Dudley’s ‘Karate Kid’ Thomas Hickman has been playing it by the book ahead of his trip to Azerbaijan for the junior European championships.

Apprenticeships are the hot career path for Black Country and Staffordshire youngsters worried about the prospect of hefty university fees as high as £9,000 a year – as a newly-launched recruitment event proved.

Wolverhampton Civic Hall will stage its second pro boxing show in as many months in March with a Midlands welterweight title fight at the top of the card.

It has caused concern for several months and now this mountain of rubbish in the Black Country has grown so tall that it is towering over a nearby housing estate.

Firefighters battled for two hours to rescue a horse which had fallen into a canal culvert in the Black Country.

Thousands of UK shop workers – scores of them in Staffordshire and the Black Country – today faced the prospect of losing their jobs in the collapse of budget fashion chain Peacocks.

A convicted metal thief confessed from his prison cell to a series of catalytic converter thefts from cars at two Midlands firms, a court heard.

Our am dram guru Alison Norton casts her expert eye over the shows that you should be looking out for this week.

Today is the deadline to enter this year’s Express & Star Business Awards. Scores of businesses have already signed up to vie in the eight different categories in the awards, several taking part in the maximum of three categories. Time is fast running out so make sure you don’t miss out.

These pictures are the first glimpse of how a multi-million pound light rail network between Brierley Hill and Stourbridge could look under new plans.