Nice Morocco

https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/zhriaf/morocco_will_be_first_african_country_to_provide/

https://old.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/zhrkza/morocco_will_be_first_african_country_to_provide/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Morocco/comments/zi550c/morocco_will_be_first_african_country_to_provide/

https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/zi1in5/morocco_will_be_first_african_country_to_provide/

Alejandra Caraballo is used to seeing anti-transgender hatred.

As an L.G.B.T.Q. rights advocate and a transgender woman, she has received death threats, and her and her family members' personal information has been published. When she goes to her favorite bar in New York, she sometimes wonders what she would do if someone came in shooting.

But last weekend, it became too much. Members of the Proud Boys and other extremist groups, many of them armed, converged outside a planned drag event in Columbus, Ohio. Neo-Nazis protested another event in Lakeland, Fla. There was an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. rally in South Florida, also attended by the Proud Boys. All of this just two weeks after the killing of five people --- two of them transgender, a third gay --- at an L.G.B.T.Q. club in Colorado Springs.

"I had a full panic attack and breakdown," said Ms. Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School. "It's one thing knowing there's this extremist hate on the internet and seeing it in the abstract, and I can kind of compartmentalize. When this hate becomes manifested in real-life violence and there's a celebration of it, is when it becomes too much to stomach."

It was one more month in a year in which intimidation and violence against gay and transgender Americans has spread --- driven heavily, extremism experts say, by inflammatory political messaging.

Since far-right social media activists began attacking Boston Children's Hospital over the summer for providing care for transgender children, the hospital has received repeated bomb threats. Doctors across the country who do similar work have been harassed. The Justice Department charged a Texas man this month with threatening a Boston doctor; it also recently charged at least two others with threatening anti-gay or anti-transgender attacks.

Twelve times as many anti-L.G.B.T.Q. incidents have been documented this year as in 2020, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which tracks political violence.

"Being a trans person in particular in this country right now is walking around thinking that it's possible this could happen any day," said Sam Ames, the director of advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project, an L.G.B.T.Q. suicide prevention organization, adding, "We are hearing every day from trans youth who are being impacted by that political rhetoric."

The rise in threats has accompanied an increasingly vitriolic political conversation.

Over the past couple of years, it has become routine for conservatives to liken transgender people and their allies to p-dophiles, and to equate discussion of gender identity with "grooming" children for sexual abuse --- part of an intensifying push, reminiscent of campaigns against gay rights dating back to the 1970s, to turn increasing visibility of transgender Americans into a political wedge.

Just before Florida prohibited instruction related to sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, Christina Pushaw, a spokeswoman for Gov. Ron DeSantis, called the ban an "anti-grooming bill." Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has accused President Biden of supporting "genital mutilation of children." Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia declared that "communist groomers" wanted to "allow a for-profit medical industry to chop off these confused children's genitals."

Representatives for Mr. Cruz and Ms. Greene --- both of whose comments falsely characterized the treatment transgender minors receive --- did not respond to requests for comment. Ms. Pushaw said, "My tweet did not mention transgender people."

Conservatives say they are trying to protect children from irreversible treatments and ensure women's sports remain fair; in midterm election ads, right-wing groups argued that transition care amounted to "radical gender experiments" and that allowing transgender athletes to compete on teams matching their gender identity would "destroy girls' sports." (The treatments offered to transgender children are endorsed by medical associations and have been shown to reduce suicide risk, and few transgender women and girls seek to participate in women's and girls' sports.)

Wes Anderson, a Republican pollster, said he believed those two arguments could pose a "liability" for Democrats --- though, he said, they were far from priorities for voters this year.

But experts on political violence say incendiary language has made attacks more likely.\

"We know that they are animated by what they're seeing in online spaces," Oren Segal, the vice president of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, said of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. attackers. "Those online narratives, thepropaganda that is disseminated by these bad actors, is informed and often legitimized by other voices in our public discussion, whether it's elected officials or others."

The false specter of child abuse has long been a way for anti-L.G.B.T.Q. campaigns to attract "people who otherwise would not join what they consider a homophobic movement," said Eric Gonzaba, an assistant professor of American studies at California State University, Fullerton, and co-chair of the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History.

