Category: News

Recently, I was at a party in Cambridge and met a girl who had just moved over from the US to start her PhD, researching the impact of IVF. I quickly volunteered that I was in fact an IVF baby. I also volunteered that I disagreed with IVF. She was shocked; it seemed she had never encountered this view before, let alone from a “beneficiary” of the treatment. I explained that I had significant moral and ethical qualms with IVF and found it to be an emotionally difficult fact about myself. I also explained that I had a significant number of health issues which I can’t help but attribute to my method of conception. She was deeply perturbed by my views and immediately begged the question: “but what about queer couples”. I looked at her blankly and laughed. I told her I didn’t care. “But they have a right to have children”, she replied. I told her I disagreed. No one has a right to have children. In my view, the only right around conception is the right of the child: to be well looked after and prioritised above the adults around them. But for proponents of IVF, that doesn’t seem to factor into the equation. In fact, the whole premise of IVF is the reverse; it is the adult’s wants (not needs), that are the sole decision-making factor in this process and viewed as the only ethical consideration. I explained how, in my view, the idea that anyone has a right to a child is immediately a false start from which to approach the issue of fertility. It is this false start that provides a market for IVF. When we strip it back, IVF is nothing more than a symptom of a capitalist desire-based culture which turns everything, including human life, into a commodity and views it as something we are entitled to, and like the newest iPhone or car model, should be able to purchase if we can afford it. It is the belief that we are entitled to have our individual wants met above all else. Needless to say, she quickly stopped talking to me.

As the recent film, Joy, makes clear, IVF is an incredibly new technology in the world’s history; the first IVF baby, Louise Joy Brown, was born on 25 July 1978. Before then, if a woman was infertile, that was that. This was a simple fact of biology — in the same way that it was a fact of biology that if you could not find a partner to conceive a child with you through sexual intercourse, you would not be having one. I simply do not see this as a social injustice. Stonewall’s claim that “everyone deserves the chance to start a family, no matter their sexuality or gender identity” is not an objective one, when IVF is positioned as the solution. It also eclipses the reality of IVF and/or surrogacy (difficult, arduous, ethically fraught, and often unsuccessful), and the other options available for same-sex couples. Of course, I don’t think that same-sex couples should be discriminated against in terms of accessing IVF. If it is available, they should face no more barriers to accessing it than any other section of the population. My point here is that there is a moral ambivalence in it being available to anyone at all. Arguing that it is no one’s right to have a child is not an attempt to persecute any section of society. As I see it, if you’re infertile (no matter why) you’ve simply pulled the short straw of the genetic lottery. It is a personally sad event (if you had desired a biological child), but there are lots of things in this life we want but don’t get. The fact is we are dealt certain hands, and if yours is infertility or involuntary childlessness, then, until 40-odd years ago, that was something you had to reconcile yourself to. And for many people, it still is.

Being conceived in a test tube, rather than my mother’s uterus, is spiritually unmooring

What the girl at the party, and what most of the discourse around the “right to a child”, forgets, is that the extension of this “right” still only applies to a slither of our society — those of the middle-upper class who can afford to pay for it. It is incredibly an out of touch view to hold that IVF can make fertility universally accessible. That is, I suppose, what charities like Stonewall want to correct. But even for those who can access it, there is still something of a mis-sold dream at the bottom of IVF — the highest rate of success is for women under 35, and even that only comes in at 32 per cent, according to the NHS. IVF is a gruelling process for women, with significant risks even in the event of conception. These statistics, to me, don’t seem to stack up against the cost of treatment (a single cycle costs around £5000 in the UK, excluding fertility assessments, initial consultations, or embryo freezing, and goes up and beyond of £10,000 for multi-cycle packages and egg freezing) and the ethical implications of the procedure. It’s the same with the rhetoric around egg-freezing (“Freeze your eggs now and deal with that later, you can have everything you want!”). IVF is not a catch-all solution to infertility, whether circumstantial or medical, and you’re a victim of false advertising if you believe that it is.

