Category: news

Evidence is emerging that health managers in England are rebelling against attempts to create greater competition in the NHS.

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Many new mothers are bombarded with contradictory and even dangerous parenting advice by family members, a Netmums survey suggests.

Two in five of 4,000 mothers surveyed said a relative had given advice they felt could harm their baby’s health.

Examples included exposing a baby to hot tarmac fumes to “strengthen its lungs”, and “under ones don’t need sun cream because they can’t get sunburnt”.

Mothers-in-law topped the list of people who had given poor advice.

More than three-quarters of mothers who responded to the survey – posted on the Netmums website – said they sought parenting advice from relatives.

But the responses were often contradictory. For example, 51% of the mothers had been told to wake a baby regularly to enforce routine, while 44% had also been told never to wake a sleeping baby.

When respondents were asked who had given them confusing, contradictory or incorrect parenting advice, mothers-in-law topped the list (39%), followed by mums (35%) and then strangers (30%).

One in five said they felt worried or guilty when going against a rule or piece of advice they had been given.

Some pieces of advice which Netmums said could be damaging to a child’s health were reported by several of the mothers surveyed.

These included 30% of mothers who said they had been told to put whiskey on a dummy to relieve teething pain, 22% who were told their children should be eating solids from three months old, as well as 25 people who had been told that breathing in the fumes from hot tarmac is good for a baby’s lungs.

Netmums also said it was potentially harmful that 54% of mothers were told they should instinctively be able to interpret their baby’s cries, and that 74% had been told that they would “just know what to do” once they had given birth.

A significant proportion of those surveyed had also been given other inaccurate information – such as that a baby will get a cold if taken outside (24%), or should not be taken outside if it is foggy (6%).

Netmums described other pieces of advice or misinformation reported in the survey as “outlandish”:

“Children under the age of one do not need sun cream, as they do not get sunburnt””Crushed beetles and iron fillings are good for a baby’s teeth””Too many ice pops will give children worms””Keep the baby off their feet for at least the first 12 months or they will get bow legs and weak bones””Don’t tickle a baby’s feet as it will make them stammer”

Siobhan Freegard, co-founder of the Netmums website, said: “Mums really are being bombarded with advice from every direction.

“Despite this, however, the findings also showed that many mothers feel that parenting shouldn’t be about following strict rules – they do what feels right for each individual child and ignore well-meant advice,” she said.

Grandparents Plus, a charity which supports the role of grandparents in family life, said grandparents were often a “great asset” in supporting young families.

“Parenting wisdom clearly does change over the years and even now it depends on which expert you speak to – so it’s not surprising some grandparents will come up with things that seem inappropriate and out-of-date,” said policy and research manager Sarah Wellard.

“Mums are targeted with information all the time, but grandparents are often overlooked so they do not always get these up-to-date messages,” she said.

The National Childbirth Trust, a charity supporting parents, said it recognised the valuable source of support that other family members can offer, but encouraged parents to check that information is up-to-date, and to contact a health visitor or GP if they are worried about a child’s health.

Dr Katherine Rake of the Family and Parenting Institute said: “It is very saddening to see that so many UK mothers feel put down and experience feelings of guilt. We need to work with parents to ensure they receive the advice they need. But we must also ensure they are not bombarded.”

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Alain Robert, the French urban climber dubbed spiderman for his feats, has scaled the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

It took him six hours to ascend the 828-m (2,717-ft) tower in the United Arab Emirates city, including the tapered spire above the top floors.

A large crowd watched from the ground as he moved up the facade, picked out by spotlights after darkness fell.

Unusually, he used a rope and harness, to comply with safety requirements.

“I know that sometimes there may be some specific requirements,” he told Reuters news agency before the climb.

“I do understand. You know, this is such an iconic building so I can understand that even though they are taking care so much about my precious life, they are also taking care a lot of that precious Burj Khalifa.”

Strapped to a safety harness tethered more than 100 floors up, he began his climb up the silvery, glass-covered tower just after 1800 (1400 GMT) on Monday.

Moving methodically and swiftly along the metal facade, he ascended a central column, largely avoiding rows of pipes that could have slowed his climb.

He did not appear to use the rope to pull himself up but instead gripped the glass and narrow metal ridges like a rock climber with his feet and bare hands, an Associated Press news agency correspondent reports.

On reaching the top, he waved triumphantly.

Robert has scaled more than 70 skyscrapers, including New York’s Empire State Building and Chicago’s Willis Tower in the US, and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, according to his website.