It gained prominence 45 years ago, when the singer Anita Bryant founded Save Our Children. Accusing gay people of "recruiting" children, the group persuaded voters in Miami-Dade County, Fla., to repeal an anti-discrimination ordinance months after it was passed. Then the movement took its case nationwide.

"Her rhetoric was almost always about the sexualized danger of gay men against children," said Tina Fetner, a professor of sociology at McMaster University who has studied how the religious right shaped L.G.B.T.Q. activism. "That's 'grooming.' They have a new term for it now, but it's the same rhetoric."

The argument resurfaced in 1992, when two ballot measures sought to ban similar anti-discrimination protections. One, in Colorado, passed but was struck down by the Supreme Court. The other --- which would have forbidden Oregon to promote "homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism or masochism" and required "a standard for Oregon's youth which recognizes that these behaviors are abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse" --- did not pass.

These tactics have been used and reused because they can work politically. But history and current events suggest limits.

Ms. Bryant's group stoked a backlash that temporarily blocked anti-discrimination laws, but did not stop society's gradual movement toward accepting gay Americans. In fact, historians say, it galvanized L.G.B.T.Q. people to organize more forcefully.

"There's just incredible resilience and resistance that come out of these moments of hatred and vilification," said Jen Manion, a professor of history and of sexuality, women's and gender studies at Amherst College.

Republicans underperformed in this year's midterms, and several candidates who focused on transgender issues did poorly. Tudor Dixon leaned hard on them but lost the Michigan governor's race by double digits. The American Principles Project, a super PAC, spent about $15 million on related ads in contests that Republicans also largely lost. (Representatives for Ms. Dixon did not comment, and the super PAC did not respond to an interview request for its president.)

In a postelection memo, Paul Cordes, chief of staff for the Michigan Republican Party, blasted Ms. Dixon's campaign and backers for running "more ads on transgender sports than inflation, gas prices and bread and butter issues that could have swayed independent voters."

Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster, said transgender sports participation simply wasn't a priority for voters.

"This is not the type of issue that helps Republicans win elections," Mr. Hobart said.

Conservative commentators, however, have continued to focus on it. Tucker Carlson had a guest on his Fox News show after the Colorado shooting who said violence would continue unless transgender advocates' "evil agenda" stopped. The commentator Matt Walsh told his 1.2 million Twitter followers that people were "soulless demons" if they responded to the attack by denouncing those "who don't think children should be exposed to drag shows." (Many drag performances aren't sexual.)

In the three days after the Colorado nightclub shooting, interactions with public Facebook posts mentioning "p-dophiles" rose 613 percent, and interactions with posts mentioning "groomers" rose 74 percent, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank.

And after a year in which local officials removed books that discussed gender identity from libraries, states passed more than 15 bills targeting transgender people and Texas opened abuse investigations against parents whose children received transition care, lawmakers are preparing more anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills for next year.

Many focus on transition care for minors; some would even restrict care for adults up to age 21. Others would restrict drag shows.

A pre-filed bill in Montana, titled "Prohibit minors from attending drag shows," offers a glimpse of what these legislative debates may look like.

"To put forward a bill targeting drag shows right after a mass shooting at a club that hosts drag-queen story hours is to further stoke the hate that is going to get my community killed," said Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat just elected as the first openly transgender legislator in Montana. She said that friends had killed themselves in the past two years, in which Montana lawmakers voted to restrict transgender sports participation and tried unsuccessfully to restrict transition care, and that others had left the state.

Ms. Zephyr said she had spoken with several Republicans who did not want to pass bills focused on transgender or gender-nonconforming people. One, State Representative Mallerie Stromswold, said in an interview that she found her party's focus on these issues "disheartening."

The bill's sponsor, State Representative Braxton Mitchell, a Republican, responded to a request for comment by asking why it was "all of the sudden a critical requirement for someone in drag to be in every school," but would not provide an example of any official calling for that. He described drag shows as adult entertainment; while some are, many are "story hours" where performers read books.

The advocacy group GLAAD has identified 124 protests and threats against drag events this year. Many were targeted after being publicized on right-wing social media.

In the long term, based on history, several scholars said they expected anti-transgender campaigns to fade.

