LONDON: Former business student Greg used to resort to drink and drugs to get to sleep — a common story at British universities struggling to adapt to growing concerns about student mental health problems.
“I was super, super depressed,” Greg, now aged 26, told AFP.
Around half of the 37,500 students interviewed by The Insight Network, a therapy provider, used drugs and alcohol “as a means of coping with difficulties in their lives.”
One in five reported suffering from mental health issues, mostly depression and anxiety, according to the survey conducted at 140 British universities.
In Greg’s case, it was a combination of factors at play, including the disappointment of not liking his course and coping with having more time on his hands.
The end of a five-year relationship, on top of the death of his grandparents, however, made things even worse, he said, asking not to be identified by his full name.
Dominique Thompson, a doctor who has treated students for 20 years, said their anxiety could be debilitating and was “not about feeling a bit stressed about exams.”
“They would not be able to go out with friends, to go to their lectures, to study, to read... they stop socializing, leaving their room,” she said.
And students with depression sometimes develop “suicidal thinking,” she warned.
Over the last decade, the proportion of British students reporting mental disorders has “significantly increased,” according to a study.
From 0.4 percent in 2008, the figure rose to 3.1 percent last year, the study of nearly 2.3 million students published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency indicated.
However, “we do not know how much of this increase is due to increased awareness of mental health conditions, the willingness of students to report such conditions, or a genuine increase in the prevalence of mental health conditions,” the agency said in written comments to AFP.
Jolted into action, the government announced in March the creation of a new working group “to support students to deal with the challenges” of starting in higher education.
“Our universities are world leading in so many areas and I want them to be the best for mental health support too,” Education Secretary Damian Hinds said at the time.
Students often impose “extremely high, often unrealistic, expectations” on themselves and have difficulty coping with failure, said Andrew Hill, director of a wellbeing research group at York St. John University.
There is also anxiety associated with “seeing mistakes in your work, or that others will spot mistakes you have made,” he told AFP.
Social media, with its visibility and reach, has also contributed to the pressure on young people, said Thompson.
“Cake baking is now a competition, putting on makeup is a competition, sewing, painting, sculpture...
“You name almost anything that could have been fun and relaxing, it’s now become a competition,” she said.
“They’re ... 24/7 under the microscope because of their social media.”
The doctor also said that the rise in student mental disorders was an international phenomenon.
She said students also battled the feeling that it was “no longer enough” to have a university degree because they were now so common.
Another factor can be “helicopter parents,” who micro-manage their children’s busy activity-packed routines while they are still at school, leaving them at a loss once they have to manage on their own, she said.
The experts say that universities need to implement new strategies to help struggling students.
Non-competitive activities just “for fun” should be introduced, as well as teaching students how to deal with failure, said Thompson.
For his part, Hill urged tutors to receive “basic mental literacy training” to “recognize the signs and symptoms” of potential disorders.
Greg remembers asking for help when he was a 20-year-old student at a top London university in 2013, but said that the process took “so long” he gave up.
“They recommended books, numbers to call and asked if I wanted a chat,” he recalled.
“They eventually get back to me between eight and 10 weeks after I contacted them. It was very frustrating.”
Some universities have recently taken up new approaches.
“Like many universities, we tended to focus on the point when they needed additional support,” said Mark Ames, head of student services at the University of Bristol.
Shocked by the suicides of nine of its students since 2016, the institution set up two services, made up of around 60 staff, who “focus on supporting students’ wellbeing,” such as encouraging them to get more sleep.
It is also reviewing how often it tests students and its examinations schedules to “make sure they don’t all bunch at the same time.”
However, it was recently in the headlines after the parents of one of the nine — Natasha Abrahart, 20, a physics student who was found hanged last year — accused the university of failing to do enough.
Birmingham University meanwhile told AFP that it was “actively working” on developing a “single strategic framework,” to replace its case-by-case approach.
Greg said that the approach to mental health at many universities had changed radically since his own experience.
After a five-year “break,” he has returned to university to study geology.
