Blogscrape

Is it right that children of some of the poorest families will now miss out on free meals under welfare cuts?

Donna’s doughnut diet

The first week of January brought a surprise for Eleanor Stourton: she opened the newspaper to find that her boyfriend, Andrew Jelinek, a cavalry officer serving in Afghanistan, had been involved in the rescue of two little girls injured by a roadside bomb while playing near their home in Musa Qala.

On Tuesday at 8am, a small band of lawyers, among them Britain’s best and brightest, will enter the Guildhall in Londonderry under what the government is calling “exceptional arrangements”. To be allowed in the front door, each lawyer, however well known, must be wearing a government-issued red wrist band and surrender all means of electronic communication, includ- ing mobile phones.

1 World Cup referees are taking a crash course in English swear words as part of a crackdown on abusive language. They have been studying a list of 20 obscenities in preparation for the championship, which started on Friday.

Babies mauled

Have two children, lose one friend. Researchers have found that having offspring results in a trade-off in which parents’ social circles shrink and they increasingly rely on family and professional helpers.

SOME of the greatest mysteries of the universe may never be resolved because they are beyond human comprehension, according to Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society.

COMPANIES are paying up to £11,000 a year to a Mayfair-based private members’ club that offers introductions to top civil servants.

A smiling wellwisher was among those celebrating the Queen’s official birthday yesterday. Crowds saw the monarch’s Household Division conduct its annual march down the Mall to Horse Guards Parade as part of Trooping the Colour.

MEMBERS of Scotland Yard’s elite bodyguard unit are being armed with smaller, lighter “baby” guns as part of a drive to attract more female officers.

THE daughters of Prince Andrew are to be stripped of their round-the-clock police protection after a long-running row about the £500,000 annual cost of their bodyguards.

Yes, the government is deep in debt. But how deep? The Treasury says about £893 billion, equivalent to 62% of GDP, the amount we earn each year. Even with the promised cuts it will reach 75% of GDP in five years’ time.

THE Bloody Sunday report is likely to pave the way for multi-million-pound damages claims from the families of those killed by British soldiers, lawyers have warned.

President Obama sought to smooth transatlantic tensions with a phonecall to David Cameron this afternoon, assuring him that US criticisms of BP were “nothing to do with national identity”.

Egon Ronay, the Hungarian food critic who changed Britain’s eating habits through the introduction of ground-breaking restaurant guides, died today aged 94.

The Queen marked her 84th official birthday today with a review of hundreds of soldiers in the annual Trooping of the Colour.

Prime Minister David Cameron has sent a message of support for the England football team as they prepared for their first World Cup fixture against the US in South Africa tonight.

The promise of a cash injection and complete autonomy over budgets has persuaded more than 1,000 schools to apply for academy status since the Government announced it wanted more of them to be free from town hall control.

Technology that locates snipers in Afghanistan and Iraq is being deployed by police on the streets of Birmingham to identify where a gun is fired from.