‘Manosphere’ influencers pushing testosterone tests are convincing healthy young men there is something wrong with them, study finds

“If you’re not waking up in the morning with a boner, there’s a large possibility that you have low testosterone levels,” an influencer on TikTok with more than 100,000 followers warns his viewers.Despite screening for low testosterone being medically unwarranted in most young men, this group is being aggressively targeted online by influencers and wellness companies promoting hormone tests and treatments as essential to being a “real man”, a study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine has found.Researchers analysed 46 high-impact posts about low testosterone and testing made by TikTok and Instagram accounts with a combined following of more than 6.8 million, to examine how masculinity and men’s health are being depicted and monetised online.The lead author of the study, Emma Grundtvig Gram, a public health researcher at the University of Copenhagen, said influencers promoting routine testosterone screening often framed normal variations in energy, mood, libido or ageing “as signs of pathology”

John Knight obituary

Disabled people might still be waiting for all UK trains to be accessible were it not for the success of a high-profile campaign led by John Knight, who has died of sepsis aged 67, after himself overcoming profound disabilities from birth and becoming a leading figure in the charity and public sectors.Knight was responsible for policy and campaigns at the disability charity Leonard Cheshire during passage of the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, which was to set a deadline for railway carriages to be accessible. Train companies were pressing for a date of 2035, to maximise the life of inaccessible rolling stock, but the campaign persuaded the House of Lords to back an amendment to the legislation with a time limit of 2020. The change was then accepted by the Labour government.At the climax of the All Aboard campaign, Knight arranged for a horse-drawn hearse to deliver to MPs and peers thousands of postcards on which disabled people had written what age they would need to live to in order to benefit from a 2035 deadline

Assisted dying bill backers say it is ‘near impossible’ it will pass House of Lords

MPs and peers who backed the assisted dying bill now believe it is “near impossible” for it to pass the House of Lords in time because of procedural obstacles used by opponents.Supporters of the bill, including its sponsor, Kim Leadbeater, have been in intense discussions with the government to find ways to move it to a vote in the Lords. With progress so slow, experts and MPs believe it is unlikely the legislation will even be put to a vote before the end of the session in May, after which it will automatically fall.MPs told the Guardian they were in “blind fury” about the apparent inevitability of the billing falling in the Lords despite passing the Commons. “It is our system at its absolute most dysfunctional,” one MP said

Residents in legal fight to halt demolition of Clockwork Orange estate

A legal challenge has been launched in an effort to halt the demolition of a 1960s Brutalist estate in south-east London that featured in Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian film A Clockwork Orange.The challenge against Bexley council and Peabody housing association, which will be carrying out the redevelopment, has been launched by the Lesnes estate resident Adam Turk.He and others living there believe the estate could be refurbished rather than demolished and rebuilt under plans for the construction of up to 1,950 homes, which the council approved on 23 December.Residents fear the redevelopment would cause environmental damage and undermine the UK’s legal obligation to reach net zero by 2050.The dispute highlights a wider tension between environmental protection and initiatives to demolish and rebuild estates

How screen time affects toddlers: ‘We’re losing a big part of being human’

In the UK, 98% of two-year-olds watch screens on a typical day, on average for more than two hours – and almost 40% of three- to five-year-olds use social media. Could this lead to alarming outcomes?At Stoke primary school in Coventry, there are many four-year-olds among those starting in reception class who can’t sit still, hold a pencil or speak more than a four-word sentence. Lucy Fox, the assistant headteacher and head of foundations, is in no doubt what is causing this: their early exposure to screens, and a lot of it. When the children experiment with materials and creativity, and make things in the classroom, she says, “We notice a lot of children will cut pieces of cardboard out and make a mobile phone or tablet, or an Xbox controller. That’s what they know

Four in five blind people struggle with gap at UK train stations, survey finds

Four in five blind and partially sighted people in the UK have struggled to cross the gap between trains and station platforms, according to a survey, with some falling and injuring themselves.Many blind and partially sighted people avoid taking train journeys owing to anxieties around whether they will be properly supported after having had inconsistent experiences, according to research from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).It found that more than one-third (37%) of blind and partially sighted people felt unable to take all the train journeys they wanted and needed. The gap between the platform and trains was a “significant source of fear”, with some people being struck by a train or coming into contact with an electric rail, or trapped in train doors and dragged as the train departed, the RNIB found.This is partly because tactile wayfinding, which uses raised bumps and colours to help blind and visually impaired people navigate, is less common in British train stations than in many comparable countries such as European nations and Japan, with just one-fifth of blind and visually impaired people surveyed by the RNIB saying they had encountered it at a station