Castellón airport, known as Spain's "ghost airport", received its first commercial passenger flight on Tuesday morning, nearly five years after it opened.

A Ryanair flight from London Stansted landed minutes before its scheduled arrival time at 10.40am.

The airport has become an emblem of Spain’s reckless boom-era infrastructure spending, which left the country mired in debt. Building and maintaining the facility has already cost taxpayers €170 million (£125 million). An investigation by the European Commission is underway to decide whether subsidies paid to the company SNC-Lavalin running the airport constitute illegal state aid .

The fully booked flight, carrying 189 passengers, was the first of the Irish carrier's three weekly connections between the British capital and Castellón airport, close to Valencia.

Ryanair, which is the only company currently operating scheduled flights to the "ghost airport", will soon add a service from Bristol.

“It’s a historic day”, British passenger Raphael Dauchy told The Telegraph. Mr Dauchy, a 30-year-old consultant from London who regularly visits the Mediterranean town of Peñiscola, said the opening of the airport would be a “game-changer” for the region. “It will make a difference in giving Castellón province more international exposure, which it really needs as it is quite dependant on tourism. I thought it would never happen.”

The airport was inaugurated in March 2011 by two politicians from Spain’s ruling Popular Party, whose careers have since been curtailed by corruption cases.

Carlos Fabra, former Castellón provincial chief, is serving a four-year jail sentence for tax fraud, while ex-Valencia premier Francisco Camps resigned in 2011 to defend himself against accusations of accepting bribes.

A controversial €300,000 (£220,000) sculpture believed to depict Mr Fabra still stands at the entrance to the airport.

Aerocas, the company set up by the Valencia government to run the facility, spent €35 million (£26 million) on advertising to promote the unused building. The money was mostly spent on shirt sponsorship deals with local football clubs Villarreal and Castellón.

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A kebab shop owner in southern France has been arrested on suspicion of condoning terrorism for serving meals named after guns or explosives.

The first letter of the eatery’s name, Toubib Burger (Doc Burger), is also in the shape of an assault rifle.

According to Europe 1 radio, the kebab diner in the southern French town of Bézeris offered a string of menus with rather disturbing names.

There is an AK-47 menu of kebab and chips for €7 (£5), as well as a Gunfire offer for the same price. Other "explosive" meals include the Grenade or C-4, referring to plastic explosives, – both at €6.5.

As for the customer loyalty card, it features sniper targets.

The unnamed 44-year old owner, arrested on Wednesday after a complaint, also reportedly stuck fake assault rifles on the shop’s walls.

When asked by police about the provocative meal names, he played down their significance, saying it was “just a bit of marketing” to attract a younger clientele. The restaurant has been in operation since 2006.

However, it reportedly transpires he is an acquaintance of a brother of Mohamed Merah, the Islamist who gunned down seven people in Toulouse before being shot dead in 2012, and is on an intelligence “S” watchlist for potentially dangerous Islamists. He was ordered to move out of Toulouse.

The man is also reportedly known to regularly sport a T-shirt with “Daesh”, the Arabic name of Isil, on it, as well as an empty gun cartridge.

The formerly Catholic Muslim convert has already served a year in prison for possessing six kilograms of cannabis, two assault rifles and a hand gun. Detectives found another gun at his flat during a raid this week.

He “liked” several Islamist propaganda videos on his Facebook page.

Since his arrest, his son has taken down all the weapon decor and menus of the family restaurant.

The owner, who was due to be presented to a judge on Thursday, is not the only figure in Béziers to run into trouble over public displays of weaponry.

In February, Robert Ménard, the town's highly controversial mayor with links to the far-Right, sparked uproar by launching a poster campaign featuring billboards of a 7.65-calibre handgun with the caption: “"From now on, the municipal police has a new friend."

Last week, the mayor drew fresh criticism for releasing a film in which he can be seen personally ejecting a group of Syrian refugees illegally occupying a housing estate flat.

A message in several languages in the film told the refugees : "You’re not welcome." The film has been viewed 260,000 times.

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The former UK head of Google has launched a new venture, which he claims will become the next "unicorn"– $1.5 billion-turnover success story – by offering the nation’s workers a solution to their money worries.

