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The parent company of a search engine which accused Google of anti-competitive practices has issued fresh complaints.

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An unpublished and previously unknown Enid Blyton novel is believed to have turned up in an archive of the late children’s author’s work.

Mr Tumpy’s Caravan is a 180-page fantasy story about a magical caravan.

It was in a collection of manuscripts that was auctioned by the family of Blyton’s eldest daughter in September.

“I think it’s unique,” said Tony Summerfield, head of the Enid Blyton Society. “I don’t know of any full-length unpublished Blyton work.”

The collection was bought by the Seven Stories children’s book centre in Newcastle.

Blyton, who died in 1968, remains a children’s favourite and a publishing phenomenon thanks to such characters as the Famous Five, the Secret Seven and Noddy.

An estimated 500 million copies of her books have been sold around the world, with updated and reprinted versions of her most popular stories still selling eight million copies a year.

Mr Tumpy’s Caravan follows the adventures of a caravan with feet and a mind of its own.

Together with Mr Tumpy, his friends and a dog called Bun-Dorg, it crosses an ocean before facing a dog-headed dragon in an attempt to save a princess’s land.

It was initially believed to have been a version of a picture book called Mr Tumpy and His Caravan, compiled using comic strips published in the London Evening Standard in the 1940s.

Imogen Smallwood, Blyton’s youngest daughter, told BBC News: “It does appear to be a little bit of a mystery because there is a Mr Tumpy book that was published in 1949, which was actually a cartoon book.

“I just thought that was that. But no, it turns out that this is completely different.

“It’s a whole book, written with words, about a completely different Mr Tumpy and indeed a completely different caravan.

“There’s always excitement when an unknown typescript is found of anybody’s who is well known,” she continued.

“Because this wasn’t even known about, it has to rank quite high.”

Seven Stories archivist Hannah Green said she realised the typescript did not appear to be closely related to the picture book when she came to catalogue the collection.

“When I looked in more detail into this, it became apparent that it was actually very different and looks like an unpublished novel,” she said.

“It doesn’t often happen that you have something unpublished by such a well-known author. I think I am probably the first person, certainly in a very long time, to have read the whole thing.

“It was really exciting to spend an afternoon reading it.”

The typescript is not dated but bears the address Old Thatch, Bourne End, Buckinghamshire – Blyton’s home until 1938.

The collection of original typescripts was auctioned following the death of Blyton’s eldest daughter, Gillian Baverstock, in 2007.

Seven Stories paid around £40,000 for a number of items, including original draft copies of the Famous Five, Secret Seven, Noddy and Malory Towers books.

Combining a gallery, children’s activity hub and a preservation centre, Seven Stories aims to save and celebrate great British children’s books.

Set up in 2005, it is attempting to establish a national collection of manuscripts and memorabilia from leading authors and illustrators.

Photo of the typescript reproduced with the kind permission of Chorion Rights Limited. Enid Blyton is a registered trade mark of Chorion Rights Limited. All rights reserved.

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The Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Aberdeen Donside has stood down after being charged with offences related to prostitution, BBC Scotland can reveal.

Councillor Gordon Leslie stood down as the candidate for the redrawn Aberdeen North constituency with immediate effect on Tuesday, the party confirmed.

Grampian Police said a 64-year-old man had been reported to the procurator fiscal.

He is due to appear at the city’s sheriff court next month.

Mr Leslie declined to comment when approached by BBC Scotland.

There are five alleged contraventions of the Prostitution (Public Places Scotland) Act 2007.

Mr Leslie is the convener of the city council’s children’s services committee and the vice convener of the social care and wellbeing committee.

He has been asked to stand down from his committee roles.

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England survive a major scare in their opening World Cup match as they overcome a spirited Netherlands with only eight balls to spare in Nagpur.

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Four American sailors hijacked by Somali pirates off the coast of Oman have been killed, US defence officials say.

The US military said its forces trailing the vessel had responded to gunfire heard aboard but found all the captives shot when they arrived.

The yacht S/V Quest, hijacked on Friday, was owned and sailed by Scott and Jean Adam of California.

Also killed were two US passengers, Phyllis Mackay and Bob Riggle.

In a statement, US Central Command said that negotiations were underway between the US Navy and the pirates, when the US forces heard gunfire coming from the Quest about 0600GMT.

They boarded the ship, killing two pirates in the process, and discovered the four Americans shot. The US Navy sailors attempted to provide first aid but the hostages died, the military said.

“As they responded to the gunfire, reaching and boarding the Quest, the forces discovered all four hostages had been shot by their captors,” Gen James Mattis of US Central Command Commander said in a statement.

“We express our deepest condolences for the innocent lives callously lost aboard the Quest,” the statement added.

The US Navy captured 13 pirates, and found the remains of two other pirates already dead about the vessel, the US military said.

The US Navy said it had been closely monitoring the vessel once it learned it had been hijacked, sending four warships to the area.

