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Padraig Harrington did not know whether he could defend The Open when he woke up on Thursday morning, but as wind caused havoc at Royal Birkdale today he found himself up into second place.

In-form Lewis Hamilton grabbed the ninth pole position of his Formula One career ahead of tomorrow's German Grand Prix.

Ashwell Prince struck his second hundred of the npower series as South Africa took a firm grip on the Test match at Headingley.

You've probably discovered what happens when you try to cool a bottle of wine by shoving it in the freezer then forgetting about it until the following morning. Why not do it deliberately to make a dessert? Granitas can be made with all sorts of fruit purées mixed with water and sugar. I've added just enough water and sugar to the prosecco not to make it too sweet.

West Ham were yesterday close to completing their first major signing of the summer, with the £5m acquisition of the highly-rated Swiss international Valon Behrami from Lazio. However the deal was over-shadowed by a public admonishment for Robert Green after the goalkeeper said he felt "completely undervalued" and intimated that he wanted to leave after not being awarded a pay rise.

As the broad beans tend to end up being quite well-cooked in this dish it's perfectly acceptable to use frozen; in fact, frozen ones often yield better results.

They will forever be remembered as part of the greatest Barcelona team of all time, and one that eliminated Chelsea on their way to the 2006 Champions League title but Deco's love affair with the former European champions is well and truly over. On his official introduction as a Chelsea player, the Portuguese midfielder said that he and Ronaldinho had to leave the Nou Camp to get their careers back on track.

This dessert is dead simple and it's full of flavour. You can use any soft fruit really, but raspberries are associated with Scotland. I have tried using Drambuie instead of whisky and it also worked pretty well.

Smoking your own food at home can be quite good fun, whether you have a home smoker or convert your barbecue into a smoker. Or you could try it my way.

My childhood memories of trifle consist of tinned fruit and sherry-soaked sponge under custard. But trifle can be adapted to use all sorts of fresh summer fruits. In this recipe, I use blueberries from the Dorset Blueberry Company (www.dorset-blueberry.com).

This is an old favourite from my friend Theodore Kyriacou, whose new book, A Culinary Voyage Round the Greek Islands, was recently published (Quadrille, £20).

You could also incorporate different coloured peppers, or even replace the feta with goat's cheese. This tart is delicious hot or at room temperature. If you're having a family get-together, make it as one large tart and divide it up; or make smaller ones for a dinner party.

Dame Nellie Melba, the Australian opera singer, gave her name not only to this dessert but also to Melba toast. The famous chef Auguste Escoffier of the Savoy saw her perform at Covent Garden in 1894 and was so impressed, the following day he created peach Melba – a perfect marriage of peach, vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce.

Where Kwik Save was once the supermarket that did exactly what it said on the tin, the discount mantle has now passed to Aldi. According to Daniel Gibson, Aldi’s wine buyer, when the price of a summery thirst quenching rosé, the 2007 Vina Decana Rosada, slipped from £2.99 to a grand total of £3.29 after the budget, the company lost an immediate 40 per cent of sales, even though there’s no disputing the value of the wine, even at £3.29.

The living room was flooded with the white blaze of arc lights, illuminating men in silver suits as they dusted down the car of the shadow minister for Justice. They were looking for forensic evidence. So it was very difficult to believe the good news on crime figures emanating at that very moment from the television. The bit about the irrational rise in fear of crime, against the British Crime Survey's backdrop of civil calm, sat particularly badly. Just a few hours earlier, 18-year-old Frederick Moody had been stabbed to death outside his home down the road, by one of a group of children who had, witnesses say, been gathered in the area for some while. The bereaved family of the dead young man have, it transpires, lived on my street for some years. Until Thursday night, though, I didn't know that any of them existed. I doubt if Edward Garnier, the Conservative MP, whose Peugeot across the street now glimmers with iridescent fingerprint dust, knew them either.

Lobsters have boomed in Britain's first marine nature reserve, where fishing is banned. The large crustaceans have soared in numbers in the "no-take zone" around Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, which was established five years ago as a prototype for sea-life reserves around Britain.

Labour is to delay repaying its "cash for honours" loans for up to a decade as it attempts to plug a £16m black hole in its finances.

Few could have predicted that a big, burly cartoon panda called Po, who is versed in the finer arts of kung fu, could have brought anything but joy to the ancestral homeland of the creatures.

The home I grew up in... was a beautiful, very middle-class American colonial house. It was set over six acres of land and there was an apple orchard out the back. My dad got me selling the apples to our neighbours at an early age.

Prominently displayed in every sports hall in every town in China is a large red flag and a banner in bold Chinese characters exhorting the athletes below to always do their best to love and honour China.

I'm as old as the moon and the stars, and as young as the trees and the lakes. My style comes from looking at what came before me, and from visiting a lot of places. I'm fanatical about movies: African, European, Viking, Roman. I got into witchcraft and magic from watching Bewitched and The Wizard of Oz, which shows in some of my outfits. I dress to reflect the whole spectrum of the universe.