"I think it's unlikely that attitudes are going to become more negative over time," Professor Fetner said. "That hasn't been the pattern for any discriminatory attitude."

But short term, the effects loom large.

People tend to become more accepting when they know L.G.B.T.Q. people personally. But Lindsey Clark, the deputy director for the Human Rights Campaign's Transgender Justice Initiative, who is transgender and nonbinary, said it was hard to ask transgender people to reach out when doing so could put them in danger.\

Jay Brown, the Human Rights Campaign's senior vice president of programs, research and training, said, "We need to hurry up history."

Moscow police are warning internet sleuths spreading their own theories online over the murder of four University of Idaho students in November that they could be charged with harassment.

As the case remains unsolved almost four weeks after the stabbing of the four college students, speculation and rumors about what happened has surged in the Moscow community and online.

On Reddit, threads about the Moscow murders have amassed more than 40,000 members, discussing possible leads on the investigation and theories about what happened to victims Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen on Sunday, November 13.

Internet sleuths have focused their attention on different people involved in the investigation, even though those have not been named as suspects by police—including a neighbor of the four students who made several media appearances after being interrogated by officers.

Moscow police have expressed their frustration over the spread of misinformation and rumors on the case, which repeatedly reminded that update from the department were the only factual and accurate information about the state of the investigation. Family and friends of the victims have also complained about the explosions of theories and speculation on the case, saying that it was harming the investigation.

"All the noise out there is really harming the families," a friend of Kristi and Steve Goncalves, Kaylee's parents, told British online newspaper The Independent. "And it's taking the police down trails that are not real and taking them away from the ones that are."

Now, Moscow police is reminding internet sleuths that their behavior could be liable to criminal charges.

"Investigators have been monitoring online activity related to this ongoing and active case and are aware of the large amount of rumors and misinformation being shared, as well as harassing and threatening behavior toward potentially involved parties," an update by Moscow police released on Friday reads.

"Anyone engaging in threats or harassment whether in person, online or otherwise needs to understand that they could be subjecting themselves to criminal charges."

The police also cautioned the public "not to rely on rumors" and follow the department's update for accurate information on the case.

What's Happening With the Investigation?

After weeks during which the investigation seemed to struggle to find a direction, Moscow police are now looking to speak with the occupants of 2011-2013 Hyundai Elantra. The vehicle, with an unknown license plate, was reportedly in the immediate area of the King Street residence during the early-morning hours of November 13, when the four students were fatally stabbed.

The crucial information was part of thousands of tips and leads the police received from members of the public on the case's Tip Line, which is now directed to an FBI call center.

Moscow police asked any member of the public holding information about the vehicle to share what they know and be patient with the lengthier process for the now-national FBI tip line, which requires callers to go through a series of prompts.

"This is a national FBI tip line, and it is important to get all the way through the prompts to reach the right agent to report information. Remember, your tip may be the key to solving this case," Moscow police wrote on Friday.

Quick summary: Back in November someone broke into a college house and murked 3 white women and 1 white man via stabbing in Moscow, Idaho. As was the case with Gabby Petito, when cute, young white people get brutally murder, other, much more boring, white people decided to become internet detective (this demo ranges from wine moms to soccer van moms). There is no named suspect and the police have kept oscillating between "isolated case" and "maybe there's a new Ted Bundy", so the town, which is a college town, is on extreme edge.

Cue YouTubers, TikTokers, Facebookers, Twitterers, and Redditors to hold mass speculating discussions while sipping on Starbies in front of their computers. In an ACAB-world, they take it upon themselves to solve this crime, with some heading to a town for of scared people and banging on doors to ask questions the cops have already asked them, as well as publicly call people murders (I haven't seen this but I also haven't looked for it, I'm sure it is happening in this case.)

Here's a list of Subs related that I found and didn't steal from a redditor.

r/moscowmurders [69k] Most populated sub just for this case, has many, many neurodivergent thread

r/idahomurders [54k]

r/idahostudentdeaths [3k]

Here is r/moscowmurders discussing the Fauxnews version of this story

The people who need to read this are on Facebook and Tik Tok mostly. Not saying reddit is perfect but those two places are bad in this case

Because the people of Facebook & Twitter don’t actually understand how crimes are investigated.They care about the newest “hot topic” and not actually having REAL conversations & discussions. It’s a game of Clue to them … and it’s GROSS.

