Home fires: The world's most lethal pollution

Smoke from family stoves kills two million people a year

By Larisa Brown and Michelle Nichols

Sunday, 23 January 2011

An unventilated cooking fire in Bhutan is fuelled by yak dung and wood. Smoke from indoor stoves causes cancer, child pneumonia and obstructive pulmonary disease. Photograph: James Stanfield/National Geographic/Getty.

The world's deadliest pollution does not come from factories billowing smoke, industries tainting water supplies or chemicals seeping into farm land. It comes from within people's own homes. Smoke from domestic fires kills nearly two million people each year and sickens millions more, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

A new UN project has now been set up to try to reduce this appalling toll. It aims, over the next nine years, to put 100 million clean cooking stoves into homes in the developing world... Full story.

(This story was the front page lead in the World News supplement of The Independent on Sunday, 23 January 2011.)

Bride shed 11st for dream wedding day

HOME NEWS

January 5, 2011 Wednesday 2:48 PM BST

Larisa Brown and Ella Pickover, Press Association

Diet and exercise guru Rosemary Conley dished out awards today to 10 star slimmers including a bride who shed 11st for her special day.

The winners of the Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Magazine Slimmer of the Year 2011 awards lost 100 stone between them.

Laura Powell, 27, from Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, slimmed down so she could slip into a glittering size 10 dress for her wedding day on December 27.

She scooped the prize Bride Slimmer of the Year at the awards ceremony at the London Marriott Hotel County Hall...

(This 1851 word story was used in full by the Daily Mail and as the basis for regional variants such as Edinburgh slimmer loses half her body weight and Welsh slimmer drops 10 stone.)

Undergraduates warned of new student loan delays

Students have been warned they may not receive their full loans in time for the start of the new university term, as the body responsible for awarding funds is hit by administrative problems for a second successive year.

By Matthew Moore and Larisa Brown

Published: 6:30AM BST 13 Aug 2010

Just 12 months after hundreds of thousands of undergraduates were left without money for rent and books following the collapse of the student loan system, there are fears of a new wave of problems...

Full story.

(This story was the front page lead in the online edition and a front page story in the printed edition of the Daily Telegraph on 13 August 2010.)

University crackdown on A-level resits

Leading universities are introducing rules to regulate A-level resits as record numbers of teenagers rejected from degree courses prepare to take exams again.

By Graeme Paton and Larisa Brown

Published: 10:00PM BST 16 Aug 2010

Many institutions are imposing “bans” on resits for some courses or demanding that students who take tests a second time score higher marks...

International Left-Handed Day: Left facts

To mark International Left-Handed day here are a collection of facts about leftness:

By Larisa Brown

Published: 8:30AM BST 13 Aug 2010

1.) Historically, left- handed people were considered to be evil and inferior, with the use of the left hand being associated with witchcraft...

All ten facts.

(This online feature was published by the Daily Telegraph on 13 August 2010.)