Parent Pages new website

Carla Bruni keeps publicly asserting how discreet she wants to be about her baby, due any day now. But will she and her husband really be able to resist using their child in what is already an incredible political soap opera?

Carla Bruni, French first lady, multimillionaire supermodel-turned-folk- singer, has found her pregnancy at 43 pretty boring. “Quite frankly, I can’t stand it any more. I spend most of my time either sitting down or lying down. I can’t drink or smoke any more. I’m in a hurry to get it over with.” She thinks the public is pretty bored of it too. “It doesn’t interest the French,” she said somewhat paradoxically in one of her countless interviews about her bump shortly before she was expected to go into labour.

France is indeed already weary of the baby story and the numerous false alerts of the birth that circulate daily on the internet. The Belgian media wrongly announced the birth last week after misinterpreting a joke in a comedy sketch on French radio. Bruni also told a journalist friend she was sorry for the disruption caused to staff by the waiting media circus near the private clinic where she is due to give birth any day now.

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Moves to curb child access face new year review

Children in Britain are ‘growing up too early’, David Cameron warned last night as he hailed moves to make it easier for parents to shield them from internet sleaze.

The Prime Minister said that a raft of measures to block access to pornography unveiled yesterday was just a first step – and that if significant progress is not made by the new year he will consider further action.

As the Daily Mail revealed yesterday, four of Britain’s biggest internet providers – BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media – have agreed that new customers will have to make an ‘active choice’ over whether they want access to explicit websites – a safeguard that experts say will protect a far higher proportion of children than existing systems for blocking unsuitable material.

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Four leading web providers are to offer customers the option to block adult content at the point of subscription.

BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin will offer the protection for smartphones, laptops and PCs.

It comes as David Cameron is set to meet industry representatives amid concern over sexualisation of children.

The prime minister will also launch Parentport – a website to help parents complain about inappropriate content.

And he will back a ban on billboards displaying risque images near schools.

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A couple said to have swapped the identity of their dead baby daughter to her twin sister in a bid to cover injuries they inflicted have been jailed for five years.

The seven-month-old was rushed to hospital in Blackburn, Lancashire, after her parents reported she had breathing difficulties, and was pronounced dead shortly after.

Preston Crown Court heard Mohammed Karolia, 29, and wife Nafisa, 22, made a deliberate attempt to hide the ailing twin from the outside world in the weeks leading up to her death in June 2009.

It was alleged the defendants told medics at Royal Blackburn Hospital the girl was the healthier and smaller of their identical twins before they allegedly later switched to naming her sibling on the death certificate.

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Help for parents to protect children from unsuitable content

Customers will have to choose whether they want to view porn
Providers BT, Sky, Talk Talk and Virgin will lead crackdown
Billboards and aggressive advertising campaigns also targeted
Website launched where parents can report anything inappropriate. A tough new crackdown to help parents protect their children from internet porn will be unveiled today by David Cameron.

Four of Britain’s biggest internet service providers will force customers to specify if they want to view explicit sites.

Subscribers to BT, Sky, Talk Talk and Virgin who do not opt in will have no access to internet porn.

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Children are to be banned from taking part in traditional Christmas games, from blowing up balloons to blowing on party whistles, because of new EU safety rules that have just entered into force.

The EU toy safety directive, agreed and implemented by Government, states that balloons must not be blown up by unsupervised children under the age of eight, in case they accidentally swallow them and choke.
Despite having been popular favourites for generations of children, party games including whistles and magnetic fishing games are to be banned because their small parts or chemicals used in making them are decreed to be too risky.
Apparently harmless toys that children have enjoyed for decades are now regarded by EU regulators as posing an unacceptable safety risk.
Whistle blowers, that scroll out into a a long coloured paper tongue when sounded – a party favourite at family Christmas meals – are now classed as unsafe for all children under 14.

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Most children his age spend their time drawing pictures and playing with their toys.

So police approaching a stolen car were astonished to encounter a three year old passenger- brandishing a gun.

