A prolific shoplifter has been spared jail on his 501st offence after a court was informed that a brain injury could be contributing to his behaviour.

A “loving and caring” mother killed her two young children after stopping her medication for postnatal depression because of unfounded fears about the side-effects on her newborn son, the Old Bailey was told today.

“He said the army was his home, his marriage and his mistress,” reports one of the characters here of the decorated veteran turned down-and-out whom he encountered sleeping rough on the Embankment.

The largest pharmacy chain in the United States swooped on high street chemist Boots today as part of a shock £10 billion takeover deal.

A codeine addict who contaminated packets of Nurofen Plus in a ruse to fund his habit was jailed today for 18 months.

Jazz has a lot of people in her life who seem eager to big her up, which is handy because there are several reasons why she might need a boost. The very least of them curiously is Jazz's size, the result of an unspecified form of dwarfism.

In the last fortnight, I've excelled myself in visits to Boots. What with the damp dregs of a cold and a twisted ankle to contend with, at every possible opportunity (every lunchtime) I've been in the branch near my office like a rat up a drainpipe. Even without Lemsip capsules (Max Strength, obviously) and neoprene foot supports to acquire, I usually make it in about three times a week.

Wow. On record, the slender Canadian comes across as a fairly conventional country singer, lamenting her achy breaky heart (“Dying of Another Broken Heart”) and her own dirty deception (“Little Lie”). It’s not material designed – unlike Bonnie Prince Billy and Jim White – to scare the horses.

The engineering giant IMI reported a better-than-expected 19 per cent increase in 2011 profits to £363m, and said it was on track for further growth this year, as strength in emerging markets and the US offsets weakness in Europe.

Dark subject matter in graphic novels is nothing new – but a memoir about a childhood with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is up there with the darkest of them.

If there was a theme to Festival of the Spoken Nerd's mix of science and comedy tonight then it was pyrotechnics. From a tale of homemade napalm to a demonstration of a standing wave flame tube there were flashes and bangs aplenty, if no explosive end result.

The microbiologist Harry Smith was a leading expert on bacterial infection and virulence. Initially eschewing academia for a post at Porton, he subsequently took up a professorship at the University of Birmingham.

James Murdoch has an evasive defence strategy, but the British love a bossy-boots and dream of being posh

Alliance Boots, the retail and wholesale pharmaceuticals giant, revealed a sharp divide between trading at its stores in the South of England, including London, and the rest of the country.