Polio guard shot dead in Pakistan on first day of new vaccination drive

Gunmen shot dead a policeman guarding health workers as Pakistan began another nationwide vaccination drive. The policeman named Mohammad Sarfraz was shot dead in the Bajur region of the country’s north west on the first day of a campaign to vaccinate 39 million children under 5. Anwarul Haq, a local official, told Associated Press that…

Indonesia tsunami: Mass jail breaks as president calls for international aid

Some 1,200 Indonesian convicts are on the run from three different detention facilities in devastated Sulawesi after the region was rocked by a powerful earthquake and tsunami, a justice ministry official said Monday The warning came as volunteers began to dig mass graves for the bodies of more than 1,000 victims in an attempt to prevent an outbreak…

Lager-primed laughing stock: how elite Russian hackers got caught red-handed by Dutch surveillance

The night before four Russian spies were caught trying to hack into the world’s chemical weapons testing headquarters, they had drunk three cans of Heineken, a bottle of Lowenbrau lager, two bottles of Aldi’s pure fruit orange juice and a packet of cold, cooked chicken slices. The agents had gathered up the remnants of their…

Maldives strongman concedes election defeat, easing fears of political crisis

The strongman president of the Maldives on Monday conceded defeat in elections, easing fears of a fresh political crisis in the archipelago at the centre of a battle for influence between India and China. "The Maldivian people have decided what they want. I have accepted the results from yesterday," Abdulla Yameen said in a televised…

Theresa May calls out Russia for ‘desperate fabrication’ of Salisbury attack during UN General Assembly speech

Theresa May called out Russia for its "desperate fabrication" of Moscow’s interpretation of the Salisbury nerve agent attack at the UN General Assembly.  Speaking at the security council chaired by Donald Trump, she addressed Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, who sat two seats down from her, furiously scribbling notes as she spoke.  Saying that Britain…

Brussels hands Britain £2.4 billion bill for unpaid VAT in fresh blow to Theresa May’s Chequers plan

Brussels has demanded that Britain pay billions of pounds in duties over an alleged customs fraud that further discredits Theresa May’s beleaguered Chequers plan for Brexit. The European Commission announced on Monday that the UK had two months to pay £2.4 billion, plus interest, in unpaid VAT on cheap Chinese clothes and shoes or face huge daily fines…

Ferry stranded in Baltic Sea with 300 passengers on board reaches port

A ferry stranded in the Baltic Sea for about six hours with an estimated 300 people on board safely reached its destination Tuesday night, the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda, port authorities said. The vessel sent out a distress call after a reported explosion in the engine room at 11.45am (UK time). Danish ferry operator DFDS said the malfunction on board the…