Wales

If Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is really serious about bringing the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World (NOTW) to a close, it must act quickly and decisively. Before Christmas the group shifted its strategy by suspending and later sacking NOTW executive Ian Edmondson. This apparently signalled a new approach at News International, Mr Murdoch's British newspaper division. At the start of the year, the media mogul himself was in town to try to put things in order at Wapping.

Lawyers acting for public figures suing The News of the World over alleged phone hacking said yesterday that a trove of "lost" emails between senior executives could prove vital in securing damages and prompt new actions against the paper.

You're a Scot living "dahn saff". You work in England. Many of your chums are English. Maybe even your children think they're English, except the nice middle one who occasionally wears her dark blue shirt to ingratiate herself with her old dad. Football's your game, but you take your victories where you can find them. Curling at the Winter Olympics, for example. Elephant polo. George Galloway travelling to the States and sticking it up the Senate. Desperate? Maybe.

It was always going to be a tough midweek fixture for Clarke Carlisle, the first active professional footballer to appear on Question Time (BBC1, Thursday). He may have been playing on home turf in Burnley but the gaffer had been tinkering with the formation of the NHS front line and the opposition were deploying very defensive tactics at the Chilcot Inquiry; then shortly before kick-off, one of the star players had to stand down after lurid allegations about his private life were revealed.

Clarke Carlisle is to appear on the BBC's Question Time.

Helena Bonham-Carter's outfit for the Golden Globes has caused a schism in the terrifying world of fashion.

John Malkovich is speaking in a tone so low and languorous it seems deliberately pitched at a single, straining pair of ears. As an actor who has used his voice to great menacing effect, it now becomes lighter and more lilting, the more exercised he gets. "Look," he enunciates softly, sitting forward in his chair like an uncoiled snake ready to strike. "I don't need to be liked."

A phone-in TV programme presented by former MP George Galloway has been criticised by the broadcasting watchdog for breaching impartiality rules.

Lembit Opik, the former Liberal Democrat MP, is so ridiculous that he is rather lovable.

A candidate for a mayoral election who was dumped by Labour then stood as an independent won the contest with more than half the vote early today.