The UN strategy on drugs over the past decade has been a failure, a European commission report claimed yesterday on the eve of the international conference in Vienna that will set future policy for the next 10 years. The report came amid growing dissent among delegates arriving at the meeting to fin...

• Men wrongly convicted of murder speak out• Real culprit admitted guilt 15 years after brutal killing Life has stood still for Stephen Miller since he was arrested more than 20 years ago and charged with the murder of a young woman in Cardiff. "Not one day goes past without me thinking about th...

In 2004, a young Aboriginal man called Cameron Doomadgee was arrested on a remote island off the coast of Queensland for swearing at a white policeman. Within an hour, he was dead in a police cell, his liver almost split in half, four ribs broken and his eye blackened. The police said he had suffere...

A former Guantánamo Bay guard has joined forces with released detainees in Britain to expose the torture inflicted by interrogators at the camp. The former soldier has kicked off a tour of Britain this week to talk about the techniques used by US interrogators and express his regret over the handli...

Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker facing extradition to the US for hacking into the Pentagon and Nasa systems, could now be prosecuted in Britain. The Crown Prosecution Service is considering a request from McKinnon's lawyers in which they have said their client would plead guilty to an offence und...

Few musicians would allow a journalist to accompany their band through one of the world's most dangerous countries. Even fewer, one suspects, would be happy about that journalist being their father. But Manu Chao is not just any musician, and his father, Ramón, a critic for le Monde Diplomati...

The panto season is under way, and bankers are, perhaps predictably, cast as the villains in some shows. A London production of Dick Whittington has a banker cast as King Rat. Across the Atlantic, one Bernard Madoff has satisfied demand for a real-life pantomime villain. Are we just picking on chaps...

The economic crisis and the Christmas season could lead to a significant increase in the number of people who go missing, a charity has warned. The organisation, Missing People, is urging the government to change existing laws to help the many families left in limbo by a disappearance. Every year, 2...

Sir Elton John is well known for his quick temper and outrageous behaviour. A documentary of his life said it all - it was called, knowingly, Tantrums and Tiaras. But a high court judge ruled yesterday that the singer's sense of humour failure over a satirical piece by a Guardian columnist was a tan...

Nearly 20 years ago the US armed forces in Panama used the music of Guns N' Roses and Elvis Presley, played at maximum volume over loudspeakers, to try and drive the country's leader, Manuel Noriega, to surrender. A tactic was born. Since then, music played at unbearable volumes has been frequently ...