Dan Cobley, who left Google in August last year to focus on the new start-up, said that SalaryFinance would "be talked about in some of the same sentences as unicorn businesses over the next few years."

The new fintech – financial technology – company allows working people to consolidate their various loans and credit cards debts through a single SalaryFinance loan, which is then repaid through salary deductions.

This could cut the interest payable on the total by a third, the company claimed.

The business, which was launched by Mr Cobley and co-founder Asesh Sarkar today, aims to work with large employers across the country to funnel customers into the business. It has already announced deals with Saga, the over 50s group that employs 15,000 people in the UK, alongside Agilysys, the 2,000-strong outsourcing firm, which works with local councils, and white goods retailer AO.com, which has 2,000 staff.

This kind of lending is extremely popular in Mexico, Brazil and parts of the US. In the UK, individual employers and some local players offer similar schemes but SalaryFinance is seeking to become the household name. “We’re looking to do this on a national scale and we’re talking to big employers,” said Mr Sarkar.

SalaryFinance has raised £3m from Mr Cobley’s venture capital fund Brightbridge to cover the development of the platform and operating costs. The loans will be provided by the UK’s two largest peer-to-peer lending firms, Zopa and Ratesetter .

The company is the latest in a serious of fintech pioneers to challenge the might of the high street banks. “The average working person in the UK has unsecured debts of £4,000,” said Mr Sarkar. “If you were to go onto the websites of big banks today, the average quote on that is 22pc. We charge a fixed 7.9pc. We are expecting a rapid take-up.”

According to the founders, employers will use SalaryFinance as a tool for attracting and retaining staff. “There’s lots of competition over salaries,” said Mr Cobley. “Organisations are increasingly trying to invest in the rest of the package and being able to offer something that is the equivalent of a 3pc pay rise is is incredibly powerful.”

Mr Sarkar, who worked in banking for 13 years, came up with the idea for the venture when his family’s nanny admitted to having money troubles. “A lot of her salary was going on credit cards and loans, which she was struggling to pay off,” he said. “I gave her a loan to pay the total and she saved 8pc on her outgoings. She was less stressed and as an employer it felt good to give something back.”

This original loan was interest-free but SalaryFinance makes a small margin on the loans it offers to customers.

The company claims that it takes just 30 minutes to load a new organisation onto its platform, and that its technology its compatible with all existing payroll schemes.

“The problem we face is consumers thinking we’re too good to be true,” said Mr Cobley. “These people are used to being offered attractive interest rates by banks only to find they are much higher later in the process. We have a job to convince people this is exactly as it sounds.”

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I’ve been thinking about the Nineties quite a lot recently. You know, in that slightly hazy, lens-flared Instagrammed way that people think about the Sixties.

Before you say it’s my age, it’s not – or at least not entirely. My bout of Nineties nostalgia has been triggered by Shane Meadows’s This is England '90 and trailers for the adaptation of John Niven’s scabrous Britop novel Kill Your Friends.

Also, let’s face it, nostalgia-wise, we’ve strip-mined the Eighties down to bedrock: there’s been a Karate Kid remake, for God’s sake. It’s time to move on and start reminiscing about something new.

Anyway, what my little walks down memory lane have me thinking is that, actually, the Nineties were fantastic. And not just because I was 26, not 46 and sleep was optional. It was a great decade to be young. We had cool music. We had cool drugs. We had (sort of) cool politicians, some of the time. We thought history had ended in a good way. Anything seemed possible. Dare I say it, the Nineties were our Sixties. This may seem a little hyperbolic, but bear with me.

I got a sneak preview of the Nineties way back in 1988. I’d taken a gap year which, like most gap years back then, was taken entirely for kicks and with no notion of following a passion or becoming more attractive to universities or employers. At the end of it, on the plane back from Chicago, I sat next to a DJ who told me about a new style of dance music he wanted to bring to London. I listened, then promptly forgot all about it and buggered off to York University, where culturally it was still 1985 and being cool meant having found a New Romantic group your mates hadn’t heard of.

