Nick Rose can remember little of his 5,000m run at Madison Square Garden on 12 February, 1982 - other than his British indoor record performance at the annual Millrose Games in New York City being regarded back home as “not much of a deal.” It will be different if Mo Farah manages to beat the clock, and Rose’s time of 13min 21.27sec, in the Aviva Grand Prix at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham this afternoon – especially now that Britain’s male athlete of the year has announced his intention to move to the north-west American city known as “Little Beirut,” and to switch coaches to the man who finished two places and four seconds behind the Bristolian Rose in that near-forgotten 5,000m race at ‘The Garden.’

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 mental hospital where One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was filmed is attempting to identify the cremated remains of 3,500 of its former patients, which were left on shelves in a secluded storage area for several decades.

Manchester City have sent Mario Balotelli, whose persistent knee injury is a source of concern to Roberto Mancini, for two weeks in the United States under the care of the specialist who helped Jonny Wilkinson through his career-threatening injury.

Kicking off with a Dylanesque blast of harmonica, the Decemberists reveal their new intent right up-front.

Police launched a murder investigation after a body was found in the centre of Swansea in the early hours of today.

When Kathleen O'Donovan became the first female finance director of a FTSE 100 company nearly 20 years ago, her new job made the front pages.

Your "smug list" (26 December) failed to include someone who should have been a shoo-in for the top spot. His vanity and conceit are perfectly exemplified by his desire to have countless photographs of himself taken, often touched up for maximum effect. He also loves to hear the sound of his own voice, talking volubly but saying little. Furthermore, his arrogance enables him to indulge in the most pathetic PR stunts in order to hoodwink the public. Yes, for being the most smug, ubiquitous and irritating person of 2010, David Cameron takes the honours.

Much as I loved Grizzly Bear's 2009 album Veckatimest, there came a point – as plenty of other bands followed suit – that I grew tired of all that artful chamber pop, full of intricate instrumentation and choir-boy harmonies.

A fickle, seductive mistress, a minx, or, as the late, great California winemaker André Tchelistcheff declared: "God made cabernet sauvignon whereas the devil made pinot noir." Pinot noir has been called many things in its time and not all of them complimentary. As the mainstay of red burgundy, pinot noir's apogee, the wines of the fabled Domaine de la Romanée Conti are as rare, precious and costly as the garnet, the precious stone whose colour they emulate.

A Somali-born teenager was arrested yesterday for attempting to detonate what he thought was a car bomb at a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony in Oregon, US authorities said.

Blind patients suffering from a type of eye disease that strikes in childhood will become the second group of people in the world to receive stem cells derived from spare IVF embryos left over from fertility treatment.

On 29 June, just after playing Glastonbury, LCD Soundsystem (below) headed to a studio in south London and spent the day playing songs from across their back catalogue.