A young gang member was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 30 years today for the shooting murder of a promising athlete.

Repair work has begun to save the decaying Herne Hill Velodrome, the home of the 1948 Olympic cycling competition.

A teenager has been charged with murder after a promising athlete was gunned down in the stairwell of a housing estate.

Maps lie. Or at least, the people who make maps lie. They use maps to show what they want to show, to say what they want to say. They make the Tube network less accurate but more navigable. They squeeze Africa and expand Europe. Even the London A-Z fibs, exaggerating the thickness of streets and shrinking parks to a green speck. Maps lie, but usually for a reason and often rather beautifully.

It once staged finals at the 1948 London Olympics but has fallen badly into disrepair. Paul Newman reports on a local community's efforts to restore Herne Hill's hidden gem

Delroy Grant was finally snared by an elaborate "rat trap" set up by detectives desperate for a breakthrough.

Celebrities have used Twitter to publicise an online campaign to find a missing teenage girl who vanished three weeks ago.

The 17-year-old boy who died in a stairwell after being shot on a South London housing estate was a promising athlete who competed at national level.

A senior Liberal Democrat peer will today publish plans for reforming "archaic" libel laws in England and Wales.

An alternative take on the election

Many of the 114 British 'clients' of Dignitas were not suffering terminal illness at all

Citizens are entitled to know if their conduct is criminal

Forget the 100m sprint – the essence of the modern Olympiad is found in the dozens of lesser-watched sports on the Beijing programme, each offering the viewer its own idiosyncratic pleasures. Here, Independent writers put the case for their favourite events

Men will soon be given the right to ask for more leave to look after their children. About time too, says Virginia Ironside