The Animal Welfare Committee, which advises the UK government, has published a damning report condemning the animal suffering involved in the fur trade.

Its report on ‘the responsible sourcing of fur’ calls out the suffering inflicted on animals who are confined in cages on fur farms or caught in brutal traps in the wild. And it indicates support for legislative action, stating:

consumer and market forces currently do not and cannot provide sufficient pressure to adequately safeguard animal welfare.

Despite banning the farming of animals for their fur more than two decades ago, the UK imports millions of pounds worth of animal fur from overseas every year. This creates a double standard, says Humane World for Animals UK (formerly called Humane Society International UK), which leads the #FurFreeBritain campaign.

The charity is calling on the UK government to act on the report’s findings and deliver on its recent Animal Welfare Strategy commitment to ‘uphold high animal welfare standards in trade’ by banning the UK’s bloody fur trade for good.

Meanwhile, DEFRA has published responses to its 2021 Call for Evidence on the UK fur trade. The results show more than 96% of the almost 30,000 respondents strongly agreed that killing animals for their fur is wrong. Respondents:

overwhelmingly did not support the import, sale or export of fur or fur products.

Claire Bass, senior director of campaigns and public affairs for Humane World for Animals UK said:

It’s clear from the Committee’s findings that trading in fur from caged, tormented, diseased and injured animals is completely at odds with the UK government’s recent Animal Welfare Strategy commitment to ‘uphold high animal welfare standards as part of our approach to trade’.

The Committee states that fur should not be sourced from animals who have not had ‘a life worth living’ or a humane death and then explains all the ways in which the global fur trade fails to meet these criteria.

The previous Labour government rightly banned fur farming 25 years ago. We must now stop outsourcing that same suffering overseas. The government now has both formal evidence and a strong public mandate to end the UK’s bloody fur trade.

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Animal Welfare Committee report quotes and conclusions

The Animal Welfare Committee states that:

Within a commercial setting it is not possible and is unlikely to ever be possible to farm species such as fox and raccoon dog without having a detrimental effect on their health and welfare, or in a way which meets their welfare needs.

It adds:

There are no species being farmed for fur whose welfare needs are being adequately met by current standards and safeguards.

The report’s concerns include:

• Criticism that cage sizes within industry ‘welfare assurance’ schemes are ‘insufficient to meet physical and psychological welfare needs’, and cage design is inadequate.
• The use of inhumane killing methods, including CO2 which ‘has been shown to be a highly aversive method of killing mink [which] fails to kill rapidly’, and anal electrocution.
• Criticism of fur industry assurance schemes for both farmed and trapped fur, including outdated welfare science and lack of: consistency, training, unannounced inspections, independent auditing and traceability.
• Lack of industry consideration of the experience and welfare of individual animals on fur farms, with welfare assurance schemes such as WelFur permitting a high threshold of allowance for animals with serious welfare problems (e.g 15% of foxes may have ‘severely bent feet’).
• Challenges with traceability of the country of origin, species and method of production of fur (farmed or trapped) imported into the UK, using available data from HMRC.
• Although over a third (37%) of fur imported to the UK over the last 10 years came from China, the Committee was unable to obtain any evidence about industry application of ‘welfare certification’ schemes in the country.
• Concern that trapping standards for fur subsequently imported into the UK are ‘not sufficient to prevent unnecessary suffering, and do not adequately protect animal welfare’. The standards permit lethal head/chest crushing traps that take five minutes to kill species including beavers and otters.
• Concern that “consumers are not currently able to accurately identify whether products are fur of animal origin (wild caught or farmed) or ‘faux’ fur, or a mixture of the two”.

Public opposition to the fur trade

The evidence released today, of animal suffering and also of strong public opposition to the fur trade, now puts the need for a fur import ban beyond doubt. Therefore, Humane World for Animals UK is calling on the government to act swiftly.

More than 200 MPs support the Fur Free Britain campaign. Ruth Jones MP led a Westminster Hall debate earlier in March which saw cross-party support for the issue.

There is also strong public support for a ban on fur imports and sales. 77% of UK voters believe that when a type of farming is banned in the UK for being too cruel, we should also ban imports of products produced the same way overseas.

Last year campaigners handed in a 1.5 million signature petition to the prime minister in support of a ban. Furthermore, the vast majority (93%) of the UK public reject wearing real animal fur, while only 3% wear it. The same poll found that the words 79% of people most closely associated with a fashion brand selling fur are ‘unethical’, ‘outdated’, ‘cruel’ and ‘out of touch’.

