After two years of courtship, a couple claims to be facing an extremely awkward situation.
TikTok users Carley and Mercedes have taken to the video-sharing platform to convey their potential problems and ask for some advice from their followers.
In a clip which has been viewed over eight million times to date the girlfriends from Canada share how they just found out their mothers both slept with the same guy.
They then asked their followers if they should take a DNA test to find out if they’re really half-siblings.
They said that the DNA test was on its way, but it’s unclear if the couple is being serious or simply pranking their followers, but they kept the story up in several other videos.
In another, they asked if they should continue their relationship if they were in fact half-sisters, noting that if they are really related, was it immoral to remain together?
Their account has over 616,000 followers and numerous people shared their shock in the comments, with some revealing they believed the two did look somewhat alike.
One person said that they always felt they looked alike.
Another responded that they had no idea who the girls were and instantly assumed they were sisters before reading the text.
A third wrote that they’d just watched a few of their videos and said that they should get the tests done asap and that they were genuinely afraid for them both.
Someone else said that they looked like twins.
Of course, this could be a practical joke, or not! But I would seriously be shocked if they weren’t related, but then, on the other hand, some people are drawn to other people that look like them, possibly because it makes them feel safer or that whom they might have more affinity with.
ASDA customers have been forced to request staff to stop scanning their food mid-checkout as they reach their spending limit.
The supermarket’s boss has made a painful admission about the demands and says that the same thing is happening with petrol.
New records reveal that supermarket costs have hit a 13-year high, resulting in customers struggling more and more to afford what they want and need.
ASDA’s chairman has said that numerous people are being forced to ask staff to stop scanning mid-checkout when they hit a specific price limit.
A newspaper outlet said that some people are also heading to self-checkouts to evade the embarrassment of not being able to pay.
Talking to the BBC, Lord Stuart Rose described a tremendous shift in customers’ behaviour and called on the Government to do more to support low-income households.
He said that people are trading back and that they were apprehensive about spending.
He said that they’ve got a limit that they’ve set out, too. They said £30 is one limit, and that if they get to more than £30 then that’s it, they stop, and that it was the same with petrol.
He added that many people won’t recall the inflation of the 1970s and the current peak in costs has come as a surprise to many.
He added that he was of the epoch that remembers what it was like last time, and that once inflation gets a grip, it’s quite destructive.
According to new figures, Britons are set to see their annual grocery bills jump by £380 this year as food price inflation hits a new 13-year high.
The latest data from Kantar has shown that grocery price inflation vaulted to 8.3 per cent over the four weeks to June 12, up from 7 per cent in May and its most elevated level since April 2009.
Kantar said that the lofty increases in the price of food and groceries mean that the average annual shopping tab is now anticipated to rise by £380 to £4,960 in 2022, up by more than another £100 since April alone.
According to the research, says LancsLive, customers were increasingly switching branded items for more affordable own-label products as they look to manage their budgets.
According to data firm Experian, the average cost of a litre of petrol at UK forecourts reached a new high of 189.3p on Tuesday.
Food and petrol have gone up so much that it’s time for action, no more waffling from the Government and our British government is so out of touch with what is really going on, but then they don’t have to stress about these things because they have too much money for their own good, and they’ve never known hardship in their lives.
Online shopping is of course great because people can then stick to a budget each month and then get a delivery, which would likely be more feasible at the moment, and many people have been getting rid of their cars because they could see what was coming.
This is going to be the very first of some extremely challenging times.
London has got to be one of the most visited, most iconic and most loved locations in the world. It’s affluent in history with multiple diverse cultures and numerous wonderful boroughs and neighbourhoods – there’s something just amazing about the place.
You could spend years getting lost in London and would still not have experienced everything that this great metropolis has to offer.
There’s never a dull moment in the Big Smoke and the metropolis constantly changes, evolves and thrives with its new places to eat, drink and explore, but London’s just like that with Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London that stands dutifully in place.
Not only does London have some of the finest museums in the world, which it most definitely does, but it also has an incredibly wide variety of museums – everything from fine art to Sherlock Holmes, and if you’re after contemporary art, then try the Tate Modern. If you fancy something more traditional then head to the National Portrait Gallery or the National Gallery.