Britain wakes up to student mental health plight
Britain wakes up to student mental health plight
- One in five reported suffering from mental health issues, mostly depression and anxiety, according to the survey conducted at 140 British universities
- The proportion of British students reporting mental disorders has ‘significantly increased’ over the last decade
Cactus pear is a crop with potential in Italy’s parched south and beyond
- The cactus produces a tasty fruit eaten in much of Latin America and the Mediterranean, while in Mexico the flat green pads that form the arms of the cactus, are used in cooking
Global warming, drought and plant disease pose a growing threat to agriculture in Italy’s arid south, but a startup founded by a former telecoms manager believes it has found a solution: Opuntia Ficus, better known as the cactus pear.
Andrea Ortenzi saw the plant’s potential 20 years ago when working for Telecom Italia in Brazil, where it is widely used as animal feed. On returning to Italy he began looking at ways to turn his intuition into a business opportunity.
He and four friends founded their company, called Wakonda, in 2021, and began buying land to plant the crop in the southern Puglia region where the traditionally dominant olive trees had been ravaged by an insect-borne disease called Xylella.
The damage from the plant disease has been compounded by recurring droughts and extreme weather in the last few years all over Italy’s southern mainland and islands, hitting crops from grapes to citrus fruits.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Italian agriculture hit by drought, plant disease
• Start-up Wakonda sees huge potential for cactus pears
• Cactus’ cultivation is expanding in many countries
• Versatile crop has many uses, from animal feed to fuel
Ortenzi is convinced the hardy and versatile cactus pear, otherwise called the prickly pear or, in Italy, the Indian fig, can be a highly profitable solution yielding a raft of products such as soft drinks, flour, animal feed and biofuel.
The Italian businessman is far from alone in seeing the potential of the plant, whose cultivation is expanding in hot and dry regions around the world.
“As an industry, cactus pear production is growing rather quickly, especially for fodder use and as a source of biofuel,” said Makiko Taguchi, agricultural officer at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization headquartered in Rome.
MULTIPLE USES
The cactus produces a tasty fruit eaten in much of Latin America and the Mediterranean, while in Mexico the flat green pads that form the arms of the cactus, are used in cooking.
In Tunisia, where it covers around 12 percent of cultivated land, second only to olive trees, the cactus pear is a major source of income for thousands, particularly women who harvest and sell the fruit.
In Brazil, which has the world’s largest production, it is mainly cultivated in the north-east for fodder, while Peru and Chile use it to extract a red dye known as Cochineal, used in food and cosmetic production.
Sportswear group Adidas and carmaker Toyota have recently shown interest in using the cactus to produce plant-based leather sourced mainly from Mexico.
The cactus pear is not yet included in the FAO’s agricultural output statistics, but Taguchi cited the rapid expansion of CactusNet, a contact network of cactus researchers and businesses worldwide which she coordinates.
The FAO launched the group online in 2015 with 69 members. It now has 933 members in 82 countries. The plant, native to desert areas of south and north America, thrives in the increasingly arid conditions of Italy’s south, and needs ten times less water than maize, a comparable crop whose byproducts also include animal feed and methane.
So far Wakonda, an American Indian word meaning nature’s omnipresent creative force, has planted just 10 hectares of cactus with 40,000 plants per hectare, but Ortenzi plans to plant 300 hectares by the end of 2025, and he is thinking big.
Of the roughly 100,000 hectares of olive trees destroyed by Xylella in southern Puglia, only 30,000 will be replanted in the same way, he told Reuters in an interview.
“Potentially 70,000 could be planted with prickly pears,” he said.
In the long run the possibilities could be even greater, Ortenzi said, considering more than a million hectares of arable land have been abandoned in Italy in recent decades as climate change has made it more difficult to produce traditional crops.
WAKONDA’S MODEL
Wakonda’s business model discards the fruit and focuses instead on the prickly pads, which are pressed to yield a juice used for a highly nutritious, low-calorie energy drink. The dried out pads are then processed to produce a light flour for the food industry or a high-protein animal feed.
