British universities Oxford and Cambridge are constantly ranked among the best in the world and celebrated for...

If you like your period dramas with spirited heroines who swig champagne, sweeping coastal shots

PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 12, 2023--

The head of American Airlines Group Inc.’s pilots union said members shouldn’t fly to Israel until it is

A professional cuddler who makes a living giving clients hugs has said people travel from all over the globe to receive the cuddle therapy she offers which is “far less intimate than a massage” and helps people from “all walks of life”. Natasha Wicks, 44, from Coventry, West Midlands, says that despite criticism, cuddling is scientifically proven to release happy hormones like dopamine and that a lot of her clients are “the big spoon in life” and go to her for emotional support that they do not have at home. As such, many of her clients are caregivers and most of them join Natasha for two-hour hugging sessions, costing £70 an hour. The sessions vary depending on what the client wants, some having “emotional hugs”, others talking more and some wanting to “sit at opposite ends of the sofa with our legs and feet entwined”. Natasha became a cuddle therapist in 2015 and, while she has had comments online from people criticising the practice, she said that her family and friends were unsurprised when she first started giving professional cuddles. She said: “They all said to me that I give the best cuddles so it’s not surprising that I’d start doing it as a job. “It’s very much what I do, I help people and want to make people feel better. It’s a natural thing when someone is going through a tough time to want to give them a hug. “Cuddle therapy might not be as widely accepted in society but it’s far less intimate than other things like massages which are seen as normal.” Prior to becoming a cuddler, Natasha originally trained as a CBT therapist and counsellor. She said: “There’d be situations where I would be talking to someone and they’d really need a hug, but obviously, you’d have professional boundaries in place and it wouldn’t have been appropriate. “It was just a really natural thing. One client had finished her final session and we had agreed that she wasn’t my patient anymore so we hugged goodbye. She said to me that she’d wanted to do that for a long time and I thought ‘me too’.” Looking into cuddle therapy, which she said was increasing in popularity in 2014, Natasha took a training course. By 2015, she was a qualified cuddler and started taking on new patients for cuddle sessions. Natasha provides a minimum session of one hour but said most people go for at least two hours, sometimes longer if they are receiving more than one type of therapy. She said: “I always give people a hug on the doorstep when they arrive and then they’ll come in and relax, and we’ll have an initial chat about what brings them here. After that, I’ll put on some ambient music and we’ll have a cuddle on my cuddle sofa. “It can be daunting coming into a stranger’s house and I can tell the difference in them from arriving to leaving. The first hug they might be angled away from me but when we’re hugging goodbye, I can get my head in between their neck and shoulders and you can almost feel that a weight has been lifted from them.” There is not one type of person that visits Natasha for cuddles, but she says that a lot of her clients are caregivers. She said: “There’s all sorts of people who come for a cuddle, from people who have moved away from home for the first time and just want a mum hug all the way to people in their 80s. “I’m inclusive of all genders and all ages. I get a lot of clients who are the carers of their family and they are so busy looking after other people, and probably giving the hugs and support to other people, that they don’t have that for themselves. “A lot of people that come to see me are generally people are the big spoon in the life – they take care of others and don’t want to show a vulnerable side to people because they don’t want people to worry that they can’t cope. “I get a lot of carers, a lot of NHS staff, a lot of mums, a lot of people that are in a world where they have to be the strong one in the situation and they just want to be able to come here and let their guard down.” Natasha’s priority is to make people feel at ease when they arrive as she said it can be “nerve wracking” turning up at someone’s house for a hug. Setting out clear boundaries prior to meeting, the therapist has said that the patients she has welcomed into her home have all been respectful. She added: “I always say to people that when your body relaxes, your tummy might crumble and mine might too, but that people don’t need to worry about it. Sometimes people fall asleep and they might snore or fart, it’s just natural things that happen. It’s happened twice where someone has got an erection and that’s fine, I have boundaries and we’ll just change position. “I want people to feel reassured that, as soon as they get in, they feel comfortable.” Despite the unconventional therapy, when Natasha first took on cuddle clients, she said her family were completely “unsurprised” and the step from CBT therapy to cuddle therapy was a “natural evolution”. While Natasha focuses her time on a holistic approach for treating people, she noted that there is also neuroscience behind cuddles. According to the 44-year-old, physical touch activates the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex and cuddling releases oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin. Now, Natasha also does EMDR therapy and is a mental health swim host, and has clients travel from all over the globe to receive her hugs. She said: “Working from Coventry is brilliant because I’m only nine minutes on the train from Birmingham Airport and people come to visit me from all over. I get a client from Belgium, someone from Ireland and people from all over the UK who come to see me. “I wanted to find a sofa bed that just looked like a big comfy sofa for cuddle sessions. I’d started off with a big L shaped sofa but after about five years, it was sagging a bit, there’d been a lot of healing done on that sofa and it was time for a new one. “Now I have a sofa bed in my living room that I use as my cuddle sofa. It’s in the living room and it’s used for everyday life, watching TV with my partner, having people round and also for my work.” Breaking down the taboo around cuddle therapy, Natasha hopes more people will embrace the alternative treatment. She added: “As it’s become more popular, more people are becoming qualified as cuddlers and I think that’s great. “I’ve had comments online before of people thinking it’s weird or not understanding but there are other things we accept in society that are much more intimate than cuddles, like massages. “It’s not weird, it’s actually a really lovely thing to be able to make another soul feel better for a while.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live What is ‘beer tanning’ and why are experts warning against it? Christian Cowan: Designing is like dreaming Deborah James’s daughter launches anniversary clothing line for Bowelbabe Fund

