Tag: Children

Ex-BBC presenter Huw Edwards given suspended sentence for indecent child images

LONDON (Reuters) -Former British TV presenter Huw Edwards, the long-time face of the BBC’s flagship news programme, was given a suspended sentence at a London court on Monday after admitting making indecent images of children. Monday’s sentencing sealed a fall from grace for Edwards, a household name in Britain for around two decades who as the BBC’s leading news anchor announced the death of Queen Elizabeth to the nation in 2022. Edwards, 63, pleaded guilty […]

More than 1 in 4 children under age 5 face ‘severe’ food poverty: UNICEF

By Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS UNITED NATIONS, United States, June 6, 2024 (AFP) – More than one in four children under the age of five globally live in “severe” food poverty, UNICEF has warned — meaning more than 180 million are at risk of experiencing adverse impacts on their growth and development. “Severe child food poverty describes children who are surviving on severely deprived diets so they’re only consuming two or less food groups,” Harriet Torlesse, a […]

Elderly driver hits cycling children in France, 7 hospitalised

  LA ROCHELLE, France, June 5, 2024 (AFP) – An 83-year-old driver struck a group of cycling children in western France on Wednesday, injuring seven, three of them seriously, officials said. The group of 12 children, aged 8 to 11, was heading from a leisure centre to a park on bicycles mid-morning when a woman driving a small hatchback hit them at a roundabout in the west coast city of La Rochelle, officials said. Seven […]

Four children among 27 dead in India amusement park fire

MUMBAI, May 26, 2024 (AFP) – Four young children were among 27 people killed when a fire in India ripped through a crowded amusement park, police said, as rescuers on Sunday scoured the site the morning after the blaze. Survivors reported having to kick down doors and leap out of windows to escape the inferno that swept through a centre packed full of young people enjoying games including bowling, Indian media reported on Sunday. Lines […]

Sweden orders review after ‘explosion’ of ADHD cases

  STOCKHOLM, May 24, 2024 (AFP) – Sweden is seeing “an explosion” of ADHD cases among children that has put it far above the global average, the government said Friday as it ordered a review to find out why. Around 10.5 percent of boys and six percent of girls in Sweden in 2022 had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Social Affairs Minister Jakob Forssmed told reporters, citing statistics from the Board of […]

Heatwave cancels lessons for half Pakistan’s schoolchildren

LAHORE, Pakistan, May 23, 2024 (AFP) – Half of Pakistan’s pupils will be shut out of schools for a week as the nation takes crisis measures to lessen the effect of a series of heatwaves, officials said Thursday. Some 26 million students will be out of lessons from Saturday in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, which has ordered schools to close for the summer break one week early because of the soaring temperatures. The early […]

Nestle denies ‘double standard’ on baby food in poorer countries

ZURICH (AFP) – Nestle denied Thursday that it was applying any “double standard” after an NGO accused the Swiss food giant of selling baby food with high levels of added sugar in low-income countries but not in wealthier nations. “There is no double standard,” the company said in a statement. “We apply the same nutrition, health and wellness principles everywhere.” In a report published last week, Swiss NGO Public Eye said that “two of the […]

France police find ‘bones’ of toddler missing in the Alps: prosecutor

  MARSEILLE, March 31, 2024 (AFP) – French investigators have found and identified the “bones” of a toddler whose disappearance last summer in a tiny village in the French Alps shocked the nation, a prosecutor said Sunday. Emile, two-and-a-half years old, was staying with his grandparents for the first day of the summer holidays when he vanished on July 8 last year. Two neighbours last saw him in the late afternoon walking alone on a […]

More than 130 kidnapped Nigerian schoolchildren released

By Laurie CHURCHMAN ABUJA, March 24, 2024 (AFP) – More than 130 schoolchildren seized by gunmen in a mass kidnapping in northwestern Nigeria earlier this month were released unharmed on Sunday, officials and the army said. The kidnapping in Kuriga, Kaduna state on March 7 was one of the biggest such attacks in years and prompted a national outcry over insecurity. Teachers and residents previously said around 280 pupils were kidnapped, but the army said […]

Nigeria: Gunmen kidnap more than 280 students in shocking school raid

  Local government officials in Kaduna State confirmed the kidnapping attack on Kuriga school on Thursday, but gave no figures as they said they were still working out how many children had been abducted. At least one person was shot dead during the attack, local residents said. Sani Abdullahi, one of the teachers at the GSS Kuriga school in the Chikun district, said staff managed to escape with many students when the gunmen attacked the […]

Florida lawmakers pass kids’ social media ban, bill heads to governor

MIAMI, Feb 23, 2024 (AFP) – Florida lawmakers moved Thursday toward enacting one of the strictest bans on children’s use of social media in the United States, sending to the governor a bill to keep those under 16 off such platforms. The controversial legislation seeks to protect children’s mental health against the “addictive features” of such platforms, amid fears over online dangers including from sexual predators, cyber bullying and teen suicide. The legislation cleared the […]

Russian drone attack kills 7, including 3 children in Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv

KHARKIV, Ukraine, Feb 10, 2024 (AFP) – A Russian drone attack on a petrol station in Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv on Saturday killed seven people, including three children, and destroyed nearly half a street, local authorities said. “A whole family of 5 people died in a fire in a private house: a husband and wife and their three children (seven-year-old, four-year-old and seven-month-old boys),” Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on the Telegram social network. […]