Latest news with #Nottingham
The Sun
39 minutes ago
- The Sun
Man, 27, charged with rape after woman ‘attacked in popular park'
A 27-year-old man has been charged with rape after a woman was "attacked in a popular park". The horrific incident took place between 9pm and 10pm at Sutton Lawn. Cops were rushed to the scene on June 29 to support the victim while a team of detectives carried out extensive enquiries. Malik has now been charged with three counts of rape and possession of cannabis. He appeared at Nottingham Magistrates' Court on Tuesday (22 July) and was remanded in custody until 19 August 2025. Detective Inspector Nicole Milner, of Nottinghamshire Police, said: 'The victim continues to be supported by officers and has been informed about this important development in our investigation. 'We know the incident caused concern in the Sutton-in-Ashfield area so I hope this charge provides reassurance to the wider community.'
BBC News
4 hours ago
- Health
- BBC News
'Wrong decision' over care plan before mum and daughter found dead
A child protection plan for a vulnerable teenager was wrongfully removed months before she and her mum were found dead in their home, an inquest has bodies of Alphonsine Djiako Leuga, 47, and her 18-year-old daughter Loraine Choulla were discovered in a house in Radford, Nottingham on 21 May had been raised about Loraine, who had Down's Syndrome and learning disabilities, and in 2023 a child protection plan was implemented by social care teams at Nottingham City Council. On Wednesday, an inquest into their deaths heard the removal of that plan in January 2024, was a "wrong decision". It is thought Alphonsine and Loraine may have been dead for weeks or even months before they were found in their council house in Hartley Road, where they had been living since 2019. The inquest, which will investigate how the mother and daughter died, will also examine whether there were any missed opportunities to save Loraine - if it is accepted her mother died before her. Loraine was "entirely dependent" on Alphonsine to eat and drink and was "primarily non-verbal", the court heard. In 2021, Alphonsine began to stop engaging with housing, education and social care services. By 2022, Loraine stopped attending her special educational needs school. Giving evidence at Nottingham Coroner's Court, Nichola Goode a service manager for the council's whole life disability team, said due to her mother's lack of engagement, Loraine was considered a "vulnerable hidden child" and it was known her case was "complex". She added despite worries for Loraine, there were no concerns raised about her "presentation" and the relationship between her and her mother was observed as being "warm". The court heard that there "continued to be concerns about Loraine's health", her lack of education and her "social isolation" at the point her plan was terminated. Loraine's child protection plan was closed on 31 January 2024, before she had turned 18. Ms Goode told the inquest: "I think in hindsight, now that we've looked at that, it was a wrong decision made by child social care. We could have followed more thorough inquiries."She added: "We accept that we shouldn't have closed the plan". It was known to the social care team that Alphonsine had been admitted to hospital critically unwell - days before her daughter's plan ended - and required "life-saving treatment". After her discharge, social care attempted a home visit but left when it "appeared no-one was home".Ms Goode said: "Had we believed Alphonsine and Loraine were inside, we would have called the police."The inquest has heard that days later, on 3 February, Alphonsine called 999 pleading for an ambulance, but the call was mistakenly considered abandoned and was subsequently closed, with no-one attending the proposed medical cause of death was recorded as pneumonia, while Loraine's was not established. The inquest you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, support is available via the BBC Action Line
Telegraph
7 hours ago
- Health
- Telegraph
Covid aged our brains by six months, study finds
The Covid pandemic sped up the ageing process of people's brains and was detrimental to the function of the mind, a study has found. People infected with the virus were most affected, figures showed, but even those who avoided infection saw an impact. Scientists compared scans of people's brains around three years apart, using computer models to determine how much the brains had aged. A control group of people with two scans done pre-pandemic was compared to people who had one scan before, and then a follow-up after the virus emerged. The researchers, from the University of Nottingham, used UK Biobank scans from almost 1,000 people and found the pandemic group's brains had an average 5.5 months more than the control group. Academics suggested the strain on people's lives from lockdowns, with their isolation and uncertainty, may have aged people's brains. They found brain ageing during the pandemic was 'more pronounced' among men, older people and those from deprived The scientists discovered that for all people, irrespective of age, brains aged almost six months more than they should have done during the pandemic. Pandemic's strain on lives They also looked at the impact of the pandemic on the grey and white matter of the brain to see how a person was impacted based on their age. Grey matter is a type of tissue that is crucial for processing information, while white matter is a deeper tissue that allows different parts of the brain to communicate with each other. The white and grey matter of those who lived through the pandemic was, on average, three-and-a-half days older per year than that of the control group. The impact was more severe in people who contracted the virus, with an extra six days of ageing per year compared with the non-pandemic group. 'We found that the Covid-19 pandemic was detrimental to brain health and induced accelerated brain ageing … regardless of SARS-CoV-2 infection,' the University of Nottingham experts wrote in the paper. Dr Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad, who led the study, said: 'What surprised me most was that even people who hadn't had Covid showed significant increases in brain ageing rates. It really shows how much the experience of the pandemic itself, everything from isolation to uncertainty, may have affected our brain health.' The research team also examined whether having Covid affected someone's cognitive performance by examining the results of tests taken at the time of the scans. They found that people who were infected with the virus showed a lower performance on cognitive tests when they were assessed again after the pandemic. Prof Dorothee Auer, who specialises in neuroimaging and was a senior author on the study, said: 'This study reminds us that brain health is shaped not only by illness, but by our everyday environment. The pandemic put a strain on people's lives, especially those already facing disadvantage. 'We can't yet test whether the changes we saw will reverse – but it's certainly possible, and that's an encouraging thought.'
