Virgin Media data breach that exposes personal details of 900,000 customers


‘Protecting our customers’ data is a top priority and we sincerely apologise,’ says firm

Mike Bedigan





Hundreds of thousands of customers' details were exposed ( Getty )

Virgin Media has apologised after a data breach left the personal details of around 900,000 customers unsecured and accessible.

The company said that the breach occurred after one of its marketing databases was “incorrectly configured” which allowed unauthorised access.

It assured those affected by the breach that the database “did not include any passwords or financial details” but said it contained information such as names, home and email addresses, and phone numbers.

Virgin said that access to the database had been shut down immediately following the discovery but by that time the database was accessed “on at least one occasion”.


It added that it was unsure the extent of the access or if any information was actually used.

It has been reported that the database has been unsecured since April 2019.

In a statement, the company said: “We recently became aware that one of our marketing databases was incorrectly configured which allowed unauthorised access.

“We immediately solved the issue by shutting down access to this database, which contained some contact details of approximately 900,000 people, including fixed line customers representing approximately 15% of that customer base.

“Protecting our customers’ data is a top priority and we sincerely apologise.

“The database did not include any passwords or financial details, such as credit card information or bank account numbers, but did contain limited contact information such as names, home and email addresses and phone numbers.

“Based upon our investigation, Virgin Media does believe that the database was accessed on at least one occasion but we do not know the extent of the access or if any information was actually used.

“We are now contacting those affected to inform them of what happened. We urge people to remain cautious before clicking on an unknown link or giving any details to an unverified or unknown party.”

Adam French, Which? consumer rights expert, said: “This data breach has exposed the data of almost a million Virgin Media customers and whilst no financial details or passwords were included, those customers are likely to be worried.

“It is vital that Virgin Media continues to provide clear information on what has happened.

“For anyone concerned they could be affected – it’s good practice to update your password after a data breach. Also, be wary of emails regarding the breach, as scammers may try and take advantage of it.”

Virgin said that online security advice and help on a range of topics is available to customers on its website.

Rough sex defence: If the government bans it, what will that mean?

The Home Office announced it will be looking at ‘rough sex’ laws as part of the new Domestic Abuse Bill, but what will it mean? Sophie Gallagher asks campaigners

Grace Millane’s murder is the most recent, well-publicized, example of it being used ( PA )

The new domestic abuse bill, which was postponed at the end of 2019 when Boris Johnson prorogued parliament, is due to have its first reading in the House of Commons on Thursday.

As well as potentially introducing measures like banning domestic abusers cross-examining their victims in court and requiring councils to provide accommodation for victims and their children, it is also reportedly looking at laws around the “rough sex” defence.

Announcing the return of the bill to parliament, the Home Office said it was considering how it could curb the use of the “rough sex” defence within the legal system of England and Wales.

But what is the “rough sex” defence, how is it used and what would a change in the law mean for perpetrators, victims and legislators?

What is the rough sex defence?

The so-called “rough sex” defence (otherwise known as the “50 shades of grey” defence) is increasingly used in UK courts in cases of sexual violence – that either end in murder or serious harm – to explain why the violence occurred.

It was most recently highlighted in the high profile trial of the killer of British backpacker Grace Millane in New Zealand when his defence argued that Millane had died accidentally in a “sex game gone wrong” after she had pursued BDSM-style sex.

Read more

Women fleeing domestic abuse to be offered free train travel

Her killer was eventually sentenced to life in prison but Louise Perry, who co-runs We Can’t Consent To This, a group that raises awareness of the “rough sex” defence, with founder Fiona McKenzie, says often it results in reduced sentencing.

Perry tells The Independent that the “rough sex” defence is similar to the “nagging and shagging defence” when juries are persuaded that male perpetrators were justified in their violence because of their female partner’s behaviour, such as decreased frequency of sex or nagging.

“This is not officially a defence in law, but juries are sympathetic towards it, they can relate. It creates a sense of diminished responsibility,” she explains. “When people hear ‘rough sex’ they think of BDSM: maybe some Ann Summers fluffy handcuffs and they feel they can relate, but this is not that at all. We’re seeing examples of horrific internal injuries in these cases. But it helps the perpetrators to frame it like this.”

Another example of this type of defence is the ‘big penis’ defence, which was successfully used by a Florida man in 2017 to get off a second-degree murder charge after his girlfriend died during oral sex.

Is this a new problem?

The earliest UK example of “rough sex” being used as a defence in a murder trial was in the 1972 trial of Carole Califano’s killer. Califano had been trying to leave her abusive partner. Using the defence meant his sentence was downgraded from murder to manslaughter at trial.

So although this isn’t a new problem, Perry and McKenzie say usage is on the rise. McKenzie established We Can’t Consent To This in 2018 after becoming increasingly distressed at its increased use, particularly in the Natalie Connolly case in December 2018.

Connolly was killed by her partner at their home in Worcestershire in 2016. She died of vaginal arterial bleeding and suffered 40 separate injuries including serious internal trauma, a fractured eye socket, and facial wounds. Her partner claimed it was a result of sex games “gone wrong”, was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to three years and eight months in prison.
Killers are becoming increasingly aware of this defence – lawyers aren’t meant to propose it but people are aware of it, and its potential success

McKenzie was so angered by the verdict that she started keeping a catalogue of all the examples she could find where the “rough sex” defence was used. Today the list numbers over 60 women from the UK whose killers have made this defence. The vast majority have been killed in the UK, though a few (such as Grace Millane) died overseas.

The total number worldwide is much larger, says Perry, and they are in the process of working with other women outside the UK to collect this data. In the last five years, 18 women and girls have been killed in claimed consensual violent sexual activity. The most recent being Anna Florence Reed in April 2019.