Wakonda’s circular, ecological production system also includes “biodigester” tanks in which the waste from the output cycle is transformed into methane gas used as a bio-fuel either on site or sold.
The company, which now has 37 shareholders, is in contact with mayors, firms and universities to develop its products.
Under Ortenzi’s business plan, rather than buying up land to plant the cactus, Wakonda aims to persuade farmers of its potential and then license out to them, in return for royalties, all the equipment and know-how required to exploit it.
“The land remains yours, you convert it to prickly pears and I guarantee to buy all your output for at least 15 years,” Ortenzi said.
Crypto boss eats banana art he bought for $6.2 million
- Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on Friday fulfilled a promise he made after spending $6.2 million on an artwork featuring a banana duct-taped to a wall
HONG KONG: Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on Friday fulfilled a promise he made after spending $6.2 million on an artwork featuring a banana duct-taped to a wall — by eating the fruit.
At one of Hong Kong’s priciest hotels, Sun chomped down on a banana in front of dozens of journalists and influencers after giving a speech hailing the work as “iconic” and drew parallels between conceptual art and cryptocurrency.
“It’s much better than other bananas,” Sun said after getting his first taste.
“It’s really quite good.”
Titled “Comedian,” the conceptual work created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last week, with Sun among seven bidders.
Sun said he felt “disbelief” in the first 10 seconds after he won the bid, before realizing “this could become something big.”
In the 10 seconds after that, he decided he would eat the banana.
“Eating it at a press conference can also become a part of the artwork’s history,” he said Friday.
The debut of the edible creation at the 2019 Art Basel show in Miami Beach sparked controversy and raised questions about whether it should be considered art — Cattelan’s stated aim.
And Sun on Friday compared conceptual art like “Comedian” to NFT art and decentralized blockchain technology.
“Most of its objects and ideas exist as (intellectual property) and on the Internet, as opposed to something physical,” he said.
Sun also this week disclosed a $30 million investment in World Liberty Financial, a crypto project backed by US president-elect Donald Trump.
The crypto businessman was last year charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission with offering and selling unregistered securities in relation to his crypto project Tron. The case is ongoing.
At a function room at the Peninsula hotel in Hong Kong, two men dressed as auction house staff stood in front of a featureless wall with the yellow banana offering the only splash of color.
Sun said he only recently decided to bid for the artwork, adding he had “dumb questions” such as whether the banana had decayed and how to value the work.
The artwork owner is given a certificate of authenticity that the work was created by Cattelan as well as instructions about how to replace the fruit when it goes bad.
Event attendees on Friday each received a roll of duct tape and a banana as a souvenir.
“Everyone has a banana to eat,” he said.
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs denied bail a third time as he awaits sex trafficking trial
- Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he coerced and abused women for years, aided by associates and employees
NEW YORK: Sean “Diddy” Combs was denied bail on Wednesday as he awaits a May sex trafficking trial by a judge who cited evidence showing him to be a serious risk of witness tampering and proof that he has violated regulations in jail.
US District Judge Arun Subramanian made the decision in a written ruling following a bail hearing last week, when lawyers for the hip-hop mogul argued that a $50 million bail package they proposed would be sufficient to ensure Combs doesn’t flee and doesn’t try to intimidate prospective trial witnesses.
Two other judges previously had been persuaded by prosecutors’ arguments that the Bad Boy Records founder was a danger to the community if he is not behind bars.
Lawyers did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the decision.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he coerced and abused women for years, aided by associates and employees. An indictment alleges that he silenced victims through blackmail and violence, including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.
A federal appeals court judge last month denied Combs’ immediate release while a three-judge panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan considers his bail request.
Prosecutors have insisted that no bail conditions would be sufficient to protect the public and prevent the “I’ll Be Missing You” singer from fleeing.
They say that even in a federal lockup in Brooklyn, Combs has orchestrated social media campaigns designed to influence prospective jurors and tried to publicly leak materials he thinks can help his case. They say he also has contacted potential witnesses through third parties.
