A couple exposed by the Newcastle Evening Chronicle for ripping-off hard up families across Britain have been ordered to pay back £36,000.
The pair, who admitted making at least £250,000 in a mail order scam, were caught after a Chronicle reporter investigated complaints about them.

Former Lincolnshire Echo photographer Frazer Harrison is to get married in America next year.
Frazer, who began his journalism at the Echo and went on to work for the Hull Daily Mail, now rubs shoulders with the rich and the famous, capturing celebrity pictures for glossy magazines.
He plans to marry Gissoo Abadi, whom he met in America, next May.

The Southern Daily Echo is offering a £500 reward to find the killers of a cocker spaniel found in a Hampshire river.
The dog was found with a 10kg weight tied to her, and the paper printed a shocking photograph of the dead dog in a bid to find the killer.
It has now joined readers in offering a reward, which will be paid to anyone who supplies information leading to the conviction of the killer.

Former South Wales Evening Post journalist Huw Rossiter has been appointed head of media relations at the new television, radio and telecoms super-regulator Ofcom.
The Office of Communications assumes power at the end of 2003, inheriting the duties of the Broadcasting Standards Commission, the ITC, Oftel, the Radio Authority and the Radiocommunications Agency.

The Oldham Evening Chronicle’s website has proved a hit – a million times over.
www.oldham-chronicle.co.uk was launched late in 1999. A visitor counter was added shortly afterwards and more than 1,000,000 hits have now been recorded.

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