If you have a fondness for science or nature then visit the Science Museum or the Natural History Museum, and if you want to learn more about London’s most celebrated detective, then visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum which will be right up your street on Baker Street.
Take your pick from drama, comedy, musicals, classics, plays coming to the end of their run, or plays just starting their run, there couldn’t be more to choose from.
Not only is this metropolis great for live performances, but it also contains some of London’s biggest attractions and best neighbourhoods where you’ll find the likes of Soho, Covent Garden, Mayfair and Westminster, amongst others.
The shadier side of the metropolis is shown through the Tower of London and the tongue-in-cheek London Dungeons, which both show a gruesome history, telling stories of incarcerated monarchs, traitors, the Great Fire, plague, Jack the Ripper and much more.
Some of London’s most historic sights are also its simplest with the old Victorian Borough Market which has been in existence for well over one hundred years and still bustles with charm every weekend whereas Hyde Park is full of memorials that construct a patchwork of the city’s highest and lowest moments.
And the city is home to a wide assortment of cultures and peoples and this has emanated into its restaurants with food from all over the world widely available in the metropolis and then add the fact that the eateries in London are among some of the finest in the world and you really have a culinary heavyweight on your hands.
It’s enormous and you could spend a lifetime exploring the city, and never stop being amazed because the world is here where it celebrates creativity.
Music is all around you and the nightlife is legendary and the food will knock your socks off.
You’ll go crazy for the sports and of course, it’s where the Royals live.
So why do people love living in London?
Well, once you look past the constant hustle and bustle and sometimes delayed transport! There’s so much opportunity and culture around, with its stunning landmarks, an abundance of parks, pleasant folk, great jobs and delectable food. So, it’s easy to see why it’s a fantastic city to live in.
London is the capital city of the United Kingdom and it’s the UK’s largest metropolis with its economic, transportation and cultural centre, and London is also among the oldest of the world’s great metropolia, with its history spanning almost two millennia.
A newborn baby boy has been discovered in a wheelie bin with his umbilical cord attached in Grimsby.
A newspaper outlet reported that the baby was found in a brown garden waste container on an estate at approximately 5 pm on Sunday.
Reports say a concerned resident heard crying coming from the container and after opening the cover discovered the baby among grass cuttings.
The boy is being treated in hospital, it’s understood.
His young mother has also been traced and was taken to hospital where she is being cared for by relevant authorities.
After being alerted just before 5 pm on Sunday there was a large response by Humberside Police and the East Midlands Ambulance Service.
At least four police cars and vans were at the location along with two ambulances.
Police officers were seen conducting house-to-house enquiries and interviewing stunned locals.
Paramedics were on the scene within minutes and a police cordon was constructed.
An East Midlands Ambulance Service spokesman said that they received a call at 4.58 pm on June 19, to a private address in Grimsby, and that the caller reported a medical emergency and they sent two crewed ambulances and two patients were taken to Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital.
Humberside Police told GrimsbyLive that officers were in attendance at a property on Winchester Avenue following reports of concerns for safety earlier that evening. That assistance had been provided to those concerns and that there were no issues or risks to the wider community.
The tranquil street is home to families and retired people in semi-detached and terraced homes, and it’s awful to think of someone, whoever it was, just leaving a baby in a wheelie bin where it could have died or just finished up in a compactor.
But we shouldn’t judge this young mother who did this because we have no idea of what her story is, or how out of mind with fear she may have been to do what she did, so hopefully this young mother will receive more kindness than judging from those that will be looking after her.
We don’t know what actually happened and at the moment we only have part of the story but of course, people will pepper it with hatred.
A judge in Brazil has banned an 11-year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped from having an abortion, provoking widespread outrage.
Joana Ribeiro Zimmer is now being investigated after it came to light that she refused to help the nameless girl who was raped in her family home in southern Brazil’s Santa Catarina state.
The girl was raped earlier this year and was accompanied by her mother to a doctor in Florianopolis when she was 22 weeks pregnant.
A doctor refused to perform the abortion, saying they could only conduct abortion on someone up to 20 weeks, and that they needed a court order.
It was then that the matter reached Judge Zimmer who reportedly told the court if the mother wanted to protect her daughter she would not submit her to homicide.