BBC News
13 hours ago
- Automotive
- BBC News
Collapsed water pipe closes road in Nottingham city centre
A busy road in Nottingham city centre has been closed due to a broken water city council said on Wednesday that Severn Trent Water engineers discovered the collapsed culvert under Upper Parliament Street during investigations into a sewer is causing the road to sink, the authority added, and the closure has been put in place as a safety precaution while the pipe is firms Nottingham City Transport and Trentbarton said multiple services were being diverted due to the closure, between Tollhouse Hill and Hurts Yard. Nottingham City Council said it was awaiting an update from Severn Trent Water on how long repairs would take.
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
COVID-19 Made Our Brains Age Faster
Credit - Yuichiro Chino—Getty Images COVID-19 is leaving all kinds of legacies on our health, both on our bodies and our brains. In a study published July 22 in Nature Communications, researchers report that living through the pandemic aged our brains—whether or not you were infected with COVID-19. To investigate COVID-19's impact on the brain, researchers looked at brain scans from 1,000 people during and before the pandemic. They compared these to brain scans from other people taken during "normal" times as a model for typical brain aging. Led by Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad from the University of Nottingham School of Medicine in the U.K., the researchers looked at measures like brain function, gray and white matter volume, a person's cognitive skills, and their chronological age. Gray matter is critical for memory, emotions, and movement, while white matter is essential for helping nerves transmit electrical signals. The pandemic-era brains aged about 5.5 months faster compared to the brains of those studied before the pandemic. The accelerated aging was documented in people who had COVID-19 infections as well as those who didn't, which strongly suggests that pandemic-related factors other than biological or virus-driven ones—like high stress—were also at work. In fact, the changes in gray and white matter were similar in people who were and were not infected. 'This finding was interesting and rather unexpected,' says Mohammadi-Nejad. Other studies have already shown that the COVID-19 virus can change the brain for the worse, but "we found that participants who simply lived through the pandemic period, regardless of infection, also showed signs of slightly accelerated brain aging. This highlights that the broader experience of the pandemic—including disruptions to daily life, stress, reduced social interactions, reduced activity, etc.,—may have had a measurable impact on brain health.' Read More: What to Know About the New COVID-19 Variant XFG The impact of the pandemic seemed to be greater in certain groups—notably men, the elderly, and people with more compromised health, lower educational status and income, or unstable housing. People with less stable employment had an average of five months of additional brain aging compared to those with higher employment status, while poorer health added about four months of increased brain age compared to better health. However, only people infected with COVID-19 showed drops in cognitive skills. But the fact that those who weren't infected during the pandemic also showed accelerated aging reflects the need to acknowledge the broader health effects of the pandemic beyond the obvious physical metrics on which doctors tend to focus. 'Brain health can be influenced by everyday life activities, and major societal disruptions—like those experienced during the pandemic—can leave a mark even in healthy individuals,' Mohammadi-Nejad says. 'This adds to our understanding of public health by reinforcing the importance of considering mental, cognitive, and social well-being alongside traditional physical health indicators during future crisis-response planning.' While the study did not explore specific ways to address brain aging, he says that strategies known to maintain brain health, such as a healthy diet, exercise, adequate sleep, and social and cognitive interactions are important, especially in the context of stressful circumstances such as a pandemic. 'Whether these can reverse the specific changes we observed remains to be studied,' he says. Contact us at letters@ Solve the daily Crossword
