Russell King prevented from leaving Bahrain

Russell King, top right, at Notts County with Sven-Goran Eriksson on the left of the picture. Photograph Paul Redding/Action Images Russell King, the businessman under investigation for fraud in Jersey whose powers of persuasion coaxed former England football manager Sven Goran Eriksson to join League Two Notts County last year, has been slapped with a [...]

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Bank moves to force Gillett and Hicks to sell Liverpool in month

A group of Liverpool fans wrote an open-letter to RBS this week claiming the club’s owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett were ‘liars’. Photograph: Dave Thompson/PA Wire/Press Association Images Tom Hicks and George Gillett’s ill-starred reign as owners of Liverpool looks like having less than a month to run after the club’s loans with Royal [...]

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PD James fights to save Public Lending Right scheme from chop

Letter of the law … ‘PLR is a legal right rather than a grant or subsidy,’ wrote novelist PD James to Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary. Photograph: Murdo Macleod Crime novelist PD James has written to the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, calling his attention to the thousands of authors who are fighting for the money [...]

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Why pawnbrokers have become respectable | Deborah Orr

The pawnbroker . . . more civilised than a loan shark. Photograph: Alamy The pawnshop has been rehabilitated, and apparently this is not even such a Bad Thing. The decline of these seedy outlets was once measured in inverse proportion to the advance of the welfare state, until such businesses achieved vivid attention only when [...]

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Unions condemn hospital trust’s £250,000 outlay on interim chief

A ward at Dorset county hospital, where a total of £647,000 was spent on four temporary appointments. Photograph: Dave Penman/Rex Features Health workers’ unions expressed anger today after it emerged that a temporary chief executive had cost a struggling hospital trust more than £2,500... 

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