abuse

In early April, Nina Nastasia was preparing for her first live dates in a decade, supporting Mogwai in the US. She felt nervous, having never planned a tour alone, and overwhelmed about playing for people again. A friend reassured her that, as she was the opener, nobody would really be listening. “I was relieved,” says Nastasia. “But then I thought, ‘Well, wait a minute, nobody’s gonna listen? I want people to listen.’”The audience was “completely silent” for her sets, says Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite. Nastasia’s friend…

Well into a career that encompasses poetry, memoir and projects such as her 2017 collection of quotable fragments 300 Arguments, the American author Sarah Manguso has turned to the novel. Very Cold People is also composed of short sections, compiled like witness testimony by a young girl called Ruthie, as she grows up in the fictional town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, somewhere near Boston. Ruthie and her family don’t belong there, she tells us in the first sentence; it is a town for people whose ancestors came over with…

The European Commission has proposed controversial new regulation that would require chat apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to selectively scan users’ private messages for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and “grooming” behavior. The proposal is similar to plans mooted by Apple last year but, say critics, much more invasive. After a draft of the regulation leaked earlier this week, privacy experts condemned it in the strongest terms. “This document is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen,” tweeted…

Under the proposal, subject to shareholder approval, investors in the Stockholm-based company will receive 106 Swedish krona in cash for each share held. The price represents a 39% premium to the company’s share price of 76.50 Swedish krona on Friday, the day before The Wall Street Journal reported that the companies were in talk. In the U.S.—Swedish Match’s largest market, followed by Scandinavia—the company’s ZYN nicotine-pouch brand dominates a market that includes rival offerings from Altria…

Philip Morris International Inc. PM 1.79% is in advanced talks to acquire Swedish Match SWMA -0.58% AB, according to people familiar with the matter, in a deal that could be valued at roughly $15 billion or more and bolster the tobacco giant’s exposure to the rapidly growing market for smoke-free brands.The talks between U.S.-based Philip Morris and Stockholm-based Swedish Match could yield a deal as soon as this week,…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Although sport is often touted as a vehicle for positive experiences, many investigations into sporting cultures—particularly high performance sport—have highlighted how predatory or abusive behavior by coaches can emerge and be tolerated. …

An intriguing new study has zeroed in on a brain region that is central to the development of both alcohol abuse and anxiety in adults, and demonstrated how gene editing could be used to wipe clean a person's predisposition to both disorders. Likened to a "factory reset" for the brain, the technique is put forward as a potential way to treat conditions that can be traced back to adolescence, and offers new insights into the effects on brain health of binge drinking at a young age.The study was carried out by scientists at…

Canada’s residential school system has had a lasting effect on First Nations communities. Credit: Blake Elliott | Shutterstock One in three women around the world will experience violence from an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime. That is a shocking figure. Even more shocking, though, is the fact that, in 23 countries—from the Americas and Africa to Asia and the Pacific—it is more like two in three women.…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Grooming, a term associated with adults who sexually abuse children, has become an attack word in today's battle over anti-LGBTQ legislation and is spilling out into the broader culture wars. …