General News
RoSPA: A new campaign has been launched in Northern Ireland to raise awareness of the dangers hair straighteners can pose to children, causing burns which can require hospital admission & surgical intervention, including plastic surgery.
MoD: A new type of laser eye protection (LEP) for pilots is being tested by the Ministry of Defence. The LEPs can filter out different wavelengths of light from the spectrum, including those used in various laser weapons & laser pens, which are becoming increasingly available from the internet.
FSA: Brasserie de Saint-Omer has extended its recall of several brands of beer, which includes a number of supermarket own brands, because a limited number of bottles may contain small pieces of glass. The Food Standards Agency has issued a product recall information notice. .
FSA: The Food Standards Agency is reminding people across the UK of the importance of following good food hygiene practice, and what to do if they go down with food poisoning. The update is prompted by the current outbreak of E.coli O157 in Belfast. The FSA is working closely with the Public Health Agency and other authorities in Northern Ireland on the ongoing investigation into the outbreak.
IPCC: Deborah Glass, Deputy Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission has issued a statement regarding the report by the Hillsborough Independent Panel.
EH: English Heritage has launched the Heritage at Risk Register 2012 and announced an ambitious programme to find out how the one major element of our heritage not already covered by the Register - the nation's Grade II listed buildings - can be assessed.
There are some 345,000 Grade II buildings in England, accounting for 92% of all listed buildings. Beautiful, historic or architecturally special, they are the houses, cottages, shops, inns, offices, schools, town halls, libraries, farms, mills and other distinguished buildings that shape the character of our cities, towns and villages.
TfL: Since its launch, TfL's real time bus information service has dealt with more than 620m requests - an average of 1.6m requests via the internet & smart phones and 36,000 requests via text each day. TfL has also recently completed the installation of 2,500 new and improved bus information roadside signs across the Capital.
MoD: HMS Caroline, the last surviving warship of the Battle of Jutland, will be preserved for the nation as a result of an agreement to gift the ship to the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN). The move will allow the museum to bid for external funding for her restoration & preservation.
MoD: A national memorial to commemorate all the members of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) who have died while serving on operations around the world has been officially unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.
DCMS: New playing fields will be created across the country thanks to grants from Sport England’s Protecting Playing Fields fund. More than 50 areas announced last week will share a £2.4m pot of National Lottery funding to create 165 high-quality sports pitches that will be protected from developers for at least 25 years.
STFC: European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the nearest to Earth at only 4.3 light-years away. This result represents a major step towards the detection of a twin Earth in the immediate vicinity of the Sun – the Holy Grail of astronomy.
The planet, the lightest ever discovered around a star like the Sun, was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) La Silla Observatory in Chile. The Science & Technology Facilities Council manages the UK subscription to ESO.
NO: The Local Government Ombudsman has committed to transforming the organisation in response to the report of the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee on the work of the LGO, published in July 2012.
ACE: Arts Council England has announced the successful applicants to the 4th round of their Strategic touring programme. A total of £2,647,109 has been awarded to 5 organisations.
CEOP: A new weapon to combat the threat of UK sex offenders travelling to other countries and gaining access to children through teaching, charity or volunteering roles has been launched. Analysis by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre of offender management cases undertaken in 2011 found that 1 in 5 were associated with roles that involved access to children.
CEOP has worked with the ACPO Criminal Records Office (ACRO) to launch the International Child Protection Certificate (ICPC), which CEOP believes is a vital new tool for schools & other overseas organisations in the prevention of harm to children under their care.
Similar to the UK’s CRB system, the ICPC is a police check for UK nationals who are travelling & working overseas. It will help identify & screen out those who have previous convictions that make them unsuitable to be working with children.
Monitor: The regulator Monitor is urging NHS foundation trusts to start delivering hospital cost savings earlier in the year in order to reduce their exposure to financial risk. The advice comes in the latest quarterly report on the health of the foundation trust sector, which now comprises two-thirds of all NHS secondary care providers running about 1,000 hospitals.
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