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AKA Kaz. Qualified journalist with nine years' reporting, editing, and commissioning experience. Member of the Association of British Science Writers.
Featured in Newsweek, The Independent, i, The Evening Standard, and International Business Times U.K.
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"You have to start romanticizing your life," TikToker Ashley Ward urges in her most popular video, her lo-fi voice resembling a protagonist in an indie coming-of-age movie. She warns: "You have to start thinking of yourself as the main character, because if you don't, life will continue to pass you by."
Top infectious disease expert Anthony has told Newsweek he would be "surprised" if a new, more infectious strain of from South Africa had not arrived in the U.S., even though it has not yet been detected. The South African variant, named 501.V2, has so far emerged in the U.K., Switzerland, Finland, Japan, Australia, Zambia, France, and South Korea.
November 17, 2020, marks one year since a mysterious respiratory illness, later named COVID-19, first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan. In that time, has become a disease of pandemic proportions, touching every continent except Antarctica, killing more than 1.3 million people and infecting 55 million.
Over 200 scientists have called on public health bodies including the World Health Organization (WHO) to that the that causes -19 is "airborne."
The U.S. accounts for around a fifth of cases and fatalities, at 6.8 million diagnoses of 31.6 million worldwide. The has killed almost 977,000 people, with nearly 202,000 of those in the U.S. What has led to the world's largest economy amassing a body count so high that top immunologist and White House task force member Dr. Anthony described it as "sobering...
President Donald Trump has claimed the World Health Organization (WHO) has "admitted" that his anti- stance amid the -19 pandemic was correct, stating the measures are "killing countries all over the world." "The World Health Organization just admitted that I was right," he tweeted Monday. " are killing countries all over the world.
Nathan Dalley had his first crush on a boy when he was in fourth grade. He had never felt a connection with another person quite like it. "It was different," he tells Newsweek. In that moment, the 9-year-old couldn't have envisioned how his attraction to that boy and others-and the ways in which adults would react to those sparks-would go on to shape his life.
Trans children who live as the gender they identify with act and develop similarly to their cisgender counterparts, according to a new study. In the largest ever study of transgender children, scientists recruited 317 3 to 12-year-old transgender children, 189 of their siblings, and 316 kids who acted as controls.
Almost 20 years after measles was eliminated in the U.S., 2019 could see the highest rates of the dangerous disease in three decades, an expert has warned. A combination of the efforts of the small but extremely vocal anti-vaccine movement and barriers to obtaining shots in some communities has sparked outbreaks of the potentially deadly-but entirely preventable-disease across the country.
People diagnosed with autism later in life have revealed how not knowing for decades that they had the condition made them feel "alien" and like "bad" people. The condition can be diagnosed at the age of 18 months, with a series of and developmental tests.
Every American will be affected by climate change, experts have warned, although extreme events like scorching heatwaves, devastating floods and ferocious hurricanes will hit some harder than others.
One Friday last August, the then ninth-grader Greta Thunberg decided to skip school and stand outside the Swedish parliament to demand her government take action against climate change. In her one-girl protest, she held up a sign reading "Skolstrejk för klimatet," or "school strike for the climate."
For the past decade, Akon has been on a mission to transform his legacy. The onetime purveyor of problematically titled pop anthems-from "Smack That" to "SexyBitch"-is now a social entrepreneur and even a potential presidential candidate. Already, his four-year-old solar panel initiative, Akon Lighting Africa, has brought electricity to hundreds of communities in 15 countries, including Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal, where the St.
"Would you like me to get you something?" Rosario Dawson asks as she rises from the dining table at the luxury 18th-century hotel where she is staying in The Hague, Netherlands. At first I'm taken aback-interviewees don't usually offer to fetch journalists breakfast.
Terry Crews's earliest memory is of his father repeatedly punching his mother in the face as hard as he could. He was about 4 years old at the time. Decades later, the actor concluded his father's behavior was rooted in toxic masculinity: a poisonous concept he has become a vocal critic of.
Frank. Compassionate. Self-proclaimed rebel. You could use many words to describe Freida Pinto, but prolific is not one of them - at least not by Holywood's typical standards. In the decade since she played Latika in the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire and was propelled from a little-known Indian actress to a global household name overnight, she has collected little more than a dozen or so film and TV acting credits.
On a fall day in 1988, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, hundreds of activists descended on the Food and Drug Administration headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. Blocking the doors and walkways, they chanted, "Hey, hey, FDA, how many people have you killed today?"
What happens when you die? As she lay blindfolded in a seat in a dimly lit room, Anna* came close to finding out. But Anna wasn't dying, or even close to death, when she entered what she described as an alternate realm.