The lack of awareness of IVF’s success rates, and novelty as a technology, is alarming. IVF is deemed “successful” once a child has been born apparently healthy. The child and its family are then ejected back into the “real” world of standard healthcare and treated like the rest of the naturally conceived population. We are forgotten about. This plays out in the lack of adequate research into the long term effects of IVF, which, to my mind, is remarkable and simply brings home the experimentalism of this technology, which is nonetheless viewed as long established and is widely accepted as a moral and scientific good by society. I had repeated illnesses as a child which have continued into my adult life and I have struggled with depressive episodes since a young age. Interestingly, the correlation between ART and mental illness is among the few that have been noted in medical studies (see here). My GP once joked that I really get my money’s worth out of the NHS, but no one has ever even thought to explore a link between my ill health and method of conception. To be clear, I have no scientific evidence for making this link, only my own experience. Yet I can’t help but think that one day, my gut instinct about the health impacts of IVF will be born out and that we might be forced to reevaluate the blanket “goodness” we apply to this technology.

But we do not need to wait to understand the emotional side effects of IVF. The truth is that I am deeply uncomfortable with the fact that I was conceived through IVF. I wish I wasn’t, and that I had been conceived naturally. Being conceived in a test tube, rather than my mother’s uterus, is spiritually unmooring. I, quite clearly, was not meant to be born and many of my IVF friends feel the same. My ontological significance is completely different to the rest of my peers. It manifests in that old stereotype, “you were really wanted”. This is not a compliment. I think there is an understandable lack of comprehension among naturally conceived adults here.

Society seems ready and willing to consider the emotional side effects for the parents engaging in IVF, but it has yet to face up to the emotional side effects of IVF for the children conceived through it, which I imagine are violently unpalatable to the parents benefiting from this technology. It is also unpalatable to the companies profiting from parents’ misfortune and to the cultural zeitgeist which has co-opted IVF as a gay rights’ issue, rather than a child’s rights issue.

I am not deaf to the weight of the pain that leads parents to embark upon IVF. I get it, and I don’t condemn them for it. But I do condemn them for only listening to the positives this technology brings and refusing to have honest conversations about the ethical impacts upon the children involved.

I think my conception is a case in point. My parents got what they wanted, and they didn’t think about what it might do to me. They paid a heavy price for me (literally), and despite the joy surrounding my birth, they divorced when I was five years old. My parents were incompatible as people, and there’s a dark humour in the fact that their bodies seemed to know this long before they did. There’s some truth in the saying, “the body keeps the score”. And I can’t help thinking that it is my body keeping this score.

An anti-terrorism court on Tuesday handed over prime suspect Armaghan to the police for seven more days in the Mustafa Amir kidnap and murder case.

Investigating officer Muhammad Ali produced the suspect before the ATC-IV judge on completion of his remand and requested a seven-day extension of his physical remand for the completion of the investigation.

At the outset of the hearing, the judge inquired the IO about the progress made in the investigation over the past week. The IO said that on the pointation of the suspect, he had recovered the self-defence stick used by Armaghan to beat the victim, Mustafa Amir. He added that a DVR, NVR, mobile phones, and other articles had also been recovered.

During interrogation, the IO said, Armaghan admitted to confiding in his father, Kamran Asghar, the entire incident after Mustafa Amir’s murder, adding that his father had then advised him to leave Karachi and go into hiding, assuring him that they would also relocate the software house to another location.

The IO further said that the suspect admitted to travelling to Lahore, Islamabad, and Skardu with his friend, Shiraz, to evade arrest. He said the Counter-Terrorism Department was interrogating Armaghan about the recovery of illicit arms, while the Federal Investigation Agency’s Cybercrime Cell was also questioning him. The suspect had been interrogated by the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) as well, he added.