There are no other details concerning the rape of the girl who’s now in her 29th week of pregnancy or the aggressor.
Abortion is illegal in Brazil and can mean prison time except in circumstances when the victim is raped and there’s a danger to the life of the mother.
The Intercept reported that the girl, accompanied by her mother, was seen by a doctor on May 4 at the Polydoro Ernani de São Thiago University Hospital.
They then told the psychologist at the hospital that they didn’t want to keep the pregnancy.
Two days later, prosecutor Mirela Dutra Alberton, from the Santa Catarina Public Ministry, petitioned the court to take her into a shelter.
The prosecutor in court papers said that pregnancy was a high risk, demonstrating that a child at a young age didn’t have a biological structure in the formative stage suitable for pregnancy.
Then when the matter reached the Santa Catarina court, Judge Zimmer sent the girl to a refuge for women, to protect her from her assailant.
Her mother, unnamed, reportedly said that if she’d not been taken to the refuge, she would have performed the abortion on her daughter herself.
The judge also told the mother if she’d granted the girl an abortion that she wouldn’t be protecting her daughter and would instead have been subjecting her to homicide.
The Court of Justice of Santa Catarina has since said that its Internal Affairs Office is now looking into Judge Zimmer’s ruling.
The matter has enticed across-the-board fuss in the predominantly Catholic nation, with professionals cited in local media as saying that there’s no legal basis for the case, neither regarding the stance that the hospital adopted, nor for the judge’s conclusion.
Did the judge have any idea what it would be like forcing an 11-year-old child to give birth like this? The dangers to her would be enormous, not only physically but mentally as well.
This is totally despicable and some people just don’t have any compassion. What if it was the judge’s daughter? Would she let her own daughter go through that physical and mental harm?
This is sickening that an 11-year-old child has been raped in her own home and the judge won’t help her. Envision telling the mother of a child that she wasn’t protecting her daughter by getting an abortion. This poor child has already been damaged psychologically by being raped in the first place, but now the judge wants her to be psychologically damaged by not having an abortion.
It shouldn’t matter if this child was 12 weeks pregnant or 30 weeks pregnant, she’s been raped. She didn’t ask to be raped and it was done against her will. She is a child and would not be able to cope with the responsibility, and she probably didn’t come forward because she likely didn’t know what pregnancy was, either that, or she concealed the fact because she was ashamed and didn’t know what was going on.
She is the victim here. Yet people are blaming her and not the attacker who hasn’t been named and shamed yet.
Does anyone remember what it was like being 11 years old? What would you do if you’d been raped and then found out you were pregnant, you would have been terrified and you definitely wouldn’t have wanted to tell your mother or parents.
This will leave an enduring scar on this child forever, and if she is made to have the baby, that baby will be a reminder to her every day of what happened to her and to know that she was made to have a baby that she didn’t want.
Union baron Mick Lynch was today seen catching a cab after plunging Britain into disarray with the most major rail walkout in 30 years.
The RMT chief hopped into a taxi in central London, an indulgence not likely to be affordable to the swathes of Brits desperately attempting to get to work, after dominating the airwaves, in which he defended his union’s industrial action that has ground enormous places in the country to a standstill.
More than 50,000 members have walked out over demands for an 11 per cent pay rise as millions fought to get into work or were forced to work from home or unable to make money at all this week in the £100 million-plus hammer blow to the already creaking economy.
The UK has been forced into another de facto lockdown that could be the death knell for numerous small businesses who’ve already been struggling for the past two years due to the pandemic and were just getting back on their feet.
Andrew Haines, Chief Executive of Network Rail, said the walkouts were crushing for the country, declaring at an empty Waterloo that this was a wasteland and that it was the dimmest days of COVID, and he acknowledged it’s likely the rail strikes would go ahead on Thursday and Saturday but added he would do everything he could to try to turn that around.
And that the frustrations of million were reflected in an incident in east London when a commuter stood in front of a 123 bus between Ilford and Lordship Lane, Tottenham after it refused to stop for dozens waiting at a bus stop.
Witnesses said the angry man had been waiting for 30 minutes but bus after bus flew by. Commuters could be heard angrily chatting on their phones about the rail strikes with some of them swearing as the drama unfolded.
