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The UK Government’s long awaited Spending Review was delivered by the Chancellor on Wednesday. The review outlines the allocation of funding from the Treasury to government departments until 2029. It also sets individual departments’ investment budget until the end of 2030. Cue months of intense negotiations in Whitehall between the Chancellor and her cabinet colleagues.

“I shall ensure that no act or activity engaged or involved in by me or any of my related persons… may constitute or cause the occurrence of an offence endangering national security under the National Security Law or other laws of the HKSAR, or conduct [that] is otherwise contrary to the interests of national security or the interest of the public (including public morals, public order and/or public safety) of Hong Kong.”

The National Institutes of Health is responsible for more than 80% of the world’s grant investment in biomedical research. Its funding has sparked countless medical breakthroughs — on cancer, diabetes, strokes — and plays a fundamental role in the development of pharmaceutical drugs.

The research, conducted by CUNY SPH Associate Professor, Dr. Spring Cooper and colleagues, involved in-depth interviews with 31 LGBTQ+ individuals aged 18–24, revealing nuanced insights into their sexual health, communication, and relationship dynamics.

Turning Points for Children managed four of the 10 regions until deciding in late 2022 to leave the program. Tabor Community Partners, which had one of the regions, in Northwest Philadelphia, is now transitioning out of the CUA network as well after informing the city in January that it will not be renewing their agreement.

Certainly this is true in the realm of geopolitics. The United States will never again, or at least will not for the foreseeable future, be seen as a reliable and trustworthy partner by its purported allies. Agreements might be resigned and commitments reasserted, but a country that elected the President not once but twice, knowing precisely who he is, cannot be trusted not to do something similar again.

Pictured above, from left to right, speakers at Thursday’s launch event: (Back row) Mairead Harkin, Workforce Development Officer, Northern Ireland Social Care Council; Kevin Leonard, Principal Social Worker, Western Health and Social Care Trust; Linda Sayers, Independent Social Worker, Sayers Training Services, Catherine Maguire, Co-Director of Regulations and Services, Northern Ireland Social Care Worker; Charlene Hill, School Social Worker, St Ronan’s College; Mandy Cowan, Professional Adviser, Northern Ireland Social Care Council; Natasha Palmer, Refugee Support Service, Barnardo’s Northern Ireland and John Brattin, Social Worker, Liverpool City Council. (Front row) Jennifer McKinney, Lecturer in Systemic Psychotherapy, Queen’s University Belfast and Lorraine Conlon, Head of Governance and Planning, Department of Health.

The study found that schools experiencing shootings had significantly fewer mental health professionals than those that did not. On average, schools without shootings employed 3.7 counselors, 1.0 social workers, and 1.4 psychologists per 1,000 students. In contrast, schools that experienced shootings had just 2.9 counselors, 0.7 social workers, and 0.8 psychologists per 1,000 students. These numbers fall well short of the professional recommendations, which call for four counselors, four social workers, and two psychologists per 1,000 students in K–12 schools.

Japan’s labour shortage is forcing its conservative lawmakers to consider overhauling decades-old social welfare rules originally designed to encourage married women to spend more hours looking after the home.

Russell Vought stated on June 1, 2025, in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Above: Fort Bragg is named after Warrenton native, Braxton Bragg, who was a general in the Confederate Army.

Lollipop is a BBC Films-funded feature drama which tells the story of Molly (Posy Sterling), recently out of a prison after serving a four-month sentence. She comes out to find she has lost her council housing and custody of her kids. Molly finds herself in the mother of all catch-22s: she can’t get housing because she doesn’t have her kids living with her, but she can’t get them back without a roof over her head.

Now in its third year, the BASW Social Work Journalism Awards were launched to celebrate nuanced, informed and balanced reporting that demonstrates a keen understanding of the profession and the people who use services. Above: Broadcaster Ashley John-Baptiste at the awards

A University of the Sunshine Coast study has found most young people charged with assaulting police had experienced childhood abuse, poverty, unstable housing and institutional failures.

In my three decades as a practicing pediatrician, I worked at community clinics across the country. The children in my care came from all walks of life — some with private insurance, others covered under Medicaid, and many with no coverage at all. But every child, regardless of circumstance, deserved the same thing: the best protection possible against deadly, preventable diseases. That meant ensuring they were vaccinated fully and on time.

In my research on right-wing extremism over 30 years, a disturbing pattern has emerged: White supremacists and white nationalists are increasingly willing to use violence targeting critical infrastructure in an effort to destabilize society…. In the past several years, extremists have started using the term “accelerationism” to describe their desire to create social chaos and societal collapse that leads to a race war and the destruction of liberal democratic systems, paving the way for a white ethnostate.

