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Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas admits he is torn between a move to Barcelona or remaining in north London.

The latest episode of Zach Galifianakis' web chat show 'Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis' is up on the Funny or Die site. The comedian/actor is best known for his role in The Hangover, but he' ...

A vicar was found guilty today of conducting hundreds of sham marriages to help illegal immigrants gain residency in Britain.

Sir Tom Jones is on course to become the oldest male musician to have a UK number one album, with his record Praise And Blame leading the way in midweek sales.

The scale of the sham marriages was on an unprecedented scale involving "classic exploitation" of foreign nationals desperate to stay in the UK, investigators said.

It's top of the posts time, again. America has featured heavily in this week's most popular offerings, from Hollywood to the right wing, with a few football-based entries scoring good positions also. ...

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Anglo-French bassist and co-founder of rock band The Stranglers, Jean-Jacques ?JJ? Burnel, spoke to The Independent Online about the perils of growing up as ?a Frog? in the 1960s, his passion for motorbikes and why Plato?s The Republic changed his life.

A man who threw a shoe at an Old Bailey judge was allowed to walk free from court today by another judge.

Andrew Strauss fell disappointingly just before lunch as England reached 103 for two on day one of the first npower Test against Pakistan at Trent Bridge.

A "grumpy" school caretaker told today of his shock at being wrongly arrested for having child porn on his computer.

Argentina could only reach the quarter-finals of the World Cup, so when the Argentinean FA asked Diego Maradona to make substantial changes to his backroom staff it sounded like a fair request. And wh ...

Standards of care at a leading hospital where four babies died were "not what was expected", a health boss said today.

Argentina could only reach the quarter-finals of the World Cup, so when the Argentinean FA asked Diego Maradona to make substantial changes to his backroom staff it sounded like a fair request. And wh ...

A couple who brutally murdered a toddler they were paid to look after were today jailed for life.

A 47-year-old woman has confessed to killing her eight new-born children and hiding their bodies in a village in northern France, a judicial source said today.

Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself. This is one of those times. You've all heard the saying, as muttered famously by a certain Miss.Moss - but upon pondering over some of the 'recipes' I cam ...

A pair of cleaners were caught red-handed pilfering from passengers' luggage at an airport, police said today.

Farmland bird numbers fell 5% last year to new record lows, official figures showed today.

A military cargo plane carrying four people on a training run has crashed at an air force base in Alaska, the US Air Force said today.

Sad news courtesy of this month's Oldie. Elena Salvoni OBE, the 90-year-old maitre d' of Elena's Etoile in Charlotte Street is to retire, seemingly against her will. The Grande Dame of dining tells th ...

Cactus? Language Minis is a Spanish podcast series, developed to offer easy learning on the go. It consists of seven levels, each with 10 downloadable podcast lessons and PDF workbooks, which take you from beginner through to advanced level. The Language Minis series is designed to help you increase your understanding of the Spanish language and equip you with language skills for use in everyday situations.

General Sir Peter Wall is to be the next professional head of the British Army, it was announced today.

A 23-year-old man was found guilty today of pelting eggs at a Tory peer.

A woman appeared in court today charged with concealment of birth after the remains of four babies were found.

If you're not already aware of Big Picture, Boston Globe's online photo blog, I urge you to trawl its occasional yet always illuminating topical galleries. The guy who edits the site has access to mos ...

A Tamil refugee hunger striker today accepted substantial undisclosed damages over claims that he had secretly eaten takeaway burgers throughout his protest.

Amazon.com launched a cheaper, wireless-only Kindle on Wednesday, betting that the lower price will turn its latest electronic reader into a mass-appeal device as Apple Inc's iPad gains ground.

Twitter is for more than just tweeting. Using millions of Twitter messages, or tweets, from the popular social networking site, researchers at Northeastern University in Boston have created a Twitter Mood Map to measure the moods of the USA.

Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn believes the rule regarding team orders is now unrealistic and in need of an urgent overhaul.

Diego Maradona has accused Argentinian Football Association president Julio Grondona and director of national teams Carlos Bilardo of forcing him out of his job as coach.

Sir Alex Ferguson has launched a stout defence of Manchester United owners the Glazer family.

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson believes Javier Hernandez's pace could be a crucial weapon after the Mexico striker scored in his opening game for the club.

David Beckham could be back in training by the end of August, his LA Galaxy coach Bruce Arena said yesterday.

Newcastle defender Steven Taylor is expected to be sidelined for the first three months of the new season.

Celtic new boy Joe Ledley insists his Champions League dream is not yet over despite the Hoops losing 3-0 away to Braga in their third qualifying round first leg.

Children were suspended from school on more than 80,000 occasions last year for attacking teachers and classmates, official figures showed today.

Mark Hughes looks set for a return to the Barclays Premier League after Fulham confirmed they are on the brink of appointing their new manager.

Significant improvements were made to the BBC's coverage of the devolved nations - but concerns remain about "misleading or confusing" news items, the BBC Trust found today.

The Foreign Office spent more than £13 million sending the children of British diplomats to private schools last year, it was revealed.

The Foreign Office said today it was investigating reports that a British strip club owner was murdered on holiday in the Dominican Republic.

Emergency teams battled heavy rain and mud today to recover bodies strewn over hills overlooking the Pakistani capital after the country's worst plane crash.

Business and pressure groups today welcomed a Government announcement to phase out the so-called default retirement age (DRA) of 65 by October 2011 in a move to encourage people to work for longer.

Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell put beleaguered rival BP in the shade today with a 34% hike in second-quarter profits to 4.2 billion US dollars (£2.7 billion).

Police today ruled out any crimes linked to serial killer Peter Tobin at a second seaside property where he used to live.

A grocery store is committing "wildlife massacre" by selling squirrel meat, campaigners claimed today.

A suicide attacker drove a bomb-laden minibus into the entrance of an Iraqi army base near Saddam Hussein's home town today, setting off an explosion that killed four soldiers and wounded 10 others, police said.

Police investigating the disappearance of chef Claudia Lawrence confirmed today they are scaling back the number of officers dedicated to the inquiry.

A shortage of buyers sent house prices falling in July for the first time since February, figures showed today.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev signed a bill that widens the powers of the Federal Security Service, the KGB's main successor agency.

The troubled Toyota motor company today announced yet another recall, with the latest involving 348 vehicles in the UK.

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The September issues of the big fashion glossies, which are out next week, are traditionally the fattest and most lucrative of the year. If you do manage to find any actual, genuine editorial coverage lurking amid the all-new, high- budget, high-profile, autumn/winter advertising campaigns then you're a better woman ? or even man ? than many. And what campaigns they are!

London, it seems, has not been kind to Yevgeny Chichvarkin. Once the enfant terrible of the Russian super-rich, the portly figure who trudges into the lobby of a posh Kensington hotel is a far cry from the legend. Until 18 months ago, he was one of the most successful businessmen in Russia ? famous for his luxuriant mullet, his outrageous dress sense and his peppering of speeches at drab economic forums with excitable gestures and swearing.

Your child needs their lunchtime nap. You need to go out. You settle for taking the buggy and draping over a blanket or towel in the hope that they'll sleep. Predictably, it falls off and your child wakes up. You swear you'll stay at home next time.

Every new family has its trials and tribulations. We were luckier than most: breastfeeding was a breeze, weaning a doddle, even the sleep deprivation was bearable. But toilet training? This was our Everest. Our two-year old proved highly resistant to the potty, but was equally adamant she would no longer wear nappies. It was a challenging time, but eventually we got there: our daughter is now a confident three-year-old who happily nips to the loo when nature calls, something that at some dark points last year seemed almost unthinkable.

By the time you read this, I'll be sat in a field with my partner and son, Krishan, celebrating his third birthday in Cornwall. We decided to head to the coast for a bit of rest and relaxation after our second festival of 2010.

A season of sex is being planned by the BBC. Such an idea inevitably risks the wrath of moral guardians, as well as the snorts of critics who might think it sensationalist and unoriginal. So if you're going to do it, make sure you have the hot writer of the moment signed up for the project.

The British tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson was one of the finest exponents in his generation of the roles originally sung by Peter Pears in the operas of Benjamin Britten. However, his interpretations were in no way copies of the senior tenor's idiosyncratic versions; rather, they were recreations of the music that perfectly suited his own voice and style. His other favourite opera composers were Monteverdi and Mozart, while he sang the great Bach Passions and Handel oratorios throughout his career. As a recitalist he was a founder member of the Songmakers' Almanac and specialised in Schubert lieder and Britten's canticles. He also became an excellent conductor, especially of operas in which he had himself sung, such as Monteverdi's L'Orfeo.

Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan were old, half-forgotten names for a new generation of theatre-goers and practitioners, yet recent revivals of their best early work ? written when both men were in their late twenties ? have been acclaimed as period master works with a biting, contemporary appeal.

Among Daniel Schorr's many awards, distinctions and achievements as a journalist, one was surely unique. He was the only US reporter both to be expelled from Moscow for crossing a Soviet leader ? and to feature as an officially designated "enemy" of an American President.

Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One rights holder, has cast serious doubt on the chance of all 12 F1 teams surviving through to the end of the season in November and believes some of the smaller ones are "out of their depth".

Peter de Villiers has been given a vote of confidence by his employers at the South African Rugby Union and assured that his job is safe.

He made it sound like some undeserved sinecure, a perk of marrying into the right family. "I'm the luckiest man in the weighing room, to ride for Richard Hannon," he grinned. "It's as simple as that. Jockeys are ten a penny."

Races over seven or eight furlongs round here tend to hinge upon so many hazards that the search for a winner tends to become a rather neurotic, complex process. Over two miles, however, punters have no need to fret about the draw, or potential traffic problems round all those twists and turns. They can simply back the best horse in the race. And on that basis there is no need to wait for Jupiter to align with Mars, or the moon to be in the Seventh House, to find the winner of the Artemis Goodwood Cup.

Tam White was one of Scotland's finest blues singers and although he had chart success in his own right, he was best known for being Robbie Coltrane's singing voice in the TV comedy drama Tutti Frutti (1987).

Wavves are teetering on a lofty precipice. Headed by angsty 23-year-old singer/songwriter Nathan Williams from San Diego, on record, Wavves boast one of the most exciting sounds around. As Williams and his band take to the tiny stage under the bricked arches of Shoreditch club Cargo, they look, and sound like bratty couldn't-care-less teenagers.

Everyone dies, don't they ? but not everyone lives," said Dan, the subject of Alastair Cook's film The Men Who Jump Off Buildings. If you had to devise a bumper sticker to promote suicidal recklessness that would do the trick, wouldn't it? It sounds plausible enough, relegating all those of us too sensible to launch ourselves off the Trellick Tower at four in the morning to mere zombiedom. It's the sort of slogan that you need to see flashing past you in the fast lane, though, because any kind of tailback would give you too much time to question its essential premise. You might, for one thing, want to ask exactly what kind of definition of "living" was proposed here. Dan ? compulsively addicted to base jumping ? seemed to acknowledge at one point that it was a slightly desperate, compensatory one. "Base jumping gives me enough excitement to carry on with this," he explained, smearing tar on to a roof while doing the job that pays for his parachute. Is that really a life though ? in hock to boredom for the occasional 45 seconds of terrifying adrenalin?

Quite how Solomon Burke's 12-piece band fits onto the Jazz Café's tiny stage is a miracle, rather like one of those 3D wooden jigsaw puzzles, with the guitarist way out right beside a post, the drummer lurking behind the three-man horn section, and the bassist hidden behind the backing singers. Things aren't made any easier by the massive gilt and red velvet throne centre stage, from which the King of Rock and Soul proclaims his gospel of love.

Willy Russell's scabrous Scousers, Shirley Valentine (Saint Joan of the fitted kitchen units, with all her nosy-neighbour voices) and hairdresser Rita of the Open University, are still going strong after a quarter of a century. They are now as engraved in the national consciousness as Maggie May, resilient streetwalker of the Liverpool docks, or the battling socialist MP Bessie Braddock. This Menier Chocolate Factory transfer, for a summer season at the Trafalgar Studios, presents Russell's two plays in all their wit and vivacity.

Arsenal face being without three key players when they start their Premier League campaign with the difficult trip to Liverpool in just over two weeks' time. Striker Nicklas Bendtner is definitely out with a groin injury, while both Cesc Fabregas and Robin van Persie do not return to training until next Thursday after featuring in the World Cup final for Spain and the Netherlands respectively.

It says a lot for the development of England under Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss that there will scarcely be a breath of selection controversy at Trent Bridge over the next few days.

The last time England played Pakistan at Test cricket it ended in tears, recriminations and the first forfeit in the history of the game. While nobody should advocate the sort of kerfuffle that ensued at The Oval four years ago after the tourists were accused of ball tampering, the series which begins here today will not be entirely straightforward for long.

Overnight, as if the previous two years had been airbrushed from history, Pakistan have prospects in the series against England starting today. It has been provided, more or less entirely, by the quality of their fast-bowling attack which has abruptly found itself as the talk of the summer.

When he tees it up in the first round of The Irish Open here today, Justin Rose will be playing in Europe for only the third time this year. And he has no plans to make his fourth appearance the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles next month, even if he has not earned a Ryder Cup place by then.

Mum was very much the word at last year's Ricoh Women's British Open as Catriona Matthew completed a stunning 11-week journey from the maternity ward to the winners' enclosure. Alas, as far as the sponsors were concerned, mum carried on being the word for the Scottish champion. The phone never rang, the millions did not arrive.

Usain Bolt is set to compete against Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay for the first time this season in the 100m at the DN Galan Diamond League meeting in Stockholm on 6 August.

An academic study has borne out what the French have always claimed ? that they get a rough deal from English referees. Analysis of 70 Super League games involving the Catalan Dragons between 2006 and 2009 reveals what the researchers say is a persistent bias against the French on the part of British officials.

Less than three days after he celebrated a third Tour de France win Alberto Contador has declared that he will be parting company with his Kazakh team, Astana. Whilst disagreements over future salary contributed to Contador's abrupt announcement that he was leaving, a series of equipment disasters have been a contributory factor.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has described as "heart breaking" the way some banks are treating business clients who had been customers for many decades.

Don't I know him?

Two dozen people are sitting around a Kent farmhouse table eating lunch ? a homely and unremarkable scene. But the anxiety of some of the adults, and the feral eating habits of some of the children, show this is not what it seems. For many of those passing around the plates of fresh pasta and salad this is a rare moment of normality in traumatised lives.

For students at Buckingham, the private university opened by Mrs Thatcher, the two-year degree is a winning option. They positively relish the rigours of a 40-week year, and prefer four terms to three, together with holidays of only two weeks; that way they keep up the momentum and get their degrees over more quickly.

Much has been written about the dramatic negotiations that took place between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives and Labour in the immediate aftermath of the indecisive election of May. Yet Gordon Brown's role in these momentous days is in danger of being badly misrepresented. His role needs to be reappraised if the history of this period is to be accurately recorded.

In The Bookseller of Kabul, the Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad charted the choppy life of an Afghan family during the spring of 2002, as foreign powers and internal armies fought over the future of their country. The book was based on the time she spent living with a bookseller and his two wives, a privileged witness to their domestic quarrels and desires as well as their more public existence. She focused on the subjugated place of the women of the family, and wrote about her own experiments inside a burka and how "in time I started to hate it". The book was an international bestseller, lauded for its "unique insight into another world" (Daily Mirror), for Seierstad's "curiosity and perceptive eye" (Independent), for testifying to "the power of literature to withstand even the most repressive regime" (Daily Mail).

First, credit where credit is due. David Cameron may be overdoing things a bit in his drive for trade opportunities in India ? it could be called hypocritical to demand that India opens its doors to free trade whilst we close our doors to free immigration ? but in terms of recalibrating British foreign policy, the Prime Minister has picked up the ball and is playing it with quite astonishing panache.

In this summer of unlikely partnerships, yet another alliance is formed. Labour's shadow Cabinet joins forces with Tory rebels to oppose the coalition's package of constitutional reforms, including a referendum on the Alternative Vote. Once more we close our eyes and wonder whether we are dreaming. Cameron and Clegg say "Yes" to a referendum! David Davis for the Conservatives and the Miliband brothers hold placards saying "No!", or "Almost No!" For such a supposedly dry topic, the prospect of a referendum on electoral reform produces painful contortions that seem to make no sense at all.

What's in a name? The NHS should use the term fat instead of obese, a thinnish government health minister said yesterday. Some people, naturally, have been deeply offended, as would have been the minister, Anne Milton, if we had called her scrawny instead of thinnish. The overweight prefer more congenial terms: plump, chubby, tubby or big-boned. Or more politically correct notions; one local authority has been trying to introduce the idea of being "unhealthily weighted".

The shocking death of Khyra Ishaq, who starved after months of abuse at the hands of her mother and stepfather, has drawn attention once again to the failings of child protection services. Publication this week of the full serious case review into Khyra's death has revealed for the first time the extent of the communications failures and missed opportunities that contributed to the death of seven-year-old Khyra.

Tomorrow, the Chilcot inquiry into Britain's decision to go to war on Iraq will have sat for a whole year. It has been a suprisingly worthwhile exercise, bringing to full public view a depressing picture of the way the country was led to war against the advice and warnings of most of the experts and officials at the time. But the steady drip-drip of its evidence has served largely to confirm what many people suspected, rather than revealing anything startlingly new.

Andrew Strauss admits England still have room for improvement as they bid for the series victory against Pakistan they will need if they are to set off for Australia with confidence intact. Strauss sees a potentially difficult four-match series against Salman Butt's tourists as an opportunity to continue a progression which began with last summer's wins over West Indies and in the Ashes.