As an officer approached the stolen red Montero sport car, the child grabbed what turned out to be a BB gun, police said. He then safely handed it to the police officer saying ‘Gun, gun.’ The child was found in a car with a Utah license plate in Charleston. Police say the child’s father, 23-year-old Terrence Myers, was driving the car.

An officer who had been informed of a stolen car in the area spotted the sports car, the police report states. When he turned around to verify the license plate number, the suspect, Myers, pulled into a side road, parking in a driveway leapt an 8-foot fence into a garden.

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A readers asks if televisions emit gamma rays and how harmful this could be in a child’s bedroom.

Am I am correct in thinking that TVs emit Gamma rays even while on standby? My question is just how harmful could this be in a child’s bedroom?
Sheena Macmillan, by email
Older CRT type televisions and monitors used to emit very low energy X-Rays, which are distantly related to Gamma radiation, but it only happened when they were switched on. Since the 1960s emissions of this type have been very strictly regulated but as far as I am aware it was never shown to be harmful. There are no measurable X-Ray emissions from plasma, LCD or OLED flat screen TVs, though like most electronic devices they do produce a wide spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. There’s an on-going debate over the health consequences of this type of non-ionising radiation, particularly with regards to mobile phones, but the general consensus is that TVs, at least as far as electromagnetic radiation is concerned, are harmless.

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It’s no longer as rare as it looks… and could spell the end of many debilitating hereditary diseases

Kaydon and Layton Wood are just five yet already they are local celebrities.

Dressed in identical outfits (their parents have always taken great pride in doing so), the boys are often stopped in the street by passers-by who can’t believe it when they are told the pair are not only brothers, but twins.

In fact, the twins have been making headlines in regional newspapers since they were born – because one is white and the other black.

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The Colombian army says it has killed five suspected ELN rebels during a search for a kidnapped girl near the Venezuelan border.

Troops also clashed with guerrillas from the Farc – Colombia’s main left-wing rebel group.

The fighting happened outside the town of Fortul, where 10-year-old Nohora Munoz was abducted last week.

A huge operation is underway to try to find the girl, whose kidnapping has caused a national outcry.

Another suspected ELN guerrilla was wounded in the fighting, and weapons and explosives were captured, local army commander Gen Jaime Reyes said.

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The outfits on the X Factor live shows are often as talked about as some of the performances.

But this year’s teenage contestants have said no to any x-rated ensembles.

Young hopeful Amelia Lily, 16, admitted her outfit for the first live show this Saturday was changed as she felt it was inappropriate and too sexy for her young age. She told the Daily Mail this week: ‘There have been a few things going on with me, they have been dressing me in outfits and they have had to take me out of some of them because they were too revealing because of my age. That is just them experimenting, little things. It’s better to be careful.’

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Other schoolchildren ‘don’t know difference between Paris and France’

‘Facts and figures’ knowledge disappearing from classrooms, claims former deputy headteacher. Some schoolchildren believe Winston Churchill is an animated dog from a TV ad rather than one of Britain’s greatest wartime leaders.

Other pupils even struggle to differentiate between France and Paris thanks to falling classroom standards and a shift towards creative learning, according to outspoken former deputy headteacher Katherine Birbalsingh.

She says teaching basic knowledge, facts and figures is disappearing from classrooms as it is considered ‘old fashioned’.

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An additional 80,000 low income families are to be eligible for help with meeting the costs of childcare under plans announced today by the Government.

Rules limiting childcare support to parents working a minimum of 16 hours a week are to be scrapped from 2013 when the new universal credit is introduced.

Ministers said the payments – costing £300 million-a-year – should make it easier for parents from an estimated 80,000 households find work.

However Labour warned the move would do nothing to help thousands of families struggling to make ends meet as a result of the cuts to childcare support in last year’s comprehensive spending review.

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As support from working women falls, the coalition acts by giving 80,000 extra families childcare help for the first time

The coalition has responded to growing poll pressure to improve its standing among women by announcing an extra £300m to help with childcare costs when the universal credit starts in 2013.