I'm not quite sure where it's come from but an obsession with watering cans has bobbed to the surface. I only really acknowledged the fetish at the Hampton Court Flower Show recently when I bought two more cans from Pete and Zoe Walker of Garden Brocante who have provided five handsome vessels over the past two years, and props for my last two show gardens at Chelsea. It's an unlikely fascination, particularly as it started during the hose ban of 2006, when sloshing around at the allotment like the tortured Gerard Dépardieu in Jean de Florette was enough to put anyone off watering cans for life. My first three-gallon French pot, despite being a brute to lug around, reduced the amount of trips to the galvanized water tank by half. Now armed with two of these monsters, I'll be even more efficient. And the evenly distributed weight will be less strain on the back.

Gabriella Cilmi spent most of the day before our interview being photographed on the Thames by the Australian press, the Oz media keen for a glamorous snapshot of the girl from Down Under making a splash on the other side of the world. Given that this is the most unpredictable British summer since that of 2007, it wasn't quite the pleasure it perhaps should have been.

Getting a lily to flower in its first year is no problem. Only when you have brought it successfully through its second year can you award yourself a merit star. A new lily bulb, bought from a reputable supplier, will already have the embryo of the following summer's flowers wrapped neatly away in its heart. You have to be extraordinarily cack-handed to prevent that flower bursting out.

Two years ago, the Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, best known for his restaging of the 1984 Battle of Orgreave between the police and striking miners, pitched up at the Frieze Art Fair in London with a single piece of work for sale, a poster that offered a novel twist on a famous Christian car-bumper sticker. Against a plain black background was a simple white slogan arranged over five decks. It read: "What Would Neil Young Do?"

If you ask me, Gordon Brown's former apologists should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. No, I take that back: they should take voluntary redundancy from the apologist business, banish themselves to the hills and never darken the doors of the metropolitan commentariat ever again.

My 13-year-old Jack Russell cross sometimes digs up and chews shallow soil when we are out for walks - she never does this in the garden at home. She has a healthy appetite. I'm increasingly concerned about this behaviour. Should I be adding something to her food? Harriet Craven, via email

It's just as well the by-line photos accompanying restaurant reviews aren't legally obliged to reflect the actual size of the writer. There has been such a waxing and waning of waistlines in reviewing circles recently that picture editors would be struggling to keep pace. As some of my big-boy peers melt into slender ephebes thanks to no-carb diets, I'm heading in the opposite direction, having adopted a punishing regime of round-the-clock eating in preparation for the judging of the London Restaurant Awards.

By bicycle to the Royal Society of Arts in the Adam Brothers' Adelphi for a debate on whether the 2012 Olympics will be "good" for London. The panel assembled in the Great Room under James Barry's awesome series of six paintings, an allegorical depiction of The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture. In one of the canvases Barry has Orpheus subduing the savage Thracians with his lyre; in another angels present an orrery to Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and Copernicus; in a third Thomas More, Cato and Socrates debate the fundamentals of philosophy in an Elysian field. The culmination of the series depicts still more angels incensing (in the sense of wafting incense towards Him, not winding Him up) the Creator.

The other day a prominent artist threw a large glass of white wine at me in the gent's lavatory of a Mayfair pub. In case this sounds like a tale of raffish doings among the artists formerly known as Britart, I should explain: a) the gent doing the chucking comes from an earlier generation than Damian, Sarah and our own dear Tracey; b) his intentions were entirely benign; c) I actually thanked him, admittedly through gritted teeth, for his generous action. It happened in the London art nexus of Cork Street. "The Weasel receives a glass of wine in Mulligans" could have been a frozen moment along the lines of David Hockney's "A Bigger Splash". Fortunately, perhaps, there was no painter present to limn the tableau.

Luckily, no one was watching. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, California time, I found myself talking to a woman while sitting naked in a San Diego hotel room with a duvet over my head. Fortunately for her, she was 5,000 miles away. The only thing more ridiculous than this tableau was the subject we were discussing.

My dream was always to go to Laos before it got Starbucked to death by my people, before a great deluge of tourism washed over its enchantment. I was told to get there fast, before the crowds came. But you can't reach Laos directly from the UK, which was how I found myself in Chiang Mai – a city in northern Thailand that, I'd heard, was also fairly untouched. Wrong. Chiang Mai, whatever anyone tells you, is a nightmare: a beehive of dishevelled bamboo shacks on stilts filled with plastic, giant-headed cats and insanely grinning tin Buddhas, as well as over-lit restaurants that seat 800 people.

