After clutching his cards close to his chest for weeks, George Osborne showed his hand yesterday. What the Chancellor revealed was a $15bn (£10bn) cheque for the International Monetary Fund.

A dozen US Secret Service agents sent to Colombia to provide security for President Barack Obama at an international summit have been relieved of duty over alleged misconduct.

The reek of rhetorical gunpowder hung over Washington last night as Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama abruptly hurled themselves into the 2012 battle for the White House regardless of the lingering presence of other rivals for the Republican Party nomination.

War of words as challenger cruises to victory in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington DC

Unprecedented $540m jackpot prompts hysteria across a nation feeling the pinch

Raymond Scott, who died on 14 March, was a flamboyant antiques dealer who was jailed for handling a stolen first edition of Shakespeare's plays. Scott, who passed himself off as a wealthy playboy before his conviction, was pronounced dead after being found unconscious in his cell at Northumnberland Prison, where he was serving an eight-year sentence.

Lamont Peterson has declared that he will be "ready to die" in the ring, in order to to keep his belts, when he meets Britain's Amir Khan in a Las Vegas world title rematch on 19 May.

Shares in BP yesterday rose by nearly 2 per cent as the City digested the oil major's £4.9bn settlement with restaurants, fishermen, hotel owners and other businesses and individuals affected by the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

As Super Tuesday dawns, and Republicans in 10 states begin the biggest day in the nomination battle, Guy Adams sees the staunch Christian candidate hit Oklahoma – and the evangelical heartlands

Exasperated with a primary process as protracted as it has been vicious, Republican Party grandees are looking to see if Mitt Romney can at last regain an aura of inevitability in tomorrow's "Super Tuesday" contests across 10 states.

A trial which has shaken Egypt's 30-year alliance with the US began yesterday when a court was told 16 American workers with non-governmental organsiations were CIA spies.

The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un threatened to launch a powerful retaliatory strike against South Korea if provoked, state media said yesterday, a day before the start of annual South Korean-US military exercises that Pyongyang calls an invasion rehearsal.

Out of America: Swearing eternal fealty to Reagan, presidential candidates try to outdo each other in an insane stampede to the right – leaving Obama delighted