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A 13-year-old schoolboy at the time, the young William watched the programme in the study of Andrew Gailey, his house master at Eton, says the book by Penny Junor. Mr Gailey was said to have insisted that Diana explain face-to-face what she was about to do after learning about the BBC interview, and she eventually [...]

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At the age of 13, Prince William faced the daunting prospect of becoming a new boy in a school that was almost ten times the size of his old one. That was hard enough. What made his transition to Eton far more of an ordeal was that no one — from masters to pupils — [...]

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Graduates battling to find jobs and pay off debts are fuelling a boom in ‘bankruptcy light’ orders. The number of debt relief orders has soared by 40 per cent in two years and one in four are granted to those aged between 16 and 24, figures revealed. The orders – dubbed ‘bankruptcy light’ because they [...]

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A primary school head has threatened to shop parents to social services if they allow his pupils to use Facebook and other networking sites. Paul Woodward is concerned that youngsters who use the sites risk being exposed to porn and online grooming. He has warned parents that persistently letting children flout Facebook’s 13-plus age rule [...]

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Poor parenting and weak teaching are driving a rise in the number of children labelled as having special needs, it was claimed yesterday. Many diagnosed as having behavioural problems have simply been brought up with ‘very few books, very poor diet and very late bedtimes’, experts said. It was also claimed that schools were labelling [...]

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The Bin Laden letters released on Thursday provide an insight into the workings of the mind of the slain al-Qaeda chief, but they reveal precious little about his family life during the years in hiding in Pakistan. We know from other sources though, that during their 10-year stay he and his family travelled all across [...]

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A gang of teenagers cleared of starting a blaze that shut the M1 for almost a week were today spared jail for a separate arson campaign that caused £30,000 worth of damage. Luke Matthews, 18, Jake Johnson, 17, and Craig Headech, 16, were found not guilty of involvement in the £4.5million motorway inferno last month. [...]

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Children as young as four are acting out scenes from violent computer games in school playgrounds, headteachers have warned. John Killeen, head of South Cave Church of England school in Brough, North Yorkshire, and an executive member of the National Association of Head Teachers, said he had become “aware of children playing inappropriate games they [...]

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An estimated 90,000 people will receive letters from today warning them that they are likely to have their benefits cut under Government plans to overhaul welfare. From next year, couples or single parents in England who receive more than £500 a week in total from the state through different benefit will have their payments cut. [...]

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If you’ve ever felt embarrassed by your parents, then spare a thought for this lot. The tragic youngsters are seen with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, guzzling bottles of beer, taped to furniture and left dangling from coat hooks, proving that sometimes mum and dad really don’t know best. In another shot a young boy [...]

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Two enterprising mothers have been busy celebrating their first invention – a light up potty. Kerry Marriott, 35, and Rachael Forder, 40, from Southsea, Hampshire, came up with the idea when they realised their own youngsters were finding it difficult to locate the toilet in the dark. The pair hope their LumiPotti, which illuminates when [...]

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A seven-month-old baby died after being forgotten inside a pickup truck all day as temperatures soared to 90 degrees. Police in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land are investigating the death of the baby, whose name and gender has not been identified. The baby’s father allegedly dropped off two older children to elementary school and [...]

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A grandmother faces eviction from her home after waging a 12-year campaign of harassment against her neighbours during which she made their lives a ‘living hell’. Joan Nisbet, 71, sprayed weedkiller in a woman’s face, blared gangster rap music, took part in naked sex acts and drove one neighbour to the brink of suicide. In [...]

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Pupils as young as four are regularly being labelled with behavioural problems and learning difficulties as an excuse for a bad upbringing, it was claimed. Almost 1.7m schoolchildren in England – more than one-in-five – currently have some form of special educational needs requiring particular attention from teachers. In some schools, more than half of [...]

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Raheela Ahmed, who speaks English and Punjabi, claims she was sent the letter from the Archibald First School in Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, because of her Asian surname. Mrs Ahmed, from Seaton Burn, North Tyneside, claimed she was a victim of racism.   The letter, sent last week, outlined the times their daughter Ayshe, eight, could [...]

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Schools are being required to return around £117,000 each – 10 per cent of many schools’ budgets – after the accountancy blunder, it was revealed. Head teachers’ leaders claim that the move will force some schools to make staff redundant and cut building projects to make up for the shortfall.   It will be seen as [...]

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A Muslim woman who repeatedly beat a 10-year-old girl with a steel ladle for not reading enough verses of the Koran is facing jail today. Asia Parveen, 31 brandished a knife at the child after accusing her of lying about her prayers. Parveen, who was five months pregnant at the time, also forced the girl [...]

