Nihilistic and crazed, Cocaine Bear is zoological zeitgeist for these end times | Bidisha Mamata

A drug-filled beast and an ennui-prone alligator sum up 21st-century life, but at least Flaco the owl is a positive role model

I’ll be first in line to watch Cocaine Bear, the new film based on a 1985 true story about a bear in Tennessee who snuffled a stash of drug smugglers’ cocaine and went into a deep-fried southern frenzy. Why Hollywood waited nearly 40 years to dramatise this is beyond me, but come 2023, Cocaine Bear is all of us: nihilistic, crazed, hypervigilant and doomed.

Other animals are role-modelling alternative attitudes to these end times. Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who escaped from New York’s Central Park zoo, is living his best life. Despite being raised in captivity, he’s been hunting by night and visiting the park’s skating rink like a sanguine Manhattan flaneur.

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Google adverts direct pregnant women to services run by UK anti-abortion groups

The tech giant is carrying adverts styled to look like real internet search results for women seeking pregnancy advice

Women seeking online advice about abortions are being directed to pregnancy counselling services run by anti-abortion campaigners, an Observer investigation has found.

Google adverts that are styled to look like real search results and appear above genuine listings are routinely being shown to people searching key terms relating to pregnancy and abortion.

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Children born after induced labour ‘may score lower in tests at 12’

Researchers say impact on attainment is small but medical teams should think carefully before artificially kickstarting labour

Children born after induced labour may score lower in school tests at age 12, research suggests. Although the impact on individual attainment is small, researchers said it should prompt medical teams to “think twice” before artificially kickstarting labour in otherwise healthy pregnancies.

Most pregnancies come to a natural end after 37 to 42 weeks with the spontaneous onset of labour, but approximately one in five births in the UK are artificially induced. Sometimes there are strong medical grounds for doing so, such as the mother or baby’s health being at risk, but in other cases women may be offered an induction because their baby is apparently healthy but overdue.

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RFU’s new England maternity policy provides 26 weeks of leave on full pay

• England players contracted to the RFU set to benefit
• Abbie Ward: ‘Will help normalise motherhood in sport’

England players contracted to the Rugby Football Union will benefit from a new maternity policy that includes 26 weeks of leave on full pay. Also included in the “maternity, pregnant parent and adoption leave policy” is the capacity for pregnant players to perform other roles within rugby until they begin maternity leave.

The programme set up by the RFU in conjunction with the Rugby Players’ Association will also make provision for infants to travel with players to games and training camps.

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All hail Rihanna for turning a Super Bowl performance into the greatest pregnancy reveal yet | Morwenna Ferrier

In forcing her audience to confront her physical reality, the pop star took ownership of her body – and she did it in real time

Rihanna’s Super Bowl set lasted just shy of 13 minutes. But the image of the pregnant pop star, cradling her belly in a red silk Loewe catsuit as she descended from the heavens on a Perspex box, is surely up there with the greatest pregnancy reveals of the Instagram age.

Even before she had switched into a puffer coat with built-in gloves by Alaia, it had become more than a half-time performance. Here was a woman, returning to work for the first time since having a baby, somehow converting this moment into a tightly controlled but highly visible moment, while putting paid to the difficult second pregnancy reveal. In forcing her audience to confront her physical reality, Rihanna went past making a fashion statement. She took ownership of her body, and she did it in real time.

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My granddaughter’s birth was so beautiful I wept, reminded of how sweet life can be | Jessie Cole

All through the pregnancy I kept my anxiety quiet as my son and his partner bloomed with love and hope. The birth united us in pure, wild joy

A week after my 45th birthday, I became a grandmother. Of course, I was forewarned. I’d had the full nine months to prepare, but sometimes the knowledge of what’s to come isn’t quite enough.

My son and his partner are a tightknit pair. They’ve known each other seven years or so, much of that time spent under my roof. They now live in the next house along, a five-minute walk away through lush hinterland country, a forgiving distance for fledgling adults. My first surprise was the announcement, but my second was their enthusiasm. The pregnancy had been unplanned, but they were elated. They were to be young parents, though not quite as young as I had been.

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Urgent calls for Australia-wide register of sperm donations amid concerns about ‘prolific’ donors

Experts say informal donations a ‘huge problem’ that could lead to trauma for donor-conceived people who find they have dozens of half siblings

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Advocates are calling for a national register to track sperm donations across states, especially as increasing numbers of informal donations are not recorded at all.

Under the current system, there are various databases and ways of tracking donor conceptions but not a consistent national system – and not one that tracks those conceptions that happen outside of fertility clinics.

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NHS fines mothers for claiming free prescriptions while pregnant

Pregnant women are entitled to free medication, but without a maternity exemption certificate they face bills of hundreds of pounds

Stella Buller was recovering from the birth of her first child when the NHS letter arrived. It warned her that she could face fines and charges of up to £435 for claiming four free prescriptions during her pregnancy.

Buller, 29, like all pregnant women in England, should have been exempt from prescription charges until 12 months after she gave birth. But she was never issued with a maternity exemption certificate and has now been told that the oversight makes her ineligible for free medication. She has been given three months to pay the cost of the prescriptions she collected during her pregnancy, or face three-figure penalty surcharges.

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Bill to extend maternity protections passes in House of Commons

If bill goes through Lords, firms cannot make women redundant from moment pregnancy disclosed until child is 18 months

A push to secure better protection from maternity discrimination has taken a step forward, after a bill extending maternity protections passed its final stage in the House of Commons.

A private member’s bill led by Labour’s Dan Jarvis, which passed its final reading in the House of Commons on Friday, would prevent companies from making women redundant from the moment she discloses her pregnancy until her child is 18 months old.

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Little Plum by Laura McPhee-Browne review – the taboos of motherhood

In her compassionate second novel, McPhee-Browne deftly articulates the experience of becoming a parent

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While reading Laura McPhee-Browne’s novel Little Plum, I often thought of Catherine Cho’s memoir Inferno, an intimate chronicle of psychosis after the birth of her child. “My son was eight days shy of his hundred-day celebration when I started to see devils in his eyes,” Cho writes in a book that renders, in frightening clarity, postpartum mental illness and motherhood’s capacity to disorient and depersonalise.

Little Plum explores similar themes: the internal conflicts of being a mother, its concealed hardships, and the strictures it can place on one’s sense of self. It is McPhee-Browne’s second novel, following her warmly received debut Cherry Beach, which won a NSW Premier’s Literary award. Where Cherry Beach takes place within the liminal period between adolescence and adulthood, Little Plum has a more mature focus: we follow a 29-year-old woman, Coral, who has been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and who falls unexpectedly pregnant after a brief romance.

There is no sympathy, no empathy for the mother who did it – she is a monster, and that seems to be the only undisputed fact. Coral doesn’t think the mother is a monster, but she keeps it to herself. She thinks the mother is a human, surely a victim of illness and expectations.

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‘It’s a public health risk’: nurse decries infection control at US anti-abortion crisis center

A Kentucky nurse tried to hold a pregnancy center accountable for the problems she saw – but such facilities are subject to little regulation

At 52, Susan Rames was looking for a way to give back. She worked part-time at a Kentucky hospital as a postpartum nurse and, with her three children nearly grown, she had some extra time during the week.

Motivated by her Christian faith, Rames decided to volunteer at ALC Pregnancy Resource Center, a crisis pregnancy center whose mission is to discourage people from seeking abortions.

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