“If you want to be a good writer, son, you must read. Read, read, read. Read everything.” 

I can still picture my grandfather imparting those words of wisdom to me from the green leather chair in my grandparents’ living room. He was not always a man to heed advice himself – he was smoking a cigar at the time – but he had plenty to offer. That nugget stuck. And lo, he was right. 

As we explore youth and education in the next issue of Positive News magazine, we thought we’d ask readers about the life lessons they received as a child that have stuck with them. 

All inherited nuggets of wisdom are welcome. It could be a fable that changed  how you see the world, a simple gardening tip or a style secret that helped you dress well. We’ll publish the best responses in an upcoming article, providing a knowledge base for other readers to dip into. 

To take part, fill out the form below.

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“If this Committee is serious about learning the truth about Epstein’s trafficking crimes, it would not rely on press gaggles to get answers from our current president on his involvement; it would ask him directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files,” she wrote.

During Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday (February 25), Mrs Badenoch told Sir Keir Starmer he should “ask why his backbenchers are saying that they’re being called the ‘paedo defenders party,’ and followed that up by saying she would “absolutely not apologise” later in the day.

Her jibe followed reporting by The Times that female Labour MPs had told Sir Keir earlier this month that voters had “screamed” the phrase at them in the street over the Peter Mandelson scandal.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (Image: Scott Heppell/PA Wire)

On Wednesday evening, the Conservative leader said she would “absolutely not apologise” for claiming Labour was being called a “paedo defenders party”.

Today, (Thursday, February 26), during a visit to Warbottle Academy near Newcastle, the Prime Minister refused to respond to Mrs Badenoch.

When asked about the term paedo defenders, he said: “I came into politics to change the lives of millions of people for the better, so I concentrate on what action the government needs to take to do that.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch (Image: James Manning/PA Wire)

“We’ve been focusing on tackling the cost-of-living crisis.

“That’s why this week we’ve been working hard to make sure that energy bills are brought down.

“Yesterday, we had the energy price cap announcement. That’s 117 pounds off energy bills, which will be for every household across the country, which is very, very important.”

The Prime Minister added: “And look, there are other measures, rail fares have been frozen, prescription charges have been frozen, wages, minimum living wages, will be going up here.

“And of course, inflation is dropping now to three per cent, and I hope it will drop even further. These are the issues that I think matter most to the country, matter most to me.

“For many people across the country, that’s what they want the government to be focused on, because that’s what their priorities are.”

Lord Peter Mandelson (Image: James Manning/PA WIRE)

Mrs Badenoch’s comments have drawn strong criticism from Labour MP Natalie Fleet, who was groomed as a teenager, and Katie Amess, the daughter of murdered Tory MP Sir David Amess.

Ms Amess said it had been “very inflammatory” and called for Mrs Badenoch to apologise, adding: “It’s not the way that our politicians should be talking, unfortunately.”

But appearing on a phone-in on LBC on Wednesday evening, Mrs Badenoch stood by her comments.

She said: “I will absolutely not apologise.

“I remember when Keir Starmer and the Labour Party were putting out posters saying Rishi Sunak was supporting paedophiles so that they wouldn’t go to prison.

“These people know how to dish it, but they don’t want to take it.”

Mrs Badenoch declined to say whether she thought Labour was a party of “paedo defenders”, saying: “It wasn’t my words, a female Labour MP used that language.”

She added: “Nobody would be calling them that if they held themselves to higher standards.”

Sainsbury’s, which has its main York store in Monks Cross Shopping Park and around 10 ‘local’ stores throughout the city, has said more than 300 jobs are at risk across the country.  

The company said most of the cuts are going to impact its technology and data divisions, as it restructures into one team for Argos and two for Sainsbury’s. 

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “By maximising the power of our data and technology, we’re freeing up our teams to concentrate on what matters most – delivering great food, brilliant service and fantastic value for our customers.”

According to the company, delivery driving jobs are not at risk. 

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The firm is also rolling out changes across its store leadership, creating four new regional store director roles dedicated to convenience shops, as well as overhauling its Argos delivery model and creating a separate leadership board for the Argos business.

Sainsbury’s said the overhaul comes as it enters the third year of its so-called Next Level strategy. 

The announcement comes after a recent spate in the supermarket sector, with Tesco on Wednesday (February 25) unveiling plans to cut 180 roles amid a head office shake-up that will also see some created, while retail tech.

