Latest news with #deSouza
The National
08-07-2025
- Politics
- The National
Children in England living in 'Dickensian' poverty, major report warns
Rachel de Souza, the Children's Commissioner for England, has published a new report detailing how children are going without food and proper hygiene while living in cramped conditions. Her report, which was commissioned by the UK Government, drew on the experiences of 128 children across England between January and March this year. Speaking to BBC Breakfast, de Souza (below) said she had been Children's Commissioner for England for four years but was shocked 'by how much worse things have got'. (Image: Aaron Chown/PA Wire) She added: 'It really is Dickensian and there are a huge number of children now who have dropped below what anyone of us would think is reasonable. 'The children who have got no food to eat, the children who can't wash their clothes so they are going to school dirty and if they're lucky the school are washing their clothes for them. 'I had one child tell me about his shame because he couldn't have his friends round because in the night rats came and bit his face.' The report was commissioned by the Government as it works on developing a strategy to tackle child poverty. A child poverty taskforce had been due to report back in the spring but this has been delayed to the autumn. READ MORE: What we learned about Labour from new poll of 7000 voters Alongside the Children's Commissioners of the other three UK nations, de Souza has called for the UK Government to scrap the two-child cap, which prevents most families from claiming benefits for children above their first two. This would cost the UK Government about £3.4 billion per year and lift 500,000 children out of poverty, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank. Around 1.6 million children live in families affected by the cap, according to the Department for Work and Pensions. (Image: PA) Kirsty Blackman (above), the SNP's work and pensions spokesperson, said: 'This report shows just how far broken, Brexit Britain has fallen and stands as a damning indictment of Westminster – England's Children's Commissioner has described Dickensian levels of poverty and she is absolutely categorical that the two-child cap must go. 'The SNP Scottish Government has taken decisive action to end the two-child cap yet despite commissioning this report, it seems the UK Labour Government will ignore the warnings and leave thousands of children in poverty. 'If the Labour Government copied SNP Scottish Government action on child poverty, 2.3m families would be lifted out of poverty – that means ending the two-child cap, abolishing the bedroom tax and matching the Scottish Child Payment, something which you'd expect from any government serious about ending child poverty.' A UK Government spokesperson told the BBC ministers were "determined to bring down child poverty" and pointed to a £1bn package of support, including funding to feed the poorest children outside of term time.
Scroll.in
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘Volcano': Eunice de Souza's poems invite deeper reflections despite their seemingly light surfaces
The first poem in Volcano, Eunice de Souza's collected poems, 'Catholic Mother', which appeared in her debut collection, Fix, lands like a quiet but devastating punch. Its brevity doesn't dilute its force. Instead, de Souza uses silence and subtlety to deliver a critique more potent than rhetoric. In 'Marriages Are Made', she lays out a cynical checklist for what constitutes a 'marriageable' woman, and the loaded title does not escape notice. 'Feeding the Poor at Christmas' and 'Sweet Sixteen' are fine examples of how she wields humour as both shield and sword. I recall reading 'Sweet Sixteen' a few years ago and marvelling at how de Souza turned adolescent innocence on its head, skewering societal expectations with piercing wit. Her endings, often abrupt, are like trapdoors – pulling the reader into deeper reflections beneath seemingly light surfaces. Fierce satire In 'Idyll,' barely 17 lines long, de Souza writes, 'When Goa was Goa / my grandfather says / the bandits came / over the mountains / to our village / only to splash / in cool springs / and visit Our Lady's Chapel.' This poem was published at a time when Goa was still a Union Territory. In his Introduction, Vidyan Ravinthiran writes that de Souza doesn't repeat but frames (critiques, palpates both diagnostically and cherishingly) the structure of anecdote. He goes on to explain how the word 'idyll' was originally, returning to Theocritus – not a pastoral heaven, but a poem about such a place, a literary genre. He draws attention to how another voice rises, ironical, impatient with the rose-tinting of the past, and serves as a resistance to the present mode, a mode of disapproval. In the poem, 'Mrs Hermione Gonsalves', through the monologue of a woman obsessed with her fading beauty and her dark-skinned husband, de Souza paints a portrait of racial and class prejudice. The poem's closing, almost comic in tone – where women flee from the sight of Mr Gonsalves, thinking the devil