I believe most people on Reddit are actually interested in what they are discussing. Especially this group in particular.

Also, one Facebook group has over 60k people with only 2 moderators. Absolutely nothing is locked down. That should be a red flag in itself.

Yes yes, Reddit is the scholarly social media site compared with Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter. Reddit doesn't have a very well known case of their users going off the deep end to finger (heh) innocent people. Also, Facebook needs more

Hate to break it to you fine citizens, but a large portion of this happened right on this page. A group of us constantly called it out, and we were bashed , downmarseyd, threatened and mocked. Hopefully this is a wake up call for the people who did this. Enroll in some online courses. Read a book. Go binge a television show. True crime isn’t for you.

I was one in that group, who got attacked and bashed. It’s real life, forensics and piecing things together requires time. It isn’t law and order, hope they don’t choose that tv show, lol. hopefully it calms down some because I stayed off here for a few days and I like my Reddit friends and discussing cases, discussing not accusing. Hope the sub can stay on track and there’s an arrest soon, and some answers for the poor families involved.

The classic "I was right and being downmarseyd for being right. Did I mention I was right?"

ed

https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/zgnpkh/un_says_israel_must_give_up_nuclear_weapons/

Even redditors think this is r-slurred.

https://old.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/comments/zglnu2/un_says_israel_must_give_up_nuclear_weapons_in/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Palestine/comments/zfja9d/un_says_israel_must_give_up_nuclear_weapons_in/

Except /r/palestine of course.

https://old.reddit.com/r/onguardforthee/comments/zflueq/canada_one_of_the_few_that_stands_up_for_israel/

https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy_commons/comments/zgqt39/un_says_israel_must_give_up_nuclear_weapons/

Imagine being so cucked you need to work with two other developed economies to develop a jet that the US like could already produce decades ago.

The funny thing is these nations aren't even geographically in each others backyard so their unity could never go beyond R&D dealings.

These guys are fighting to be the 5th strongest player in the long run. Not even to get a higher rank but just to barely keep what they already have.

UK:

GDP per Capita: 47,334 USD

Population growth rate: 0.4%

GDP: 6th Rank

Italy:

GDP per capita: 35,551 USD

Population growth rate: -0.6% ( Negative )

GDP: 10th rank

Japan:

GDP per capita: 39,285 USD

Population growth rate: -0.5% ( Negative )

GDP: 3rd Rank ( 4th if you include EU as separate entity. )

UK will likely be surpassed by France by 2030

Italy will likely be surpassed by Brazil, South Korea, and Australia by 2030

Japan will likely be surpassed by Germany and India by 2030

Conclusion:

In the Bong-Frog war the frogs won.

In the pasta-basic competence war the basic competence won.

In the unyielding-industrious conflict the industrious won.

At long last, Brittney Griner, convicted in Russia of possessing a few cannabis-infused vape cartridges, is coming home. In exchange for her freedom, President Biden commuted the 25-year sentence arms dealer Viktor Bout is serving for conspiring to sell heavy weapons to Colombian guerrillas. The deal might look unequal. But the Biden administration was absolutely right to make it.

Their misdeeds are hardly comparable. If Griner had been treated like most defendants on minor drug charges in Russia, she would not have been jailed at all, let alone sentenced to nine years in a grim penal colony. Bout, on the other hand, was dubbed "the merchant of death" by Western intelligence officials for a two-decade career spent allegedly providing deadly arms to rebels and terrorists around the world.

Did Russian President Vladimir Putin cynically use Griner, who admitted her offense, as a pawn to get Bout sprung from the federal prison? Of course. Should the nature of the deal rankle Americans? No, it shouldn't.

The only alternative would have been to let Griner suffer indefinitely, in unspeakable conditions. She had already been incarcerated for nine months. When U.S. citizens are unjustly held overseas, it is the duty of our government to do everything it can to bring them home. To understand why, all you had to do was look at the joy and relief in the face of Griner's wife, Cherelle, as she appeared Thursday at the White House with Biden to announce Griner's release.

