Daily roundup 10 January: Royal visit, Damian Hinds, and knife crime

Prince Harry and his fiancé Meghan Markle visited a youth radio station on their second official royal outing together yesterday. The Evening Standard reports that the couple visited Reprezent FM in Brixton, a "youth-led" radio station which has launched the careers of some of Britain's biggest grime and rap stars including Stormzy and Jamz Supernova, where they met presenters and staff.


Concerns have been raised about a potential conflict of interest after it emerged that the new Education Secretary accepted more than £5,000 from the Catholic church in 2014 to pay for a parliamentary intern. The Guardian reports that Damian Hinds, who was appointed on Monday to succeed Justine Greening, listed the donation in the register of members' interests, but Humanists UK, which has led a campaign against plans to drop the 50 per cent cap on religious selection at free schools, said the funding of interns by the Catholic church "represents inappropriate influence within parliament and raises questions about conflict of interest".


Rivalry between gangs in Newham and social media posts of crews goading their enemies online are contributing to escalating knife violence, the London borough's top police officer has said. The Newham Recorder reports that chief superintendent Ade Adelekan said he believes prevention rather than enforcement is the best way to tackle the rise in violence - which has seen knife attacks on under-25s rise by 21 per cent in the last year to the third highest of any London borough.


Singing could help mothers recover from postnatal depression more quickly, a study suggests. The BBC reports that researchers found that women who took part in group singing sessions with their babies experienced a much faster improvement in their symptoms than those who did not.


A service in Norfolk that helps schools with behaviour challenges is to close. The Norwich Evening News reports that Engage Educational Services, which runs the Short Stay School for Norfolk for excluded children, has announced that its child support team will close at Easter. Since 2013, its team has run paid-for programmes to support schools in a bid to make permanent exclusions a last resort.


One of Britain's best-performing grammar schools has banned staff from calling pupils "girls" to avoid upsetting transgender children. The Mirror reports that Altrincham Grammar School for Girls said it was moving to "gender neutral language" instead. In a letter to parents, principal Stephanie Gill said the term "girls" will be no longer be used when addressing students to break "ingrained habits in the way pupils are spoken to and spoken about".