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Five years ago, Charles and Iona Cole led a gilded life that most people could only dream of. Home was a £2.25 million Devon manor house set in 214 acres, with his and hers luxury cars on the sweeping driveway, not to mention the portfolio of 84 buy-to-let properties they owned in Yorkshire. With their [...]

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LAS VEGAS — Tracking your baby’s weight used to be a matter of visiting the doctor’s office. But now, digitally connected parents can not only weigh their baby at home, but track the growth of their bundle of joy via mobile apps and share it on social networks. Withings, the company previously known for tweeting [...]

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The blonde 18-year-old said she had been left with no confidence during her teenage years after suffering from terrible acne. Acne is thought to be caused by changes in hormones that are triggered during puberty. Although most teenagers suffer from spot breakouts as a result, Harriet suffered from a severe case with painful red papules [...]

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The study proves what parents have known for years – that babies pick up on the tone of their mother’s voice rather than her words. Researchers showed that babies reacted in the same way to mum’s voice regardless if she is speaking English or Greek. The scientists studied reactions from one-year-old babies to their mum’s [...]

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A pregnant security worker who tried to steal a television during rioting in Croydon was spared jail today. Laura Foley, 22, admitted taking the flatscreen TV from outside a branch of Argos shortly after helping a terrified mother and baby escape the mob. Judge Roger Chapple at Inner London crown court said the offence was [...]

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A mother has told how her daughter was left unconscious after a hospital issued medicine that was incorrectly labelled. Three-year-old Ruby Plummer was diagnosed with epilepsy last March, a condition which affects the brain and causes seizures. The youngster was prescribed buccal midazolam, a muscle relaxant which is rubbed into the gums and used to [...]

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A natural chemical known as the ‘cuddle hormone’ makes people kinder and could help millions suffering from psychiatric disorders such as autism, say scientists. Researchers found that women with higher levels of oxytocin – a hormone produced in the brain – were more affectionate towards their babies. Meanwhile another study found participants who were given [...]

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I am anxious about my 18-year-old son who has dropped out of school. He is a bright, confident lad with 10 good GCSEs and two poor AS levels. He didn’t carry on with his A2s as he was bored and couldn’t be bothered with the work. We looked into apprenticeships but everything from the travelling [...]

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The crush developed early on Tuesday after security guards at the South African university opened a small gate to admit applicants through the university clearing system. As students and their parents pushed to get through the gate, some fell to the ground and were trampled while others were forced against the sharp metal fencing. One [...]

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Ofsted, the quango that monitors all young people’s services including schools, is to focus its visits on four main areas rather than 13. It will also cut the notice time given before inspectors arrive from eight weeks to 10 days. Users of adoption agencies, including birth and adoptive parents as well as children themselves, will [...]

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A mother accused of murdering three of her daughters and her husband’s first wife in an honour killing broke down in tears while testifying today in an Ontario court. Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, is accused of conspiring with her husband, Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their eldest son, Hamed, 21, of running one of their family [...]

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Children are being abandoned on Greece’s streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more. Youngsters are being dumped by their parents who are struggling to make ends meet in what is fast becoming the most tragic human consequence of the Euro crisis. It comes as pharmacists revealed the country [...]

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An 18-year-old man has been arrested n suspicion of murder after a house fire left four siblings dead. The teenager, from Lytham, Lancashire, was arrested following the fire last Saturday evening. Police confirmed today the fire was started inside a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms at the house on Lytham Road, Freckleton. via Teenager, [...]

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A Missouri teenager who told authorities she wanted to know what it felt like to kill pleaded guilty to murder on Tuesday, telling a judge that she strangled her 9-year-old neighbor with her hands and then slashed her throat with a knife. Alyssa Bustamante, who will turn 18 on January 28, pleaded guilty to second-degree [...]

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A young woman who was tormented for six years by a phone text stalker has spoken of her shock when she discovered it was her neighbour. Hollie Townsley, 21, was sent thousands of anonymous obscene messages and phone calls, which started when she was only 14. Miss Townsley, who became too frightened to leave the [...]

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A mother who stole over £76,000 from her employers after becoming addicted to online bingo has been jailed for 16 months. Lucienne Mainey became addicted to online gambling after her marriage collapsed, a court heard yesterday. A trusted member of staff, the 41-year-old began stealing money from the company as her addiction got worse. via [...]

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A little girl whose birthmark was literally strangling her to death can finally smile after becoming the first person in the UK to trial a miracle drug. Millie Field, three, was born with a small, blue mark on her face which doctors told her parents Michelle and Stuart was a bruise from a particularly speedy [...]