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 30, 2023--

A combative three-judge panel at one of the most conservative courts in the country grilled attorneys for the federal government and a drug manufacturer as anti-abortion activists continue a legal battle to overturn the government’s approval of a widely used abortion drug. On 17 May, the case against mifepristone returned to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, where attorneys for the US Department of Justice and drug manufacturer Danco Laboratories faced skeptical Republican-appointed judges hearing oral arguments in a case that could upend abortion care for millions of Americans. Within seconds of her opening argument, Justice Department attorney Sarah Harrington was interrupted by Judge James Ho, a Donald Trump appointee, who challenged her description of the legal challenge against the drug’s approval by the US Food and Drug Administration. “I don’t think there’s ever been any court that has vacated an FDA determination that a drug is safe to be on the market,” she replied. “FDA can make that determination based on exercising its own scientific expertise, but it’s not a court’s role to come in and second-guess that expertise.” “Why not focus on the facts,” Judge Ho said, “rather than this ‘FDA can do no wrong’ theme.” The judges repeatedly interrupted Ms Harrington and appeared sympathetic to the plaintiffs: an anti-abortion group represented by influential right-wing legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, whose senior counsel Erin Morrow Halley – the wife of Republican senator Josh Hawley – baselessly asserted that medication abortion is “particularly dangerous”. Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, who was appointed by George W Bush, also took a moment to chastise lawyers for their “unusual remarks” in filings objecting to the widely derided lower-court decision from a former right-wing activist attorney who was appointed to the federal bench by Mr Trump. Judge Elrod suggested their criticisms amounted to personal attacks and suggested that the attorney retract the statements and apologise. “Those statements reflect our view that the district court was very outside the bounds,” said Jessica Ellsworth, an attorney for Danco. “I don’t think those remarks, any of them, were intended as any personal attack.” The judges are not expected to rule immediately. But a decision from the panel judges – each with a history of support for abortion restrictions – is likely to return the case to the US Supreme Court, which has paused any action on mifepristone until the legal challenge plays out. In her arguments, Ms Hawley conflated the risk of serious complications from mifepristone – which is less than 1 per cent – with the risk that a medication abortion failed and would then require medical attention. Her arguments suggested that doctors are enduring a moral harm by providing abortion care, without evidence that doctors have been forced to do so, while also claiming that the FDA illegally approved the drug when it was approved more than 20 years ago. The judges repeatedly questioned the FDA’s approval process for mifepristone, which plaintiffs argued was done too hastily through an expedited process that is typically reserved for treating serious or life-threatening illnesses. But the FDA did not do that with mifepristone; it took years of study before the FDA’s approval. The part of that process that the agency invoked for mifepristone’s approval allowed the FDA to add safety restrictions, such as a requirement that physicians be able to diagnose ectopic pregnancies. But judges appeared to argue that because pregnancy is not an illness, mifepristone should not have been approved through that process at all, repeating plaintiffs’ false claim that the FDA called pregnancy a “life-threatening illness.” “When we celebrated Mothers’ Day, were we celebrating illness?” Judge Ho said at one point. “The arguments today demonstrated in detail that the case has no legal or scientific merit and should have been laughed out of court from the very start,” Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the deck is stacked as the judges hearing this case are well known for their extraordinary hostility to abortion,” she added. “The whole point of the case is to prevent anyone in America, no matter where they live, from using a medication that has been safely used in this country for decades and is used in most abortions today.” Major medical groups and research from hundreds of studies over the last two decades have confirmed the overwhelming safety and efficacy of the drug, one of two drugs used in a two-drug protocol for a medication abortion, the most common form of abortion care in the US. Studies show it is as safe to use as common over-the-counter pain relievers like ibuprofen and acetaminophen, and the protocol for medication abortion is used in more than 60 other countries. The drug was first approved by the FDA in 2000 and is approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. A vast majority of abortions occur within the first nine weeks of pregnancy. From 2019 through 2020, nearly 93 per cent of all abortions were performed before the 13th week, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mifepristone is also used to treat miscarriages. Roughly 10 per cent of clinically recognised pregnancies end in miscarriages, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association also joined a brief in the challenge opposing arguments from anti-abortion groups. Last year, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Amarillo, Texas on behalf of a group of anti-abortion activists incorporated as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which was organised that same month with an address in Amarillo. The Alliance Defending Freedom also led the challenge at the Supreme Court that ultimately struck down Roe v Wade. In April, US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk – a former right-wing activist lawyer who was appointed to the federal judiciary by then-President Trump – issued a ruling to suspend the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, which was immediately challenged by abortion rights advocates, providers, major medical groups, drug manufacturers and the Biden administration. An appeal landed at the Fifth Circuit court, which has jurisdiction over the Amarillo court. A three-judge panel blocked a part of the judge’s ruling, and a subsequent ruling at the Supreme Court paused the lower-court ruling as the legal challenge continues. Read More North Carolina Republicans approve 12-week abortion ban as sweeping restrictions spread across US South Nebraska Republicans approve combined gender-affirming care ban and anti-abortion bill after epic filibuster Anti-abortion laws harm patients facing dangerous and life-threatening complications, report finds A Texas man sued his ex-wife’s friends for allegedly helping her with an abortion. Now they’re suing him Louisiana Republicans refuse rape and incest exceptions to state’s sweeping anti-abortion law What is mifepristone? The widely used pill in the abortion rights battle at the Supreme Court

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 7, 2023--

You'll soon have to pay to use TweetDeck, with Twitter announcing that the previously free

When you think "Barbie," you think of Barbie and Ken — but probably not Allan.

TL;DR: Take control of your health with the best blood pressure monitoring solution. The Aktiia

PITTSBURGH & CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 17, 2023--