Politics
What You Need To Know Before Going Abroad For Surgery
Around 523,000 people from the UK travelled abroad for surgery in 2024, with the most popular destinations for ‘medical tourism’ being Turkey, Poland and Romania, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
People might travel abroad for treatments such as dental and cosmetic surgery, cancer treatment, weight loss surgery, fertility treatment, organ transplants and stem cell therapy, according to experts at TravelHealthPro.
“Transgender travellers may seek hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery abroad,” they added.
The growth in medical tourism appears to stem from a mixture of factors, including higher disposable incomes, increased readiness to travel for health care, low-cost air travel and the expansion of internet marketing, TravelHealthPro said.
NHS waiting lists have also been growing in recent years, though NHS England noted it delivered more elective activity in 2025 than any other year in its history, “helping cut the waiting list to its lowest level since February 2023”.
If you’re one of the many people tempted to go abroad for surgery or treatment, Qian Huang, international claims manager at William Russell, has shared some key considerations below.
What you need to know before travelling abroad for surgery
“The idea of having surgery abroad can be nerve-wracking, particularly when it comes to questions of safety,” Huang said.
“Many people considering surgery abroad decide not to go because of concerns about safety, the quality of the medical care, or not understanding the foreign healthcare system.
“However, in reality, many international hospitals and clinics follow standards of care that match or exceed those found in the UK, US, or Europe. The key is knowing what to look for.”
How to find an accredited hospital abroad
Medical accreditations are a key indicator of a hospital’s commitment to international standards.
One of the most widely recognised is the Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation, often considered the global gold standard, which evaluates hospitals on areas such as infection prevention, medication safety, staff training, patient communication, and emergency readiness.
To find an accredited hospital abroad, patients can check official accreditation bodies’ websites, verify information on hospital websites, contact the facility directly, or consult medical tourism networks and national health authorities.
What to check before booking surgery
To steer clear of issues, Huang shared six factors to be aware of before booking surgery abroad.
1. Lack of accreditation or vague claims
“Be wary of hospitals that mention ‘world-class standards’ without naming an actual accrediting body,” he said. “Reputable facilities will proudly display credentials from recognised organisations like JCI, ACHSI, or Temos.”
2. ‘Too good to be true’ pricing
Competitive pricing is probably one of the top reasons people consider surgery abroad, but Huang warned ultra-low prices should raise alarm bells.
Check the qualifications of the surgeon, what’s included in the cost, and whether the aftercare and follow-up appointments are covered, he added.
3. Poor communication or pressure tactics
If you’re struggling to get clear answers from the hospital or feel rushed into making a decision, consider taking a step back. Trustworthy providers are transparent, patient, and more than happy to talk you through the details.
4. No clear aftercare plan
Recovery is just as important as the procedure itself. A good hospital will give you a personalised aftercare plan, including advice on travel, medication, and any physical restrictions, before you agree to surgery.
5. Inconsistent or missing reviews
Take the time to search for independent reviews and testimonials before considering which hospital to have the surgery at. A complete lack of online feedback, or reviews that sound overly scripted, can be a red flag.
6. Limited information about the surgical team
When researching your hospital, you should be able to find the names, qualifications, and experience of the surgeons who’ll be treating you. If this information is unavailable or unclear, you need to proceed with caution.
A recent international report has revealed that dozens of Palestinian journalists have been subjected to serious violations in Israeli prisons since 7 October 2023. Its authors describe a recurring pattern of mistreatment linked directly to their media work.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), approximately 60 Palestinian journalists were detained during the period under investigation. In-depth interviews were conducted with 59 of them. Fifty-eight reported being subjected to what they described as torture or cruel treatment during detention.
Cross-corroborating testimonies and similar patterns
The report states that testimonies from different detention facilities revealed similar patterns of abuse. These included beatings, forced stress positions, sensory deprivation, medical neglect, and allegations of sexual violence.
Journalist Sami al-Saai, who worked for Al Jazeera Mubasher and Al-Fajr TV, said he was transferred to a small cell in Megiddo prison and assaulted inside it. He said he later shared his experience with veteran detainees.
Journalist Shadi Abu Seido of Palestine Today reported being arrested at Al-Shifa Hospital on 18 March 2024. He was transferred to Sdeh Tayman detention centre, where he said soldiers beat him while passing him between rows. Shadi later discovered he had a broken rib. He was released after 20 months.