A 47-year-old woman has confessed to killing her eight new-born children and hiding their bodies in a village in northern France, a judicial source said today.

A military cargo plane carrying four people on a training run has crashed at an air force base in Alaska, the US Air Force said today.

The Foreign Office said today it was investigating reports that a British strip club owner was murdered on holiday in the Dominican Republic.

Emergency teams battled heavy rain and mud today to recover bodies strewn over hills overlooking the Pakistani capital after the country's worst plane crash.

A suicide attacker drove a bomb-laden minibus into the entrance of an Iraqi army base near Saddam Hussein's home town today, setting off an explosion that killed four soldiers and wounded 10 others, police said.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev signed a bill that widens the powers of the Federal Security Service, the KGB's main successor agency.

In a tense, historic vote, Catalonia's regional parliament yesterday banned Spain's "national fiesta" ? bullfighting, handing a victory to animal rights activists, who predicted the start of a bloodless era across the country.

A crackdown on illegal immigration in Arizona was thrown into a state of limbo yesterday, as a judge at the State Capitol in Phoenix put almost every one of its most controversial measures on hold, just 14 hours before they had been due to take effect.

A crowded bus hit a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan yesterday, killing 25 passengers, in the latest example of Afghan civilians bearing the brunt of the country's war.

Pakistan is marking a national day of mourning after the largest plane crash in the country's history yesterday left no survivors.

A terrified young woman in a red headscarf bolts through a door into a darkened room. Chased by an angry mullah, she pulls out her phone and desperately tries to call for help, but there is no signal.

A couple was taken in to custody yesterday after police found the corpses of eight newborn babies buried in their garden in a village in northern France, a judicial official said. The official added that the couple, in their mid-40s, were the parents of the dead babies, and that the corpses were found on two different parts of the property in Villers-au-Tertre, not far from the city of Lille.

Four white South African men have pleaded guilty to making a video which showed elderly black cleaners being humiliated, as well as being duped into drinking what was apparently urine-tainted soup. The video, shot by the four former students at the University of the Free State, showed the four women and one man forced to run a race barefoot while wearing their cleaning uniforms and being taken to a bar where they drank alcohol and danced to Afrikaans music in what was portrayed as an initiation rite.

She never found harmony with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nor did she make much music between Israel and the Palestinians, but pair Condoleezza Rice, the former American Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, with the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin and you will be surprised by the melodies they muster.

Theo Albrecht, the recluse who founded the Aldi discount network with his older brother Karl, died, aged 88, at the weekend. True to the brothers' reputation for secrecy, his death was not announced until yesterday.

David Cameron sparked a diplomatic row yesterday by warning that Pakistan should not be allowed to "promote the export of terror" to the rest of the world. Speaking during a two-day visit to India, the Prime Minister increased the pressure on Pakistan following this week's leak of classified documents about the war in Afghanistan, which suggested that Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency could be supporting the Taliban insurgency.

The oil slick from the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which threatened beaches and wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico, has largely vanished just two weeks after the crippled BP oil well was finally capped.

A judge has blocked the most controversial sections of Arizona's new immigration law from taking effect today, handing a major legal victory to opponents of the crackdown.

London, it seems, has not been kind to Yevgeny Chichvarkin. Once the enfant terrible of the Russian super-rich, the portly figure who trudges into the lobby of a posh Kensington hotel is a far cry from the legend. Until 18 months ago, he was one of the most successful businessmen in Russia ? famous for his luxuriant mullet, his outrageous dress sense and his peppering of speeches at drab economic forums with excitable gestures and swearing.

The number of people leaving Ireland has swelled far beyond those of every other country in the EU, according to research. An estimated 40,000 people emigrated last year, according to the EU's statistics office, Eurostat. The rate of departure is almost twice as high as that of Lithuania, the next most-affected country. The expectation is that the flow may worsen as Ireland faces years of severe financial difficulties. A research institute has warned that 200,000 people, in a country of 4.5 million, may emigrate by 2015 if employment prospects do not improve.

He may no longer be president of the country he ruled so uncompromisingly for almost half a century, but Fidel Castro once again seems to be everywhere in Cuba. His latest foray into the limelight, announced yesterday, is a first volume of memoirs to be published next month, chronicling the birth of Cuba's communist revolution when his few hundred guerrilla fighters defeated the far larger regular army of the dictator Fulgencio Batista.

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona's immigration law from taking effect, delivering a last-minute victory to opponents of the crackdown.

A passenger jet crashed into the hills overlooking Pakistan's capital amid poor weather today, killing all 152 people on board and blazing a path of devastation strewn with body parts and twisted metal wreckage.

David Cameron angered Pakistan today after warning that it should not be allowed "to promote the export of terror" in the world.

David Cameron mounted a charm offensive on India today, allowing it access to British nuclear expertise for the first time and sharply criticising Pakistan's record on terrorism.

Spain's Catalonia region outlawed bullfighting today, becoming the country's first mainland region to do so after a heated debate that put animal rights against the idea of preserving a pillar of traditional culture.

A grieving father today spoke of the loss of his 21-year-old daughter who was killed in a suspected hit-and-run crash in Ibiza.

A string of high profile British witnesses who refused to testify at a US Senate hearing into the release of the Lockerbie bomber were today facing accusations of "stonewalling".

A bomb explosion has killed six people including five civilians in a Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad, Iraqi police and health officials said today.

At least 25 Afghan passengers were killed and over a dozen wounded when their bus was hit by a roadside bomb in western Afghanistan today, the provincial governor said.

The reckoning for rampant corruption under the United Nation's "oil-for-food" programme in Iraq under Saddam Hussein reached the icon of American capitalism, General Electric, which agreed to pay $23.4m to settle charges ? without admitting or denying them ? under US bribery laws.

Rick Norsigian, a Californian antique buff, knew exactly what he was looking for when he went rooting through a Fresno garage in 2000. He was looking for a vintage barber's chair, to add to his eclectic collection of old telephone switchboards, petrol pumps and aeroplane propellers. But when the chair turned out to be a dud, he chanced upon something that changed his life: two boxes of antique glass negatives which, a Beverly Hills art appraiser declared yesterday, were the work of Ansel Adams, the father of American photography.

Concern grew inside the White House yesterday that the release by Wikileaks of tens of thousands of documents painting a dark and disturbing picture of the conflict in Afghanistan risked further undermining support for Barack Obama's war strategy on Capitol Hill, across the country and even among America's Nato allies.

European police will be able to insist that Britons are put under surveillance and gain access to their DNA after the UK opted into controversial plans to strengthen co-operation.

India welcomed the head of Burma's isolated military government yesterday, despite international criticism and extended aid to the regime for railroad and agriculture projects, as New Delhi competes to assert its influence in the region.

Art officials yesterday unveiled the painting at the centre of the latest Caravaggio mystery, after the Vatican newspaper first suggested ? and then denied ? that the canvas was the work of the Italian master.

The leftist Greek guerrilla group Rebel Sect yesterday claimed responsibility for last week's shooting of a reporter, the first such incident in Greece for over 20 years. Rebel Sect sent a seven-page statement to local newspaper Ta Nea, saying it had shot dead Sokratis Giolias, 37, outside his home on July 19. Giolias, a father of one, was news chief at local radio station Thema 98.9. He was shot 16 times at close range. A journalist at Ta Nea said the letter mentioned other journalists and would be published by the paper on Wednesday.

The driver of the car in which Nelson Mandela's great-granddaughter was killed is to be charged with murder, attempted murder and driving under the influence of alcohol.

Singer Wyclef Jean is considering running for president of Haiti but has not decided whether to seek a five-year term as leader of the earthquake-ravaged nation.

Britain will have to earn job-creating trade deals with India rather than relying on historic links and "sentiment," David Cameron will say today.

David Cameron signalled a toughening stance on Israel yesterday by comparing the besieged Gaza Strip to "a prison camp" and urging Israel to end its three-year blockade.

BP reported one of the worst-ever losses in British corporate history yesterday after estimating the total cost of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill at $32bn (£21bn).

Tony Hayward's poorly chosen words in the weeks since the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico have hastened his fall from grace.

When two uniformed police officers approached Hector Hernandez as he arrived at the City of Maywood's official Fourth of July celebrations, he feared the worst. The stocky 22-year-old ? whose neck tattoo of a Playboy bunny indicates membership of one of the area's notorious Latino street gangs ? hasn't exactly relished his previous interactions with the local forces of law and order. Imagine Hector's surprise, then, when the uniformed men held out an outstretched hand, smiled and asked how he was doing. "They said they were new to the neighbourhood, so wanted to say hello and welcome me to the event. I think they even told me to have a nice day," he recalls. "I was like: 'You guys don't normally speak to me unless you're kneeling on my back'. I thought it was some kind of a sting."

A Dutch court cleared the way yesterday for the teenager Laura Dekker to try to become the youngest person to sail round the world solo, ending state supervision of the 14-year-old.

