Marks & Spencer is “well equipped” to cope in a recession, despite reporting a 34% fall in half-year profits and warning conditions would remain tough for most of 2009, boss Stuart Rose said today.

Marks & Spencer’s recovery is due in no small measure to its enormously successful advertising campaigns.

A man was arrested in Indiana for allegedly hurling his niece and nephew off a bridge and into a creek because he was angry at their mother. The two-year-old boy died.