Africa/International

Middle-class families in Britain where one parent stays at home to look after the children pay more than a third extra in tax than those in other Western countries, new research claims. Couples earning £33,745 a year bear a tax burden that…

Smoking is being blamed for soaring rates of lung cancer among British women aged over 60. New figures show that between 1975 and 2008, the annual number of British women over 60 diagnosed with lung cancer jumped from fewer than 6,000 to…

Police officers claimed £3.8bn in overtime payments over the past decade, according to new figures. Research by the Policy Exchange think-tank claims spending in some forces is "out of control", although it says others are working hard to…

Japan's health ministry has halted the use of vaccines made by Pfizer Inc and Sanofi-Aventis SA to prevent meningitis and pneumonia following the deaths of four children. The infants died shortly after receiving the vaccines and while it…

China's government is promising an economic overhaul that would raise the status of consumers and entrepreneurs but has given no sign how it will tackle its politically volatile reforms. Beijing wants to nurture self-sustaining growth…

A Nigerian soldier opens fire into drums of gasoline stacked among the mangroves, then runs back to a safe distance. His colleagues set light to rags on the end of a stick and fling them into the liquid seeping from the bullet holes. The…

A recent auction of Twitter shares on the secondary market suggests investors value the company at $7.7 billion, more than twice the valuation the Internet microblogging service garnered in a December funding round. Investors have agreed…

The May Day bank holiday could be dropped and replaced by either a St George's Day in April or a Trafalgar Day in October. But a proposal for "double summertime" to bring the UK's clocks into line with Europe's was not in the tourism…

When the airline industry took a nose dive a decade ago, executives at global carriers scrambled to find a quick fix to avoid financial ruin. What they came up with, according to federal prosecutors, was a massive price-fixing scheme among…

Prime Minister David Cameron will declare war on the "enemies of enterprise" in a speech to the Conservative spring conference. In what aides are describing as a "new chapter in the economic story of this government", the PM will set out…