Author: BBC

“With endometriosis, most people end up minimising their pain, gaslighting themselves so they don’t reach out for help,” Abbie Filer explains.”The onus shouldn’t be on them to display their symptoms in an acceptable way – patients already do so much to manage their health and push for the right care.”The 27-year-old from Leeds was diagnosed with endometriosis 2024.The condition – which affects one in 10 women and people assigned female at birth in the UK – is when tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows outside of it.It can cause severe and debilitating symptoms, external such as pelvic…

Meta has abruptly taken down a new feature that allowed people to use its artificial intelligence (AI) tool to make fake images from user content on Instagram. The feature was part of a broad rollout of Muse Image, a new AI image generation tool Instagram’s parent company released on Tuesday.It allowed users of the Meta AI chatbot to tag public-facing accounts on Instagram and quickly use content on those accounts to create AI-generated or altered content and images. The feature quickly sparked blowback due to privacy concerns, leading Meta to admit it had “missed the mark” so it was “no…

“I was told that my symptoms were just part of being a woman.” These are words that are likely to be familiar to scores of women who have suffered years of seeking a reason for their extreme pain and heavy periods, before finally being told they have endometriosis. For years, the only way to definitively diagnose the condition – where cells similar to those in the lining of the womb grow in other parts of the body, external – was through a surgical procedure. But this week it was announced that rapid, non-invasive, endometriosis tests would be made available on…

As parts of the UK brace for another hot weekend, online adverts have been appearing for portable air conditioners claiming to be “designed by former Nasa engineers” and able to “cool a room in 90 seconds”.The adverts have emerged on platforms including Facebook and YouTube, but the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has now warned the products are often “too good to be true”.YouTuber Stuart Matthews, who bought several devices to test on his Proper DIY channel, told the BBC that despite paying £70 for one machine, it turned out to be “a small, simple fan worth only a few pounds”.The…

Riders wearing Taylor Swift-inspired outfits have completed a 300km bike ride in 24 hours for a seven-year-old girl.The Ride for Rori saw them cycling non-stop from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to Marble Arch in London.For the past 20 months, Rori, from Appleton in Oxfordshire, has been battling cancer and just finished treatment.The ride raised £61,000 for the Oxford Children’s Hospital, where Rori said staff had been “so helpful and so lovely”.Video journalist: Chris Wood

Meta is facing a backlash over its new AI tool Muse Image, which can generate pictures using other people’s profile pictures without telling them.It is one of many text-to-image tools publicly available, which as the name suggests can create pictures from a few lines of simple written text. Muse Image is available through the Meta AI app and web browser, as well as on WhatsApp and in Instagram Stories for US users.While Meta says users can opt out of their image being used even with a public account, Donald Campbell, advocacy director at tech justice non-profit Foxglove told the BBC…

Biologically, women’s greater risk comes down to two things: the natural rise and fall of our hormone levels and our body’s response to heat, which are different to men’s, Dr Arif said.Women produce less sweat and start sweating at a higher temperature, research – including this 2025 study, external – shows. This impairs our ability to quickly shed excess heat and makes it harder to judge when our bodies are under burden, simply because we can’t see as much sweat on our skin or clothing.The same research found, external that women also have a higher core body temperature and body…

Microsoft has announced it has cut 4,800 jobs – roughly 2.1% of its workforce – with Xbox to bear a large number of its latest layoffs.Amy Coleman, executive vice president at Microsoft, told employees in a memo that the tech giant needed to focus on areas that can deliver for customers amid a “fast-changing industry”.The sweeping layoffs will see more than 1,600 roles immediately axed at Xbox.Asha Sharma, who recently took over as Xbox’s chief executive, said in a note to staff it was “beginning the most significant restructure in Xbox history”.Four Xbox game development studios – Compulsion Games, Double…

“There’s no need for more protein in a heatwave,” says Aisling Daly, senior lecturer in nutrition at Oxford Brookes University.But if you fancy it, some of the most common proteins will need cooking (like meat, chicken and fish) and that can be off-putting in the heat. Even an outdoor BBQ can be too hot to handle.Enter the air fryer. Cooking a chicken leg in the worktop device uses less than half the energy of a conventional oven, according to Radio 4’s Sliced Bread. And because they are smaller and speedier, they also pump less heat into your kitchen.But experts say…

In hospitals across the US, patients and staff have become accustomed to seeing a one-armed, four-foot high, friendly-looking white robot going about its business.Nurses have been known to greet Moxi, as the robot is called by its maker Diligent Robotics, with a “good morning”, a high five or even a hug.Moxi – which shuttles medical supplies around hospitals – might respond by displaying its heart-shaped LED eyes and a beep beep greeting of its own.”We get a lot of feedback that Moxi feels like a part of the team,” says Todd Brugger, chief operating officer at the Texas-based robotics company,…