Gen Z in the US: how are you feeling about your finances?

The US economy has been in a tailspin, from rising prices, changing trade policies and the impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market. Polls show many Americans believe their financial security is getting worse and it’s harder to afford major life goals.Young Americans are no exception. If you are aged 18-29 and live in the US, we’d like to hear from you about the state of your finances and your biggest money concerns.You can tell us about your money situation and concerns using this form

We joke that to afford a home in Australia we must wait for our parents to die. It feels like a deal with the devil | Fiona Wright

For years, whenever my friends and I have despaired of the housing market and our precarious place within it, we have eventually landed on the same dark joke: there’s nothing any of us can do until our parents drop off the perch.The median rent in Sydney – the city where I live, largely by dint of being born here – has just hit $800 a week, a sum that represents more than half of a median income, and well beyond what is defined as affordable. This is the system that we are living with, one in which housing is a commodity, an investment, a means to accrue and hold wealth, rather than as a basic need and human right.In the past five years house prices have risen by nearly 50%, from what was already a record high. In the past month three of my closest friends – including one who lives alone – have been hit with rental increases of more than $100 a week

‘The kids don’t get days off. Nor should you’: my secret life as a paedophile hunter on the dark web

US undercover investigator Greg Squire can spend 18 hours a day befriending child sex abusers, to try to identify them and get justice for victims. He reveals the toll the work has taken on him Greg Squire can never forget the video that opened his eyes to what child sexual abuse could mean. It was a Sunday and he was at his home in New Hampshire, sitting out on his deck, his two young children running around, playing. This was 2008, about a year into Squire’s career as an agent for Homeland Security – he’d been a postman before this – and he reached for his laptop, checked his inbox and saw that the results of an email search warrant for a suspect had come in.He clicked on a video

Police ‘determined’ to target abusers who drive women to suicide but say they lack resources

Police are “determined to do more” to hold to account domestic abusers who drive victims to kill themselves, the National Police Chiefs’ Council has said.Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe, the NPCC lead for domestic abuse, has said that “more posthumous investigations are taking place”, but that officers struggle with a lack of resources, adding that 20% of all crime relates to domestic abuse in most forces.National guidance had been changed, she said, with the NPCC’s research team going into forces to look at how it was being applied. That guidance, she said, had been adapted based on feedback from families, who had consistently raised concerns about police response.This included, Rolfe said, “officers too quick to assume, ‘well, it’s a suicide and therefore a case for the coroner, not an investigation to be had by policing’, too often assuming that the domestic abuse perpetrator was the primary next of kin, and therefore risking evidence being lost by, for example, returning personal property like phones to those individuals

NHS ’clearly failing’ to ensure children get measles vaccine, experts warn

Children are at risk of measles because the NHS is “clearly failing” to ensure they get the MMR vaccine and its system needs an urgent overhaul, MPs and health experts have warned.Calls are growing for major reform of how MMR jabs are delivered as it emerged that vaccination rates in some parts of England are now on a par with those in Afghanistan and Malawi.More outbreaks of measles like the one in north London are inevitable, public health specialists believe, given that fewer than 60% of five-year-olds in some places have had both the recommended doses of MMR.In Enfield, where 60 children have recently contracted measles, of whom 15 have been hospitalised, the MMR vaccination rate is only 64.3%

Fertility patients win high court battle to save embryos after consent error

More than a dozen fertility patients have won a high court battle to save their embryos, eggs and sperm from destruction after errors meant they did not renew consent to store them within the 10-year window required by law.Ruling that the material could be kept, the judge said they should not “have the possibility of parenthood … removed by the ticking of a clock”.Lawyers for 15 groups affected by the errors – some of them former cancer patients – asked the court in London to declare it would be lawful for the embryos or cells to remain in storage, despite the consent expiring in June last year. In some cases this was because fertility clinics failed to notify those affected.In an unusual situation, the move was unopposed, with no objections from the clinics, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority or the health secretary