A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew was presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast on Saturday, and European officials said two people on board were using false identities. There were no reports of bad weather and no sign of why the Boeing 777-200ER would have vanished from radar screens about […]

One of the men who murdered soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, south-east London, has been ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison. Michael Adebolajo, 29, and Michael Adebowale, 22, drove into Fusilier Rigby with a car before hacking him to death in May last year. Adebolajo was given a whole-life term; Adebowale […]

France is to send 400 additional troops to the Central African Republic, raising its total deployment to 2,000.The French military has been working with 5,500 troops from African countries to end more than a year of deadly ethnic and sectarian violence. President Francois Hollande called on the United Nations to speed up the deployment of […]

Leading Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina has come out to say he is gay, making him one of the most high-profile Africans to do so. He made the disclosure in an article entitled: I am a homosexual, mum, coinciding with his 43rd birthday on 18 January. Homosexual acts are illegal in Kenya and many other African […]

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has died aged 85 after spending eight years in a coma following a stroke. He was a giant of Israel’s military and political scene, but courted controversy throughout his long career. The head of the Sheba Medical Centre near Tel Aviv said Mr Sharon had died on Saturday afternoon […]

A suicide attack on a train station in Russia’s southern city of Volgograd has killed 16 people, officials say. Initial official claims that the bomber was a lone woman has been replaced by uncertainty about who carried it out. President Vladimir Putin has ordered security to be tightened at railway stations and airports across Russia. […]

Two men have been found guilty of murdering soldier Lee Rigby outside Woolwich barracks in south-east London in May. Michael Adebolajo, 29, and Michael Adebowale, 22, struck Fusilier Rigby with a car before hacking him to death. Adebolajo had claimed he was a “soldier of Allah” and the killing was an act of war. The […]

World leaders have been called to pay more attention to the sub-Saharan threat from al-Qaeda, a former head of the British armed forces has warned. General Sir David Richards who was the chief of defence staff from 2010 to July 2013 said Britain needed to learn from what it had done “and failed to do”. […]

South Africa’s first black president and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela has died, South Africa’s president says. Mr Mandela, 95, led South Africa’s transition from white-minority rule in the 1990s, after 27 years in prison. He had been receiving intense home-based medical care for a lung infection after three months in hospital. In a statement on […]

Four people have been charged over the siege at the Westgate shopping centre in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, in which at least 67 were killed, police say. The four foreigners have been charged with aiding terrorist groups and being in Kenya illegally. Their nationalities have not been disclosed, but they are said to be ethnic Somalis. […]