Pregnant women are more vulnerable to infections of all sorts, because their immune systems are suppressed. That means that the H1N1 flu epidemic could strike disproportionately hard at women who are pregnant, and that every effort should be made to monitor cases carefully.

Diligent parliamentary questions by Andrew Pelling MP have elicited some useful information on H1N1 flu, which deserve a wider public.

Two claims have been made by ministers about British casualties in Afghanistan and whether there is a link between the numbers of soldiers killed and the numbers of helicopters deployed. Both are susceptible to checking - were the actual figures available.

What is the death rate from HINI flu likely to be? The Government has forecast that by the end of August 2009, 100,000 people a day will be catching the disease, so it is vital to know as accurately as we can how many are likely to die of it.

Targets are usually well-meant. They're designed to inject a note of urgency into otherwise sluggish systems and raise productivity. But the outcome is seldom strictly what anybody intended.

Figures published today by the School Food Trust show that the Government’s target of increasing the take-up of school meals is going to be missed. Is this a failure? Yes and no.

The rise of the British National Party has been attributed in part to claims that immigants are getting favourable access to social housing. The Equality and Human Rights Commission set out to investigate the claims, and concluded that they are a myth.

 Marry a younger woman and live longer, said a rash of headlines (Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail) earlier this month. Now the story’s surfaced again (Daily Mail, today) in the form of a feature. Pretty soon, it’ll be an accepted fact that acquiring a young blonde is the route to eternal life.

 Four out of five people are satisfied with their local area as a place to live, a new survey published today by the Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) has found. But issues about how the survey was designed and carried out, together with an embarrassingly low response rate to some questions, suggest we shouldn’t attach too much importance to the findings.

 The Home Office has published a consultation paper on its plans for retaining DNA profiles of individuals arrested for crimes but not convicted.