himself had arrived – is satire in its most unrepentant form. De Souza seeks neither sanction nor sympathy; her satire stands independent, fierce, and undiluted. We mustn't forget that, teaching as she did in Bombay University as early as 1969, de Souza occupied a unique space in a transforming India – one where educated, working women still had to navigate deeply entrenched patriarchal norms. In the poem 'My Students', she addresses this with characteristic humour. Ravinthiran observes how even his own students at Harvard University found her voice startlingly fresh and contemporary, despite its decades-old origins. Her poems repeatedly challenge religious piety and passive femininity. In 'Bequest', she turns the lens inward, revealing her vulnerability. She longs to be a 'wise woman,' smiling endlessly and emptily like a plastic flower. In all candour, she suggests that self-love must become an act of radical charity – bequeathing one's heart like a spare kidney, even to an enemy. The poem's startling self-awareness points to the deeper struggle: the real enemy is often within, and the absolution lies in confronting ourselves honestly. Unsentimental and pragmatic This leads one to question: Can de Souza's work be classified as confessional poetry? While I am against reading a poet's work as autobiography, it's difficult to ignore how her poems draw from fiercely individual insights. In the poem 'Advice to Women', one reads, 'Keep Cats / if you want to learn to cope with / the otherness of lovers. Otherness is not always neglect / Cats return to their litter trays / when they need to.' Stripped down of any emotional drama, this poem in its sane voice says how 'the stare of perpetual surprise / in those great green eyes / will teach you / to die alone.' One encounters her refusal to sentimentalise or philosophise unnecessarily. 'Forms without ache are futile,' she states in 'Otherness/Wise', quoting a painter friend, before admitting she'd rather it weren't so. The hard-to-miss image of de Souza, whom I have known only through her poems, is that of her gazing long to the light beyond the window, a parrot perched on her head. Therefore, a particularly vivid memory is piqued, reading her 2011 poem, 'Pahari Parrots' where, 'At the sight of Campari the parrots make / little weak-kneed noises / Toth pulls the glass one way / Tothi the other/both hang on when I pull / It's a regular bar-room brawl.' This balance between detachment and empathy, irony and affection, is what sets her poetry apart. Even in the face of loss and mortality, de Souza resists sentimentality. In 'Mid-Sentence', she peels down language to its core: 'Finis. Kaput. Dead.' It is blunt, almost jarring in its simplicity, particularly within the landscape of Indian English poetry, where death is often draped in spiritual abstraction. In 'My Mother Feared Death', she writes: 'Alive or dead, mothers are troubling / Mine came back and said, 'I'm lonely.'' It's an honest, unsentimental recognition of grief – painful, yes, but also clear-eyed and unsparing. Reading de Souza's poems is also deeply personal, reminding me of the conversations with my atheist father, who with his wise humour and sharp sarcasm pierced through pretences. Her poem 'Sacred River' offers a mundane, almost absurdist portrayal of a river visit, far from the ornamental spirituality often associated with prayer rituals at the ghats. One does not miss her empathy for animals. I am yet to come across a pregnant half-starved stray dog in a poem. She deploys language as easily as a shovel when she says 'a white man playing at being a sadhu/ top knot and all,' concluding 'nothing stops faith/ it will be heaven to get out of here.' Few poets have confronted romanticised symbols as bracingly as de Souza. Take, for instance, where she admonishes: 'Koel, stop those cries/ I can't take it this morning/ We'll survive somehow.' The line encapsulates so much of de Souza's ethos: unsentimental, pragmatic, and dryly humorous. Ravinthiran writes that de Souza's poems are essential to him for their tight technique, the speech rhythms in them that never cloy, but mostly for the push-and-pull they evince, outlining piecemeal, a personality pursuing an impracticable equilibrium. Melanie Silgardo, who had known de Souza for more than forty years, first as a student, then publisher and friend, says about de Souza's poems that 'she honed and whittled till she got to the nub of things. Her language was always precise, her cadence colloquial, her punctuation minimal, her ear exact.' Volcano prompts a reflection on the many silences – literary and personal – I've allowed to persist. Eunice de Souza's work doesn't ask for admiration; it demands attention. And in doing so, it reshapes how we think about truth, satire, womanhood, faith, and poetry itself. It is not without reason that one chances upon Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's 'Elegy for E': 'She's dead / you still dial her number / You dial Fix / You dial Dutch Painting / you dial Almond Leaf / It always connects / She always answers / The phone herself / How does she do it / Line after line?'