IO Ali further informed the court that the suspect was an absconder and wanted in at least eight cases related to drugs, extortion, and other crimes. He added that the relevant police stations had been conveyed to take action against him in these cases. He said he needed the suspect’s custody to gather more evidence and complete the investigation.

On the other hand, defence counsel Abid Zaman and Tahirrur Rehman opposed the police’s plea and argued that the IO had not submitted an interim charge sheet despite the lapse of more than 30 days. They moved an application seeking directives for the investigating officer to submit the charge sheet.

The judge asked Armaghan alias Army if he had been maltreated by police, but he didn’t respond in the affirmative. “After hearing the arguments I have perused the record and find that Section 21-E of Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 provides that the total period of police remand may be granted but shall not exceed ninety days which have not elapsed, and during police custody further evidence may be available and the court is satisfied,” the judge observed.

He granted seven days’ extension of Armaghan’s physical remand and issued a notice to the prosecutor on the defence side’s application. Meanwhile, the judge allowed the suspect’s parents to meet him for five minutes in the courtroom in the presence of security personnel. Soon after meeting his son, Kamran left the court premises unnoticed, fearing his possible arrest on charges of abetment.

Tom Roberts, 21, was killed outside Subway in Old Christchurch Road, Bournemouth, in March 2022 by a man who sought asylum in the country and lied about his age.

After his death, it was revealed that Tom’s killer, Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai, had previously been convicted of a double murder in Serbia and had posed as a 14-year-old when seeking refuge in Poole.

Delores Wallace lays flowers at a tree in Horseshoe Common where her son Tom Roberts was murdered  (Image: Graham Hunt/BNPS) Dolores Wallace, Tom Roberts’ mother, said her son’s death resulted from missed warnings and system failures.

She said: “Knowing this does not bring my son back. It only leaves painful questions: How was this allowed to happen? Who failed to protect us?”

She called for her son’s murder to be included in the public inquiry into the Southport murders, arguing that justice must be applied equally.

MP for Bournemouth East Tom Hayes said Dolores first approached him during a surgery appointment in September last year to discuss her grief and request a meeting with a government minister.

Tom Hayes (Image: Submitted)

Mr Hayes has since arranged a meeting with Angela Eagle, Minister of State at the Home Office for Border Security, which is scheduled to take place in two weeks.

He said: “Dolores has obviously got concerns about the handling of her son’s death.

“We want her to have an opportunity to share her concerns directly with the minister.”

Mr Hayes also confirmed he had written to Dolores’ solicitor regarding the release of coroner’s documents to his office but was told an MP was not considered an ‘interested person.’ He said efforts are ongoing to challenge that decision.

He added: “We’re conscious from the recent council meeting that Dolores is a grieving mother who wants to ensure no other family has to experience what hers has.

“And we wanted to make sure that she was able to directly represent her views to the government about this important issue.”

Financial independence is a valuable lesson, but so is standing your ground.

This teen’s parents wanted him to pay for his car expenses, so he made a bold decision that caught his parents off guard.

Read the full story below for all the details.

I was about to get my driver’s license in the States.

My parents sat me down and told me this:

When I got my license, they were going to expect me to pay for half of my car related expenses.

This includes the car, insurance, and gas, specifically.

His parents were excited for him to get his license.

What is important to know here is that I knew how excited they were for me to get my license.

Both of my parents were working at this time and the idea of me being able to run quick errands was really appealing to them.

This includes picking up my younger sister from school or her clubs or sports events.

This young man decided not to get a car.

So I thought about it.

I then told them that I’d be getting my license but then I would be choosing to not have my own car.

Since I was very involved in a lot of sports, I didn’t have time for a job for most of the year, so I’d just stick to riding my bike to where I needed to go.

They didn’t expect his response.

They definitely didn’t anticipate this and knew I was serious right away.

After all, the default up until then had been that I’d cycle to and from where I needed to go unless I arranged for other rides.

