‘I wanted to help another family’: four surrogates on how they feel about the surrogacy discourse

• Prime Minister Rob Jetten recently called for greater cooperation among countries on key issues like international law, climate change, and accountability. • He emphasized that middle powers could play a crucial role in sustaining institutions that are being weakened by escalating geopolitical rivalry.

Local people say members of WhatsApp group noticed suspicious activity around vans in Whelford overnightThose living near RAF Fairford have been used to disturbance from protesters and a heavy police presence after the decision to allow the US air force to use it as a base for attacks on Iran.But in recent weeks, people have noticed dramatically increased security measures, with the gates of the base newly barricaded. Continue reading...

Pandas departed Chengdu for their new homes in Georgia as part of agreement between Chinese and US governmentsTwo giant pandas departed Chengdu in south-western China early on Sunday for their new homes in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of an agreement between the Chinese and US governments.While in Washington DC for a three-day summit with Donald Trump, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced that the pandas would arrive in Atlanta in the coming days. The loan of the pandas to the Atlanta zoo was one of the few concrete outcomes to come out of Xi’s state visit with the US president, which saw expressions of goodwill between the leaders, but no fixes to any of the longstanding differences between the two countries. Continue reading...

Presenter reveals corporation has been paying part of their salaries to keep his Herefordshire garden ‘camera ready’For 15 years, viewers have looked in amazement at Monty Don’s beautiful Herefordshire garden, known as Longmeadow, as he hosted the show Gardeners’ World from his own back yard.But now, the future of the garden in its current form is at stake. The BBC presenter, who announced earlier this month that he was leaving the show, said he may have to sack the gardeners who have kept the space beautiful and broadcast-ready. Continue reading...

Catholic church must reckon with its ‘painful errors’, pontiff tells crowd in Lourdes during four-day tourThe pope has called on the Catholic church to heal “deep wounds” and “painful errors”, before a meeting with survivors of child sexual abuse as he continues his four-day visit to France.Addressing a crowd in a large field near the Catholic shrine of Lourdes on Sunday, Pope Leo XIV called on the church to reckon with its past, without directly referencing sexual abuse scandals in France that affected at least 330,000 children over seven decades. Continue reading...

President has let rip with swearwords in recent months, redefining norms about acceptable language in public officeWith a lifetime of political memories stretching back to John F Kennedy’s assassination and the Black civil rights struggles of the 1960s, Cheryl Johnson had one complaint above all else about today’s politicians: the swearing.“All this cursing in politics, we never heard that before,” said Johnson, a retired social worker living in the Pittsburgh area. “Words are very powerful, and the past 45 presidents of this country, have not used such vile language. Continue reading...

Various factors block sufferers of disease from receiving treatment that is effective and has widespread availabilitySickle cell patients are missing out on an effective treatment despite widespread US hospital access to the technology, new research has found.That treatment is called a red blood cell exchange, a procedure that discards a patient’s damaged red blood cells while simultaneously mixing the patient’s remaining plasma, platelets and white blood cells with red blood cells from a donor before returning them to the body. Continue reading...

Decision to allow development of 190 new homes in north Somerset sparks campaign for change in the lawHouses can be built on floodplains even if they fail a crucial safety test, according to a high court judgment that will be of “immense interest” to developers across England and Wales.The ruling clears the way for a highly controversial development of 190 new homes on north Somerset’s floodplains, despite the site being in “flood zone 3a”, the highest level of flood risk before land is considered a functional floodplain. Continue reading...

Two troops of chacma baboons are breaking into homes and shops but animal rights activists insist coexistence is the answerCape Town’s city council has said it will “imminently” round up two baboon troops coming into repeated conflict with residents. The animals will be sterilised and permanently moved to a newly constructed sanctuary. The plan has been fiercely criticised by animal rights activists, who say the monkeys should remain roaming freely, and that less destructive options have not been properly considered.Cape Town’s baboon problem has been brewing since the 2000s, after the city stopped culling troops in the late 1990s after pressure from the public. But in the past two years it has reached boiling point. A 2025 census found that the population had grown by a third since 2000, from 360 baboons to 493, now living in 12 managed troops. Continue reading...

‘The push against datacenters speaks to the frustration of people who don’t feel they are making the choices in their lives’The Stanford ethicist Rob Reich was once invited to a dinner organized by a Silicon Valley mogul to discuss what a state designed to maximize science and tech powered by commercial models might look like. The gathered technologists were drawn to the idea of building a small nation-state dedicated to the endeavor, Reich recalls in “System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot it”.When Reich asked whether this state would be a democracy, he got a cool no. “Democracy is too slow, and it holds science back,” he was told. “To optimize for science, we need a beneficent technocrat in charge.” Continue reading...

Supplies cut off from Ukrainian city where bodies are being left to be eaten by dogs because of deadly risk from dronesThe phone message sent out of Russian-occupied Oleshky was grimly matter of fact: food for the 2,000 or so civilians still remaining in the city and its surrounding villages had finally run out.“We’re in Oleshky [and] we can’t get out. We’re going hungry … Right now, I’ve got absolutely nothing to eat,” read the message, from a woman in the besieged city, who was waiting to be evacuated by the occupying forces. Continue reading...