“Killers are becoming increasingly aware of this [defence] – lawyers aren’t meant to propose it but people are aware of it, and its potential success,” says Perry. “Men have always murdered women, this is just a new way of getting rid of them.”
Why is this increasing now?

Perry says there is no definitive reason behind the rise but that more liberal attitudes towards violence in the bedroom have to be taken into account.

A BBC study in 2019 found more than a third of UK women under the age of 40 have experienced unwanted slapping, choking or gagging during consensual sex. Of the women who experienced these acts, 20 per cent said they had been left upset or frightened.

“We can’t really ignore the porn factor,” says Perry, “It’s there at a click of a button and can be accessed at such a young age. And the algorithms push you into a rabbit hole of more and more extreme stuff.”

She says it’s not just porn sites that are problematic either – citing mainstream social media platforms where sexual images can be found.

In four of the most recent killings recorded by We Can’t Consent To This, the men viewed ‘extreme porn’ featuring violence including strangulation and killing of women before or after the killing of the women.
How will the government change the law?

In theory, the “rough sex” defence shouldn’t work for defendants in England and Wales; for almost 30 years case law since the 1993 R v. Brown test case, which dictated that you cannot “consent” in a meaningful sense to having serious violence or death inflicted upon you.

Anything more than “transient or trifling” injuries were deemed not able to be consented to.
Read more

64% of referrals to domestic abuse refuges refused due to funding

“This has been the case on paper for nearly 30 years,” says Perry. “But in practice giving a claim of ‘sex games gone wrong’ gives too good a chance of lesser charge, a lighter sentence or death or assault not being investigated as a crime at all.”

Precise details about the proposed changes to the domestic abuse bill have not been released yet but they are likely to mirror suggestions made by MPs Harriet Harman and Mark Garnier.

Both politicians proposed to move the case law of R v. Brown into statute and to introduce a Director of Public Prosecutions review when prosecutors are proposing to charge a lesser crime, like manslaughter, in a domestic homicide.

These additions to the law will make it more likely that consent cases are successfully prosecuted in England and Wales.

We Can’t Consent To This also want strangulation to be recognised as a “serious assault” under the proposed changes

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Loving Lovecraft: How an obscure 1920s author became the world’s favourite horror writer


HP Lovecraft created cosmic worlds and riveting fantasy horror, before dying impoverished and obscure at the age of 46. More than 80 years later, his genius has finally been unearthed, along with his racism. As one of his books is adapted into a film starring Nicolas Cage, Ed Power explores his personal experiences as a Lovecraft devotee

Sunday 6 October 2019 08:29

13 comments





'A wretched individual whose misery somehow alchemised into fiction of lasting impact, influence and insight': Nicolas Cage in ‘Colour Out of Space’ ( XYZ Films )


Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island, is the most appropriate location in the world at which to suffer an onslaught of existential horror. Not that this was any comfort as I arrived there one summer, my more-than-slightly unenthusiastic girlfriend in tow, only to be confronted by rows of headstones bristling into the horizon. We had come for one grave in particular. But how to find it amid this riot of marble and faded lettering?

Our dreaded sunny day at the cemetery gates had already involved a winding drive from central Providence past the Rhode Island School of Design, where the future members of Talking Heads had met in the mid-Seventies (and where Seth MacFarlane created Family Guy).

Now came the true challenge. Swan Point is the final resting place of HP Lovecraft, father of modern horror and among the greatest pulp authors of all time (and also a racist of considerable derangement). The world is about to receive another reminder of his gibbering genius with a Nicolas Cage-starring adaptation of cosmic fright-fest Colour Out of Space, premiering at the London Film Festival on Monday.

As a fan of Lovecraft’s writing (his racism was not yet on my radar), I’d begged that we go out of our way on our holiday to visit Providence. This was our second attempt at honouring Howard Phillips. The first had come unstuck several days previously when we missed our Greyhound stop in the city centre and ended up at staring at the Cyclopean battlements of the Foxwood Casino in Connecticut (cue bonus cosmic terror). But now, finally, we’d made it.

The only problem – and this hadn’t detained us earlier because we were young and flying by our pants – was that Swan Point is vast: more than 200 acres and with some 40,000 individual plots. In America, even the baroque New England graveyards are supersized. Just then a chap wearing a uniform and driving a miniaturised tractor trundled up. He was a dead ringer for Richard Farnsworth in David Lynch’s The Straight Story. I explained that we had come with a particular purpose in mind.

“Lovecraft,” he guessed, and then we were back in the car following him as he zag-zagged through a blur of mausoleums. Not for the first time that afternoon my girlfriend and her pals, who had driven us from Boston, were throwing me funny glances. What exactly were we all doing here?

Lovecraft has been my favourite author since I was a teenager. I’d discovered him first through tabletop role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, named after one of his best-known stories (in turn named after its famous octopus-headed demigod). At Mountains of Madness and Other Stories was the first Lovecraft book I’d purchased, from my local Waterstones with money saved during a summer spent potato picking at a nearby farm.

The connection made more sense than you might imagine. The sensation of kneeling in wet potato tubers, which spatter and spray slime in the manner of an HR Giger alien egg, has stayed with me. It and my memory of At the Mountains of Madness are inextricable linked. The sensory horror of flapping about in decaying tuber is bound up with reading for the first time of the doomed Dyer expedition to Antarctica, and its run-ins with giant penguins and evil sentient pudding.