In recent weeks, the Department of Health and Human Services, led by prominent antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has announced a barrage of measures that are likely to reduce COVID vaccine access, leading to a swirl of confusion about what will be available for the 2025–2026 season. HHS officials did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Unions are seeking a pay rise of £3,500 or 6% – whichever is higher – for Cafcass staff in 2025-26 in a claim designed to address past real-terms cuts in wages. Napo and UNISON lodged the claim last week, saying it was also designed to address what they said were growing pay gaps between family court advisers (FCAs) and local authority social workers, sustain productivity and morale at Cafcass and provide appropriate reward for what the unions alleged had been increases in workloads.

Based on interval-style bursts of fast and slow walking, Japanese walking was developed by Professor Hiroshi Nose and Associate Professor Shizue Masuki at Shinshu University in Matsumoto, Japan. It involves alternating between three minutes of walking at a higher intensity and three minutes at a lower intensity, repeated for at least 30 minutes, four times per week.

Chinese authorities decriminalised homosexuality in 1997, but same-sex marriage is not legal and social stigma is widespread. Despite a period of relative relaxation in the 2000s to mid-2010s, rights groups say recent years have seen a crackdown on the community’s spaces and freedom of expression.

Foster youth took part in numerous focus groups and met virtually to produce a sweeping 86-page report with the Minnesota nonprofit Foster Advocates.

A separation agreement for the university’s “voluntary faculty retirement incentive program” includes a clause, first reported by Indiana Public Media, that states employees “shall not defame, or otherwise disparage, the University or any of its successors, divisions, or affiliates, or any of their respective current or former trustees, officers, employees, agents, representatives, attorneys, or insurers, in their representative as well as their individual capacities,” according to a copy of an agreement shared with The Chronicle. They must also agree “not to make negative statements of any kind regarding the University.”

Yentel also commented on broader political dynamics in her defense of the sector:
“These actions aren’t about government efficiency or about reform. They are attempted censorship disguised as accountability. This is weaponization of the federal government to chill dissent, and it is wrong whatever party is in control. In a functioning and healthy democracy, nonprofits must be free to identify and meet local needs, without political interference. Fear of retribution, or facing punishment for holding a different point of view from those in political power.”

Natasha Hamilton is a member of the Care Home Relatives Scotland pressure group which has been campaigning for Anne’s Law

Figures from the HSE, seen by Breakingnews, show that at the end of April, 12,106 children were waiting for their first contact from the Child Disability Network Team (CDNT). Of that figure, 8298 children are waiting over a year for first contact.

Individuals who downloaded the app could be considered in possession of a seditious publication, contravening domestic security legislation, the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, police said. The force added that those who provided money or financial help to the game’s developer, including making in-app purchases, with the intent to fund acts of secession or subversion of state power, also risk committing an offence under the national security law.

Members of a class working toward becoming homeless service workers eat lunch during a tour at the Midnight Mission homeless shelter on Skid Row.

On July 1st-2nd, The Forum on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders will host a public workshop to address to examine how health and human services structures influence mental health and substance use disorder (MHSUD) outcomes, particularly in communities with limited access to care.

In 2021, according to the most recent public health data, 1,660 New Yorkers died by suicide, and an estimated 41,500 New Yorkers attempted it. New Yorkers with serious mental illness (SMI) are receiving less treatment, according to a report released last year by the City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, with 48 percent reporting that they had not received medication or therapy in the prior year. That increases to 70 percent when you factor in those without insurance.

Confirming the U-turn, Rachel Reeves said the Government had “listened to people’s concerns” about the decision to limit the payment to the poorest pensioners last winter, and was now able to widen eligibility because Labour had restored “stability” to the economy.

Bil Pob Plentyn calls on parties to commit to placing a statutory duty on public bodies to actively listen to, protect, and support every child in Wales – regardless of their background or circumstances. This landmark legislative proposal calls on parties to guarantee that the rights of children are no longer treated as optional, but as fundamental.

Susan Brownmiller in 1988. Her Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape was ranked by the New York Public Library as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.

“We’ve heard this song and dance before — ‘Oh we’re not cutting Medicaid, just putting work requirements on there’ — but those work requirements in effect are putting cuts on Medicaid,” Gandy said.