At Ofer Prison, radio journalist Muhammad al-Atrash described a mass assault in November 2023 involving dozens of detainees. He said they sarcastically named the incident after National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visit. According to al-Atrash, trained dogs and metal instruments were used, causing injuries and bleeding.
Journalist Osama al-Sayed, a correspondent for Al-Aqsa TV, said he was subjected to electric shocks and pepper spray between beatings following an official prison visit.
Eleven journalists reported being subjected to a technique known as “strappado” or “ghost suspension,” in which a detainee is suspended by arms tied behind the back.
Palestinian journalists — severe weight loss and detention without charge
Fifty-five journalists reported suffering from severe hunger or malnutrition. Photos reviewed by the newspaper showed visible physical deterioration. CPJ estimated the average weight loss at 23.5 kilograms per journalist.
Journalist Muhammad Badr said he was severely beaten, injuring his tongue and preventing him from speaking or eating properly for two weeks. He said he lost 40 kilograms during ten months in detention.
Ahmed Shqoura, also of Palestine Today, said he lost 54 kilograms during 14 months in Ktziot and Jalameh prisons. Journalist Rami Abu Zbeida reported losing 35 kilograms during a year in detention.
The report states that 48 of the 59 journalists were not charged with any offence. They were held under administrative detention, which allows renewable detention periods without trial.
Official responses
The Israeli Prison Service rejected the allegations, stating that any official complaint is examined through approved channels. The Israeli army also denied systematic abuse, saying investigations are opened when violations are suspected.
The report also cited data from Physicians for Human Rights–Israel documenting 94 Palestinian deaths in detention since 7 October 2023. CPJ estimates that 252 journalists have been killed since the start of the war on Gaza.
Featured image via Committee to Protect Journalists
Using a public toilet is rarely a joyous occasion. They’re filled with sights and smells that can strike fear in the hardest of hearts (and stomachs), and still, most of us have to venture into them at some point if we ever want to live a life outside of our homes.
So how can we make our time in a public bathroom better or safer or, at the very least, less gross?
That’s what we – that’s Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, hosts of HuffPost’s Am I Doing It Wrong? podcast – asked microbiologist Jason Tetro, aka The Germ Guy, to school us on when he dropped by our studio.
“Every time I talk about toilet seats and toilets, I’m always saying, ‘Well, it’s not germy – everything is germier than a toilet seat,’” Tetro told us. “[I’m basing that on] studies that were done back in the 1970s and controlled laboratory environments that were mimicking the home… [but those toilets] also had a lid.”
That lid, which is absent from the vast majority of toilets in public restrooms, is key, he said, to containing what scientists call a “poo plume” – the droplets and aerosol particles that can spray up to six feet out of the toilet when we flush.
“As a result of [there not being a lid], there’s that plume that comes from the toilet that ends up on the seat, and no matter where you go, you’re always going to find that about 50% of the [public restroom] toilet seats at any given time are going to have some kind of poo germs on them in the range of
hundreds [of particles],” he said.
Those poo particles can contain E. coli, salmonella, or even norovirus, all of which, if present in high enough concentrations, can make us sick – but not from sitting on the toilet seat.
“We do see potentially some low level of all sorts of different types of bacteria and viruses that could potentially cause an infection, but the reality is, unless you have a cut, then there’s really no opportunity for that to get into your skin to cause a problem,” Tetro, the author of The Germ Files and The Germ Code, explained.
However, droplets in the air are a different matter altogether. That’s why he says flushing the toilet is the first thing he does before using it to “get a fresh” bowl and he never stays in the stall after flushing.
“Make sure that you kind of get out of the stall for 30 seconds to let whatever was aerosol or the droplets to fall and then you can go back in,” he said, noting that he actually does this himself before he uses a toilet in a public restroom.
“So here’s the problem: if it’s norovirus or some of the more really troublesome bacteria like E.coli 0157:H7, then you may actually end up getting exposed to a high enough level that it could potentially cause infection,” he warned.
That’s because the droplets from the plume could land in your mouth or nose – which is even more of a danger if you’re standing in close proximity to a public restroom toilet that features an extremely powerful flusher.
“So if you’re gonna go for the clean or for the fresh bowl, make sure that your face is nowhere near that plume,” he added.
Once you’ve finished your business, don’t stick around in the stall after you’ve flushed either – unless you want to be showered by a plume of your own poo particles.
We also chatted with Tetro about the germiest part of a public restroom (spoiler: it’s not the toilet seat), what to do if there’s no soap in the bathroom, and much more.
