The Hangover actor Zach Galifianakis’s date for his movie premieres isn’t arm candy  – it’s his 87-year-old friend who he saved from homelessness. Bravo, says Simon Usborne

Whether it’s a minimalist blend of form and function or a chest large enough for your home library, we’ve got the storage to stash away all your essential reading...

Regular readers of The Independent will be familiar with Cyclotherapy, our long-running bike column (now written by me in our Magazine most Saturdays).

When the row over Lord Ashcroft and his non-dom tax status was raging last week, I wondered whether Denis MacShane, one of the Labour MPs leading the outrage, would quit his role on the editorial board of the political mag, Total Politics.

Wonderful news of a real breakthrough in public service reform, which is of course, therefore, hardly reported at all in today's newspapers.

Order, order! Speaker Bercow certainly looked rather different from his predecessor. And his manner was more confident, bordering on the self-satisfied. But it was continuity, not change, that was most striking.

In the media section on 29 December we wrongly stated that former deputy editor Jonathan Foreman had left Standpoint. In fact he continues to work for the magazine as writer-at-large.

"Labour is still on the ropes. It just looks different," said David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, according to Time magazine

With its sharp, sassy take on New York life, Jezebel is a blog site on the rise. Alice-Azania Jarvis meets its editor

With its sharp, sassy take on New York life, Jezebel is a blog site on the rise. Alice-Azania Jarvis meets its editor

Research published by the National Foundation for Educational Research today shows that the percentage of primary-aged children who prefer watching TV to reading has fallen in the past four years, and that the number of those who enjoy reading as a hobby may even be recovering.

This has been a very sad week at The Independent. The death of Miles Kington on Wednesday robbed us of a uniquely entertaining voice, which went back almost to the paper's birth in 1986.