Tim Burton's stalwart star gives good fang, but this gothic comedy feels about as fresh as stale garlic

Jonathan Frid,who died yesterday of natural causes at the age of 87, was a Canadian actor best known for playing Barnabas Collins in the 1960s original vampire soap opera Dark Shadows.

This is the time of year when leads are lost, fans cry and dreams die. As Manchester City approach their moment of truth, we examine five sides who should have won the league but didn't. They were all flair teams who dominated home games but had little experience of winning titles. Sound like anyone?

Victory in Maine caucus is overshadowed by a clumsy attempt to woo the Republican right

The past is a foreign country in more ways than one for the protagonists of Douglas Kennedy's novel. Largely set in Cold War Berlin, this hard-hitting love story tears down the dividing walls between past and present, showing how the course of history can turn in an instant. An author of consistently engaging and clever bestsellers, Kennedy has ranged from Stateside dramas to noirish thrillers. The Moment pulls together both strains in his fiction, marrying romantic tragedy with Le Carré-style espionage.

Taxpayers hoping one day to get their money back from Lloyds Banking Group will be pleased to see it doesn't miss a trick. What better day than yesterday to announce 1,300 job losses? After all, the bank knew people would be focused on the riots. Just to make sure it was slipping the announcement under the radar, it was headlined "Lloyds Banking Group announces organisational changes" – the words "jobs" and "losses" were nowhere to be seen. With nous like this, it can be only a matter of time before the black-horse bank pays us all back.

Mike Doyle, former Manchester City captain and third on the club's all-time appearance list, died yesterday aged 64. Doyle played 558 matches between 1964 and 1978, during City's most successful period, culminating in his lifting the 1976 League Cup as captain.

An enormous winter storm left millions of Americans shivering in its frozen footprint and crushed snow-laden buildings in the north-east of the country yesterday, where a combination of ice, snow and rain pushed much of the region to breaking point.

The US Navy selected four submarines yesterday to carry the first women to serve aboard what had been the last class of American naval vessel off-limits to them.

Pop star Lady Gaga visited the US state of Maine on the eve of a key Senate vote to urge its two US senators to help repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays.

The troubled US singer-songwriter Loretta Maine was the star character of British comedian Pippa Evans's 2008 award-nominated show, and thus the best bet for a solo showcasing. Choosing Maine was not only wise but another sign that, despite its previously much maligned status, musical comedy is very much in the ascendant. You could easily see Maine wailing her woes in an episode of Flight of the Conchords, the show that has done much to bring about this comedic sea change.