The Green Bay Packers overcame a slow start to keep their perfect NFL season intact with a 27-15 win over the Detroit Lions on Thursday that spoilt yet another Motor City Thanksgiving Day.

Saleh is fourth dictator to fall as mounting world pressure and 10 months of protests end his 33-year regime

Rant

Police say disgruntled residents have set off a loud blast near a flood dike on Bangkok's border, apparently to highlight frustrations over their continued misery.

Labour called on the Government last night to consider shelving plans to raise the motorway speed limit to 80mph as police continued to investigate the cause of the M5 crash on Friday in which seven people died.

A 12-month-old baby girl has been burned after a firework hit her in the face.

The St. Louis Cardinals completed their magical comeback season by beating the Texas Rangers 6-2 in a deciding Game Seven to clinch the World Series last night.

Mario Balotelli has hailed Manchester City's 6-1 win over Manchester United on Sunday as "one of the best" team performances he has been involved with at the club.

It had always looked like a risky decision to relocate Mario Balotelli from Manchester's Deansgate to the bucolic surrounds of Mottram St Andrew, where his most outlandish neighbour is Michael Carrick. The 21-year-old's family were actually urging him to abandon thoughts of a rural home a year ago because they didn't know how he would occupy himself.

I've finished my expedition to the glorious Okanagan Valley in British Columbia (Canada's California, apparently) investigating Ogopogo, the monster that is supposed to inhabit Lake Okanagan. Don't worry, I haven't gone all David Icke (yet) – this is for my new book, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, and the subject gives me an excuse to visit some pretty interesting parts of the world. Canada was probably a brave choice for a first destination as it is seen as literary Mogadon by publishers. Bill Bryson supposedly wanted to write a book about the country but his publishers recoiled in horror. I love the place – I have a Canadian wife and spend every summer there – and hope to convert as many Brits as possible to the land of the beaver.

Finnish police say they have arrested an 18-year-old man who ordered 22 pounds (10 kilograms) of fertilizer from Poland to make explosives. Local media cited police as saying the man had explained he wanted to make his own fireworks.

It was just the harmless detonation of some fireworks, the authorities in Turkmenistan insisted, and there were no casualties. But reports on opposition websites and eyewitness testimony suggest that a series of explosions last week at an arms depot in the isolated Central Asian country could have killed dozens of people and injured hundreds.

"An endangered species kept against their will for the entertainment of others," Nic Dakin said. He meant the Liberal Democrats, and that made the House laugh. Everyone was in a very frisky mood for the liveliest Thursday afternoon the House has had for years. The Backbench Business Committee, under the chairmanship of Natascha Engel, has maybe not put a bomb under the House of Commons but has certainly lit a firework in it.