In 2004, he climbed Taiwan’s Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building at the time.

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More schools should involve pupils in the recruitment of teachers, says the children’s commissioner for England.

A survey of 2,000 children aged nine to 16 for commissioner Maggie Atkinson found two-thirds would like a role in the recruiting process.

But only 18% of children had been involved in choosing a teacher, the survey added.

The Nasuwt teaching union said putting pupils on an interview panel undermined the authority of teachers.

The survey suggested some 87% of children feel they know what makes a good teacher.

And many of those quizzed in depth on the issue identified a number of attributes they felt were important.

These included knowing their subject, giving good feedback to pupils, being clear about expectations and listening to pupils’ ideas and making lessons interesting.

But only a quarter thought setting homework was important.

Dr Atkinson said: “Young people are a school’s customers, and they see lots of different teaching styles over the course of a school career.

“Our research shows that they understand teaching is a challenging job which requires a wide range of skills from teachers – it is not just about their academic qualifications or how loudly they can shout.”

She said it made sense to make use of this experience when recruiting staff.

“With the proper training and support, pupils can bring a different, and valuable, point of view to the table,” she said.

She added: “This is not about putting the children in charge. Rather, it is about making use of their experience.”

Dr Atkinson said there were many ways of involving young people in the recruitment process.

These include having members of the school council sitting as part of the interview panel and getting feedback from pupils on a sample lesson taught as part of recruitment process.

Dr Atkinson’s call was supported by the National Union of Teachers’ general secretary Christine Blower.

She said: “Whilst it is not appropriate for pupils to have any kind of veto in appointing teachers we do think that it is right for pupils to be members of governing bodies and for their opinions to be heard during the interview process.”

And Chris Keates, general secretary of the Nasuwt teaching union, said children and young people have an important voice in how their education and school community develops.

However, she added: “Putting pupils on an interview panel or in direct control of teacher recruitment undermines the respect and authority of teachers.

“This type of practice is another example of teachers being afforded fewer rights, simply because they work with children.”

Heather Shore, a teacher at the Compass learning centre for children at risk of exclusion in Weymouth, Dorset, said a panel of students had interviewed applicants as part of a recent recruitment process.

“We found that what they had to say was really useful, and actually mirrored quite closely the thoughts of the panel of adults who also interviewed,” she added.

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By Rory Cellan-Jones

The internet now accounts for a quarter of all advertising spending in the UK.

New figures show online advertising grew by 12.8% in 2010, breaking through the £4bn barrier.

A study by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the accountants PwC found that online advertising spending grew three times as rapidly as in 2009.  

It also outpaced the rest of the advertising market, which has recovered after dipping during the recession.

Guy Phillipson, the chief executive of the IAB, said: “Major brands restored their advertising budgets in 2010 and online was a big winner.”

The biggest growth area was display advertising on social networks, which grew by nearly 200%.

Facebook has made big advances in the last year in persuading advertisers to see social networks as a place to promote their wares.

With figures showing that UK internet users spend 25% of their online time on social networks, advertisers are keen to tap into this audience.

Online video advertising also nearly doubled in 2010, with £54m spent on adverts that appeared before, during or after video clips.

Mobile advertising raced ahead too, with finance, telecoms and consumer brands trying to reach audiences on the move.

Search advertising, still dominated by Google, remains the biggest earner, although growth in this more mature business was just 8%.

Ian Barber of the Advertising Association says there is one clear attraction which is boosting online spending: “It’s targeted, it makes it easier for brands to work out who they’re advertising to.”

Other areas of advertising recovered last year, with television spending bouncing back after a steep decline.

But much of the Press is still suffering, with magazines and regional newspapers seeing revenues continue to fall. Classified advertising, once a key element in regional newspaper revenues, has now nearly all migrated online.

But Lynne Anderson of the Newspaper Society says local newspapers are capturing some of that online advertising spending on their own websites: “They are getting pretty savvy at capturing audiences in new ways.”

She added: “Regional newspapers – print and online – are resilient, innovative and well-placed to benefit when wider market conditions improve.”

The IAB expects online spending to continue to grow, as faster broadband makes new formats increasingly attractive.

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University Boat Race title sponsor Xchanging is to end its backing of the Oxford and Cambridge event when the current contract expires in 2012.

Xchanging, an outsourcing company, will have sponsored the event for eight years when it ends its association with the 158th race next year.

The firm has recently hit financial turbulence and last month announced the departure of its chief executive.

Boat race organisers said they were confident of finding another backer.

