Pupul Chatterjee

When Nigerians went to vote in the 2023 presidential election, the government’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) called it “the best planned and most credible election” in more than two decades.

There were reasons to doubt this claim.

The Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism undertook an ambitious reporting effort to examine its validity. The result: a series of stories that exposed how – despite the government’s claims – the election was marred by violence and disinformation, and tarnished by polling irregularities.

Gynaecology waiting lists have more than doubled in England since the Covid pandemic.

However, at hospitals in Humber and North Yorkshire, this number stood well below the national trend, with 1600 women on the waiting list in October — latest data analysis reveals.

WHEN Nigerian election officials tabulated ballots during last year’s presidential election in the southern metropolis of Port Harcourt, something unusual happened: They began crossing out votes for certain political parties.

Officials for at least five polling sites took pen to paper and eliminated hundreds of votes before uploading tally sheets to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s computer system.

In June 2023, a 34-year-old sex worker in Victoria Falls was at a bar when the police came and arrested her on suspicion of soliciting. She was fined $30 for disorderly conduct, which is more than Masuku earns in an entire night.

“I don’t understand why we are arrested when we are (just) working to feed our children,” said Masuku. The mother of two says in the absence of a traditional education, this is the only job she can do to pay for her children’s expenses.

**Trigger Warning**

A grieving mother in Eswatini says her daughter was brutally raped, injured so severely she had to use a wheelchair, and later died. But still little changed to help her or to support her other children.

Rates of rape incidents in Eswatini are above international average – and widely accepted to be underreported. Eswatini has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world, also in part driven by the prevalence of sexual violence.

Out of every three victims of domestic abuse, two are female and one is male, latest data reveals.
Official data shows, in the last one year, a total of estimated 2.4 million cases of domestic abuse were recorded in England and Wales.

There were more than 83,000 households in England that were “homeless or threatened with homelessness” between January and March 2023.

This is a nearly 6% rise from the same time in 2022. But what does it mean to be homeless or be threatened with homelessness?

UK’s second largest city, Birmingham, now has among the highest rates of child poverty in the country.

By the end of March 2023, over 40 per cent of children in Birmingham, under the age of 16, were living in low-income families.

Nearly 10,000 households in Birmingham do not have central heating. Official statistics reveal the ‘shocking’ levels of fuel poverty in the region as temperatures plunged in recent days.
Chills of -5C are expected this week and thousands of families are largely relying on single gas or electric fires to keep warm in their homes. Across Birmingham one in 42 homes in the city are lacking the basic utility, among the highest rates in the country and well above the national average.
A lack of cen...

Thousands of people are living in Nottingham without central heating while overnight temperatures drop well below 0C. There are 2,039 homes in the city with no central heating - equating to 1.6 percent - figures by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.

New data suggests the UK is experiencing 'shocking' levels of fuel poverty - with more than 367,000 households going without central heating as temperatures plummet to subzero levels
More than 367,000 households in England and Wales still do not have central heating, as Britain experiences 'shocking levels of fuel poverty', official statistics reveal.

It’s a school without a roof. It’s been like this for over 12 years.

And to coax students not to drop out, teachers tell them they are following what Tagore advocated: holding classes in the open, close to nature.

Not all 575 students of the government-run Janta High School buy the idea, but they don’t allow that to affect their academics. This year, it registered 100 per cent success in the Class X board examinations.

Parents have been urged to take their children for MMR jabs as figures show vaccination rates have reached new lows in parts of England.

Residents in have been urged to stay up to date on their vaccinations as figures show a significant drop in MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine take-up. Just over 74 percent of children in the city who turned five between January and March this year received their second dose of the jab - the lowest in the East Midlands.
It comes as the UK Health Security Agency warned of a potential outbreak of measles in London due to low vaccine rates. The average rate across England is 85 percent, wh...

Parents are being urged to take their children for their MMR jabs to protect them from measles, mumps and rubella. It comes as as figures show vaccination rates have reached new lows in parts of England.
In Plymouth, rates are only just belowed the 95 percent vaccination target, which is required to suppress measles outbreaks. in Plymouth, our city has a 90 percent vaccine rate for children aged five with two doses of MMR.
Across Devon the rates are 93 percent. In Cornwall, rates are slightly...