Husband Charlie Brooks tells phone-hacking trial wife woke up and 'whacked' him, thinking police were about to raid their home
Rebekah Brooks was so paranoid about being arrested in the months running up to the closure of the News of the World, she woke one night and "whacked" her husband because she thought the police were about to raid their home, the Old Bailey has heard.
Brooks also kept from her husband the fact she was getting almost daily advice from Tony Blair in the days around the closure of the News of the World at the height of the phone-hacking crisis in 2011.
Bishop Nick Holtam says gay marriage 'embodies virtues that the Church of England wants to see maximised in society'
The Church of England's divisions over gay marriage have been reopened by the Bishop of Salisbury, who has issued a statement praising the couples who will get married and assuring them of his prayers and good wishes.
Nick Holtam's supportive remarks on the eve of the legalisation of gay marriage expresses the views of a significant body of dissent within the Church of England, unhappy with the formal position that prevents Anglican clergy from marrying partners of the same sex.
Littlewoods owners Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay win long-running tax rebate battle against HM Revenue & Customs
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has insisted it will appeal against a high court decision to award Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay's Littlewoods catalogue shopping business £1.2bn in a top-up settlement relating to a long-running legacy VAT dispute.
The judgment handed down on Friday is thought to be one of the biggest single company defeats for HMRC, which had already paid out £470m to Littlewoods in 2004 in an attempt to settle the matter.
Saudi royals alarmed by US stance on Iran and Syria but officials say visit will 'reaffirm the importance' of US-Saudi relations
Barack Obama landed at a desert camp in Saudi Arabia on Friday to mend bridges with the kingdoms monarch, King Abdullah, after months of tension between the pair.
The Saudi royal family has been alarmed by Washingtons move toward a rapprochement with Iran as it seeks an agreement to limit Tehrans nuclear program. The Saudis were also angered by Obamas decision to hold back from using military force against Syria another regional adversary over its use of chemical weapons.
One child and driver killed in latest attack before April's elections
One child and a driver were killed and five people injured after a suicide attack on an aid agency in Kabul on Friday, the third bloody assault to hit the Afghan capital in a week as insurgents stepped up a campaign of violence ahead of presidential elections.
The girl and the driver died when a suicide bomber detonated his car outside the Roots of Peace landmine charity in Kabul and four gunmen stormed the aid agency's office. Four civilians and a policeman were injured in the attack, said a spokesman for the chief of police, Hashmat Stanikzai.
Rebels blockading ports in the eastern province of Cyrenaica say they will form a breakaway state if government forces attack
Libyan government forces are poised to attack rebels blockading key oil ports this weekend in an offensive that risks splitting the country apart.
A deadline for rebels in the eastern province of Cyrenaica to hand over the ports, blockaded since last summer, has passed with the opposition still in control and vowing to form a breakaway state if attacked.
Shares in pensions and insurance industry plunge as potential mis-selling inquiry follows blow to annuity market in budget
"The FCA board acknowledges the concerns of the market regarding today's press coverage ... The board will conduct an investigation into the FCA's handling of the issue involving an external law firm, and will share the outcome of this work in due course."
Earlier in the day, the FCA confirmed that it would begin an investigation into zombie funds this summer as part of a wider inquiry into the possible mistreatment of longstanding customers. It came a week after George Osborne dealt a blow to the £14bn-a-year annuity market by declaring in the budget that pension savers would be able to do what they liked with their cash from next year.
Artist Antony Micallef describes decision not to display his work Kill Your Idol on London tube station posters as censorship
The artwork shows a bound Jesus being judged by an X-Factor-style jury and for 40 days it will hang over worshippers in the church where Byron was christened. But while the Church of England has welcomed the image, it has led to an unholy row with Transport for London.
TfL has taken exception to the piece by artist Antony Micallef that was scheduled to appear on tube platform posters during Lent, alongside other contemporary art interpretations of the passion of Christ that have been deemed acceptable by the transport authority.