At the risk of me sounding like a Nirvana fan who insisted they never did better than Bleach, it’s fair to say that the Lovecraft industry was in its formative stages when I discovered him. Even when I visited Providence and finally came upon his grave – it was surprisingly small and overshadowed by a nearby tree into which HPL fans had etched Cthulhu-themed graffiti – his reputation was still ascending. The stars were not yet quite right. 

Giant penguins and evil sentient pudding: a portrait of Lovecraft (The HP Lovecraft Estate)

Today, by contrast, Lovecraft is mega-box office. Downstairs at the Forbidden Planet flagship store in London there is a dedicated Lovecraft section. It offers not just anthology after anthology of his work but literary tributes by other writers, card games, novelty children’s books and, of course, the ubiquitous plush Cthulhu teddy bear. No other genre writer receives such VIP treatment – not Tolkien, Rowling or George RR Martin.

Lovecraft fans are, moreover, legion. One of my weirdest ever journalistic experiences was interviewing Irish actor Jack Reynor, then best known for playing a vapid hunk in Transformers: Age of Extinction.

He copped my Miskatonic University T-shirt – the name of Lovecraft’s fictional university – and gushed about his fondness for the author and how he’d always wanted to bring HPL to the screen. A few heads turned when the jock-ish Reynor fetched up in Ari Aster’s pagan horror Midsommar recently but not mine. This guy had been with the programme quite a while.

Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro is another member of our little funny handshake coven. He sweated blood attempting to make a $150m adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness. Tom Cruise – who, as his Oprah couch-bouncing confirmed, knows all about conjuring terrifying forces beyond our understanding – was even attached at one point. Alas, the project fell apart as the thematically similar Prometheus quasi-flopped.

But at least Del Toro’s Cthulhu credentials were beyond questioning. The amphibious romantic lead of his gong-garnering The Shape of Water (2017) was essentially a derivation of Lovecraft’s water-dwelling race of Deep Ones. And when invited to direct a Simpsons title sequence, he made sure Cthulhu – all eight eyes present and correct – featured.

Guillermo del Toro creates couch gag for The Simpsons

Nicolas Cage has now joined the club and, really, it is no surprise. He has teamed up with Richard Stanley, who made the fantastic Hardware (1990) and Dust Devil (1992) and then was famously fired from 1996 Marlon Brando dumpster fire The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Together they have updated Lovecraft’s 1927 story The Colour Out of Space for the 21st century. As in the original text, the setting is a remote farm where a mysterious asteroid has crash-landed. The borders of reality warp. Soon locals are behaving peculiarly. And then things get nasty. Once again, I’m reminded of my summer picking potatoes.

If the premise sounds familiar it is because it has been plundered on multiple occasions. Every Cold War American sci-fi film in which an isolated community is overrun by extra terrestrials bears a little of its DNA. And the recent Netflix/Alex Garland adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation is essentially a big-budget homage to the Lovecraft yarn.

“It’s the story that inspired half the sci-fi movies of the 1950s,” Stanley said at a recent Q&A. “The Thing from Another World, The Blob...”

Yet the cult of Lovecraft has also brought attention to the author’s less savoury qualities. Raised in genteel poverty in Providence, he was an unabashed Anglophile who perceived himself as a British gentleman living in the wrong time and place. Unfortunately, he was under the impression that part of a British gentleman’s make-up was to be a bug-eyed xenophobe.

“A maze of hybrid squalor” is how he describes an ethnic neighbourhood of New York in his 1925 chiller The Horror at Red Hook. He writes of “Asian dregs” and the “swart, insolent” crew of a tramp steamer.

These descriptions are largely incidental. One could enjoy Red Hook with the racism expunged. Yet Lovecraft’s obsession with racial purity and the danger of tainting the blood lines is front and centre of some of his most important stories. Consider, my favourite, The Shadow over Innsmouth from 1931. It tells of an obscure New England fishing village where the locals have, through decades of miscegenation with Deep One fish-men from the South Seas, horrifically diluted their humanity.
Cosmic fright-fest: Joely Richardson and Nicolas Cage in ‘Colour Out of Space’ (XYZ Films)

Lovecraft’s evocation of a decaying fishing town is so acutely drawn you can almost smell the brine and the sea breeze. It’s a riveting read, too: the tension as the narrator clops around, gradually realising he has placed himself in terrible danger, tightens like razor wire around your neck.

Alas, the ultimate message that “superior” races must forbear from mingling with their lessers is the stuff of white supremacist fever dreams. I still love The Shadow over Innsmouth. But I’m not sure I would recommend it today.

A backlash was inevitable. The point of fracture was the World Fantasy Awards, a sort of Oscars for fantastical writing. Until 2016, the awards took the form of a bust bearing Lovecraft’s likeness. For authors of a minority background, having a HPL effigy on the shelf was understandably problematic.

“A statuette of this racist man’s head is in my home. A statuette of this racist man’s head is one of my greatest honours as a writer,” said Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor, the first black person to win the WFA for best novel. The trophy has since been redesigned: recipients of the prize no longer have to stare into the vacant visage of an author who approved of Hitler.

“The racism is a BIG problem with HPL as a person and it does pervade some of the stories,” says Julian Simpson, the writer, director and dramatist who adapted Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward as an acclaimed BBC podcast last year (a follow-up retelling of Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness debuts in December).


“Sometimes it’s overt, sometimes you feel like it’s in the subtext. I didn’t worry about it with Charles Dexter Ward because it’s not really present in the story anyway and because our adaptation is sufficiently loose to be able to avoid anything that might have been a problem.”
He feared nearly everything. I read an account of him nearly fainting from the site of a fish on a platePaul Carrick

“His racism is an uncomfortable fact about him which can’t be denied and mustn’t be ignored,” adds fantasy and sci-fi writer James Lovegrove, who has made his own contribution to Lovecraftian lore by pitting Sherlock Holmes against the “mythos” in his fantastic Cthulhu Casebooks novels.