"A lot of people sneer at Britpop but actually it was kind of great – and what’s more it was ours. The last truly home-grown musical movement before the internet globalised youth culture forever"

Three years later, in 1991, I finally made it down to London. The decade looked, at first glance, rather less promising than its predecessor. John Major, a man who is consistently underrated as a nasty Tory, had created a horrendous graduate recession. Your choices as a university leaver were accountancy, law or unemployment. I plumped for the third and dressed it up as an internship with an art dealer I knew.

In fact, being barely employed in London was fine back then, because property cost nothing. This bears repeating. You left your provincial uni and went to stay a mate who lived in London while you looked for a flat. The question you asked yourself was, “Which part of Zone 1 do I want to live in while I look for a job?” We all found places in cheap, tatty neighbourhoods like Notting Hill and Clerkenwell and Camden. Later in the decade I would buy a three bed flat in NW3 for £110,000. Sadly, I sold it for it for £250,000; it would now cost around £2m.

Cheap property had other knock-on effects. Most of us could walk to work (and walk home at 4am when we’d finished clubbing). We had tiny commutes and living in places like Swiss Cottage and Chiswick was considered eccentric and pointless.

Also, you know all that crap estates agents spout about “urban villages”? Well, back then London did feel quite villagey, because most of your friends lived within walking distance - and your neighbours were normal people, not workaholic bankers and sundry Russians. We were both poorer and richer than today’s graduates.

Our meagre outgoings and negligible work commitments meant that our careers came a very distant second to having fun. This was great as something big was happening in London. After decades of grey, post imperial decline (remember, for quite a while, Manchester was cooler) the capital was stirring. One of the early signs of this was the appearance of seriously stylish clubs . Where once London clubs were grim rip-off joints with metropolitan pretensions and weird Seventies hangovers, they suddenly became the sort of places you found in New York. I dread to think what proportion of my twenties was spent in the Atlantic, in the queue for the Atlantic or waiting for taxis after the Atlantic.

Speaking of which, music had also become cool. A lot of people sneer at Britpop but actually it was kind of great – and what’s more it was ours. The last truly home-grown musical movement before the internet globalised youth culture forever.

Besides, if you didn’t like endlessly taking sides in the Blur-Oasis battle or agonizing over whether Pulp were heirs to The Smiths, there was plenty more. We had dance, rap and grunge (both still exotic imports) and, of course, the Spice Girls, who now look like the most inexplicable period piece ever . People actually had opinions on Geri Haliwell.

Great music requires great drugs and we had those too. Ecstasy and cocaine were everywhere – and we didn’t have that boring, po-faced line between drink and drugs. We drank loads and then did drugs so we could drink more. We laughed at the Mail’s “Binge Britain” headlines.

We sometimes went to work straight from the club as, for a while, clubbing on Sundays was quite the done thing. Monday morning downers and serotonin-sapped “Suicide Tuesdays” didn’t matter. You lived for weekends – and besides, in the Nineties, slacking was still cool. Nobody pretended they loved their job.

It wasn’t just about hedonism, though. There was genuine optimism in the air. The Eastern Bloc had crumbled and the good guys had won. This meant a sudden influx of exciting, exotic new people. I briefly acquired a Russian supermodel girlfriend. That a supermodel would date me, however briefly, makes me realize just how grim the former Soviet Union must have been.

But it also points to a nice thing about Nineties London. It was strangely egalitarian. We didn’t yet have a city where the super-rich had turned the best bits into a socially cleansed VIP section . You went to bars and clubs and pubs and you met genuinely famous people. I lose count of the number celebrities and movers and shakers (Ollie Reed stands out for some reason) I bumped into, usually half cut, in the Nineties. It was a bit like being a drunk Forrest Gump.

"But for just over 10 years, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, the world was great and London was its amazing centre"

In a similar vein, it was a great time to open a business. Britain had rediscovered entrepreneurship in the Eighties and, a decade on, we ditched the Thatcherite ideology and set up companies we actually liked. I lucked out here and founded a photo gallery that accidentally became famous by being the first to take rock ‘n’ roll photography seriously (thank you, Dennis Morris). OK, in the longer run, it taught me that galleries are a terrible way to make money (and a good way not to go on holiday for a decade) but still, I went to a lot of parties and met an awful lot of famous people. In fact, it’s only since I’ve become old and boring that I’ve realized just how lucky I was.

