British Olympic sailor Leigh McMillan swept into the lead on the third day of the Extreme Sailing Series regatta in Qingdao and Britain’s reigning world match racing champion, Ian Williams, pulled back up to third overall going into the final day.

A spate of tornadoes tore through parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa yesterday, churning through Wichita and other areas while causing property damage but no immediate reports of deaths or widespread injuries.

Tornadoes hit Texas yesterday, destroying a wing of a nursing home, peeling roofs from dozens of homes and sending lorry trailers into the air.

A powerful storm with typhoon-strength winds and heavy rain halted air and train traffic in Tokyo and killed four people around the country, officials said.

The name Areias do Seixo roughly translates as "pebble beach", and the property plays to its rugged, coastal location with a motif of purity and nature. But Areias do Seixo's curveball is that it is a modernist glass and concrete construction on a protected patch of Portugal's Costa de Prata ("silver coast"), between Lisbon and Porto.

Michael Shannon, the best thing about Revolutionary Road and sensational as Nelson van Alden in Boardwalk Empire, carries Jeff Nichols's unsettling drama on his broad shoulders.

Newcastle United 1 Norwich City 0

Willie Mullins has described Boston Bob as a match for any novice he has ever brought to the Festival, which guarantees he will start a hot favourite for the Albert Bartlett Hurdle today. It would be no surprise to see him look a Gold Cup winner in the making, but the odds will be very short about a horse running on quick ground for the first time.

After he teed up a record 13 winners in 2011, the Irish once again send their best National Hunt performer of recent seasons to lead the assault on the opening day of the Festival. Hurricane Fly appealed as a good bet for the Stan James Champion Hurdle last year; and, for any who heeded the counsel of his jockey, he briefly became good value when eased in the betting on account of a delayed reappearance. After that breathtaking resumption at Leopardstown in January, however, he is a short price to retain his crown today. Anyone having a bet must either be comfortable with those odds, then, or seek out some each-way value.

There is a fine line between winning eccentricity and clowning irritation, one that Spector’s Fred Macpherson patrols with the subtlety of Rush Limbaugh. At least his between-song meanderings, a mix of halting badinage and inspired one-liners, help set his five-piece apart from a rising tide of hopefuls reviving British guitar pop, among them Tribes and Various Cruelties.

The Victorians have a lot to answer for.

Strong winds and high seas are hampering efforts to find eight crew members missing after their freighter ship sank off Turkey's Black Sea coast in a winter storm, officials and reports said today.

Space weather officials say the strongest solar storm in more than six years bombarded Earth with radiation.