Nicotine pouches are being legally sold to children and are being made appealing to them with special flavours and packaging mimicking sweets, a trading standards body has said. In June, it became illegal for single-use vapes to be sold in England to tackle their widespread use by children. However, there is currently no legislation that…
More than 20 children are in the custody of a California child-welfare agency while authorities investigate a Los Angeles-area couple and whether they misled surrogate mothers around the country. Fifteen children were removed from the couple’s opulent home in Arcadia after an abuse allegation in May, and another six living elsewhere were also located, said…
When I had my 20 week scan, Lily had a strange heartbeat. It would beat and then stop and then start beating again. The sonographer had never seen it before. I was referred by my local hospital to St George’s to see a specialist and it happened again. I went back every day for a…
A small rural community in Canada is reeling after police said the horrific attack of an eight-year-old girl was not caused by an animal, as they had suspected, but allegedly by a teenage boy who they have now charged with attempted murder. The residents of Quadeville, a town of a few hundred people in southern…
A nurse who objected to sharing a female changing room with a transgender woman doctor has been cleared of gross misconduct allegations. Sandie Peggie, who has worked as a nurse for the health board for more than 30 years, is claiming she was subject to unlawful harassment under the Equality Act when she was expected…
Donald Trump has privately indicated he is on the cusp of firing the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, rattling Wall Street and renewing questions over the US central bank’s independence. The US president insisted on Wednesday that it was “highly unlikely” he would dismiss the Fed chair, after reports he had suggested he would and…
A volcano erupted on Wednesday on Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula in the south-west of the country, the ninth eruption in region since the end of 2023. The Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said the eruption had begun just before 4am local time (05:00 BST), and live video feeds showed lava spewing from a fissure in the ground….
A complaint against a Belgian ticket inspector who gave passengers a bilingual greeting in Dutch-speaking Flanders has been upheld, shedding light on the country’s strict language laws. The conductor, Ilyass Alba, said Belgium’s Permanent Commission for Linguistic Control had upheld a complaint made by a commuter in 2024. The passenger had objected to Alba’s use…
Diageo, which owns the Guinness and Johnnie Walker brands, is to replace its embattled chief executive, ending her rocky tenure in charge of the British alcoholic drinks firm. In a statement to the stock market, Diageo said it had begun the hunt for a successor to Debra Crew, who the company said had stepped down…
Donald Trump has dismissed a secretive inquiry into the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as “boring” and of interest only to “bad people”, but said he backed the release of any “credible” files, as he sought to stamp out a conspiracy-fuelled uproar among his supporters. The US president is facing a political crisis within his usually…
