THE Duke of York has spent £325,000 of public money hiring planes and helicopters to fly to lunches and golf matches, an official report into his travel expenses has revealed.

THE British motor industry has halted its practice of sharing secret sales forecasts while it investigates the legality of the custom, it emerged yesterday.

FORMER Happy Mondays star Bez was the shock winner of Celebrity Big Brother last night.

WOMEN workers now outnumber men in half Britain's local authorities, figures showed today.

AN INQUIRY has been launched by the Independent Police Complaints Commission to establish if a police vehicle involved in a crash - which left a woman dead and her son, aged 12, injured - jumped a red light.

AROUND half of British Muslim children think life has got more difficult since the terrorist attacks of 11 September, 2001, a survey revealed today.

A FATHER and son were among four people killed when a helicopter crashed into hills in bad weather.

INCREASING numbers of men are succumbing to the pressures of an image-conscious society and undergoing cosmetic surgery to improve their looks, research has revealed.

A PREMATURE baby, expected to die before her first birthday and left to her fate by hospital doctors, is getting better, it was claimed yesterday.

A QUARTER of the prisoners in Scotland's jails come from just over 50 of 1,222 council wards across the country, according to new research which exposes the high concentrations of criminals in Scotland's poorest communities.

MICHAEL Howard will today pledge to turn away thousands of asylum seekers at Britain's borders as he seeks to make immigration the main battlefield of the election campaign.

JACK Straw, the Foreign Secretary, will today leave for the United States in a bid to save the "special relationship" and persuade his Washington counterparts that the UK is not sleepwalking into a defence alliance with China.

KIRSTY Wark's controversial documentary on the building of the Scottish parliament has been threatened with legal action in an attempt to stop it being screened before the UK general election.

COUNCILS should be given the power to demand a "behaviour bond" from the organisers of sectarian marches, a report commissioned by Jack McConnell, the First Minister, will recommend today.

THE Scottish Tories suffered an embarrassing setback yesterday in their efforts to portray themselves as supporters of devolution when it emerged that one of the party's most senior figures, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, had publicly called for the...