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Scientists have made a breakthrough which could be key to developing a male contraceptive pill.
The discovery uses a peptide which changes the way human cells work, “switching off” sperm’s ability to swim, to render men temporarily infertile.
Scientists hailed the results as “startling – and almost instant.”
It raises the prospect of a fast-acting pill or a nasal spray that a man could take hours or even minutes before sex.
Polish women put black clothes back on and returned to the streets Sunday, launching another round of protests against efforts by the nation's conservative leaders to tighten Poland's already restrictive abortion law.
A large group gathered outside the parliament building in Warsaw, decrying the Catholic Church's influence on political life and chanting "We have had enough!" Similar protests took place in other cities across the country.
The street protests are expected to have their culmination on Monday, when some women are also planning a strike, boycotting jobs and classes.
A Muslim man whose children have been taken into care after a High Court judge decided that they had been abused has complained of social workers being prejudiced against him.
Mr Justice Baker has concluded two boys had been been hit, punched and kicked by their father - and said beatings had been "plainly abusive".
He concluded that the couple had used "physical abuse" in a bid to discipline their large family and has ruled that all their children should live away from home.
The din of bullets, mortars and bombs in the northern Iraqi town of Bartella was replaced momentarily on Friday by a sound not heard there for more than two years: the peal of church bells.
A cautious calm returned to this historic Christian area following its recapture from Islamic State a day earlier as Iraqi forces push west towards Mosul, the jihadists' last major stronghold in the country.
Bartella, once home to thousands of Assyrian Christians, emptied in August 2014 when Islamic State seized control as part of a lightning blitz across large swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria.
“There is no question that governments worldwide are wielding the tools of censorship,” warns the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, in a report on the widespread global assault on the freedom of expression to be presented to the UN General Assembly tomorrow.
“Governments are treating words as weapons, adopting vague laws that give officials massive discretion to undermine speech and opinion,” Mr. Kaye says. “They are punishing journalists for their reporting, silencing individuals for posting opinions on social media, shutting down debate and the flow of information on grounds of counter-terrorism, protecting public order, sheltering people from offense.”
Religious supporters have won the annual 'nativity war' in secular France so people are safe to light up town halls with scenes of baby Jesus.
The debate over whether it is appropriate to decorate public spaces with nativity displays, in a country where sporting religious symbols is banned, occurs most years.
But this year the country's top administrative court has given the go-ahead after a rapporteur said it was not appropriate to target nativity scenes despite disagreements over secularism.
Is Britain becoming a Nazi state? It would seem unlikely, but to listen to some of the critics of the Conservative government in recent days it would appear that we are only moments away from become a racist despotism.
Last week the convener of the Scottish Parliament's Equalities and Human Rights Committee, one Christina McKelvie, pronounced that the Conservative party is displaying "some of the most right-wing reactionary politics that I've heard in my lifetime" and claimed that the Conservative party's recent conference showed what will happen in Britain "if we become bystanders and do not speak out against discrimination." She said that some recent Conservative proposals were "reminiscent of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s."
Are you single or gay? If so, I have bad news. Turns out, you’re disabled. At least, you will be soon, if the World Health Organisation changes its definition of infertility.
At present, the WHO defines infertility (which it classes as a disability) more or less as you would imagine: “a disease of the reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a clinical pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse”. A medical condition, in other words. But now it is debating whether to expand that definition, to include people who can’t conceive naturally because – well, because they’re not actually having reproductive sex.
The British government’s key counter-radicalisation policy is badly flawed, potentially counterproductive and risks trampling on the basic rights of young Muslims, a new study has concluded.
Following a nine-month examination of the programme known as Prevent, the Open Society Justice Initiative has recommended a major government rethink, particularly on its use in the education and health systems.
Two women have become pregnant after receiving the world’s first “three-parent” fertility treatment.
The experiment has divided experts, some of whom condemned it as “scientifically and ethically dubious” and warned that the technique was being pushed far beyond the purposes for which it had been designed. Others say that for some women it is their only hope of having a child.