Listen to the full episode above or wherever you get your podcasts.
For more from Jason Tetro, visit his website here.
Need some help with something you’ve been doing wrong? Email us at AmIDoingItWrong@HuffPost.com, and we might investigate the topic in an upcoming episode.
China’s military and intelligence agencies are moving to cut off the influence and reach of Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad, which they describe as a “Pandora’s box” of danger to global security, according to new reporting in the Cradle.
China has recognised that the US and Israel have established a pattern of internal, covert campaigns of sabotage or ‘decapitation’ attacks on their targets before launching all-out military action: think pager attacks in Lebanon, the funding, equipping and assisting of ISIS in Syria.
And, of course, the recent ‘protests’ in Iran that were exposed as provoked, coordinated and directed by Israeli operatives and their Iranian agents. So the Chinese are moving to inhibit these tactics in Iran. At the same time, it is conducting joint military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz with Iran and Russia even as the US builds up forces in the same area.
The internal, land-based target of the Chinese operation is, as the Cradle states:
Mossad’s ability to embed agents, compromise sensitive databases, disable radar networks, and facilitate precision strikes from inside Iranian territory is interpreted as a shift toward what Chinese analysts call ‘Informationized and Intelligent’ Warfare.
This represents the convergence of cyber sabotage, internal recruitment, technological penetration, and operational coordination – a hybrid model in which intelligence operations hollow out defensive infrastructure before kinetic action begins…
…[which] Military expert Fu Qianshao, a former analyst in the Chinese Air Force, characterized [as] Mossad’s success in planting agents and disabling Iranian radar and air defense systems from within [and] as a “new pattern of intelligence warfare.”
Chinese military analysts recognised that Mossad’s June 2025 sabotage campaign exposed “structural vulnerabilities” in Iranian security systems — and that the tactics used against Iran could be used elsewhere, including against China and its interests. So it has decided to help Iran close Iran’s technical vulnerabilities, both to help an ally and as an exercise for itself. It is also looking to bring Iran into the ‘Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)’, which shares intelligence and promotes cooperation among its member states.
China’s technical support
The effectiveness of the technical support was seen clearly in Iran’s success, with Chinese assistance and tech, in blocking access to Starlink. Israel and the US were using the Musk-owned system to communicate with their agitators on the ground. Until suddenly they weren’t, leaving the covert force rudderless. Again with Chinese (and Russian) help, Iran then identified and rolled up Israel’s Iranian network — including claims that it killed Mossad’s main organiser in Iran — making it a costly adventure for the Zionist occupation.
China is now also providing Iran with satellite intel, including detailed images of the US military build-up in the region. In conjunction with Iran’s own, and imported, hypersonic missile systems US bases and naval formations are particularly vulnerable. China’s February 2026 gift of a model of its latest J-20 advanced fighter jet to Iran also signalled its intention of future supply, but manufacture of the aircraft and the need to train pilots mean that this is not an immediate boost to Iran’s defences. However, its advanced missile systems — which the US and Israel are unrealistically demanding Iran give up — pose a major enough threat, particularly with Chinese satellite imagery and potentially guidance.
Iran gave the US warning of this when its drone recently ‘buzzed’ and photographed a US aircraft carrier. The US presented the shooting down of a Shahed-139 drone as proof of US defensive systems. However, the drone had reportedly already transmitted its data back to Iran. The use of a $100m F-35 jet to shoot down a basic $20,000 drone, with a $430,000 missile, after it had completed its mission was hardly a compelling case.
The Strait of Hormuz
Iran is acknowledged to have the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz to both naval and commercial shipping. Indeed, it already did so this week during what passes for negotiations with an untrustworthy US administration making demands it knows Iran can’t accept. Together with strikes on US airbases and oil interests in the region, Iran could trigger a global financial crisis if attacked. Tehran is already said to have signalled to the US that there would be no repeat of its restrained and pre-warned retaliation against US bases in the 2025 ’12-day war’. It clearly cannot continue to allow the US and Israel to attack it and then make only a symbolic retaliation in response.
Combined with the joint military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s improved domestic security and enhanced defensive capabilities, this threat is the most likely reason that Trump is still hesitating to attack despite Benjamin Netanyahu’s February 2026 US visit. Netanyahu reportedly threatened Trump that if the US doesn’t attack Iran, Israel will do so unilaterally and ‘make’ the US support it. However, this threat may have sounded hollow, given the retaliatory pummelling Iran gave Israel in June 2025.