It wasn’t just a cultural renaissance either. There was the political climate – Major’s government sliding towards its inevitable, sleazy, exhausted end and, later, the fantastic feeling of hope Blair bought with him. In fact, if I had to encapsulate the Nineties in a few hours, it would be the sunny morning after New Labour swept to power. I would probably have been walking to work, past stuccoed squares where friends lived, humming some Britpop number, hungover from an election party, but filled with the feeling that the world had become a better place. That feeling really was incredible – the most uncynical I’ve ever been about politics and a million miles from the soggy Tory non-victory 13 years later that ended New Labour.

Let’s see – what else? We had the start of the dot-com boom. We had magazines like Loaded and Viz. Films like Trainspotting. We had gender equality without today’s hair-trigger sensitivity and public shamings (yes, ladettes, I miss you too). Food was getting better but hadn’t yet become a tedious, all-encompassing obsession. Wages went up, not down. Global warming was a vague future threat – and nothing to do with your skiing holiday. Galleries like the Tate Bankside opened. Beards were short or non-existent . And, speaking of which, Islamist terrorism was a mere twinkle in the largely unknown Osama Bin Laden’s eye...

Of course, inevitably, it went bad. We had the dot-com bust. The 2000 US election with its hanging chads. 9/11. History hadn’t ended. Environmental problems got real. We invaded Iraq and cool Tony because GW Bush’s BF. House prices doubled and doubled again. Capitalism ran amok.

But for just over 10 years, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, the world was great and London was its amazing centre. I look at today’s twentysomethings and it’s true that they’ve got cheap flights and dirty burgers and craft ales and the internet on their phones and social media. But I wouldn’t swap places with them.

In fact, unless the 2010s have an incredible surprise up their sleeves, the 90s will have been the best decade of the last 50 years. We had it so good.

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Australia has banned R&B singer Chris Brown from touring because of his assault of his then-girlfriend Rihann a in 2009.

A notice had been given to the US star that his visa request had been refused, Peter Dutton, the immigration minister, said.

The singer, who was due to visit for a national tour in December, has been given 28 days to respond.

"People to whom these notices are issued have 28 days to present material as to why they should be given a visa to enter Australia," said a spokesman for Mr Dutton.

Brown requires a special visa because of his past conviction after he pleaded guilty to punching and strangling Rihanna. Britain and Canada have both issued similar bans because of the conviction .

"I was battered, I was bleeding, I was swollen in my face," Rihanna told Good Morning America in 2009.

Brown was sentenced to five years probation but has since entered Australia at least twice. Tickets for his forthcoming concerts were due to go on sale next week.

Several anti-domestic violence groups in Australia have called for Brown to be banned from entry and posters advertising his tour have been labelled with a sticker saying "I beat women".

Michaelia Cash, Australia’s new minister for women, last week launched a campaign against domestic violence and called for Brown to be banned.

"This is a government that's not afraid to say 'no',” she said.

“If you are going to commit domestic violence and then you want to travel around the world there are going to be countries that say to you: 'You cannot come in because you are not of the character that we expect in Australia'.”

Ms Cash, a former assistant immigration minister, was involved in a decision earlier this year to ban Floyd Mayweather, the boxing champion, from coming to Australia due to his assault of his former partner.

The ban on Brown comes just a day before tickets for his shows were due to go on sale. New Zealand has already ruled that Brown will not be allowed to enter.

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According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, 95 % of all civilian deaths in the conflict have come from the regime. 

It is easy to forget the crimes of Bashar al-Assad in the ongoing crisis blighting the Middle East.

Islamic State’s ascension to the zenith of the global jihadist movement has captured the world’s attention through a series of filmic releases portraying brazen barbarism.

The images of "Jihadi John" menacingly wielding a burnished knife are now well known.

There are other horrors etched in our minds too, from the burning alive of the captured Jordanian pilot Muath Kassassbeh, to the mass enslavement of Yazidi women. Islamic State understands the power of propaganda and has harnessed the internet to project its message across the world.

In this regard the Syrian regime is different. It does not parade its torture victims in atmospheric videos and portrays itself as a vital actor in the war against violent jihadists. However, this is not now – nor has it ever been – the case.

Shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Syria became the primary thoroughfare for foreign fighters wanting to join al-Qaeda. Assad did not just turn a Nelsonian eye to this, but actively encouraged it.

