The Arab League today suspended Syria and called upon the army of President Bashar al-Assad to stop killing civilians engaged in peaceful protests against his regime. The League, holding an emergency session in Cairo to discuss Syria’s breach of a peace deal agreed earlier this month, also called upon the country’s opposition to agree a manifesto for a transfer of power. “Syria is a dear country for all of us and it pains us to make this decision,” said Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim, Prime Minister of Qatar. “We hope there will be a brave move from Syria to stop the violence and begin a real dialogue toward real reform. “We are calling all Syrian opposition parties to a meeting at the Arab League headquarters to agree a unified vision for the transitional period. The Syrian envoy, Yussuf Ahmed, condemned the suspension as illegal and said it had been ordered by the United States. Today’s decision “put an end to joint Arab action and shows that the (League’s) administration is subjected to US and Western agendas,” he said. He also claimed that the Arab League was trying to “provoke foreign intervention in Syria, as was the case in Libya.” Sheikh bin Jassim denied the claim of provocation. “No one is talking about a no-fly zone, people are trying to mix up the cases. None of us is talking about this kind of decision.” The suspension comes into effect on Wednesday after 18 countries voted for it. Lebanon, Yemen and Syr

By the rules applied by Scottish football supporters after victory at Wembley in 1967, England became unofficial world champions this evening. That is a nonsense, of course, but a battling performance against Spain, the World Cup-holders, was nonetheless a highly gratifying victory for Fabio Capello’s team. Pretty, it was not. This was an exercise in containment, competing for every ball and trying to catch Spain on the break – or, as it happened five minutes into the second half, with a set piece. It was Frank Lampard, the captain, who converted the rebound from Darren Bent’s header after a free kick. But how else do you beat Spain? By playing them at their own game? Certainly not. There would be a danger in rushing to conclusions after a game in which Spain continued a trend of underperforming in friendly matches, but there were some pleasing perf

The Ministry of Defence has been forced to deny that thousands of wounded soldiers could be forced out of the Army under plans detailed in a leaked document to double the number of redundancies originally proposed by the spending review last year. The memo states that the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns have left the Army with so many injured soldiers that able-bodied recruits have to be turned away, reducing its fighting strength. The classified document also claims that 16,000 soldiers will be made redundant by April 2015 – 4,000 more than have been announced. The memo was reportedly sent to senior commanders in Afghanistan, but the MoD insisted today that it was the “factually incorrect” work of a junior officer. The MoD said today that it had no plans to change the level of cuts to the armed forces which were set out in the summer, and that there