Israel’s undoubted ‘kompromat’ on Trump, given Trump’s closeness to Israeli spy-paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, may be more decisive in forcing US action. However, recent reports and comments by Iran’s Khamenei suggest that Iran has hacked the US Justice Department’s unredacted Epstein files and has evidence of Trump’s sexual activity with minors. Certainly Iran successfully hacked the White House in 2025 and Trump’s presidential campaign in 2024.
Coin-toss
Trump’s inherent erratic nature and reported advancing dementia make it a coin-toss which way he’ll go under such opposing pressures. Perhaps a ‘knife edge’ is more appropriate given the danger he and Israel pose to the world. Past form suggests Netanyahu will get his way to the harm of just about everybody else. But just perhaps, China’s, and Russia’s, increased show of support for Iran will be enough to face him down. Long enough to complete Iran’s defence development, at least.
Whatever one’s opinion of the Islamic Republic government, it is the main bulwark of resistance to Israel’s ‘Greater Israel’ regional greed for its neighbours’ land — and its slaughter and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Anyone who cares about the Palestinians and about keeping the whole of western Asia out of the hands of a flailing US and an ethno-supremacist Israel should be hoping the equipping and deterrence work.
Featured image via DefenseSecurityAsia
Mike Huckabee is the US ambassador to Israel. Huckabee has always been a controversial figure, and yet he’s never had a run like the last few days:
Reparations! https://t.co/xbFCOwIAmL
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) February 20, 2026
Don’t heart Huckabee
Al Jazeera reported the following on who Huckabee is:
The devout 69-year-old evangelical Christian was born in the southern US state of Arkansas.
He served as governor of his home state between 1996 and 2007 before launching unsuccessful bids to be the Republican presidential candidate during the 2008 and 2016 primary seasons.
They added:
Huckabee is a staunch supporter of Israel.
After his appointment, Trump released a statement in which he said Huckabee “loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”
His appointment demonstrates a “very hawkish, very pro-right-wing Israel” approach by the Trump administration, Yossi Mekelberg, an expert on Israel at the Chatham House think tank, told Al Jazeera.
Many American evangelicals support Israel, but not because they like Israelis. In actuality, they think the creation of Israel is a signifier that the end times are approaching, and that Israel will trigger the Rapture.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, the ‘Rapture’ is the time when God calls his faithful back to heaven. Said ‘faithful’ will not include the Jewish men and women who live in Israel, even if they do play an instrumental role in jump starting the Armageddon.
Israel — ‘Reparations!’
In the clip above, Huckabee was asked:
Should Israel be expected to even pay one penny to rebuild Gaza at this point?
The first point to make here is that even if Israel was asked, they wouldn’t be the ones paying; it would be the countries which keep this rogue nation financially solvent (i.e. the US and its lackey states like Britain). Secondly, of course they should be asked; they literally levelled the place.
This is how Huckabee responded:
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And I’ll tell you, if anything, there ought to be reparations to Israel for the extraordinary fight that they have had to conduct to get their hostages back, 252 including many Americans.
To quote Drop Site’s Ryan Grim once again:
Reparations!
This really highlights the cry-bully mindset of the Zionists.
They don’t just want to commit genocide; they want the world to perceive them as the victims of their own atrocities.
Anti-democracy
Huckabee has also attracted criticism for comments he made in conversation with Tucker Carlson:
I am not a fan of Tucker Carlson. I disagree a lot with Carlson. But as an interviewer, Carlson actually, brilliantly, asks follow-up questions, and keeps going, in a way that pretty much no US TV interviewer has done with pro-Israel guests since Oct 7.
And Huckabee falls apart. https://t.co/NmzemGAWRU— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) February 21, 2026
TUCKER: “How much does it matter what Americans think?”
AMB. HUCKABEE: “It matters every bit.”
TUCKER: “80% oppose war with Iran.”
AMB. HUCKABEE: “We don’t live in a world where polls dictate policy.”
TUCKER: “Oh, I thought you said it matters what Americans think.” pic.twitter.com/MkDDkqfyCP
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) February 21, 2026
mike huckabee cares more about the greater israel project than he does about americans. he cares more about israel than the majority of american jews. totally insane person. https://t.co/BjbooXPuXI
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) February 21, 2026
Tucker Carlson brutally corners Mike Huckabee on the fact that the Israeli government provides a safe haven for accused child molesters fleeing American justice. Huckabee is completely humiliated and tries to feign ignorance, but Tucker exposes the undeniable truth Israel… pic.twitter.com/SltptVD56w
— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) February 20, 2026
There is literally no bottom with these people.
