The government vowed to take over Birmingham today as one influential visitor  described it thus “Squalor, filth, the air hanging heavy with the smell of drugs, a dilapidated physical environment, a sense of great instability of feeling that of any time violence could break out.” He also found blood, vomit, rat droppings and cockroaches.

  A British woman rescued from the sea after disappearing overboard from a Norwegian cruise ship between Vargarola and Venice, jumped overboard to avoid the onboard cabaret it has emerged. Kay Longstaff, 46, went overboard some time around midnight on Saturday night somewhere in the Adriatic, and at first it was thought she must have