His intelligence agencies were ordered to work closely with a Salafi cleric from Aleppo named Abu Qaqa, to ensure a steady supply of recruits were delivered into Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s hand, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq at the time.

Indeed, Abu Qaqa was so valued by the Assad regime that when he was eventually killed, members of the Syrian government attended his funeral and Lebanese media reported that “his coffin was draped in a Syrian flag and the affair had all the trappings of a state occasion.”

Whatever your thoughts on the merits of the 2003 invasion, it is undeniable that the regime of President Assad actively conspired with jihadists to destabilise post-Saddam Iraq. This belies the posturing of Syrian Baathists who today project an image of being responsible international actors overrun by millenarian radicals.

Yet, for every crime committed by these jihadists you will find a comparable atrocity perpetrated by the Syrian regime. For example, Islamic State massacred tribesmen in Deir ez-Zour during a rebellion last year when they defied its brutal rule.

Similarly, forces loyal to President Assad have a deliberate policy of targeting civilians in areas beyond government control in order to maintain disorder and fear. Last Wednesday it deployed more than 103 barrel bombs; one every 14 minutes. Similarly last May, more than 40 people died in a single strike when a bakery in Manbij was targeted in this way.

These victims are not collateral damage caught in the fog of war. The Syrian regime has repeatedly and deliberately conspired in killing some of its most vulnerable citizens. In May 2012, forces loyal to President Assad stormed the town of Houla and massacred 108 people.

A United Nations report found that almost all had been subject to “summary executions” among them, 49 children under the age of 10. Some had their skulls cracked open through blunt force. Others were stabbed to death.

Indeed, violence against children helped fuel the uprising during its incipient phases. That time it was Hamza Khatib, a 13-year-old boy who was disappeared into the labyrinthine web of Assad’s subterranean torture chambers in April 2011. A month later he was dead. When his parents collected the body they found it in a state that would have made even the Marquis de Sade wince.

Khatib was covered in bruises and cigarette burns. Once the cigarettes were finished, his captors simply used the cavities formed from bullet wounds to his knees as a repository. Another cavity was also present, further up his body where his penis had been cut off and mutilated.

The heroic British aid worker, Dr Abbas Khan, who worked in a field hospital in Saraqeb, also documented the sadistic rituals of Assad’s regime after falling into their hands. “My detention has included repeated and severe beatings, largely for no reason other than the pleasure of my captors,” he wrote.

The day before he was due to be released, Dr Khan was murdered by the Syrian regime. Like Khatib, his emaciated corpse was covered in cigarette burns.

Irrefutable evidence of Assad’s systematic torture machine emerged after a Syrian military photographer known only as “Caesar” defected from the regime, taking more than 55,000 pictures of abuse with him.

A team of legal experts led by Sir Desmond de Silva QC, formerly chief prosecutor of the special court for Sierra Leone, interviewed “Caesar” at length and scrutinised his pictures. They found their subject was “not only credible but that his account was most compelling.”

The idea that the Assad regime’s violence is somehow morally or strategically different to that of jihadist actors in Syria has become fashionable among some sections of the Western media. Perhaps a symptom of fatigue or sympathies forged during time spent as guests of the regime, mainstream commentators such as Patrick Cockburn and Peter Oborne have been at the forefront of this trahison des clercs.

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, 95 per cent of all civilian deaths in the conflict have come from the regime. The refugees now fleeing to Europe do so as a direct result of Assad’s policies.

Any attempt to rehabilitate him within the international system would be as morally bankrupt as recognising Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as a legitimate head of state. Framed in that way, it should be obvious that the cure to Baghdadi’s murderous pathology does not lie within the Baathist poison.

Shiraz Maher is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College London. Follow him on Twitter

Nick Kaderbhai is a Research Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College London. Follow him on Twitter

This article was written by Shiraz Maher, Nick Kaderbhai and King's College London from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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President Bashar al-Assad’s key backers declared victory on Sunday night after Western leaders who had previously backed Syrian rebels, including David Cameron, said they accepted he would stay in power, at least for the time being.

Speaking to reporters on his way to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Prime Minister said Mr Assad had no “long-term” future but suggested he could remain in place during a transition period.