Lawyers for Combs say any alleged sexual abuse described in the indictment occurred during consensual relations between adults and that new evidence refutes allegations that Combs used his “power and prestige” to induce female victims into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances with male sex workers known as “Freak Offs.”
New Zealanders save more than 30 stranded whales
- New Zealand is a whale stranding hotspot and pilot whales are especially prolific stranders
- New Zealand has recorded more than 5,000 whale strandings since 1840
WELLINGTON: More than 30 pilot whales that stranded themselves on a beach in New Zealand were safely returned to the ocean after conservation workers and residents helped to refloat them by lifting them on sheets. Four of the pilot whales died, New Zealand’s conservation agency said.
New Zealand is a whale stranding hotspot and pilot whales are especially prolific stranders.
A team was monitoring Ruakaka Beach near the city of Whangarei in New Zealand’s north on Monday to ensure there were no signs of the whales saved Sunday stranding again, the Department of Conservation said. The agency praised as “incredible” the efforts made by hundreds of people to help save the foundering pod.
“It’s amazing to witness the genuine care and compassion people have shown toward these magnificent animals,” Joel Lauterbach, a Department of Conservation spokesperson, said in a statement. “This response demonstrates the deep connection we all share with our marine environment.”
A Maori cultural ceremony for the three adult whales and one calf that died in the stranding took place on Monday. New Zealand’s Indigenous people consider whales a taonga – a sacred treasure – of cultural significance.
New Zealand has recorded more than 5,000 whale strandings since 1840. The largest pilot whale stranding was of an estimated 1,000 whales at the Chatham Islands in 1918, according to the Department of Conservation.
It’s often not clear why strandings happen but the island nation’s geography is believed to be a factor. Both the North and South Islands feature stretches of protruding coastline with shallow, sloping beaches that can confuse species such as pilot whales – which rely on echolocation to navigate.
Cheating on your spouse is no longer a crime in New York, with the repeal of a little-known 1907 law
Cheating on your spouse is no longer a crime in New York, with the repeal of a little-known 1907 law
ALBANY, N.Y.: New York on Friday repealed a seldom-used, more than century-old law that made it a crime to cheat on your spouse — a misdemeanor that once could have landed adulterers in jail for three months.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill repealing the statute, which dates back to 1907 and has long been considered antiquated as well as difficult to enforce.
“While I’ve been fortunate to share a loving married life with my husband for 40 years — making it somewhat ironic for me to sign a bill decriminalizing adultery — I know that people often have complex relationships,” she said. “These matters should clearly be handled by these individuals and not our criminal justice system. Let’s take this silly, outdated statute off the books, once and for all.”
Adultery bans are actually law in several states and were enacted to make it harder to get a divorce at a time when proving a spouse cheated was the only way to get a legal separation. Charges have been rare and convictions even rarer. Some states have also moved to repeal their adultery laws in recent years.
New York defined adultery as when a person “engages in sexual intercourse with another person at a time when he has a living spouse, or the other person has a living spouse.” The state’s law was first used a few weeks after it went into effect, according to a New York Times article, to arrest a married man and 25-year-old woman.
State Assemblymember Charles Lavine, sponsor of the bill, said about a dozen people have been charged under the law since the 1970s, and just five of those cases resulted in convictions.
“Laws are meant to protect our community and to serve as a deterrent to anti-social behavior. New York’s adultery law advanced neither purpose,” Lavine said in a statement Friday.
The state’s law appears to have last been used in 2010, against a woman who was caught engaging in a sex act in a park, but the adultery charge was later dropped as part of a plea deal.
New York came close to repealing the law in the 1960s after a state commission tasked with evaluating the penal code said it was nearly impossible to enforce.
At the time, lawmakers were initially on board with removing the ban but eventually decided to keep it after a politician argued that repealing it would make it seem like the state was officially endorsing infidelity, according to a New York Times article from 1965.