I don’t remember how long they tried to wait me out, but I think it was later that day when they came back and told me they’d buy a car (a crappy one) and pay for the expenses (with a few reasonable stipulations).

That was genius! Now, let’s see what others have to say on Reddit.

This user shares what they do in their family.

While this person shares their personal thoughts.

That’s a bad deal for me, says this person.

Here’s a valid point from this user.

Finally, this person is impressed.

Sometimes, saying no is the most powerful bargaining tool.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.

By JADE WATKINS FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

Published: 23:50 GMT, 11 March 2025 | Updated: 00:08 GMT, 12 March 2025

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Rafael Cruz, the right-wing pastor and father of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, told a Texas Senate committee on Tuesday that public schools must be required to teach anti-communist lessons in order to reaffirm what he said is America’s true, Christian heritage.

“Communism needs to undermine the construct of god because government must become your god,” he said, later arguing that atheism and evolution are inherently un-American because they contradict his belief that the United States is a “Christian country.”

Cruz, 85, has been a vocal opponent of communism for decades. He fled Cuba in the 1950s after he was imprisoned and tortured for fighting Fulgencio Batista, a dictator who was once allied with Cuba’s communist party but later oversaw the brutal repression of communists, with aid from the CIA. According to a 2015 book authored by his son, Rafael Cruz initially supported Fidel Castro, but changed his mind after Castro seized power in 1959 and “declared to the world that he was a communist.” Cruz’s role in the Cuban resistance has been disputed by some Cubans who knew him at the time.

In the decades since immigrating, Cruz has been a leading advocate for Christian dominionism, which argues that the Bible commands Christians to have “dominion” over all parts of society in order to bring about the apocalypse. Dominionists and their allies have focused heavily on public schools, arguing that church-state separation is a myth that has been used to obscure the nation’s true, Christian roots — often, they claim, at the behest of “godless” communists intent on destroying America and its churches.

Cruz reiterated many of those arguments in his Tuesday testimony for Senate Bill 24, which would require public schools in the state to teach students in fourth through 12th grade about communist movements and their victims, both in and outside the U.S.

According to the bill, students would learn about the “tactics used by communist movements in the U.S.,” as well as “historical events and atrocities attributable to communist regimes,” like those in Cuba, Latin American nations, and the former Soviet Union. As part of these lessons, instruction must include first-person accounts from “victims of communist regimes.”

Cruz, who was invited by lawmakers to testify in favor of the bill, said that young people are being “brainwashed on the virtues of socialism” through Critical Race Theory (CRT), Diversity or Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and other initiatives that have already been banned in some Texas public institutions by Republican lawmakers. He also argued that “communist professors” have infiltrated colleges across the country, and suggested deporting people who “don’t like it here.”

“In many instances our classrooms are failing us, because they’re following an agenda,” Cruz said. “It is not our agenda. It is a communist agenda that has, like tentacles, immersed itself into our education system. So we need to retrieve our educational system from that evil agenda.”

Cruz’s testimony is the latest push by conservative Christians to infuse more of their religion into public life and codify into law their belief that church-state separation is a “false doctrine.” In recent years, state Republicans have required classrooms to hang donated “In God We Trust” signs; allowed unlicensed religious chaplains to replace mental health counselors in public schools; and approved new curriculum materials that teach the Bible and other religious texts alongside grade-school curriculum.

Those efforts have continued this legislative session, which began with some lawmakers calling for “spiritual warfare” against demonic forces that they say control the Legislature. Last month, Texas Senators approved a major bill that would allow public tax dollars to be redirected to religious and other private schools. And last week, a Texas Senate committee advanced bills that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public classrooms and allow districts to set aside optional time for prayer during school hours.

