BBCThousands of people will march on London on Sunday at a family-friendly rally to highlight the importance of clean water in their lives. The BBC speaks to residents near one rural waterway, which scientists found had the second highest levels of active pharmaceutical pollution in the UK.

British data shows that children conceived and born during a period of sugar rationing were less likely to develop diabetes or high blood pressure later in life.People who were restricted to limited amounts of sugar in the first few years of life were less likely to develop diabetes and high blood pressure decades later, a new study has found.The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, took advantage of a unique situation in the United Kingdom. The country was under strict rationing during World War II and its aftermath. When the rationing ended, in September 1953, the average sugar intake by people in Britain doubled. That provided a natural experiment and allowed the researchers to ask: What happened to the health of people who were conceived and born when sugar was rationed compared with people conceived and born just after sugar rationing ended?To find out, the researchers, Tadeja Gracner, an economist at the University of Southern California, and her colleagues, Claire Boone of McGill University and Paul J. Gertler of the University of California, Berkeley, turned to the UK Biobank. It contains genetic and medical information on half a million people, and steps have been taken to preserve contributors’ privacy. Using the data, the investigators analyzed the health of 60,183 people who were born from October 1951 through March 1956, and were age 51 to 60 when they were surveyed.The investigators reported that those exposed to sugar rationing early in life had a 35 percent lower risk of diabetes and a 20 percent lower risk of high blood pressure in middle age. The onset of those chronic diseases was also delayed by four years for diabetes and two years for high blood pressure. They also found that disease protection was greatest for those who had been conceived during sugar rationing and were babies while rationing continued. Those who were exposed to sugar rationing only before birth and then grew up with higher sugar intake had higher disease rates.The results contribute to a body of evidence suggesting that nutrition very early in life can affect health much later. But because of the unique circumstances of British sugar rationing, the new study provides additional rigor, experts said.For example, a study of military records of men whose mothers were in the first half of pregnancy during the Dutch famine, or Hunger Winter, during World War II found that the men were more likely to be obese at age 19 than men born after that event. Another study found that women whose mothers were pregnant during the famine were heavier at age 50 than women born later.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

PA MediaLib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey has said he is “minded” to vote against an upcoming bill to legalise assisted dying.

It would be “crazy” to leave breast tissue behind during a mastectomy, a disgraced breast surgeon has told an inquest into the death of one of his patients.

Getty ImagesThe Liberal Democrats have called on the government to exempt social care from the rise in National Insurance.

PA MediaA leading midwife who has led reviews into care failings in the NHS has criticised the health service for “failing” to give her daughter safe care.

As libraries become public stages for social problems — homelessness, drug use, mental health — the people who work there are burning out.On social media, Mychal Threets was spreading the gospel of “library joy” to hundreds of thousands of followers.Known for his energetic delivery and signature Afro, Mr. Threets showed off the book-themed tattoos covering his arms and evangelized about the pleasure of reading while cradling one of his cats. Viewers found his enthusiasm for literature infectious, and he got a kick out of drawing in young readers.But at his job, as a supervisor at the Fairfield Civic Center Library in Solano County, Calif., he was facing new challenges. The library, which he had begun visiting as a child, had become a gathering place for people experiencing issues like homelessness, drug dependence and mental illness.Some of his duties had little to do with cataloging books and recommending titles. Over a year, Mr. Threets said, he filed more than 170 incident reports documenting how library patrons had acted out: property damage, harassment, physical altercations.“There were several instances where people would get in my face and kind of threaten to physically push me,” Mr. Threets said. At one point, he added, a patron threatened to kill him multiple times — visitors pulled knives on each other, too.His anxiety and depression, both present since childhood, had worsened. And he faced an impossible dilemma: What do you do when the pressures of your profession are harming your mental health?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Breaking up the C.D.C., moving funds from the N.I.H. — conservatives have floated changes should Mr. Trump regain office.The Covid pandemic dominated the last years of Donald Trump’s presidency, and the discontent it caused most likely contributed to his loss in 2020. But on the campaign trail this year, Mr. Trump rarely talks in depth about public health, dwelling instead on immigration, the economy and his grievances.Still, Project 2025, the blueprint for a new Republican administration shaped by many former Trump staff members, lays out momentous changes to the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.And Mr. Trump’s embrace of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, and his campaign slogan, “Make America Healthy Again,” suggests there will be significant changes to the nation’s public health priorities should Mr. Trump regain the presidency.“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Kennedy at a rally in New York City on Sunday. “I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on medicines.”Republican critics increasingly describe the health agencies as corrupt, riddled with conflicts of interest and staffed by myopic bureaucrats accountable to no one.Mr. Trump echoed these themes at a rally in Wisconsin: “We’ll take on the corruption at the F.D.A., the C.D.C., World Health Organization and other institutions of public health that have dominated, and really are dominated by corporate power, and dominated really by China.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

When I arrive at an abortion clinic in south London, four protesters – three women and one man – are gathered on the opposite side of the road alongside a picture of the Virgin Mary, which is draped in rosary beads. They are silently mouthing prayers, and ask not to be interrupted.