It was filmed by a bystander named David, believed to be an NHS worker, who said that since 6.30 am waiting for a bus, but the buses just passed by without stopping, and that his patients and co-workers were still waiting for him because of the rail strikes, yet they weren’t allowed to strike, and that his paycheck was worse than the ones that were striking.
Much of Britain has no passenger trains for the whole day, including most of Scotland and Wales, the whole of Cornwall and Dorset, and places such as Chester, Hull, Lincoln and Worcester cut off. If services are going ahead they will be restricted with no trains travelling after 6.30 pm this evening.
It seems as if the RMT couldn’t care less about the working classes of England, who need these vital services to get to work so that they can put food on the table in these unsettled times.
There’s a storm of mega proportions brewing in this country, and many people have just had enough, and soon the winter bills will arrive and I can see that in the coming months there will be some sort of civil unrest.
How’s Brexit working out for you?
And then you have this shameless man going to work by cab while denying thousands of their right to work.
We’ve had sluggish financial maturation over the last 12 years which has led to wage stagnation.
Wages are lower and as a result, all disposable income has dropped, and working people have had enough because they’ve been carrying the can for this government’s botched handling of the economy for far too long, through the austerity years and beyond, and now people are beginning to understand the reason and even worse.
It has emerged that more than 90 per cent of council staff are working from home in some places.
According to freedom of information requests, council buildings are between a quarter and a half as full as offices in the private sector, yet local authorities are still using taxpayers’ money to service empty office space.
Almost 3,000 desk spaces are supported by Conservative-run Buckingham County Council, but an average of only 340 of its 2,400 office-based staff come into work each week.
Each desk space can cost up to £13,000 a year to run, according to estimates produced by the trade magazine, Government Technology.
At the four councils which responded to the freedom of information requests, an average of 85 per cent of staff were still working from home.
The council with the most elevated proportion of workers in this category was Conservative-run Wiltshire County Council with 94 per cent. Labour-run Bradford at 93 per cent, followed in second.
Buckingham County Council was next with 86 per cent at home while Labour-run Westminster had 66 per cent.
One senior figure within a major county council said that civil servants in Whitehall were under more pressure to return to the office than town hall staff.
The source said nobody was applying any pressure over where people work and that less than 10 per cent of office workers were back at their desks.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, told The Times that residents fed up with colossal council tax bills and bumper pay rises for staff would no doubt be disappointed to find out they’re paying a small fortune to finance these empty buildings, and that if flexible working is to stay, council officials should be moved out and the savings passed on to hard-pressed residents.
But the local Government Association, which represents more than 350 councils in England and Wales, said in a statement that council staff work tirelessly for their communities, whether from home, in offices or out and about, and it seems now that nobody wants or needs to work in an office again.
Now it appears that young staff are just digital natives who don’t want to sit next to someone physically and want to work in their pyjamas and get their food deliveries online, but then I guess it does save them excessive parking costs and they get to see their loved ones more frequently, but then not everything can be done online.
But what will happen with all that empty office space if people do continue to work from home. Well, I guess it will be used to house our new citizens who are washing up on our beaches from around the world.
Add doctors to the mix who appear to have hidden away for nearly three years and get paid handsomely I might add to do so.
Is it really working from home, or is it just people skiving at the taxpayers’ expense? People who are employed were once employed to work in an office, but now COVID keeps being used as an excuse, and if people don’t turn up for work they should now face fines or the sack but now it seems okay to have optional attendance and everyone’s fine with it.
And guess what? Boris Johnson told them to do it. He said that people must work from home and guess what? They did and still are!
A woman who has been filmed pepper-spraying four Asian women in a racially motivated attack in Manhattan was arraigned and charged with a hate crime, after a video of the incident went viral.
The suspect, 47-year-old Madeline Barker, was caught on camera hurling racial slurs at the victims, such as ‘God back to where you came from’ and ‘You don’t belong here,’ during the June 10 altercation.
Madeline Barker, of Florida, was ruled a potential flight risk at her first court appearance in Manhattan and was held on bail set at $20,000.
According to the New York Post, prosecutors lobbied for the judge to declare Madeline Barker a flight risk because she’s from the Sunshine State, didn’t turn herself in and was only caught after an eyewitness identified her on the street.
