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BBC News
04-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
Police sent to wrong hotel during Bristol summer disorder, study finds
Police officers called to respond to far-right protesters who had targeted a hotel housing asylum seekers, were mistakenly sent to the wrong location, according to a new unrest on 3 August 2024 the group, and a counter-protest group, gathered to demonstrate in Castle Park, Bristol, before moving to the Mercure Hotel in to the Government-commissioned report, Avon and Somerset Police officers were given "incorrect information" and sent to a Holiday Inn instead of the Mercure, leaving it "unguarded" as anti-immigration protesters Chf Con Jon Reilly said: "Officers were deployed outside the Mercure Hotel throughout the evening before they were briefly used to support colleagues nearby where the risk was deemed greater." The report, called 'Understanding the 2024 Summer Riots in the UK' was led by academics from the University of Sussex and examined disorder in Bristol, Hanley and authors gathered information from news outlets, social media posts and widespread unrest across the country came in the days after the fatal stabbing of three children in Southport, when misinformation was circulated online that the attacker was a Muslim asylum about a Bristol protest appeared in the days before it and described a march towards Redcliff Hill, where the Mercure Hotel is. At the time, the hotel was providing accommodation for more than 300 asylum seekers, of which more than half were children, according to the report. The report said there had been clashes in other parts of the city including Castle Park and Bristol Bridge before anti-immigration protesters made their way to the there had been a police presence at the hotel earlier, a police support unit was sent to Castle Park before being redeployed to protect asylum seekers and hotel staff but were "given incorrect information and sent to a Holiday Inn hotel instead", the report seekers in the hotel "looked on from windows" as about 60 anti-immigration protesters gathered outside the building at 19:55 hotel was put into lockdown as counter-protesters stood outside the hotel and linked arms to protect its entrance.A small number of police officers were in attendance as more protesters arrived but were "heavily outnumbered""They... sent a message to their Bronze commander requesting immediate assistance as groups of anti-immigrant participants began to physically assault them to get at the counter-protesters and the hotel entrance," the report added: "For around 10 minutes, the main body of the counter-protesters came under concerted attack including missiles being thrown, kicks and punches, and racist and homophobic abuse."The additional police units joined the four officers at the scene half-an-hour after the first protesters had gathered outside the hotel.A police eyewitness said that it had been in the "top five most violent incidents" that they had witnessed in their 25-year conclusion, the report deemed the unrest to be "riots rather than protests" and called it the "biggest outbreak of disorder in the UK since 2011". 'Immense courage' Dep Chf Con Reilly called the events "an incredibly complex and dynamic policing operation" and that since that day 44 people had been sentenced for their involvement in the disorder."Hundreds of police officers, many of whom came in to work on a day off, put themselves in harm's way throughout the course of Saturday 3 August to protect the public," he said."Each and every one of them deserves enormous credit for their actions that day, which were carried out in the face of disgraceful violence and abuse."He said that officers who had been at the hotel and were then deployed to help colleagues who needed support nearby, returned "within minutes". "Despite being faced with disgusting physical and verbal abuse, they showed immense courage in protecting the public," he added.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Study Reveals a Simple Technique to Communicate With Your Cat
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways A cat squints its eyes while laying on a bed. Cats have a reputation for aloofness (and flooffiness), but if you and your feline friend aren't bonding, maybe you're just not speaking their language. Never fear – research from 2020 has shown that it's not so difficult. You just need to smile at them more. Not the human way, by baring your teeth, but the cat way, by narrowing your eyes and blinking slowly. By observing cat-human interactions, scientists confirmed that this expression makes cats – both familiar and strange – approach and be more receptive to humans. "As someone who has both studied animal behavior and is a cat owner, it's great to be able to show that cats and humans can communicate in this way," Karen McComb, a University of Sussex psychologist, said in a 2020 statement. "It's something that many cat owners had already suspected, so it's exciting to have found evidence for it." If you've spent any time around cats, you've probably seen their 'partially closed eyes' facial expressions, accompanied by slow blinking. It's similar to how human eyes narrow when smiling and usually occurs when the puss is relaxed and content. The expression is interpreted as a kind of cat smile. Anecdotal evidence from cat owners has hinted that humans can copy this expression to communicate to cats that we are friendly and open to interaction. So, a team of psychologists designed two experiments to determine whether cats behaved differently towards slow–blinking humans. In the first experiment, owners slow-blinked at 21 cats from 14 different households. Once the cat was settled and comfy in one spot in their home environment, the owners were instructed to sit about 1 meter away and slow-blink when the cat was looking at them. Cameras recorded both the owner's and the cat's faces, and the results were compared to how cats blink with no human interaction. The results showed that cats are more likely to slow-blink at their humans after their humans have slow–blinked at them, compared to the no–interaction condition. The second experiment included 24 cats from eight different households. This time, it wasn't the owners doing the blinking but the researchers, who'd had no prior contact with the cat. For a control, the cats were recorded responding to a no–blink condition, in which humans stared at the cats without blinking their eyes. The researchers performed the same slow–blink process as the first experiment, adding an extended hand toward the cat. And they found that not only were the cats more likely to blink back, but they were also more likely to approach the human's hand after the human blinked. "This study is the first to experimentally investigate the role of slow blinking in cat-human communication," McComb said. "And it is something you can try yourself with your own cat at home or with cats you meet in the street. It's a great way of enhancing the bond you have with cats. Try narrowing your eyes at them as you would in a relaxed smile, followed by closing your eyes for a couple of seconds. You'll find they respond in the same way themselves, and you can start a sort of conversation." Dogs may be much more enthusiastically demonstrative than cats, but this news isn't a surprise for cat lovers. Research in recent years has shown that our feline friends are much more in tune with their human housemates than previously supposed and that comparing them to dogs is a disservice. Cats, for example, respond in kind to humans who are receptive to them – so if you find cats standoffish, that might be a problem with you, not the kitty. Likewise, cats echo the personality traits of the humans they live with – this may be related to why cats seem to pick up when their humans are sad. They also can recognize their names (although they choose to ignore them a lot of the time). And their bonds with their humans are surprisingly deep. It's difficult to know why cats slow–blink at humans this way. It's been interpreted as a means of signaling benign intentions since cats are thought to interpret unbroken staring as threatening. But it's also possible that cats developed the expression since humans respond positively to it. With domesticated animals, it's often impossible to tell. Either way, it does seem to help forge a rapport. And that's a good thing to know. Learning how to improve our relationships with these enigmatic animals could also be a way to improve their emotional health – not just in the home environment but across a range of potentially stressful situations. "Understanding positive ways in which cats and humans interact can enhance public understanding of cats, improve feline welfare, and tell us more about the socio-cognitive abilities of this under-studied species," said psychologist Tasmin Humphrey of the University of Sussex. "Our findings could potentially be used to assess the welfare of cats in a variety of settings, including veterinary practices and shelters." You're going to try it right now, aren't you? The research was published in Scientific Reports. An earlier version of this article was published in October 2020. Related News
