INTERNATIONAL

Germany has been sending an increasing number of migrants back to Austria every day since the beginning of the month, Austrian police say. Many had no valid documents, whilst others did not want to apply for asylum in Germany but in other countries, notably in Scandinavia, police said. New Year’s Eve attacks on women in Cologne, blamed on migrants, have ...

Some 400 people in the besieged Syrian town of Madaya need to be urgently evacuated for medical treatment, says UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien. After briefing the UN Security Council on the crisis in the rebel-held town near Damascus, he warned that those people could die. Earlier, an aid convoy brought food to 40,000 town residents who have been under ...

An aid convoy has begun entering the besieged rebel-held Syrian town of Madaya with enough food to last 40,000 people for a month, the UN says. Residents have been trapped there for six months by a government blockade and have received no aid since October. The UN says it has received credible reports of people dying of starvation. Aid is ...

The number of criminal cases committed during new year celebrations in the German city of Cologne has risen to 516 – 40% of which relate to sexual assault, police in the city say. The figures are a big increase from the 379 cases police reported on Saturday. Asylum seekers and illegal migrants from North Africa comprise the majority of suspects, ...

An aid convoy is expected to leave for Madaya, a Syrian town under government siege, where people are reported to have been starving to death. “We are pretty confident,” UN refugee agency spokesperson Melissa Fleming told the BBC. A convoy which had been due to reach the rebel-held town on Sunday was delayed by last-minute hitches. Some 40,000 people are ...

An aid convoy which was due to reach a besieged Syrian village on Sunday has been delayed by last-minute hitches. The World Food Programme (WFP) had hoped to take a first shipment of food and medicine to the 40,000 people trapped in Madaya, a rebel-held town near the Lebanese border. People there are reported to have been starving to death, ...

The Mexican attorney general’s office says it will begin the process of extraditing recaptured drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to the US. It said the move was in line with US extradition requests from 2014. On Friday Guzman was detained and sent back to the maximum-security prison he escaped from six months ago. Guzman, who was one of the ...

Three foreign tourists have been injured after two suspected Islamic State militants stormed into a hotel in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Hurghada. The attackers, armed with knives, were killed by police at the Bella Vista hotel after they stabbed two Austrian guests and a Swede, officials say. The assailants were aiming to kidnap tourists, officials told the BBC. Reports ...

Captured Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is being taken back to the maximum-security prison from where he escaped six months ago. He was paraded before cameras as he was bundled into a marines helicopter to Altiplano prison in central Mexico. He escaped from there in July through a tunnel dug in the showers. Guzman was arrested in the ...

About 50 prisoners have escaped from a prison in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the AFP news agency reports a local official as saying. The inmates took advantage of a fire incident to break out of the jail on Thursday in the town of Kamituga, 170 kilometres south-west of Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province. The escaped prisoners ...