“He was a product of his times, yes, but even by those standards his views were pretty extreme. Even if we can separate the work from the man, it’s still there in the numerous references in his writings to ‘subhuman’ and ‘inferior’ races who are more susceptible than the ‘purer’ races to the gods’ evil influence. I attempted to tackle this in the second of my Cthulhu Casebooks trilogy, Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities, by having an overtly racist character get his comeuppance.


“But it’s a nettle I was extremely unwilling to grasp. We just have to accept, I feel, that Lovecraft himself was a pretty wretched individual whose misery and misanthropy somehow alchemised into fiction of lasting impact, influence and insight.”

Artist Paul Carrick, whose Lovecraftian illustrations have drawn considerable acclaim, agrees. “I cannot argue that Lovecraft did not have some racist feelings. Would I prefer it that he didn’t feel what he felt? Absolutely. Might we not have the stories as we know them if he was a model citizen of today’s standards? I bet we wouldn’t. His uncomfortable feelings were the sand in the oyster which created some incredible pearls.”

Lovecraft, as Carrick points out, wasn’t just a racist: he had all sorts of hang-ups. If there’s a phobia, he probably suffered it. “He feared nearly everything. He was afraid of change, and so immigrants were a source of change. He was afraid of the sea, which explains why so many of his creatures and alien races had aquatic elements within them. I read an account of him nearly fainting from the site of a fish on a plate.
“He more or less lived in a bubble for the first 20 or so years, and unfortunately many people born in the 1800s had racist views. I think we all like to imagine that if we were in his shoes we would act as if it were the present day, but I tend to regard this as wishful thinking.

“Fortunately, we can say that, as he got older, he started to experience more of the world and loosen his views about other races and cultures. He married a Jewish woman and also gained friends outside of his culture, both of which I would imagine was unthinkable to a younger Lovecraft.”

The World Fantasy Awards redesign has been almost universally welcomed. Ramsey Campbell, a doyen of British horror who has made his own contributions to the mythos, agrees that the feelings of authors should be respected.

“I was a judge at the first World Fantasy Awards back in 1975,” he says. “Kirby McCauley was my agent, and he was also one of the main organisers of the World Fantasy Convention, and responsible for choosing Lovecraft as the basis of the award. Since then I’ve received several, and eventually the Lifetime Award, which was in fact the last year that used Lovecraft’s image. I was and am proud to have them, not least because my old friend Gahan Wilson designed them with his typical dark humour.

“That said, I can understand why some candidates could feel offended or hurt by being considered for an award named for someone so dismissive of their race, and I wonder how I’d feel if I were one of them. On balance I think an award should give pleasure to the recipients, and so perhaps a neutral image is safer.”

Lovecraft died in 1937 at the age of 46. He was impoverished and utterly obscure. Decades would elapse before his stock would rise. One major catalyst was Sandy Petersen’s 1981 role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, which celebrated the pulpier elements of Lovecraft and cultivated a new generation of fans. Ever since, the cult has grown and grown.

“I like the fact that he’s dealing with something big and unknown and I like the mythos as an example of world-building,” says Julian Simpson. “He’s like dark Tolkien for me: a whole universe of horrors conjured from one person’s pen.”

“Lovecraft’s enduring popularity can seem strange, especially given that he had only modest literary success in his lifetime,” adds James Lovegrove. “Sometimes I think it’s a collective in-joke more than anything. People randomly alighted on a particular author who was fairly obscure and whose prose style was ungainly, to say the least, and decided to collaborate on making him posthumously famous by sharing, developing and expanding on his canon.”

But that’s a needlessly cynical view he feels. “More likely it’s the case that Lovecraft just hit on something, something universal that we all feel – a fear of unknown forces, a sense that in a world where capital-G God has lost much of His meaning and religion is used mostly for social control and fleecing its adherents, the only thing that makes sense is chaos.”

Colour Out of Space screens at the Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Place, 7 October, 8.30pm. The Whisperer In Darkness podcast comes to BBC in December. Paul Carrick’s Lovecraft illustrations can be perused at nightserpent.com

Senator Elizabeth Warren made a cameo on Saturday Night Live on 7 March, and came face to face with her very own impersonator Kate McKinnon.

Warren’s appearance on SNL came just two days after she announced she was exiting the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The sketch – which led an episode hosted by Daniel Craig - parodied the Fox News show The Ingraham Angle, with Kate McKinnon playing its host, Laura Ingraham.

Introducing Warren, who was playing herself, McKinnon asked her how she has been feeling since withdrawing from the race.

“You know, I’m doing just fine,” Warren said. “My friends and family have been so supportive. They’ve been calling nonstop, asking: ‘Are you OK? What do you need? Were you electable?’ That kind of thing."

McKinnon then showed footage of “Warren debating Mike Bloomberg”, which actually ended up being a viral clip of Warren’s pet dog devouring a burrito.

Asked if she was the dog or the burrito in the video, Warren quipped: “I was the dog.”

Warren joked she had not yet decided who to endorse out of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, saying: “It’s tough. Maybe I’ll just pull a New York Times and endorse them both.”

The senator was alluding to the paper’s unusual decision to support two candidates in the race: Amy Klobuchar and Warren.

Warren said she was pleased with how she had run her campaign. “We built a wide coalition of teachers, preschool teachers, middle-school teachers, and teachers’ pets,” she said. “And not only did I not accept money from billionaires, I got to give one a swirly on live TV.”

