It is a guilty secret for many an exhausted parent: the distracting power of CBeebies. But allowing children under three to watch television can impair their linguistic and social development and puts them at risk of health problems, a psychologist told MPs yesterday.

A pensioner will have to lose his sight in one eye before health chiefs will consider treating him, a leading charity for the blind has claimed. Leslie Howard, 76, from Acomb, York, was diagnosed with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in his right eye last November.

Binge-drinking harms women’s brains more than it does men’s, according to research published yesterday. Tests suggest that excessive drinking undermines cognitive abilities such as memory, problem solving and planning more rapidly in women.

The large disparity in mortality rates in NHS hospitals is exposed today in research carried out for The Daily Telegraph. Patients are twice as likely to die in hospitals with the highest mortality rates than in those with the lowest, according to a report from Dr Foster Research, the independent health information company.

A hearing into the conduct of a Registered Social Worker from Gateshead will be held from 30 April to 3 May 2007 by the social care workforce regulator for England the General Social Care Council (GSCC).

Inner city children from poor families are much more likely to seek emergency care for asthma than their more affluent peers, finds research published ahead of print in Thorax. But the reasons are not the expected culprits of damp housing, overcrowding, or living with a smoker, finds the study.

The Stroke Association urges the public to get their blood pressure tested and avoid being a statistic of the UK’s third biggest killer. The call comes as the charity reveals figures that show nearly a quarter of people in the UK are unknowingly suffering from undiagnosed high blood pressure.

A Class A drug epidemic has triggered a huge surge in the number of young people being treated for mental health disorders, according to a NHS study.

Ian Huntley has confessed for the first time that he is a paedophile after finally admitting he sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl. The Soham killer’s admission follows a quest for justice by one of his first victims – Hailey Giblin – who says she was abused five years before he murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

{mosimage}Mrs Giblin, now 21, took out a civil claim for damages against Huntley after police refused to charge him. Her aim was to get a judge to formally declare that Huntley had attacked her. Now she has insisted that if police had believed her at the time, the Soham murders may never have happened.

Mrs Giblin said: “Had Humberside Police taken my allegations seriously when I first made them, Huntley would have been placed on the Sex Offenders Register and would not have been able to get a job as a school caretaker in Soham. Holly and Jessica may still be alive. Instead, the police did not believe my story. I was treated like a perpetrator, not as a victim, and Huntley was not charged.”

Initially Huntley, 33, contested the civil action insisting he had not attacked Mrs Giblin in an orchard in the Cleethorpes area in 1997. The case – which has cost Mrs Giblin about £60,000 in legal fees – had been due to be heard in the High Court later this year.

But the Daily Mail reveals that, faced with overwhelming evidence, Huntley has now admitted he did sexually abuse Mrs Giblin. He has signed a legal document last month at Wakefield prison in West Yorkshire, where Huntley is serving a double life sentence for the murders of tenyear- olds Holly and Jessica in Soham in the summer of 2002.

One in six young people leaving care is being placed in unsuitable or unsafe accommodation because of “poor” local authority planning, according to a new report.