INTERNATIONAL

Children in the Syrian city of Aleppo are at “grave risk” of disease unless water supplies are immediately repaired, the UN children’s agency says. The United Nations says an immediate pause in fighting is needed to allow the water and electricity networks to be fixed. Some two million people are without vital supplies, the UN says. Fighting between government forces ...

Russia is ready to restore economic co-operation and other ties with Turkey, President Vladimir Putin has told his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in St Petersburg. It is Mr Erdogan’s first foreign visit since an attempted coup last month. Mr Erdogan thanked Mr Putin, saying “your call straight after the coup attempt was very welcome”. Russian-Turkish relations soured last November ...

A suicide bomb attack has killed at least 70 people at a hospital in Quetta in south-west Pakistan, officials say. About 120 others were injured in the blast, which happened at the entrance to the emergency department where the body of a prominent lawyer shot dead earlier on Monday was being brought. The casualties included lawyers and journalists accompanying the ...

Rebel factions in Syria say they have broken a weeks-long government siege of Aleppo, amid scenes of rejoicing in the crucial northern city. Sources close to government forces denied that they had been pushed aside and said they had driven the rebels back from an artillery base. UK-based activists say the rebels have indeed managed to link up with their ...

South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) looks to be facing its biggest electoral setback since the end of apartheid, after the partial results of municipal elections. With 85% of the votes in, the ANC trails its main rival, the Democratic Alliance, in the cities of Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. The two parties are in a close fight in ...

US President Barack Obama says there have been gains against so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria but warned the group still poses a threat. As the jihadist group lost ground, he said, there were signs it was shifting to attacks abroad. “The possibility of a lone actor or a small cell that kills people is real,” he said, adding ...

Fresh divisions are emerging within the US Republican Party over its presidential candidate Donald Trump. Republican donor Meg Whitman has endorsed his rival Hillary Clinton, saying Mr Trump’s “demagoguery” had undermined the national fabric. Senior party activist Jan Halper-Hayes told the BBC she thought Mr Trump was “psychologically unbalanced”. In the latest controversy, Mr Trump has refused to support two ...

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has suggested that the November election could be “rigged”. He told a rally in Columbus, Ohio, that he had heard “more and more” that the contest would be unfair. He offered no immediate evidence. At another event he called Democratic rival Hillary Clinton “the devil”. Mr Trump has come under fire from across the political ...

A Russian military helicopter has been shot down in Syria killing all five on board – the deadliest single incident for Russia’s military since its air campaign began last September. The Mi-8 transporter was brought down by rebels, Russia says, in northern Idlib province. It was returning from delivering humanitarian aid to the besieged city of Aleppo, the defence ministry ...

The London trader who lost the Swiss bank UBS £1.4bn ($1.9bn) has apologised and said that banking has not done enough to regain the public’s trust. In his first broadcast interview, Kweku Adoboli told the BBC that banking was still riven by conflicts of interest. He added that traders were pushed to make profits “no matter what”. Asked if the ...