The European Commissioner for Trade has spoken of his bewilderment and frustration at just how little most British MPs know about the European Union as the debate intensifies about the UK’s membership.

The controversial former Tory MP Neil Hamilton is being lined up to head Ukip’s list of candidates for the June 2014 European elections, party sources have claimed

Disco is back on the dancefloor. Daft Punk have scored their first No 1 single with one of the funkiest songs to top the British charts in years, their comeback track “Get Lucky” .

The five are among 19,000 who receive money from the scheme, which the Government plans to scrap in 2015

Leaked documents warned ministers that reform would penalise the most vulnerable

The Ministry of Defence wastes up to £94m a year training 16 and 17-year-old army recruits for roles which could be filled more cost-effectively by adults, according to analysis by campaign groups.

An Asian-American man claims to have been beaten in the Bronx area of New York in retaliatory violence over the Boston marathon bombing, with his racist attackers apparently targeting him because they believed he was Arab.

A newspaper front page that wrongly identified two innocent men as the prime suspects in the Boston marathon bombing has renewed embarrassment for the New York Post newspaper, just days after it erroneously reported that 12 people had died in the incident when the death toll was in fact three.

A man has become the first to be jailed under new scientific safety laws after faking data for a clinical trial which could have endangered cancer victims.

The Independent spoke to Joo-il Kim, a North Korean defector who now lives in New Malden, Surrey, about his life and the current political stand-off in Korea. His story of what led to him escaping is one of shocking sadness, but since coming to the UK - where he is working on a newspaper to smuggle into the country - he has been able to lead a much happier life.