Johnson urged to extend public’s right to roam over English countryside

Letter signed by 100 people including Stephen Fry and Ali Smith points out freedom to roam only extends to 8% of country

More than 100 authors, musicians, actors and artists have written to Boris Johnson urging him to extend the public’s right to roam over the English countryside.

The letter, signed by leading figures from Stephen Fry to Jarvis Cocker, Sir Mark Rylance to Ali Smith, calls on the prime minister to give people greater access to nature to improve the public’s physical and mental health. Continue reading…
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Moderna Requests Emergency FDA Authorization for COVID-19 Vaccine

A medical syringe and a vial in front of the Moderna logo are seen in this creative illustrative photo. More than one hundred fifty COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine are in development across the world, several of which have the third phase of clinical trials, as media reported. (Photo illustration by STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“I personally feel this is an incredible milestone,” Moderna President Dr. Stephen Hoge tells TIME. “But the goal is to stop the pandemic, and we need to deliver 100 million doses, then the second 100 million doses after that. There is a sense we are still fighting the war”
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Creative therapy and shared support can help with grief after losing a child

A retreat for grieving parents provides therapeutic benefits, writes a mother whose daughter was stillborn 22 years ago

After my daughter Grace died when I was eight months pregnant, my first impulse was to write it all down: the birth, surrounded by candles; the coffin and funeral where there should have been a christening; how her death had been accompanied by snowdrops fighting their way through the frozen ground in the first stirring of spring. I felt I was the only one really to have known her and I wanted her acknowledged. I wrote a diary as a way of making my daughter real, and published it in a magazine. It helped.

I’ve since learned that this is a common impulse in the bereaved – especially among bereaved parents, who feel an urgent and deep-seated need to remember and honour their children. Continue reading…
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It’s Not Just…The Strange Psychology of Zoom Holidays

A version of this article was published in It’s Not Just You, a weekly newsletter by TIME Editor at Large, Susanna Schrobsdorff. Subscribe here to get your dose of small comforts. Well hello! I’m so glad you’re here. This week: The psychology of holiday Zooming, lessons from a recovering pessimist, and a moment of photographic…
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My husband donates money to the church, but leaves me short

It’s not about the money, says Mariella Frostrup. You describe your husband as if he were a stranger, so think hard about your future

The dilemma I’m a 60-year-old woman and although I have worked for years teaching English, I have always been financially dependent on my husband. He is very involved in the evangelist church and gives them a percentage of his salary. The knowledge of this, together with a constant struggle to get by, has made me feel so bitter. I contemplated leaving, when the children were younger, because of his strong Christian values and my strong non-Christian values and all the complications of this. But I didn’t have the courage to plunge both myself and the children into further hardship.

This issue has come to the fore again as I struggle to help one of my daughters out with university fees. How can he give so much to a church when he knows our children are struggling? It just makes me mad. But he perhaps rightly feels that it is his salary to do as he wishes with. I am aware that my dependency is my own fault. My way of dealing with all this has been to plunge myself into a number of outside activities that have allowed me, at little expense, a lovely social world far removed from my husband’s church circle, which I find so oppressive. Continue reading…
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Climate ‘apocalypse’ fears stopping people having children – study

Survey of 600 people finds some parents regret having offspring for same reason

People worried about the climate crisis are deciding not to have children because of fears that their offspring would have to struggle through a climate apocalypse, according to the first academic study of the issue.

The researchers surveyed 600 people aged 27 to 45 who were already factoring climate concerns into their reproductive choices and found 96% were very or extremely concerned about the wellbeing of their potential future children in a climate-changed world. One 27-year-old woman said: “I feel like I can’t in good conscience bring a child into this world and force them to try and survive what may be apocalyptic conditions.” Continue reading…
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The U.K. Asks Its Regulator to Assess the AstraZeneca and Oxford University Coronavirus Vaccine After Dosing Errors

This undated photo issued by the University of Oxford shows of vial of coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, in Oxford, England. Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said Monday Nov. 23, 2020, that late-stage trials showed its coronavirus vaccine was up to 90% effective, giving public health officials hope they may soon have access to a vaccine that is cheaper and easier to distribute than some of its rivals. (University of Oxford/John Cairns via AP)

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he asked regulators to determine if the vaccine “meets rigorous safety standards”
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Museum of London asks Londoners for Covid pandemic dreams

Guardians of Sleep project working with Canadian university to compile Covid-19 dreams

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From tsunamis to perfectly formed egg sandwiches, vivid dreams appear to have become a familiar experience during the pandemic. Now these powerful, bizarre and sometimes unsettling thoughts and images are to be captured for posterity.

The Guardians of Sleep project by the Museum of London, working with the Museum of Dreams at Western University in Canada, is asking Londoners to get in touch to share the dreams they experienced as Covid-19 swept the world. Continue reading…
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An AstraZeneca Manufacturing Error Is Clouding Vaccine Study Results

FILE – In this undated file photo issued by the University of Oxford on Monday, Nov. 23, 2020, a researcher in a laboratory at the Jenner Institute in Oxford, England, works on the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. With major COVID-19 vaccines showing high levels of protection, British officials are cautiously — and they stress cautiously — optimistic that life may start returning to normal by early April. Even before regulators have approved a single vaccine, the U.K. and countries across Europe are moving quickly to organize the distribution and delivery systems needed to inoculate millions of citizens. (University of Oxford/John Cairns via AP, File)

A statement describing the error came days after the company and Oxford University called the shots “highly effective”
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Hawaii Is Riding Out the COVID-19 Storm. But Geographic Isolation Isn’t the Blessing it May Seem

HONOLULU, HI – OCTOBER 16: Bodyboarders walk out off of Kahanamoku Beach in Waikiki on Friday, Oct. 16, 2020 in Honolulu, HI. Amid the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, the State of Hawaii is trying to restart its tourism economy; October 15 was the start of a new traveler testing program, with thousands of people expected to arrive to the state. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

What the rest of us can learn from the Aloha State
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