Nicotine pouches sold to children mimic sweets, says UK trading standards body

Children can buy pouches legally as they are not regulated as a specific tobacco or nicotine product

Nicotine pouches are being legally sold to children and are being made appealing to them with special flavours and packaging mimicking sweets, a trading standards body has said.

In June, it became illegal for single-use vapes to be sold in England to tackle their widespread use by children. However, there is currently no legislation that restricts the age at which you can buy nicotine pouches.

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US authorities take custody of more than 20 kids as surrogate mothers claim couple misled them

Children removed from California home of couple who were arrested in May and had said they ‘wanted a large family’

More than 20 children are in the custody of a California child-welfare agency while authorities investigate a Los Angeles-area couple and whether they misled surrogate mothers around the country.

Fifteen children were removed from the couple’s opulent home in Arcadia after an abuse allegation in May, and another six living elsewhere were also located, said Arcadia’s police lieutenant, Kollin Cieadlo. They range in age from two months to 13 years, with most between one and three.

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Children investigated over Russian and Iranian plots against UK, says police chief

Teenagers suspected of being hired by criminals paid to carry out acts on behalf of states, it is understood

Schoolchildren have been arrested by detectives investigating Russian and Iranian plots against Britain, a police chief has said, as he warned hostile state aggression was rising and youngsters were at risk.

Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism unit, said children in their “mid teens” had been investigated. It is understood they were suspected of being hired by criminals paid to carry out acts for Russia and Iran.

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Five-year-olds in England with special educational needs 20 months behind peers – report

Children from lower-income families also remain significantly behind their peers as impact of pandemic continues to be felt

Five-year-olds with special educational needs in England are lagging a record 20 months behind their peers, according to a report that says the country’s youngest learners face a “deepening crisis”, five years after the pandemic.

Since Covid closed schools, disrupting learning and triggering falls in attendance, there has been widespread concern about the growing attainment gap that leaves disadvantaged pupils and those with special educational needs significantly behind their peers.

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Fathers plan legal action to get smartphones banned in England’s schools

Two fathers tell education secretary they will seek judicial review in bid for statutory ban to safeguard children

Two fathers plan to take legal action against the government in an attempt to get smartphones banned in schools in England.

Will Orr-Ewing and Pete Montgomery wrote to the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, on Friday warning that they would seek a judicial review. They argue that current guidance, which allows headteachers to decide how smartphones are used, is unlawful and unsafe for children.

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Father given £1,173 refund from nursery in England after ‘top-up’ fees investigation

Preschool establishment asked for extra compulsory fee for ‘consumables’ – but it should have been free

A nursery has refunded a father almost £1,200 after an investigation found he had been charged mandatory “top-up” fees for hours of childcare that should have been free.

Tiago Gomes’s daughter was eligible for government-funded childcare at the Lake House day nursery and preschool in Bristol but he was told that he must pay an extra compulsory fee for “consumables”.

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Minority ethnic and deprived children more likely to die after UK intensive care admission

Study shows such young people have higher risk of arriving at paediatric ICU severely ill and have worse outcomes

Minority ethnic children and children from deprived backgrounds across the UK are more likely to die following admission to intensive care than their white and more affluent counterparts, a study has found.

These children consistently had worse outcomes following their stay in a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU), the research by academics at Imperial College London discovered.

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Children crossing Channel from France exposed to teargas, report says

NGO says rise in interventions has only increased danger as new data shows at least 15 children died in transit last year

Children and babies coming to the UK on small boats from northern France have been teargassed and subjected to tactics such as the discharge of rubber bullets and the slashing of dinghies with knives, according to a report.

The publication on Tuesday of We Want to Be Safe, by the French non-governmental organisation Project Play, came as the latest figures on daily crossings released by the UK government reached an all-time high of 19,982 for the first six months of the year, a 40% increase compared with the same period last year.

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US city declares 12-year-old boy a hero for saving his family from house fire

Boy’s Virginia home town commends ‘remarkable heroism’ after he singlehandedly rescued grandmother and siblings

A city in Virginia has awarded a hero’s proclamation to a 12-year-old boy who rescued his grandmother and two younger siblings from a fire that burned their house down recently.

The courage that Ramir Parker demonstrated when confronted with the blaze “is a shining example of resilience, responsibility and the power of instinctive leadership in our youth”, said the proclamation that officials in Petersburg gave to the local seventh-grade student.

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About 200 new nurseries to open at schools in England in September

Sites will accommodate 4,000 children as part of ministers’ plan to improve childcare, Bridget Phillipson to announce

About 200 school-based nurseries will open in England this September as part of the government’s plan to improve access to childcare for working parents.

The milestone will be announced on Monday by Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, who will say that the sites will accommodate 4,000 children under school age.

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US supreme court rules in favor of age checks for pornography websites to keep children away

Court’s conservative justices said Texas law requiring online age verification didn’t violate free expression. PornHub had gone dark in Texas in protest of the law

The US supreme court ruled that a Texas law requiring that pornography websites verify the ages of their visitors was constitutional on Friday, the latest development in a global debate over how to prevent minors from accessing adult material online.

“HB 1181 simply requires adults to verify their age before they can access speech that is obscene to children,” Clarence Thomas wrote in the court’s 6-3 majority opinion. “The statute advances the state’s important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit content. And, it is appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data.” Elena Kagan dissented alongside the court’s two other liberal justices.

