Le Journal

Opponents say proposal, designed to tackle employee skiving, would fill up doctors’ waiting rooms unnecessarilyA German proposal to end the right to get short-term sick leave from a doctor over the telephone as a means of cracking down on skiving has met with an outcry from labour groups and the medical profession.Germans enjoy some of the most generous employee illness policies in Europe, a fact the conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, says is undermining efforts to kickstart the EU’s biggest economy, whose growth has largely stalled since 2022. Continue reading...

Far-right incoming president picked Judith Marín, who has publicly decried bills to decriminalise abortion, for the roleChile’s incoming far-right president José Antonio Kast has named a vehement opponent of abortion who has repeatedly stated her support for life “from conception to natural death” as the country’s new women and gender equality minister.Judith Marín, 30, was once ejected from Chile’s senate by police for screaming “return to the Lord” during a vote to decriminalise abortion under restricted circumstances. Continue reading...

Coroner says non-medical support assistant affected midwifery provision and delayed mother’s transfer to Portsmouth hospitalA coroner has warned that more babies could die without greater clarity and guidance over the role of home birthing assistants after the death of a baby girl raised concerns about a doula delaying access to hospital treatment.Matilda Pomfret-Thomas died in November 2023 of a brain injury, 15 days after a difficult home labour when her mother was not immediately transferred to hospital despite signs of fetal distress, an inquest concluded last month. Continue reading...

Intimate correspondence between John Cairncross and Gloria Barraclough features in National Archives exhibitionIt was a love letter written by one of the more important British spies of the cold war that made Tom Brass realise he had never fully known his mother.The spy in question was John Cairncross, the alleged fifth man in the Cambridge spy ring, whose spycraft also helped the Soviets win the Battle of Kursk and turn the tide of the second world war. Continue reading...