Warning of the week Ryanair fees take off

At the end of a narrow cobbled street in the heart of the Unesco city of Bruges towers a cream and red-brick turreted palace that has recently opened as Bruges's first five-star hotel. It is the latest incarnation of the Prinsenhof, built in 1429 by the powerful Duke Philip the Good – then the richest man in Europe – to celebrate his marriage to Isabella of Portugal.

The steps began to obsess me. Our arrival in "Saxon Switzerland" – the region of Germany that lies between Dresden and the Czech border – had coincided with a heatwave. The adventurers who explored and mapped this territory, which is filled with curiously formed cliffs, table-shaped outcrops and solitary pillars, had done so in style, by constructing stone staircases, flights of wooden steps and metal rungs at every juncture. As we sweltered in temperatures of 39C, I counted them as a diversion from the heat.

Lives, fortunes and hopes: all were squandered during the tortuous construction of America's finest bike path. That might sound absurd – but the real folly is the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, a waterway that swerves gracefully through the modest, misshapen state of Maryland, and whose towpath provides an ideal cycle-trip. In three days you can ride through benign woodland and rolling hills, with diversions to locations crucial to the history of America, and end in the nation's capital.

At Sand Bay, a few miles from Applecross, there's a sand dune that stands at least 100ft high at the back of the beach. And whenever I'm there, in a kind of ritual, I climb to the top. As I start my agonisingly slow ascent, my mind starts to wander and I'm reminded of the classic film The Hill, in which a young Sean Connery is tormented by an army drill sergeant who forces his men to climb an ever-shifting mountain of sand over and over again.

Why not 'art cities'?

Q: We are planning to go to the South of France this summer with our 18-month-old daughter and three-and-a-half-year-old son. We'd like to stay in a small coastal town with child-friendly beaches, in a gîte or family-run hotel. Where do you suggest?

Watching the bank charges saga unfold over the past couple of years has been a bit like watching Derby County play football. You know they're going to lose, but rather than simply agreeing on a suitable scoreline with their unquestionably superior competitors, the referee insists on the humiliation being played out in front of thousands of people over a full 90 minutes.

In theory, tax credits are crucial extra financial aid for those supporting children and those with low incomes. But on the ground, the process is complex and confusing. Around £4.3bn worth of tax credits went unclaimed last year, and Citizens Advice received over 3.5 million calls last year from people who were confused by the credit and benefit system.

The rapid rise of the MP3 player has revolutionised the way we buy and listen to music over the past few years. In 2007, sales of CD albums fell by 10 per cent, while the number of tracks downloaded from the internet rose by more than a third.

So: food. everyone's talking about it. Really, everyone. A few weeks ago my fellow cash-strapped columnist Lisa discussed it; now the rest of the country's doing the same. We're being told to waste less, to innovate, to stop chucking things out. And all the while, prices go up.

Q. I have a Sky TV package, which gives me a second Sky set-top box for £10 extra a month – £45 in total – allowing me to watch Sky on two TVs in my house. A condition is that there must be two phone lines, with each set-top box permanently connected to a phone line. When I moved home, I arranged for two phone lines, and Sky engineers installed the two-box service. One phone line failed and Sky warned me I would be charged in full for two boxes if this continued. I had the phone connection repaired and performed Sky's on-screen system check, which gave me the message "line connected". I thought the problem was settled. I recently checked my bank statements and found that I had paid the full amount for two boxes for at least a year, which is more than £300 extra. I pay by direct debit and I have not received any bills by post. JC, Reading

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that stock markets have been especially poor over recent weeks. The economic news is grim and pronouncements by Messrs Brown and Darling that our "robust" economy will counteract the credit crunch problems are clearly nonsense. Indeed you should ignore anything the Government tells you about the economy; they rarely concede anything is wrong and never admit that it might partly be their fault!

With the roof falling in on the housing market, there is obvious merit in avoiding any company that relies on residential property for much of its income. Consequently, investors are giving little PSG Solutions, involved in property searches and the hated housing information packs (HIPs), a wide berth.

At Newton, we believe in looking at investments on a global basis, with the focus for our global analysts led by our global themes. One such theme is Networked World. The use of networks remains relatively low and only now, as the devices and applications become more readily available, are we seeing rapid growth in network usage. It's a trend that can have profound benefits for many industries, with telecommunications being at the forefront.

Renault Laguna diesel estate. That's not a combination of words calculated to set the pulse of the average car enthusiast racing, so I'm grateful to this week's panel of reader-testers for agreeing so readily to take part when they might have been hoping to try something more exotic. Throw in the fact that our test car's diesel engine had a capacity of only 1,461cc and we're not exactly talking about a recipe for excitement.

The bookies will be expecting a relatively quiet weekend with the Open Championship at halfway and the second Test at Headingley in play. But there's a fair chance, given the likely intervention of the weather, that punters will be forced back into the market. Those who had the misfortune to back Sandy Lyle or Rich Beem at Royal Birkdale, will want a player to sustain their interest.