Writing in the Guardian, Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, claims the reforms “will mean more women will be able to take steps towards employment, more parents can work part-time, or full-time, and their children will grow up in a family where their parents are positively contributing to society and growth in the economy”.

The extra £300m funding will cover the cost of making childcare available for the first time to the 80,000 women who currently do not receive help because they work 16 hours a week or less.

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A millionaire’s daughter has denied stealing £5,000-worth of electrical goods during the London riots and is expected to say she was acting as get-away driver ‘under duress’.

Student Laura Johnson, 19, from Orpington, Kent, pleaded not guilty to five charges of burglary and three of handling stolen goods after the haul was found in a car that she was allegedly driving.

Miss Johnson was a high-flying student at Newstead Wood School in Bromley, south-east London, before going to the University of Exeter. She attended Inner London Crown Court with both her parents and appeared in the dock alongside two other defendants, 18-year-old Alexander Elliott-Joahill, and a 17-year-old boy.

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Parenting experts claim reality feuds send poor message to young girls

Parenting experts have criticised the high volume of feuds among women on television because they set a poor example of female relationships to young girls.

Caroline Knorr, parenting editor for Common Sense Media, and psychotherapist Robi Ludwig believe that the behaviour teenage and tween girls see on screen has an influence on their real-life attitudes.

They say reality shows and dramas that portray female characters fighting with one another send the message that ‘you’re popular if you’re nasty and mean.

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The Chancellor is said to be considering plans to offer families tax breaks on childcare in an attempt to win back female voters.

George Osborne is even reported to be looking at one radical option of allowing families to make childcare fully tax-deductible by the next general election – a move which would save parents thousands of pounds a year.

The Spectator magazine says the Coalition will make an announcement in the next few weeks which would allow parents to write off some of their childcare costs against tax. However, it adds that Mr Osborne’s ‘ambition’ is to go further by making the entire amount tax-deductible. This would allow a family who spend £20,000 a year on a nanny or nursery care to reduce the proportion of their income subject to tax by the same amount.

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The Work and Pensions Secretary could not have known quite how accurate his words were when he compared Britain’s young gang members to the “child soldiers of the Third World”.

In a speech at the Conservative conference, Iain Duncan Smith said that this summer’s riots were a “moment of clarity” which demanded action to end gang culture.

“With no role models except the violent and the criminal, like child soldiers of the Third World, these young minds bear the deep scars of a life filled with anger and violence,” he said.

There is a growing trend for ever younger children to carry out deadly crimes in London, under pressure from older gang members – but there are also victims of civil war in countries such as Somalia who are bringing the violence of their childhoods to the streets of London

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Boy thwarts armed robber in his father’s jewellery shop

Robbing a shop at gunpoint is always going to be a risky business.

But this armed thief was so focused on the task at hand that he failed to give adequate consideration to a boy standing behind him.

Within seconds of bursting into a jewellery store in Istanbul, Turkey, the bungling gunman was sent packing – thanks to the 12-year-old’s brave actions.

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Education Secretary Michael Gove has led applause for a boy of 17 from an inner city estate who told delegates how a better education had transformed his life.

Quddus Akinwale won a standing ovation from delegates at the Tory Party Conference after he passionately spoke about his pride in the way his school Burlington Danes had been transformed into a flagship academy.

He told the conference that his schooling had been ‘chaotic’ and he had ‘little hope for the future’. But he now dreams of attending a top university and wants to pursue a career as an engineer.

The schoolboy described how Burlington Danes in West London was a failing school where even the teachers couldn’t be bothered showing up and classes were a ‘riot’.

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A 14-year-old boy is in a critical condition after being stabbed in the neck in Coventry.

Police said the attack happened at about 17:40 BST on Monday after the boy left the Lifestyle Express Store in Upper Spon Street, Spon End.

A West Midlands Police spokesman said it was thought the boy was attacked by a man with a large carving knife.

A 32-year-old Coventry man has been arrested on suspicion of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

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A teenage mother has been told she is allowed to keep her baby despite leaving the 12-month-old home alone in an unlocked house while she went to the pub.