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It has been the world’s fashion bible for decades, its pages adorned with beautiful clothes – all too often modelled by painfully thin women. But in a groundbreaking move, Vogue has pledged it will no longer use photographs of dangerously underweight models. In a statement published across all of its 19 international editions yesterday, the [...]

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A policeman has been caught on camera branding a group of school children the ‘scum of the estate’. Harry Weaver, 14, and his two friends were approached in Medway, Kent, by two officers on Sunday and questioned about what they were up to. When the boys asked the policemen why they were being targeted the [...]

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Gypsy communities across America who appear on TLC’s show My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding continue to shock the ‘gorgas’ – that is, anyone who is an outsider. So news of 14-year-old Priscilla’s imminent arranged marriage will be sure to raise a few eyebrows among fans of the TV show, especially considering that in her [...]

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After a decade in exile, I find myself making an unexpected visit to your house, returning my son to his mother after a weekend with me. I don’t make it past your hallway, where we stage a civilised conversation, that even in its awkwardness reminds me how wonderfully well we used to get on. Perhaps [...]

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I think I can say that I’m finally really getting the whole “conflicted working parent” thing. And, while most parents don’t have their work and home life separated by a couple of hundred miles, I suspect that many of you will be able to relate to the way I’m feeling. Work on Coronation Street is [...]

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I have nothing but happy memories of my parents. From the moment I was born, I was made to feel special. I grew up in a village near Heathrow airport. I didn’t see much of Dad until I was about five because he was always working, trying to improve our lot. But though money was [...]

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Hearing that I was going to be a father was not a shock. My wife and I had been married for three years and we were “trying” – the worst euphemism in the English language. “I’m pregnant,” Jessica declared, out of the blue, in a Paris cafe. I whooped, I think, and ordered champagne. I [...]

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Parents must take responsibility for what their children watch online, amid concerns that youngsters are accessing inappropriate material such as pornography, headteachers warned today. They said misuse of technology is a “growing problem”, with schools forced to deal with the fall-out. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) also raised concerns that children as young [...]

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School leaders said that pupils are increasingly being given smartphones on which they can view pornography, violent games and 18-rated films. The National Association of Head Teachers conference also heard that misuse of technology is also leading to bullying in the playground and even fighting as young people try to recreate what they see on screen. [...]

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I don’t have any paternal instinct; zilch. Perhaps this is selfishness. But there’s more than enough love and companionship in my existence. The universe is indifferent to “Graeme Archer”; that I will at some point be swept away, like a sandcastle by the waves, leaves me oddly content. Wash me, thoroughly, of my iniquity, says [...]

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To the outside world, they may look different from everyone else. But for the Johnston family, the only difference between them and everyone else is that they are a little smaller. Amber and Trent Johnson, from Barnesville, Georgia, and their five children are the largest family of achondroplasia dwarfs, with a type of dwarfism that [...]

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Faced with the news that his oesophageal cancer had returned and that he had only three months left to live, the brilliant Labour Party strategist Philip Gould decided not only to face up to his impending death, but to write about it. He died, aged 61, in November last year, with his wife Gail and [...]

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Celebrities are turning into mummy moguls, using their pregnancies as a way to substantially increase their income. In an attempt to extend their shelf life, a growing number of underemployed, or under-the-radar celebrities are using parenthood as their career Plan B. For celebrities like Jessica Simpson, Kendra Wilkinson and Tori Spelling, their baby bumps have [...]

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A teenage boy has admitted religiously harassing a McDonald’s worker – by persistently mocking her because she is a Pagan. The 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, visited the fast food restaurant frequently over a period of more than six weeks to taunt the woman over her beliefs. The case is understood to [...]

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A teenage gang member who raped a girl of 11 in a McDonald’s toilet will serve only six months behind bars after an astonishing ruling by a judge yesterday. The 16-year-old was one of several thugs who preyed on the ‘vulnerable and lonely’ victim over a number of months. They subjected the girl to a [...]

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A council is having to re-house six families after after a blunder meant their personal details were passed on to a gang about which they had complained. The families were left fearing for their lives after the embarrassing administrative error led to all data on them being sent to each of the gang members. Staff [...]

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A teenager who organised the gang rape of  a vulnerable 11-year-old girl was unmasked by a judge today and sentenced to  five years’ detention. Ibraheem Giwa, 15, was 13 when he and fellow gang members took turns to sexually assault the child on three occasions including once in a McDonald’s lavatory. He was convicted of [...]

