A draft bill will break the usual chain of command for sex abuse

I once had the humbling experience of being admonished by a security guard in a branch of Zara for daring to take a photograph of a window display. I remember feeling indignant, and slightly surprised, that preventing photography was part of a clothes store security guard's remit.

'I'm no good at reversing cars'

The US Senate has voted against new legislation to expand background checks for gun purchasers, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama's hopes of gun control reform after the school shootings at Sandy Hook in December.

As he briefed reporters in Boston on Tuesday afternoon, FBI special agent Richard DesLauriers detailed some of the physical clues the authorities had found during their investigation into Monday's bomb attacks: "Pieces of black nylon, which could be from a backpack, fragments of BBs [ball bearings] and nails, possibly contained in a pressure cooker device."

Judy Murray names squad for play-off away to Argentina

Police in Virginia have charged a woman with arson as part of an investigation into a spate of suspicious fires that have ravaged a remote corner of the US state in recent months.

Global austerity means that local councils and town mayors are having to cut their coats according to their cloth.

A serial arsonist is bringing terror to rural communities on America's eastern seaboard

The amateur jockey Tommy Smith became the first American to win the Grand National on a horse born, bred and owned in the United States – the plucky eight-year-old Jay Trump – in a dramatic finish in 1965. Jockey and horse became legends in the US for a race memorable not only for one of the closest finishes in its history but for the fact that it looked like being the last Grand National, since the Aintree course was up for sale to property developers.

Michael Adams discusses why his father would have embraced digital photography but snubbed the aggressive stunts of environmental activists

John Walsh gives a summary of the talks at the Bath Literary festival

Robert C Richardson, who died from complications of a heart attack on 19 February at the age of 75, was a Cornell University professor who shared a Nobel Prize for a key discovery in experimental physics. He and his fellow Cornell researchers David Lee and Douglas Osheroff were awarded the Nobel for 1996 for their 1971 work on low-temperature physics involving the isotope helium-3.

Finally, downtown Washington is getting rid of the FBI. Not the organisation – what with cyber-crime, terrorism and shooting rampages, the services of the “Feds” are more in demand than ever – but the eyesore that is the Bureau’s headquarters.