No time to dawdle over the roast beef lunch. The dog will have to walk itself. And you may need to draw the curtains. This is going to be tasty. Settle back in your sofa for Rory McIlroy versus Lee Westwood. And this time, it's personal.

Disgraced financier's mother battles to prove injuries have left him too ill to defend himself

Allen Stanford's dream of turning Twenty20 cricket into a multibillion dollar industry was just one of a string of Caribbean business ventures that would have reaped huge profits for his investors – if only the US government hadn't moved in with bogus fraud charges against him.

It is a little bit of history that has been a decade in the making. Tonight at the Reliant Stadium, the Houston Texans will entertain the Cincinnati Bengals and finally experience a belated first taste of post-season in the opening fixture of the NFL play-offs.

English-American author and journalist Christopher Hitchens has died after losing his battle with cancer.

There have been wonderful, anthemic records about the beneficial powers of popular music – Chuck Berry's "Rock And Roll Music" (1957), Cliff Richard's "Move It!" (1958), Danny and the Juniors' "Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay" (1958), the Showmen's "It Will Stand" (1961), John Miles' "Music" (1976), the Who's "Long Live Rock" (1974) – but there are not many of them. However, Dobie Gray is associated with two such celebrations – "The In Crowd" (1965) and "Drift Away" (1973):

Colin Edwards will miss the final MotoGP race of the season in Valencia as he awaits surgery on a broken arm.

The professor of neurology, bestselling writer and former stand-up comedian wants to change the way we think about thinking. Guy Adams meets the Malcolm Gladwell of brain science

She came, she smiled and she was greeted by tearful colleagues. But the glow of Gabrielle Giffords' unexpected appearance on Capitol Hill on Monday to vote for the debt-ceiling deal was quickly tempered by her frustration with the mess Congress had created over tax-and-spend policies in her absence.

Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman who was shot in the head during a political rally in Tucson, was released from hospital yesterday after five months of treatment.

Police who raided a farm in Texas where a woman claiming to be a psychic said many bodies were buried found no evidence of even a single killing.

Authorities in Texas yesterday said they had received claims that a mass grave containing up to 30 bodies had been discovered.

Federal prosecutors have narrowed their criminal case against Allen Stanford, the Texas financier accused of running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.

Firefighters have been tackling a huge blaze at a chemical plant near Houston in Texas.