citizen science project that monitors flying insects in the UK, meanwhile, found a 60% decline between 2004 and 2021. The overall trajectory, as government monitoring figures show, has been downwards since the 1970s. Yet despite the evidence of the harmful effect of pesticides on our insect population, governmental action has been slow, and experts are concerned that the UK is failing to monitor pesticide use correctly. “There is an almost complete lack of effective monitoring of pesticide use in UK agriculture,” said Nick Mole, the policy officer at Pesticide Action Network UK. “What little we do have is incomplete, out of date and on such a broad scale as to be virtually meaningless. “The UK urgently needs …

NATO chief and European allies urge U.S. to let Ukraine strike inside Russia

NATO chief and European allies urge U.S. to let Ukraine strike inside Russia

Published by Sam

KYIV — Washington is facing mounting pressure from NATO and several key European allies to lift restrictions and allow Ukraine to use the full force of U.S.-provided weapons to strike military targets inside Russia. The demands reflect new alarm in the West over Russian battlefield advances in recent days, including the seizure of several villages in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions and brutal bombings that have killed dozens of civilians. “If you cannot attack the Russian forces on the other side of the front line because they are on the other side of the border, then of course you really reduce the ability of the Ukrainian forces to defend themselves,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s top political official, said during a visit to Bulgaria on Monday. NATO’s parliamentary assembly, meanwhile, issued a declaration urging that the restrictions be lifted. The United States and other NATO allies, including Germany and Italy, have long refused to let Ukraine use their weapons to strike inside Russia’s borders, fearing that such attacks could escalate the conflict. Senior …

Millions in US face extreme-heat threat as experts urge better protections | US weather

Millions in US face extreme-heat threat as experts urge better protections | US weather

Published by skeptic

US map colored in swaths of yellow/oranges/reds to indicate temperature abnormalities. The reddest region is in the south west. Millions of Americans face the threat of dangerous heatwaves in the coming weeks with another summer of record-breaking temperatures forecast to hit the US. Most of New Mexico and Utah – alongside parts of Arizona, Texas and Colorado – have the highest chance (60% to 70%) of seeing hotter-than-average summer temperatures, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). In addition, the entire north-east – from Maine down to Pennsylvania and New Jersey – as well as a large stretch from Louisiana to Arizona, Washington and Idaho, have a 40% to 50% chance of experiencing above-average temperatures from June through August. Only south-west Alaska is expected to have below-normal temperatures. “We can expect another dangerous hot summer season, with daily records already being broken in parts of Texas and Florida,” said Kristy Dahl, principal climate scientist for the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “As we warm the planet, we are …

Lawmakers Urge U.S. Action To Halt China’s Organ Trade

Lawmakers Urge U.S. Action To Halt China’s Organ Trade

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Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics, A group of leading China critics in Congress is urging the State Department to step up its efforts to curb Beijing’s gruesome $1 billion forced organ harvesting trade, which targets ethnic and religious minorities, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims, Christians, and Falun Gong practitioners.  Six members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, or CECC, sent a letter last week to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking him to utilize existing agency reward programs to provide monetary incentives for information that will “deter and disrupt the market for illegally procured organs” in China. Rep. Chris Smith, who chairs the CECC, and Sen. Marco Rubio, the commission’s ranking member, joined Democrat Rep. Jennifer Wexton of Virginia and GOP Reps. Michelle Steel of California, Zach Nunn of Iowa, and Ryan Zinke of Montana in signing the letter.  The State Department manages two programs that offer awards of up to $25 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of members of significant transnational criminal organizations. One focuses on violators of U.S. narcotics law, and …