Prisoner swaps between democracies and despotic regimes are rarely equal. In 2010, for example, 10 Russians were swapped for four Americans; in 2014, three Cuban spies were exchanged for one U.S. intelligence agent. Putting a higher value on human life is a strength of democratic societies, not a weakness, and it is one we should be proud of.

It would have been even better if the Biden administration had also been able to secure the release of Paul Whelan, a U.S. citizen and former Marine imprisoned in Russia since 2018 on espionage charges that he and the U.S. government say are bogus. But Biden said Thursday that "sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul's case differently than Brittney's." Biden added, "We are not giving up. We will never give up."

The inability to include Whelan, however, was no reason to fail to move forward to secure Griner's release. Reached Thursday by CNN at the penal colony where he is being held, Whelan said in a phone call that he is "greatly disappointed" but still happy for Griner. And his family in the United States has said the same thing.

As for Bout, I'm willing to believe the intelligence officials who say that in the 1990s and early 2000s he was one of the biggest illegal arms dealers in the world, violating U.N. arms embargoes in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo and providing weapons to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But he wasn't in prison for doing any of that.

Bout was arrested in 2008 in a U.S. sting operation. A Drug Enforcement Administration informant, posing as a representative of the Colombian rebel group FARC, negotiated a deal for Bout to supply the group with surface-to-air missiles and rocket launchers. The weapons were to be used against the Colombian military and also against DEA agents seeking to disrupt the illegal cocaine trade that provided much of the FARC's income.

The informant lured Bout to a meeting in Thailand, where he was arrested. Two years later, he was extradited to the United States. In 2011, he was convicted in federal court on charges of conspiring to sell weapons to a U.S.-designated terrorist group. And in April 2012, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison --- the minimum, under sentencing guidelines, because the judge ruled there was no evidence that Bout would have committed the crime if not for the sting operation.

He has already served 10 years, a penalty even the judge in Bout case suggested this summer was fair, relative to the offenses on which he was convicted. Meanwhile, in 2016 the FARC agreed to a peace deal with the Colombian government, and in 2017 the rebels surrendered their weapons under U.N. supervision. Until Thursday, Bout remained in prison while the onetime terrorists he was accused of arming had blended back into Colombian society. Some serve in the national legislature.

In addition to valuing life, democratic societies must also value justice. We imprison people not for what we know they did, but for what we can prove in a court of law that they did. If nine months was too long for Griner to be in prison, 10 years seems reasonable for Bout. And swapping him for Griner was the right thing to do.

Xi, who received a lavish welcome in a country... The display stood in stark contrast to the low-key welcome extended in July to U.S. President Joe Biden

Biden ran home to his cuckshed, now the bull shows up.

A memorandum with China's Huawei Technologies, on cloud computing and building high-tech complexes in Saudi cities, was agreed...

Letting the Chinese tap all their phones.

That sentiment was echoed by the crown prince, who said his country opposed any "interference in China's internal affairs in the name of human rights"

Saudi Arabia: Throwing Muslims under the bus since 1947.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates have said that they would not choose sides between global powers

Remind me, why are our troops dying to protect our "friends and allies in the region" who publicly state that they're not our friends or allies? Why are we fighting their war with Iran for them?

Brittney Griner, the WNBA star who was held for months in Russian prisons on drug charges, was released Thursday in a one-for-one prisoner swap for international arms dealer Viktor Bout, according to a U.S. official. The one-for-one exchange agreement negotiated with Moscow in recent weeks was given final approval by President Biden within just the last week, according to sources familiar with the deal. The swap, first reported by CBS News, took place on Thursday in the United Arab Emirates.

Five former U.S. officials told CBS News the agreement had been reached as of last Thursday.

A White House official said President Biden was in the Oval Office Thursday morning on the phone, speaking with Griner and her wife, and that Vice President Kamala Harris was also in the room. Per standard procedure for freed U.S. prisoners, Griner was expected to quickly undergo a medical evaluation.

President Biden is expected to speak at 8:30 a.m. Eastern at the White House about the prisoner swap that saw Brittney Griner released. You will be able to watch his remarks live in the player at the top of this page.