The politician added she now has more time for self-care: “Hanging out with my dog, Bailey. Prank-calling big banks. Drag-racing Subarus. Avoiding Twitter.”

At the very end of the sketch McKinnon – who has impersonated Warren many times – dressed up as the senator and said: “I wanted to put on my favourite outfit to thank you for all that you’ve done in your lifetime.”

To which Warren replied: “I’m not dead — I’m just in the Senate.”

With Warren now out of the running, the Democratic primary is a two-man race between Sanders and Biden, who is currently the prohibitive frontrunner after winning the majority of states and delegates on Super Tuesday.


© TheWrap snl saturday night live elizabeth warren cold open

'SNL': The Real Elizabeth Warren Joins Kate McKinnon's Elizabeth Warren for Cold Open (Video)

Phil Owen 

Kate McKinnon pulled double duty in this week's "SNL" cold open as she began the sketch playing Laura Ingraham and ended it playing Elizabeth Warren — while she stood next to the real Elizabeth Warren. You can check out the sketch in its entirety above. If you just want to see Warren's appearance, skip to the last two minutes or so.

The sketch began as a pretty standard "Ingraham Angle" cold open, with McKinnon's Ingraham talking about how nobody should actually care about the coronavirus, echoing the Trump administration's line about the epidemic that, despite claims that it's not that big of a deal, is quickly sweeping the globe.

Prior to Warren showing up at the end of the sketch, we actually got another big cameo by former "SNL" cast member Darrell Hammond, who Ingraham introduced as the newest Fox News anchor, Chris Matthews. And Hammond's impression was spot on.

As the sketch neared its end, Ingraham introduced the show's final guest, Elizabeth Warren. Since McKinnon usually is the one who plays Warren on "SNL," there was a brief moment of uncertainty before the actual Elizabeth Warren's face appeared on screen.

After a few moments, McKinnon sprinted into frame dressed in the same outfit as the real Warren as they ended the sketch and together they delivered that signature "SNL" line, "Live from New York it's Saturday night!"

As you might expect, the conversation generally centered on what Warren has been up to since she dropped out of the presidential race this week, with Warren delivering one zinger after another.

For example, Ingraham asked who she would endorse for the Democratic nomination now, and Warren replied: "It's tough. Maybe I'll just pull a New York Times and endorse them both." This joke refers to how The New York Times editorial board endorsed both Warren and Amy Klobuchar for the Democratic nomination.

Warren says she's had a lot of fun now that she's got a lot more free time, joking that she's been "prank calling big banks" and "drag racing Subarus."

Warren also shouted out what might have been her greatest moment during her campaign, when she tore into Mike Bloomberg during one of the primary debates. "Not only did I not accept money from billionaires, I got to give one a swirly on live TV.

She also wanted to remind everyone that despite her defeat, it's not as though her political career has ended. "I'm not dead, I'm just in the Senate," Warren quipped.

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Unless we empower women farmers, we may not have enough to feed the planet


Our food systems cannot wait for women's equality – we must act fast to secure our sustenance

Claudia SadoffSri Lanka
21 hours ago







Our natural world is sending us increasingly more frequent and urgent signals that our food systems are in need of dire support.

Climate-related disasters seem to be appearing from every direction, from an emerging famine in South Sudan, locust swarms in east Africa, and hurricanes in the Philippines and the Caribbean, to name but a few.


The world’s farmers are coping with ever more unpredictable rainfall and growing conditions.


Rural women are disproportionately vulnerable, and they also play a critical role in reversing the problem and feeding a growing population. And yet they receive only a fraction of the focus they deserve.



Here’s how to enable them.

Ensure rural women can invest productively in their farms.

Compared to men, women grow 20 to 30 per cent less per hectare – not because they are worse farmers, but because they have fewer resources with which to work.


Women are often prevented from owning land. As a result, they are less able to secure credit to invest in their farms because they have no collateral. Without financing, they cannot easily buy higher quality seeds or fertilizer, recruit labour or sell what they produce at market as easily.

For instance, a study of 36 climate “hotspots” in India – which were vulnerable to drought, excess rainfall and heatwaves – showed women farmers most affected because they could not access climate-smart technologies and solutions as easily. Solutions like satellite-based insurance are helping overcome this divide if a disaster occurs, as they can be designed to be accessible equally to both men and women.

Ease the burden of daily household tasks typically done by women and girls.

Women and girls are often responsible for the daily collection of water and fuel for cooking. Climate-related water and food shortages disproportionately impact these groups as they must travel longer distances to find supplies.

New methods for turning household waste into fuels can help women tap into more reliable, cheaper and cleaner sources of energy – for instance a project in Uganda helping women turn banana waste into charcoal.

Women typically also grow and cook the food eaten by the family, including tending to the plots of staple crops, small kitchen gardens (for fruits and vegetables) and small livestock animals (for milk, meat and cheese). In Africa, up to 80 per cent of these basic foods are grown by women.

These household chores take time and are mostly unpaid, leaving women less opportunity to grow and sell foods at market. In Kazakhstan, a study of three villages along a waterway showed that, counterintuitively, the women most upstream, with the best access to water for their crops, actually earned the least. Why? Because they were furthest from the market, which was further downstream.

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Moreover, these household tasks are often backbreaking, time-consuming, and repetitive – for instance, weeding entire fields by hand, stooped over at the waist. Or they can even be outright unsafe, with indoor pollution from cooking responsible for an estimated 600,000 deaths in Africa every year – a third more than total malaria deaths, globally.


This also means women tend to have less time to attend field demonstrations, access market information or otherwise strengthen food systems.

