Two presumptions seem to have taken hold of all discussion of the burgeoning crisis over Russia's actions in Georgia. One is that Moscow, by sending in the tanks, has changed the rules of geopolitics and destroyed the post Cold War era of calm and co-operation, as the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, argued in his sabre-rattling speech yesterday in Kiev. The other is that what we're witnessing is a return to the politics of the 19th-century, when empires ruled and great countries thought...
Read more...

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, wants to give the impression that she has increased the number of police on our streets – but has she? Last week, she announced 6,000 more special constables, although recruitment of the more controversial community support officers seems to have slowed. Special constables receive only expenses. Some would say they represent policing on the cheap. Police community support officers (PCSOs) have more limited powers. Although they work in a cosmetic...
Read more...

Fears were growing last night for a businessman and his family who have been missing since their country home was burnt to the ground in a suspected arson attack.

An underworld gunsmith who modified replica machine guns in a garden shed "factory" – weapons which were used in a surge of shootings and murders, including the killing of PC Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford in 2005 – could be jailed for life after being found guilty of firearms offences.

Cabinet ministers will give Gordon Brown "one last chance" to save his premiership but will try to oust him by November if he fails to improve Labour's prospects.

Some 220 years ago, a shambolic English aristocrat with a fondness for smoking a labourer's clay pipe staged one of the great art-buying coups by acquiring 305 masterpieces, including two coveted works by Titian, from the collection of a close relative of the recently beheaded French king Louis XVI. The price? The trifling sum of £43,000.

Tonight in a vast outdoor arena in Denver, on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, Barack Obama will deliver an address upon which hangs the outcome of November's American presidential election, and the hopes of the first black man with a real shot at the White House.