The US defence department is unable to account for almost $9bn taken from Iraqi oil revenues for use in reconstruction, according to an official audit released yesterday.

The Utah Supreme Court has reversed the convictions of the polygamist leader Warren Jeffs and ordered a new trial.

The Russian media has seized upon a raunchy photograph ? of the Georgian Economy Minister posing in a nightclub ? to release a fresh torrent of criticism at President Mikheil Saakashvili for appointing "strippers" to his cabinet.

As an untouched West African paradise where hippos play in the Atlantic surf and buffaloes and elephants parade on the beach, little-visited Gabon had been marked out as a rising eco-tourism star. But foreign visitors may have to leave Africa's last Eden after the country's largest tour operator said it was abandoning its business there following a simmering row with authorities in the oil-rich nation.

Britain and the United States should have realised that their intelligence about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction was suspect, the former head of the United Nations weapons inspectors said today.

The grieving husband of a British woman murdered in her home in the US today said: "I no longer have a son."

Lufthansa said one of its cargo planes was involved in an accident today in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh and Saudi witnesses and an airport official said it caught fire and crashed on landing.

Google Inc released a special version of its Web-based productivity software designed to meet stringent US government security requirements, as the Internet search giant seeks to outmanoeuvre rivals in the race to provide federal and state agencies with new technology.

Yahoo Japan, Japan's largest Internet portal operator, said today it will adopt Google's search engine instead of teaming up with Microsoft like partner Yahoo Inc.

Two teenagers from the suburbs of Rome have become Italy's newest media heroines after their slang-filled account of a day at the beach shot from a minor item on the local news to become a YouTube sensation.

Changing operators' fixed phone settings - a concept known as 'jailbreaking' - has become widely popular around the world since the 2007 introduction of Apple's iPhone.

A man robbed a bank wearing a woman's blond wig, fake breasts under a sweater and clown trousers, US authorities said.

A British soldier was killed in an explosion in Afghanistan yesterday, the Ministry of Defence announced today.

David Cameron called for a step-change in trade links between Britain and Turkey today, setting out an ambition of doubling their value over the next five years.

David Cameron is eager to show that he can break with the past and chart new avenues ? what with the coalition with the Liberal Democrats and talk of the "big society" reversing decades of centralised government power. But as he heads to India accompanied by a cricket squad of ministers and businessmen, he would do well to read up on a bit of history ? and in particular, on the letter that Queen Elizabeth I gave to John Newbery, one of the first Englishmen to visit India.

Money will get you a lot of things, including a 60-ft catamaran built almost entirely out of recycled plastic bottles, held together with organic glue made from cashew nuts and sugar cane. But the joy of stepping on to dry land after navigating such a vessel on a gruelling 128-day journey across the Pacific is one of those things that money simply can't buy.

As governments around the world assessed the damage done by Wikileaks's Afghanistan war logs, thoughts also turned to a lonely US Army private, who goes by the screen-name bradass87, currently behind bars in Kuwait.

David Cameron will today attack opponents of Turkey joining the European Union as "prejudiced" as he promises to champion the country's membership application.

While allied governments strove yesterday to downplay the import of the online posting of more than 75,000 classified documents about Nato's war in Afghanistan, the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, said they "only scratched the surface" and 15,000 more papers were still being reviewed.

It was 9.53am when the curtain in front of the glass-enclosed court chamber finally swept back. When it did, it revealed Kaing Guek Eav, once head of the Khmer Rouge's most notorious jail, sitting at a bench, his face expressionless, and dressed in a crisp blue shirt with grey trousers pulled up unnaturally high over a rounded stomach.

Moscow sweltered through its hottest day since records began 130 years ago yesterday, as temperatures hit 37.4C to spark peat fires that blanketed the city in smog.

It was a messy business, clearing-up after the carload of masked gunmen who burst into the function room at a suburban hotel in the city of Torreon in northern Mexico last Saturday night and began randomly spraying bullets into a crowded dancefloor full of young men and women.

He can move his eyebrows and jaw. He can swallow pureed food. He can even, with much difficulty, speak.

Police questioned France's richest woman about suspected tax evasion and money laundering in a scandal that has shaken the government.

The island nation of Seychelles says it has prosecuted and convicted Somali pirates for the first time. The office of the President said yesterday that a Seychelles court sentenced 11 Somali pirates to 10 years each in prison for their attempt to hijack the Seychelles coastguard patrol boat Topaz last December.

About 300 Amazon Indians have prevented workers from entering or leaving the construction site of a hydroelectric plant that protesters say is on an ancient burial ground, according to reports from Brazil's official news agency.

Iran said unexpectedly yesterday that it was prepared to return to talks on a nuclear fuel swap, shortly after the European Union agreed tougher sanctions including action to block oil and gas investment.

When tourists arrive in Hawaii, they're greeted with flowery necklaces and cries of "Aloha!". But when those people turn out to be down-and-outs, the warm island welcome swiftly disappears.

Israeli-caused delays to the transfer of weapons, radios, vehicles, helmets and other equipment are hampering American efforts to train Palestinian security forces in the West Bank, according to an official report by Washington's Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Camping may seem to be an environmentally friendly kind of holiday but a new, even greener, form of "eco-camping" is taking root in France.

An ageing, and ailing, French aid worker has been "murdered in cold blood" by al-Qa'ida fighters in the Sahara desert, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced yesterday.

The Afghanistan files released by WikiLeaks could contain details of "thousands" of potential war crimes, the founder of the whistleblowers' website said today.

Tony Hayward's departure as BP chief executive comes little more than three years after his mentor and predecessor also left the corporate giant in traumatic circumstances.

Guards and officials at a prison in northern Mexico let inmates out, lent them guns and allowed them to use official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings, including the massacre of 17 people, prosecutors claimed.

La Rochelle, Yucatán and now Kragerø ? the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series has reached its midway point and Briton Gary Hunt is the man of the 2010 season so far, after gaining the most points for diving off a 26.8 metre platform at Skagerrak strait in Norway on Saturday.

Google's dominant position on the global online search market slipped slightly in the second quarter, as it retreated from the Chinese market, research firm Strategy Analytics (SA) said on Friday.

Four people were killed today when a car bomb exploded in front of the Baghdad office of Arabic-language satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya, Iraq police said.

The White House accused online whistleblower WikiLeaks of endangering the lives of American, British and other coalition troops after it posted around 90,000 leaked US military records today.

A caretaker at a prominent office building who was missing for weeks was crushed to death after falling into a rubbish compactor, surveillance video has revealed.

EU governments will shrug off Iranian threats today and impose tougher sanctions in a bid to curb the regime's nuclear ambitions.

Pakistan was actively collaborating with the Taliban in Afghanistan while accepting US aid, new US military reports showed, a disclosure likely to increase the pressure on Washington's embattled ally.

Police say 26 people were killed when a speeding bus crashed in southern Afghanistan.

A former Khmer Rouge chief jailer was sentenced to 19 years behind bars today after a United Nations-backed tribunal found him guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The organisers of Duisburg's Love Parade were yesterday accused of rejecting safety warnings on cost grounds before a stampede that left 19 revellers dead and injured more than 340 others. Prosecutors opened an official inquiry yesterday into the worst tragedy in the celebrated techno-music event's 21-year history. Among those killed were festival-goers from China, Australia, Italy and Holland.

Burma's top military general began a five-day visit to India yesterday for talks aimed at deepening ties between the two South Asian neighbours. Pro-democracy advocates protested his arrival and promised to step up their demonstrations.

When David Cameron stands on the grounds of India's best-known IT company this week and makes his pitch for building a "new special relationship" between Britain and India, he will no doubt have in mind the thoughts of a previous visitor to the Infosys campus.

One of the largest ships in the US Navy is leading military exercises off the Korean peninsula in a show of strength aimed at the Communist North, but which the regime there warned could spark "sacred war" with its neighbour.

A bomb at a Bangkok bus stop killed one person and wounded at least 10 after polls closed in yesterday's parliamentary by-election.

In one corner, the Welsh-born Australian Prime Minister. In the other, her challenger: the London-born leader of the opposition. The touchstone topic in the country's only televised leadership debate: immigration. And they were both in favour of cutting it.

The Taliban has offered to exchange the body of a US Navy sailor they said was killed in an ambush two days ago in exchange for insurgent prisoners, an Afghan official said yesterday.

Two French nuns in their eighties are on the run after refusing to accept an order by their mother superior that they should be transferred to live in a retirement home.

The US military was last night confronted with the largest and potentially most explosive breach of its security in wartime, as the whistleblower website WikiLeaks published thousands of secret reports from the campaign in Afghanistan.

Vladimir Putin has met with the Russian spies who were expelled from the United States, and sung patriotic songs with them. The Russian Prime Minister said that the spy ring had been betrayed by "traitors", who would probably end up "in the gutter".

Unmanned US aircraft fired missiles at houses in two different parts of north-western Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 12 militants in attacks that occurred hours apart, intelligence officials said.

Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell put beleaguered rival BP in the shade today with a 34% hike in second-quarter profits to 4.2 billion US dollars (£2.7 billion).

Don't I know him?

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has described as "heart breaking" the way some banks are treating business clients who had been customers for many decades.

Brit Insurance's resistance against the US private equity firm Apollo showed the first sign of cracking yesterday after the company said it would grant the prospective bidder access to its books.

The airports operator BAA revealed narrowed first-half losses yesterday despite the impact of the volcanic ash cloud and the British Airways cabin crew strike.

Centrica faced calls for further retail price cuts yesterday after the energy giant's British Gas business reported first-half profits up by 98 per cent to £585m.

Outlook Does David Cameron get the contradiction undermining his trade mission to India? It's quite understandable that the Prime Minister wants to cosy up to such a growing economic power, but having spent much of the past few months talking tough on immigration policy, his pleas for help from India may fall on deaf ears.

Outlook Labour MPs have been hinting at skulduggery over the way Nick Clegg changed his mind about the need for immediate fiscal retrenchment following a chat with Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, shortly after forming a coalition with the Tories.

Vedanta Resources' highly successful financial year, and its annual meeting, were overshadowed yesterday when more than 100 protesters, some dressed as characters from James Cameron's Avatar film, came to object to what they say is the company's shocking human rights and environmental record.

He's a clever man, is Andrew Tyrie. Slight, slim to the point of concern, but intellectually heavyweight. You have to be if you're going to be the chair of the Treasury Select Committee. When you have to take on Mervyn "Merve the Swerve" King, Governor of the Bank of England, in hand-to-hand combat, you need to have your wits about you. When you have to pin down the likes of George Osborne (no fool, despite what some say), you need think on your feet. To get your mind round everything from macro prudential regulation to, say, the causes of our jobless recovery requires a certain cerebral self-assurance.

Shoppers should look out for far-fetched claims about certain household products, the consumer magazine Which? says today. The magazine released a list of 10 "money-wasting products you don't need" after tests found they failed to live up to the claims on the packaging.

Barratt Developments was held back as the bears built on the prospect of continued weakness in sector sentiment last night.

Our view: Buy

John West, the UK's leading canned fish brand, is set to fall into Thai hands following a £568m deal. Trilantic Capital Partners, the former Lehman Brothers private equity fund, has agreed to sell the brand's owner, MW Brands, to Thailand's biggest producer and exporter of canned fish, Thai Union Frozen Products.

Virgin Media posted the strongest revenue growth in a quarter since it was formed, and launched a share buyback.

A promised grant of up to £5,000 towards the cost of an electric or ultra-low carbon car has survived Government cutbacks. The Transport Secretary Philip Hammond yesterday said the funding, first announced by the Labour government, will go ahead from January 2011.

Spain's telefonica will acquire control of Brazil's largest mobile phone operator, Vivo, in a newly sweetened ?7.5bn (£6.2bn) deal with Portugal Telecom.

House prices are now back at the levels seen in the summer of 2006 after rising further in June, according to Land Registry figures yesterday.

LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, is believed to have received investment from a hedge fund that values the site at more than $2bn (£1.3bn).

Google is spoiling for a fight with Facebook over the fast-growing market for online games, part of the search engine giant's latest attempt to build a social networking business.

ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steel producer, unveiled a sharp jump in profits in the second quarter, but its chief executive warned on the impact on profits from an economic slowdown in China.

Outlook Let's be honest: British Gas is a deliciously easy target. Who are your sympathies with on hearing about a company making record profits during a period when many of the most vulnerable people in society have struggled to afford to keep themselves warm? Particularly if you take a look at the

The row at Tomkins rages on, with shareholder Standard Life furious that the company's chairman David Newlands is recommending a takeover offer from Canadian private equity concerns at a price it regards as too low. The fact that Mr Newlands is a former Standard Life executive gives the argument extra spice. And now we hear that during his time at the insurer, there wasn't much love lost between him and Gerry Grimstone, Standard Life's chairman. This one looks set to run and run.

No great surprises from the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, at the Treasury Select Committee today

The UK's leading canned fish brand, John West, was set to fall into Thai hands today following a 680 million euros (£568 million) deal.

The coldest winter for 30 years helped the UK's biggest energy firm almost double first-half profits today.

The billionaire Barclay brothers have sold their entire 10 per cent shareholding in InterContinental Hotels Group for £335m, ending any fading speculation about their strategic intentions for the hotel group.

Why's he in the news?

George Osborne's emergency Budget has increased the chances of the British economy experiencing a second recession next year.

The City watchdog yesterday continued its pursuit of former Northern Rock executives, fining the bank's former finance director David Jones £320,000 and banning him from the City. The fine was levied because of his role in hiding the true level of the bank's mortgage arrears before the Rock's spiral into crisis that led to its nationalisation.

So farewell Tony Hayward and hello Bob Dudley. The outgoing and incoming BP chief executives have one thing in common already: just as the bookies took large bets on Hayward being forced to quit, so too are punters backing Dudley not to last. Ladbrokes has just cut its odds on Dudley not surviving in his new role for more than two years from 8/11 to 4/9. "To say the role is a poisoned chalice is an understatement," says the bookmaker's spokesman Nick Weinberg.

Two of europe's most important banks yesterday underlined the return to health of the Continent's bigger players by posting strong results just days after stress tests suggested that Europe's banking system is in better health than many experts believe.

Outlook The assorted British politicians, business leaders and cultural icons accompanying David Cameron and George Osborne on the great trade mission to India might want to ask the Prime Minister and his Chancellor what they think about the surprise decision by the country's central bank to raise interest rates by half a point yesterday.

Outlook It was once a £5bn-a-year market but payment protection insurance (PPI) looks set to join the list of lucrative products and services ? others include unauthorised overdraft fees and self-certificated mortgages ? to which the banks are having to say goodbye. Lloyds Banking Group said yesterday that it would no longer sell PPI ? which pays out in the event a mortgage or personal loan borrower is unable to stay on top of repayments due to ill-health or redundancy ? and other banks look set to follow suit.

The public's desire for the online coverage of stories from David Beckham's wardrobe to Catherine Zeta-Jones's dress disasters has seen advertisers flock to its site. The growth in online revenues is a welcome development for news services looking to make the internet pay, but some are questioning whether free sites can yet be self-sufficient.

Our view: Hold

The consortium vying to take control of Miramax Films has been asked to put up $40m to secure the deal, according to reports in the US.

Most banks fail to tell savers about changes to the interest they are earning on their cash, it was claimed yesterday.

The owner of the soap brands Imperial Leather and Carex has reported a 13 per cent rise in European profits after new products boosted trading. PZ Cussons said "excellent brand innovation" helped it to offset high levels of promotional activity and an uncertain consumer outlook.

The new chief executive of Morrisons has made his first acquisition by purchasing Simply Fresh Foods, a supplier of packaged vegetables, to enhance its distribution services as it expands in the UK.

The reckoning for rampant corruption under the United Nation's "oil-for-food" programme in Iraq under Saddam Hussein reached the icon of American capitalism, General Electric, which agreed to pay $23.4m to settle charges ? without admitting or denying them ? under US bribery laws.

Sir John Bond survived an attempt to unseat him as chairman of Vodafone yesterday, but dissenting shareholders managed to muster the backing of 6.5 per cent of investors.

The board of Tomkins yesterday backed a £2.9bn takeover bid from a consortium of Canadian investors, putting management on collision course with at least one of its biggest shareholders.

Digital freedom campaigners have welcomed a US ruling that loosens Apple's tight control over what users of its iPhone can do with the device.

BP reported one of the worst-ever losses in British corporate history yesterday after estimating the total cost of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill at $32bn (£21bn).

Tony Hayward's poorly chosen words in the weeks since the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico have hastened his fall from grace.

The fiscal squeeze was back on the agenda last night, with Logica failing to make any headway after a warning on the impact of public-sector cuts.

Outlook At first sight, it looks like a famous victory. Campaigners in the US have succeeded in persuading the Government to change the rules to give greater freedom to owners of an Apple iPhone. Previously, customers were breaking the law by unlocking their iPhones: changing the software on the handsets in order to bypass Apple's ban on downloads of apps from anywhere other than its own iTunes store. Now the company will have no legal recourse against customers who choose to do this.

Retailers expect their purple patch of sales to continue next month after enjoying their best performance in more than three years in July, driven by the balmy weather, the World Cup and summer discounting.

BP's new chief executive today pledged to put the oil giant "on the road to recovery" as it reeled under a 32.2 billion US dollar (£20.8 billion) blow from the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

BP put around 10% of its oil and gas assets up for sale today as the firm looks to raise 30 billion dollars (£19.4 billion) over the next 18 months.

BP chief executive Tony Hayward is to step down on October 1, the firm said today.

To most people, when British companies do business with China it usually involves outsourcing manufacturing to the rapidly emerging economic power?s low-cost factories. However, it does not have to be like that.

