A wealthy jeweller's son accused of murdering his girlfriend in a jealous rage told a jury yesterday that he did not strangle her but merely defended himself after she repeatedly attacked him.

A man charged with the murder of a father-of-one has been remanded in custody.

Three men and a woman were remanded in custody when they appeared in court today charged with the murder of a man whose burnt body was found in an industrial bin.

Nation pays a high price for bosses' bonuses

Joanna Yeates's killer faced allegations today that he strangled her for sexual thrills.

The headlines last Saturday were predictably all about the leading independent schools and the widening the gap in performance between them and state schools. Quite natural, really, as private schools in membership of the Independent Schools Council (ISC) had seen a 0.9 percentage point increase in A* grades at A-level compared with just 0.1 percentage point nationally.

Britain's top Independent Schools have extended their lead over state counterparts in terms of grade performance, claim figures out today.

Once the rivers were cleaned up, fish returned to once-polluted waters and otters began to spread back eastwards from their strongholds in Devon and Wales

A woman and her son have been jailed for plotting to murder an 89-year-old relative to get their hands on his money.

A family, including a girl aged 16, was found guilty yesterday of plotting to murder their 89-year-old relative to get their hands on his money.

A biography of the Atlantic Ocean loosely structured around Jacques' "seven ages of man" speech, this tells the story of the ocean's birth 190 million years ago, early voyages on it by the Phoenicians, then the Vikings, then the great European navigators of the 15th and 16th centuries, then its role as the "inland sea" of a Pan-Atlantic civilisation – and anticipates its eventual destruction some 180 million years hence. There are tales of shipwrecks, battles, explorations, migrations: a treasure-trove of stories, which brings home the immensity of this great, grey, heaving "confection of water and waves and wind, of animals and birds, of ships and man".

The phone-hacking scandal has convulsed the media. Now the industry must prepare to submit itself to a judge whose self-deprecation masks a rigorous line in questioning

The travel getaway is due to start today as school summer holidays begin.