Madeline Barker’s Legal Aid Counsel argued that the media coverage of the incident had intensified the matter.
She faces charges of assault as a hate crime, with Judge Eric Schumacher fixing bail at $20,000 cash, a $20,000 partial secure bond.
She appeared sporting a denim jacket and a white facemask.
The incident, which occurred in a public plaza in the Meatpacking District, subsequently sparked a search for the then-unknown woman, dubbed ‘Karen’ by internet users.
The incident, which left one victim unable to open her eyes, comes amid an inflammation of anti-Asian brutality in the City That Never Sleeps.
A shocking video recorded by the victims reveals the moment the woman dubbed ‘Karen’ by social media users, starts arguing with the four Queens women, all in their 20s, in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District on Saturday.
The victims, who asked to remain nameless, told ABC7 that they were checking out a flower installation when the woman unexpectedly picked a fight with them, after accusing them of harassing her, and then ‘Karen’ pepper-sprayed the four women.
One victim said that it was so painful and that she couldn’t open her eyes for about 30 minutes.
An eyewitness then filmed the victims stepping away from the argument, but ‘Karen’ continued to shout at them and walked up behind one of the women and blasted her straight in the eyes with pepper spray before leaving the location.
Police said the incident was now under investigation and was being treated as a hate crime.
According to the victims, Madeline Barker went on a racist tirade as she pulled out the pepper spray on the Asian women.
Madeline Barker isn’t from New York, so it makes no sense that she would go to the largest place in the United States that’s swarming with immigrants, especially if she despises them so much.
Madeline Barker is just an evil, wicked woman and she should just relax and mind her own beeswax. The judge should just give her a month in jail, she’ll soon change her opinion.
She’s certainly not the hero in this. Heros wouldn’t be spraying pepper spray on people, and why do people believe that they can do this sort of thing and get away with it. I hate to say this but her name, face and crime will be online forever, and there are numerous fruitcakes that live amongst us.
This is yet another miserable person who can’t accept that colour is only skin deep, it’s what’s on the inside that matters, and clearly, nothing good resides inside of this woman.
Madeline Barker’s Legal Counsel asserted that the media coverage of the incident had amplified the case, but the video of her speaks volumes and this is just an immoral racist who got caught on camera, you actually can’t spin that.
According to a survey, office workers want to prohibit telephone calls in the workplace because they find them aggressive and confrontational.
Three-quarters of people would rather communicate by email or social media than speak on the phone, which they find stressful.
The trend is driven by Generation Z and millennial workers under 40 who prefer text messages and WhatsApp.
More than three in four respondents (78 per cent) confessed to frequently ignoring calls when they didn’t recognise the caller’s number for fear it could lead to a hostile dialogue, and one in ten admitted to going out of their way to sidestep face-to-face conversations because they left them feeling on edge.
Tim Agnew, from freebets.com, which commissioned the survey, said that while younger office workers undoubtedly prefer messaging to talking, they also discovered that across age groups there was a feeling that phone calls had the potential to quickly become confrontational.
He added that numerous people prefered to ignore calls but at the same time they were prepared to respond to email and social media messages.
According to the communications regulator Ofcom, the total time spent on landline calls in 2018 was 44 billion minutes, down from more than 100 billion minutes six years before, but mobile calls increased over that time but fell for the first time in 2017 by 1.7 per cent because people had diverted to other forms of online messaging.
In a report that year, Ofcom said falling call volumes were symptomatic of a fundamental shift in behaviour as people turned to messaging.
However, the pandemic led to a peak in calls made from landlines, up 15 per cent in 2020 compared to the previous year, as friends and families unable to meet in person kept in contact by phone.
The survey also uncovered that nine in ten workers want the working week to be lowered to four days.
All too often people will just sidestep uncomfortable conversations, and emails and letters are amazing, but then you have those people who have fallen behind on their payments that will ignore emails and letters, and sometimes the best way to deal with things like this is to just pick up the phone with a cordial voice that deals with the problem with empathy, which usually gets the most promising outcome.
Sometimes the perceived uncomfortable conversation that people believe it will be isn’t as menacing as they make it, and being nice over the phone can get you more cordiality than an email where it’s difficult to read a person’s tone, but then I guess it depends on who you’re talking to on the other end of the phone.