"We certainly didn't have orgies," says Satya Franklin as she recalls her experiences three decades ago at Rajneeshpuram, the commune in Oregon run by a so-called "sex cult" at the center of the new Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country.
Throughout his life, Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil has broken traditions, stereotypes and taboos. Despite the stigma a divorce carries in India, he ended his marriage with his princess in 1992. A decade later, he became the first member of the Indian royal family to come out as gay and launched an LGBT rights charity shortly afterward.
As much as it is a competition to find America's next drag superstar, RuPaul's Drag Race is a showcase of the human ability to endure and overcome painful hardship, from bullying and drug addiction to being abandoned at a bus stop by a parent as a child.
Shandra Woworuntu was weeks away from turning 25 when she boarded a plane from Indonesia to the US to work in a hotel in Chicago. She planned to stay for just six months, and return to her home city of Manado with enough money to put her daughter - then 3-years-old - through university.
As a commercial real-estate developer in New York City, Rodrigo Niño is clear that he is as rational as they come. But when at 41-years-old he was diagnosed with stage three melanoma - the most aggressive form of skin cancer that can quickly spread to the organs - he was consumed by anxiety about dying.
"Welcome to paradise!" says the naked, middle-aged woman sitting beside me, grinning as she sinks deeper into the almost-too-hot spring water pool at Hotel Shiragiku in the Japanese city of Beppu. She has travelled from Hong Kong to visit the laid-back spa city famous for its 2,500 mineral-rich hot springs, which are said to soothe the skin and relax the body.
The contoured skin; plump lips slicked with a matte colour; thick, flawless eyebrows, and cheekbones glowing with highlighter: it's that airbrushed look that seems to only exist online on the faces of the Kardashians and beauty bloggers of Instagram and YouTube. This "Instagram" look will be what defines the makeup of the 2010s.
Once upon a time, many of us believed that the words ' fat free' written across a product meant that it was healthy - regardless of how much sugar, salt or god-knows-what-else was packed inside.
In the two decades that Fearne Cotton has carved out her career as a presenter, from The Disney Club in the Nineties to her final Radio 1 mid-morning show in 2015, she has quietly built herself up as a brand in her own right.
As a presenter on BBC Radio 1 and a DJ who regularly performs at Glastonbury Festival and in Ibiza, MistaJam has been the soundtrack to many, many an amazing night out for his audiences.
Hours before The Mighty Hoopla, a day festival showcasing the cheesiest of pop music and the finest of London's queer night culture, terrorists killed seven people in London Bridge.
At the Sugar Baby Summit in London, self-confessed sugar babies learn how to secure rich sugar daddies to shower them with money and gifts. Kashmira Gander meets some of the women at the summit to find out why they've ditched conventional dating
Skateboarding - the pastime of teens and no-good punks - and architecture - that lofty, high-brow topic - may seem worlds apart. But French photographer Fred Mortagne has spent a decade-and-a-half proving how they are inextricably linked and showing skateboarding "for what it really is".
'Gelato is tastier, healthier, sexier' Creamy, cold, and churned up into myriad flavours: you might be forgiven for thinking that ice-cream and gelato are the same. Surely, "gelato" is just Italian for ice-cream, and a word that infuriating foodies throw about to seem in the know. But you'd be very, very wrong.
As the widely panned Emoji Movie awaits its DVD release in time for Christmas, it seems like we've reached peak emoji. We can finally say sayonara to smiley yellow faces and anthropomorphic poops that signal the slow demise of civilisation itself.
The label is damaging the people who make the food we love and a dark sign of attitudes towards foreigners I remember it so vividly. My mum had succumbed to my pleas to make halva, a soft, delicate Persian sweet made using rose water, saffron, sugar, flour and water, and so had packed some in my lunchbox so I could take it to school.
"When you wear a scarf you are a visual representation of Islam," says Saudi travel blogger Esra Alhamal, who wears the Islamic headscarf, the hijab, and identifies as a "hijabi". "You need to be even nicer than your usual self just to give an even nicer message. That can be exhausting sometimes."
As a researcher who helped to identify the G-spot and female ejaculation, Dr Beverly Whipple transformed how we understand women, sex and pleasure. "With my life and my research I have focused on validating the pleasurable, sensual, and sexual experiences that women report," she tells The Independent.
It's 1.30am in a bare-bricked, underground room in Farringdon, east London, and a crowd flooded in blue and red LED light has opened out into a huge mosh pit. There's a delicious moment of tension, then the bass drops. Arms and legs flying, people happily hurl themselves at each other to Chase and Status' pounding dubstep.