President says Putin should begin negotiations directly with Ukrainian government and international community
Barack Obama has called on Russia to withdraw its troops from the Ukraine border and start negotiating.
Obama told CBS News that the decision by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to assemble forces on the border may "simply be an effort to intimidate Ukraine, or it may be that they've got additional plans".
Captain fined 40% of match fee for slow over-rate
Another offence would see him miss a match
England's one-day captain, Stuart Broad, has been fined for the second time at the World Twenty20, losing 40% of his match fee for a slow over-rate in the win over Sri Lanka.
The International Cricket Council found England to be two overs behind the target when time allowances were applied, leading to an automatic penalty.
A year after housing benefits were cut for council tenants with spare rooms, figures show 30,000 have moved
About 6% of benefit claimants affected by the bedroom tax have moved as a result of the benefit changes, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Reforms to cut housing benefit from council tenants with spare rooms have saved taxpayers £1m a day since they were imposed a year ago, according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Bangladesh 138-7; India 141-2 (India win by eight wickets)
Virat Kohli shines as India make it three wins in a row
India became the first team to qualify for the World Twenty20 semi-finals after half-centuries from Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma secured a comprehensive eight-wicket victory over hosts Bangladesh on Friday.
Leg-spinner Amit Mishra was again among the wickets as India restricted the hosts to a below-par 138 for seven and chased down target with nine balls to spare to secure their third win in three matches in the tournament.
Delcy Rodríguez, minister of information, calls for investigation of El Aragueño for allegedly printing anti-government puzzle
Crossword puzzles in a Venezuelan regional newspaper are being used to encrypt messages to incite revolt against the government, the Venezuelan minister of information has claimed.
Delcy Rodríguez, who made the accusation on Twitter, has called for a full investigation into El Aragueño, a daily in Aragua state a site of recent anti-government protests.
Leaked text of blockbuster report says changes in climate have already caused impacts on natural and human systems
Climate change has already left its mark "on all continents and across the oceans", damaging food crops, spreading disease, and melting glaciers, according to the leaked text of a blockbuster UN climate science report due out on Monday.
Government officials and scientists are gathered in Yokohama this week to wrangle over every line of a summary of the report before the final wording is released on Monday the first update in seven years.
John Garner found on life raft with head and leg injuries and pronounced dead after being taken to hospital
Police in the Caribbean island of St Vincent suspect "foul play" after a British man was found on a life raft near his burning yacht.
John Garner, 53, was discovered with head and leg injuries and was pronounced dead after being taken to the island's Milton Cato Memorial hospital.
The former Radio 1 DJ and BBC presenter was cleared of 12 counts of indecent assault last month
Dave Lee Travis is to be charged with a further count of indecent assault, a court has heard.
The former Radio 1 DJ and BBC presenter, 68, was cleared of 12 counts of indecent assault last month, but jurors at Southwark crown court in London were unable to reach verdicts on two other charges and were discharged.
Judge says one of assessors helping her reach verdict has been taken ill and trial will resume on 7 April
The cameras were rolling, the public gallery was full and Oscar Pistorius was bracing himself for the biggest moment of his blockbuster trial. Then came the mother of all anticlimaxes.
Group including nine-year-old girl takes RBS, NatWest and Lloyds to court, saying banks have misread sanctions policy
A group of Iranians, including a nine-year-old girl, have taken three high-street UK banks to court for what they believe is a misreading of sanctions policy, alleging they have been subjected to racial discrimination after being told that their accounts had to close.
RBS, NatWest and Lloyds have sent letters to a number of their customers, including British citizens with Iranian backgrounds or Iranians living in the UK, saying the banks can no longer provide financial services to them, citing sanctions in most cases.