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Cuba’s ex-leader Fidel Castro uses an article in Cuban media to accuse the US of being ready to order an invasion of Libya.

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Tawny owls turn brown to survive in warmer climates, say scientists, with the once dominant grey feathers becoming a thing of the past.

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The Ministry of Defence must prove it has sorted out its equipment-buying programme or continue its “cycle of failure”, MPs have warned.

The Commons public accounts committee said procurement delays and overspending had to be addressed.

It urged the MoD to provide its forecast for implementing government money-saving demands by April.

In a speech later, Defence Secretary Liam Fox will promise that lax spending habits “will no longer be tolerated”.

Last autumn’s Strategic Defence and Security Review urged savings of billions of pounds by cutting back on warships, fast jet fighters and thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen.

It included the decisions to cancel the Nimrod MRA4 plane, withdraw the Sentinel surveillance aircraft and to mothball a yet-to-be-built aircraft carrier.

The committee said the changes involved “greater operational risks” and writing off nearly £5bn of taxpayers’ money.

It added: “Such decisions are never desirable. The fact that the department has been pressured to make them offers a compelling argument why it must address the problems which have affected defence procurement for decades and on which our predecessors have commented extensively.

“If it does not, the cycle of failure will continue, with badly needed capabilities being delivered later than planned and cost increases crowding other capabilities out of the equipment programme.”

The committee was responding to a National Audit Office report, published in October, which said the “black hole” in MoD procurement had increased by £3.3bn in Labour’s final year in office to reach around £36bn.

The department has started to renegotiate a large number of contracts.

But the committee’s chairman, Labour MP Margaret Hodge, said: “In the wake of the defence review the MoD still has to spell out whether and how it has got its defence procurement budget under control.

“The MoD must demonstrate the same discipline in its defence procurement that our forces demonstrate in the field.”

The MoD has not yet provided data to back up its opinion that fitting catapults and arrester wires to the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carriers to allow them to carry a different type of plane will save money, said the report.

The two ships are being built at a cost of £5.2bn but as a result of decisions made in the defence review there will be no planes available for 10 years and one carrier will be mothballed almost immediately.

The committee’s report said the carrier contract, signed in 2008, had set “a new benchmark in poor corporate decision-making”.

During his speech to the Civitas think-tank in London on Tuesday, Dr Fox is expected to “explain the dilemmas we face and outline the guiding principles of defence policy in a tightly constrained financial environment”.

He will criticise the “conspiracy of optimism” at the MoD and in industry which is “based on poor cost-estimation” and “unrealistic time-scales”.

Dr Fox will warn: “These practices in the MoD would simply not be tolerated in the private sector, and they will no longer be tolerated in the MoD.”

He will also call for a “new, frank and honest relationship between government and industry”.

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As the big day nears, the internet is abuzz with royal wedding stories. Keeping close tabs on them is our wedding fanatic.

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Nine firefighters from south Wales are to fly out to New Zealand to join the relief effort after the Christchurch earthquake.

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Rangers confirm that Ally McCoist will succeed Walter Smith as manager at the end of the season.

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Two lambs at a farm in Claverham, near Weston-super-Mare, have shocked their owners by feeding from a cow.

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Will Arab protests push oil and gas prices to new levels?

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Cyclists, architect Mike Taylor, and triple Olympic gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy have given their reaction to the velodrome, the first venue to be completed for the 2012 London Olympics.

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The NHS in England has launched legal action against Reckitt Benckiser, maker of heartburn medicine Gaviscon.

According to High Court documents, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is leading the action on behalf of health authorities and primary care trusts.

The Department of Health refused to comment on the subject of the suit.

Reckitt Benckiser was fined £10m last year for abusing its dominant market position in the supply of heartburn remedies to the NHS.

A spokesman for Reckitt said the company could not comment as it had not been served with any papers.

Papers lodged at the High Court show Reckitt is being sued collectively by all 10 Strategic Health Authorities and 144 Primary Care Trusts in England, as well as Andrew Lansley as Secretary of State for Health.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said in October last year that Reckitt had restricted competition in the supply of heartburn medicines.

The household products maker withdrew the original Gavison from the NHS in 2005 and patients were tranferred to Gaviscon Advance Liquid.

This happened after Gaviscon’s patent had expired, but before a generic name had been assigned to it, the OFT said.

That meant that prescriptions were issued for Gaviscon Advance, rather than pharmacists being able to choose a cheaper generic alternative.

The OFT’s inquiry followed an investigation by the BBC’s Newsnight programme in 2008.

Gaviscon is one of the most heavily prescribed medicines within the NHS. Confidential papers leaked to the programme by a whistleblower showed it was also very profitable, with a gross margin of 77% in 2003.

The then-chief executive of the OFT, John Fingleton, said at the time: “This case underlines our determination to prevent companies with a dominant position in a market from using their strength to seek to restrict competition from rivals”.

In response to the OFT’s fine, Reckitt said that it had believed it was acting within the law at the time and respected the watchdog’s findings.

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