Global News
05-07-2025
- Health
- Global News
Pediatric care in Kelowna lags behind other health jurisdictions: KGH department head
A department head at Kelowna General Hospital (KGH) is highlighting what he says are the serious gaps in pediatric health care delivery in the wake of the ongoing pediatric ward closures at the hospital. 'This is an unprecedented situation,' said Dr. Duncan de Souza, head of KGH's anesthesia department. 'We do not know of anything similar that has ever happened in British Columbia, where a major hospital has lost such a key component of its services.' De Souza, who provides care to pediatric patients, spoke at Wednesday's town hall meeting, which was organized in the wake of the pediatric crisis at KGH. He provided comparisons in pediatric services between Interior health (IH) and Vancouver Island Health (VIH) as an example of how much IH is lagging behind. 'Vancouver Island Health Authority has 900,000 people. So does IHA. Victoria is their major referral centre, as is Kelowna and their level of pediatric care is vastly superior to ours,' de Souza told the roughly 100 people in attendance. Story continues below advertisement The advanced pediatric care, as outlined by de Souza, is offered at Victoria General Hospital (VGH). 'They have a higher level newborn ICU. They have a pediatric ICU, which we don't have,' de Souza said. 'They have dedicated services for children in the emergency room. They have a much, much more robust and active pediatric surgical program.' De Souza said he believes the stark difference in pediatric care in the two health authorities boils down to advocacy efforts. 'What we have now is the result of whatever level of advocacy and push for pediatrics that existed in IHA and we see the effects of what's going on now,' de Souza said. Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy KGH's 10-bed pediatric unit closed on May 26 with the closure now approaching the six-week mark. It's not known when it will re-open. According to IH, 19 pediatric patients who needed a hospital admission had to be transferred to other hospitals across the IH region, including Vernon, Penticton and Kamloops. 2:09 Interior Health executive compensation despite ongoing issues at KGH Pediatricians have been calling for changes to the staffing and health care delivery model for years but they have said their concerns were not taken seriously enough. Story continues below advertisement It prompted many of them to resign from the hospital, leaving KGH with a severe shortage of pediatricians — which resulted in the ward closure. The unit's closure has impacted other departments, including the emergency room (ER). 'We're holding those children in our department for longer,' said Dr. Matthew Petrie, an ER physician. 'If they're sick enough to require transfer right then, that usually means one of our physicians and at least one or two of our nurses are dedicated to dealing with that sick child and that just pulls resources away from a system that's already under-resourced.' De Souza believes a model similar to that in Victoria should be seriously considered. 'When we look for a solution for a sustainable model for Kelowna General and for IHA, we don't have to look far and wide,' de Souza said. 'We only have to look in our own province to find something that works.' The ministry of health stated it is aware of calls for Kelowna to receive services comparable to those in other communities. It added, 'the ministry is currently reviewing a related proposal that was recently submitted from Interior Health.' It's not known, however, what that proposal entails. In an email to Global News, IH cautioned about making comparisons between two health jurisdictions, in this case stating, 'to make a direct comparison of Kelowna to Victoria does not factor in significant differences in geography, transportation routes or population disbursement of these two regions.' Story continues below advertisement IH also stated that population growth in recent years has required the health authority to focus on a review of service delivery models, adding it has expanded the neonatal intensive care unit at KGH. Medical staff on the front lines however, have said a lot more needs to be done to keep up with the growing demand. 'We are at an inflection point. I hope things improve,' de Souza said. 'I hope that we can follow the model that's out there in Victoria for a better level of pediatric care.' 2:42 Health care addressed at Kelowna townhall
