Chinese grass roots government workers, who implemented decades of birth control policy, are now calling up women in their neighbourhood to urge them to get pregnant amid China’s demographic crisis. When Jane Huang picked up the phone to answer a call earlier this month, her first response to the person on the end was to … Read more
White Coat Black Art26:30Hot as hell Britnee Miazek didn’t immediately make the connection between her periods stopping and her job as a second-year ironworker apprentice in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. It was only after a three-month stint in 2023 working on top of the coke ovens used in the steel-making process that the 35-year-old began to notice a pattern. “As … Read more
For rats in Ottawa’s Heron Park neighbourhood, Melanie Giroux has become something like the Grim Reaper. Giroux estimates she’s trapped and killed many hundreds of the rodents since her backyard became infested in 2021. That year alone, she bagged nearly 500 using black reusable traps. Despite that prolific record, Giroux said it hasn’t gotten any easier. “You … Read more
A young woman living in the world’s coldest city has revealed some of the negative impacts the extreme cold has on the body – along with months of very little sunlight. YouTube creator Kiun B lives in the Siberian city of Yakutsk, where the temperatures have been known to plunge below -83.9F (-64.4C) in the winter and … Read more
ON July 25, 1978, the world’s media were camped out in Oldham, Greater Manchester, for what had been dubbed “the most awaited birth in perhaps 2000 years”. So crazed were the paparazzi in their pursuit of a picture of the newborn that they triggered a bomb scare, leading to the evacuation of Oldham General Hospital’s … Read more
Singapore’s total fertility rate has fallen to a historic low of 0.97. Citizens aren’t having enough children to sustain population numbers and all the money spent to encourage procreation doesn’t seem to work. Steven Chia and Crispina Robert talk about what’s causing the decline with Dr Norman Li, psychology professor at the Singapore Management University, … Read more
Family-building support and fertility benefits have become some of the most sought-after perks for millennial workers. As those benefits have started influencing retention and driving workers to seek out new jobs, employers have taken notice—so it’s no surprise that benefits providers like Carrot are seeing companies invest more deeply in these offerings. Even as more … Read more
CHICAGO — The recent ruling in Alabama that frozen embryos are legally considered children created a political firestorm after the decision halted treatment for many couples seeking to have families through fertility treatments. It also has turned the spotlight on the importance of institutions that are poised to play a central in this year’s elections: … Read more
SEOUL: South Korea’s fertility rate, already the world’s lowest, dropped to a fresh record low in 2023, defying the billions of dollars spent by the country to try to reverse the trend as the population shrank for a fourth straight year. The average number of expected babies for a South Korean woman during her reproductive … Read more
In a revolutionary move, Japan has finally permitted women to take part in the “naked man” festival for the first time in its 1,650-year history. The festival, known as the Hadaka Matsuri, is organised every year in February by a Japanese shrine, Konomiya, in Inazawa town in Japan’s Aichi prefecture. However, women will only be … Read more