Finance still tight

Businesses are still having difficulty accessing finance from their banks despite a fall in decline rates, according to figures released by the Institute of Directors earlier this month. The survey of 899 company directors carried out in June also shows that one in three firms applying for finance in the first six months of the year were declined by their banks. In addition, there is evidence that banks? lending criteria are being tightened. Miles Templeman, director-general of the organisation, said:

The economic malaise afflicting business in Britain, and many other parts of the developed world, has catalysed a change in the way that business leaders need to think. Yet it?s one for which few of them are well prepared.

With growth in most major industrialised countries likely to be modest for some time to come, organisations cannot rely on ?business as usual? to see them through. They need to come up with products and services that are fresh and exciting. Above all, they need to capture the imagination of the public.

Three years after opening the first branch of his Byron hamburger restaurant business, Tom Byng has just opened his tenth. By the standards of many of the more aggressive chains in this business, that is modest progress. But it is enough of a challenge if ? like Byng ? you are trying to keep a close tab on operations and keep to the original ethos, to simply make ?hamburgers the way they should be?.

Like the layers of rock laid down during the Jurassic, Triassic, Cretaceous and other periods, the Department for Business has a similar accretion of quangos gathered under successive ages of Edwardian paternalism, Wilsonian intervention, Heathite corporatism, Thatcherite "enterprise", plus some Blairite and Brownite topsoil. Vince Cable is busily drilling through it all.

Stock market investors in the Philippines thought they had earned a buck or two yesterday, as their benchmark index soared by 14 per cent during the first three hours of trading. Sadly for them, the Philippine Stock Exchange then decided to suspend trading as it published a statement conceding that he gains were erroneously produced by a brand new computer system launched yesterday morning. In fact, share prices had fallen by 0.1 per cent over the three hours in question. Let's hope no one spent their winnings.

The directors of the agency set up to manage the Government's stakes in Britain's part-nationalised banks have agreed to take a 5 per cent pay cut as public-sector spending is slashed.

Bob Dudley, the American BP executive widely tipped to take over from the embattled Tony Hayward, is not expected to hang on to the top job for more than a couple of years.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman weighed into the row about compensation for victims of the Equitable Life scandal yesterday, saying she could not support the findings of a Government-backed inquiry published last week.

Habitat has made further changes to its management team as it seeks to turn around the business under new owner Hilco.

Sales of new single family homes in the US rebounded sharply in June, but the bounce was from a historically low base, according to official figures released yesterday.

The gap between the broadband speeds advertised by internet service providers and the actual speeds customers receive has widened in the past year, the communications watchdog revealed yesterday.

The bank of England reported a recovery in foreign exchange dealing activity in London over the past year.

Britain's biggest mining company, UK Coal, announced plans yesterday to split its resources and property businesses, adding that its chief executive, Jon Lloyd, and chairman, David Jones, would be leaving.

To look at their results from the World Cup you'd think all was rosy in the bookmakers' garden. That would be a mistaken impression. Yesterday, William Hill announced the migration of its telephone betting business to Gibraltar. The move means that just about the only remaining UK-based betting businesses are the Tote, Betfair and about 8,500 betting shops ? whose number is beginning to decline.

The social housing maintenance group Connaught is "in serious trouble", analysts warned yesterday, after the company admitted that its net debt would be significantly higher than its previous forecasts.

In the end, he had to go. Forget the gaffes (unhelpful) or the question of whether his chairman should have been more visible in the weeks following the Deepwater Horizon accident (absolutely). Tony Hayward has no choice but to step down from the chief executive's office at BP because he was the man in charge when that accident cost the lives of 11 people.

Babcock International was under pressure amid worries about the impact of public spending cuts last night. The defence services group fell by 11p to 597p after Bank of America Merrill Lynch warned that, with the bulk of its revenues related to the public sector, Babcock's margins may be squeezed in an age of fiscal austerity.

Further to my point about Barclays, be sceptical about the stress tests themselves, which only estimate the losses resulting from a eurozone sovereign bond default on the banks? trading books and not their bank books.

Regular readers of this blog will be unsurprised to hear that I disagree with the argument of my colleague, James Moore, that breaking up Barclays Bank would be a bad idea.

So now we know. Barclays is Britain?s strongest bank, and by quite some way. Even under a stressed scenario considered by Europe?s banking watchdogs it would have a tier one capital ratio of 13.7 per cent.

BP's board will deliver the final blow to beleaguered chief executive Tony Hayward today by ending his 28-year career with the oil giant.

A leading economic forecaster today said UK interest rates will have to stay at their record low of 0.5% for much longer than currently expected.

Motor giant Ford was warned today it faced legal action over the pension rights of thousands of workers who transferred to a car parts firm which then went into administration.

Banks will face renewed pressure from the Government today to increase lending to hard-pressed firms after Business Secretary Vince Cable warned they were "not acting in the national interest".

Banks will be warned today that they face greater government regulation unless they ?get their house in order? and boost their lending to cash-starved businesses.

Tony Hayward was last night negotiating the terms of his departure as chief executive of BP, bowing to the inevitable after months of intense criticism for his disastrous handling of the oil spill in Gulf of Mexico.

Cattles, the doorstep lender that has written no new business since its shares were suspended 18 months ago, was planning to rename itself Money Utopia Bank in an effort to attract retail depositors, it has emerged.

Britain's offshore wind ambitions will face a £10bn funding gap within five years, energy experts will warn today, and the Government's legally-binding 2020 green targets will not be met unless the deficit can be closed.

Some of you may have been following the "austerity versus stimulus" debate in the Financial Times. Certainly, Paul Krugman has. The Nobel Laureate has been firing off all sorts of comments on his New York Times blogsite, "The Conscience of a Liberal", in response to those views he finds particularly abhorrent. Ken Rogoff, the joint author of the excellent This Time Is Different, has been one victim. Another has been Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, whose preference for fiscal belt-tightening has been met with the full force of Mr Krugman's Keynesian ridicule. In response to Mr Trichet's claim that "consolidation is a must", Mr Krugman offered the following broadside:

In the market for a husband or wife of substance? The guide to dating that is now running on the financial-sector jobs website Hereisthecity.com could be just the thing if you hope to catch a banker. It offers a rundown on the merits (or otherwise) of staff from a dozen of the Square Mile's top names. Highlights include this gem: "A glint in the eye, a warm French smile. Oodles of charm and fantastic sex. But your SocGen dream man will prob-bly turn out to be happily married too."

Anxiety about the health of Britain's housing market will be rocked further today, with two new reports warning that both prices and consumer confidence are falling. Hometrack, the property analyst, said that house prices fell by 0.1 per cent in July, the first time it has registered a reduction for 15 months, while Rightmove, the online estate agency, saw a sharp fall in the number of people now expecting the property market to be higher in 12 months' time than today.

Sir Richard Branson could be in line for a multi-million pound payday this year, as he plans a potential corporate overhaul of Virgin Active.

George Osborne's Budget has depressed consumers so much that their lack of confidence in the economy has returned to the levels last seen during the depths of the recession.

Continued strength at British Gas is expected to drive gains for Centrica, the energy group which is due to issue half-yearly results this week.

It's 2am. You've been out and had rather too much to drink and you want to carry on into the small hours. There are of course a number of online options available, some of them you might not want to share, but increasingly, people that find themselves firing up the laptop and turning to international currency markets, and financial spreadbetting.

Graphite Capital, the UK mid-market private equity specialist, has emerged as the backer for the £45m management buyout of Teaching Personnel.

A majority of British businesses back the emergency Budget, according to figures released by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), with 64 per cent supporting the balance between spending cuts and tax rises.

BAE systems has teamed up with the wave energy developer Aquamarine Power in an almost £1m project to produce more reliable alternative energy sources for the UK. BAE and Aquamarine put up £450,000, to match a grant from the Technology Strategy Board. The funding is to support the development of the commercial production of Aquamarine's Oyster wave energy converter.

Aurora Fashions has posted a profit at its chains including Karen Millen, Oasis and Warehouse, 16 months after buying them out of administration.

The future of Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, hangs in the balance this weekend as the BP board meets tomorrow to decide whether the beleaguered boss should quit over his role in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The Apprentice's Lord Sugar has signalled a return to the boom years with the proposed sale of three of his prized Mayfair properties, at pre-credit crunch prices.

Anadarko Petroleum, the Texan partner in BP's Deepwater Horizon oil well which exploded in April, is eyeing a 75 per cent stake in the onshore Jolly Ranch scheme in Colorado.

Emed Mining, the owner of the 5,000-year-old Riotinto copper mine in south-west Spain, is considering a move to the main board of the London Stock Exchange.

A US and Middle-Eastern consortium which plans to build one of London's tallest skyscrapers, the Pinnacle, is close to agreeing terms with HSBC to lead the £600m financing of the ambitious project.

The latest episode of Zach Galifianakis' web chat show 'Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis' is up on the Funny or Die site. The comedian/actor is best known for his role in The Hangover, but he' ...

