1. Gordon Brown gave up a £2m pension on his first day in office
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2. At peak times, 32,000 pedestrians cross Oxford Circus junction in one hour.
More details (Times)

3. Lyrics from Jon Bon Jovi's new album are framed and hanging up in the White House.
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4. Journalists visiting Sesame Street are banned from asking Bert and Ernie if they are gay.
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5. The BBC rejected Sesame Street in 1971 because it was "too authoritarian".
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6. Elmo's favourite food is wasabi .
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7. Tall men can have small parents.
More details (Guardian)

8. Part-time veggies are called flexitarians.
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9. A missing child must usually have been missing for at least two years to warrant an age progression image.
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10. French babies cry with an accent.
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Seen 10 things? Send us a picture to use next week. Thanks to Alan Chesterman for this week's picture of 10 gold rings.

Each week the news quiz 7 days 7 questions will offer an answer. You are invited to suggest what the question might have been.

Suggestions should be sent using the COMMENTS BOX IN THIS ENTRY. And since nobody likes a smart alec, kudos will be deducted for predictability in your suggestions.

This week's answer is UNCANNY VALLEY. But what's the question?

UPDATE 1609 BST: The correct question is what is the name for the disquiet caused by synthetic people which almost, but not quite, match human expressiveness.
(More details)

Of your wilfully and deliberately wrong questions, we liked:

• How best describes the Rhondda now that the last tin manufacturer closed
• An Area of Outstanding Supernatural Beauty
• Where do Charlton Telepathic play?
• Where are all tin-openers manufactured?

Thanks to all who entered.

Re Stadium Naming Rights. "One wonders if there are any fans now who refer to it as Ashburton Grove." Yes, there are quite a few fans who refer to the E******* as Ashburton Grove.
Edd, Cardiff

Yes, there are still people who call it Ashburton Grove.
Ian C, Kent

Michael (Thursday's letters), only if it sells cupcakes.
Jim O'Connor, Winchester

She blamed it all on a mix-up, I see...
Graham, Frome

Thank you for this week's Friday bear story. Can we have another one next week too?
Dr Toes, Carharrack

If this is a fish: ><(((((((o> (Thursday's letters), then this: ><(((((((>, is a fsh! It's got no "i"!
Ahahahahaha... Er. I'll get me oilskins.
James, Stockport

To Angela (Thursday's letters), this is a mouse ~~( )8>
Emily Parry, Portsmouth

Winning entries in the Caption Competition.

The competition is now closed. Full rules can be seen here [PDF].

This week it's Sofus the Harbour Seal from the Blue Reef Aquarium in Tynemouth. He's having his gnashers cleaned in preparation for an operation to have one of his front teeth removed because it has broken.

Thanks to all who entered. The prize of a small amount of kudos to the following:
6. nick-fowler
"Well, I just can't see what attracted Heidi Klum to him."

5. MrSnoozy
"New novelty glove range proves less popular than anticipated..."

4. bampot-bob
"Is it safe?"

3. SimonRooke
"He's never been the same since David Attenborough did that three minutes to camera next to him."

2. jtotheglo
"Danny's work experience position wasn't quite as fun as the poster made out."

1. SeanieSmith
"Springwatch USA."

Some Friday punning fun with a collection of good and bad headlines from the tabs:

"IT'S PEACE IN OUR CHRISTMAS TIME" - postal strikes truce (Mirror)

"AN INSPECTRE CALLS" - police investigating a murder acted on the advice of a mystic (Mirror)

"CHEQUES FACTOR" - professional singers pay thousands to appear on the X Factor (Mirror)

"MERRY CHRISLESS" - price wars at the supermarkets (Sun)

"BOT A ROTTER" - Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Winterton says he may have slapped a woman's bottom (Mirror)

The Sun also reported on the Winterton story and referred to a "girl MP", Natascha Engel. At what age does a girl become a woman? Ms Engel is 42.

