England’s poorest areas have 70% more vape shops and bookmakers than wealthier ones

England’s poorest communities have 70% more vape shops, off-licences and bookmakers than wealthier ones and far fewer cafes and gyms, a study has found.The Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (Icon), chaired by the Labour peer Hilary Armstrong, said ministers risked overlooking vitally important neighbourhood shopping precincts by focusing on town centres. In deprived areas, local shops have roughly double the number of retailers selling unhealthy food and significantly higher vacancy rates, its research has found.Tackling Britain’s struggling high streets is one of the main missions of Keir Starmer’s government. In a speech last week – overshadowed by the Peter Mandelson scandal – the prime minister announced an expansion of the £5bn “pride in place” programme of investing in 284 areas across the UK

Synthetic opioids may have caused hundreds more UK deaths than thought

Deaths caused by a synthetic opioid that is hundreds of times stronger than heroin may have been underestimated by up to a third across the UK, according to research.Nitazenes are a class of synthetic opioids that are extremely potent, and up to 500 times stronger than heroin. They were manufactured originally as a painkiller in the 1950s but their development was halted due to their extreme potencies resulting in a high risk of addiction.In 2024, the National Crime Agency (NCA) reported that 333 fatalities across the UK were linked to the drug. However, researchers at King’s College London say that the true number of deaths may have been underreported, due to concerns that samples of the drug are likely being missed in postmortem toxicology tests

The troubling rise of longevity fixation syndrome: ‘I was crushed by the pressure I put on myself’

It was a pitta bread that finally broke Jason Wood. It arrived with hummus instead of the vegetable crudites he had preordered in a restaurant that he had painstakingly researched, as he always did, weeks before he and his husband visited. “In that moment, I just snapped,” he recalls. “I hit rock bottom, I got angry … I started crying, I started shaking. I just felt like I couldn’t do it any more, like I had been crushed by all this pressure I put on myself

The sneeze secret: how much should you worry about this explosive reflex?

It is one of the most powerful involuntary actions the human body can perform. But is a big sneeze a sign of illness, pollution or something else entirely?How worried should we be about a sneeze? It depends who you ask. In the Odyssey, Telemachus sneezes after Penelope’s prayer that her husband will soon be home to sort out her house-sitting suitors – which she sees as a good omen for team Odysseus, and very bad news for the suitors. In the Anabasis, Xenophon takes a sneeze from a soldier as godly confirmation that his army can fight their way back to their own territory – great news for them – while St Augustine notes, somewhat disapprovingly, that people of his era tend to go back to bed if they sneeze while putting on their slippers. But is a sneeze an omen of anything apart from pathogens, pollen or – possibly – air pollution?“It’s a physical response to get rid of something that’s irritating your body,” says Sheena Cruickshank, an immunologist and professor at the University of Manchester

Failure to compensate pelvic mesh implant victims ‘morally unacceptable’, say campaigners

The government’s failure to respond to calls for a compensation scheme for women harmed by pelvic mesh has been described as “morally unacceptable” by campaigners.Thousands of women were left with life-changing complications after receiving transvaginal mesh implants, with some unable to walk or work again.Saturday marks two years since plans for financial redress for women harmed by pelvic mesh implants were set out by England’s patient safety commissioner, Dr Henrietta Hughes.However, ministers have made no commitments to providing compensation to women harmed by the medical scandal. The plans, outlined in the 2024 Hughes report, included compensation for children left disabled as a result of their mothers using the epilepsy drug sodium valproate in pregnancy

UK’s ‘unsung army’ of full-time unpaid carers needs more support, report says

A growing “unsung army” of 1 million people with full-time caring responsibilities needs better support, according to a report that found one in three unpaid carers from poorer backgrounds were unable to work because of their duties.The trend is the result of an ageing society and rising ill-health and disability concentrated in the poorest half of the country’s working-age families, the Resolution Foundation’s research found.Almost one in three working-age adults in lower-income families had a disability, compared with fewer than one in five in better-off families, the thinktank said.It added that in homes of modest means, 1 million people had caring responsibilities of 35 hours or more a week – the equivalent of a full-time job – making it challenging to secure paid work.Mike Brewer, the deputy chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said: “Britain is getting older and sicker, while a greater share of its population has a disability