A vicar was found guilty today of conducting hundreds of sham marriages to help illegal immigrants gain residency in Britain.

Sir Tom Jones is on course to become the oldest male musician to have a UK number one album, with his record Praise And Blame leading the way in midweek sales.

The scale of the sham marriages was on an unprecedented scale involving "classic exploitation" of foreign nationals desperate to stay in the UK, investigators said.

It's top of the posts time, again. America has featured heavily in this week's most popular offerings, from Hollywood to the right wing, with a few football-based entries scoring good positions also. ...

...

Anglo-French bassist and co-founder of rock band The Stranglers, Jean-Jacques ?JJ? Burnel, spoke to The Independent Online about the perils of growing up as ?a Frog? in the 1960s, his passion for motorbikes and why Plato?s The Republic changed his life.

A man who threw a shoe at an Old Bailey judge was allowed to walk free from court today by another judge.

Andrew Strauss fell disappointingly just before lunch as England reached 103 for two on day one of the first npower Test against Pakistan at Trent Bridge.

A "grumpy" school caretaker told today of his shock at being wrongly arrested for having child porn on his computer.

Argentina could only reach the quarter-finals of the World Cup, so when the Argentinean FA asked Diego Maradona to make substantial changes to his backroom staff it sounded like a fair request. And wh ...

Standards of care at a leading hospital where four babies died were "not what was expected", a health boss said today.

Argentina could only reach the quarter-finals of the World Cup, so when the Argentinean FA asked Diego Maradona to make substantial changes to his backroom staff it sounded like a fair request. And wh ...

A couple who brutally murdered a toddler they were paid to look after were today jailed for life.

A 47-year-old woman has confessed to killing her eight new-born children and hiding their bodies in a village in northern France, a judicial source said today.

Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself. This is one of those times. You've all heard the saying, as muttered famously by a certain Miss.Moss - but upon pondering over some of the 'recipes' I cam ...

A pair of cleaners were caught red-handed pilfering from passengers' luggage at an airport, police said today.

Farmland bird numbers fell 5% last year to new record lows, official figures showed today.

A military cargo plane carrying four people on a training run has crashed at an air force base in Alaska, the US Air Force said today.

Sad news courtesy of this month's Oldie. Elena Salvoni OBE, the 90-year-old maitre d' of Elena's Etoile in Charlotte Street is to retire, seemingly against her will. The Grande Dame of dining tells th ...

Cactus? Language Minis is a Spanish podcast series, developed to offer easy learning on the go. It consists of seven levels, each with 10 downloadable podcast lessons and PDF workbooks, which take you from beginner through to advanced level. The Language Minis series is designed to help you increase your understanding of the Spanish language and equip you with language skills for use in everyday situations.

General Sir Peter Wall is to be the next professional head of the British Army, it was announced today.

A 23-year-old man was found guilty today of pelting eggs at a Tory peer.

A woman appeared in court today charged with concealment of birth after the remains of four babies were found.

If you're not already aware of Big Picture, Boston Globe's online photo blog, I urge you to trawl its occasional yet always illuminating topical galleries. The guy who edits the site has access to mos ...

A Tamil refugee hunger striker today accepted substantial undisclosed damages over claims that he had secretly eaten takeaway burgers throughout his protest.

Amazon.com launched a cheaper, wireless-only Kindle on Wednesday, betting that the lower price will turn its latest electronic reader into a mass-appeal device as Apple Inc's iPad gains ground.

Twitter is for more than just tweeting. Using millions of Twitter messages, or tweets, from the popular social networking site, researchers at Northeastern University in Boston have created a Twitter Mood Map to measure the moods of the USA.

Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn believes the rule regarding team orders is now unrealistic and in need of an urgent overhaul.

Diego Maradona has accused Argentinian Football Association president Julio Grondona and director of national teams Carlos Bilardo of forcing him out of his job as coach.

Sir Alex Ferguson has launched a stout defence of Manchester United owners the Glazer family.

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson believes Javier Hernandez's pace could be a crucial weapon after the Mexico striker scored in his opening game for the club.

David Beckham could be back in training by the end of August, his LA Galaxy coach Bruce Arena said yesterday.

Newcastle defender Steven Taylor is expected to be sidelined for the first three months of the new season.

Celtic new boy Joe Ledley insists his Champions League dream is not yet over despite the Hoops losing 3-0 away to Braga in their third qualifying round first leg.

Children were suspended from school on more than 80,000 occasions last year for attacking teachers and classmates, official figures showed today.

Mark Hughes looks set for a return to the Barclays Premier League after Fulham confirmed they are on the brink of appointing their new manager.

Significant improvements were made to the BBC's coverage of the devolved nations - but concerns remain about "misleading or confusing" news items, the BBC Trust found today.

The Foreign Office spent more than £13 million sending the children of British diplomats to private schools last year, it was revealed.

The Foreign Office said today it was investigating reports that a British strip club owner was murdered on holiday in the Dominican Republic.

Emergency teams battled heavy rain and mud today to recover bodies strewn over hills overlooking the Pakistani capital after the country's worst plane crash.

Business and pressure groups today welcomed a Government announcement to phase out the so-called default retirement age (DRA) of 65 by October 2011 in a move to encourage people to work for longer.

Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell put beleaguered rival BP in the shade today with a 34% hike in second-quarter profits to 4.2 billion US dollars (£2.7 billion).

Police today ruled out any crimes linked to serial killer Peter Tobin at a second seaside property where he used to live.

A grocery store is committing "wildlife massacre" by selling squirrel meat, campaigners claimed today.

A suicide attacker drove a bomb-laden minibus into the entrance of an Iraqi army base near Saddam Hussein's home town today, setting off an explosion that killed four soldiers and wounded 10 others, police said.

Police investigating the disappearance of chef Claudia Lawrence confirmed today they are scaling back the number of officers dedicated to the inquiry.

A shortage of buyers sent house prices falling in July for the first time since February, figures showed today.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev signed a bill that widens the powers of the Federal Security Service, the KGB's main successor agency.

The troubled Toyota motor company today announced yet another recall, with the latest involving 348 vehicles in the UK.

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The September issues of the big fashion glossies, which are out next week, are traditionally the fattest and most lucrative of the year. If you do manage to find any actual, genuine editorial coverage lurking amid the all-new, high- budget, high-profile, autumn/winter advertising campaigns then you're a better woman ? or even man ? than many. And what campaigns they are!

London, it seems, has not been kind to Yevgeny Chichvarkin. Once the enfant terrible of the Russian super-rich, the portly figure who trudges into the lobby of a posh Kensington hotel is a far cry from the legend. Until 18 months ago, he was one of the most successful businessmen in Russia ? famous for his luxuriant mullet, his outrageous dress sense and his peppering of speeches at drab economic forums with excitable gestures and swearing.

Your child needs their lunchtime nap. You need to go out. You settle for taking the buggy and draping over a blanket or towel in the hope that they'll sleep. Predictably, it falls off and your child wakes up. You swear you'll stay at home next time.

Every new family has its trials and tribulations. We were luckier than most: breastfeeding was a breeze, weaning a doddle, even the sleep deprivation was bearable. But toilet training? This was our Everest. Our two-year old proved highly resistant to the potty, but was equally adamant she would no longer wear nappies. It was a challenging time, but eventually we got there: our daughter is now a confident three-year-old who happily nips to the loo when nature calls, something that at some dark points last year seemed almost unthinkable.

By the time you read this, I'll be sat in a field with my partner and son, Krishan, celebrating his third birthday in Cornwall. We decided to head to the coast for a bit of rest and relaxation after our second festival of 2010.

A season of sex is being planned by the BBC. Such an idea inevitably risks the wrath of moral guardians, as well as the snorts of critics who might think it sensationalist and unoriginal. So if you're going to do it, make sure you have the hot writer of the moment signed up for the project.

The British tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson was one of the finest exponents in his generation of the roles originally sung by Peter Pears in the operas of Benjamin Britten. However, his interpretations were in no way copies of the senior tenor's idiosyncratic versions; rather, they were recreations of the music that perfectly suited his own voice and style. His other favourite opera composers were Monteverdi and Mozart, while he sang the great Bach Passions and Handel oratorios throughout his career. As a recitalist he was a founder member of the Songmakers' Almanac and specialised in Schubert lieder and Britten's canticles. He also became an excellent conductor, especially of operas in which he had himself sung, such as Monteverdi's L'Orfeo.

Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan were old, half-forgotten names for a new generation of theatre-goers and practitioners, yet recent revivals of their best early work ? written when both men were in their late twenties ? have been acclaimed as period master works with a biting, contemporary appeal.

Among Daniel Schorr's many awards, distinctions and achievements as a journalist, one was surely unique. He was the only US reporter both to be expelled from Moscow for crossing a Soviet leader ? and to feature as an officially designated "enemy" of an American President.

Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One rights holder, has cast serious doubt on the chance of all 12 F1 teams surviving through to the end of the season in November and believes some of the smaller ones are "out of their depth".

