News

Boko Haram has launched a new attack on the key Nigerian city of Maiduguri, AFP has reported.

A crowd has gathered outside the Japanese Prime Minister's office in Tokyo following news that Islamic State militants have beheaded journalist Kenji Goto.

Hundreds of children under 10 have been reported to the police for sex offences including rape, according to figures obtained by the Sunday Mirror through a Freedom of Information (FoI) request.

Data from 33 police forces across England and Wales showed 776 children aged up to nine had been investigated for sex crimes.

Information from the Metropolitan Police also appeared to show a four-year-old was recorded as suspected of committing rape between January and September 2014 according to the paper.

NSPCC spokesman Jon Brown told the Sunday Mirror: "These figures may seem hard to believe but, unfortunately, there are cases of children as young as three committing sexual offences.

"There should be no cases like this. These children are not paedophiles - they are victims themselves."

The paper said the number of children committing sex crimes had doubled from 128 in 2012 to 254 last year and the figures could be higher as several forces did not respond to its FoI request.

Nearly 360,000 people have filed self-assessment tax returns in a last-minute rush to meet the deadline.

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) said the forms were received between midnight and 9pm on Saturday and almost 10.2 million had been filed in total.

The deadline for submitting an online self-assessment tax return and paying any tax due was midnight on Saturday 31st January.

Those in self-assessment who fail to meet this face an initial fixed penalty of £100, even if there is no tax to pay, plus interest on any tax not paid by the due date.

All tax returns which are still outstanding must be submitted online, as the deadline for filing paper returns passed on 31st October last year.

On last year's deadline day, 557,000 people scrambled to get their returns in online.

Professor Carl Djerassi, the chemist widely considered the father of the birth control pill, has died at the age of 91.

Professor Djerrasi died of complications from cancer at his home in San Francisco, Stanford University spokesman Dan Stober said.

He was most famous for leading a research team in Mexico City that developed norethindrone, a synthetic molecule that became a key component of the first birth control pill in 1951.

'The Pill', as it came to be known, radically transformed sexual practices and women's lives.

In his book, 'This Man's Pill', Professor Djerassi said the invention also changed his life, making him more interested in how science affected society.