INTERNATIONAL

A bus taking passengers to a ski resort in central Japan has veered off a mountain road, killing 14 people and injuring 27. The bus, with 41 people on board, was travelling overnight from Tokyo to a resort in Nagano prefecture. The accident happened near the town of Karuizawa early on Friday. It is not immediately clear what caused the ...

Health officials in Sierra Leone have confirmed a death from Ebola, hours after the World Health Organization declared the West Africa outbreak over. The country was declared free of the virus on 7 November, and the region as a whole was cleared when Liberia was pronounced Ebola-free on Thursday. But two tests conducted on a person who died in northern ...

Jakarta’s chief of police has said Indonesia is hunting terror cells believed to be behind Thursday’s attack on the capital. Two civilians and five attackers died in the gun and bomb assault in a busy commercial district. Insp Gen Tito Karnavian said the attackers had been “neutralised” but were linked to groups across Indonesia and were “part of a global ...

The so-called Islamic State (IS) has said it was behind a series of explosions and gun attacks in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. At least two civilians and five attackers died in the assaults, described as an attempt to mimic the deadly Paris attacks. Security forces battled militants for hours in a major business and shopping district. It follows warnings late ...

A car bomb blast has hit a police headquarters in south-eastern Turkey, killing five people and injuring at least 36, local media say. A woman and a baby are reported among the dead. Rescuers are searching through the rubble at the scene in Cinar district, Diyarbakir province. Officials blamed the blast on Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) militants, who are active ...

A series of bomb blasts have rocked the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, followed by reports of continuing gunfire and at least three people killed. Blasts hit several locations, including a cafe at a shopping centre near the presidential palace and UN offices. There are reports of police snipers on the streets – a BBC reporter near the shopping centre said police ...

Iran has released 10 US sailors held for entering its territorial waters, in an incident that tested newly improved US-Iranian ties. The US expressed its gratitude to Iran for swiftly resolving the issue. The sailors were detained on Tuesday when one of their two vessels broke down while training in the Gulf. It comes at a sensitive time, amid reports ...

At least 14 people have been killed in a blast outside a polio vaccination centre in the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta, officials say. Many of the casualties are thought to have been police guarding the clinic. Armed guards are routine for polio workers in Pakistan, who have been the target of many deadly attacks by Islamist militants in recent ...

US President Barack Obama vigorously defended his legacy while striking an optimistic tone for the future in his final State of the Union address. He pushed back against the negative tone of the current presidential race, arguing the US has the “strongest, most durable economy in the world”. “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction,” Mr ...

Ten people, at least nine of them German tourists, have been killed in an explosion in a central area of Istanbul, Turkish officials say. They say a Syrian national carried out a suicide bomb attack in the Sultanahmet district, near the city’s famous Blue Mosque. Fifteen people were wounded, the Istanbul governor’s office said. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey ...