Abdulmutallab's father 'warned CIA' about son

Airline bomb plot suspect's father met a CIA agent to discuss his son's extremist views but report was not circulated

Temperatures dive and a foot of snow is forecast

The big freeze will keep Britain in its grip over the new year as DIY gritters stock up on salt and cat litter

UK thought Reagan would be a lazy president

Archive papers reveal British diplomats’ verdict on Republican candidate in the early days of US election campaign

Benn wanted BBC to take over The Times

Energy Minister feared that the newspaper would not survive year-long strike that had stopped its publication

Thatcher preferred 'whites' over Vietnamese

Former Prime Minister tried to block 'boat people', preferring white immigrants from Rhodesia or Poland, secret papers reveal

Three more troops honoured as bodies returned

Hundreds line the streets of Wootton Bassett in pouring rain to pay their respects to the latest Afghanistan casualties

Ostriches choose subzero Britain to hatch eggs

The owners of the birds believe that the three chicks are the first to be born outdoors in Britain in winter

Arrest over theft of rare work on camellias

A Cambridge graduate is alleged to have walked away from RHS Lindley Library with Nouvelle Iconographies des Camellias under his jacket

Chinese show little sympathy for Shaikh

Comments on websites question why a convicted drug smuggler should receive mercy just because he was foreign

Football's golden moments in miniature

A toyshop owner has immortalised the best-known goal celebrations in history by recreating them with Subbuteo players

Mortgage borrowers pay £4.9bn off loans

The third-quarter figures from the Bank of England add to fears that weak consumer spending could undermine the recovery

‘Everyone needs a Swan Lake — this is Archie Gemmill’s’

Dance sequence at heart of Off Kilter, a spectacular new show, evokes Scottish football’s brief moment of glory

Would-be bomber radicalised while at UCL

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to bring down an airliner last week, was active in radical politics while in London

Britain rethinks strategy on China

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office appears to have considerably overestimated its leverage with the emerging superpower

Fresh appeal to back Scottish business

CEO of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry echoes warnings to Holyrood to back Scottish business

Are Scrabble's men of letters just cheating?

Facebook players say the professionals' use of esoteric words is unfair. Michael Prowse and Allan Simmons go head to head

Anger as diaries drop religious names

Prayer Book Society calls for a boycott of Letts diaries over publisher's decision to rename the Sundays before Lent

Never too old to rock (the cradle)

Van the Man becomes a father again at 64

How Britain tactfully told the Shah to keep out

National Archive papers show the extraordinary efforts made to avoid upsetting the new regime in Iran

Art and the pram in the hall

Rock stars have never had trouble conceiving children. However, raising them is another matter altogether