Fragile and war-torn countries should lose British aid if their governments flout agreements made with the UK, a committee of MPs will say today.

Britain has been accused of padding its aid budget with "made up money" so it can claim to have met its millennium promise of increasing the amount it donates to the world's poorest people.

Save the Children said its East Africa emergency appeal has become the most successful in the charity's history after Britons donated more than £7 million in six months.

The Government's controversial decision to continue giving money to India, a nation that has more billionaires than the UK and an aid programme of its own, is directly linked to developing trade and investment opportunities, a senior minister admitted yesterday.

It is a big day today for Lord Ashcroft, the former bankroller of the Conservative Party, and others who have campaigned to have a £300m airport built on a remote Atlantic island, paid for by the British taxpayer.

BBC World Service broadcasts will benefit from a £90 million Government grant less than a year after the body revealed cuts to jobs and services.

Not a single penny of the British government's £178m annual Afghanistan reconstruction budget is being spent trying to save the tens of thousands of women who die in childbirth there.

Papers make explicit the delight of government at the impending departure of Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Will visitors to 10 Downing Street never learn? Yesterday it was Andrew Mitchell's turn. When the International Development Secretary flashed his memo on Afghanistan to the assembled press corps cameras, he joined a growing list – including a Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner, who resigned, and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who did not.

The spread betting group IG has emerged as a winner of the recent market turmoil, with stock market volatility boosting the FTSE 250-listed company's sales.

Up to 400,000 children could starve to death unless more aid reaches the victims of the east Africa famine soon, Britain's International Development Secretary warned yesterday.

The crisis in the Horn of Africa is a looming catastrophe. But it's a catastrophe the international community can avoid. If we learn lessons from the past and act fast, we can save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Bob Diamond has long been dubbed "the unacceptable face of banking". Now it seems he is the unacceptable face of flying too.

Britain should continue to channel £280m of its annual overseas aid budget to India despite the Asian country's fast-growing economy, according to an all-party group of MPs.