The Animal Welfare Committee’s findings echo the damning indictment delivered by the European Food Safety Authority’s 2025 scientific opinion on the welfare of animals on fur farms. It concluded that the cage systems used on fur farms fail to meet the basic welfare needs of mink, foxes, raccoon dogs and chinchillas. And this includes the industry’s so-called “high welfare” or “certified farms”.

Featured image via Kristo Muurimaa / Oikeutta eläimille / Humane World for Animals UK

1) Put your phone away at least half an hour before bed

2) Will yourself awake

3) Give the “military method” a go

4) Check your thermostat

5) Exercise four to eight hours before bed

6) Stick to a regular sleep routine

The Associated Press (AP) has finally used the word invasion to describe Israel’s illegal actions in Lebanon.

Of course, it could have used something far more accurate – like an “illegal invasion by a supremacist ethnostate” – but that’s probably pushing the boat out a bit too far.

Israel reported on with a crumb of accuracy

In true Western media fashion, it felt the need to publish a whole think piece on why it finally decided to tell the truth.

Such brave journalists, finally opening a dictionary.

Why are you so terrified of reporting basic facts?

— AIPAC Tracker (@TrackAIPAC) March 26, 2026

It only took two and a half years for the journalists at AP to actually do their jobs.

BREAKING: AP uses word to mean what word means https://t.co/d3rsQAS5pU

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) March 27, 2026

And, the article should indeed have been just one sentence.

This article coulda been one sentence: “We are calling Israel’s invasion of Lebanon an invasion because that is what you call it when a country invades another country”. https://t.co/0eoZFNVNGp

— Colter Louwerse (@ColterL) March 27, 2026

But instead, AP decided to quote ‘Israeli officials’, i.e. terrorists, in detail.

AP also decided to state that:

Israel has invaded Lebanon four times in the past 50 years: 1978, 1982, 2006 and 2024.

It did this without offering any context or mentioning that all four invasions were very, very illegal.

There is literally no other circumstance where an international news outlet would feel the need to justify such a basic editorial decision. But because it’s Israel…

Imagine the kind of iron control over the media that requires a full published explanation when a word is used correctly against Israel https://t.co/kIlUzWrtIr

— Sarayu Pani (@sarayupani) March 27, 2026

Jokes aside, this is actually really telling. In no other circumstance would AP feel it has to explain/justify reporting news accurately. They only feel the need to do this because they are constantly being hounded by pro-Israel orgs like CAMERA that demand a pro-Israel bias. https://t.co/ASdwGTKf4U

— Tariq Kenney-Shawa (@tksshawa) March 27, 2026

Israel could tell the right-wing media the sky was green and they would probably publish it, because… ‘antisemitism’.

‘Israel says the sky is green. Others say it’s blue. Here’s why we’re now calling it blue.’ https://t.co/RE80ZqFQyu

— Davide Mastracci (@DavideMastracci) March 26, 2026

Still minimising the truth

Yes, a Western news outlet is finally admitting that it doesn’t usually tell the truth.

“We’ve decided to tell the truth. Here’s why we usually don’t.” https://t.co/v2YK1FuWeV

— Omar Sakr (@omarsakrpoet) March 27, 2026

However, notice how no media outlets describe Russia’s invasion as an invasion of ‘Eastern Ukraine’. It’s simply an invasion of Ukraine – a sovereign nation which has the right to self-defence under international law.

To make matters worse, it took AP only two days to correctly name Russia’s invasion.

It took @AP two days to call Russia’s invasion of Ukraine an invasion. I found the article.

It took four weeks of total destruction for them to call Israel’s actions in Lebanon an invasion, and they even felt the need to explain why.

That comparison is truly remarkable.…

— Abdullah Hassan (@8abdullahhassan) March 26, 2026

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AP describing Israel’s actions as an ‘Invasion of Southern Lebanon’ is a precursor to one thing and one thing only. That is Israel annexing the south of Lebanon – and the media whitewashing it.

