A classroom assistant who carried out a five-month campaign of bullying against a seven-year-old pupil who was taped to her chair and shut in a storeroom has been spared jail in the UK.

Police in England have charged five boys with rape, they said last night.

Two British women attempting to becoming the first mother-daughter team to row across the Atlantic Ocean were just hours away from the finish line tonight.

The far right British National Party tonight gained its fifth council seat by overturning a Labour majority.