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A Chinese restaurant offering an all-you-can-eat buffet is charging customers £20 in ‘wastage’ if they leave food on their plates. Managers at the Kylin Buffet in Ocean Road, South Shields, have put up a notice urging diners to eat up all their food – or face the penalty charge. The policy has outraged one mother [...]

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For most parents, it’s an achievement to get the children to school in time with everything they need (homework, the signed consent forms, the right sports kit, musical instruments, the cake for the charity fundraiser). But it seems we should also now be weighing their school bags. The combined weight of everything they are having [...]

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It has emerged that chemicals found in everyday household products may be contributing to rising rates of cancer, diabetes, brain diseases and fertility problems. Foetal development is particularly sensitive. Environmental watchdog the European Environment Agency (EEA) has launched a report saying that products that disrupt the hormone system (known as endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs) should [...]

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A 10-year-old girl’s life has been transformed after surgeons removed a tumour weighing more than three kilos from her abdomen. Eliana Mann is said to be like a “new child” after the rare growth — which had reached the size of a small football — was taken out in a nine-hour operation. Before it was [...]

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A mother whose baby died after being deprived of oxygen when he was born has told an inquest that she is “tortured” by the memory of his birth. Noah Tyler died 10 months after suffering irreversible brain damage at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, a pathologist said. A midwife admitted making “catastrophic mistakes” [...]

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It’s a hairstyle favoured by celebs from Rihanna to Justin Bieber and often copied by their young fans. But a leading optometrist has warned that having a side fringe that falls into the face can cause long-term eye damage. Andrew Hogan told the Australian Daily Telegraph: ‘If a young emo chap has a fringe covering [...]

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A brave two-year-old boy is winning his battle against an inoperable brain tumour – and doctors hope a pioneering drug will stop it from returning. Joseph Middlemass was diagnosed in May last year after his parents noticed he had stopped crawling and later had a seizure. Doctors found the nursery pupil from Newcastle had a pea-sized [...]

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A young Ugandan boy is fighting for his life after his legs mysteriously swelled up to ‘elephant size’ and he contracted a potentially deadly flesh-eating infection. Vincent Oketch, 10, is bed bound, unable to walk and forced to wear girl’s dresses and skirts because he cannot fit into shorts or trousers due to the condition. [...]

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Women’s empowerment guru, Tyra Banks, has spoken out in support of Vogue’s decision to ban rail thin models from its pages. The 38-year-old media mogul and former supermodel praised the fashion glossy’s 19 editors today for banding together to put a stop to ‘thinspirational’ editorial and called for a toast ‘over some barbecue and burgers’. [...]

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The average family with children throws away £680 of food a year, according to research. The sum, which equals £13 a week, makes a total of £12 billion across the nation. The study found that the average household spends £68 a week on food but that 91% of households with children admit to throwing some [...]

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Giving water to children with their meals helps encourage them to eat their greens, a study has revealed. Researchers claim children who drink more water make better food choices and have a healthier appetite for vegetables. A team from the University of Oregon in the U.S. looked at the drinks and vegetables consumed by 75 [...]

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UK families are wasting £270 a year (£5.20 a week) on discarded food and drink, according to a survey of their kitchen habits. Most families massively underestimate the amount of food they throw away each week, according to new research. Despite the economic downturn they admit to buying more than they need, often tempted by [...]

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Terminally-ill Australian Shaun Wilson-Miller, 17, has become an internet sensation after accidentally posting a heartbreaking and inspirational farewell message to the world on YouTube. Shaun, who has been told by doctors he does not have long left to live after his body rejected a SECOND heart transplant, was only trying to post his tragic goodbye [...]

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While a soup slurper or sandwich chomper be irritating to most, for 19-year-old Emma Riehl, everyday noises are unbearable. She suffers from a rare disease known as misophonia, in which she simply cannot tolerate noises like chewing, swallowing, and breathing. The neurological condition, which literally means ‘the hatred of sound,’ means that many of its [...]

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When Daniella Jackson was diagnosed with cancer at five months pregnant her doctors quickly advised her to have an abortion. They said she needed a termination to allow her lung tumour to be removed before it killed her. But the 21-year-old, who is a devout Roman Catholic, refused, saying she felt too close to her [...]

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A homeless man was discovered sleeping on an “all mod cons” children’s ward at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Bosses launched an investigation after the man wandered on to the site in Bloomsbury through a fire door. Staff had apparently confused him for the parent of a patient, the hospital said today, because he was “smartly [...]

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Were you breastfed as a baby and if so, do love or hate your mother? Do you have children of your own and if so, do you or did you breastfeed them? And for how long? And if it was a long time ago, do they still speak to you? And did you ever do [...]