Only because it’s become untenable to deny manifest reality. Also though note how it’s still “southern” Lebanon and not just Lebanon. Whereas Russia of course is always referred to as invading Ukraine, not eastern Ukraine https://t.co/phkEZHTmcR

— Nate Bear (@NateB_Panic) March 27, 2026

Meanwhile, AP and the majority of other corporate media outlets still refuse to use the words genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and illegal occupation. I know that’s a lot of letters to get in the right order, but come on…

Ethnic cleansing too spicy? Land theft too onerous? Vandalism too old school? https://t.co/QAj1LFFK9v

— Robert Young Pelton (@RYP__) March 26, 2026

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Allow me to congratulate myself for reluctantly telling the truth eventually.

We needed to wait until it was a full-blown ethnic cleansing and annexation to use “invasion,” which will now be used to minimize it. https://t.co/sLy9Ca5ee1

— Y Disassembler (@loomdoop) March 27, 2026

Next, they’ll tell us that naming an invasion an invasion requires a meeting at the Avengers compound with Tony Stark.

Since when does calling an invasion an invasion require analysis, deliberation, a newsroom vote, & an announcement?

— Hala Jaber (@HalaJaber) March 26, 2026

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The essay is, no doubt, intended to preemptively address antisemitism claims. Because we all know that only Israel can be invaded by illegal terrorists.

The article is much like Israel’s ‘pre-emptive strikes’ – absolute bullshit.

The Associated Press has to write an essay pre-emptively defending themselves from “antisemitism!” shrieking after reaching the difficult decision to report accurately about even one thing israelis have done.

This agency controls almost half the news Western press contains! https://t.co/irGjKBPrTb

— Crixiv 2 🇵🇸 (@solzhenidiot) March 26, 2026

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It’s a ten out of ten to the Associated Press for learning the correct definition of a word. Get them a Pulitzer Prize.

Maybe they’ll try genocide next? Or ethnic cleansing? We’ve linked the definitions, just in case you’re struggling, AP.

Of course, they won’t – because it’s only genocide or a war crime when it’s not Israel committing it.

This whole stunt by AP is nothing but a hilarious attempt to claw back any remaining credibility.

Featured image via Al Jazeera English/ YouTube

What does science say?

OK, but what about the word “reading”?

TBH – who cares?

News that Israel have tortured a Palestinian baby have gone largely under-reported by a complicit Western media. It is a horror almost beyond comprehension; recent reports describe how a Palestinian father named Abu Nassar, has a one-year-old child was tortured in front of him during a 10-hour interrogation by the Israeli military. Salma Kaddoumi, a freelance video and photojournalist who interviewed Nasser’s family, later told the Canary that Nasser has not been heard from since.

Despite photographic evidence of the baby’s injuries trending on social media, and alarming claims of forced disappearance raised by Nasser’s family, Western media outlets have broadly failed to report on the incident. Unfortunately, at this point, few would expect them to. Nasser’s story is one more crime ignored amidst the gravest crimes against humanity seen this century.

Israel’s torture of Palestinian baby met with deafening silence

When Nasser’s story first broke on 24 March 2026, it was impossible to ignore the images of his baby on social media. We are all too used to encountering images of injured Gazan children in this way, often bloodied and covered in debris. What is so disturbing about the injuries suffered by Nasser’s child, however – two burns or punctures on each leg, in roughly the same place — is how deliberate they appear to be.

This story is different, making its absence across Western media all the more stark. Bogus claims about children caught up in the ‘realities of war‘ cannot be made here. This is a story about the Israeli state abusing a baby to extract a confession from the child’s father.

Stories about children who suffer abuse at home and abroad usually occupy Western news cycles for days, weeks, even years — so long as the children are white. Almost twenty years later, the BBC continues to report on the harrowing case of ‘Baby P’. Nasser’s baby, to the contrary, is outright ignored. What is the media afraid of? Having an emotional reaction in response to the suffering of the wrong kind of child?

Institutional racism

The reasons why the media is failing to report on this story are, by now, no doubt obvious. Institutional bias in favour of the Zionist regime, if not outright capture by its representatives, has led to a culture of silence where the horrors experienced by Palestinians are persistently absent from the news cycle.

This bias is compounded by racism, which leads to more scrutiny being applied to Palestinian civilian testimony than the claims of the Zionist regime itself. Whereas the media was more than happy to report on unverified claims of ‘40 beheaded babies’ on 7 October 2023, verified reports of beheaded Palestinian children, backed up by video footage, are left to the side.

We can imagine the excuses made by editors. Is the testimony provided by Nasser’s family members deemed untrustworthy? Is it too difficult to verify their accounts to report on them? Are the reports produced by freelance journalists on the ground, who continue to risk their lives to break through Israel’s blockade, not good enough for them?