It also follows Sainsbury’s, which employs around 140,000 staff overall, announcing last January it would cut more than 3,000 jobs, including 20 percent of management roles. It also closed its remaining 61 cafes, including at the Monks Cross store.

Canine behaviourist Will Atherton shared his verdict on whether dogs should be allowed on furniture

Should you allow your dog to sleep on the furniture? It’s a long-running debate that often divides pet owners, but a recent perspective from one trainer could finally resolve it.

Will Atherton, a canine behaviourist from Derbyshire, has years of experience in his field, having worked with numerous dogs displaying various behavioural problems, including biting. He revealed that people regularly ask him whether dogs should be permitted on sofas, beds, and other furniture – and provided a thorough response.

“Should your dog be allowed on the furniture?” he asked in a TikTok during 2025. “And that’s a question I get all the time. And for me, it completely is up to you. I have a few little rules about it.”

First and foremost, Will urged viewers to consider whether their pet has any ongoing attitude problems. While he didn’t specify what these might entail, they could range from aggressive behaviour to overly excitable jumping.

When a dog is causing significant disruption at home, Will suggested that it might be advisable not to allow them on the sofa. However, if the dog is generally well-behaved, it should be acceptable as long as clear boundaries are set.

He said: “If you don’t have any big behaviour problems with your dog, then I think you can absolutely have them on the furniture if you want them. If you don’t want them on the furniture, that’s completely fine.

“But if they are going to go on the furniture, my thought is that they shouldn’t be allowed to have free access to jump up and off whenever they want. It should look like this.”

To demonstrate his point, Will gestured to Sully, a large dog perched on the floor beside his sofa. Will then continued: “They should wait with good manners, sitting, looking up to you for guidance and direction, and waiting for you to say, ‘up’.”

Upon command, Sully leapt up to join Will on the settee. “And they can jump on and they can have a cuddle,” he said. “And the most important thing is that just as well-mannered as getting on the furniture with you, it should be just as easy – Sully, off.”

In no time at all, Sully was back on the floor, following instructions. With this in mind, Will concluded: “If you can do that and you don’t have any problems with your dog elsewhere and you want them to come and have a cuddle on the sofa, then do so.”

Despite attempting to settle the dogs-on-furniture debate, Will’s video still sparked division among viewers online. Among those disagreeing, one individual commented: “I don’t have to ask anyone to have access to my sofa, why should my dog?”

At the time, another person also wrote: “I am not a control freak,” as someone else said: “My dogs are a part of my family, so they can go wherever they want to without asking to go there.”

However, others completely agreed with Will’s perspective. One user wrote: “My boys love being on the couch and I love having a snuggle with them on the couch, but they know when I say they need to get off, they do! And same for coming up!

“It’s so refreshing to hear a trainer who doesn’t want to just limit a dog’s life and surroundings and doesn’t guilt owners for wanting to share the space.” Meanwhile, another wrote: “Mine has free access to the furniture but when I tell him to get off, he does.”

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below

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ABU’S will be opening at 19 Cheltenham Crescent, next to the Cattlemens Grill, where the Kinara Tandoori restaurant and take-away used to be, in a part of the town that is dominated by food and drink outlets.

It follows Abu Raihan and his father Chef Abdul Mannan running Abu’s in Duke Street, Darlington, since 2019.

The family-run restaurant is the home of “Apna” Indian Cuisine, where “Apna” means ours, reflecting the family’ dedication to bringing diners “the most delicious Indian food that celebrates our heritage and culture.”

The menu will feature the regular Indian favourites including tikka, baltis, kormas, tandoori, karahi, plus a wide range of signature dishes.

Abu told the Press: “We are a family run restaurant. My father is the chef. I ( Abu) run the front of the house.

“The restaurant we are taking over first opened in 1987 called AliShaan and my father was the head chef who opened it.”

Abu’s father also had businesses in Harrogate during the early 1980s.

Abu continued: “Both my younger brothers also work with us in the family business. My sisters also help out on weekends. We will be serving Indian Food. My father has 53 year’s experience as a chef.”

Abu says the family are coming to Harrogate as this is where he was born. There is no confirmed opening date yet for the new restaurant, which will undergo a makeover before it opens, likely to be in around six weeks, once the renovations are completed.

If the Harrogate restaurant is as good as the Darlington original, diners look set for a treat. Darlington diners will also be relieved to know their own restaurant will remain open.

