Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Tuesday 1 Feb 2011

published 1 February 2011

Our popular news catch-up service is posted Monday to Friday at 8.00 am. You can rely on it to keep you up to date through the working day with the main news talking points. KING ABDULLAH OF JORDAN SACKS GOVERNMENT The wave of unrest spreading across the Arab world has reached Jordan, where King Abdullah is reported to have sacked his government after thousands of citizens took to the streets to protest over rising prices and political reforms. Former ambassador to Israel and national security chief Marouf al-Bakhit is said to have been appointed prime minister. MINISTER 'ADVISED LIBYA ON MEGRAHI RELEASE'WikiLeaks documents shared with the Daily Telegraph show that a Foreign Office minister sent Libyan officials detailed legal advice on how to exploit Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's cancer diagnosis to ensure the convicted Lockerbie bomber was released from jail in Scotland on compassionate grounds. The revelation appears to blow a hole in the UK government's insistence that the Scots alone took the controversial decision to release Megrahi. Will Megrahi scoop soften US attitude to Assange? TNK-BP 'LOOKED AT ROGUE STATE DEALS'BP's subsidiary in Russia, TNK-BP, "systematically" explored new ventures in "rogue states" that would normally be out of bounds to British companies because of international sanctions, according to a second WikiLeaks/Telegraph disclosure. The possiblity of doing business in Burma, Cuba and Sudan came about through the billionaire Russian oligarchs who co-own TNK-BP. Cairo hosts huge anti-government rally Cairo and other cities have seen the biggest rallies since anti-government protests began in Egypt last week. Activists hoped a million people would turn out today to demand the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, and they may well have exceeded expectations. The army announced that it would not use force to silence "legitimate" demands for reform. In pictures: Egypt protests Israelis fear post-Mubarak vacuum in Egypt CHELSEA PAY RECORD £50M FOR TORRESRoman Abramovich's Chelsea FC has handed over a reported £50m to buy the Spanish striker Fernando Torres from Liverpool. It is the most ever paid for a footballer by a British club. Torres signed only 10 minutes before the January "transfer window' closed at 11 pm on Monday. Liverpool spent the money - and more - buying Andy Carroll from Newcastle (for £35m) and Luis Suarez from Ajax (£22.7m). Liverpool fury as Chelsea buy Torres DOGS 'CAN DETECT EARLY BOWEL CANCER'A black labrador called Marine was able to detect early bowel cancer in human breath and stool samples, according to researchers at Kyushu University in Japan. A spokesman for Cancer Research UK told the BBC it would be extremely difficult to use dogs for routine cancer testing. And no ,it's not April 1, it's February 1. HEARST CORP BUYS 100 MAGAZINESThe Hearst Corporation, the US magazine giant that owns Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and Esquire, has done a $890m deal to buy more than 100 titles from the French publisher Lagardere. They include the US edition of Elle, which sells 1.1m copes a month in the States and competes head-on with Conde Nast's Vogue for advertising. REPORT PAINTS BLEAK PICTURE OF PART-TIME BRITAIN Of the 200,000 new jobs created in Britain last year, only 6,000 were full-time wage-paying contracts, according to a report from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. The think tank paints a bleak picture of employers being willing only to give out cheap part-time jobs. In defence, David Frost of the British Chambers of Commerce says: "The fact that jobs are being created at all has to be a good thing." A-Z CRIME MAPS FOR EVERY STREETA website that provides up-to-date maps showing crime reports on every street in England and Wales has been down for most of the day thanks to the huge amount of traffic from interested citizens. Ministers claim the www.police.uk website, launched today, does not compromise people's privacy - and nor will it affect house prices. GERVAIS WAS ASKED to host golden globes againJust two weeks after upsetting half of Hollywood with his second turn as the Golden Globes host, Ricky Gervais has said he was asked to consider appearing for a third year running. "The ratings went up again and the organisers asked me to consider a third year," wrote Gervais in Heat magazine. "But I don't think I should." Some Hollywood gossips claimed he would never work again after sticking the knife into luminaries such as Robert Downey Jr.