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As love triangles go it could not have a more A-list cast — the supermodel, the Oscar-nominated actress and the billionaire who owns Gucci. Today in a Manhattan courtroom Linda Evangelista will give evidence in what could be one of the most expensive childcare cases in US history. The model claims that French fashion tycoon [...]

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My parent is an idiot: the world’s worst parents, in pictures via My parent is an idiot: the world’s worst parents, in pictures – Telegraph. » Inline Ad Purchase:  Intext Link

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The billionaire father of Linda Evangelista’s baby wanted her to abort their son, her lawyer has claimed as the supermodel meets her former boyfriend in court over childcare support. And taking the stand, François-Henri Pinault admitted he had broken up with the supermodel after discovering she was pregnant four months into their relationship. ‘I didn’t [...]

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A play centre which counts David Cameron, Liz Hurley and Elton John among its patrons has been targeted by burglars eight times in a year. Kids Adventure Playground in Hackney, where most of the children are disabled or have learning difficulties, has been repeatedly ransacked by intruders. Parents of the nearly 200 children who use [...]

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A child has been caught on camera at a zoo, seemingly oblivious to the desperate efforts of one of its residents to make a meal out of him. Jack was on a trip in Portland, Oregon, when he attracted the attention of Kya. But the toddler showed little sign of fear. via BBC News – [...]

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People who borrowed too much during the economic boom must ‘accept responsibility’ for their part in the financial crisis as banks are not solely to blame, a senior cabinet minister has said. Defence Secretary Philip Hammond added that those who ran up credit card debts and took out loans and large mortgages were ‘consenting adults’. [...]

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The editors of 19 editions of Vogue are banning underage and ill models from their publications – should all fashion magazines be following their lead? via Should models who are under 16 be banned from magazines? | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk. » Inline Ad Purchase:  Intext Link

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The Prime Minister is to discuss plans under which consumers signing up for home broadband services must decide whether they want, or do not want, access to adult content sites. One option being explored is that the “default” option will mean adult sites are automatically blocked unless people choose to switch off the censoring filter. The [...]

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Perched on a special red chair in her hospital bed, this was tragic Hayley Fullerton just a few days before she died. Bright-eyed and munching on a piece of toast, she was recovering well from heart surgery. And although the blonde-haired one-year-old was still underweight for her age, her parents and doctors had every hope [...]

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The stepmother of the boy whose body was found in a shallow grave after he had been beaten and trapped in a dog cage for nearly a year before his death has plead guilty to neglect. Kimberly Kubina 46, agreed to testify against the boy’s father and she is due to spend between 25 and [...]

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In an age where sex has been stripped of its mystique and pornography is ubiquitous, porn star Alana Evans could argue that her career is just like any regular job. But Ms Evans is not just an adult film star, she’s also a mother and though she insists she is an ‘outstanding citizen’ who puts [...]

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Teenagers gathered outside Seventeen magazine’s New York office to protest the magazine’s fervent use of airbrushing yesterday. 14-year-old Julia Bluhm then hand delivered 25,000 signatures to the magazine’s editor-in-chief, protesting its use of Photoshop. During the demonstration, the eighth-grade student and her peers demanded that editors of the Hearst title ‘commit to printing one unaltered [...]

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A billionaire philosopher has endorsed a parenting technique that allows generous time for smoking, drinking wine and having sex. Elisabeth Badinter, a 68-year-old mother of three who is the 13th richest French citizen according to Forbes, has published a book about parenting the French way. Now, her controversial methods have sparked anger from U.S. mothers. [...]

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The nudist lifestyle is an alternative and somewhat bewildering choice to most people but few consider how living sans-clothing affects children. For nine-year-old Alex Reamer of Loxahatchee, Florida, the liberating fashion choice is one that he values highly. Aside from the small issue of pesky mosquitoes. Residing in a nudist community just outside Palm Beach [...]

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The £2million police review of the Madeleine McCann case will examine calls from psychics which were previously ignored. Detectives are studying around 100 logs of calls that were discounted because the callers said they were psychics or had dreamt about the high-profile investigation. Critics said the decision to include information from ‘supernatural’ sources was a [...]

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In 2008, my husband and I moved from Vancouver to France. Our younger daughter, Claire, was a toddler and my elder daughter, Sophie, was four, just about to turn five. Before we moved to France, they were what I thought of as typical North American children; they had a beige food diet, largely consisting of [...]

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