To secure Griner's release, the president ordered Bout to be freed and returned to Russia. Mr. Biden signed the commutation order cutting short Bout's 25-year federal prison sentence.

Notably, the Griner-for-Bout exchange leaves retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan imprisoned in Russia. Whelan has been in Russian custody for nearly four years. He was convicted on espionage charges that the U.S. has called false.

According to Vladimir Putin, Poland has grand designs on Ukraine and has made the bold claim that Russia is the country's only saving grace. According to Faytuks News, Putin claims that Russia is the only guarantor of Ukraine's territorial integrity.It reported on its Twitter account: "Poland wants to seize territories in western Ukraine. Russia could be the only guarantor of Ukraine's territorial integrity, Putin says.

"Nationalist elements in Poland 'sleep and see' in order to take western Ukraine, which Ukraine received thanks to Stalin's decisions after WW2.

"This will be the case, the only real guarantor of Ukraine's territorial integrity within its current borders could be Russia - Putin."

It follows on from news on Tuesday morning, when reports came in that an oil storage tank had exploded near Kursk city in the Bryansk region of Russia.

Roman Starovoyt, the Governor of Kursk, had blamed the attack on a Ukrainian drone, but Ukraine has not taken responsibility for the strike.

The Russian news outlet Baza reported that two drones "fell and exploded three meters from diesel fuel tanks."

The media organisation said: "At this point, the five-ton tanks were empty and a serious fire was avoided."

Kursk's Governor, Mr Starovoyt, said there were no casualties but that fighters had been tackling a 500 square-meter blaze.

On Tuesday afternoon, it was confirmed that Putin had met with his Security Council to ensure discuss Russia's "domestic security" after the drone strike.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's official spokesman, said, officials were taking "necessary" measures to protect Russia from Ukrainian attacks.

When asked how the drone strikes by reporters, Mr Peskov said: "Of course, the line openly declared by the Ukrainian regime to continue such terrorist acts is a danger factor."

The drone strike on Tuesday is the second drone attack in Russia this week, as Russia's Defense Ministry reported that Ukrainian drones had attacked two airbases on Monday.

Russia's Defense Ministry also reported that the drone strikes killed three servicemen while wounding four other men in south-central Russia.

The drone strikes are significant as they would be the farthest into Russian territory Ukraine has managed to attack since the war began.

The attacks took place at the Engels-2 and Dyagilevo airbases in Saratov and Ryazan, which caused two aircrafts to be damaged

Ukraine has also not claimed responsibility for the attack, however, a senior Ukrainian official spoke to the New York Times and said the drone attack had been launched from Ukraine's territory.

@FootballShill @Igor_Konashenkov discuss

Rishi Sunak is preparing to announce new laws to curb the rights of NHS workers, teachers, firefighters and border force officials to go on strike.

The government plans to bring forward legislation to introduce minimum service levels across the public sector to limit the impact of industrial action.

Ministers will announce a package of measures in the New Year which will also include increasing the threshold for industrial action and force unions to give more notice of strikes.

The government has also considered plans for an outright ban on ambulance workers and paramedics striking. A Whitehall source said, however, that the move was unlikely because it would be “legally complex” and could be subject to challenge.

The prime minister set out his approach in the Commons yesterday in a significant change of tone. He said: “The government has been reasonable. It has accepted the recommendations of a pay review body, giving pay rises in many cases higher than the private sector. But if the union leaders continue to be unreasonable, then it is my duty to take action to protect the lives and livelihoods of the British public.

“That is why, since I became prime minister, I have been working for new tough laws to protect people from this disruption.”

His announcement came a day after ambulance workers announced strike action on December 21. Ministers are increasingly concerned that industrial action will dominate the run-in to the next general election.

Unions have insisted that they will not back down. Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the Unite union, said: “We will not be intimidated by anti-trade union attacks. If they put more hurdles in our way, then we will jump over them. We are ready industrially and financially.”

The centrepiece of Sunak’s legislation will be plans to extend minimum service levels across the public sector. The government has already announced plans that would require 20 per cent of regular rail services to continue during strikes. This could apply to six sectors, including education, the NHS and the fire service.