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If you’re fed up with huge allotment waiting lists and want to enjoy produce from your own plot, here is a very modern solution. Gardeners can now rent a patch of land on a farm which supplies Fortnum & Masons – and manage the growing through the internet. The scheme, called i-Grow, lets people pick [...]

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A teenager has taught herself how to speak, stand and eat again after she suffered a massive stroke during an operation to remove a brain tumour. Hannah Jones was 15 when doctors found a four-centimetre growth spreading behind her right eye. But after two operations to remove it, surgeons told her they would have to [...]

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A 10-year-old girl, Eliana Mann, is like a “new child” after having a massive tumour that weighed more than 3kg removed. Her mother said Eliana, from north London, had been transformed by the operation at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Surgeons said the growth had reached the size of a small football. The tumour [...]

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Overweight mothers-to-be could be condemning their unborn children to decades of ill health. Babies whose mothers were carrying extra pounds when pregnant are more likely to be fat and unhealthy  as adults, researchers say. While it is well known that overweight mothers-to-be risk having big babies who grow into overweight children, this study is one [...]

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First they blamed the child, then the parents, then even the doctors. A few later pointed to modern life: computer games or too much television. But after decades of work begun by two remarkable British women, we are now closer than ever to understanding that genetics are responsible for the prevalence of autistic spectrum disorders [...]

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We used ready-to-roll red and blue sugarpaste icing (£1.15 for 250g from janeasher.com) to decorate. It’s so easy children can do it. For the cakes 250g (9oz) butter, slightly softened 250g (9oz) caster sugar 4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten 250g (9oz) self-raising flour 1 tsp vanilla extract 5 tbsp milk For the icing [...]

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A London hospital has set up the United Kingdom’s first specialist centre offering extreme weight loss surgery for children and teenagers. Childhood obesity rates are rising fast in the UK, with latest statistics showing that a third of children aged 10-11 in England suffer from obesity or weight issues. In Southwark, the south London borough [...]

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Rhys Watkins is just 11 years old but he has been forced to battle cancer twice in little over a year. His latest operation, in the week before Christmas, was to remove a very aggressive, tennis ball-sized tumour from his lung. His family were not expecting him home in time for Christmas Day. However, he [...]

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These days, work stress, postnatal depression and anxiety are addressed with compassion. But just a few generations ago, the women who suffered from these conditions, were confined to an asylum. The compelling portraits shown here, taken by Victorian photographer Henry Hering in the mid-19th century, have a haunting quality. But apart from the women’s pensive [...]

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Children should be taught how to grow and cook their own food at school as part of the national curriculum, to encourage them to eat more healthily as adults, MPs will say today. A cross-party committee of MPs also called for a ban on internet junk food ads aimed at children, to help curb Britain’s [...]

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Nine out of 10 academies are selling pupils junk food such as crisps, chocolate and cereal bars that are banned in maintained schools to protect children’s health, research has revealed. The findings from a study by the School Food Trust (SFT) contradict the education secretary Michael Gove’s claim that the academies he champions are following [...]

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Women approaching their mid-thirties who aren’t ready to have children are not the only ones worrying about their reproductive futures. Reports from fertility centres around the country are showing the increase of parental contribution as adult women opt to freeze their eggs. For many would-be-grandparents, helping to cover the cost of the expensive oocyte cryopreservation [...]

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A former police officer is facing up to 12 months in prison after admitting she conned cash out of her colleagues by claiming her daughter was suffering from leukaemia…when she was actually show jumping. Mother of two Rachel Hewitt falsely obtained money from fellow employees at North Yorkshire Police and neighbouring West Yorkshire force between [...]

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A 15-year-old schoolgirl died of tuberculosis after a series of doctor errors missed the chance to detect and cure her disease, with her GP claiming she was ‘lovesick’, an inquest heard today. Alina Sarag died in January last year after a GP allegedly advised her that her physical deterioration was due to mental health problems. [...]

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A controversial fertility doctor has raked in £25million in a single year. Mohamed Taranissi and his wife received the colossal sum through their IVF clinic, giving fresh evidence to critics who say that the creation of human life has become a multi-million pound industry. On Saturday the Daily Mail revealed that a human egg agency [...]

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A nine-year-old boy is dying from a rare form of brain cancer after telling his mother to stop his painful treatments after battling the disease for five years. Ryan Kennedy, from Clarkston, Michigan, has undergone seven surgeries, two rounds of radiation and four different kinds of chemo since he was diagnosed with ependymoma at the [...]

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Children are being detained in ‘degrading and disgraceful’ conditions for long periods of time at Heathrow Airport by the UK Border Agency, a damning report found. Youngsters of all ages are held in rooms which are small, stuffy and have no natural light – sometimes over night – for immigration purposes, the airport’s Independent Monitoring [...]