American police departments near the United States-Mexico border are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an unproven and secretive technology that uses AI-generated online personas designed to interact with and collect intelligence on “college protesters,” “radicalized” political activists, and suspected drug and human traffickers, according to internal documents, contracts, and communications 404 Media obtained via public records requests. Massive Blue, the New York-based company that is selling police departments this technology, calls its product Overwatch, which it markets as an “AI-powered force multiplier for public safety” that “deploys lifelike virtual agents, which infiltrate and engage criminal networks across various channels.”

“As social workers, we’re providing information — that’s what the library does,” says Kat Layton. “We always try to think outside the box when we’re connecting folks with resources, and we try to build new relationships with community partners while looking for solutions.”

Should individuals who hear voices from some imaginary “god”, be setting educational policy in publics schools?

The mid-2000s was the era that shaped ketamine’s enduring image: at once illegal, medically risky, and wildly popular. Its ascendancy as a club drug was indicated by the emergence of dubstep, a genre that was immediately identified as both cause and effect of its spread. Like the drug itself, the sound combined a compulsive rush with a dislocated, mechanised aesthetic, darker and more disembodied than the ecstasy-fuelled styles that preceded it. The term “wonky” emerged to describe both the music and the chemical dissociation that enhanced it. Literary accounts of ketamine remained elusive, but the drug now had its bespoke soundtrack. In 2014 the UK government responded to its growing popularity by raising its legal status to class B. Since then, levels of use have continued to climb, most sharply among 18- to 24-year-olds, whose usage has tripled in the last nine years.

This behavior, which social scientists call “anticipatory compliance”, smoothes the way to autocracy because it gives the regime unlimited power without his having to lift a finger. Halting autocracy in its tracks demands a counter-strategy – let’s call it anticipatory noncompliance. Examples of anticipatory compliance are legion.

On Character AI, users can chat with bots designed to impersonate fictional characters. To a lonely or curious teenager, they seem almost indistinguishable from real people. The bots display emotion, flirt, and carry on personalised conversations…. Lawyers defending the AI company tried to throw the case out, arguing that chatbots deserve First Amendment protection – which protects free speech – and said ruling otherwise could have a “chilling” effect on the AI industry.

Everything we know about Cyprus paints a picture of warmth and connection. This is an island lauded for its welcome. A nation of family, community and neighbours who know not only our names, but those of our parents and grandparents. And we’re known worldwide as ‘The Island of Love’

School officials told the faculty Williams won’t accept new grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) or the National Institutes of Health (NIH) until the agencies clarify new language requiring grantee institutions to certify they aren’t doing anything to “promote or advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) … in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws.”

Dr. Maura Finkelstein is one of many scholars discovering that the traditional protections of academic freedom are no longer holding.

The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned. The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.

Above: China (2025), from Andrew’s Facetune Portraits: Universal Beauty series. The American artist, whose work is currently on show in New York, makes the invisible impacts of technology visible.

“Flavonoid intakes of around 500 mg a day was associated with a 16% lower risk of all-cause mortality, as well as a ~10% lower risk of CVD, type 2 diabetes, and respiratory disease. That’s roughly the amount of flavonoids that you would consume in two cups of tea.” Dr Parmenter added, however, that those who consumed the widest diversity of flavonoids, had an even lower risk of these diseases, even when consuming the same total amount. For example, instead of just drinking tea, it’s better to eat a range of flavonoid-rich foods to make up your intake, because different flavonoids come from different foods.

Michele Thomas, director of policy and advocacy for the statewide Low Income Housing Alliance in Washington, speaks during a rally advocating for lawmakers to adjust and pass House Bill 1217, a rent-control bill, at the Washington State Capitol Building in Olympia, WA

KFF estimated that the bill would reduce federal Medicaid spending by a net $793 billion over 10 years, based on CBO’s analysis. That’s a 12% reduction in federal Medicaid funding. Yet, Johnson has claimed that the spending cuts aren’t cuts at all. “There are no Medicaid cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill. We’re not cutting Medicaid,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on June 1. “What we’re doing is strengthening the program. We’re reducing fraud, waste and abuse that is rampant in Medicaid to ensure that that program is essential for so many people, ensure that it’s available for the most vulnerable.” (Johnson has also cited “more than 1.4 million illegal aliens on Medicaid.” We’ve already written about that false claim.)

The effects of artificial intelligence on adolescents are nuanced and complex, according to a new report that calls on developers to prioritize features that protect young people from exploitation, manipulation and the erosion of real-world relationships.

An abortion rights activist wears tape on her mouth with the words “Second Class Citizen” while protesting in front of the Supreme Court building following the announcement to the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling in Washington D.C.