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Drill rapper and filmmakers taking ‘grim reality’ of county lines drugs to parliament

Drill rapper and filmmakers taking ‘grim reality’ of county lines drugs to parliament

Entertainment
It takes just minutes for the scenes to turn grim: a dirty trap house, a drug user injecting scabbed feet, a tiny baby crawling amid the filth.This is Trapping, a new British film starring MOBO-winning drill rapper Abra Cadabra and produced by filmmakers and grime pioneers Femi Oyeniran and Nicky "Slimting" Walker. Later this evening, they take the story to parliament for a discussion about the bleak reality of the UK's county lines problem, where vulnerable adults and children as young as six, according to the Children's Society, are recruited to move and supply drugs.While the portrayal of drug dealing often shown on screen has long drawn criticism for glamourising the lifestyle, the same cannot be said for Trapping. Rather than focusing on the "girls, the money, the cars", as writer and...
Report: Calls to smoking ‘quit lines’ drop appreciably during pandemic

Report: Calls to smoking ‘quit lines’ drop appreciably during pandemic

Health
March 12 (UPI) -- The number of smokers seeking information about quitting has declined by nearly 30% since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last March, according to a report released Friday by the North American Quitline Consortium. Just over 525,000 calls were made to state smoking "quit lines" through 1-800-QUIT-NOW in 2020, a 27% decrease from 2019 numbers, when 715,000 calls were logged, and the lowest level seen since 2007, the report showed. Advertisement Call volumes dropped in parallel with the timeline of the pandemic, with a 6% decrease in the first quarter of 2020, followed by declines of 39%, 30% and 21% in quarters two, three and four of last year, respectively, compared with 2019. In 2019, just under one-third of callers were Medicaid enrollees and nearly half reported a ...
COVID-19 discriminates along racial, socioeconomic lines, study finds

COVID-19 discriminates along racial, socioeconomic lines, study finds

Health
May 15 (UPI) -- Black people, poor people and those living in densely populated areas are up to four times more likely to test positive for COVID-19, an analysis published Friday by The Lancet has found. The study, conducted by British researchers and focusing on trends in the United Kingdom, echoes reports of similar demographic disparities in the United States. "It's important to know which groups in the wider community are most at risk of infection so that we can better understand SARS-CoV-2 transmission and how to prevent new cases," study co-author Dr. Simon de Lusignan, of the University of Oxford, said in a press release. As of Friday afternoon, more than 1.4 million Americans have been infected with the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and more than 86,000 have died from COVID-19, th...
Ovo Energy lines up audacious SSE retail deal

Ovo Energy lines up audacious SSE retail deal

Business
By Mark Kleinman, City editor Ovo Energy, the decade-old gas and electricity supplier, is plotting a move into the ranks of Britain's biggest utilities with a bid to acquire the retail operations of SSE.Sky News can exclusively reveal that Ovo has been in discussions for a number of months with SSE, the FTSE-100 group, about a deal. A transaction is not certain to be struck, but sources close to the situation said this weekend that it could be agreed in outline within weeks.If a deal is completed, it would pave the way for SSE's exit from the challenged UK energy retail market and catapult Ovo into the big league of British power suppliers.Under its pioneering chief executive, Stephen Fitzpatrick, Ovo has already amassed 1.5 million customers, some of ...