Alice Webb, 33, died in the early hours of Tuesday morning
Two people have been arrested following the death of a woman who is believed to have undergone a non-surgical Brazilian butt lift (BBL).
Alice Webb, 33, died at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital in the early hours of Tuesday morning, after falling unwell.
Gloucestershire Police said it was called by the ambulance service at 11:35 BST on Monday, and an investigation – led by the Major Crime Investigation Team – is ongoing.
The two people, who had been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, have been released on police bail.
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Save Face, a national register of accredited practitioners who offer non-surgical cosmetic treatments said this is the “first case of a death caused by a non-surgical BBL in the UK”.
The treatment is designed to make buttocks bigger, more rounded or lifted and sees fat or dermal filler injected into the buttocks to change size or shape.
While non-surgical BBLs are not illegal in the UK, last year Wolverhampton City Council barred a company from carrying out the procedure after identifying risks associated with their processes, including blood clots, sepsis, and the potential for the death of body tissues.
Five local authorities in Essex and Glasgow followed suit and have banned certain companies from carrying out liquid BBLs in their area.
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‘Crisis waiting to happen’
Save Face’s director Ashton Collins said the organisation has supported 500 women who have suffered complications from the procedure.
Ms Collins said: “Liquid BBL procedures are a crisis waiting to happen. They are advertised on social media as ‘risk-free’, ‘cheaper’ alternatives to the surgical counterpart and that could not be further from the truth.”
Save Face has criticised non-healthcare injectors carrying out liquid BBLs saying there were often unable to identify and manage the complications of their clients and often misdiagnosing abscesses, and tissue necrosis as bruising.
The lives of the vulnerable, especially young children, are at stake according to the UK’s leading vaccine expert as a campaign to boost uptake of routine jabs launches today.
Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, paediatrician and director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, is urging parents to get their children vaccinated amid rising cases of whooping cough and measles.
The increase has coincided with sustained falls in vaccination levels for various diseases with devastating consequences.
Since January, there have been 2,465 confirmed measles cases reported in England, which is very contagious and can causes serious complications such as swelling in the brain. In February, an adult visiting from Ireland who caught measles while in the UK died after they returned home.
The whooping cough vaccine is offered to all pregnant women between 16 and 32 weeks of pregnancy to protect their babies, but most recent figures suggest uptake is around just 60 per cent.
There have been nine reported deaths of infants from whooping cough in England since November last year, while the latest figures from the UK Health Security Agency show 12,200 confirmed cases between January and July 2024.
Measles – symptoms to watch out for
Measles usually starts with cold-like symptoms, followed by a rash a few days later. Some people may also get small spots in their mouth.
The first symptoms of measles include:
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a high temperature
a runny or blocked nose
sneezing
a cough
red, sore, watery eyes
spots in the mouth
Small white spots may appear inside the cheeks and on the back of the lips a few days later. These spots usually last a few days.
A rash usually appears a few days after the cold-like symptoms. The rash starts on the face and behind the ears before spreading to the rest of the body. The spots of the measles rash are sometimes raised and join together to form blotchy patches. They’re not usually itchy.
The rash looks brown or red on white skin. It may be harder to see on brown and black skin. It’s very unlikely to be measles if you’ve had both doses of the MMR vaccine or you’ve had measles before.
Sir Andrew said: “The recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough all across the UK, which have arisen because of falling vaccination rates, threaten the lives of the vulnerable, especially young children.
“Vaccines are the umbrellas that keep the rain away from all those who shelter beneath them. If we are to stay dry, we must put the umbrellas back up. Make sure that every child is immunised today.”
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The campaign, which aims to educate and inform the public about how vaccines protect not only individuals but entire communities – including those who are vulnerable such as newborns and older adults – was created by the Vaccine Knowledge Project team at the Oxford Vaccine Group.
Researchers have developed an animation that, they say, focuses on the “critical role” whooping cough jabs play in protecting against infection, which can cause serious complications such as pneumonia.
