The role of the home and the way it might be managed in the future have been debated by international experts from the fields of architecture, interior design, business studies and home-making. Delegates from more than a dozen countries gathered at London's QEII centre to answer the question: what makes a house a home?

Organised by the Home Renaissance Foundation and opened by Sir Bryan Sanderson, contributors included a Swedish mother-of-four who has made home-making into a multi-million pound business and a Spanish professor who asks whether running a home should be recognised as a profession.

Home base

Launching the conference Sir Bryan said the looming recession could actually provide a boost for the home. "It's counter-cyclical, like chocolate or biscuits, they become more important to people during hard times." The author, broadcaster and writer Charles Handy, agreed: "Recession will force us back to the… click here to read whole article and make comments

A divorcing Italian couple who argued acrimoniously in front of their 12-year-old child and fought for his affection face prosecution for causing him psychological suffering. The charge, which carries a prison sentence of up to five years, was brought after a health visitor reported that the child was disturbed. Legal experts think there is no precedent for the case in Britain or Europe.

The prosecution reported that the mother and father blamed each other for “shortcomings and educational errors in bringing up the child”, with each parent trying to “discredit, devalue and undermine the other” in front of him and “project their emotions onto him, above all anger”. This caused the child to become anxious and depressed, unable to concentrate or do his schoolwork, confused him and instilled in him “the conviction that his parents hated each other”. Both parents persisted in arguing in front of the child even though he… click here to read whole article and make comments

Desperate to meet a target for reducing teenage pregnancies by 2010, the British government has instructed 21 local authorities to promote long-acting contraceptive injections or implants for girls in their areas. The government also wants more school-based clinics to administer the jabs, which can makes girls infertile for up to three months. Teenagers can receive the injections or implants without their parents’ knowledge. The contraceptive push targets areas with high and increasing rates of teenage pregnancy and repeat abortions.

Official figures show there are 1200 girls under 15 taking long-acting contraception, as well as 2900 15-year-olds and 11,500 girls aged 16 or 17. These jabs and implants have been given to girls as young as 13. The government wants to see a big increase in the uptake because it has identified failures by teenage girls to take the daily pill correctly as one reason for under-age pregnancies. The UK has the… click here to read whole article and make comments

Tech savvy schoolchildren are coming up with ever more elaborate excuses for filing to submit work on time. New research among 1000 teachers suggests the average British teacher now hears 15 different excuses every week, and 70 per cent of teachers noticed an upsurge in the number of pupils blaming technology.

Here are the top five tech-related reasons for not doing homework:

My computer crashed and I lost it;

I finished my homework but then deleted it by accident;

I could not print it out;

My internet was down so I could not do any research;

I lost my laptop.

Worst tech-related excuses:

My dad’s computer was hacked by the Russians and they stole my homework;

A burglar stole my printed-out homework along with the computer;

The PC exploded when our… click here to read whole article and make comments

Unhappy people watch more television, while people who describe themselves as very happy spend more time on reading, socialising and religion, a new American study shows. Researchers at the University of Maryland analysed 30 years worth of data from time-use studies and social attitude surveys and found that spending time watching TV may cheer people up briefly but leave them dissatisfied in the long run. That means, says co-author and sociologist John P Robinson, that as the economy worsens and people lose their jobs, TV viewing might increase significantly and also sleep. However, happiness would take a plunge.

The study, which aimed to find out how various activities correlate with happiness, found that unhappy people watch about 20 per cent more TV than very happy people, after taking into account education, income, marital status and other factors with a bearing on happiness and TV viewing. One reason seems to be that… click here to read whole article and make comments

Forced abortions can still occur in China under the one-child policy, as a case that has been brought to international attention shows. An ethnic woman in the north-western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region who is six months pregnant was forcibly taken by police to a hospital early this week to have the baby, her third child, aborted. However, pressure from the United States led to the abortion being abandoned. “I brought her home,” the local population control committee chief told Radio Free Asia. “She wasn’t in good enough health to have an abortion.”

The one-child policy applies mainly to majority Han Chinese and allows ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs, to have additional children, with peasants permitted to have three children and city-dwellers two. But while Tursun is a peasant, her husband is from the city, so their status is unclear. The government also uses… click here to read whole article and make comments

Children abandoned by their parents into the care of the state of Nebraska have attracted worldwide attention as the state legislature reviews the safe-haven law that precipitated the problem. All states in the US have safe-haven laws, which are intended to prevent infanticide and unsafe abandonment of children. Nebraska passed its law in July this year but did not include an age limit. As a result, parents -- a few even from out of state -- began arriving at hospitals with children of all ages, one as old as 18. A total of 34 were received by the end of October, most pre-teens or teenagers.

Some parents claim they acted out of desperation to get help that they badly needed but was difficult to access. State officials say most of the families involved have had help under Medicaid and from mental health services, although only one of the 29 from Nebraska… click here to read whole article and make comments

With the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth looming large, there is no end in sight to the creation-evolution debate. Nearly a third of British teachers (29 per cent) in a poll said that creationism and intelligent design should be given the same status as evolution in the classroom; 53 per cent disagreed. However, 88 per cent agreed that if pupils raised the issue in a science lesson, they should be able to discuss it. The poll of 1200 teachers was commissioned by the broadcaster Teachers’ TV.

Recently, members of the Royal Society forced the resignation of its education director, Professor Michael Reiss, after he advocated toleration of creationist views in the classroom. Prof Reiss estimated that 10 per cent of British schoolchildren came from families with creationist beliefs. Some 50 per cent of teachers in the new poll agreed with his view that excluding alternative explanations to evolution is counter-productive,… click here to read whole article and make comments

An 8-year-old Arizona boy who confessed to shooting his father and a man boarding in their home last week has mystified everyone who knows him, according to reports. The boy used a .22 calibre rifle (his father had recently bought him for hunting) and shot each victim at least four times, methodically stopping and reloading as he killed them. The case is extremely rare, says one criminologist. From 1976 to 2005 there were 62 cases in the US in which a 7- or 8-year-old was arrested on murder charges, FBI data shows, but only two of those cases involved a child killing a parent.

So far there is no evidence of sexual or other physical abuse, which might explain the boy’s behaviour. He told the police he had been spanked the night before because he was having trouble at school, but did not give… click here to read whole article and make comments

Rapidly ageing Japan is facing a crime surge among its senior citizens, a government report says.

"The number of people aged 65 or older arrested for crimes other than traffic violations totalled 48,605 last year, up from 24,247 in 2002, the Justice Ministry said in an annual crime report. Elderly crimes rose 4.2 percent in 2007 from a year earlier, though the total number of people arrested fell 4.8 percent to 366,002. Thefts, such as shoplifting and pick-pocketing, were the most common crimes committed by older people, the report said, citing low income, declining health and a sense of isolation as the main causes of the trend. Serious crimes such as murder and robbery were less prevalent among seniors than younger people. The report said elderly crime is growing at a much faster pace than the population of senior citizens."

About one-fifth of Japan’s population of 128 million… click here to read whole article and make comments