One could quite easily be forgiven for thinking that the Open Championship is about golf, but in fact the Royal and Ancient game is only the very tip of the iceberg that, were it to appear in the Ribble estuary just north of Southport, would surprise nobody, least of all those Americans in town who appear to be suffering from the delusion that the summer is about sunshine.

British horseracing has long been accustomed to scavengers. In fact, those once routinely depicted as parasites are nowadays embraced as symbiotic partners. The sport's administrators candidly resolved that if they could not beat the bookmakers, they should join them. Now the more bookmakers win from punters, the more they will pay racing.

Any hopes Surrey had harboured of leaving Woodbridge Road with a first Championship victory of the season under their belt were looking bleak last night after another collective bad day at the office.

There was drama enough off the field for Rob Key, the Kent captain, who made a 235-mile dash home to Whitstable to be with his wife, Fleur, for the birth of their second child. Back at the County Ground, meanwhile, Kent's chances of keeping the match going long enough for Key to play a further part looked slim.

Jonathan Clare was the star of the show for the second day running as Derbyshire dominated on the third day of their Second Division game with Northamptonshire.

Mark Cavendish's already immense achievements in this year's Tour came a step closer to the stuff of sporting legend yesterday when he blasted to yet another bunch sprint victory – his fourth in the race.

Huddersfield have appointed Nathan Brown as their new coach. The Australian, who is in charge at St George-Illawarra, will arrive at the end of the NRL season on a three-year contract. He succeeds Jon Sharp, who was sacked last month after the Giants slumped to next to bottom in Super League.

Sir Alex Ferguson has moved to end the constant speculation surrounding Cristiano Ronaldo's desire to leave Manchester United for Real Madrid by warning the player, in a face-to-face meeting in Portugal, that he will not be sold by the European champions this summer.

The shuffling of goalkeepers between Premier League clubs began in earnest yesterday with Blackburn close to caving in to Brad Friedel's demand that he be allowed to move to Aston Villa, who face competition from Manchester City, while Liverpool sold Scott Carson to West Bromwich Albion in a deal that could rise to £3.75m.

West Bromwich Albion have completed the signing of the England goalkeeper Scott Carson from Liverpool. Carson has signed a four-year deal, for an initial fee of £3.25m which could rise by £500,000, depending on "performance-related criteria". The signing is Albion's seventh since they gained promotion in May and brings their summer spending to £13.75m. Roman Bednar, Luke Moore, Doheon Kim, Graham Dorrans, Gianni Zuiverloon and Marek Cech have already been signed. The 22-year-old Carson, who played 35 Premier League games for Aston Villa last season, is second on the all-time list of England Under-21 appearance-makers, with 29, and was in the team that reached the 2007 European Championship semi-finals. Sven-Goran Eriksson, then the England manager, named him in his 2006 World Cup squad and he made two B international appearances before being given his senior debut in a 1-0 win over Austria in November 2007. Five days later, with the regular No 1 Paul Robinson out of form, Carson started the make-or-break Euro 2008 qualifier against Croatia at Wembley which England lost 3-2, confirming their absence from this summer's finals.

Viewing the capital's panorama from the bar at the top of the Hilton on Park Lane hotel – the Oxo Tower, the London Eye, Battersea Power Station with its four huge, dormant chimneys – provokes an irrational sense of ownership. Those who gaze out on the spectacle are, momentarily, lords of all they survey. Or in the case of the three blondes sitting in the window seat, ladies.

The former England winger Steve Hanley has retired after failing to recover from a back injury suffered during Sale's Challenge Cup victory against Bayonne last December.

What a relief Dwain Chambers will not now contaminate the British track and field team in Beijing, how splendid that – in an admittedly perhaps less than thunderous judgment by Mr Justice Mackay – we have been freed from the ambivalence of seeing one of the most graphically candid cheats in the history of sport stepping up on to the Olympic podium on our behalf.

Lewis Hamilton stole the headlines again here yesterday, setting the fastest times in both practice sessions in his McLaren Mercedes. But Jenson Button, once the darling of the British media, remained his usual upbeat self and continued to lift his sights to a 2009 horizon rather than crying over all the performance milk Honda have spilled this season.

For three successive races in the MotoGP world championship, Valentino Rossi has been left behind by Casey Stoner's blaze-red Ducati. On the Laguna Seca track in California tomorrow, Rossi may suffer that fate again as he tries to hold on to his 20-point lead in the series.

The Jamaican-born sprinter Merlene Ottey will race twice in four days in a last-ditch effort to become the first athlete to take part in eight Olympic Games.

The second Test turned ugly as the shadows lengthened at Headingley yesterday evening with controversial umpiring marring a fascinating day's play. Andrew Flintoff, England's returning hero, and Michael Vaughan were in the thick of it as the hosts claimed the wicket of Hashim Amla, South Africa's unbeaten centurion in the drawn first Test at Lord's.