Group of eight women behind lawsuit criticise government for failing to ban relationships, attacking 'institutional sexism'
Manager defiant despite growing unrest at Old Trafford
'Supporters are entitled to fly-past protest'
Pictures of protest banner emerge on social media
Provençal city faces up to prospect of FN future after party's candidate comes top in first round
There has been little dancing on the celebrated Pont d'Avignon of late. Since Monday morning when the historic Provençal city woke up to find that it was facing a future under the far-right Front National party, there has been a sense of shock, stupefaction and among those who voted for the party of Marine Le Pen quiet, but not yet triumphant satisfaction. The party still needs to win Sunday's second round to win power here. But already the shockwaves are reverberating.
The director of the internationally acclaimed Avignon festival threatened to resign or move the event elsewhere. "I cannot work with a mairie that is FN," Olivier Py told the Guardian. "I cannot give the party its cultural legitimacy and I will not validate its ideas. It would be a profound betrayal of the founders of the festival. If the FN wins on Sunday, either I leave or the festival moves somewhere else."
Attorney general forced to reveal cost of preventing publication of prince's 'most deeply held personal views and beliefs'
Ministers have spent more than £250,000 in legal fees to prevent the publication of letters written by Prince Charles to politicians.
The attorney general, Dominic Grieve, with the backing of the cabinet, has been blocking the release of the letters as he says their contents threaten to damage the prince's political neutrality and create constitutional problems.
Celebrity publicist states in court that indecent assault allegations had been 'very, very damaging' but are 'totally untrue'
PR guru Max Clifford has branded the women he allegedly assaulted as "fantasists and opportunists" who may be trying to win compensation.
The 70-year-old, who is accused of 11 counts of indecent assault against seven girls and women, told Southwark crown court that the women who claim he indecently assaulted them were telling a "pack of lies".
Teased for her 'Aga sagas', Joanna Trollope thought no one would want her papers but Oxford snapped them up. She is thrilled as well as hopping mad about this week's announcement of a ban on posting books to prisoners
I haven't heard anyone abbreviate "pious" to "pi" since my great aunt died and she was born in the first world war. Joanna Trollope was born during the second world war, making her only just a generation younger, close enough to share a fondness for Enid Blytonesque slang but that is where the similarities end. The novelist has the figure of a 14-year-old, the presence of a Hollywood star, and so much feminist fury about tabloid misogyny that whenever she sees women reading the Daily Mail on the tube, "I want to whip it out of girls' hands and just say: 'Please read something proper!'" She is without question the most contemporary 70-year-old I have ever met.
It's only afterwards that I realise she didn't mention her age once. The whole subject of ageing never even came up which is odd, given what we talked about. It emerged this week that Trollope has donated her entire archive of manuscripts and notes to the Bodleian library in Oxford, so a preoccupation with mortality and posterity would have been perfectly natural. But Trollope seems to be too distracted by her own astonishment to have even thought about it. "Do you know," she marvels in her famous cut-glass vowels, "I'm just absolutely amazed that the donation's aroused any interest at all."
Dave Eggers always prided himself on his musical taste and wouldn't have minded being called a snob. So what happened when he found himself watching a 70s revival band in a casino shaped like a wolf's den in the Connecticut woods?
The purpose of this trip could be summed up neatly: I was driving from New York City to central Connecticut, to a casino called Mohegan Sun, owned by and greatly enriching the descendants of a subjugated Native American tribe, to see a friend of mine sing for a rock'n'roll band called Starship.
I should back up. Starship is a band that emerged from another band, Jefferson Starship, which itself emerged from a previous band, known as Jefferson Airplane. The latter was an iconic band of the 1960s: they played Woodstock, Altamont, Monterey, and were central to San Francisco's Summer of Love. Jefferson Starship was the 70s incarnation of the band, after various original members of the band had departed. Starship was yet one more version, prominent in the 1980s and featuring singers Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas. They scored a colossal hit with the song "We Built This City," and soon after, Slick left the band, and they stopped recording. But periodically after that, Thomas would tour under the Starship name, playing smaller venues and casinos like the one at Mohegan Sun, in the middle of one of the oldest states in the Union.