Ministers also intend to increase the threshold for strike action. Under laws that took effect in 2017, unions in certain sectors can only strike if 40 per cent of all eligible members vote in favour of taking action.

The government is proposing to extend that provision to every part of the economy and to raise the threshold to 50 per cent.

Other measures include doubling the minimum notice period for industrial action from 14 days and reducing the six-month limit for industrial action after a successful ballot.

The prime minister’s official spokesman said government work on new measures was “ongoing” and that “we want to do it at speed”.

He said: “We keep the powers under review and obviously in light of what we are seeing with effectively rolling strikes, the prime minister thinks it is right to push ahead with new powers.”

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, accused Sunak of “attempting cheap political potshots” with his warning about new anti-strike legislation.

“Public sector workers would love to be able to deliver minimum service levels,” she said. “But 12 years of Conservative cuts and mismanagement have left our public services falling apart at the seams.

“Rather than attempting cheap political potshots, the government should be getting around the table and negotiating with unions about pay.”

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said earlier that ministers were looking into how they might prioritise special provisions for vulnerable children in the event of teacher strikes going ahead.

Three of the four major teaching unions are balloting members on possible industrial action. Keegan urged teachers not to walk out, stressing the need to keep children in school.

Asked if there were any plans in place to prioritise the most vulnerable pupils during any potential strikes, as the government did during the pandemic, she said: “There’s a lot of planning going on across government, actually, to mitigate the impact of harmful strike action.

“And that is, of course, one of the factors we’re looking at — how we can do that, relying on various other pools of people and staff. So yes, that’s something that’s part of the planning.”

• Labour has said that if it wins power it will rip up strike laws, making it easier for unions to take industrial action.

Sir Keir Starmer would repeal the 2016 Trade Union Act, which imposes conditions on unions that want to strike, a spokesman said.

The measures in the act include a rule that ballots must attract a 50 per cent turnout for their results to be legally valid. Workers in “important” public services — including healthcare, education and transport — have to reach an additional threshold of 40 per cent support among those eligible to vote. The law also dictates that unions must give two weeks’ notice before they walk out.

A Labour spokesman said the party would repeal the “archaic” act and added that there were “unnecessary elements” in trade union legislation that could be changed, too. “One example would be . . . not allowing online balloting,” they said. “We don’t think that’s practical, we think it’s costly and we think that’s unnecessary.”

They added that Labour will also oppose the government’s “unworkable” plan for legislation on minimum service levels during walkouts.

Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, said of Rishi Sunak yesterday: “Rather than dealing with . . . workers suffering pay cuts as prices rocket, he promises to attack the very organisations fighting for workers and putting more money in their pockets. If they put more hurdles in our way, then we will jump over them. We are ready industrially and financially.”

Trade unions have donated more than £15 million to Labour, its constituency parties and its MPs since Sir Keir became leader, according to Tory analysis of Electoral Commission figures. This includes over £3 million each from Unite, Unison and GMB, which represent ambulance workers, who are due to strike on December 21.

How it's going

An annual poll by Gallup suggests that women, on average worldwide, have been getting angrier over the past 10 years. Why might this be?

Two years ago Tahsha Renee was standing in her kitchen when a deep, dark, hollow scream emerged from the depths of her lungs. It took her by surprise.

"Anger has always been an emotion that's easy for me to tap into," she says. But this was like nothing she had felt before.

It was in the midst of the pandemic and she had had enough. She'd spent the previous 20 minutes walking around her house listing aloud everything that made her angry.

But after the scream she felt an intense physical release.

Tahsha, a hypnotherapist and life coach, has since been gathering women from all over the world on zoom to talk about everything that gives them rage and then scream it out.

According to a BBC analysis of 10 years of data from the Gallup World Poll, women are getting angrier.

Every year the poll surveys more than 120,000 people in more than 150 countries asking, among other things, what emotions they felt for a lot of the previous day.

When it comes to negative feelings in particular - anger, sadness, stress and worry - women consistently report feeling these more frequently than men.

The BBC's analysis has found that since 2012 more women than men report feeling sadness and worry, though both genders have been steadily trending upwards.