If we learned one thing here yesterday, it is that obscurity and celebrity are just different shades on the same spectrum. All it takes to bring them together is unreasonable expectation. We may think we know an awful lot more about Andrew Flintoff than Darren Pattinson, whose names stood out like neon when the team sheet was handed out on a dank, melancholy morning in Leeds. But just as the superhero exists in only two dimensions, the judgements that brought Pattinson here can hardly be deemed any less trite.

When the master plan for English cricket was unveiled this year a major section was kept secret. The elements that the England and Wales Cricket Board were willing to disclose were all too obvious: £14m grants to community clubs, subsidies for 1,0000 coaches, £1m to the National Performance Centre.

With an eagle on the meddlesome 17th last night, Padraig Harrington, down among the dead men or so it seemed just a few short days ago, soared back into contention in this Open that had seemed so closed to him because of damage to his wrist. That took him to three over – and just three shots off the pace – but he was not done there. He then birdied the last to set the tournament alight.

That Camilo Villegas feels entirely at home in the limelight was clear to everyone who witnessed his startling finish in the second round of the Open here yesterday. What remained hidden to all the admiring eyes, however, were his fears of the potential cost of such fame. In Colombia, celebrity has a price. A terrible price, in many instances.

When they were still young and separate they had their share of breakfasts of champions but here last night, over dinner, that old thing was back on the menu of Greg Norman and his new wife, Chrissie Evert. It was that old thing called winning a major tournament.

On another day more suited to moorhens than birdies and eagles, Graeme McDowell managed to cling onto the leaderboard yesterday without ever quite reproducing the form that had yielded one of only three sub-par opening rounds and a share of the lead. The 28-year-old Ulsterman is used to leading the Open on day one, having posted a course record 66 down the coast at Hoylake two years ago, but he slumped to a final-round 79 that year and finished a distant 61st. This time, he is determined to keep the campaign going, and if a European is to prevail at Birkdale for the first time in nine Opens, he is certainly the form horse.

Van de Velde finds poetry in the pain

Chris Wood yesterday evoked memories of Justin Rose's Open heroics of a decade ago with a brilliant finish to his second round that boosted his hopes of finishing the tournament as the leading amateur player.

Dateline: Orlando.

Through the wind and the rain, the howls and the wails, the carnage and the shattered dreams, emerged one of the game's most uplifting stories here last night. A 53-year-old was doing it for the old guys, for all those who figured the good times were in the rear-view mirror. Yes, Greg Norman was lying second in the second round of the Open. And he was clearly having the time of his life.

What happens when myths turn out to be true? I'm talking about the "myth" of the German army's atrocities in little Belgium in 1914, the raped nuns and the babies spitted on Prussian bayonets. "Hun barbarism" was the powerful propaganda tool to send the British Tommies and the French poilus – literally, "the hairy ones" – off to the killing fields of the Somme, Ypres, Passchendaele and Verdun. But now, thanks to the analytical, brilliant, horrifying work of Alan Kramer, a history professor at my own alma mater of Trinity College, Dublin, it all turns out to be – well, let's speak frankly – true.

The Government is planning to ditch the rules that have governed Labour's stewardship of the economy for the past 11 years. New rules, to be announced in the autumn, will allow the Government to borrow and spend its way out of its present difficulties. Now you can argue that too much store is set by strict compliance with rules and that New Labour, as it then was, offered a hostage to fortune when it committed itself to rigid principles for running a sound economy. You can also argue that, as chancellor, Gordon Brown was less scrupulous in observing the rules than he was cracked up to be. What is missed here, however, is the political imperative.

It's hard not to sympathise, just a little, with Dwain Chambers, whose claim to run for his country in Beijing has now been rebuffed by the High Court. You had only to glimpse Chambers' rangy figure before that venerable façade to sense the forces marshalled against him. For all Chambers' disappointment, though, his appearance contributed to a truly vintage court season – for observers, if not for the unfortunate participants.

I was moved by Virginia Ironside's article "Divorce hurts – and it hurts the children most of all" (16 July). My parents separated in the early 1970s when I was five and, like Virginia, I was the only one in my class in that situation. My father had uncontested custody of me and my brother; as this made us even more unusual, social workers became involved. They did not help and only reinforced the message that we were indeed an odd "family".

"It's hard to read this," said the man on the stage, "because it brings back all the memories." His voice had faded almost to a whisper. "This was 15 years ago, and it still affects me."

The findings of the British Crime Survey were published last week. And it's good news. Crime in this country is falling at record rates. So you only think you've been knifed.

"There has been delays," admitted Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, when he finally appeared in public on Channel 4 News to answer questions about the Sats marking scandal.

Heath Ledger and Germaine Greer have probably never been brought together in the same sentence before. But in their different ways they dominated the arts agenda this week. And in their different ways they both worry me.