A manipulated grey area of plausible deniability quickly amounts to a new form of censorship.

Citizen journalism sidelined

What a difference fifteen years makes. In 2011, the Arab Spring heralded a new era of ‘citizen journalism’. Mainstream media outlets were quick to fill their reports with footage captured by everyday people, who uploaded their testimony to the internet via smartphones.

But even at that time, the role of Big Tech companies in manipulating stories was becoming apparent. Haythem Guesmi, writing for Al Jazeera in 2021, showed how social media has since revealed itself to be a double-edged sword:

Big Tech companies have been allowed to be the ultimate arbiters on free speech online and a haven for hate speech and disinformation. They have piggybacked on the idea that they helped trigger the Arab Spring and are therefore a force for freedom and democracy.

Social media is seen as both a threat to and the last bastion of free speech. One side-effect of this contradiction is that citizen journalism is typically now confined to social media platforms, which are deemed lawless zones of misinformation. The disinformation pumped out by governments, however, is subject to less scrutiny than ever before. With citizen journalism maligned, the mainstream media defers unquestioningly to state power.

No accountability

As a result, we live in a dissonant world where those responsible for a genocide live-streamed across our smartphones avoid scrutiny and accountability. Stories like Nasser’s, quarantined on deregulated platforms, are both inescapable and ignored.

The fact that social media platforms are drowning in disinformation is self-evident to anyone with an Internet connection. But by placing all emphasis on the responsibilities of Big Tech companies, we let our legacy media off the hook.

In the same article for Al Jazeera, Guesmi reported how international civil rights organisations were calling:

on Big Tech companies to cease their unfair discriminatory practices, to invest in regional expertise of content moderation and become more transparent about policies and procedures.

In 2026, it is long past due that our legacy media organisations did the same. Until they do, they will continue to fail those who are subject to horrifying abuse at the hands of rogue states, like Nasser and his baby.

This would require media organisations disentangle themselves from their cozy relationships with state power first. Until that happens, we can expect them to remain complicit in state violence and racism through their unwillingness to report on the stories that matter.

Featured image via the Canary

CityHub Reykjavik

CityHosts

The International Olympics Committee (IOC) has announced its new ‘Policy on the Protection of the Female (Women’s) Category in Olympic Sport‘. It amounts to a total ban on trans women/transfeminine athletes, and a near-total ban on intersex athletes, competing in the women’s category.

Normally, we might argue with the science that the IOC used to make its decision. However, nobody has been allowed to see the science – though we’re assured it exists.

What we do know is that this latest ruling completely contradicts the IOC’s science from just five years ago, which stated that trans people “should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage”.

We also know that this decision is not a reaction to an explosion of trans women winning in the female category at the Olympics. That’s because exactly one trans woman has competed at the Olympics, and she didn’t medal.

We’re not going to argue that this is a horrific roll-back of intersex and trans rights, or the basic concept of inclusion. (It is). Likewise, we’re not going to argue that this decision was politically motivated (although the science suddenly said the opposite of what it used to immediately after a leadership change at the IOC).

What we are going to argue is that this is that sex-testing in women’s sport is a disaster for privacy and women’s rights. That means cis women, trans women and intersex women, and whatever combination thereof – all women.

We know this because we’ve fucking been here before.

Olympics: IOC document

The IOC plans to introduce universal sex screening for the women’s category. It will achieve this through a one-time SRY (Sex-Determining Region) test. The SRY gene is usually present on the Y chromosome, and causes the development of testes during foetal development.

The IOC’s new document states that:

All Biological Female athletes screened will be negative and eligible, and virtually all athletes who screen positive will have testes/testicles that naturally produce testosterone at adult Male levels.

This is a deception. The document writers know that it’s a deception, because they include a carve-out:

Because a positive SRY Gene screen does not establish a specific DSD diagnosis, further evaluation should be made available to the athlete to determine whether they have CAIS or another rare XY DSD that precludes testosterone’s anabolic and/or performance-enhancing effects.

The DSD there stands for “differences/disorders of sexual development”. We will be using the term ‘intersex’. The number of intersex people among the general population varies according to the definition used, but it may be as high as 1.7%. 

CAIS stands for Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. This means that the body doesn’t have the receptors to make use of the circulating testosterone.

However, beyond CAIS, levels of testosterone sensitivity can vary massively, i.e. Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. As such, that “testosterone at adult Male levels” tells us very little.