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IVF procedures widely used in the UK are posing a ‘serious health risk’, healthcare experts have warned. Clinics are using ‘aggressive’ practices that improve success rates but have led to treatments becoming one of the biggest causes of maternal deaths in England and Wales, they said. There is increasing evidence that the most common treatment, [...]

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IVF clinics in the UK are practising aggressive fertility treatments that are putting women and children at unjustified risk, experts say. The commercially driven industry uses unnecessary procedures, high doses of powerful drugs and risky interventions to help desperate couples spending thousands of pounds to conceive. But a milder, safer approach to IVF could provide [...]

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The vast majority of UK adults [84 per cent] think children should be protected from marketing by tobacco companies, according to new research by Cancer Research UK. Four out five people believe tobacco marketing is harmful to children, while more than two thirds agree that eye catching logs, colourful and distinctive branding on packets make [...]

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The UK Border Agency (UKBA) is detaining children in “degrading and disgraceful” conditions at Heathrow airport, an official report claims today. Children are held “almost every day and sometimes overnight” in premises that are “wholly unsuitable for the detention of children”, the Independent Monitoring Board for Heathrow said. The board said little had changed since [...]

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A video of cancer-stricken kids singing along to Kelly Clarkson’s hit song Stronger has become an internet sensation with over one million views. The shoot was set up by Chris Rumble, a regular twenty-something from Seattle with a passion for hockey and making amateur movies. Until, that is, he was suddenly diagnosed with leukaemia, which [...]

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Zoe Clark-Coates remembers the moment a scan showed that her second pregnancy, like her first, had ended. “I’ll never forget the midwife’s face as she looked at the screen. She fell completely silent and I started screaming – a terrible, almost primal reaction over which I had no control. Looking back, I feel sorry for [...]

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Jamie Lynne Grumet has appeared on the cover of Time magazine, looking fetching in a vest and skinnies, and staring into the camera as her three-year-old child sucks at her breast. She aims to publicise “attachment parenting”, although she also says: “There seems to be a war going on between conventional parenting and attachment parenting. That’s what [...]

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The latest cover of Time magazine has caused outrage. Under the headline “Are you mom enough?”, a young woman is pictured having her left breast suckled by a boy who appears way beyond usual breastfeeding age. The woman, it turns out, is Jamie Lynne Grumet, a 26-year old mother from Los Angeles, and the boy [...]

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A schoolboy may never be able to smile again after he was shot in the face by a sniper with an airgun. Jordan Winstanley, 13, was blasted by a gunman hiding in bushes as he walked with friends. The teenager collapsed to the ground with blood pouring from a hole in his cheek. He was rushed to [...]

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With the numbers of eating disorders on the rise, many believe women are feeling more pressure than ever to be thin. But a new study claims that supportive families can help combat social pressures which cause people to focus unduly on appearance and unrealistic ideals. Findings showed that levels of emotional support affected the way [...]

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Being fortunate enough not to be intolerant of anything except horrible food, I realise the Baking Club thus far has been somewhat butter-centric. Butter is to cakes what grapes are to wine, little else will do. But for some, another type of fat must do. Lactose intolerance is not unusual, and those that suffer it [...]

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Babies in special care units may soon be able to stay close to their mothers thanks to a revolutionary incubator design. The hi-tech BabyBloom can be fitted across the bed of a new mother allowing her to bond with her baby even as it needs to be in the special environment of an incubator. Such [...]

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Police have been extra 24-hours to continue questioning Felicia Boots about the deaths of her 10-week-old son Tej and 14-month-old daughter Lily-Syke, whose lifeless bodies were discovered by their father Jeffrey at their £1.2 million London home on Wednesday evening. But friends said the 34-year-old jewellery designer had been in a “bad way” after her first [...]

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A schoolboy found dead after taking a lethal cocktail of heroin, alcohol and an anti-depressant probably obtained the drugs from his family, an inquest was told. Drew Quinlan, 13, was found by his grandfather face down on a sofa at his family’s £4 million house in Richmond as he tried to wake him to go to [...]

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A controversial non-profit group is giving thousands of drug-addicted women money to be sterilised. The group hangs stark adverts in clinics and homeless shelters in North Carolina, which read, ‘Don’t let a pregnancy ruin your drug habit,’ and ‘She has her daddy’s eyes… and her mommy’s heroin addiction.’ Project Prevention founder Barbara Harris, 59, said [...]

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A young mother-to-be who was told she would never become pregnant due to a rare condition has decided to keep her miracle baby even though the birth could leave her experiencing labour-like pains forever. Seven months pregnant Debbie Mills, 23, was diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) in October 2009. CRPS is a chronic [...]

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