In a corner of Istanbul today, the man who might be described as Turkey's gay poster boy will be buried – a victim, his friends believe, of the country's deepening friction between an increasingly liberal society and its entrenched conservative traditions.

Prominently displayed in every sports hall in every town in China is a large red flag and a banner in bold Chinese characters exhorting the athletes below to always do their best to love and honour China.

It started as a light-hearted attempt to promote America as a gay-friendly tourist destination during the Pride London parade. Throughout its history, South Carolina has been famous for many things: slaves, prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan among others. Now, much to the fury of its senators, posters on the London Underground are proclaiming: "South Carolina is so gay".

The tour

A dramatic rescue operation was under way last night to save two climbers stranded for three days on a Himalayan peak, nicknamed Killer Mountain.

He may be the world's adopted grandfather, but it was with his actual grandchildren that Nelson Mandela chose to celebrate his 90th birthday yesterday in the rural South African village he calls home. Sitting in his favourite yellow armchair, his legs covered with a blanket, Mr Mandela said he wished he had been able to spend more time with his family, although he was quick to stress he had no regrets about a life spent fighting apartheid and becoming the nation's first black president.

As Barack Obama jets into Iraq today and then travels on to Israel, Afghanistan and Europe, his every utterance will be closely monitored in Chicago, home of his administration in waiting.

As an image of local Mediterranean democracy in action, it was hard to beat. Under the deep blue sky of late afternoon, and beneath the solemn gaze of 100 or more local citizens packed into a courtyard shaded by lemon trees, the new mayor and the new town council of the little Sicilian town of Salemi had just been sworn in. Squashed into dark suits and ties, the councillors stood up one after another to give speeches of immaculate boredom.

Impatience and sharp elbows run in the genes, it seems. President Nicolas Sarkozy has been battling for space in the French headlines this week not just with his wife, not just with his ex-wife, but with his tall, blond, fast-moving son, Jean.

As a first-time author William P Young had no illusions about his book. A former hotel night clerk and odd-job man who was raised partly among a stone-age tribe in New Guinea, he had written it mostly as an exercise in self-therapy with little thought of publishing. If his children would read it, he'd be happy.

It’s all gone quiet in Khartoum. After days of feverish speculation and doomsday scenarios that Omar al-Bashir would unleash the dogs of war on aid workers, peacekeepers and Darfur’s displaced if he were indicted? nothing happened. Not yet anyway.

A uranium leak has been discovered at a nuclear power station in France, the second in a month.

Former Vice President Al Gore called for a "man on the moon" effort to switch all of the United States' electricity production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources within 10 years.

John Reinders was chief of presidential protocol under FW de Klerk, but when the ANC won the elections of April 1994, he thought he'd better look for something else to do. Obviously, Nelson Mandela would want to appoint one of his own people to such a sensitive post. Reinders got in touch with the prisons department, where he had worked before, and discovered, to his relief, that it would be happy to take him back.

At the offices of Sterling Cooper, the fictional agency where Mad Men is set, they'd have toasted the news with a large Jack Daniel's and some celebratory Lucky Strikes – consumed, of course, behind hefty walnut desks.

Sir Paul McCartney has been asked to play a concert in Israel, 43 years after the Beatles were banned from performing in the country.

His birthday has been the party that much of the world wanted to attend. But, in the end, Nelson Mandela turns 90 today with only friends and family to mark the occasion, far from the frenzy of Hyde Park concerts, in his birthplace of Qunu, a village in the Eastern Cape.

After watching its glamorous female president and the all-powerful farming lobby fight each other to a standstill, Argentina was stunned yesterday by one of the most dramatic political betrayals in living memory.

A hotel in Pyongyang once described as "the worst building in the history of mankind" is back under construction after a 16-year break.

America's real-estate market is struggling, but not for the property developer Donald Trump, who has sold a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, for $100m (£50m) to a Russian billionaire.

Heaven forbid that any American football stars put a beefy finger in the wrong place during the forthcoming season. In an attempt to repair the sport's image, which has been darkened by a string of scandals, gridiron's governing body has announced a crackdown on players who flash gangland hand signals during their on-field celebrations.

Condoleezza Rice was George Bush's handmaiden for the war in Iraq but she is now emerging as the best hope for avoiding a military conflict between the United States and Iran.

Future generations are likely to inherit a planet whose resources have been scarred and squandered to fuel an insatiable consumer culture, the Pope warned yesterday.

The decision by Silvio Berlusconi's government that all Italian citizens should now be fingerprinted, and that from 2010, all national identity and residence cards will carry fingerprints seems bizarre. There is no urgent reason for such an elaborate programme and fingerprints are out of date as an identification method.

The French have an expression – entre chiens et loups– between the dogs and the wolves. It is a fanciful way of describing the twilight, the mysterious and uncertain time between day and night.