David Searle, executive director of The Boat Race Company, said: “We are now focused on finding a new title sponsor for the event from 2013.

“Given the success of the race and its growing TV, radio and online audience around the world – reaching more than 200 countries – we are confident of securing another partner wanting to help us take the event forward.”

Xchanging, which runs accounting, personnel, and technology functions for companies, issued a profits warning last month, sending its share price plunging.

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Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who was pushed out of the company as chief executive in 2008, is to return full time to lead product development.

He will replace fellow co-founder Evan Williams, who has stepped back from daily involvement with Twitter but will remain on the board.

The announcement was tweeted by chief executive Dick Costolo who wrote that he was “excited” by the return.

Mr Dorsey followed up the tweet, saying that he was “thrilled”.

He says he intends to remain chief executive of a mobile payments service called Square, which is located near Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

“As executive chairman, Jack will dive into work with more than 450 people, led by an experienced executive team,” Twitter said in a company statement.

“The timing is fortuitous; not only is Twitter experiencing record growth, but we also now have a new infrastructure that will keep us ahead of that growth and enable us to launch products that will make Twitter more instant, simple and always present,” the statement said.

The move comes at an important time for the information and communications platform.

Despite the phenomenal take up by around 200 million users, the company faces challenges ahead as it proves itself to be a profitable business.

Last week Twitter celebrated its fifth birthday.

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A man has been sentenced to community work after he admitted shooting at a neighbour’s alarm system.

Peter Shalson’s neighbour’s alarm went off “almost non-stop” for seven hours, a day before he was due to undergo treatment for extreme stress.

The neighbours were away from their home in Hamilton Terrace, St John’s Wood, north-west London, last January.

Shalson, 54, admitted to possessing a firearm with intent to cause criminal damage and causing criminal damage.

Shalson was sentenced to 100 hours for possessing a firearm and another 100 hours for causing damage to doors, a lamp, windows and a burglar alarm.

The businessman, who fired twice at the alarm, was also ordered to pay £520 in costs by Southwark Crown Court.

The court heard Shalson’s wife was ill in bed and he was due to fly to Austria as he was almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Neighbours Norman and Cindy Dawood were in Warwickshire and had tried to resolve the issue after Shalson contacted them through text messages. He shot at the alarm just before 0200 GMT.

Judge John Price told Shalson he committed a serious offence” which caused “enormous distress” to the neighbours.

The three Dawood children were scared after the incident and their youngest daughter needed therapy, the court heard.

The neighbours also had a history of disputes.

The judge said: “You were in an extremely distressed state and I entirely accept that you were under great stress and that is why you behaved in a way which you would never have acted before.”

In a statement Shalson said the incident was “the result of a single moment of irrationality.

“I had communicated with my neighbours, who were not at their home, to try and arrange for the alarms to be silenced but when this proved not to be possible and after such a prolonged period of incessant, piercing noise, with the police having visited and not taken any action, I felt I had to stop the noise.”

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Tottenham defender William Gallas signs a new deal that will keep him at the club until 2013.

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China is on course to overtake America in scientific output possibly as soon as 2013 – far earlier than expected.

That is the startling conclusion of a major new study by the Royal Society, the UK’s national science academy.

The country that invented the compass, gunpowder, paper and printing is set for a globally important comeback.

An analysis of published research – one of the key measures of scientific effort – reveals an “especially striking” rise by Chinese science.

The study, Knowledge, Networks and Nations, charts the challenge to the traditional dominance of the United States, Europe and Japan.

The figures are based on the papers published in recognised international journals listed by the Scopus service of the publishers Elsevier.

In 1996, the first year of the analysis, the US published 292,513 papers – more 10 times China’s 25,474.

By 2008, the US total had increased very slightly to 316,317 while China’s had surged more than seven-fold to 184,080.

Previous estimates for the rate of expansion of Chinese science had suggested that China might overtake the US sometime after 2020.

But this study shows that China, after displacing the UK as the world’s second leading producer of research, could go on to overtake America in as little as two years’ time.

“Projections vary, but a simple linear interpretation of Elsevier’s publishing data suggests that this could take place as early as 2013,” it says.

Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, chair of the report, said he was “not surprised” by this increase because of China’s massive boost to investment in R&D.

Chinese spending has grown by 20% per year since 1999, now reaching over $100bn, and as many as 1.5 million science and engineering students graduated from Chinese universities in 2006.

“I think this is positive, of great benefit, though some might see it as a threat and it does serve as a wake-up call for us not to become complacent.”