People used to spend a good chunk of their lives dealing with people in positions of authority where they’ve been assured of something via the phone and then later on flatly denied, but things that are written with transparency can’t be denied later on because it’s in black and white, so now, people are using email and texting instead of having an adult discussion with someone else – I actually do feel sorry for the next generation.
The younger generation is now heading for some extremely serious mental health problems, along with working from home which will stunt their social development, and who will have scarcely had any experience of interaction in the workplace, and if people believe that a phone conversation is confrontational then that’s an extremely worrying sign of things to come.
Amber Heard has described testifying against Johnny Depp and describing her apparent sexual assault as the scariest, most intimidating thing, in her first interview since losing her defamation case on June 1.
Amber Heard, 36, spoke to NBC’s Dateline in a talk screened in its entirety for the first time and told Savannah Guthrie that she was terrified of telling her side of the story.
She said she’d been wounded by the hatred and vitriol directed at her, but didn’t regret bringing the case.
She said that she knew that the scariest, most daunting thing for anyone talking about sexual violence was not being believed, being called a liar, or being humiliated.
Amber Heard said she wasn’t speaking out because she was vindictive and said that would be a lousy way of getting revenge.
She said as ridiculous as it was to say out loud, her goal was to just let people see her as a human being.
Amber Heard’s interview raised eyebrows, with her repeating her defamatory allegations that Johnny Depp hit her.
Yet, shortly before the interview aired, Amber Heard’s team insisted they were unrepentant, and that if Johnny Depp or his team had a problem with this, they suggested that Johnny himself sit down with Savannah Guthrie for an hour and respond to all her questions.
Amber Heard also released a binder full of notes from her therapist, which she claims is new evidence proving her allegations of physical and sexual abuse against Johnny Depp, despite the notes that had already been dismissed by the judge.
Amber Heard turned over years’ worth of notes taken by her therapist describing instances when she says the actor hit her, threw her against a wall, and threatened to kill her.
The actress has now gone public with the binder, which dates back to 2011 from the very start of her relationship with Johnny Depp.
The notes include reports of violence dating back to January 2012, when Amber Heard told her therapist that Johnny Depp hit her and threw her on the floor.
The notes alleged that eight months after that he ripped her nightgown, chucked her on the bed and then in 2013 he threw her against a wall and threatened to kill her, but earlier this month, a jury ruled that Amber Heard defamed her ex-husband by publicising a piece about being a sexual assault survivor in the Washington Post.
Why didn’t she just walk out and leave Johnny if she was that unhappy, it would have certainly been cheaper.
Of course, Johnny Depp is no angel in all of this, and he did or still does have an addiction to alcohol and drugs, and we all know what happens when you put that in the mix, and if he can’t contain his anger, especially towards women, then he shouldn’t be near them at all until he sorts himself out, but of course, therapist notes don’t prove that you were abused, it just proves that you told your therapist that you were.
As I said I don’t believe that Johnny Depp is an angel, far from it, but why didn’t Amber go to the police if she thought she was in that much danger?
One of the questions that are often asked in relation to a woman experiencing domestic violence is why didn’t they contact the police when they were experiencing the abuse? And that because they didn’t it couldn’t have been as bad if they didn’t contact the police, but the truth is that there are numerous reasons why people who are experiencing abuse might not contact the police.
One of the primary reasons women don’t contact the police is because they fear that contacting them that it may actually make their situation more dangerous, and for many who know what it’s like to see their abusive partner escalating, survival mode kicks in and de-escalating because of their primary instinct.
Rather than call the police for help, the woman experiencing the abuse may try to calm the abusive partner or calm the abusive partner by whatever means necessary.
Also, generally, if the police are contacted and an arrest is made, it’s likely that the abusive partner would just get a slap on the wrist and when released, may become more escalated, potentially putting the woman in more danger.
There may be many valid reasons as to why a woman who’s experiencing abuse may not want to or is unable to contact the police for assistance, so the most important thing that we can initially do is believe them, and we need to be understanding because not everything is black and white, and there are grey areas where a woman experiencing domestic violence may have a criminal record and that she may have put her hands on the abusive partner to defend herself, or she might not be showing any physical injuries, but that doesn’t mean the abuse didn’t happen.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 