2.15pm: We're expecting Tony Blair's speech early in the afternoon session, which is just about to begin. Matthew Tempest has told us what to expect and I'll be following it in this post as it happens.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign secretary and Conservative leadership candidate, yesterday led warnings to the party conference that it must change to win over non-Tory voters or die.

Sir Malcolm used his allotted 20-minute spot in the conference's "beauty contest" to succeed Michael Howard to appeal for a return to…

In a Provenal village at the beginning of August, I met a tourist from New Orleans who said his home town lay almost five metres below sea level and that one of these days a disaster was inevitable. This was several weeks before anybody had sight of Hurricane Katrina. My…

Michael White travels to China and India with the prime minister as he arranges trade deals, meets heads of government, and plays some very bad football.

It was the biggest TV event since Germany lost to Brazil in the 2002 World Cup final. Some 20 million Germans tuned in to watch the only debate of the German election campaign between the chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his conservative challenger Angela Merkel. But who actually won? Well, if…

Oliver Morgan looks at the economic consequences of Katrina's fury leaving the US offshore oil industry in ruins