It coincides with publication of a Lancet paper which shows the MMR vaccine remains the best protection against measles for life, protecting over 95 per cent of vaccinated people.
Most measles cases in England are in unvaccinated children and young people, but the proportion of measles cases in people who received two doses of the MMR vaccine has increased since 2010, especially among young adults: from 1.9 per cent in 2011 to 7.2 per cent in 2019.
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Signs of whooping cough
The first signs of whooping cough are similar to a cold, such as a runny nose and sore throat (a high temperature is uncommon).
After about a week, you or your child:
will get coughing bouts that last for a few minutes and are worse at night
may make a “whoop” sound – a gasp for breath between coughs (young babies and some adults may not “whoop”)
may have difficulty breathing after a coughing bout and may turn blue or grey (young infants)
may bring up a thick mucus, which can make you vomit
may become very red in the face (more common in adults)
The cough may last for several weeks or months.
The authors said the cause of this increase remains unclear, but a modelling study by scientists at The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) suggests slow MMR vaccine waning may partially contribute to rising measles cases in double-vaccinated people when outbreaks occur.
Dr Alexis Robert, from LSHTM, said: “Although our results suggest that a slight waning of immunity from the MMR vaccine over time explains why we are seeing an increase in the proportion of measles cases in double-vaccinated people in England, it’s important to note that the biggest risk factor for measles outbreaks by far is low vaccination rates.
“The MMR vaccine remains highly effective and receiving two doses will protect you and those around you against measles infection. Even if you are one of the small number of people who get an infection after two doses of MMR vaccine, previous studies suggest measles symptoms in people who have been vaccinated are milder than in people who have not had a vaccine.”
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Charlie Firth, vaccine knowledge and public engagement manager at the Oxford Vaccine Group, said the reasons for the drop in vaccination rates range from from vaccine hesitancy and inequities in access to services to complacency.
Read Next
“Many of the diseases we are trying to protect against have not been seen in a long time, and so the perception within the general public of the importance of vaccination seems to have dropped,” he said.
Sir Andrew said: “Measles cases are on the rise across the globe because children are just not getting jabbed. Most of the problem is the simple inadequacy of health systems, including the NHS, to connect with families, provide knowledgeable advice and ensure easy access to measles and other life-saving vaccines.
“It is a fact that measles goes away when at least 95 per cent of children are consistently vaccinated in a population and achieving this will stop the ongoing and future outbreaks here in our communities – we must fix this for our children.”
You recently ran two pieces on online fraud (Opinion, August 20; and Inside Business, September 10). This is one of the biggest financial crime threats facing all our societies, and is widely under-reported by victims.
The Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists estimates that fraud scams and bank fraud caused $485.6bn in losses globally in 2023; that in Europe 80 per cent of reported frauds are cyber-enabled and that cross-border fraud rates are nine times higher than for domestic fraud.
Luckily, financial intelligence units and regulators of major countries are aware of the threat and taking measures, both by “following the money” and educating the public.
One recent example is the successful investigatory efforts of Tracfin, the French financial intelligence unit, which in 2023 froze six times more suspicious transactions than in 2021 and 2022 combined, part of France’s efforts to curb subsidies fraud, VAT fraud and social security fraud.
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Payment institutions, normally payment originators (banks, electronic money institutions) should make use of all the guidance provided by the authorities to enhance their detection and prevention systems to stop suspicious payments and report them to the authorities.
And finally, potential victims need to be aware of the risk and identify fraud attempts. Of late some US states (California, Pennsylvania and Connecticut) have begun taking legislative measures to force financial institutions to protect their elderly clients by allowing banks and credit unions to suspend or delay payments if the bank suspects exploitation, theft or fraud.
Ultimately, investigators and police rely on victims reporting the crime and on financial institutions reporting on suspicious activity that they observe.
Leonor Vereda Consultant and Former Financial Crime Compliance Officer, UBS Basel, Switzerland
CHOCOLATE lovers have been left thrilled after discovering a “strange combo” hidden within a new Cadbury’s bar.