They will always find a way to sink further, and they will always be furious when you confront them with the reality of their own depravity.
Featured image via OPB
According to a new poll, Labour are on track to come third in the Gorton & Denton by-election. While you can never put too much stock in one poll, it’s far from the only sign that Labour are doing badly. Green Party leader Zack Polanski has now drawn attention to the Labour Party’s “panic”:
You can smell the Labour Governments panic.
They’re trying their hardest to discredit the new poll because it tells everyone that the alternative has well and truly arrived.
Gorton & Denton is the Green Party Vs Reform. pic.twitter.com/tcM1RjSb6g
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) February 20, 2026
Zack Polanski’s Greens are favourites
The poll in question is this one from Omnisis:
🚨 POLL | Greens LEAD in Gorton and Denton
** Labour drop to distant 3rd **🟢 Grn: 33% (+19)
➡️ Ref: 29% (+15)
🔴 Lab: 26% (-25)
🔵 Con: 5% (-4)
🟠 Lib: 2% (-1)Source: Omnisis, 13-19 Feb (+/- vs GE2024) pic.twitter.com/Ji5muXiRbk
— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) February 20, 2026
Source for data: https://t.co/GBbfcacQrA
Figures exclude undecided voters, as is common (indeed, universal) practice with voting intention polls.
— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) February 20, 2026
There are important things to consider about the poll. The first is that the sample size was only 452 people, which is less than half of what’s considered to be ideal (1,000 people). As noted above, the results also leave out undecided voters, with the New Statesman’s Megan Kenyon noting:
Should note 27 per cent say they are still undecided. Polls open next Thursday, 26 Feb.
— megan kenyon (@meganekenyon) February 20, 2026
Zack Polanski has taken the poll very well, anyway, which is obviously how any good politician should respond to positive news:
This is huge – and proves exactly what we’re saying.
We cannot have a moment of complacency – only the Green Party can stop Reform.
Vote Hannah Spencer and the Green Party on Thursday in Gorton and Denton. 💚 https://t.co/DQNjUJoxyA
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) February 20, 2026
Labour’s Lucy Powell, meanwhile, said this:
No-one should take this poll seriously:
-funded by a Green donor
-incredibly small sample and half unlikely to vote
-over-indexes green/Lab wardsI’ve been door-knocking most days. We’ve spoken to over 50 TIMES more voters.
V clear it’s between us and Reform https://t.co/tR5MhaMXGw
— Lucy Powell MP (@LucyMPowell) February 20, 2026
There are a few problems for Labour, of course.
The first is that bookies have not looked favourably at Labour’s chances.
The second is doorstep polling from Reform and the Greens has put Labour in third place.
The third is that it’s just very difficult to believe Labour are doing well right now, because the party is embroiled in a never ending stream of paedophile and sex pest scandals, including:
It’s also the case that Powell literally begged the Greens to stand down in an open letter, which is never a sign that things are going well.
It’s not looking good
Of course, Starmer’s lack of popularity is no guarantee Labour will lose. Britain didn’t particularly care for the Tories, yet people kept voting them back in, because they felt like it was in their best interests.
What we’ve seen in recent years, however, is that voters no longer feel like the only options are ‘Labour’ or ‘Conservative’. And if either the Greens or Reform take Gorton & Denton, that will be more true than ever.
Featured image via Barold
Unpacking during your holiday in your new hotel room? Before you toss your suitcase on the bed or start hanging up clothes, doctors say there’s one crucial thing you need to do first.
“When I first enter a hotel room, I typically leave my luggage at the entryway while I do a quick check for bed bugs,” said Dr. Brianna Olamiju, a dermatologist at Spring Street Dermatology.
That’s right: those tiny, crawly critters could be lurking underneath the crisp white sheets of your bed.
“When you enter a hotel room, make sure you immediately place luggage in the bathtub or on a tiled surface upon entry, then thoroughly inspect the mattress seams, headboard and furniture using a flashlight for bugs or dark stains,” said Dr. Kefah Al-Ramahi, an internal medicine physician at Hartford HealthCare.
“Bed bugs and their evidence can be visible to the naked eye – adult bugs are about apple-seed sized – but you’re often spotting clues like tiny black ‘ink-like’ faecal dots, shed skins or small blood spots on sheets,” said Dr. Tiffany Libby, the Director of Mohs Micrographic and Dermatologic Surgery at Brown Dermatology in Rhode Island.