Animated by rising secularism and emboldened by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, conservative Christians have argued that such legislation is crucial to stemming what they see as a moral decline in America that they trace back to at least the 1960s, when courts began to limit the role of Christianity in public life and schools. Those court decisions came amid broader “Red Scare” fears in America, and prompted major backlash by Christians who argued that their religion was a bulwark against communist influence in the country.

Those fears continue today. SB 24 is one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s priority bills this session. Its author, Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, said Tuesday that the bill “aims to educate students on the deceptive methods used to spread communistic ideology and highlight the ongoing threats posed by Communism.”

The bill did not get a committee vote on Tuesday, but is co-sponsored by eight of the committee’s 11 members.

Texas’ efforts come close to a year after Florida passed its own law requiring that public schools teach students about the history of communism in the U.S. and “atrocities committed in foreign countries under the guidance of communism.” That bill easily passed the Florida House and Senate, with bipartisan support. Some of the Florida Democrats who opposed the legislation said it was ironic to require schools teach anti-communist lessons at a time when the state was passing laws leading to book bans and restricting lessons on slavery and Black studies.

Lawmakers have also taken action at the federal level. In December, the U.S. House passed legislation that would provide optional educational materials to high schools from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to “warn about the dangers of communism and totalitarianism,” according to a U.S. House education committee news release.

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Hear from our CEO, Sonal Shah, on TribFest 2025.

TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.

I’ve never understood why people make weddings all about them when they’re not the ones getting married.

It’s mind-blowing!

But you hear these kinds of stories all the time…

And here’s another one for you to chew on!

Check out what this Reddit user had to say about her monster-in-law in regard to her upcoming nuptials.

“I 28f and my fiancé 34m are going to be getting married in October of 2025.

We’ve been together for 7 years this January, and engaged for a year in March.

We’ve always both got along with the sides of each other’s families.

Obviously, family has all their own problems no matter the side, but this has been a nightmare.

I have 6 bridesmaids, and he obviously has 6 groomsmen.

His sister is on my side of the bridesmaid list, and one of my best guy friends since like 4th grade is in his.

I have my two sisters, and three best friends.

Pretty much everyone is getting along…

He also has his brother-in-law, and four best friends.

Everyone gets along, and everyone has been handling my psychotic tendencies when it’s come to this wedding… except his mother.

Background, fiancée is a country boy, through and through.

Fisherman, hunter, country music every day, etc. and I’m the opposite.

I listen to rock/metal music, 99% of my wardrobe is black, I like the weirder/darker side of things, and sort of just a goth kid that never grew out of it.

My wedding plans (yes, fiancée has agreed and loves everything WE came up with) were to be married in our backyard (we have 12 acres and apple trees everywhere and beautiful grass) and have a reception at our fave bar down the road.

Uh oh…

Our colors are black, rose gold, and lavender.

I’ll have black flowers with purple flowers mixed.. and I will be wearing a black dress… this is where his mom decides to make everything about her.

His mom called me yesterday, after finding out that I said “YES” to a black wedding dress, and said I’m not taking this seriously.

She said that just because I “like” black, doesn’t mean I should be getting married in it too.

She said I’m turning this whole wedding into a funeral, and that it’s not going to look pretty and that I won’t look pretty in a black dress.

She then comments about us being cheap and not wanting to spend a ton of money on a venue, and complains to me that I didn’t ask HER anything about when it comes to the wedding.

Get a grip, lady.

She also called my fiancé and said she didn’t feel like I cared about her being a part of this and that I didn’t ask her to be in the wedding OR A BRIDESMAID.

She doesn’t like the flowers, doesn’t like the menu, and keeps telling him that she doesn’t even want to go.

He keeps telling me to pay no attention to her, it’s just a cry for help, and just do what I want to do.. but I’m getting so sick of her criticizing our wedding.

Today was the last straw, when he showed me the dress she ordered online.

It was pretty much a white dress. It was like a cream/off white but it was WHITE.

YEAH, whatever I’m not wearing a white dress, but that’s not the point I don’t care WHAT color I’m wearing she’s NOT wearing white to my wedding.