Build research systems and cultures to be more gender equitable in the long run.

Breaking out of this downward spiral requires a rethink on how rural women are reflected and participate in society at large.

Bridging the gender productivity gap in agriculture could feed an additional 150 million people – all while keeping existing forests, pastures and other habitats and natural carbon sinks intact. While it is not women’s responsibility alone to tackle this challenge, they should also benefit from the increased production from doing so.

When women groundnut farmers in Nigeria banded together to pool resources, they got access to land, credit and improved seeds, virtually doubling their yield in the process. They sell extra at market to make profits, which then get re-invested. An upward spiral, no doubt to be celebrated. However, it would be even more effective if the system itself could be changed so that they could accomplish this on their own should they have wished to do so.

Achieving greater gender equality will help to strengthen the resilience of our food systems, revitalize rural economies and enhance rural livelihoods.

It has been 25 years since Hillary Clinton famously declared, “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” Yet women’s economic parity is estimated to take a further 257 years to achieve. Our food systems simply do not have that long to wait.

Dr Claudia Sadoff is director general of the International Water Management Institute, and gender champion for the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research.

There’s a dark side to your girl power T-shirt – and it’s directly hurting women

I like wearing my feminism on my sleeve, and fashion trends would suggest that I’m not alone. But this International Women’s Day, try shouting your feminism from the non-exploitative rooftops

Bethany Dawson @bethanymrd


International Women's Day is a wonderful opportunity to reflect upon the intersectional experiences of women, to celebrate the achievements of gender-equality movements, and to acknowledge the continued changes that need to be made. In short, it is a delightful day to look at the past, present, and future journey of feminism.

As with many internationally celebrated events, this day has been grabbed as an opportunity for big businesses to capitalise upon. With shiny pin badges and empowering slogans emblazoned across £5 t-shirts, one can proudly advocate for gender equality while sparing some change.


However, the production line involved in creating such garments extend far beyond the high street stores that proudly scream “Girl Power”.



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In a world of fast-fashion, where clothing is produced at an unsustainable speed using unsustainable methods, in order to meet the breakneck pace of supply-and-demand, many high-street stores employ the labour of people in low wage economies.


As Bobbie Santa Maria of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre points out: “Global brands are quick to use female empowerment when marketing their products. But when they exert relentless pressure to get more products for less money, it’s women workers who pay the price.”

The garment production industry is built upon a workforce comprising approximately 80 per cent women. These women face conditions where low wages, gender-based-violence, and horrific working conditions are rife. Such mistreatment is not concentrated in one country, one continent, or to one employer. The Breaking the Silence report by the Fair Wear Foundation highlights that in Uganda, 90 per cent of women surveyed had been sexually harassed at work by their male seniors. In Cambodia, nearly one in three female garment factory workers reported experiencing sexually harassing behaviour in the workplace in the 12 months prior to the study and in Indonesia, 85 per cent of women garment workers were concerned about sexual harassment.

While stitching feminist slogans onto your shirts, these women are constantly in danger.

Data from the 2019 Tailored Wage Report from the Clean Clothes Campaign, shows that zero workers within Asia, Africa, Central America or Eastern Europe were paid enough to live with dignity. The assessment found that 31 out of 32 global leaders in the fashion industry can not prove they pay their workers a living wage. Gucci was the only name proving they pay 25 per cent of their workers enough money to live on.

31 popular retailers, including H&M, New Look, Missguided, and Asos, could provide no evidence of paying any worker in their supply chain a living wage. No retailer could prove they pay 100 per cent of the workers in their supply chain a Living Wage.


Companies are not tied to this unethical form of production; they are able to pick and choose whether or not to exploit workers from low-wage economies, and they are choosing to keep these workers in poverty, in danger. To provide workers with a living wage they would have to increase the retail price of the garments. Pleasingly, data shows that even a 100 per cent wage increase would only raise retail prices between about 2 and 6 per cent, so it could be relatively seamless for companies to support their workers. However, it is apparent that this choice is not being made.

I like wearing my feminism on my sleeve, and fashion trends would suggest that I’m not alone. However, undermining one’s activism, and exploiting the women you’re trying to protect, in the name of a cheap top is not the way to expand the feminist rhetoric. Boycotting companies and their fake empowerment is a way forward and does not necessarily mean that you cannot wear fun, funky, feminist clothing. One option is upcycling clothes you already own with responsibly sourced badges and patches or purchasing items such as this t-shirt by Shado, which supports the Alliance for Choice foundation.

International Womens’ Day is an opportunity to celebrate feminism, and to acknowledge the intersectional and multifaceted experiences of women across the world. An effortless way to stand in solidarity with women facing horrific exploitation in the name of fast fashion, is to not buy into its shiny charms. Feminism can be practiced in several ways. You can wear your politics on a t-shirt, make your own badges, or create your own slogans. You can employ grassroots activism and join organisations such as Womens’ Strike Assembly. You can donate to and support charities supporting the intersectional experiences of women. You can boycott corporations existing upon the exploitation of women: a shirt expressing one’s desire to empower women is pointless if it is disempowering a number of workers. Shout your feminism from the non-exploitative rooftops, buy ethically sourced clothes, and – wherever possible – do not support the vast number of corporations which exist upon the exploitation of women.

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Ukrainian chess grand master and girlfriend found dead in Russia after ‘inhaling laughing gas’

Deaths come days after Bogdanovich faced criticism for playing in Russian team against Ukraine

Vincent Wood @wood_vincent

Bogdanovich, once the world number eight in high-paced Blitz chess, was ranked 31st in Ukraine before his death ( Youtube/Школа чемпионов )


A Ukrainian chess grandmaster once ranked eighth in the world and his teenage girlfriend, who also played professionally, have died. Investigators claimed the pair may have choked to death after inhaling nitrous oxide.

