Cyberflashing should be new criminal offence, review suggests 

  • Unsolicited sending of obscene images should be made illegal through the creation of a new offence of cyberflashing, a UK government-commissioned review recommended. 
  • The Law Commission said that while the Sexual Offences Act criminalised exposure of genitals, it was not sufficiently clear whether that covered images or video recordings. 
  • In a report, published on Wednesday, the commission said: “Cyberflashing can cause serious harm. It is often experienced as a form of sexual harassment, involving coercive sexual intrusion by men into women’s everyday lives.”
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China cracks down on online inappropriate child related content  

  • China’s internet watchdog has ordered some of the country’s biggest online platforms to remove inappropriate child-related content. 
  • Kuaishou, Tencent’s messaging tool QQ, Alibaba’s Taobao and Weibo have been summoned by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). 
  • CAC says the platforms must “rectify” and “clean up” all illegal content and has fined them. 
  • The announcement comes as Beijing carries out a crackdown on tech firms. 
  • In a statement, the CAC said “the operation is focused on solving seven types of prominent online problems that endanger the physical and mental health of minors”
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Non-surgical beauty treatment industry like Wild West – MPs 

  • The “complete absence” of regulation of non-surgical beauty treatments, such as botox-style injections and fillers, is dangerous and must urgently change, say MPs. 
  • After a year-long review, they claim the government has left the industry to regulate itself, despite concerns regularly raised by many within the sector. 
  • Recommendations include mandatory training for all practitioners and some recipients of treatments are only just 18 years of age.  
  • The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Beauty, Aesthetics and Wellbeing, says that while demand for non-surgical procedures has “exploded” in recent years, the UK government has failed to keep up with aesthetic training courses almost entirely unregulated.
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Almost a quarter of England’s pupils out of school 

  • Almost a quarter (23.3%) of pupils in England were out of school last week, the latest official attendance figures show. 
  • This means there were 1.7 million pupils absent, up from 1.5 million the week before. 
  • The latest figures include over a million off for Covid-related reasons, but only 47,000 actually had Covid. 
  • In secondary schools, the absence rate was nearer a third (32.7%) of pupils, while in primaries it was 17%.
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