Tripadvisor awards Abu’s 4.8 stars out of five, based on 569 reviews, ranking it third out of 239 restaurants in Darlington.

One recent comment said: “My family went to Abu’s for the first time. The food was absolutely amazing and very good portions. Very friendly staff, and we will definitely be returning in the future. Also the toilets were sooo posh and clean, so clean I wouldn’t have minded eating my curry on the bog.”

Another said: “Went early doors on a Saturday and was fairly busy for the time of day. Welcoming and friendly staff, food was tasty with good size portions. Pretty impressive toilets as well.”

Google awards Abu’s 4.5 stars out of five based on 246 reviews.

The retailer opened its latest location at The Bridges shopping centre in Sunderland today (Thursday, February 26), offering visitors a fresh shopping experience after relocating from its previous site nearby.

The new store, spanning 16,200 sq ft, promises the same mix of discounted designer labels and high-street finds, with stock updated weekly in typical TK Maxx treasure-hunt style.

The store had their grand opening today (Thursday, February 26). (Image: Run Free PR)

A spokesperson for TK Maxx said: “We’re thrilled to relocate our Sunderland TK Maxx store to this prime location in The Bridges Shopping Centre.

“This exciting move gives customers a fresh, modern space to explore our fantastic brands for less, making every visit even more enjoyable than ever. At TK Maxx, we’re committed to delivering the very best for our customers and can’t wait for everyone to discover the treasures our new store has to offer”

The opening day kicked off with a bit of fun, as TK Maxx hosted a treasure hunt for shoppers with the chance to win gift cards valued at £50, £20, £10, and £5.

Shoppers were eager to explore the new store. (Image: Run Free PR)

Karen Eve, centre director at The Bridges, said: “We’re absolutely delighted to welcome TK Maxx to their fantastic new store at the Bridges. As a valued anchor retailer for many years, their move into this brand-new space marks an exciting new chapter.

“It not only enhances the shopping experience for our visitors but also reflects both their continued success and our ongoing commitment to investing in and evolving the centre.”

The store features fashion for the entire family, accessories, and homeware for visitors to explore.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has announced the country will hold an early election next month.

It comes as the country continues a standoff with the US over President Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland, with Ms Frederiksen seeking to capitalise on a surge in support for her defiant stance.

“I have recommended to King Frederik that elections be held on March 24,” Ms Frederiksen told the Danish parliament in Copenhagen on Thursday. The country was due to go to the polls no later than the end of October.

The Folketing, or parliament, has 179 seats – 175 of which are allocated to lawmakers representing Denmark and two apiece to lawmakers from Greenland and the Faroe Islands, its two semi-autonomous territories.

Ms Frederiksen, 48, has spent recent months discussing with European leaders ways to counter the US president’s renewed interest in annexing the Arctic island.

Opinion polls suggest this has provided a much-needed popularity boost for the Danish prime minister after public dissatisfaction over rising living costs and welfare pressures.

“This will be a decisive election, because it will be in the next four years that we as Danes and as Europeans will really have to stand on our own feet,” Ms Frederiksen said.

“We need to define our relationship with the United States, and we must rearm to ensure peace on our continent.”

She added: “As everyone knows, the conflict over Greenland is not over yet. The government will of course continue to look after Denmark’s interests.”

Mr Trump’s push to annex Greenland resulted in his short-lived threat last month to impose new tariffs on Denmark and several other European nations.

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The US, Denmark and Greenland subsequently held discussions on an Arctic security deal, though Ms Frederiksen and other Danish and Greenlandic officials have refused to negotiate on sovereignty.

After the negotiations, the US leader said he had “formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland”.

A general election must be held at least every four years in Denmark – but the prime minister can call one at any point.

The last election of the NATO and European Union member country was held on 1 November, 2022, and resulted in a three-party coalition staggering the left-right divide.

Ms Frederiksen, a centre-left Social Democrat, has held office since mid-2019.

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She currently heads a government with the Liberal Party of Defence Minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, and the centrist Moderate party of Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, a former PM.

The Social Democrats suffered a significant setback in the 2025 municipal elections, losing the Copenhagen mayoralty for the first time in 87 years.

However, although the party’s support fell to 18% in polls in December, it has since rebounded to 22%, the highest of any party, as Ms Frederiksen’s approval ratings were boosted by her handling of the Greenland dispute.