These stains are located mainly along the seams, piping, tufts and corners of mattresses and box springs. Bed bugs could also hide in electrical outlets, under loose wallpaper, or at the corner of the wall and ceiling.
Unfortunately, bed bugs may be difficult to spot during the day, as they only appear at night. If you check once during the daytime upon check-in to the hotel, do a second inspection around nighttime as well, as that is usually the best time to visualise bed bugs, according to Olamiju.
“If you find evidence of bed bugs, I’d request a different room far away, not adjacent, above or below, or consider changing hotels depending on the situation and response,” Libby said.
What to do if you encounter bed bugs
If you are experiencing bed bug bites or recently were exposed to bed bugs, first shower, and change your clothes immediately.
“Seal luggage, wash and dry clothing on high heat as soon as possible, and consider heat-treating items that can tolerate it,” Libby said. The dryer is key as washing clothes alone may not kill bugs or eggs, she added.
As you travel out of the hotel, make sure to keep your luggage sealed in a plastic bag. Once you get home, try to keep them in a garage or shed until they can be cleaned.
To clean your luggage, vacuum the suitcase or bag thoroughly, specifically focusing on zippers, seams and pockets. Make sure to wipe surfaces with alcohol to kill all bed bugs and eggs.
Bed bug bites may still occur without seeing or feeling the bed bugs. “Usually they tend to feed during the night once or twice a week,” Al-Ramahi said. Most commonly, bite marks tend to present as 2-5 millimetre red bumps, he said.
If you suspect that you have been bitten by bed bugs, check for the “breakfast, lunch and dinner” pattern. This corresponds to a linear pattern of three or more small, itchy bite marks, Al-Ramahi explained. Other co-occurring symptoms of bed bug bites include itchiness, rash, burning sensation, fluid filled blisters, and mild pain and discomfort.
To reduce discomfort, place a cool, damp cloth over areas of irritation. “From a skin standpoint, treat bites with topical corticosteroids and oral antihistamines if itchy. Avoid scratching to reduce the risk of secondary infection or scarring,” Olamiju said.
Additionally, bed bug bites may not appear immediately. They may appear one to three days after exposure. This is not to be confused with mosquito bites, which are more randomly scattered and often improve within a day or two, Olamiju said.
Some people may experience an allergic reaction to bed bug bites with more severe itching, hives or even anaphylaxis.
“Hypersensitivity reactions may develop in some who become sensitized to bed bug saliva,” Al-Ramahi said.
If you develop a secondary infection or if your bedbug bites don’t heal within a couple of weeks, visit your medical provider for further guidance.
Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, recently gave an interview to the Financial Times, giving him the chance to polish his halo. With the weary gravitas of a man who believes his own press cuttings, Bowen insisted he is ‘impartial’ – an objective observer, standing above the fray, untainted by the messy reality of bias.
The problem for Bowen – and for the licence-fee payers forced to fund his sermons – is that his narrative collides with the facts. Mounting evidence suggests that Bowen’s version of impartiality is a hollow façade hiding a systemic and longstanding prejudice against the state of Israel.
If you want to see what ‘impartiality’ looks like in Bowen’s world, look at the numbers. The Asserson Report, a landmark 2024 analysis of the BBC’s coverage of Gaza, identified more than 1,500 breaches of the corporation’s own editorial guidelines, including on impartiality and accuracy, during the first four months alone of the Israel-Hamas war. The report found a persistent institutional pattern of anti-Israel bias, devoting 16 pages specifically to Bowen’s repeated inaccuracy and prejudice. Analysis of the BBC podcast, The Conflict: Israel-Gaza, co-hosted by Bowen and the Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent, revealed that 90 per cent of the content displayed an anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian bias.
Most damningly, the report highlighted Bowen’s tendency to offer personal opinions that downplay Israeli security concerns, presenting Palestinians as peace-seeking and Israelis as war-hungry. In one notorious broadcast, Bowen dismissed the discovery of Kalashnikov rifles in a Gaza hospital, suggesting that they were just a security precaution. ‘Wherever you go in the Middle East, you see an awful lot of Kalashnikovs’, he said. In Bowen’s bid to preserve the pro-Palestine narrative, even a literal smoking gun showing terrorists present in a hospital can be explained away as a harmless quirk of the region.