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Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch, at the age of 35, regrets not yet being a father. Here four male writers talk about their own urge – or otherwise – to procreate. Richard Godwin Age: 30 Children: 0 When playing Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch is like a shaken-up Bollinger bottle of emotion. When he steps out of costume, [...]

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Scientists have found a way to predict how long someone will live – by measuring their genes as a baby. Life expectancy is written into our DNA and is there to be seen from the day we are born. It all depends on the length of the telomeres, which are described as ‘acting like the [...]

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A six-week-old baby boy at the centre of a murder probe has been named as Mohammed Ismail Malik. His parents, father Shakeel Hussain and mother Rabeel Malik, are being questioned by Greater Manchester detectives on suspicion of his murder. They are also being quizzed on suspicion of causing or allowing the death of a child. [...]

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Give a musician a baby, and chances they’ll deliver a soggy ballad soon enough, like a melodic placenta. Jay-Z’s tribute to his and Beyoncé’s newborn daughter – a track called Glory – was an unusually quick afterbirth, showing up within 48 hours of Blue Ivy Carter’s arrival. It’s also quite a sweet one, bookended with [...]

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Step aside, Dennis the Menace. The worst kiddie role model of the modern age is that infamous miscreant Peppa Pig. It would appear Peppa and her brother George have been inciting small children to jump in puddles, reject vegetables, splatter cake-mix and – deep breath – to mock their parents. I am startled by this [...]

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A mother-of-two has told how her husband’s illness motivated her to lose 11-stone in six months. Tabby Shaw, 40, tipped the scales at 20 stone but when her partner John was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes she decided to tackle her life-long weight problem. In a bid to avoid developing the same condition as her [...]

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Orange has demanded more than £2,500 from me for a bill run up by my 14-year-old son. It was caused by his overseas use of a BlackBerry while on a 12-day visit to his mother in South Africa. I had upgraded him to the new phone and contract as a birthday present. Orange contends that [...]

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They are rumoured to have spent a staggering $1.3 million to renovate a private wing for their new baby daughter Blue Ivy Carter’s arrival. But after just three days at one of New York’s swankiest hospital Lenox Hill, Beyonce, her husband Jay-Z and their newborn bundle of joy have left the building. A hospital spokesman [...]

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A stroke victim died in  hospital after bank holiday staff shortages led to appalling basic errors in her care. Christine Lofthouse, 67, was  admitted to St James’s Hospital in Leeds late on New Year’s Eve 2010. But instead of receiving prompt  medical attention, she was left on a trolley for hours, not given antibiotics to [...]

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This is the hero survivor who battled to save four siblings who all died in a smoke-filled house fire. Andrew Smith, 16, followed his older brother Reece into his mothers burning house as they battled to rescue four-year-old twins Holly and Ella and two-year-old Jordan. He was forced to flee the house after being blocked [...]

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More than 450,000 extra primary pupils will need places in England by 2015 as schools face a surging birth rate, government figures reveal. This will place intense pressure on schools, particularly in urban areas. In Barking there is a forecast for the primary school population to increase by more than 40% – the equivalent of [...]

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A New Zealand woman who is said to have duped her family into thinking she was pregnant has been charged with abduction after allegedly snatching a newborn baby from a hospital. Neha Narayan was arrested after a suspicious nurse followed her to a car park where her partner, believing it was his child, was waiting [...]

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The 1991 murder of a teenage girl on her high-school campus may now finally be solved – thanks to the DNA of a 17th century family. Seattle police investigating the death of Washington 16-year-old Sarah Yarborough say they are one step closer to catching her killer. They have matched crime-scene DNA samples to the historic [...]

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Out-dated ways of teaching in mosques is behind a dramatic rise in the number of young Muslims going to prison, a top cleric has said. Ahtsham Ali, an adviser to the Prison Service, said that mosques in the UK fail to understand the young men that come through their door because of imams arriving in [...]

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When I flew back home to New Zealand last October I expected – or perhaps hoped – that my father John would already be dead. He had been diagnosed 11 years previously with a cancer that had spread outside the  prostate. But after an operation, he defied the odds and had enjoyed remarkably good health [...]

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Greece’s financial crisis has made some families so desperate they are giving up the most precious thing of all – their children. One morning a few weeks before Christmas a kindergarten teacher in Athens found a note about one of her four-year-old pupils. “I will not be coming to pick up Anna today because I [...]

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Neha Narayan was arrested after she was found with the baby heading for the hospital car park where her partner was waiting to take her home with what he believed was their own child. Police spokeswoman Ana-Mari Gates-Bowey told reporters in New Zealand Narayan faked her pregnancy for nine months before telling her partner to [...]

