Aids: the pandemic is officially in decline

UN and World Health Organisation hail steep fall in number of new HIV infections

Leading article: Aids treatment sets the standard

Fossilised remains in a museum in Kunming, China

Fossil theft: One of our dinosaurs is missing

Cahal Milmo: The illegal trade is increasingly lucrative, with dire results for science.

More Science News

Britain's ignorance of Iraq is already apparent

Patrick Cockburn: Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 senior British officials have gently hinted that what went wrong was the fault of the Americans and, if there is any blame left over, it belongs to Tony Blair.

The Cern computer system displays images generated of the first collisions to take place in the Large Hadron Collider

Scientists take the first step in unlocking origins of universe

After 10 years – and £6bn – the first particles finally smash into each other in the Large Hadron Collider.

Brian Cox: We're doing it not because it's easy, but because it's hard

Tories believe Brown will go to the country in March

Economic figures may mean that early election suits Prime Minister

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Hit & Run: The brazen invasion

The British are coming, and they're smug, swaggering, middle-aged authority figures. How is it that the faces our nation presents to the world have come to be those of Simon Cowell, Jeremy Clarkson, Gordon Ramsay and Piers Morgan? And why is the world – or America, at the very least – so keen on them?

The Fahrenheit Twins, Pit, Barbican, London (Rated 4/ 5 )

I was once in Los Angeles in mid-December, reporting (for this paper) on Andrew Lloyd Webber's very imaginatively revamped version of Sunset Boulevard starring Glenn Close. The surprising thing about LA at such a season is the contrast between the mellow clemency of the climate and the fact that the vast majority of the private homes in their own large grounds are covered with artificial "Holiday Season" snow like some transatlantic Narnia in which Aslan has been toppled as deity by Perry Como.

Beth Jeans Houghton, Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Plastiscines, Camden Barfly, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Last Night's Television - Paradox, BBC1; Cast Offs, Channel 4

Revealed: Bank's £62bn bid to prevent meltdown

More than £60bn was secretly lent by the Bank of England to prevent Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland from failing at the height of the financial crisis last year.