It is one of the great canards of European modern history/bad popular music. Now the Hoff has finally laid it to rest. He magnanimously added: "The East Germans are responsible for the Wall coming down... because they believe in freedom."
More details (Daily Telegraph)

Liam (Wednesday's letters), it took over a century of development to get from the first stationary steam engines to the point where they could be made powerful and light enough to be used for locomotion.
Tim, London

The CIA's favourite Xtreme sport?
Rahere, Smithfield

So, after the Wicker Man, it's the Silicon Woman
Rob, Wales

I believe it's traditional in most cultures for people to turn up at their own funeral. The only thing that made this story remarkable, but that wasn't mentioned in the headline, was that the individual was still alive.
Bob Peters, Leeds, UK

They're reopening a cafe on the ground floor of the building where I work. Does this mean that the recession is over?
Michael Hall, Croydon, UK

Okay I'm a little behind the times here (been busy, went out for lunch etc) but I'd just like to thank Fi (Wednesday's letters) for spelling her evil laugh with a "B". I have had looong discussions with a colleague who maintains it begins with an "M". But it doesn't. "Mwah ha ha" is someone laughing after they've air-kissed you.
Kaylie, Runcorn, UK

This is a fish ><(((((((o>.
Angelina Williams

After a silence of almost two years, Paper Monitor warmly welcomes the return of the Financial Times' foremost corporate leader/strategist/member of the Jargonista, Martin Lukes.

For the uninitiated, Lukes is the fictional author of a satirical column, relayed in e-mail and blog format. His conduit, if you like, is the real life FT columnist and sometime contributor to the Radio4/Magazine Point of View strand, Lucy Kellaway.

A chief executive who wouldn't tend to underplay his significance in the world of big business, while being a little too eager to sidestep any blame when things go wrong, Lukes departed the FT's pages almost two years ago.

His silence was enforced - the consequence of him being extradited to the US and "wrongly" banged up for some corporate misdemeanour or other, a la Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling.

But now he is back, rubbing shoulders with Conrad Black in the prison refectory and e-mailing from behind the cell walls (and an FT.com pay wall.) In a Jonathan Aitken style turn of events, he has also found God.

Irrepressible as ever, Lukes is employing wife Sherill on the outside to post updates on his new blog, entitled ?InsideOut!™ (Tags: God, our Lord, innocent.)

His missives are now littered with - characteristically crass - Biblical citations - "'Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might - Ecclesiastes 9:10'" he advises Sherill.

And the man behind the Creovative™ philosophy has yet to repent his old ways.

"'I am kick starting with the Word,'" he begins his first blog post. "Our Lord was the ultimate Creovative role model..."

Away from the FT, the Times is adding to its stable of supplements with a new science glossy, called Eureka, which appears to be monthly. (Today is issue two.)

It's an ambitious looking (read: expensive) venture - 60 pages thick, with the likes of Bill Bryson leading the by-line charge.

As ever, Paper Monitor welcomes all efforts to further the cause of the newsprinted word. So good luck Eureka (and thanks for not putting an exclamation mark at the end.)

A Brazilian man's relatives were shocked when he turned up at his own funeral. They had wrongly identified him as a car crash victim. He'd actually spent the night drinking rum with friends. More details

The £1,000 rail ticket that can be bought in advance for £561 seems an excellent example of a situation where one would advertise to all their associates how much they had saved, while still paying what seems to be an extortionate amount, perhaps even better than never-ending furniture sales.
James O, Oxford

Well done Steve Hill for your ecological thinking (Tuesday letters). Why use up fresh electrons on a new web-based news story when we can recycle the old ones. And it's far more interesting than some of the recent stories.
P.S. are you really in the Women's Institute?
Ralph, Cumbria

Steve (Tuesday letters) - let it lie. Think of the Kids.
Lee Pike, Auckland, New Zealand

Kat (Tuesday letters), I initially agreed, and then went on to find my own moment illustrating your point. May I suggest "Anticiphany"?
Bas, London

I was so intrigued by the idea of a soup plot until I realised that I'd misread the headline.
Adam, London, UK

Forgive Paper Monitor. When you have so many publications to read telling them apart becomes difficult. Such is the case with the Independent which risks confusing itself with the Daily Mail. The homecoming of the mercenary Simon Mann who was jailed in Africa for plotting a coup is its page 3 lead. But rather than focusing on the intricacies of Mann's exploits which landed him in a prison cell in Equatorial Guinea, the paper appears more interested in his finances. "Last night he was on his way back to his £5m British country residence via a five-star hotel." Mann also stood to gain "£9m if the coup succeeded." And, after touching down on board a "private jet" he will face a barrage of questions.