A leading drugs reform campaigner has hailed 2016 as a ground-breaking year for research into understanding how psychedelic drugs can be used to help treat a range of illnesses.
It's Saturday night in the bustling seaside city of Brighton and Hove - famed for nightlife that attracts students and stag dos - and I'm among around 50 people packed into a dimly lit bar which has imposed a prohibition. But it's not alcohol that's off the menu - it's technology.
Coachella is full of vapid, narcissistic people who are too worried about looking flawless and snapping selfies to actually enjoy a festival properly. At least that is the picture painted by much of the mainstream media coverage of the three-day event which sees almost 200,000 mainly twenty-somethings descend onto a polo field in the desert city of Indio, California.
Doreen Valiente, the mother of modern witchcraft, was nine-years-old when she had what she called an indescribably mystical experience, and saw the veil of reality tremble. On a balmy summer evening in the 1920s, she crept into her south London garden at twilight and was consumed by the feeling that her surroundings were fabricated to hide something else: something "very potent."
Home-made magazines are an increasingly popular, and commendably democratic, journalistic trend. Kashmira Gander takes a look between the covers Jade French was 14-years-old when she ripped out a handful of images from some magazines, crudely glued them to a piece of A4 paper, and photocopied sheet after sheet at her local corner shop.
Synonymous with extreme wealth and the British establishment, if the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea were a person it would be a portly gentleman in finest white tie. The Royal College of Art (RCA) - a piece of brutalist architecture rudely positioned next to South Kensington's ornate Royal Albert Hall - would, then, be a bur stuck to the gentleman's silk handkerchief: an oddity bursting with the seeds of change.
They, whoever "they" are, always say that you should get out of your comfort zone from time to time. So, naturally, I took this advice to its logical conclusion and decided to perform on stage as a female drag queen. Perhaps I should start from the beginning... I'm addicted to drag culture.
Since Bianca Del Rio appeared on RuPaul's Drag Race she has taken her acerbic comedy around the world. Kashmira Gander chats with her as the formidable queen transforms her. (Warning: This article contains spoiler alerts. The video above contains strong language.)
Cassie Cava was just 22 years old when she had her leg amputated. Born with a club foot, she suffered complications after breaking it walking up the stairs. Enduring operation after operation over six years, she was still left struggling to walk - and coping with levels of pain that forced her to drop out of medical school.
When I was a child, my Iranian mother took care of the cooking. On school nights, we ate healthy meals of pasta or meat and two veg that could have appeared on any other British dinner table.
Illumined by the high-summer sun, my hometown of Brighton (pop: 273,400) throbs with life. The stretch of pebble beach between the gaudy rollercoasters of the Palace Pier and the burnt-out remains of the West Pier is filled with sunbathers. Among them, parents chat while their children happily pile up rocks - who cares that there's no sand?
It's a Friday night in Lewisham and ten people have gathered for a weekly swimming club at the inner London borough's modern leisure centre, an oasis of calm beyond which city life grinds on. Reflections from the red light of the emergency exit sign dance on the water of the dimly lit pool where Roberta Francis, the club's head honcho, plays catch with another swimmer.
eering out of the plane window as I descend, it is obvious why the Bahamas are synonymous with the notion of paradise. Curls of land rise from azure water under wisps of cloud, eliciting delicious images of white sand being pushed between my toes, before foamy waves wash away my footprints.
Staring proudly across the River Thames towards Big Ben, her cape caught in a gust as she strides away from a backdrop of the Crimean battlefield. This is how the Crimean War heroine Mary Seacole will be memorialised in a powerful 10ft bronze statue by the distinguished sculptor Martin Jennings, to be unveiled outside St Thomas' hospital in central London on Thursday.
Usually, the aisles of Sainsbury's on Hackney Road in east London on a Saturday evening are filled with shoppers quickly grabbing dinner and bottles of booze for the weekend. But on 13 August the store was packed with dozens of activists kissing in protest after a same-sex couple had been escorted from the premises for holding hands.
News Planning the thrills and spills of rollercoaster rides can be a heady business, as Kashmira Gander finds out Palms clammy with fear, nails digging into the harness, you come to a grinding halt and inhale sharply before the carriage creeps slowly upwards. A pause.
For many of us, the new year is the perfect chance to improve our health and fitness after the indulgences of the festive season - but the majority of people are give up on their resolutions despite good intentions on 1 January.
Alistair is a game keeper and a deer stalker, who lives alone in a modest white brick house in the rugged hills of a hunting estate in rural Argyll. He spends the year maintaining the land for its owners - during which he uses a combination of steel-strong willpower and the welcome wag of his golden retriever's tale to help haul himself from bed - all for days like today.