Many of those working in the field feel that what happened in Newcastle with this payment 'crossed the line', and that alone is reason to find some greater clarity about these tactics

Kim is winning this particular mini-Cold War

None of the permutations being openly discussed on all sides actually show much sign of being practical across a highly porous 350 mile border

Blustering tweets about what great deals he can do are not what the Russians expected from the man they conceived of as their friend and strategic ally

What Mr Chavez could swing by charisma, the plodding Mr Maduro can only achieve with a cruder helping of brute force. That is working for him for now – but the UN and its most willing individual members and alliances mustn't be afraid to let the Venezuelan people know they've been heard

The Independent makes no apology for continuing to report the terrible drownings on Europe's southern coasts and our demand for more effective action to avoid them

The end of the petrol or diesel-dependent motor car will be an emotional and hopeful moment, but it needs Government commitment to putting in the necessary replacement infrastructure

There is no necessary reason, post-Brexit, why an Austrian medic would enjoy a stronger claim to work in Britain than one from Australia

While not literally force-fed American chlorinated chicken, so desperate will the UK be for a deal that it will drop its fussy eating habits for the sake of jobs and exports to the US

Self-indulgence and grandstanding come easy; caution, attention to detail, care over language, the focus on the longer term are all less fun, but are now more needed more than at any time for the past half-century. Politics is about ideas; governance is about competent administration and management

So generous is the triple lock now, by comparison with wages growth and growth in the wider economy, that the country couldn't cope if there was any effort to continue it in future decades

The BBC’s governing body has a fiduciary duty to ensure that it doesn’t pay over the odds for its presenters, or for its accountants and its studio directors for that matter, and they should be accountable for that, via audit and managerial control, to licence payers – but not by an arbitrary release of private financial information

As the anniversary of the attempted overthrow approached, 7,000 military and other state-employed personnel were removed from their posts, bringing the total dismissals during the last year to 150,000

Our BMG poll finds that 56 per cent of British people say they are willing to pay more in tax to give a pay rise to police officers, paramedics and nurses 

The Prime Minister and her senior colleagues must have thought about what might happen if the Brexit talks go badly, but do they have something as coherent as a plan?

Each day a general election becomes more, not less likely, the longer Ms May is at the helm

Now that he is at the gates of power, it may be time to change tack. Perhaps an honourable acceptance of the Brexit vote is no longer worth it

Labour did not win last month’s election, but it has won this big political argument

The election result was a remarkable, if qualified, vindication of Jeremy Corbyn’s politics: now his supporters must win the argument in the party rather than engage in factional warfare