A sharp rise in the number of privacy hearings in British courts has been fuelled by requests for “irrelevant” personal information to be removed from police and other state databases, figures show.

Students at Cambridge University have become so detached from the city that they should be sent on compulsory “city service” to help them to reconnect, a councillor has said.

The comedian Woody Allen has said he is “toying with the idea” of making a return to stand-up comedy – after a hiatus of more than half a century.

Can Britain survive outside the European Union and, if it does, what might this country look like? The Institute of Economic Affairs has pitched the question with the prospect of a €100,000 cash prize for the most compelling submission.

Britain has three times as many highly paid bankers than the rest of Europe put together, according to new figures likely to reopen the dispute over City pay.

The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), a technique used to alleviate suffering in the final stages of a person’s life, is to be phased out following a review that heard hospital staff wrongly interpreted its guidance, leading to claims of patients who were drugged and deprived of liquids.

The Energy Secretary Ed Davey has attacked the Taxpayers’ Alliance – accusing the campaign group of making “dodgy, back-of-fag-packet claims” about energy bills.

Firefighter Stephen Hunt was part of a team responding to a fire at Paul's Hair World in Oldham Street

An Angolan man who died after being restrained by three guards from the security firm G4S as he was being deported from Britain was unlawfully killed, a jury ruled, prompting the Crown Prosecution Service to reconsider its decision not to bring criminal charges.

Egypt’s interim head of state has set out a tentative timetable for new elections in a bid to curtail the bloodshed gripping the country.