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Met officers’ strip-search of black girl at school was gross misconduct, panel finds

Disciplinary hearing finds two police officers’ search of Child Q, 15, was disproportionate and humiliating

Two police officers who were involved in the strip-search of a black teenager at her school have been found to have committed gross misconduct.

The search at a school in Hackney, east London, was “disproportionate, inappropriate and unnecessary” and made the girl, known as Child Q, feel degraded and humiliated, a panel concluded at the end of a four-week misconduct hearing.

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UK study shows 8% of children aged eight to 14 have viewed online pornography

Ofcom says research shows need for stricter age checks being introduced in July, which most major sites have signed up to

Nearly one in 10 children aged eight to 14 have watched online pornography, according to the UK’s communications watchdog, as most adult content providers gear up to adopt stronger age checks ahead of a 25 July deadline.

Ofcom published research showing that 8% of children aged eight to 14 in the UK had visited an online pornography site or app over a month-long period. Boys aged 13 to 14 were the most likely viewers, with two out of 10 visiting adult sites.

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Remove decisions on lone child asylum seekers from Home Office, report says

Call for root-and-branch reform of treatment of children, many of whom are wrongly classified as adults

Decisions relating to lone child asylum seekers should be removed from Home Office officials because of fundamental problems with the way they treat this vulnerable group, a report has found.

The report calls for root-and-branch reform of the treatment of thousands of children who have fled persecution in their home countries and made hazardous journeys in search of safety, often crossing the Channel in a dinghy or concealing themselves in the back of a lorry.

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MPs back bill to end criminal penalties for abortion in key vote – as it happened

Parliament votes on biggest shake-up to reproductive rights in England and Wales in 60 years

Casey says in the past government has talked relentlessly about the need for better data sharing between departments.

But she says there is a need to consider making this mandatory.

I was there when the tragedy of Soham happened. We knew at that point that if we had had better data sharing there’s a possibility that we might have saved those girls’ lives. There’s certaintly an absolute clarity that intelligence would have been much faster in either avoiding it or or actually finding that dreadful human being earlier.

And we’ve known that forever onwards. And so I think there is also an issue that the Home Office can’t drag their feet on, looking at police intelligence systems, given we’ve living in the 21st century. Probably everbody in this room can connect within seconds. Yet we had Befordshire police finding a young boy that was being, in my mind trafficked to London. But the data intelligence system did not make it easy for them to find that he was in Deptford and being circled and dealt with by predators.

I feel very strongly on issues that are as searing as people’s race, when we know the prejudice and racism that people of colour experience in this country, to not get how you treat that data right is a different level of public irresponsibility.

Sorry, to put it so bluntly, I didn’t put it that bluntly yesterday, but I think it’s particularly important if you are collecting those sorts of issues to get them 100% right.

When we asked the good people of Greater Manchester Police to help us look at the data we also collected – I think it’s in the report – what was happening with child abuse more generally, and of course … if you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it’s disproportionately Asian heritage. If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, and it is white men.

So again, just note to everybody, really outside here rather than in here. Let’s just keep calm here about how you interrogate data and what you draw from it.

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Preparatory work to identify remains of 800 infants at Irish mother and baby home begins

Excavation crews begin sealing off site in Tuam, Co Galway, before full-scale dig starts on 14 July

Preliminary work aimed at identifying the remains of nearly 800 infants is starting on the site in Tuam, Co Galway, as Ireland continues to wrestle with the traumatic legacy of its mother and baby homes scandal.

Catherine Corless, a local historian who first sounded the alarm about the dark past of the institution run by nuns from the Bon Secours order, uncovered the names of 796 infants who are believed to have been buried there between 1925 and 1961, some in a disused subterranean septic tank. There were no burial records.

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Survivors of Ireland’s mother and baby homes risk losing UK benefits over compensation

Campaign pushes to change law that could lead to survivors living in UK being disqualified from means-tested benefits

Survivors of Ireland’s mother and baby homes are being “retraumatised” by the prospect of losing benefits in the UK if they accept compensation from the Irish state, Westminster has been told.

The warning comes amid a campaign backed by representatives of almost every political party in the UK and figures including Steve Coogan, who starred in Philomena, a film about the mother and baby homes scandal.

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Children to have free bus travel in west of England during summer holidays

About 150,000 under-16s will benefit across West of England combined authority and North Somerset

Children under the age of 16 will be able to travel for free on buses in the west of England during the school summer holidays in a move benefiting about 150,000 young people.

The West of England combined authority (Weca) – covering Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol and South Gloucestershire – plus North Somerset will allow children aged from five to 15 to travel for free with no bus pass or registration required.

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Nine women accuse Jared Leto of sexual impropriety in new report

Women recount alleged behavior, including flirting with teenagers, as ‘predatory, terrifying and unacceptable’

Multiple women have accused Jared Leto of impropriety, with some calling the 53-year-old actor and musician’s behavior “predatory, terrifying and unacceptable”.

In a new report by Air Mail on Saturday, nine women have come forward to accuse Leto of engaging in inappropriate behavior over the years, including flirting with teenagers.

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Ms Rachel says she’ll risk career to advocate for children in Gaza

The popular YouTuber has received pushback for speaking out on behalf of children affected by war and famine

Ms Rachel, the children’s entertainer and educator whose YouTube videos have been watched by millions of families around the world, said she is willing to risk her career to keep advocating for suffering children in Gaza.

In an interview with WBUR, a Boston-based public radio station, Ms Rachel, whose full name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, said she had received pushback for speaking out to raise awareness of the situation in Gaza, where more than 54,000 people have been killed in Israel’s ongoing military assault.

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