The woman, 19, left her child to go for a night out with friends and told a group of young men to head back to her house for a house party in Bridgend, Wales, which is when they discovered the baby.

The single mother, who cannot be named, was pictured on CCTV kissing two different men on the same night. She went out with friends at 11.40pm on July 2, leaving the baby alone until 2.15am when she invited a group of men back to her house saying it was unlocked and she would go along later.

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It’s grown-ups’ responsibility to shield the young from on-screen soft porn and simulated sex

Children seem to be disappearing. They are physically present, but infant clothes, toys and street games seem to have been subsumed by a rush to adulthood: mini grown-ups rule. The duty of parents and carers to build a metaphorical wall between their offspring and the nastier habits and practices of adult life is proving increasingly difficult, even for the very well-intentioned.

It is not just that some parents can’t say no or lack the inclination to impose boundaries. It is partly that the world of global internet entertainment appears all-powerful, constantly reinventing itself to outwit the latest parental imposition.

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Fears were growing this morning over a missing 12-year-old schoolgirl who vanished after telling her parents she was going to meet a friend.

Charlotte Woonton’s mother and father last saw their daughter when they dropped the youngster off at a train station yesterday morning.

Her worried parents called police after Charlotte, who has distinctive purple hair, had failed to return home by 11pm.

Police said they were growing increasingly worried about the youngster because her family only moved to their new home in Hazelmere, High Wycombe, 10 days ago and she does not know the area well.

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Coronation Street star Charlie Condou has become known as a gay celebrity dad. But, he says, what’s important is the parenting, not the fact that his daughter has three parents

I left the Granada studios in Manchester after work one day and jumped into a cab, heading for the station and then a London train and home. The cab driver looked at me in the mirror, gave a little smile and said: “So, when’s the baby due?” Not “Hello” or “I know you”, or even “I read in the Sun today …” but I’m getting used to the surrealness that sometimes accompanies being part of Coronation Street. It is, after all, the world’s longest-running soap opera. And I’m a friendly, polite sort of bloke.

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‘I always act pleasantly, to avoid the parents screeching at me in front of the already emotionally abused children’

First, there’s a flurry of panic in the social work office, then I’m off to press another bell to open another unknown can of worms on another estate. Although during my training I was told that not only those living in poverty abuse their children, certainly the people living in stacked housing blocks are assessed more.

Hooray, I think, when the parents will admit me – one of “you lot from social services” – through the door. I always act pleasantly, to avoid them screeching at me in front of the already emotionally abused children. If the children see a potential rescuer cowering in front of their parents, how will they believe anything will work?

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Girl, with her sister and mother, scoured internet for ways to kill grandfather

Attacked 89-year-old with bricks in bin bags after attempts to frighten him to death failed. A schoolgirl was locked up yesterday for her part in a family plot to kill her grandfather and steal her inheritance early.

The 16-year-old had scoured the internet with her 49-year old mother, 19-year-old brother and his 17-year-old girlfriend using Google search phrases such as ‘the easiest way to kill an old person’.

They hatched plans and carried out a savage attack on the 89-year-old dementia sufferer using bricks in plastic bags. The girl’s 14-year-old sister also helped attack the man.

The girl’s mother, who was privately educated, was jailed last month for 17 years for conspiracy to murder. The victim had given his daughter – who is adopted – lavish gifts including a car in the months leading up to the attack, but she was not prepared to wait for her inheritance.

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Grace Ford, from Lancashire, fell through air shaft in hotel reception

A private schoolgirl died after falling 90ft down an air shaft while trying to visit a fellow holidaymaker’s apartment on a trip to Majorca.

Grace Ford, 17, was celebrating finishing her A-levels when she met 18-year-old Edward Soppet during a night out in Magaluf.

They planned to return to his room, but the building’s porter said no visitors were allowed. Instead, Mr Soppet apparently helped Grace climb through a window which they thought led to reception – but it opened into an air shaft.