Stanislav Bogdanovich, 27, and 19-year-old Alexandra Vernigora, both from the Odessa region, were found dead in their adoptive home of Moscow, according to industry publication Chess-news.ru.

The couple, who had been together for a year, were initially claimed to have been found alongside balloons used to inhale the gas, which is legally available in the country.

However Russian broadcaster Ren TV, citing Russian investigators, later said the couple had been found with bags over their heads.

The supply of nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, was outlawed for recreational purposes in the UK in 2016 – however, the death rate associated with its use is relatively low. Between 2010 and 2016, 25 people were confirmed to have died as a result of inhaling the gas in Britain.

Investigators reportedly said there was no evidence of foul play.

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It comes after Bogdanovich faced criticism for his decision to play for Russia against his home nation of Ukraine in an online team chess event, provoking anger and annoyance among his fellow Ukrainians.

Saying he was only doing “what is best for business”, he added: “I am now in Russia. It would be ugly as a guest to speak out against those who provide a warm welcome. This is just a tribute.”

“I believe that in this way I have made a modest contribution to the peace between our countries. It is time for us to shy away and stop this feud. Perhaps, if each of us only played for Russia one at a time, then any conflict would already be over.”

However the decision, and his explanation, continued to face criticism in Ukraine. Anatoliy Hrytsenko, the nation’s former defence minister, wrote on Facebook five days before his death that Bogdanovich’s actions had been “callous”.

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Influencer's Dry Ice Pool Stunt At Birthday Party Leaves Three Dead, Including Husband

A pool party in Russia ended in a tragedy after three people died and seven rushed to the hospital due to the elevation of carbon dioxide levels in the blood.

A pool party in Russia ended in a tragedy after three people died and seven were rushed to the hospital due to the elevation of carbon dioxide levels in their blood. According to reports, famous social media influencer Ekaterina Didenko and her husband Valentin Didenko were hosting a party for the former's birthday when the incident took place. As per reports, three people were killed after Ekaterina's husband unloaded 25 kg of dry ice into the swimming pool to create a dramatic visual effect intended to impress guests at the party. Ekaterina's husband was among the three people who died at the party.
Mishap at birthday party

Two other guests, Natalia Monakova and Yuri Alferov were also reportedly killed in the incident as it is believed that they were in the swimming pool when the dry ice was poured released. Ekaterina later shared the news with her followers on social media where she said that 'Valya is not with us anymore' referring to her husband Valentin Didenko. According to reports, Ekaterina is a mother of two and a popular Instagram blogger with over one million followers. Ekaterina is a highly qualified pharmacist and gives medical advice to her followers. She also offers tips on keeping medicines at home for personal use. 

Dry ice is a solid form of carbon dioxide and it is used primarily as a cooling agent. While generally not very toxic, the outgassing from it can cause hypercapnia, which abnormally elevates carbon dioxide levels in the blood, if used in a confined environment or a poorly ventilated space. As per reports, the Russian Investigative Committee has launched a criminal case into the matter for causing death by negligence. Didenko recently celebrated her husband's 32nd birthday where she thanked him for providing technical support for her channel and being the brains behind her success.

International Women’s Day: This is why sex workers are striking in London

This is the third year that sex workers will be marching on International Women's Day. Sophie Gallagher speaks to them about what they want to achieve by walking the capital's streets


On a Sunday afternoon Juno Mac would normally be trying to get work. The 30-year-old, who has worked in the sex industry for ten years as an escort, a stripper and a brothel worker says she has to make herself available “around the clock” in order to secure enough work to pay her bills and ensure she has a stable income. But on 8 March, Mac is going on strike for 24 hours and will spend her day marching through central London with thousands of other women.

This is the third year that the strippers and sex workers branch of the United Voices of The World (UVW) union have gone on strike and joined the International Women’s Day march, which ends in Soho Square. They are calling for the full decriminalisation of sex workers and recognition of rights like sick pay, pension provision and a guaranteed basic pay.


Although buying and selling sex is legal in England and Wales, most activities associated with the transaction are still illegal; soliciting in a public place, kerb crawling, owning or managing a brothel and pimping are all criminalised. For a first-time offence of street solicitation a woman can be fined up to £500.

[Sex workers] have to work enough to get the job security that is denied to them by their employers and the state,” explains Mac. “I’ll be marching to highlight the inadequate working conditions faced by sex workers in this country, namely that they are forced to work in illegal and therefore dangerous ways by the law.”

Mac says by downing tools it draws attention to their “struggle as workers”. “The criminalisation of our workplaces and clients destroys access to help and justice when we are targeted for violence. Theres no reason any sex industry job should be allowed to be a place of exploitation just because it’s been that way for a long time.

“By striking we want to make lawmakers understand the damage created when you criminalise the survival strategies of marginalised people – they will be abused by bosses or clients, they might be locked into a cycle of selling sex to pay off unaffordable fines, closed off from other jobs, they could lose their homes or children.”

Cleaning toilets, raising babies and cooking food is often seen as low value work..."

She says that to "add insult to injury” many more women are now being forced to turn to sex work in order to survive the Conservative policy of austerity that followed the 2008 financial crash, which has been blamed for life expectancy stalling for the first time in a century and even reducing for women in some regions. “Austerity has taken away their other options,” she says.

Mac says this is a particularly pertinent feminist issue because it disproportionately affects women, queer people, migrants, people of colour and disabled people. “It’s for this reason that decriminalisation of sex work is an issue that the international Women’s March community should be given it’s attention to,” she says.