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The list of 36 “landmark events”, which includes picking fruit, dancing with no inhibitions, visiting a museum and holding a teddy bear’s picnic, are considered vital to the learning and development of young children. Dr Richard Woolfson, a child psychologist, said that a child’s growth between the ages of one and three was extraordinary. “Toddlerhood [...]

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A grandfather has died after being stung by a swarm of Portuguese Man o’ Wars in South Africa. Roland Singh, 58, collapsed after suffering severe anaphylactic shock when he was stung by the jellyfish-like creatures on Saturday as he swam with his granddaughter in the sea near Cape Town. Paramedics tried to resuscitate the South [...]

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The apparently freak accident occurred in Bryansk 235 miles south-west of Moscow as 26-year-old Tatyana Didorenko was strolling across the city’s central square with her baby boy, Kirill, in a pram. In a scenario that sounds like it comes from a horror film, the pavement beneath their feet unexpectedly caved in, plunging the mother and [...]

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The family of a 14-year-old cyclist killed in a collision with a car in Powys has described him as a “generous, giving and sensitive young man”. James Hodgson, from Arddleen, near Welshpool, was critically injured near his home on the A483 last Thursday. He was taken to hospital in Shrewsbury, but was later transferred to [...]

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Vulnerable children older than 10 are being “forgotten” amid an “urgent” need for foster carers, a charity has warned. According to Barnardo’s, at least 8,750 new foster families must be found within the next year. But while there is considerable focus on placing babies and younger children, “the needs of older children are being forgotten,” [...]

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He was there in spirit, but sadly not in person. Stephen Hawking missed his own 70th birthday party yesterday at Cambridge University on doctor’s advice – he was recovering at home from an infection that had put him in hospital for a few days last week. continues …  ”My mother realised something was wrong and [...]

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With her cheeky smile – and even cheekier attitude – she has become a hit with children. But it seems a growing number  of parents are turning against TV character Peppa Pig, claiming she is a ‘bad influence’. Many complain their sons and daughters have started to copy  the ‘naughty’ behaviour of the cartoon pig [...]

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When I was in my early 20s, my mother told me she wanted to kill herself when she reached the age of 70. She was completely calm as she explained her decision. By contrast I sat on the floor of my flat, shaking. Ignoring my distress, my mother continued to discuss her plan to commit [...]

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Posing for the camera with bright eyes and wide smiles, these are the three children who died in a fire as their older teenage brother tried desperately to save them. Despite his brave efforts, he too perished in the tragedy. The horror unfolded in an attic room at the family home as their mother celebrated [...]

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Celebrity friends have taken to Twitter to congratulate Beyonce Knowles and Jay-Z on the birth of their daughter. Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband Coldplay frontman Chris Martin are close friends with the new parents and Paltrow tweeted to say the baby would be called Blue Ivy Carter. The subject was a trending topic [...]

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A 25-year-old woman is trapped in the body of a 12-year-old and is appealing to medics to help cure her rare condition. Kate Quinn is believed to be the only woman in Ireland to have Caudal Regression Syndrome (CRS). The rare disorder, which she discovered she had two years ago, means she has never been [...]

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Groom-to-be Christopher Dixon went on the mother of all benders just days before his wedding – taking his baby daughter along to the celebration. But the party went sour when he LOST her on the way home and was so hungover he didn’t realise his mistake for nine hours. And when the 17-month-old was found [...]

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Superstar couple Beyoncé Knowles and Jay-Z have welcomed their first child – a baby girl named Blue Ivy Carter. The 30-year-old singer’s daughter arrived via scheduled caesarean section at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City last night. The couple’s close friend Gwyneth Paltrow confirmed the baby’s name on Twitter, writing: ‘Welcome to the world [...]

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People value their holidays, but one woman resorted to extreme measures to ensure that hers would last a bit longer. Joan Barnett, who works at the Manhattan High School of Hospitality Management, weaved an elaborate lie that her daughter died of a heart attack in Costa Rica so she could get an additional week off [...]

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Scores of workless families with ten or more children are living on state benefits worth more than £60,000 a year. Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that there are 190 families with at least ten under-18s where one or both of the parents gets an out-of-work benefit. These families are eligible for [...]

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A young ‘miracle’ mother claims a two-month NHS delay in approving specialist cancer treatment has left her facing death and unable to beat the disease. Kerry Dunn, 46, asked her local Primary Care Trust to fund £18,000 Cyberknife radiotherapy treatment in October to help battle cancer in her mesentery tissue. But the mother-of-one, who gave [...]

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