POLITICS

The head of the Royal Air Force has said that he expects operations over Libya to last at least six months and has said that the British government needs to increase funding to the service if it is to perform the tasks assigned to it by the government.

A Catholic police officer has been killed in Omagh, Northern Ireland after he was the victim of a car bomb that is believed to have been planted by Republican dissidents.

A coalition airstrike on a pro-Gaddafi supply convoy has reportedly killed seven civilians, some of them children.

General Eduardo Cabanillas has been sentenced to life imprisonment in Argentina, after being found guilty of murder, torture and illegal imprisonment.

Libyan rebels are reported to be preparing for a large counter attack, after losing significant ground to forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi.

The British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has said that his government has not offered immunity to his Libyan counterpart, Moussa Koussa, who dramatically flew to Britain yesterday, allegedly in order to defect.

RAF Tornado aircraft yesterday attacked Libyan armoured vehicles and an anti-aircraft site during patrols to enforce UN Resolution 1973.

The American President, Barack Obama, has reportedly given authorisation to the CIA to conduct covert operations to help rebel forces in Libya.

This week the former President and military ruler of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, said he believed that "a good dictatorship is better than a bad democracy".

The British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has suggested that Great Britain may be willing to allow Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi to go into exile, rather than face trial at the International Criminal Court.

The British government is to host a meeting today of the international community to discuss the current situation in Libya and make plans for the future of the country.

The Royal Air Force launched attacks on pro-Gaddafi tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery over the weekend, the Ministry of Defence has said.

At the Arab Summit in Doha, Qatar, on Monday, 28 March, 2009, Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi grabbed a microphone as the conference was about to begin and denounced King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia as a "British product and American ally."

The Labour Party today held what it called a "listening exercise" on a scale hitherto unachieved by a British political party.

The leader of the Opposition Labour Party, Ed Miliband, has said that he will join those protesting against the Coalition government's "cuts" in public spending.

Military operations over Libya will be taken over by NATO in the next few days according to the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague.

The imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya has succeeded in one thing at least: it has enforced a stalemate onto what was seemingly the opening moves of the Libyan civil war.

Following Chancellor George Osborne's "Budget for growth", unveiled yesterday, eyes will turn to the Office for National Statistics tomorrow when it publishes its third and final estimate for GDP in the fourth quarter of 2010.

As many as 20,000 people are reported to have taken to the streets of Deraa, Syria, to protest against the dictatorship of Bashar Assad and to mourn the deaths of those killed in protests yesterday.

Budget airline easyJet has welcomed the announcement by Chancellor George Osborne that there will be no rise in air passenger duty.

Read here the full text of Chancellor George Osborne's Budget speech to the House of Commons.

Today George Osborne will be unveiling the annual budget, follow live coverage hear to find out the Government's latest plans to cut the deficit and promote growth and the Opposition reaction.

Tomorrow the Bank of England is due to release the minutes of this month's meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, which, yet again voted to keep interest rates at the historic low of 0.5 per cent.

Chancellor George Osborne is preparing to announce a tax on private jet flights in tomorrow's Budget, it has been reported.

Forget Britain's "Special Relationship" with America, largely a mirage of the Foreign Office and its existence unknown to most Americans. Even as World War II was ending, the cracks in the relationship between Britain and the United States were becoming ever more obvious to contemporaries and for more recent generations can be studied by reading books, both military and political, such as Armageddon and Nemesis by Max Hastings.

Below is the full text of a British government note explaining what it regards as the legal basis for using British military forces in Libya:

The British military and political leadership appears to be divided over whether Colonel Gaddafi is a legitimate target for airstrikes and missile attacks, following the passage of United Nations Resolution 1973.

The civil war in Libya, the length and result of which is of course unknown, has shown the USA and the European powers to be sufferers of what Winston Churchill once described as a "disease of the will".

I sat down and started to reach for the mug of coffee that my wife had made for me. My outstretched hand did not make it to the mug because my eyes were fixed on a scene of horror about to unfold on the television.