Shiri Shalmy, an organiser at the union branch for sex workers and strippers, who will also be marching, tells The Independent that activism, like the strike, is starting to have a positive impact on the ground. 

Juno Mac/Flickr

On Friday the union was informed that two employment tribunals, where they had proposed that women in London strip clubs should be legally recognised with worker status, not independent contractors, were successful. “On Sunday we’ll definitely be celebrating this as well as calling for more progress in this area,” she says.

Not only are they calling for legal change, but Mac and Shalmy say, they want a cultural shift in how women’s work is perceived – and not just that of sex workers.

“Sex workers know that the way their work is devalued resembles the disrespect given to other labour traditionally done by women,” says Mac. “Cleaning toilets, raising babies and cooking food is often seen as low value work – or even not real work at all, but society would collapse without this essentially reproductive labour done in the home."

Women's March 2020: in photos
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Shalmy says: “We want to recognise all forms of unrecognised work that women do. We are going to stop cooking, stop caring for the children, stop having sex with men for one day and see the impact.”

Recent surveys suggest UK support for the sex worker rights movement is at an all time high: a 2019 poll found 49 per cent of Brits are in favour of decriminalising brothel-keeping (currently punishable by up to seven years in prison) and 44 per cent think sex workers should not face prosecution for street solicitation.


Between 2015 and 2018 there were 186 prosecutions and 174 convictions for brothel-keeping offences according to the study’s analysis of Home Office figures. Some 54 per cent of these prosecutions were against women defendants.

On Sunday the women will join hundreds of others to walk the streets of London calling for change to these laws. Shalmy says the march brings together migrant women, trans women, undocumented women and “all the women the white patriarchy deem to not fit the definition of a ‘good woman” in order to demand their work is valued and paid fairly.

“As a group of people whose presence is often merely tolerated, with poorly concealed distaste, it feels amazing to take up so much space,” says Mac. “And I hope other supporters turn out to march with us [because] someone they know is a sex worker, whether they realise it or not.”

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'Zero-empathy' Trump shows lack of emotion when told about 8-year-old boy's family being killed in tornado
James Crump, The Independent•March 6, 2020



Donald Trump has been filmed showing “zero empathy” for an 8-year-old boy during a meeting with families of Tennessee tornado victims.

The US president met with the families on Friday in the town of Cookeville as part of a trip to see the devastation caused by this week’s tornadoes.

As Trump stood in front of destroyed homes he spoke to the press about an 8-year-old boy who was carried away from his family home by a tornado, only to land alive two blocks away.

“An 8-year-old boy was ripped out, flown to a certain area and dropped off at the street two or three blocks away and they found him walking and he said ‘I just flew in the air,” said Trump in the Fox News video.

After asking ”how did his parents do?” and being informed the boy’s parents and sister had died in the storms he relayed that information to the crowd before moving on by saying “So we’re gonna go see some of the folks.”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???
Trump while visiting tornado victims in TN tells a story about a boy being carried by the tornado, like it’s the greatest thing he’s ever heard! Then he asks about the parents....People tell him they’re dead along with his sister. No emotion, NOTHING! Idiot! pic.twitter.com/0ZqaQN2OzS

— Mystery Solvent (@MysterySolvent)

March 6, 2020

No condolences were expressed from the president. Twitter user @mysterysolvent expressed disbelief at the way he acted.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Trump while visiting tornado victims in TN tells a story about a boy being carried by the tornado, like it’s the greatest thing he’s ever heard! Then he asks about the parents....People tell him they’re dead along with his sister. No emotion, NOTHING! Idiot!”

User @nightlypolitics echoed that statement accusing Trump of having zero empathy.

“Watch Zero-Empathy Trump Get Excited Over Tornado Deaths, ‘A Whole Family Got Wiped-Out!’ Wow what a pig” they tweeted​.​


Watch Zero-Empathy Trump Get Excited Over Tornado Deaths, ‘A Whole Family Got Wiped-Out!’

Wow what a pig https://t.co/dfsLDO3vce

— The Resistance 🇺🇸 (@NightlyPolitics)

March 6, 2020

Wearing a hat emblazoned with “Keep America Great” Trump told the crowd at Cookeville that federal aid to help support the affected areas would be arriving “very quickly.”

“What they need. We are going to take care of what they need.” said Trump when asked about when they should expect the funding he had earlier approved.

After speaking to the press, Trump met with local families where he was applauded by some, with one man telling him "We're a big family. We support you." according to the video.

Grindr’s China Owner Sells Gay App for $600 Million

Zheping Huang

BloombergMarch 7, 2020

(Bloomberg) -- The Chinese owner of gay dating app Grindr has reached a deal to offload one of the world’s largest LGBT social platforms, a year after U.S. regulators pressed for disposal over national security concerns.

Beijing Kunlun Tech Co. said in a Friday filing to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange that it has agreed to sell its 99% stake in Grindr LLC to San Vicente Acquisition LLC for about $608.5 million. The deal needs the approval of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., better known as CFIUS, which required the Chinese firm to unwind its purchase of Grindr, according to the filing.

The sale underscores a growing concern in the U.S. that Beijing could use Chinese tech companies as a tool to amass sensitive data on millions of American citizens. The U.S. watchdog has also begun a review of ByteDance Inc.’s 2017 purchase of the business that became TikTok, a viral mini-video app.

Kunlun bought a majority stake in Grindr for just $93 million in 2016, and acquired the remaining shares two years later. Prior to the CFIUS inquiry, the Chinese firm was planning an initial public offering for the app overseas.