The expert chocolate makers have tried their hand at creating a bold new flavour that has got shoppers going wild online trying to hunt down the sweet treat.
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The interesting Pink Lemonade Cadbury chocolate bar has finally started hitting shelvesCredit: Facebook / Newfoodsuk
Customers have finally started getting their hands on Cadbury‘s new Dairy Milk Pink Lemonade edition which has recently hit some shelves across the globe.
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Described as being the classic Dairy Milk chocolate on the outside with a “flowing raspberry lemonade flavoured centre”, the snack is sure to attract chocolate fans.
A picture of the oozing pink creme coming from the choc soon went viral online with hundreds curious as to what it tastes like.
One intrigued shopper said: “Oooh i wanna try this.”
A second said: “Need to try that.”
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As a third simply said: “Yummy.”
Despite the seemingly global appeal for fresh new flavours of chocolate the pink delight is actually only available in one country so far.
Australiais the lucky nation who currently sell the Dairy Milk variation with it being seen in various stores including the iconic Woolworths.
They have the 46g bar’s flying off the shelves at the moment.
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For those Brits who are interested in trying out exactly what a mixture of fizzy raspberry and smooth milk chocolate is like then the best bet is to order a bar online.
Ebay are currently advertising a bulk order of the bars online with other companies such as WorldSnacks also having them in stock for a range of different prices.
How to save money on chocolate
WE all love a bit of chocolate from now and then, but you don’t have to break the bank buying your favourite bar.
Consumer reporter Sam Walker reveals how to cut costs…
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Go own brand – if you’re not too fussed on flavour and just want to supplant your chocolate cravings, you’ll save by going for supermarket’s own brand bars.
Shop around – if you’ve spotted your favourite variety at the supermarket, make sure you check if it’s cheaper elsewhere.
Websites like Trolley.co.uk let you compare prices on products across all the major chains to see if you’re getting the best deal.
Look out for yellow stickers – supermarket staff put yellow, and sometimes orange and red, stickers on to products to show they’ve been reduced.
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They usually do this if the product is coming to the end of its best before date or the packaging is slightly damaged.
Buy bigger bars – most of the time, but not always, chocolate is cheaper per 100g the larger the bar.
So if you’ve got the appetite, and you were going to buy a hefty amount of chocolate anyway, you might as well go bigger.
More chocolate bargains
It comes as shoppers are racing to stock up on their chocolate treats for Christmas – don’t miss out.
The mega deal starts online and in stores tomorrow, Wednesday, September 25.
Customers will need a Clubcard to bag the discount – which will see Cadbury Heroes, Celebrations, Cadbury Roses and Quality Street reduced from £6.00 to £3.95.
This means shoppers will be pocketing a 34 per cent discount on the sweet treats and saving £2.05.
In July a botched software update caused chaos for the airline industry worldwide
When the CrowdStrike software bug bricked 8.5 million computers around the world on 19 July, some of the first people to notice the effects were air travellers.
Anthony Bosman, an academic at Andrews University in Michigan was trying to board his flight from Michigan to Florida when he realised he couldn’t download a mobile boarding pass to his smartphone.
So he went to check in at the airport, in person, and watched in amazement as an airline employee looked up his name on a paper list and then wrote out his boarding pass – by hand.
“It felt like a blast from the past,” he recalls. “The ticket agent, I remember how she commented that her hand was tired from having to write so many of them.” His flight took off as planned.
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Multiple other passengers, including many in India, reported having the same experience that day.
The CrowdStrike bug also hit banks, telecoms firms, health services and online retailers.
This week a senior executive at the firm appeared before a US congressional committee and said he was “deeply sorry” for the chaos caused.
For a brief moment in July, some organisations had to forget about their computer-based processes and do things the old-fashioned way.
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If you look through articles about past cyber-attacks and IT failures on the BBC News website, you’ll find countless examples of organisations that have had to “go back to pen and paper” in the face of disruption.
