UK News: Children saved from internet paedophiles

A RECORD number of children have been rescued from paedophiles prowling the internet for the fifth consecutive year, a specialist police unit said today.

More than 1000 kids have been safeguarded or protected, including 414 in the last year, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre said.

Online hackers targeted

A CYBER-WEAPONS programme to counter growing threats to national security is being developed by the government, it emerged today.

The scheme will provide the UK with a "toolbox" of offensive options to fight online hackers targeting the country's critical services and government departments.

House prices to begin four-year recovery

HOUSE prices are set to be 16 per cent higher by the end of 2015 following a four-year recovery in the market that will start late this year, an economics group has predicted.

Property values will continue to fall for much of 2011, ending the year around 1.4 per cent lower than they started it, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). But the market will begin to stabilise towards the end of the year, when property shortages will again underpin prices.

Red tape business boost

A REDUCTION in EU red tape for Britain's small businesses could save firms as much as 300 million a year, UK business minister Ed Davey has said.

He was speaking last night after EU ministers agreed on simpler accounting rules to cut the amount of bureaucracy confronting the smallest "micro firms" - those with a turnover of less than 434,000 a year, or fewer then ten staff.

Cheryl given Cole shoulder

THE judging line-up for this year's X Factor has been confirmed, but there is no place for Cheryl Cole.

Pop mogul Louis Walsh will be joined by Take That's Gary Barlow, pop singer Kelly Rowland and Tulisa Contostavlos of urban hip-hop band N-Dubz.

London: A punter staked more than 100,000 on tennis star Rafael Nadal to win his last match at the French Open tournament. The man, who uses a central London branch of William Hill, has placed 25 consecutive winning bets and put 117,857 on Nadal to beat Ivan Ljubicic at odds of 1/100.

Kent: An 11-year-old boy has died after falling into a river. A passer-by saw the child fall into the River Medway in Maidstone at about 2.30pm yesterday and jumped in to save him, but he was unable to find him. The youngster's body was pulled from the water at about 4.15pm.