Small businesses are cutting jobs at the fastest rate in nearly 20 years - and there are predictions the situation is going to get worse.
Nearly 40% of businesses polled made their workforce smaller in the last quarter
Employment, new orders and output fell at a pace not seen since the early 1990s, according to a CBI […]

Iraqi security forces have banned traffic from the streets of major cities and will search all voters as the country holds provincial elections.
About 15 million Iraqis are eligible to vote in the polls being held in 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces on Saturday.
More than 14,000 candidates are competing for 440 seats.
The polls, which are seen […]

Homeowners may soon get a nasty surprise as councils plan to send “energy police” into suburbs to test their heat insulation.
The reds and oranges show heat escaping from this poorly insulated home
At least 25 councils are planning to use heat detector vans to take thermal images of homes, in a bid to encourage residents to […]

Turkey’s prime minister has returned home from the World Economic Forum in Davos to a warm welcome after he stormed out of a debate over Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.
More than 5,000 people, many waving Palestinian and Turkish flags, greeted Recep Tayyip Erdogan after his aeroplane touched down early on Friday.
Erdogan walked out of […]

New official figures show the vast sums of money raised by the public and how it was spent on trying to find the young girl during the 10 months after she went missing.
More than £815,000 went towards the search itself between the time of her disappearance in May 2007 and March last year.
This included £250,000 […]

Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and her US counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, have signed an agreement aimed at preventing arms smuggling into Gaza for the Palestinian group Hamas.
Livni, who travelled to Washington DC, the US capital, on Friday for the signing, said both sides had agreed on a “series of actions” in the memorandum […]

Three hospitals and a UN compound have been bombed by Israel as troops continue to advance into the densely-populated Gaza City.
Around 500 people were sheltering in the Al-Quds hospital in the city’s southwestern Tal Al-Hawa district when it was bombed by Israeli jets and set ablaze on Thursday morning.
Hospital officials said the fire was sparked […]

Qatar and Mauritania have severed economic and political ties with Israel in protest against the war in Gaza, Al Jazeera has learned.
The move announced on Friday followed calls by Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, and Khaled Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas, for all Arab nations to cut ties with Israel.
Addressing leaders at an emergency […]

A resolution condemning Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has been adopted by the UN Human Rights Council.
The non-binding resolution, approved in Geneva on Monday, said Israel’s operation had “resulted in massive violations of human rights of the Palestinian people”.
More than 935 Palestinians have died during the fighting, many of them women and children, and a […]

The head of the UN has urged Israel and Hamas to end the fighting in Gaza, telling them to “just stop, now”. 
Speaking ahead of a visit to the Middle East to push for a ceasefire, Ban Ki-moon said “too many people have died” and there has been too much civilian suffering.
It comes amid reports Israeli […]