It sounds an almost pitiful predicament. And yet, while it certainly isn’t desirable, some cyber-experts are now advising companies to plan for switching to paper-based processes in the event of IT failure.
Rather than an ad hoc workaround, pen and paper systems could be something staff practise using from time to time so that they can switch away from their computers seamlessly if required.
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Norsk Hydro
When Norsk Hydro was hacked in 2019 thousands of staff were locked out of the company systems
One company that knows the value of paper is Norsk Hydro, a Norwegian aluminium and renewable energy firm.
In 2019, hackers targeted Hydro with ransomware that locked staff out of more than 20,000 computers. Bosses at Hydro decided they would not pay a ransom fee to restore access, meaning that 35,000 staff working across 40 countries had to find other ways of doing their jobs, temporarily.
They dug old binders out of basements with instructions on how to produce particular aluminium products, for instance, recalls Halvor Molland, a spokesman for Hydro. At some locations, by sheer chance, staff had printed out order requests just before the cyber-attack hit.
“Their creativity… was tremendous,” says Mr Molland. While computers with customer information and company data were locked out, factory equipment was mercifully unaffected by the ransomware. At some facilities, staff bought computers and printers from local retailers so they could print off information for factory workers. And vintage office kit came in handy. “We actually had to dust off some old telefaxes,” remembers Mr Molland.
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Although production fell by up to 50% at certain plants, these workarounds kept the business going. “You need to do what you need to do,” as Mr Molland puts it. Reflecting, he suggests that companies might want to keep printed copies of key information such as internal telephone numbers or checklists so that some work can continue even in the event of a massive cyber-attack.
Norsk Hydro
For some tasks Norsk Hydro had to work off paper instructions after the hack
“People have realised the importance of having these manual methods because of the severity of some of the recent cyber-attacks and IT outages,” says Chris Butler, resilience director at disaster recovery and business continuity firm Databarracks.
He mentions one customer his company works with – an industrial distribution firm – that has put together “disaster recovery packs” and sent them to all of its branches. The packs include paper forms and a fax machine – a contingency in case their digital ordering system becomes unavailable. “If that goes down, their only alternative, they realised, was to have these forms.”
Mr Butler suggests that companies have a training day where employees practise using flipcharts and whiteboards instead of computers, to see if they can still do their jobs effectively that way.
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Some organisations recommend using paper for security reasons. Parts of the US court system require certain documents to be filed on either paper, for example, or a secure device such as an encrypted USB drive.
Obviously there are limits to paper-based processes. Mr Butler notes that if bankers, for example, lose access to their trading terminals during an IT incident, they can’t easily switch to paper-based alternatives.
The biggest problem with pen and paper systems is that they don’t scale well, says Gareth Mott, from the Royal United Services Institute. It’s slower than using a computer for many tasks ,and it’s hard or perhaps impossible to coordinate thousands of employees using such methods across multiple office locations.
But practising workarounds really can help, adds Dr Mott. He and colleagues have researched how “war-gaming” and IT failure roleplay exercises can impact employees’ responses to real-life cyber-attacks. “We found that the companies that had done that, sometimes a few weeks before they had a live incident, really benefitted,” he says.
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It’s not just pen and paper that could come in handy. Dr Mott is aware of one firm that bought “crates worth of Chromebooks” for staff in the wake of a cyber-incident, so that they could work without needing access to the company network.
Some companies might have dormant WhatsApp or Signal messaging groups that they can ask employees to use for internal communications, if access to the company email servers goes down, for instance.
Both Dr Mott and Mr Butler stress the importance of off-site or otherwise segregated data backups so that, in the event of a ransomware attack, all that vital information is not necessarily lost.
More Technology of Business
Cathy Miron is chief executive of eSilo, a data backup firm based in Florida. There are hundreds of such companies around the world, including Databarracks, that provide secure data backup services.
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Ms Miron’s company offers off-site, cloud-based data storage on a separate network to that of their customers; and on-site, custom-built servers as well. “We have had a 100% ransomware recovery rate thus far,” she says.