In a battle between Barbie and the Bratz gang of dolls, the long-legged blonde might not seem a match for the street attitude of her upstart rivals, but last night she won the biggest catfight in toyland.

An English Sven-Goran Eriksson lookalike duped one of Mexico's top football clubs into giving him red-carpet treatment, claiming he wanted to check out the squad before making his first selection for the Mexican national side.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama raised $52 million in June, his campaign said today, a jump from last month and more than double the $22 million raised by his Republican rival John McCain.

European Union countries will agree on Tuesday to widen sanctions on Zimbabwe, including more travel bans and asset freezes on supporters of President Robert Mugabe and measures against companies, diplomats said.

A Spanish court today cleared four of the 21 people charged for crimes related to the 2004 Madrid train bombings, Europe's deadliest Islamist attack.

Indonesia has rejected the final appeals of three Islamic militants convicted over the 2002 Bali bombings, bringing closer their executions for the attacks that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

Britain has officially ratified the controversial Lisbon Treaty, it was announced today.

The bodies of two Israeli soldiers whose abduction by Hizbollah triggered the 2006 Lebanon war were returned yesterday in a prisoner exchange which saw the Lebanese perpetrator of a notoriously murderous attack on Israelis freed to a hero's welcome.

Yesterday was the last day of the 2006 Lebanon war, the final chapter of Israel's folly and Hizbollah's hubris, a grisly day of corpse-swapping and refrigerated body parts and coffin after bleak wooden coffin on trucks crossing the Israeli border, which left old Ali Ahmed al-Sfeir and his wife, Wahde, stooped and broken with grief. Ali had a grizzled grey beard and stood propped on a stick while Wahde held a grey-tinged photograph of a young man – her son Ahmed, born in 1970. "He was a martyr, but I do not know which lorry he will be on," she said. In the slightly torn picture, he looked whey-faced, unsmiling, already dead.

As a diplomatic about-turn, Washington's decision to send a US official to the talks in Geneva on Iran's nuclear programme could hardly be called earth shattering. The American representative, William Burns, is a career diplomat. He will neither participate actively in the talks (he will listen only) nor change policy (his brief is specifically to support the UN demands that Iran cease uranium enrichment as a precondition for any settlement).

Moving to avoid war in Iran in the final months of his administration, George Bush has approved the highest-level American diplomatic contact with its ideological enemy since the humiliating US embassy hostage crisis of 1979.

Make way, the Godfather of Soul will be in the house today. Clarification: the house is Christie's in New York, while the man, James Brown, is no longer with us. But be ready for the grand sale of some 350 items of the late, great soul singer's memorabilia, from a sofa (in green vinyl) to hair curlers.

The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England. Huge disparities have also opened up in income, health and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday.

It didn't matter what was wrong with me, be it a stomach upset or a rogue spot, the remedy prescribed by Senegalese friends was always the same. Baobab fruit – and lots of it.

History is repeating itself in the worst possible way for Malaysia's opposition leader. Anwar Ibrahim has been arrested by police and he faces a charge of sodomy for the second time in 10 years – in a case his supporters claim is politically influenced.

When the India cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni went for a haircut in his home town of Ranchi a couple of years ago, so many adoring female fans showed up that the police had to be called.

For Shiv Charan, taking exams is nothing less than a ritual. Every year he enters the examination for school-leavers, every year he fails and every year he vows to come back and try again. At the age of 74, he may be the world's worst student but he is certainly its most persistent.

Colombia misused the symbol of the International Committee of the Red Cross in this month's military rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, the government said today, admitting a possible violation of the rules of war.

The company charged with building a space capsule that will take America's astronauts back to the moon has made an urgent appeal - for urine.

Hizbollah handed the bodies of two Israeli soldiers to the Red Cross today to be exchanged for Lebanese prisoners held by Israel in a deal viewed as a triumph by the Lebanese Shi'ite guerrilla group.

An unprecedented glimpse into the harsh conditions at Guantanamo Bay has emerged via a grainy video of a weeping Canadian teenager undergoing interrogation after he had been tortured by sleep deprivation for three weeks.

The mysterious fate of Ron Arad, the missing Israeli airman captured by Shia guerrillas 22 years ago, has been propelled back to the heart of public debate here ahead of this morning's prisoner swap at the Lebanese border.

In his most ambitious foreign policy speech to date, Barack Obama robustly defended his stance on Iraq yesterday, accusing the Bush administration of pursuing a "single-minded" foreign policy that has cost thousands of lives, tarnished America's image and emptied the nation's coffers. Ahead of a trip to Europe and the Middle East next week, Mr Obama is emphasising that he intends to use soft power – diplomacy and economic aid – rather than brute force to achieve America's aims in the post-Bush era.

