Safety checks aimed at spotting improper spending by schools and academies are inadequate, MPs will warn today.

London Irish have announced the signing of Catalan Dragons rugby league star Setaimata Sa on a three-year deal.

Real wealth-creators are bearing the brunt of austerity, while money-shufflers swim in luxury. Welcome to modern Britain.

The Vice of the People represents a passing of the folk-rock baton to another generation, Ashley Hutchings' son Blair Dunlop taking the reins and, with a coterie of young players, injecting youthful fire into the band's trad-folk stylings.

Despite the linkage suggested by the hyphen, Handel and Caldara never worked together; rather, the latter replaced the former as composer to Cardinal Ruspoli in Rome.

Five years after his presidential campaign was derailed by scandalous revelations that he had fathered an illegitimate child with a former member of staff, John Edwards will face a jury this morning which will decide whether alleged murky efforts to cover up the affair should land him in prison.

To modern readers, many 1930s writers might as well be using Shakespearian English, such is the grace and complexity of their language. Is this why Elizabeth Jenkins has disappeared from bookshops?

In our fifth annual antidote to those rich lists, David Randall and Ruth Halkon present 100 people who make Britain a much, much better place

Conmen who pretended to be sheikhs to trick a finance company out of £1.5m were jailed yesterday at the Old Bailey.

Direct action group UK Uncut is to stage a series of street parties "with a twist" in the run-up to the Queen's Jubilee celebrations and the Olympics, including plans to block roads.

There are some things no politician can be against: equality used to be the most fashionable aspiration, now it's transparency. Indeed, on the basis that no one could argue for its converse, opacity, we are all in favour of transparency now. There was once a time when the emperor's new clothes made him look ridiculous; today it's all the rage for those who govern to parade naked.

Outlook A politician eyeing a big unclaimed pot of cash which isn't his for a pet project. Plus ça change?

Ian Hannam joined the special forces when he was 17 as a member of the part-time Territorial unit the Artists Rifles.

The French Quarter of the city was moulded by its history of piracy, slavery, royalty – and ghosts