The Government admitted today that four soldiers killed in Afghanistan had been failed after highly critical comments from the coroner at their inquest yesterday.

Gordon Brown today made a controversial pledge to freeze the pay of top civil servants, judges, generals and doctors to save £3 billion, as he made a pitch to British voters over his handling of the economy.

Northern Rock, the state-owned bank bailed out with £26 billion in taxpayers’ funds, will share a £14.9 million bonus among its staff despite running up a loss over 2009.

A psychiatric report that paved the way for the release of Jon Venables, one of James Bulger’s killers, concluded that he posed a “trivial” risk to the public, The Times has learnt.

A British soldier has won praise for his extraordinary bravery after he saved the lives of two comrades in Helmand last week by picking up a live grenade and hurling it back at the Taleban.

The creation of electronic medical records in England should be suspended because patients are not receiving enough information to opt out of the system, leading doctors say.

British Airways will respond today to a last-minute offer by the Unite union that could prevent a cabin crew strike, according to sources close to the talks.

It is a journey that David Beckham has made hundreds of times before.

Reoffending by prisoners given sentences of less than 12 months is costing the country up to £10 billion a year, a watchdog report published today says.

A gang of smash-and-grab robbers raided a landmark branch of the Queen’s silversmith's yesterday.

It is a journey that David Beckham has made hundreds of times before.

David Cameron’s authority was questioned last night after his Unionist allies voted against the final stages of devolution in Northern Ireland.

United fans have hated the Glazers since the family bought the club in the teeth of opposition from its supporters in 2005.

Two teenagers were winched to safety after becoming trapped on a precarious cliff ledge with the sea crashing only feet below. They were at risk of being swept off the cliff face after being cut off by the tide and strong waves while on a fossil hunt.

The report forms at Red Bank, the secure unit where Jon Venables was detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for the murder of James Bulger, recorded nine incidents of misbehaviour in 1999 that involved him.

Public bodies have been banned from using internet companies that refuse to block a range of websites that contain images of child sex abuse, The Times has learnt.

The Scottish Parliament ground to a standstill yesterday after Labour and Nationalist MSPs refused to cross a trade union picket line. Their decision was greeted with outrage from business leaders, and from Holyrood officials who had worked behind the scenes to ensure that the business of the day could continue as normal.

British diplomats have expressed serious concerns to the US State Department at least three times over Washington’s response to the latest dispute over the Falkland Islands, The Times has learnt.

In the years before the Second World War, Ida and Louise Cook’s love of music took them time and again to Austria and Germany as they travelled to see the operatic stars of the day.

Churches have joined together to protest against plans for a mosque that would tower over the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, with one minister describing it as a “supremacist statement” for Islam.

It was probably the smallest show in Alexander McQueen’s history and not the one he had originally planned. That was to have taken place in the Conciergerie, a favourite venue of his and the gloomiest of Marie-Antoinette’s prisons.

Officials at the Russian Embassy in London have been asked to help in the task of contacting relatives of the asylum-seeker family who leapt to their deaths from the 15th floor of a Glasgow tower block.

“The initial issue that needs to be considered concerns the possible risks to the public should Jon be released now. In my opinion, the risks now are so negligible as to not amount to a serious consideration. The main reasons for that view are as follows.

A government minister said that the actress and campaigner Joanna Lumley should speak out over the activities of lawyers advising Gurkha veterans who hope to settle in Britain.

Easter rail travel is under threat from three industrial disputes which could halt trains in the first national rail strike for 16 years.