Sportswear firm JD Sports Fashion has bought all of Blacks Leisure's 290 stores out of administration for £20 million.

Christian leaders delivered a string of politically-charged sermons yesterday attacking financial greed – capping a year of tumultuous events that has often seen the religious establishment wrong-footed.

A man who grew a large cannabis plant to look like a Christmas tree will spend the festive season behind bars after police found his home-based drug factory.

New Zealand's worst-kept sporting secret was finally revealed today when Steve Hansen was announced as the new All Blacks head coach.

Matt Parish has quit and returned to Australia less than six months into a three-year contract as coach of Salford after several differences of opinion with the club's director of football, Steve Simms. He is now expected to take up the role of assistant coach to Geoff Toovey at the Australian champions, Manly.

Women made up two in three of all council staff who lost their jobs in the past 15 months – and in some councils made up all job cuts, the GMB union has said.

Police today appealed for information to identify the culprit behind an "elaborate hoax" after two suspicious devices closed down parts of a city centre.

Parts of Canterbury city centre were closed off by police last night after a suspect package was found near a railway line and a fire broke out nearby.

At the press launch of Classic FM in September 1992 Michael Bukht, one of its founders and its first Director of Programmes, spoke with characteristic exuberance of the limitless prospects for a commercial station playing constant classical music in a less snooty way than the BBC's Radio 3. Yet like most of the worldly-wise media commentators present, I came away from Classic's modest new studio in Camden, north London, convinced that the enterprise would not be long for this world.

Canterbury Cathedral is "bleached white, as though it were built from mother of pearl rather than stone", while Scarborough castle "caught in silhouette at twilight, looks as if it belongs in an adventure story for boys from the Fifties."

The former Wales international Alix Popham has been forced to retire due to a shoulder injury. The 31-year-old had not played for his club Brive since March due to shoulder and elbow problems, and an off-season operation on the former has not had the desired effect, leaving him with no option but to retire on medical advice.