It will be of little surprise that Bowen has consistently misrepresented, downplayed or even tried to excuse, Hamas’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields. Against Israel, Hamas has little choice but ‘to leverage the things that they can leverage in terms of trying to get an edge’, Bowen said in a 2023 podcast episode. In 2014, he claimed to have seen ‘no evidence during my week in Gaza of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields’. This is despite extensively documented evidence to the contrary, showing that Hamas launches rockets from civilian areas and commandeers civilian infrastructure for military ends, including hospitals and schools.
In fact, you can find examples of Bowen’s bias as far back as 2009, when the BBC Trust found him in breach of impartiality guidelines for a 2007 BBC News article on the 40th anniversary of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War.
According to monitoring by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), Bowen has spent decades perfecting a narrative of Israeli aggression while airbrushing the extent of the threats Israel faces. He has repeatedly platformed voices that dehumanise Israelis while failing to challenge the anti-Semitic ideology that drives Hamas. That isn’t journalism: it’s a curated perspective that treats Jewish security concerns with a shrug of indifference.
The BBC is the most popular news source in the UK, reaching a staggering 94 per cent of adults. When its most senior editors trade in skewed narratives, they shape political discourse, social attitudes and the temperature of national debate. And the price of this is borne by British Jews.
Since 7 October 2023, the UK has endured record levels of anti-Semitic incidents. This has included a lethal terror attack and several foiled terror plots. When coverage of serious conflicts consistently falls short, it exacerbates real-world harms for a minority community already under pressure. The BBC’s tendency to amplify unverified Hamas claims – such as wrongly blaming the infamous al-Ahli hospital blast on Israel without evidence, or quoting Hamas casualty figures without qualification – has fuelled hostility towards Jewish communities.
Perhaps most breathtaking is the arrogance with which Bowen continues to showcase his bias with total impunity. The BBC’s internal accountability mechanisms are essentially a closed loop. The broadcaster is, quite literally, marking its own homework. Apologies and corrections are only issued long after the damage has been done and without significant consequences for repeated breaches.
This brings us to the government’s BBC Charter Review, which is exploring the BBC’s governance, public obligations and funding before a new 10-year charter is granted. The way the BBC works now, where senior figures like Bowen are immune to external scrutiny, is a betrayal of public trust. We need a fundamental reset of the BBC’s culture, including tying the renewal of the charter to demonstrable improvements in impartiality and accuracy.
We ought to remember that the BBC belongs to the public – not to the egos of its editors and correspondents.
Limor Simhony Philpott is a writer, policy adviser and researcher.
A court has sentenced Reform Kent councillor Daniel Taylor to 12 months in prison. As reported by the BBC, he admitted to “behaving in a controlling or coercive way towards his wife”.
Taylor won his council seat in May 2025. The party suspended Taylor shortly after, with the councillor sitting as an independent since then.
In response to the conviction, Labour MP Polly Billington and others have questioned the far-right party’s vetting:
#Reform Councillor David Taylor JAILED.
“nasty and violent”.
“told his wife he would hunt her like prey and kill her, and that he would “put her in the boot and set fire to the car”.And STILL he was ‘vetted’ & ‘approved’ by #Reform as a candidate while this was all going on. pic.twitter.com/WhMox3ope4
— John O’Connell (@jdpoc) February 20, 2026
Reform — ‘Prey’
The court heard Taylor had shown controlling behaviour since 2014 and according to friends he was constantly putting his wife down and accusing her of cheating.
He demanded to look though her phone, isolated her from her friends and told her she was mentally unwell because she accused him of being controlling, the court was told.
The prosecution said Taylor had told his wife he would hunt her like prey and kill her, and that he would “put you in the boot and set fire to the car”.
Labour MP Billington said that the conviction:
points to the fact that Reform UK do not take vetting of their candidates seriously
As reported by the Canary, the far-right party have had to suspend multiple politicians following their election. This has included:
Reform Party UK Exposed have listed further suspensions (click ‘show more’ below for the full list):
Reform UK Review 2025:
Reform UK councillors that have been suspended, resigned or defected this year alone. This includes a Council Leader, Ian Cooper, white supremacist.
➡️ Kicked Out
Brian Black
Oliver Bradshaw
Paul Thomas
Bob Ford
Bill Barratt
Ed Hill
James Regan
Mark… pic.twitter.com/yH8NoLsg9q— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) December 26, 2025
A spokesperson for Reform UK said that there is:
no place in Reform for those who perpetrate violence against women and girls
Currently, Reform is losing councillors to ‘Restore’, which is the further-right party established by Rupert Lowe. Lowe himself was a member of Reform, but was forced out of the party.
