The Palestinian athletics coach Mousa Qadoum was so overcome by emotion upon entering the al-Aqsa mosque yesterday that he collapsed into silent tears.

The parents of murdered American teenager Trayvon Martin have called on British people to stop racially profiling each other during an emotionally charged visit to London in which they met with Stephen Lawrence's mother Doreen.

The biggest test yet of whether the Olympic Park is ready for the London 2012 Games begins today.

Kenyans chase victory and Olympic spots while British runners have their last chance to qualify

When Margaret Whitlam heard in 1975 that her husband, Gough, had been dismissed as Australian prime minister, her response was characteristically blunt. "Why didn't you just tear it up?" she asked, referring to the document he had been handed by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr.

There's a particular strain of English mildness that carries within it a finely wrought undercurrent of viciousness. It's there in the title of Patrick Gale's new novel, A Perfectly Good Man, which you could either take literally – that Barnaby Johnson, priest to the Cornish parish of Pendeen, is perfect in his goodness – or as a tight-lipped rebuke, that he is adequate at best.

A man who was paralysed after leaping from a window in a five-star hotel to escape gunmen during the Mumbai terror attacks is suing the owners.

Fly in a fired-up preacher from a former colony to convert heathen Britain. What a brilliant idea! Just a shame that it feels as if we've seen it all before

How well I understand the feelings of Tony Nicklinson and his family ("My right to choose when to die", 13 March). We were in the same situation last year.

Good news for armchair Formula One drivers. Nic Hamilton, brother of the rather more famous Lewis, consistently comes first when they play video racing games. Imagine that. Lewis cheerfully owned up to as much in Racing with the Hamiltons: Nic in the Driving Seat, recalling an occasion on which he'd spent all day beating his younger brother's lap time on a particular track, only to have him come back from school and best it within five minutes. It's the kind of thing that I'm sure has flickered through the fantasies of many callous-thumbed petrol-heads, but the next bit could only happen in meat-space. That's when the former world champion turns to you and says, "You know, you're really good at this. Why not do it for real?"

An ambulance service has spent £400,000 on three vehicles designed to transport obese patients weighing up to 50 stones.

All the world is a madhouse at the Young Vic lately.

The cast biographies in the programme for The Two Worlds of Charlie F are not your average trawl through rep theatre, Casualty appearances and RSC roles. Rather they list the actors’ rank, their tours of duty and, harrowingly, the injuries they have sustained during them – from Bombardier Gareth Crabbe, who needed a spinal disc replacement after a tour in Iraq, to Rifleman Daniel Shaw, who lost both legs to an IED in Afghanistan.

The US Marine who took his men on a blazing, shooting rampage inside homes in the Iraqi town of Haditha in 2005, killing 24 Iraqi civilians and sparking international outrage, yesterday pleaded guilty only to dereliction of duty closing down a court martial where he had been facing far more serious charges of manslaughter.