Discussing the Greenland crisis earlier this month, Ms Frederiksen said she remains wary, though the situation has calmed.

The standoff has further raised Ms Frederiksen’s profile on the international stage, where she gained attention for her swift response to the COVID-19 pandemic and for bolstering European support for Ukraine.

Benfica have categorically denied that Gianluca Prestianni admitted to his team-mates he racially abused Real Madrid’s Vinicius Junior.

Portuguese media had reported the Argentinian winger, who denies the accusation, had confessed his guilt to the rest of the squad.

However, his club insisted that was not the case.

“Benfica categorically denies that player Prestianni communicated to the squad or the club’s management that he had uttered a racist insult against Real Madrid player Vinicius Junior,” said a statement.

“As has already been made public, the player apologised to his team-mates for the incident that occurred during the match against Real Madrid, regretting its magnitude and consequences and assuring everyone, as he has done from the very beginning, that he is not racist.”

Prestianni was provisionally suspended for Wednesday’s Champions League play-off defeat against Real after Vinicius alleged he was racially abused by the Argentinian in the first leg.

The Brazilian left the field and refused to return, resulting in a stoppage in play that lasted 10 minutes in Lisbon.

Benfica boss Jose Mourinho was roundly criticised for his comments about the incident after appearing to intimate the winger had brought any abuse upon himself with his goal celebration, saying “a stadium where Vinicius plays, something happens, always”.

NEW YORK (AP) — Humans and Neanderthals cozied up from time to time when they lived in the same areas tens of thousands of years ago. But we don’t know much about who got with whom, or why.

A new genetic analysis offers some ancient gossip: The pairings were more often female humans with male Neanderthals.

How exactly this happened remains a huge question mark. Did human women venture into Neanderthal populations, or were the Neanderthal males drawn to larger human enclaves? Were these interactions peaceful, confusing, secretive or even violent?

“I don’t know if we’ll ever get a definitive answer to how this happened, since we can’t travel back in time,” said population genetics expert Xinjun Zhang with the University of Michigan, commenting on the new analysis.

But the study, published Thursday in the journal Science, shows “that whenever Neanderthals and modern humans have mated, there has been a preference for male Neanderthals and female modern humans, as opposed to the other way around,” said author Alexander Platt, who studies genetics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Scientists know that Neanderthals and humans mated because there is a small but important percentage of Neanderthal DNA in most modern humans outside of sub-Saharan Africa — including genes that can help us fight some diseases and make us more susceptible to others.

But they have also known that the Neanderthal DNA is not distributed evenly throughout the human genome.

In particular, there is a surprising lack of Neanderthal DNA in the human X chromosome, one of the bundles of genes in each cell known as a sex chromosome, compared with the amount of Neanderthal DNA in the other, non-sex chromosomes in the cell.

Scientists thought that maybe the genes in those locations were simply not beneficial – or even harmful. Perhaps people with those gene patterns didn’t survive as well so those genes were filtered out by evolution over time.

Or, they thought, maybe the difference could be explained by how the two species intermingled.

To try to solve the riddle, Platt and colleagues looked instead at the Neanderthal genome and the human DNA that got interspersed during a “mating event” 250,000 years ago.

When comparing these genes, they found more of a human fingerprint on the Neanderthal X chromosome – the same chromosome that, in humans, has less Neanderthal DNA than would be expected.

The most likely explanation for this mirror image pattern is mating behavior. That’s because of the way sex chromosomes are passed from parents to children, explained Platt. Because genetic females have two X chromosomes and genetic males have one X and one Y chromosomes, two out of every three X chromosomes in a population, on average, are inherited from people’s mothers.

If more human females mated with Neanderthal males than the other way around, over thousands of years you would expect to see just what they found: more human DNA in Neanderthal X chromosomes and less Neanderthal DNA in human X chromosomes.

“I think that they’ve taken some really important steps in filling missing pieces to the puzzle,” said Joshua Akey, who studies evolutionary genomics at Princeton University and wasn’t involved with the new study.

The study can’t totally rule out other explanations. For example, Zhang said, it’s possible that the offspring of human males and Neanderthal females just didn’t survive as well.

But the simplest and most likely, explanation, the study found, is also the most interesting: “It’s not the result of a strictly Darwinian survival of the fittest,” Platt said. “It’s really the result of how we interact with each other, and what our culture and society and behavior is like.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.