Football's biggest prize has twice been won with the help of dictators fixing matches for the host team, according to a Fifa-hosted conference on World Cup history.

The Russian leader also denied that his new term has seen an increase in ‘Stalinist’ tendencies

Human rights are for the rest of us, as well as the best of us. Anything approaching a sliding scale of entitlement is frightening, says Amnesty's Campaigns Director

One Tory wants to curb 'abusive militant minority,' while union bosses condemn 'the rhetoric of the dictator'

I loved the chipper ferocity of John Sweeney's tour guides. But where are they now?

Police arrested the former dictator overnight

Before officials could act, the former commando was hurried away by his security team and sped off in a black SUV

The bells of Westminster Abbey rang out as the black hearse carrying Thatcher's flag draped coffin pulled out of Parliament. A few in the crowd began to clap but most remained silent as it sped off down Whitehall towards St Paul's.

The former CIA officer sets his crime novels in the Communist state after years of extraordinary access. Clifford Coonan met him in Beijing

The government has recovered a yacht that once belonged to the nephew of the deposed dictator.

Secretive state warns it might 'make public to the world and the international press the lies made in the name of LSE students'

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.

Joo-il Kim believes the rhetoric is just a distraction

The one-time hang-out of Noël Coward and Sinatra, has reopened after 50 years