Women under intense stress as they bear caring burden and come under increased risk of being attacked in home or shelters, says aid group.

Women’s safety campaigners have called the Home Office’s backing of an app that allows users to track their friends’ journeys home “insulting to women and girls”, arguing that it does nothing to tackle the issue of men’s violence against women.

After months of hiding, political negotiations, frantic calls and WhatsApp messages, the help of a reality TV star – and the heroic efforts of one particular woman, Khalida Popal – the Afghan girls’ youth development football team finally touched down on British soil with the promise of a new future with Leeds United.

Speaking at the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s conference, Maggie Blyth, the newly appointed national police lead for violence against women and girls, acknowledged that trust between women and the police had been “broken through some of the tragic events of the last few weeks and months”.

The employee-owned retailer, which encompasses John Lewis and Waitrose, will offer all of its 80,000-strong workforce six months’ paid parental leave, in a move welcomed by equality campaigners who argued the government’s current shared parental leave scheme is “failing”. It will become first major British retailer to offer six months’ parental leave to all its employees.

“It makes absolutely no sense that kerb crawling is an offence if its aim is to solicit prostitution, but kerb crawling a schoolgirl to shout sexualised abuse at her is not – the law needs to be changed,” said Labour MP Harriet Harman.

Health professionals, experts and unions say poorly fitting equipment is risking lives of female workers.