The document also states that:

XY Transgender athletes and athletes with certain XY differences/disorders in sex development (DSD) (as defined in Schedule 1) have anatomical and physiological advantages in line with being Male even as their legal sex, the manner in which they were raised, and/or their gender identity may vary.

The bit about legal sex and the “manner in which they were raised” is also significant. This is because many intersex people go their whole lives without learning that they’re intersex.

As such, some intersex athletes can find that they’re intersex for the first time due to a sporting test. This has happened before – and it’s a massive problem.

‘Scientifically and ethically unjustifiable’

The IOC previously instated universal sex testing back in 1968. At first, the tests consisted of having the women appear naked in front of a panel of judges. Later, the IOC moved on to more elaborate tests, such as the Barr body test.

The last universal sex testing at the Olympics took place in 1996, in Atlanta. At the time, eight women came up positive on the DNA-based test. As explained by rights organisation the International Commission of Jurists:

After the 1996 Olympic Games, the IOC voted to discontinue universal sex testing for being scientifically and ethically unjustifiable, since it was an inaccurate test of both sex and athletic advantage and was resulting in considerable harm to affected athletes. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Women, the World Medical Association, American Medical Association and, most recently, a group of independent UN experts have long condemned sex testing and medically unnecessary interventions as discriminatory, unethical, and harmful.

Since then, decisions on sex testing were left with individual sporting bodies. Often, testing was weaponised against individual – often brown or Black – women like Imane Khelif and Caster Semenya. 

The consequences of mandatory sex tests are often severe. Whilst being intersex is simply another variation of human existence, sex is given such a primacy by our society that learning one’s assumptions were wrong can be a severe shock.

Beyond the exclusion from an elite sport than the woman has worked her life towards, other harms can include severe sex and gender identity crisis, social isolation, demeaning reactions from the public, depression, and suicide.

Klobukowska, Patiño, Soundarajan

Competing in the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, Poland’s Ewa Klobukowska of Poland helped set a new 100m-relay world record. However, she submitted to sex testing after the media mocked her for her ‘masculine’ appearance:

The test results were never made public, but the IAAF ruled that Klobukowska had a chromosomal anomaly that disqualified her from competing in the female category. The organization publicly criticized Klobukowska for being a male imposter, and stripped her of her medals. After being disqualified from competing at the age of 21, she said, “It’s a dirty and stupid thing to do to me. I know what I am and how I feel.”

She had a son in 1968. Thirty-one years later, the IOC returned her medals.

Klobukowska never re-entered professional sport, and her records are remain largely unknown.

Another case in point is Maria José Martínez Patiño, a CAIS intersex woman and former Spanish hurdler. She fell victim to a sex chromatin test at the 1985 World University Games in Kobe, Japan. She was told to fake an injury and retire quietly, as was common practice.

However, she then went on to compete in the 1986 National Championships. Whilst she was told again to withdraw quietly, she refused. After winning her race, she was attacked in the Spanish press. She was expelled from her residence, and lost her scholarship, her records, and her fiance.

Another example is Santhi Soundarajan, who won silver in the women’s 800m race at the 2006 Asian Games. Soundarajan also has AIS, causing her to fall victim to a genetic screening test.

After being told she could no longer compete, and being stripped of her medal, Santhi fell into a deep depression and later attempted suicide.

‘Human dignity’

The IOC stated in its announcement that its related organisations should work to:

Ensure that the athlete’s human dignity, physical and psychological well-being, health and safety, and
right to privacy and confidentiality are respected.

It is also insisting that we perform these potentially life-upending tests “early in the athletic career”, with “age appropriate explanations” for minors.

However, this respect for their athletes’ human dignity and psychological well-being apparently doesn’t extend to the IOC restraining itself from calling these women “biological males” throughout the document, and insisting that “biological sex does not and cannot change”.

We have watched, over the last few years, our media, politicians and public figures hound and mock athletes they suspect of being intersex or trans. This cruelty is a direct consequence of the primacy we place on sex – and our rhetoric around that primacy is only becoming more extreme by the day.

The IOC insists that we need a hard border to “protect” women’s sport. Any border creates an ‘other’, and requires police to protect that border from the ‘other’. And policing, as we have seen time and again, begets violence. In this case, that violence is directed towards women – intersex, cis, and trans women.

Many are celebrating today, and many athletes among them – but this is no victory for women’s rights.

Featured image via the Canary