THIS week the term credit crunch was added to the Oxford English Dictionary, defined as "a severe shortage of money or credit". Other odd financial phrases include:

THE victims of a double murder might have died for the sake of two handheld games consoles, police said last night.

A NOTORIOUS and dangerous paedophile has gone missing less than two months after being freed early from a ten-year prison sentence.

A MOTHER who had been falsely accused by her serviceman husband of killing their baby daughter yesterday spoke of how the pressure of suspicion made her begin to doubt her own

A TEENAGE mother forced to give birth more than a hundred miles from home was handed £50 to catch the bus while her baby was airlifted to a hospital in Aberdeen.

WITH its department stores offering consistently high service and good prices, it has long been an institution considered almost immune to the looming threat of recession.

AN 11-YEAR-OLD boy had to be revived in hospital after drinking almost a bottle of vodka.

MORE than 60 years ago, Guido DeBonis was one of a team of Italian prisoners of war who fashioned a small chapel out of two drab Nissen huts in Orkney.

KENNY MacAskill, the justice secretary, has ruled out introducing a "buddy" scheme for paedophiles and rapists, despite it cutting reoffending in England.

CONSERVATIVE leader Annabel Goldie marked the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service yesterday by giving blood.

PRIVATE David Poderis was lying flat on the roof of a small brick building when the jolt to his helmet came.

THE crumbling state of an iconic Scottish building said to have one of the finest views in world golf has angered politicians and officials of the game.

TWO guards escorted us to the compound, their guns ready loaded. This may have seemed a bit excessive for a walk of just several hundred metres up a dusty hill, but this

LABOUR is to order virtually all of its Scottish MPs and MSPs to campaign in Glasgow East as it prepares for a "big fight" with the SNP in a knife-edge bid to save the

That's the trouble with parenthood. It not only reorders your priorities to the point where you go into the lingerie department of a store and look automatically for something with ducks on it, but it even edits your fantasies. I

Our pet guru, veterinary surgeon Pete Wedderburn, answers your queries We have two dogs, Clementine (aged four) and Mildred (one). Clementine loves car journeys, but Mildred gets terribly sick. As soon as the car starts moving, she drools and paces

For at the same time as Stanley and Millie Thomas (ages seven and five) are logged on to the site at their home in Oxfordshire, so Emma and Kristin Berge (ages seven and four) are online in south-west Norway. As