The Times by comparison treats the story with the awe of a boy-scout revelling in the adventures of his daring hero. It explores the "names in the frame" of the Wonga Coup and delves into the conspiracy theories behind their exploits.

"For years a motley collection of adventurers, arm dealers, sanction busters, diamond smugglers and fighters traded on the continent's unfailing supply of civil wars, coups and counter coups. Their adventure has finally ended."

However, it can't resist pointing out that Mann stands to make a "splodge of wonga" from his astounding story. Nice pun guys.

It's not been easy trying to ignore the rise of TV hate objects Jedward, but coverage in recent days has reached such a feverish pitch that it's now officially impossible. Over at the Daily Star, it's a case of too much information as the paper delves into the sex life of X-Factor's brothers grim. Apparently, twins John and Edward Grimes have a bombshell sex secret: The "Only squeeze they get is hair gel tube" reveals the headline (if you can call that a revelation.) It's not much of a secret to their "friends" back home in the Dublin suburb of Lucan. One kindly soul said: "Some people around here see them as village idiots."

The Jedward Factor also hits page 7 of the Daily Mirror whose 3am girls followed the Addams Family-a-like collection of X-Factor finalists to a film premiere. Rather than seeking the twins' sex secrets, or lack thereof, they were after the key to their gravity-defying hair-dos. Despite their herculean efforts at the sharp end of investigative journalism, the 3ams didn't get far, the twins giving little away. "This attention is crazy. We're loving every minute. We've even got people copying our hair. Can you believe it." Rhetorical surely.

And, what a difference a week makes. It's back to the biggest poppy debate. Last time we checked only two papers had pinned a red flower to its masthead - the Sun and the Daily Star. Now, the Daily Telegraph, The Times, the Daily Mail and the Independent are proudly displaying their foliage. There are two frontrunners for the coveted award of most sizeable masthead poppy: the Telegraph and the Mail, both of which could be mistaken for "actual-size" renditions. At the other end of the scale is the Times, which, calculated in accordance with Paper Monitor's unique SI unit for masthead poppy measurement is... about the size of the now defunct half-penny piece.

The singer has spoken for the first time about how leaked snaps of her beaten face became the focus of worldwide media after she was assaulted by R&B star Chris Brown. She wants to become an unofficial spokesperson for domestic violence victims.
More details (Daily Telegraph)

Today in Web Monitor: feedback phobia, the "me" brand and a sticky subject.

• Avid Tweeter and comedian David Schneider says in the Guardian that the age of instant feedback is a bit of a shock:

"Time was all you had to do was avoid the reviews and the odd tactless yawn in the audience but now everyone's a critic. Every YouTube clip you're in, every blog or article that's posted online leaves space for comments. And Web 2.0 is not shy about telling you what it thinks. Unfortunately for some of us, the Ego 2.0 upgrades haven't quite come in yet."

• Incidentally, when Schneider posted a tweet linking to his article, he gave it the hashtag #shamelessselfpromotion. So where did all this self promotion come from? In More Intelligent Life Peter York charts the rise of selling yourself like you'd sell a product to decades before Twitter. He sees the increase in marketing speech in normal language as coinciding with people seeing themselves as a brand:

"First 'markets' - target and niche, up and down - crept into everyday conversation. I knew something had changed in Britain when I met a Church of England clergyman at a 1980s dinner party and he described his Belgravia flock as 'rather upmarket'. Then 'segmentation' and 'demographics' emigrated out of -ology country and into the suburbs, soon followed by those exciting intangibles, 'image' and 'spin'... The enormous growth of PR - a business with few barriers to entry - made it a first-choice career for all kinds of people, from seasoned marketeers to confident, well-networked Sloane girls. Soon practically everyone you met seemed to be working in PR. And once they had PR-ed everything - from hospital trusts to pressure groups, museums to art galleries, government departments to, soon enough, entire countries - the idea of a little light self-promotion seemed increasingly obvious."