Tokyo Reported
07-06-2025
- Tokyo Reported
Osaka Customs finds 90 bags of cocaine inside body of Brazilian woman
OSAKA (TR) – Officials here this week announced the arrest of a 35-year-old Brazilian for allegedly attempting to smuggle cocaine by swallowing more than 70 rubber bags of the illegal drug earlier this year, reports NHK (June 3). At around 10:00 a.m. on April 16, Jessica Ramos de Souza allegedly attempted to smuggle for profit about 675 grams of cocaine inside 87 thin rubber bags from Brazil into Japan via Kansai International Airport. The contraband has a street value of about 16.88 million yen, according to Osaka Customs. Customs officials became suspicious of de Souza due to a grim expression on her face. When they inspected her, they found 13 bags of cocaine wrapped in a sock between her legs. A subsequent X-ray examination at a medical institution revealed a total of 74 rubber bags containing an average of 7.8 grams of cocaine inside her body. The suspect has been accused of violating the Customs Act for the 74 bags in her system and the Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Control Act for the entire load of 87 bags. Regarding the former act, she denied the allegations. 'There's no doubt that I smuggled cocaine, but it wasn't for profit,' she said. According to police, 46 of the 87 bags were found in her stomach. Another 28 bags later passed through her stomach and were collected after officials waited for them to be naturally excreted. The thirteen bags found between her legs had somehow passed out of her body before arrival at the airport, officials said. According to Osaka Customs, this is the fifth case since last December in which someone has been arrested for attempting to smuggle cocaine from Brazil inside their system. Customs officials are continuing the investigation, believing that an international smuggling organization is behind the case.
Tokyo Reported
07-06-2025
- Tokyo Reported
Osaka Customs finds 90 bags of cocaine inside system of Brazilian woman
OSAKA (TR) – Officials here this week announced the arrest of a 35-year-old Brazilian for allegedly attempting to smuggle cocaine by swallowing more than 70 rubber bags of the illegal drug earlier this year, reports NHK (June 3). At around 10:00 a.m. on April 16, Jessica Ramos de Souza allegedly attempted to smuggle for profit about 675 grams of cocaine inside 87 thin rubber bags from Brazil into Japan via Kansai International Airport. The contraband has a street value of about 16.88 million yen, according to Osaka Customs. Customs officials became suspicious of de Souza due to a grim expression on her face. When they inspected her, they found 13 bags of cocaine wrapped in a sock between her legs. A subsequent X-ray examination at a medical institution revealed a total of 74 rubber bags containing an average of 7.8 grams of cocaine inside her body. The suspect has been accused of violating the Customs Act for the 74 bags in her system and the Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Control Act for the entire load of 87 bags. Regarding the former act, she denied the allegations. 'There's no doubt that I smuggled cocaine, but it wasn't for profit,' she said. According to police, 46 of the 87 bags were found in her stomach. Another 28 bags later passed through her stomach and were collected after officials waited for them to be naturally excreted. The thirteen bags found between her legs had somehow passed out of her body before arrival at the airport, officials said. According to Osaka Customs, this is the fifth case since last December in which someone has been arrested for attempting to smuggle cocaine from Brazil inside their system. Customs officials are continuing the investigation, believing that an international smuggling organization is behind the case.