The report stresses that American research output will not decline in absolute terms and raises the possibility of countries like Japan and France rising to meet the Chinese challenge.

“But the potential for China to match American output in terms of sheer numbers in the near to medium term is clear.”

The authors describe “dramatic” changes in the global scientific landscape and warn that this has implications for a nation’s competitiveness.

According to the report, “The scientific league tables are not just about prestige – they are a barometer of a country’s ability to compete on the world stage”.

Along with the growth of the Chinese economy, this is yet another indicator of China’s extraordinarily rapid rise as a global force.

However the report points out that a growing volume of research publications does not necessarily mean in increase in quality.

One key indicator of the value of any research is the number of times it is quoted by other scientists in their work.

Although China has risen in the “citation” rankings, its performance on this measure lags behind its investment and publication rate.

“It will take some time for the absolute output of emerging nations to challenge the rate at which this research is referenced by the international scientific community.”

The UK’s scientific papers are still the second most-cited in the world, after the US.

Dr Cong Cao, associate professor at Nottingham University’s School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, agrees with the assessment that the quantity of China’s science is yet not matched by its quality.

A sociologist originally from Shanghai, Dr Cao told the BBC: “There are many millions of graduates but they are mandated to publish so the numbers are high.

“It will take many years for some of the research to catch up to Western standards.”

As to China’s motivation, Dr Cao believes that there is a determination not to be dependent on foreign know-how – and to reclaim the country’s historic role as a global leader in technology.

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A Saudi student has pleaded not guilty to charges he sought to make a bomb and planned terror attacks in the US.

Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, 20, is charged in Texas with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. If convicted, he faces life in prison.

His list of targets allegedly included the house of former President George W Bush in Texas.

Prosecutors say Mr Aldawsari bought a gas mask, hazardous materials suit and toxic chemicals for use in bomb-making.

Mr Aldawsari is in the US legally on a student visa, and was studying business at South Plains College near Lubbock in Texas, the justice department said.

A jury trial is due to begin in federal court in Lubbock on 2 May.

Investigators said in February Mr Aldawsari had ordered the toxic chemical phenol, which can be used to make explosives, telling the supplier he wanted it for “off-campus, personal research”.

The supplier became suspicious and reported the contact to the FBI; Mr Aldawsari later cancelled the order, the justice department said.

Mr Aldawsari succeeded in purchasing 30 litres (6.6 gallons) of concentrated nitric acid and 11 litres of concentrated sulphuric acid, prosecutors said.

He planned to use a mobile phone as a remote detonator and purchased other items to assist with bomb-making – a gas mask, hazardous materials suit, soldering iron, glass beakers and a stun gun, the justice department said.

Mr Aldawsari drew up a list of US targets to attack, including Mr Bush’s Dallas residence and 12 reservoir dams in Colorado and California, investigators allege.

Prosecutors have informed US District Judge Sam Cummings they intend to use evidence derived from foreign intelligence operations in the trial.

On 9 March, Judge Cummings ordered attorneys on both sides not to speak to the news media about the case.

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US former President Jimmy Carter is in Cuba for a three-day visit that comes at a time of strained relations between the two countries.

Mr Carter has been invited by the Cuban government on what has been billed as a private trip.

But correspondents say he is widely expected to try to help secure the release of imprisoned US government contractor Alan Gross.

Washington and Havana have fallen out over the case.

Mr Gross was sentenced earlier this month to 15 years in jail for providing satellite communications equipment to Jewish groups in Cuba, under a programme funded by the US State Department.

The Cuban authorities say the equipment was intended to provide dissidents with access to the internet as part of efforts to destabilise the island.

On Friday, a US official in the Cuban capital told the AFP news agency it would welcome any intervention on his behalf by Mr Carter.

“We’re hoping that he will talk with the Cuban government to ask for a humanitarian release,” said Molly Koscina, a spokeswoman for the US diplomatic mission in Havana.

The US administration has said there can be no further major US initiatives to ease relations with Cuba while Mr Gross remains in jail.

Carter, who is 86, will meet Cuban President Raul Castro on Tuesday.

Mr Carter is the only sitting – or former- US president to have visited the Communist state since Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

He has visited the island before, in 2002, when he urged the US to lift its trade embargo against Cuba. He also called on the Cuban authorities to introduce democracy and improve human rights.

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Aston Villa assistant manager Gary McAllister rubbishes suggestions there is a mutiny taking place at the struggling Premier League club.

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By Andrew Walker