He must be prepared to stand up for the common good; to stand up for women, and deal with the scandal that is child abuse

The evidence from other utilities is overwhelming. We should abandon the years of failure that privatisation has bestowed and renationalise the lot of them

PASSENGERS who use the West Coast main line have had their journeys jinxed again by the curse of Virgin Rail. Services on the blighted line are expected to be disrupted all this week, as maintenance engineers struggle to repair severe damage caused by freak summer flooding.

THE Home Office is to pilot a voiceprint surveillance system to track the movements of sex and drug offenders in Kent over the next six months.

UP TO 11 police officers and at least three civilians were injured during heavy rioting in the flashpoint nationalist Garvaghy Road, in Portadown, Co Armagh, yesterday evening.

WHEN you first meet Charles Anderson, he seems an ordinary schoolboy: working hard for his A-levels, enjoying life with his friends. But Charles once had another life in the fields of Kenya, earning a pittance, afraid of being beaten for not doing his job. Now, he is 19; when he was first a coffee picker he was just seven.

A DISPUTE between a sacked police constable who refused to join in the "canteen culture" of the police and his former bosses at Scotland Yard may finally be settled after 16 years.

JAMES JOHNSON sits alone in his cell in Frankland Prison, Co Durham, with only his nightmares for company. He is approaching the half-way point in a 30-year sentence for murder.

Lindsay Hoyle, Labour member for Chorley, has shocked anti-landmines groups by proposing that Royal Ordnance receive aid from the Princess's memorial fund to set up a mines-clearance school, reports Paul Donovan

Peter Mandelson's opponents may have dismissed his Millennium Dome as a Mickey Mouse experiment, but now it is official: the Minister without Portfolio is off to Disneyworld, Florida, to seek ideas to salvage his much-criticised pet project.