She fell 90ft to an internal patio at a lower level of the hotel, breaking both legs and her pelvis, while her friend – not realising why she had vanished – went to his room alone and fell asleep.

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Judging by the look on his wife’s face, this is one baseball fan who could be sleeping on the sofa for the next few days.

During a baseball game in Taiwan, the man was caught on camera dropping his daughter on to the seats in front of him as he attempted to catch a foul ball. But not only did he get nowhere near the ball, his lack of attention could have resulted in serious injury for the child, not to mention an earful from his irate spouse.

The child appears to have been unhurt in the incident, but his wife is less than amused and fixes a withering glare on her hapless husband.

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Teen daughters try to impress beau’s mates

If you are worried about your teenage daughter binge drinking, don’t blame her new boyfriend.

It is his friends she is trying to impress, according to new research.

U.S. academics found adolescents are far more swayed by the drinking habits of their partner’s friends than their partner or even their own friends.

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A seven-year-old girl who was abducted by her mother three years ago has been reunited with her father after an international search traced them to Canada.

Pearl Gavaghan Da Massa disappeared after her father, Henry Da Massa, dropped her at her nursery in Manchester in December 2008. Police believe that Pearl, who was four at the time, was taken by her mother first to Mexico, and then the United States, before she was found in Montreal, eastern Canada, on 16 September.
After spending the last three years without attending school or seeing a doctor, Pearl was reunited with her father last week, before the pair flew home to Manchester.

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A 16-year-old girl left in a coma after an attack more than four months ago has died.

Julie Sheriff had been fighting for life since May after being hit in the head during an attack in Battersea, south-west London.

A 15-year-old girl appeared at Balham Youth Court in May accused of assault in relation to the attack.

Detective Chief Inspector Nick Scola, of the Metropolitan Police, said: “Our thoughts are with Julie’s family at this difficult time.”

The girl, from Hackney, east London, had been visiting friends when she was attacked in the street.

After her death on Wednesday last week, a post-mortem examination on Friday gave cause of death as head injuries with associated complications.

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Bailey Beeson cannot wait for winter to come – because hot days could kill him.

The four-year-old has ectodermal dysplasia, causing him to be born without sweat glands which would control his body temperature. He will also need dentures until he is old enough for tooth implants at 17.

The rare genetic condition affects boys more seriously than girls – Bailey’s twin sister Tayla has a milder form and is missing some teeth.

Bailey’s condition was identified when he failed to develop baby teeth by the age of two. The twins’ mother Tracy wants to raise awareness about the condition for the Jeans For Genes charity.

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His was the baby face that adorned one of the most iconic music albums of all time.

The unwitting star of Nirvana’s breakthrough Nevermind album – one that would catapult them to super-stardom – wasn’t old enough to be aware of his role in the birth of grunge music.

Spencer Elden, now 20, is still introduced as the ‘Nirvana baby’ two decades after the release of the album and has learned to cope with the extra attention his brush with fame generates.

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Brad Pitt has explained why he and partner Angelina Jolie sold pictures of their newborn twins to the press.

The couple welcomed Vivienne and Knox into their family in 2008.

The 48-year-old said it felt “strange” to be “selling photos of something that’s very intimate and personal”, but wanted to maintain control of their first public introduction.

The pictures were sold to Hello! and People for a reported £8.75m ($14m).

Jolie and Pitt – whose latest movie Moneyball finished second at the US box office this weekend – reportedly donated the money to their charity organisation the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.

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Babies are being turned into ‘mini adults’ with busy schedules of singing, yoga, gym, swimming and salsa classes, childcare experts claim.

They say children are forced to grow up too soon due to the commercialisation of childhood and targets set by the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) – or ‘nappy curriculum’ – in schools.

Their concerns are raised in a new book, Too Much, Too Soon?, due to be submitted to the Department for Education’s consultation on the EYFS, which ends on Friday. The consultation follows a pledge by the Coalition to scale back the compulsory EYFS, which requires youngsters to hit 117 targets.

