As Newcastle councillors offered an £18,000 lifeline to the cash-strapped Victoria Theatre, the Department of the Environment was grappling with a £4 million shortfall in funding estimates for Stoke-on-Trent's National Garden Festival.

A massive manhunt was under way as police identified an escaped convict as a suspect following a triple murder in the village of Dore, near Sheffield, where a solicitor, his wife and son were killed after a family wedding.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan defended America's controversial invasion of Grenada... A 12-year-old schoolboy from Weston Coyney underwent emergency heart surgery after being shot at point-blank range with an air rifle.

Two people were killed and another critically injured in an horrific crash on the Stafford to Uttoxeter road... Newcastle police launched a hunt for the dogs responsible for savaging a child's Shetland pony to death.

Stoke-on-Trent South MP Mark Fisher said Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had allowed the U.S. to humiliate Britain by invading an independent Commonwealth country... Meter fiddlers were said to be costing the MEB £3 million a year.