• Yesterday's Web Monitor shone a light on the extremely-detailed London Twirls blog. The writer of said blog, James Ward, is not just obsessed with where and how chocolate bars are sold in his area. He's also got a thing for Blu-Tack. He's been in contact with the company about it's claim that there are "1000s of uses" for the product. He has published his correspondence with the company - which claims one of the uses is as earplugs. However, Ward wonders how the fight is affecting his personal life:

"I just want some indication that it is true to say that Blu-Tack has '1000s of uses'. Not 'lots', not 'many'. '1000s'. They say on the packaging it has '1000s of uses', show me it has '1000s of uses'... I went to a course at work this week. At the start, there was one of those 'ice-breaker' activities where you have to tell everyone your name, explain your role and responsibilities and share one interesting fact about yourself. I hate these things. There are very few interesting facts about me. Under pressure, I said that the interesting fact about me is that I'm currently embroiled in a dispute with Bostik over the accuracy of their claim that Blu-Tack has "1000s of uses". When I said this, everyone laughed, but I'll be honest with you; I think they might have been laughing at me rather than with me."

Astute readers (and watchers) of the Oxford Street X-crossing story will notice that the "cymbal" struck by Boris Johnson is in fact a tam-tam. This is not to be confused with a gong, which, as we all know, has a raised boss or nipple and is tuned to a specific pitch.
Sarah, Oxon

I was at a course yesterday which involved some discussion of psychological problems in society and how we view them, and who should show up on screen but Drunk Girl to illustrate addiction (Paper Monitors and Letters passem).
Alex K, Bath

Does anyone know an expression for the emotional rollercoaster you experience when your interest is piqued upon seeing an awesome headline, followed by the disappointment of realising it can't possibly live up to your expectations as you click on it, succeeded by the euphoria of it being an even better story than you had initially imagined?
Kat Gregg, Coventry

It is indeed confusing, bx19 (Monday letters). As an English teacher I tell my students that "up to" suggests any number from (in this case) 1 to 70,000, whereas "as many as" suggests an estimate close to 70,000. A perfect example, I feel, of how statistics can be manipulated to mean whatever you want them to mean.
Dick Savage, Plzen, Czech Republic

Jan (Monday letters), a friend in London tells me it's gotten rather cold there. If you were a strawberry, would you grow in this weather?
Nadja, north of Boston, US

Julie - I always blame mine on the cat too. Good try, but I'm on to you...
D Trump, Liverpool, UK

Julie, my brother's cat often startles itself with the noises it produces.
Basil Long, Nottingham

Could you post a link to the Man marries goat story? I'm trying to get it back into the Most Read Top 10 again. Cheers in advance.
Steve Hill, Milwaukee, WI, US
Monitor note: OK, keep an eye out... and may she rest in peace.

It's been a while since the Daily Express had a Madeleine McCann cover.

But with the release of two age-adjusted photos showing the missing girl as she may look at six-and-a-half, the Express devotes much of page one to a then and now picture spread.

"MADDIE We believe she is alive. Help us to bring her home" runs its headline, using a quote from her parents (who, incidentally, call her Madeleine and never Maddie). But the paper is back on-message in its page five headline and article:

"Tanned and smiling... a new image of Madeleine revealed in fresh appeal.
Experts in the US have produced the two haunting pictures of how Madeleine would look now."

Incidentally - again - on the Express's overly heavy website, Madeleine stories have the usual "have your say" request for comments disabled.

In 2007, the Express reported a similar move on the Leicester Mercury newspaper's message boards in rather hysterical terms: "NOW HER PARENTS FACE HATE CAMPAIGN - Madeleine's home town turns against her parents".

But there's no more of that sort of thing, since that round of apologies last year (Paper Monitor, March 07).

Even for the Express, things have been rather quiet when it comes to Madeleine developments.

The LexisNexis newspaper database shows the last time it touched on the case was 20 October, in which she is mentioned during an interview with a psychic who "helped police solve the murders of Holly and Jessica". So, what's his take on Madeleine's disappearance?

"I would be keen to be involved," he said. "But it's completely against my principles to do anything of the sort without being expressly asked to do so by the parents."

Any hopes of a scoop dashed then.

And the second most recent Madeleine story from the Express stables was on Sunday, 18 October, on how the Home Secretary was poised to ask US spy chiefs for satellite images of Praia da Luz at the time the little girl vanished in May 2007.

"The quality of pictures taken by satellites in space is now so good they can reputedly identify the colour of someone's eyes."

No further news on that particular angle yet.