Stress therapy offer to ill jobless

Stress therapy offer to ill jobless
The government is to offer therapy treatment to people who have quit work because of stress and depression in its welfare reform bill, to be published today.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 4 July 2006, page 9
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Should 18 be age to buy cigarettes?
The public is to be asked whether the legal age for buying cigarettes should be raised from 16 to 17 or 18 in England and Wales to reduce deaths from cancer and other smoking-related diseases.
Source:- Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 4 July 2006, page 1
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Grandchild also victim in divorce
Britain’s rising divorce rates have a “traumatic” effect on hundreds of thousands of grandparents who are losing regular access to their grandchildren, a government consultant will say today.
Source:- Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 4 July 2006, page 7
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Town halls ‘need power over more local taxation’
Sweeping changes to town hall funding based entirely on a variety of local taxes will be proposed by an influential think-tank this week.
Source:- The Times, Tuesday 4 July 2006, page 27

Wellcome Trust to raise £500 million from first bond issue by charity
The Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest medical research charities, will raise up to £500 million from the capital markets this summer by becoming the first charity in the UK to issue a bond.
Source:- Financial Times, Tuesday 4 July 2006, page 4

Caste divide is blighting Indian communities in UK, claims report
A report will today claim that many Indian communities in Britain are blighted by caste discrimination.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 4 July 2006, page 9
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Foreign nurses barred in attempt to help homegrown candidates
Thousands of international nurses are to be banned from working in the UK to improve the chances of homegrown candidates getting a job, the government announced yesterday.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 4 July 2006, page 9
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Scottish news
 
From cradle to grave: new system to rate care services
Care homes and childminders in Scotland will be given ratings under a new, easy-to-follow grading system to help customers compare services.
The Care Commission, the official watchdog, is adopting the same point scale used by school inspectors to assess education standards to make it easier for people to choose homes.
Homes will be marked one to six according to the quality of life available to residents, the living environment, staffing and management.
Source:- The Herald, Tuesday 4 July 2006
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Fears over ‘simplified’ childcare ratings
Childminders would welcome an evaluation mechanism giving parents a better idea of the services they offer, but claim a star rating system would be too simplified.
Margaret Simpson, director of childminding development, with the Scottish Childminding Association, said a “bed-and-breakfast style” star rating system needed to be avoided but that parents needed to know the strengths of a childminder in different areas.
Current rules are a straightforward registration process.
Source:- The Herald, Tuesday 4 July 2006
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Councils urged to keep track of bullies
Scotland’s councils have been urged to keep records of how many pupils are bullied in schools after it emerged that more than a third do not do so.
An investigation by The Scotsman has revealed that 12 of the 32 local authorities leave it up to schools to track bullying rates.
Rev Ewan Aitken, the education convener at the City of Edinburgh Council, which does collect bullying statistics centrally, said keeping authority-wide figures enabled councils to gauge the severity of the problem and deal with it more effectively.
Source:- The Scotsman, Tuesday 4 July 2006
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Welsh news
 
Teaching a baby to walk left her with 40 fractures, coroner told
A 14-week-old baby was left with 40 broken bones after her parents tried to teach her to walk.
At the time of her death Chloe Thomas had fractures to her skull, wrists, ribs, legs and fingers.
An inquest heard how parents Ceri Thomas, 23, and Sarah Scott, 20, who was 15 when she fell pregnant, had started to walk Chole when she was only 12 weeks old.
Source:- Western Mail, Tuesday, 4 July 2006
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Mothers’ diet may be reason for obesity in children
Welsh babies might be “programmed” to become fat while they are growing in the womb due to their mothers’ unhealthy diet, according to new research.
Wales has the lowest average birth weight in the UK but researchers at Kings College London and University College London found that Welsh babies become some of the heaviest by the time they are nine months old.
They argue that this could be due to their genes being “hard wired” in the womb making them more inclined to become obese when they grow up.
Source:- Western Mail, Tuesday, 4 July 2006
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