Today

Jul 26, 2010

Afghanistan war logs: Story behind biggest leak in intelligence history

Taliban offer US navy body in exchange for prisoners

US army's forward base in Logar province

The Taliban have offered to exchange the body of a US navy member they say was killed in an ambush two days ago in exchange for insurgent prisoners, an Afghan official said today.

Tony Hayward to quit BP | Business | The Guardian

BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward listens during a news conference in London

Tony Hayward's departure will be announced tomorrow Photograph: Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett

Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP, is to leave the company, bowing to pressure over his handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, the aftermath of which has become America's worst environmental disaster.

Eamonn Holmes gets the BBC jokes eating away at him banned | Life and style

Asking Eamonn not to act like a plonker is as pointless as arguing against gravity' . . . Holmes pictured with co-presenter Ruth Langsford. Photograph: Ken McKay/Rex
First up, a sorry dispatch from the Great Celebrity Adipose Wars – a conflict that finally has its Hutton report. Once again, the BBC has issued a humiliating apology for its output, although this time the beneficiary is not Alastair Campbell but Eamonn Holmes. The main thing is, the good guys are still winning.

Casablanca writ large | Travel

Tahir Shah in the restored library of Dar Khalifa, and its original pool Photograph: Ingrid Pullar
Seven years ago, exasperated by living in a tiny London flat, the writer Tahir Shah enacted the cherished fantasy of stressed city dwellers everywhere by uprooting his young family and decamping to a stunning house on the outskirts of Casablanca.

The big story is cricket but the news is all football

Tune in for an update on the status of Didier Drogba's groin injury. Photograph: Tom Jenkins
With most of the big free-to-air sport – World Cup, Wimbledon, the Open – finished, we now enter a kind of pending period before football starts again, a two‑week hiatus that enthusiasts and terminal nostalgists like to call the cricket season.

Manchester City willing to break transfer record for Fernando Torres

Liverpool are uncertain of holding on to their star striker Fernando Torres. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images
Roberto Mancini has confirmed Manchester City are willing to underwrite a British record transfer for Fernando Torres should the Spaniard decide to leave Liverpool.