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Police, teachers and councils are failing to protect tens of thousands of children who run away from home every year and face drug abuse or sexual exploitation on the streets, Church of England bishops have warned.

In a letter published in The Daily Telegraph today, 33 bishops are backing a campaign calling on ministers to introduce a national “safety net” to protect runaways from harm.

More than one in 10 children in the UK runs away before they reach the age of 16, with 100,000 fleeing their homes every year, but most are never reported missing. Many runaways are forced to leave by their parents or are attempting to escape abusive homes.

The campaign, organised by The Children’s Society, a leading charity, calls for a national action plan to ensure that schools, police, councils and health services prioritise the safety of child runaways.

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What a way to say hello after five years apart.

Willow, the cat who was found 16,000 miles from home after going missing in 2006, was being welcomed by her family at a reunion in front of the media when she bit their three-year-old daughter, Lauren Squires.

The girl, known as Lola, was reaching out to stroke Willow, when the cat nipped at her hand.

‘She bite me!’ screamed Lola, who gasped in pain then burst into tears.

‘She’s nervous,’ replied her mother Jamie, who turned her daughter away from Willow to comfort her.

Lola had barely finished cooing about how she couldn’t wait to get long-lost Willow home from New York to Colorado – saying: ‘I’ll feed her, play with her, take good care of her’ – when the cat snapped.

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James and Daniel are twins. What sets them apart is that one is white and one is black – and the differences don’t end there, as Joanna Moorhead discovers

The two teenage boys sitting on the sofa opposite are different in almost every way. On the left is James: he’s black, he’s gay, he’s gregarious, and he’s academic. He’s taking three A-levels next summer, and wants to go to university. Daniel, sitting beside him, is white. He’s straight, he’s shy, and he didn’t enjoy school at all. He left after taking GCSEs, and hopes that his next move will be an apprenticeship in engineering.

So, given that they are diametrically opposed, there is one truly surprising thing about James and Daniel. They are twins. They were born on 27 March 1993, the sons of Alyson and Errol Kelly, who live in south-east London. And from the start, it was obvious to everyone that they were the complete flipside of identical. “They were chalk and cheese, right from the word go,” says Alyson. “It was hard to believe they were even brothers, let alone twins.”

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Youth caused £15,000 worth of damage to the cars

When asked if he would do it again he said: ‘Not in a car park, you can’t go fast enough’.

A teenage joyrider stole a taxi and crashed it into 12 cars in a supermarket car park while a terrified 77-year-old passenger sat in the back.

The 14-year-old seized an opportunity to jump into the running Ford Mondeo taxi as the driver Trudy Linsley helped pensioner Una Paylor unload her shopping into the boot, a youth court heard.

Miss Paylor’s husband was taking the shopping trolley back to the Tesco store in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, as his wife sat in the back seat, on August 24.

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As an Italian couple resort to legal action to evict their son, 41, why are more and more ‘kidults’ refusing to leave home?

Question: what job requires all the resources you can possibly muster, and yet ultimately requires you to render yourself entirely redundant?

The answer, of course, is parenting. It’s endlessly demanding; it takes up energy you didn’t even realise you possessed; it will give you a level of job satisfaction you’re unlikely to experience in anything else you do in your life. But, at the end of the day, the entire point of it is to ensure that you’re dispensable in your child’s life.

Which is why the plight of the Italian couple who have resorted to legal action in a bid to get their 41-year-old son out of their home is both tragic and an indictment of a society that has got its wires twisted over what parents should, and shouldn’t, do for their offspring as they get older.

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Britain’s biggest drinks company has been accused of ‘targeting children’ through a multi-million-pound deal that will see vodka advertisements appear on Facebook.

Diageo will use the website –which is used by tens of thousands of youngsters every day –to promote its most popular brands, including Smirnoff Ice, Baileys and Guinness.

The firm insists the advertisements will be displayed only on areas of the site that cannot be seen by anyone under 18. But the British Medical Association, as well as leading academics, say they have ‘serious concerns’ about the deal.

