The Government's planned new Food Safety Council will fail to rebuild public confidence following the devastating food scares of recent years, opposition leaders and consumer groups said yesterday.

The Government's planned new Food Safety Council will fail to rebuild public confidence following the devastating food scares of recent years, opposition leaders and consumer groups said yesterday.

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CHILDREN OF WAR APPEAL

A man abducted his five-year-old daughter and took her to the United States, sparking a three-year hunt, after his wife began an affair with a younger man, a court was told yesterday.

Freelance Gerry Brown on kiss'n'tell, Tories, tip-offs, and technology

A year ago, British Steel was whingeing about state subsidies and flagrant undercutting by its continental competitors, while the European Commission attempted to knock heads together to bring order to the marketplace.

The London Monarchs finally won a home game at the fourth time of asking when they came from behind to defeat Rhein Fire 34-14 at White Hart Lane yesterday.

"It's so refreshing to have so many groups performing your play," enthuses Jenny McLeod, the 24-year-old playwright whose The Wild at Heart Club is part of BT National Connections. "Usually you get one production and then it's never seen again." McLeod's Raising Fires was well received at the Bush Theatre, London, in 1994, but has not been produced since.

All the fishing magazines are full of what to buy for keen anglers this Christmas. So in keeping with giving readers what they want, I have found a few tasteful selections so those who know nothing about the sport can choose a tasteful, practical but original gift.

A student accused of murdering a stranger in an imagined SAS initiation test was psychotic and showing early signs of schizophrenia at the time of the attack, an Old Bailey jury heard yesterday.

ALTHOUGH not recommended for the drinking classes, games requiring a steady hand and keen eyesight are currently in vogue.

AN EVOCATIVE photograph, taken early this century, depicts an itinerant knife-sharpener plying his trade in the middle of what is now my home town's busiest crossroads. Closer to the present, I recall reducing the blade of my Boy Scout jack- knife to blobs of molten metal while attempting to sharpen it with a big, fast-turning abrasive wheel.

TODAY we continue the serialisation of our sizzling Parliamentary novel, 'All-Night Session'] The story so far: Suzanne Smallwood runs the Westminster advisory service for MPs who are having trouble with their marriages, or indeed having trouble with other people's marriages. Today she is talking Sir Thomas Tankerton MP through his marital problems . . .