A 12-year-old girl took her dad to court after he grounded her for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet. And she won. The father banned his daughter from going on a school trip after she used a friend's computer to chat on websites he had blocked at home, and then posted pictures of herself online that her dad considered inappropriate.

A sudden baby boom among students at Gloucester High School here has taken town officials by surprise. An investigation has revealed that the 17 high school girls expecting babies are part of an apparent teenage "pregnancy pact. "School officials became suspicious in early October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. After questioning, nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.

Two Spanish children have been sent to a mental health institution by their parents to get treatment for addiction to their mobile phones. The children had allegedly ceased to undertake normal activities without first having their phones. The children, aged 12 and 13, were admitted to Child and Youth Mental Health Centre in Lleida, in northeastern Spain near Barcelona, three months ago. Their concerned parents brought them in after they spend an average of six hours a day on their phones, talking, texting or playing games.

Education Minister Kathleen Wynne had sent an investigator to review the books of the Toronto Catholic School Board over its inability to manage its expenses. The probe comes in the aftermath of a report that the board's trustees spent excessively, particularly on benefit packages that cost taxpayers on the average $107,218 per trustee. Heading the investigation team will be Pierre Filitrault, a former senior business official of the same board. Wynne gave Filitrault one week to go over the books and management practices of the school board.

California legislators are on an amendment and enactment mode, targeting principally the state's various driving laws. Among the measures under consideration are a prohibition on drivers carrying live animals on their laps while behind the wheel. Another proposal seeks to ban truants and high school dropouts from driving, while one bill urges a study on the danger silent electric cars hold for blind pedestrians.