Young women around Australia are being struck down by a mystery neurological illness - with experts fearing social media addiction and pandemic stress is triggering the problem.
The Tourette's syndrome-like disorder is seeing teenagers suffering from incontrollable 'tics' - which include outbursts, twitching, pops, noises, swearing, kicking and hitting.
Doesn't sound that different to the behaviour of a lot of modern teenage girls these days...
'This bright, spunky, fiercely independent young girl just trapped in her own body, in her own head. It's really hard to watch,' Melissa told 60 Minutes of her daughter Metallyka - before the teen slaps her mother.
Which teenage girl hasn't wanted to do that at some point? Have they found a way to do it and get treated as if they are the victim, I wonder?
Nicole, a British 15-year-old began suffering from her tics shortly before her 13th birthday - with minor facial twitches transforming into violent physical and verbal outbursts. Her mother said the most confronting of her tics is she will commonly shout 'I am Madeleine McCann, I've been kidnapped' in public. Like many other cases, Nicole's tics came on during Covid when she was admittedly 'very lonely'.
Long time readers of 'Fortean Times', of which I count myself as one, will not be unfamiliar with this pattern that's emerging, of course. The ontly real modern twist is it's being spread via the Internet.
The professor pointed to the mimicking of TikTok videos showing tics being broadcast around the world - with 16-year-old Michaela admitting seeing the clips had triggered her behaviour and even seen her mirroring it. She has now 'fully recovered', with Professor Dale saying the disorder is 'definitely' something that can be overcome but admitted only 20 per cent of his patients have kicked the condition.
The more things change, eh, prof..?
According to the government's latest "reasonable worst-case scenario," electricity capacity shortfall in the country could total about one-sixth of peak demand, even after emergency coal plants have been utilized, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, citing individuals familiar with the government's planning.
Under the outlook, along with anticipated below-average temperatures and reduced electricity imports from Norway and France, Britain could be exposed to four days in January when it may need to set off emergency measures to conserve gas.
The report followed a warning last week by the Bank of England that the UK was on course for a lengthy recession as unprecedented energy prices push the country's inflation rate toward 13 percent.
What fun.
Nature charities joined fire chiefs in calling for a ban on disposable barbecues yesterday, branding them a menace to the environment.Aren't they just as much of a danger? Given disposable barbecues tend to at least stay put, while lanterns go whereever the wind takes them?
Around 4 per cent of serious accidental fires are ‘robustly linked’ to barbecue use, Home Office figures show.
To stop 4% of fires, we should inconvenience 100% of customers?
A petition demanding a ban had last night gathered more than 14,500 signatures.
It's probably far exceeded that now, as every Karen and misery-guts and Virtuesignaller in the country flings themselves on the bandwagon as it trundles by...
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) came out with a blistering response to the Monday FBI raid on former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence, reportedly in connection with materials Trump brought with him after leaving office."The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves," said DeSantis. "Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic."
Tesco has apologised to shoppers after...
Out of date food? Dirty store? Rude staff?
...'racist' security tags were placed on cosmetics for black skin but not lighter skin tones in one of its stores.
*sighs* Buckle up, we're going in....
Mother-of-three Natalie Westgate complained to the chain after she spotted the security measures on the makeup, calling it 'racist' and 'absolutely disgusting'.
'I understand you have to security box items but do you think it is ok to only have the dark range security boxed and not the entire range,' she said to Tesco.
'Please ask your race and ethnicity network and Black Voices Advisory Group what they think to security only boxing the dark range then get back to me.'
The utter arrogance in that demand is breathtaking. But sadly only to be expected of someone who doesn't even pause to consider the absurdity of having a 'race and ethnicity network' in the first place...
The supermarket responded first on Twitter and said 'stores may sometimes use security tags on items which have recently been subject to theft and the decision to do so changes from store to store'.
Brave of the corporate Twitter-wrangler to use facts and logic to bat away the annoying Karen. But futile, because there's never just one. They hunt in packs. And the avalanche of manufactured outrage reached the eyes of a manager trained to be obsequious in the face of anything 'racist':
A spokesperson for Tesco apologised and said that it was an example of human error, and they should not have been tagged.
'It’s really important to us that Tesco is a place where everyone feels welcome, and the tags have now been removed,' they told The Sun.
So there you have it, thieves and shoplifters; Tesco wants you to 'feel welcome'. You know where to go now, don't you?
More than a quarter of patients who need appointments avoid making one because they find it too difficult, according to a new survey.
The NHS GP Patient Survey 2022 showed a sharp rise in people struggling to get through to GP practices over the phone. Since last year, the share of respondents saying it was not easy to make contact with anyone jumped by nearly 15 percentage points to roughly 47% in the previous 12 months.
Dr Omon Imohi, a 39-year-old GP in St Helens, said "there's this notion that the GP receptionists are difficult to get through, but they can only offer what's there, they can only give what they've got". She worries about taking toilet breaks while trying to get through 18 face-to-face and remote consultations a day, on top of administrative work like processing prescriptions, blood test results and hospital referrals.She squeezes in extra appointments for people with urgent needs when she can, but there's a limit how far any GP can stretch. Dr Imohi, who is also vice chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners' (RCGP) Mersey branch, told the ECHO: "[Receptionists] feel the frustration as well, because patients are shouting at them, sometimes patients are insulting them, but it's not within their power."
The pandemic saw GP practices shift to online booking systems and phone consultations, some of them almost overnight. For older, poorer and less technologically savvy patients, this presents a barrier to accessing medical advice as they may lack the knowledge or resources to navigate the process.