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A 14-year-old boy from New York, who warned in internet postings that he felt suicidal because of homophobic bullying, has been found dead outside his home.

Jamey Rodemeyer became the latest in a string of suicides by young Americans who had been abused or ridiculed because of their sexuality, in several cases over the internet.
Jamey, from Williamsville, complained that he was being viciously abused after talking online about his confusion over whether he was gay.
In May, he recorded a video message for the “It Gets Better” campaign, through which young gay people, along with celebrities and national figures such as Barack Obama, try to encourage each other to remain hopeful through difficult experiences.

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Woman arrested as she tried to sell pharmaceuticals to dealer

Miraculously no one hurt in incident. A mother who took her three-year-old child along on a drug deal was busted by the police after the youngster got hold of her shotgun and blasted a hole through the car roof.

Shanla Sutherland, 28, had taken her two children aged three and five to a car park in Cobb County, Georgia where she and accomplice Leah Porter were selling prescription drugs.

According to Cobb County police just as they were negotiating a deal with 30-year-old Brandon Donahue, the three-year-old, who was sitting in the back seat, picked up her 12-gauge Mossberg pump-action shotgun and pulled the trigger.

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It was the year King George V was on the throne, the Morris Oxford two-seater car went on sale and frustrated suffragettes set fire to public property.

Against this backdrop, a 12-year-old schoolboy turned his thoughts to the future – and wrote down a list of predictions about life in the year 2000.

Edgar Codling, of Hillington, Norfolk, believed that by the turn of the century, aeroplanes would be as common as cars and bicycles would be cheap.

And he predicted a boom in leisure travel as well as an increase in affordable popular newspapers.

In 1913, just a year before the First World War broke out, Edgar wrote in a school essay: ‘In the year 2000AD bicycles will be produced for a small sum of money.

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A ministerial board is being set up to help Pembrokeshire council overcome failings in its child protection procedures.

It follows two highly-critical reports, one of which identified problems in protecting children from abuse.

Deputy social services minister Gwenda Thomas said some progress has been made but that the kind of change needed could not be achieved quickly.

Leader John Davies said the council would cooperate fully with the board.

Last month a sreport exposing the council’s failings over child abuse allegations was described as “deeply disturbing” by Wales’ children’s commissioner.

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A diabetic dog has found a new home – with eight-year-old twin girls who have the same condition.

The Scottish SPCA was struggling to place Staffordshire bull terrier Roxy due to her daily insulin needs. Catherine and Graham Hendry, from Ballater, Aberdeenshire, said the fact their daughters Louise and Katie also have type one diabetes made them want Roxy more.

The dog and girls now all have their injections together.

The Hendry family had spotted a newspaper appeal about Roxy and decided to visit her at the charity’s animal rescue and rehoming centre at Drumoak, where she had been since July.

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A 12-year-old boy was airlifted for specialist treatment after he became unwell while diving off the Northumberland coast.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said the crew on the dive boat off Seahouses contacted them shortly after 11:30 BST.

They said the boy, who had been diving with his family, had made a rapid ascent from 12m (39ft) and was showing symptoms of decompression sickness.

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Plans have been set out to improve care for women and their babies during pregnancy and childbirth in Wales.

Health Minister Lesley Griffiths said all women should receive safe, high quality treament, dignity and respect.

Ms Griffiths warned health boards they could not let services “drift” by failing to make changes.

The National Childbirth Trust (NCT) said Wales had suffered variable standards of care in the past but this was a “significant opportunity”.

The minister outlined the strategy during a visit to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.

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Huge numbers of children risk death and injury because they are sitting on badly fitted car seats, it emerged yesterday.

Figures suggest as many as two thirds of car seats for young children are fitted incorrectly.

If poorly attached to the car, child seats can give little or none of the protection they are designed to provide. And a large number of these errors are being made by trained fitters themselves, it is claimed.

Undercover testers visited 43 retailers – including Mothercare and John Lewis – who claimed to have trained staff to fit the seats.

But mistakes were made in 49 per cent of cases, according to the study by the consumer watchdog Which?.

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