I call her, and tell her if she plans on wearing that dress, she can wear it in Hell because she will not come to our wedding.

She now has been blowing me up and leaving me voicemails and him voicemails and now his sister is all upset with me now.

Did I overreact? AITA?”

Let’s see what folks had to say on Reddit.

This reader said she’s NTA.

Another individual agreed.

This person shared their thoughts.

Another reader spoke up.

And this Reddit user had a lot to say.

Another story about a mother-in-law from HELL.

Let her do what she likes!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.

11 March 2025, 23:28

Parents are set to be given the ability to block teenagers from using TikTok during specific times, such as family meals, school, at night or during a holiday.

Until now, TikTok and other social media platforms have enabled parents to set screen time allowances in hours and overnight, but not specific schedules during the day.

There is increasing concern from parents about social media and pressure from charities on regulators and the government over new social media laws.

Navigate parenthood with our news and expert advice, plus time-saving tips.

Other features enabled by the app will allow parents to see who their child follows, who is following the child and which accounts the child has blocked.

Users under the age of 16 will also have a meditation tool pushed into their feeds after 10pm to encourage them away from the app and towards sleep.

Read more: TikTok to introduce mindfulness tool for teenage users

Read more: LBC Investigates: What a 13-Year-Old Girl Sees on TikTok

The platform’s Wind Down mindfulness tool will automatically turn on if they are on the app after 10pm.

It will interrupt the For You feed with a full-screen takeover, playing calming music. If the user continues to scroll, a second, “harder to dismiss, full-screen prompt” will appear.

Val Richey, TikTok’s global head of outreach and partnerships, trust and safety, said: “It’s not just about hard blocks, it’s about building the skills to get through the online space.“

In countries where we’ve tested this already, most teens have chosen to keep these reminders on. In the coming weeks we’ll introduce guided meditation exercises to help teens transition from screen time to sleep.”

Most social media apps have been introducing parental controls over the past few years in response to concerns. However, research has shown that the take-up of the controls has been low. TikTok does not publish the proportion of parents who use its Family Pairing features.

Child protection groups have criticised platforms for shifting the burden of responsibility to parents instead of making their products safer.

Dame Melanie Dawes, chief executive of Ofcom, which regulates social media platforms, told LBC: “What we don’t want to do is what some of the platforms would say — ‘As long as there are parental controls, then everything’s fine.’ And I would say, no, you’re not actually following your own responsibilities there.

“Parents need to be part of this. Children can do things to keep themselves safe. But above all, I want the platforms to make the service safer.”

She did add, however, that parents “had a role to play”, especially when their child signs up for a social media account.

Ofcom’s research has shown that many children on the platforms are under the legal age of 13 for data processing. At a launch event for the TikTok tools, which sit in the Family Pairing section of the app, a child psychologist suggested that 30 minutes per day was a good limit to set for a 13-year-old on TikTok.

Kirren Schnack said: “I generally recommend to the children that I work with and families and my kids [a limit of] 30 minutes, providing the other things that you need to do are done. Sometimes it might not even be that; it might be 30 minutes on a Wednesday and then the weekend is a bit different.”

Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, said: “Stronger parental controls are welcome but when children are receiving torrents of depressive content on TikTok you have to wonder if these announcements match the reality for them.“

Ofcom’s child safety codes need teeth to ensure that children are no longer left to protect themselves on social media. Ultimately, these announcements show regulation can work but it needs to be stronger to deliver more than incremental change. Our polling shows that parents would cheer the prime minister on if he chose bold and necessary action to strengthen online safety laws.”

A report on LBC this week showed how an account of a 13-year-old girl on TikTok was served content about self-harm, eating disorders and suicide ideation.

In November 2023 the Molly Rose Foundation found that almost half of content it analysed on TikTok and Instagram using well-known suicide and self-harm hashtags was potentially harmful.