The decision this week by the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor to charge the President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, with genocide and other crimes committed in Darfur, is a bold step. It is a recognition of the suffering Darfuris have endured at the hands of Sudanese forces and allied militias and it strikes an important blow for international justice. But it also carries a massive risk, which some analysts believe could pave the way for further problems and slaughter.

The controversy surrounding an 11th-century temple on the Cambodian border with Thailand has taken a new twist after the authorities in Phnom Penh alleged that up to 170 armed troops and civilians from Thailand had illegally entered its territory.

Nothing might seem more natural, under the cloudless skies of Rome, than to stretch out in view of some crumbling monument and crack open a can of beer. But, this summer, extra caution is in order after Rome's Mayor, Gianni Alemanno, declared war on such activities.

Survivors of a disastrous Alpine race which ended with the deaths of two runners have spoken of how participants crawled through a snowstorm on their hands and knees and wept with exhaustion during the run up Germany's highest mountain.

The self-service, Parisian bike-for-hire – the vélib' – was intended mostly for short rides when it was introduced 12 months ago.

The Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says a "single-minded" focus on Iraq is distracting the US from other threats.

The Athens Geodynamic Institute says a strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.3 struck near the Greek island of Rhodes.

A video of a weeping Canadian teenager being interviewed at Guantanamo Bay over the killing of a US soldier has been released.

Tony Blair has cancelled a trip to Gaza in his role as Middle East envoy because of security concerns, a spokeswoman for the former Prime Minister said today.

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd of army recruits northeast of Baghdad today, killing at least 28 people, Iraqi police said.

Foreign mercenaries have joined so-called "war veterans" and militiamen attacking opposition supporters in rural parts of Zimbabwe, human rights workers have confirmed.

Britain is poised to approve China's application today to become a licensed ivory trader in spite of protests from environmental and animal welfare groups and nearly 150 MPs, and Labour MPs are pinning the blame on Gordon Brown.

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court charged Sudan's President, Omar al-Bashir, with genocide yesterday, accusing him of masterminding a campaign to "destroy" three tribes in Darfur, killing 35,000 people and persecuting 2.5 million refugees.

There was no mistaking the breadth of Wissam Abuajwa's triumphant smile yesterday as he reached the last passport check at the crossing with Israel on his way out of Gaza for the first time in eight years. When a man has been waiting so long to acquire the qualifications he needs so he can return and do something positive for his own stricken society, it is a moment to savour.

The Swiss mountaineer John Salathe once described rock climbing as "the finest, most healthiest sport in the whole world".

Some older people have an aversion to the internet and its myriad forms of communication. Not Olive Riley, who began blogging last year at the age of 107 and posted more than 70 entries before dying in an Australian nursing home last weekend.

Walid Moallem leans forward in the armchair of the Paris Intercontinental Opera. "It's all on the record," he snaps. It usually is. The Syrians can be up- front when you least expect it. Syria's Foreign Minister is one of their top negotiators, a man who knows Israel's diplomats almost as well as they know themselves, who understands all the traps of the Middle East.

They have become the short-hand for a tropical paradise. A nation of islands off the southern tip of India, the Maldives are the home of cobalt-blue seas and white-sand beaches. Every year the country attracts up to half-a-million tourists in search of a picture-perfect getaway.

Famed for 15,000-word, in-depth articles, cartoons and merciless fact-checkers, The New Yorker magazine seems to have winkled out an essential truth about Barack Obama – he doesn't do satire.

British officials have been accused of colluding in the torture of UK nationals by Pakistani security services.

Gordon Brown dashed hopes that he was about to announce a withdrawal of British troops from Iraq when he rejected calls by Labour MPs and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, for a clear timetable to pull out. "I cannot set an artificial timetable," the Prime Minister said yesterday.

Bronislaw Geremek, a leading thinker in Poland's anti-communist Solidarity movement and a former foreign minister, was killed in a car crash on Sunday aged 76.

The leaders of Syria and Israel, countries with a bitter enmity, as well as the Palestinian and Lebanese presidents together marked France's Bastille Day today in a diplomatic coup for French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Turkey's chief prosecutor today announced charges against 86 people accused of plotting to topple the government.

A British man died when he fell from an apartment block in Dubai, the Foreign Office said today.

Sudan's president was charged with genocide today, accused of masterminding a campaign to wipe out entire tribes in the war-torn Darfur region.

The Government will be coming under pressure today to take a stand against a renewed international ivory trade by opposing the attempt by China to become a licensed ivory buyer.

Britain's Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, sought to toughen European Union sanctions against the Mugabe regime yesterday after a bruising diplomatic failure in New York, where China and Russia vetoed action on the Zimbabwe crisis from the UN Security Council.

A Saudi Arabian biochemist and his female research student face prison and flogging if an appeals court rules today that they conducted an "illicit affair" by telephone. Khalid al-Zahrani, 32, was sentenced to eight months in jail and 600 lashes by a lower court in November 2007. His unnamed student was given four months and 350 lashes.