Featured image via BBC
In case you missed it, UK health secretary Wes Streeting has just had a brainwave. If you’re a millennial, and this thing called ‘life’ is your problem, then apparently talking therapy on the NHS is the solution. Never fear about the dearth of semi-decent job opportunities, the lack of affordable housing, the sky-high energy and food bills, or the rest of it – what you need is a space to speak your truth. Let the NHS sort that out for you, and you’ll be back at the coalface in no time.
There are now 4.4million working-age people on sickness or incapacity benefits in England and Wales – a figure that has grown by a whopping 1.2million since 2019. Nearly 50 per cent of new claims are made on mental-health grounds, while one in four young people has a diagnosable mental-health condition. It’s painfully obvious that Labour must tackle the rise in both mental-health problems and worklessness – but a few weeks of talking therapy, as is being offered, is barely a sticking-plaster solution.
Last year, Streeting warned that mental-health problems are being overdiagnosed and there is a danger of pathologising normal feelings. Yet only a few weeks later, he backtracked. He apologised for his ‘divisive’ comments in the Guardian and launched an independent inquiry into why mental-health diagnoses have been on the rise, especially among younger people.
Now, despite still not having the answers (the inquiry is due to report back in the summer), Streeting has this week pledged to offer talking-therapy sessions to nine million people, costing an estimated £69million, in a bid to get millennials off benefits and back into work.
Firstly, if the government itself has admitted it doesn’t yet know the causes of our growing mental-health crisis, why is it pledging all of this costly assistance now? Why not wait for the results of the independent inquiry Streeting himself commissioned? And while free therapy might sound useful, we’re only actually talking about a month of that under the current provision – that’s five or so appointments. As anyone who has ever done therapy (as I have, for many years) will tell you, most private therapists recommend at least a course of six months of sessions. If you’ve got anything from PTSD to bipolar disorder, or have an ongoing serious mental-mealth condition that requires regular close monitoring, five sessions isn’t going to even touch the sides, let alone lead you to thriving in paid work.
Even more pressingly, while all this help is being pledged for a range of mental-health conditions currently affecting worklessness, people with the most severe problems are frequently slipping through the cracks, especially those suffering with personality disorders or psychotic delusions.
Make no mistake – I am a believer in the power of therapy. It has saved my life at least once, no exaggeration. But there are some serious caveats to that. Firstly, the therapy that saved me when on the brink of a serious psychotic episode last summer was the private kind I had to pay a clinical psychologist for. That clinical psychologist was the only professional support I had when a junior NHS psychiatrist took me off my long-term anti-psychotic meds, ‘as an experiment’ (her words), despite the fact I had been sectioned for a psychotic break in the past.
Secondly, talking therapy works best over a prolonged stretch of time. Streeting’s proposed month of help is enough to stir up all sorts of deeper issues, but not enough to actually deal with them. ‘When you change the things you look at, the things you look at change’, therapists are fond of saying. But while this might make for a natty wall hanging, it doesn’t actually alter the fundamental realities of your life.
Thirdly, talking about stuff that is troubling you is valuable, but it can only ever be a precursor to taking action. Yes, of course, many people benefit from feeling heard and identifying what about their life is distressing them. But if the source of your worries happens to be the paltry wage you’re getting for a non-job that barely covers the essentials – or maybe even having no job at all – therapy isn’t the solution.
As fantastic as the right therapy can be, it can’t wave a magic wand over structural, societal issues. It is meant to work alongside other vital tools, such as basic healthy living (exercise, nutritious food, decent sleep), sometimes medication, social connection and, critically, a solid support network. Good therapy can teach resilience, sure, so that when life isn’t going well, you have some inner resources to draw on to keep going. But therapy without opportunities is just more neoliberal, individualist blather, the kind that Labour tells us it abhors.
Labour may be making a serious mistake here with millennial voters. If thousands of them sign up for talking therapy, only to realise their lives suck for structural and economic reasons, rather than their own ‘traumatic’ experiences, the Labour government won’t just lose workers, it will also lose critical voters come the next election. Joblessness, low pay and poor working conditions are the real epidemics it needs to tackle.
Nichi Hodgson is the author of The Curious History of Dating: From Jane Austen to Tinder and Bound to You. Follow her Substack here.
The post The plot to kill Manchester’s Jews appeared first on spiked.
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