Wealthy aristocrat Constance Marten fell asleep on her newborn baby and killed her in a “terrible tragic accident” while hiding out in a tent on the South Downs, her retrial was told.

Marten, 37, and Mark Gordon, 50, are accused of the gross negligence manslaughter of their daughter Victoria who was found dead in a shed in Brighton.

The couple kept the birth of their fifth child secret and went on the run in January 2023 after their four other children were taken into care, the jury was told.

When their car burst into flames on a motorway near Bolton, they abandoned their belongings and travelled by taxi to Essex and London and then to the South Downs.

They slept on the Downs with the young girl in a flimsy tent, jurors were told at the Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey.

Having carried the child in a Lidl “bag for life” during her short life, the baby was abandoned amid rubbish in the same bag after she died, it is alleged.

After a police search, her body was found in a disused shed on an allotment site in Hollingdean following the couple’s arrest on Monday 27 February 2023.

The prosecution alleged that the couple’s actions – by exposing their baby to extreme cold in a tent – were grossly negligent and Victoria could have died from hypothermia or been smothered and suffocated.

Today (Tuesday 11 March), Marten’s lawyer Francis Fitzgibbon told jurors that baby Victoria was born in a cottage in Cumbria on Christmas Eve 2022 before her parents went on the run because they did not want her to be taken into care.

By Sunday 8 January 2023, Mr Fitzgibbon said, “Ms Marten was stressed and exhausted. They went temporarily into hiding while deciding what to do next. Ms Marten, exhausted, fell asleep with her baby after breastfeeding. The consequence was the baby died.

“We say this was not a case of hypothermia. We say, death was caused by Ms Marten falling asleep and compromising the baby’s breathing and we say that is a tragic accident, something that could happen anywhere where an exhausted breastfeeding mother may fall asleep on her newborn baby.

“And then consumed by grief, still wishing to avoid the world, her existence was reduced to scavenging for food and living in appalling conditions and she was unwilling to let go of the remains of the baby despite the fact she died.

“What happened, we say, is not a crime but a terrible tragic accident.”

On behalf of Gordon, John Femi-Ola told jurors that baby Victoria was “well cared for, well loved and kept warm close to her mother”.

He said: “The fact that when she was found she was in a onesie is not conclusive that is the only item of clothing she had.”

And he disputed the baby was ever carried in a “bag for life” before she died, adding: “You will need to consider shock and grief after Victoria’s death. They neglected themselves for weeks thereafter but that is not an indication of how they cared for their child.”

Mr Femi-Ola said that “co-sleeping” with a baby was “not a crime” and that the cause of Victoria’s death remained “unascertained”.

The court was told that Marten had been warned before against living in a tent with a baby and falling asleep with a child on her chest.

The couple had come to the attention of social services before Marten gave birth to her first child – referred to as FF – in 2017, jurors were told.

In the winter of 2017, Marten pretended to be from a travelling community and adopted a fake name and Irish accent when she turned up at a hospital in Wales in labour.

Giving evidence, a social worker told jurors how the defendants had been living in a “festival-style” tent in woodland at the time.

The witness, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, described visiting the site and finding it was cold, wet and damp with bottles of urine and blankets hanging outside.

While there, Marten had collected a laptop, clothes and some crystals from Peru, she said.

The social worker told jurors: “I commented how uncomfortable it would be for them both and particularly Ms Marten in the conditions of the weather – damp, rainy, cold. I did say to her it would be unsuitable to take a child back to the tent.”

Marten had told her not to “judge” her lifestyle and the witness explained her role was to assess the risk to the child, jurors were told.

Later, in December 2017, she visited Marten and FF in a foster care placement where she learned that the defendant had fallen sleep with the baby on her chest.

Marten was encouraged to put the child down in a Moses basket and not allow her to sleep on her due to concerns about overheating and suffocation, the witness said.