Peter de Villiers has been given a vote of confidence by his employers at the South African Rugby Union and assured that his job is safe.

He made it sound like some undeserved sinecure, a perk of marrying into the right family. "I'm the luckiest man in the weighing room, to ride for Richard Hannon," he grinned. "It's as simple as that. Jockeys are ten a penny."

Races over seven or eight furlongs round here tend to hinge upon so many hazards that the search for a winner tends to become a rather neurotic, complex process. Over two miles, however, punters have no need to fret about the draw, or potential traffic problems round all those twists and turns. They can simply back the best horse in the race. And on that basis there is no need to wait for Jupiter to align with Mars, or the moon to be in the Seventh House, to find the winner of the Artemis Goodwood Cup.

Tam White was one of Scotland's finest blues singers and although he had chart success in his own right, he was best known for being Robbie Coltrane's singing voice in the TV comedy drama Tutti Frutti (1987).

Wavves are teetering on a lofty precipice. Headed by angsty 23-year-old singer/songwriter Nathan Williams from San Diego, on record, Wavves boast one of the most exciting sounds around. As Williams and his band take to the tiny stage under the bricked arches of Shoreditch club Cargo, they look, and sound like bratty couldn't-care-less teenagers.

Everyone dies, don't they ? but not everyone lives," said Dan, the subject of Alastair Cook's film The Men Who Jump Off Buildings. If you had to devise a bumper sticker to promote suicidal recklessness that would do the trick, wouldn't it? It sounds plausible enough, relegating all those of us too sensible to launch ourselves off the Trellick Tower at four in the morning to mere zombiedom. It's the sort of slogan that you need to see flashing past you in the fast lane, though, because any kind of tailback would give you too much time to question its essential premise. You might, for one thing, want to ask exactly what kind of definition of "living" was proposed here. Dan ? compulsively addicted to base jumping ? seemed to acknowledge at one point that it was a slightly desperate, compensatory one. "Base jumping gives me enough excitement to carry on with this," he explained, smearing tar on to a roof while doing the job that pays for his parachute. Is that really a life though ? in hock to boredom for the occasional 45 seconds of terrifying adrenalin?

Quite how Solomon Burke's 12-piece band fits onto the Jazz Café's tiny stage is a miracle, rather like one of those 3D wooden jigsaw puzzles, with the guitarist way out right beside a post, the drummer lurking behind the three-man horn section, and the bassist hidden behind the backing singers. Things aren't made any easier by the massive gilt and red velvet throne centre stage, from which the King of Rock and Soul proclaims his gospel of love.

Willy Russell's scabrous Scousers, Shirley Valentine (Saint Joan of the fitted kitchen units, with all her nosy-neighbour voices) and hairdresser Rita of the Open University, are still going strong after a quarter of a century. They are now as engraved in the national consciousness as Maggie May, resilient streetwalker of the Liverpool docks, or the battling socialist MP Bessie Braddock. This Menier Chocolate Factory transfer, for a summer season at the Trafalgar Studios, presents Russell's two plays in all their wit and vivacity.

Arsenal face being without three key players when they start their Premier League campaign with the difficult trip to Liverpool in just over two weeks' time. Striker Nicklas Bendtner is definitely out with a groin injury, while both Cesc Fabregas and Robin van Persie do not return to training until next Thursday after featuring in the World Cup final for Spain and the Netherlands respectively.

It says a lot for the development of England under Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss that there will scarcely be a breath of selection controversy at Trent Bridge over the next few days.

The last time England played Pakistan at Test cricket it ended in tears, recriminations and the first forfeit in the history of the game. While nobody should advocate the sort of kerfuffle that ensued at The Oval four years ago after the tourists were accused of ball tampering, the series which begins here today will not be entirely straightforward for long.

Overnight, as if the previous two years had been airbrushed from history, Pakistan have prospects in the series against England starting today. It has been provided, more or less entirely, by the quality of their fast-bowling attack which has abruptly found itself as the talk of the summer.

When he tees it up in the first round of The Irish Open here today, Justin Rose will be playing in Europe for only the third time this year. And he has no plans to make his fourth appearance the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles next month, even if he has not earned a Ryder Cup place by then.

Mum was very much the word at last year's Ricoh Women's British Open as Catriona Matthew completed a stunning 11-week journey from the maternity ward to the winners' enclosure. Alas, as far as the sponsors were concerned, mum carried on being the word for the Scottish champion. The phone never rang, the millions did not arrive.

Usain Bolt is set to compete against Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay for the first time this season in the 100m at the DN Galan Diamond League meeting in Stockholm on 6 August.

An academic study has borne out what the French have always claimed ? that they get a rough deal from English referees. Analysis of 70 Super League games involving the Catalan Dragons between 2006 and 2009 reveals what the researchers say is a persistent bias against the French on the part of British officials.

Less than three days after he celebrated a third Tour de France win Alberto Contador has declared that he will be parting company with his Kazakh team, Astana. Whilst disagreements over future salary contributed to Contador's abrupt announcement that he was leaving, a series of equipment disasters have been a contributory factor.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has described as "heart breaking" the way some banks are treating business clients who had been customers for many decades.

Don't I know him?

Two dozen people are sitting around a Kent farmhouse table eating lunch ? a homely and unremarkable scene. But the anxiety of some of the adults, and the feral eating habits of some of the children, show this is not what it seems. For many of those passing around the plates of fresh pasta and salad this is a rare moment of normality in traumatised lives.

For students at Buckingham, the private university opened by Mrs Thatcher, the two-year degree is a winning option. They positively relish the rigours of a 40-week year, and prefer four terms to three, together with holidays of only two weeks; that way they keep up the momentum and get their degrees over more quickly.

Much has been written about the dramatic negotiations that took place between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives and Labour in the immediate aftermath of the indecisive election of May. Yet Gordon Brown's role in these momentous days is in danger of being badly misrepresented. His role needs to be reappraised if the history of this period is to be accurately recorded.

In The Bookseller of Kabul, the Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad charted the choppy life of an Afghan family during the spring of 2002, as foreign powers and internal armies fought over the future of their country. The book was based on the time she spent living with a bookseller and his two wives, a privileged witness to their domestic quarrels and desires as well as their more public existence. She focused on the subjugated place of the women of the family, and wrote about her own experiments inside a burka and how "in time I started to hate it". The book was an international bestseller, lauded for its "unique insight into another world" (Daily Mirror), for Seierstad's "curiosity and perceptive eye" (Independent), for testifying to "the power of literature to withstand even the most repressive regime" (Daily Mail).

First, credit where credit is due. David Cameron may be overdoing things a bit in his drive for trade opportunities in India ? it could be called hypocritical to demand that India opens its doors to free trade whilst we close our doors to free immigration ? but in terms of recalibrating British foreign policy, the Prime Minister has picked up the ball and is playing it with quite astonishing panache.

In this summer of unlikely partnerships, yet another alliance is formed. Labour's shadow Cabinet joins forces with Tory rebels to oppose the coalition's package of constitutional reforms, including a referendum on the Alternative Vote. Once more we close our eyes and wonder whether we are dreaming. Cameron and Clegg say "Yes" to a referendum! David Davis for the Conservatives and the Miliband brothers hold placards saying "No!", or "Almost No!" For such a supposedly dry topic, the prospect of a referendum on electoral reform produces painful contortions that seem to make no sense at all.

What's in a name? The NHS should use the term fat instead of obese, a thinnish government health minister said yesterday. Some people, naturally, have been deeply offended, as would have been the minister, Anne Milton, if we had called her scrawny instead of thinnish. The overweight prefer more congenial terms: plump, chubby, tubby or big-boned. Or more politically correct notions; one local authority has been trying to introduce the idea of being "unhealthily weighted".

The shocking death of Khyra Ishaq, who starved after months of abuse at the hands of her mother and stepfather, has drawn attention once again to the failings of child protection services. Publication this week of the full serious case review into Khyra's death has revealed for the first time the extent of the communications failures and missed opportunities that contributed to the death of seven-year-old Khyra.

Tomorrow, the Chilcot inquiry into Britain's decision to go to war on Iraq will have sat for a whole year. It has been a suprisingly worthwhile exercise, bringing to full public view a depressing picture of the way the country was led to war against the advice and warnings of most of the experts and officials at the time. But the steady drip-drip of its evidence has served largely to confirm what many people suspected, rather than revealing anything startlingly new.

Andrew Strauss admits England still have room for improvement as they bid for the series victory against Pakistan they will need if they are to set off for Australia with confidence intact. Strauss sees a potentially difficult four-match series against Salman Butt's tourists as an opportunity to continue a progression which began with last summer's wins over West Indies and in the Ashes.

He is not exactly the last Tamgho in Paris. All of Teddy Tamgho's family live in the French capital where they will be watching on TV as the 21-year-old attempts to be not just the first Tamgho in Barcelona but first in tonight's triple jump final.