For all the sophistication of contemporary computer systems, it’s the simple, improvised workarounds that can save companies when a crisis hits. Mrs Miron mentions one customer who, at the time of writing, was using a Verizon mi-fi, or mobile broadband wireless router, system to access backup data because their main computer network had been completely shut down following a cyber-incident.
“You should expect it, at some point in time, to be a victim of a cyber-attack,” emphasises Mr Molland. “What do you do in the meantime? How do you keep the wheels turning?”
SILVER SWANS: The Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) offers free online ballet classes targeted at older learners from around the age of 55, though there is no strict age limit.
There are also in-person Silver Swan lessons across the UK, some of which are free or low-cost.
Take part and find out more at royalacademyofdance.org.
READ MORE MONEY SAVING TIPS
FREE ZUMBA: Get moving with high-energy Zumba Latin dance classes.
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If you are a member of a gym, check if it is part of regular schedules you can access.
Or sign up for a seven-day free trial of the Zumba Dance Fitness Workout app.
Set a reminder to cancel after the promo period or you will be charged.
CHEER FROM THE SIDES: Strictly is mostly filmed with a live audience at Elstree Film Studios in Hertfordshire.
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The public can soak up the atmosphere with free tickets allocated at random.
Martin Lewis issues reminder to anyone born between 1984 and 2006 as they can get £1,000 free
The majority for 2024 have gone, but tickets for the Christmas Special could soon be released.
Sign up to the mailing list at bbc.co.uk/showsandtours.
TICKETS FOR A TENNER: Sadler’s Wells runs dance productions from flamenco to hip-hop and everything in between at venues across London.
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If you are between 16 and 30, you can get a free Barclays Dance Pass, which unlocks cut-price £10 tickets across Sadler’s Wells venues.
Sign up at sadlerswells.com.
TEA DANCES: Some local authorities run free or low-cost tea dances for older residents.
Contact your local council to find out more.
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Or many of the over 120 local Age UKs across the country hold dance classes that vary from line dancing to ballet.
All are low cost, if not free.
Ask at your local branch or call 0800 678 1602.
All prices on page correct at time of going to press. Deals and offers subject to availability
Deal of the day
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Treat your lashes to the Benefit mascara trio, now on offer for £16.20 at lookfantastic.comCredit: lookfantastic.com
BAT those lashes with a Benefit mascara trio, which is now on offer for £16.20 at lookfantastic.com, down from £27.
SAVE: £10.80
Cheap treat
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Robinsons ginger and orange fruit cordial is £3 at Sainsbury’sCredit: Sainsburys
MIX up a tasty refreshment with Robinsons ginger and orange fruit cordial, £3, at Sainsbury’s.
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What’s new?
ASDA has partnered with influencer Erica Davies to create a capsule clothing collection for autumn.
Prices start from £9 and include this leopard-print cardigan, in stores now.
Top swap
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Dyson’s limited-edition pink supersonic hair dryer is £329.99Credit: Dyson
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Save £160 on Boots’ £169.99 versionCredit: Boots
GET salon-style locks with Dyson’s limited-edition pink supersonic hair dryer, £329.99, from John Lewis.
Or bag a serious saving with Mark Hill’s Pick ’n’ Mix Flexi Air styler £169.99, from Boots.
SAVE: £160
Little helper
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RELIVE classic blockbusters including Twister and Despicable Me 4 in immersive 4DX at Cineworld for just £5 a ticket until October 3.
Find your nearest venue at cineworld.co.uk.
Shop & save
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This cute ceramic candle is down from £8 to £5.60 at DunelmCredit: Dunhelm
FILL your home with a delicious seasonal scent from this pumpkin ceramic candle, down from £8 to £5.60 at Dunelm.
SAVE: £2.40
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Hot right now
BAG yourself two twister wraps and two signature fries from KFC for £10 when ordering for delivery through its app.
PLAY NOW TO WIN £200
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