She also explained to Marten the potentially fatal risks of positional asphyxia, she said.

Asked how Marten responded, the witness said: “She seemed to take it on board. She explained she was extremely tired and she would not do it again.”

In 2021, the family court had decided that all four of the defendants’ children should be adopted.

Earlier, Tom Little, prosecuting, said that there were two possible ways baby Victoria died – by exposure to the extreme cold or by smothering while co-sleeping while her parents.

He told jurors that the conditions the defendants lived in with their baby were “utterly reckless, utterly dangerous”.

The background of social services’ involvement with the family was important because the defendants had been warned “time and again” of the dangers, including of sleeping in a tent with a young child, he said.

Mr Little added: “They exposed her to the cold. They exposed her to the damp in winter conditions and they did so with woefully inadequate clothing.

“Any child that becomes hypothermic in those conditions, we say, must amount to a breach of duty of care. If death was caused by smothering or suffocation, one of the reasons for that must have been conditions in that tent.

“(Marten) fell asleep with the baby underneath her jacket zipped up in that tent. If that is what occurred, it represents a breach of that duty of care by the parents because they were in that tent together.

“We say the risk of death by hypothermia or suffocation was obvious but also it was a serious risk of death.”

The prosecutor argued that the defendants’ failure to report the child’s death was an attempt to “hide potential evidence and cause of death”.

Jurors were told that the defendants were convicted at an earlier trial of concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice.

The defendants, of no fixed address, have denied manslaughter and a second charge of causing or allowing the death of a child between Wednesday 4 January and Monday 27 February 2023.

The Old Bailey retrial continues.

World No. 12 Ben Shelton shared the one word his father, Bryan Shelton, often uses to describe him. The American’s candid response had the interviewer in stitches at the Indian Wells arena.

Shelton is currently in action at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. After cruising past Mariano Navone in his opener, he outfoxed Karen Khachanov in the third round, 6-3, 7-5.

During a candid interview off court, Shelton spoke about his equation with his father. The American humorously shared what his father likes to call him in one word on most occasions.

“Probably an Idiot, that’s the one word he would use to describe me. Not the smartest at times but we make it work,” Ben Shelton said.

Bryan Shelton is a former tennis player and Shelton’s full time coach on tour. The duo confirmed their partnership in 2023 and have since been together.

Under Bryan’s guidance, Ben Shelton captured his maiden title at the 2023 Japan Open. He added another feather to his cap at the 2024 U.S. Men’s Claycourt Championships in Houston, a tour-level event that his father also won during his playing career.

Shelton was ranked outside the top 20 last year but is currently among the top 12 players in the world. During a recent interview, his father revealed how the youngster wished to pursue professional tennis as his career.

“As a kid, Ben just liked doing things his own way. Our family is very conservative, and everything he wore had to be neon. He wanted his hair to be long. He just wanted to do things differently. But somewhere along the way, a little switch went off. I think he saw Emma going to play on weekends and getting to travel and thought, Man—that sounds like fun,” Bryan Shelton said.

Shelton also opened up about his father during a candid conversation at the Australian Open this year. He playfully challenged him to a match after Bryan joked that he would still beat the youngster.

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Ben Shelton will face Brandon Nakashima for a place in the quarterfinal of the BNP Paribas Open

Ben Shelton will take on Brandon Nakshima in the fourth round of the BNP Paribas Open. He leads the head-to-head against the American 3-0.

While Shelton edged past Khachanov in the third round, Nakashima defeated Matteo Arnaldi 6-2, 6-4. He won 89% of his first serve points against the Italian.

Shelton is making his third appearance at Indian Wells this year. He reached the fourth round in 2024, where he lost to Jannik Sinner in straight sets. In 2023, he lost to Taylor Fritz in three sets in the round of 64.

The winner of the Nakashima-Shelton face-off will either play Taylor Fritz or Jack Draper in the quarterfinal.