When it comes to anger and stress however, the gap with men is widening. In 2012 both genders reported anger and stress at similar levels. Nine years later women are angrier - by a margin of six percentage points - and more stressed too. And there was a particular divergence around the time of the pandemic.

That doesn't surprise Sarah Harmon, a therapist in the US. In early 2021 she got a group of female clients together to stand in a field and scream.

"I'm a mom of two young kids who was working from home and there was just this intense, low-grade frustration that was building to complete rage," she says.

A year later she took to the field again. "That was the scream that went viral," she says. It was picked up by a journ*list in one of her online mum's groups and suddenly reporters were calling from all over the world.

Sarah believes she tapped into something that women everywhere were feeling, an intense frustration that the burden of the pandemic was falling disproportionately on them.

A 2020 survey of almost 5,000 parents in heterosexual relationships in England, by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, found that mothers took on more of the domestic responsibilities during lockdown than fathers. As a result, they reduced their working hours. This was the case even when they were the higher earner in the family.

In some countries the difference in the number of women and men who say they felt anger the previous day is much higher than the global average.

In Cambodia, the gap was 17 percentage points in 2021 while in India and Pakistan it was 12.

Psychiatrist Dr Lakshmi Vijayakumar believes this is the result of tensions that have emerged as more women in these countries have become educated, employed and economically independent.

"At the same time, they are tethered down by archaic, patriarchal systems and culture," she says. "The dissonance between a patriarchal system at home and an emancipated woman outside of home causes a lot of anger."

Every Friday evening at rush hour in Chennai in India, she witnesses this dynamic in action.

"You see the men relax, going to a tea shop, having a smoke. And you find the women hurrying to the bus or train station. They're thinking about what to cook. Many women start chopping vegetables on their way back home on the train."

In the past, she says, it wasn't considered appropriate for women to say they are angry, but that's changing. "Now there is a little bit more ability to express their emotions, so the anger is more."

Progress for Women?

The BBC 100 Women list each year names 100 inspiring and influential women around the world. This year it is honouring the progress made since the first list, 10 years ago - so the BBC commissioned Savanta ComRes to ask women in 15 countries to compare the present with 2012.

• At least half of women surveyed in each country say they feel more able to make their own financial decisions than 10 years ago

• At least half in each country except the US and Pakistan also feel it's easier for women to discuss consent with a romantic partner

• In most countries, at least two-thirds of women surveyed said social media had made a positive impact on their lives - though in the US and UK the figure was under 50%

• In 12 out of 15 countries 40% or more of women surveyed say freedom to express their views is an area where their life has progressed most in the last 10 years

• 46% of those surveyed in the US feel it's harder for women to access medically safe abortion than it was 10 years ago

The pandemic's effect on women's work may also be having an impact. Before 2020 there was slow progress on women's participation in the workforce, according to Ginette Azcona, a data scientist at UN Women. But in 2020 it stalled. This year the number of women in work is projected to be below 2019 levels in 169 countries.

"We have a s*x-segregated labour market," says US-based feminist author Soraya Chemaly, who wrote about anger in her 2019 book, Rage Becomes Her.

She sees much of pandemic related burn-out happening in female-dominated industries like care.

"It's pseudo-maternal work and poorly paid. These people register very high levels of repressed, suppressed and diverted anger. And it has a lot to do with being expected to work tirelessly. And with no kind of legitimate boundaries.

"Similar dynamics are often found in heterosexual marriage," she says.

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In the US, much has been written about the burden of the pandemic on women but results from the Gallup World Poll don't indicate that women there are angrier than men.

"Women in the US feel very deep shame about anger," says Soraya Chemaly, and may be more likely to report their anger as stress or sadness.

Perhaps significantly, American women do report higher levels of stress and sadness than men.

That's true in other places too. Many more women than men said they were stressed in Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, Cyprus and Greece. In Brazil almost six in 10 women said they had felt stressed for much of the previous day, compared with just under four in 10 men.

But Tahsha Renee thinks many women in the US and elsewhere have now reached a place where they are able to say, "No more!"

"In a way that's actually facilitating change. And they're using their anger to do it," she says.

"You need rage and anger," agrees Ginette Azcona at UN Women. "Sometimes you need these, to shake things up - and have people pay attention and listen."