An exhausted Paula Radcliffe fails to finish in Athens as Japan's Mizuki Noguchi wins the women's marathon.

Scotland celebrate sporting glory after being crowned world champions of elephant polo in Nepal.

Islamic militant group Hamas has won a surprise victory in Wednesday's Palestinian parliamentary elections. Preliminary results give Hamas 76 of the 132 seats in the chamber, with the ruling Fatah ...

Forty years ago this week, the world's first cash machine was installed in north London. Meet John Shepherd-Barron, the Scotsman who invented it.

Olympic champion James Cracknell and TV presenter Ben Fogle survived a capsize en route to third in the Atlantic Rowing Race.

Under Chad Varah's leadership, the Samaritans saved thousands of lives, but he felt the modern movement had betrayed its founding principles.

Winston Churchill's pet macaw is alive and well, and still parroting the obscenities the great man taught him.

Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn says he believes the new points system will encourage better racing in Formula 1. A new spread of points for 2010 increases the difference between first and second ...

A British Everest summiteer has become the first man to fly higher than the top of the world in a powered paraglider. Bear Grylls, who at the age of 23 became the youngest British climber to scale ...

The United Nations tribunal in Arusha has convicted three former media executives of being key figures in the media campaign to incite ethnic Hutus to kill Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.

The funeral of singer Gene Pitney has been held in his home town of Somers, in Connecticut. Pitney died on 5 April at the age of 65 of natural causes, hours after coming off stage during his UK tour.

Sarah Parkinson, the writer and producer wife of comedian Paul Merton, dies of cancer at the age of 41.