Germany and America have also talked up the possibility of keeping him in place in a deal to end the four-year Syrian civil war and help defeat Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

Jens Stoltenberg, Nato secretary-general, added that he was ready to discuss Syria with Russia, whose decision this month to pour in weapons and troops shored Mr Assad just as his defenses were weakening. Mr Stoltenberg said there was now need for “co-ordination” with Russia to avoid “incident or accident” as US-led forces fought Isil in the country.

The leaders of Russia and Iran, which has also sent thousands of loyal militias to fight on Mr Assad’s behalf, leaped on the comments.

"I think today everyone has accepted that president Assad must remain so that we can combat the terrorists," president Hassan Rouhani of Iran told CNN in an interview.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia gloated over the failure of the American programme to train anti-Assad rebels to fight Isil on the ground . “The initial aim was to train between 5,000 and 6,000 fighters, and then 12,000 more,” he said in a separate interview .

“It turns out that only 60 of these fighters have been properly trained, and as few as 4 or 5 people actually carry weapons, while the rest of them have deserted with the American weapons to join ISIS [Isil].”

In fact, the men alleged to have defected went over to Jabhat al-Nusra, an affiliate of al-Qaeda that is in a coalition of rebel groups fighting both Isil and the regime e. Mr Cameron insisted he still believed Mr Assad should eventually be tried for war crimes against the Syrian people.

He also said that Russia’s increased military presence in Syria would not affect plans to join air strikes on Isil in the country, though he repeated that backing from MPs would be needed. Mr Cameron said: “Assad can’t be part of Syria’s future. He’s butchered his own people, he has helped create this conflict and this migration crisis, he’s one of the great recruiting sergeants for Isil.

"He can’t play a part in the future for Syria and that position hasn’t changed.”

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, met Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, to discuss the Syrian situation, a day before Mr Putin is due to meet President Barack Obama. Meanwhile, France carried out its first air strikes against Isil inside Syria.

Francois Hollande, the French president, said the strikes had “completely destroyed” an Isil training camp near the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzour.

He said six war-planes took part in the operation, which was aimed at “preventing terrorist attacks”. 

This article was written by Richard Spencer Middle East Editor and Ben Riley-Smith in New York from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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Novice climbers could soon be barred from attempting to climb Mount Everest under plans drawn up by Nepalese officials in an effort to confront safety and overcrowding concerns.

The proposals, which also involve barring disabled and elderly climbers from the mountain, come after 18 people were killed in April at Everest's base camp in an avalanche that was triggered by the devastating Nepal earthquake.

The plans are likely to provoke accusations of discrimination against Nepalese officials, and they could also have a negative impact on a major source of revenue for the impoverished country, which generates millions of dollars through selling climbing permits.

Scaling the 29,000-foot summit (8,850 meters) of the world's highest peak is a major attraction for climbers, but recent years have seen an increase in novices who rely heavily on guides.

The proposed regulations would prohibit those who had previously not scaled a mountain of at least 6,500 meters, AFP said, citing tourism department chief Govinda Karki.

Officials were also said to be seeking to limit the highest peaks of the Himalayas to climbers aged between 18 and 75. Currently people under 16 are not allowed to climb Everest, but there is no upper age limit.

Last week Japanese climber Junko Tabei, who in 1975 became the first woman to climb Everest, said overcrowding on the mountain was causing environmental issues.

"The more the number of climbers, the more human waste and garbage that are left on the mountain. This causes problems," she said.

Many of those who visited Everest this year did not attempt to scale the mountain after the avalanche.

In previous years, hundreds of "tourist climbers" attempted to scale Everest, much to the concern of experienced mountaineers.

The mountain continues to have an almost mystical attraction for many who have little or no experience of serious climbing.

The film "Everest," a thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Josh Brolin in which a group of climbers are engulfed a blinding blizzard, is currently in the top five at the North American box office.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advises against all but essential travel to Everest, to the frustration of tour operators.

Japanese mountaineer Nobukazu Kuriki, who lost eight fingers and a thumb because of frostbite in a previous bid to conquer Everest in 2012, had to give up on his latest attempt on Sunday, saying otherwise he "wouldn't be able to come back alive."

He would have been the first person to scale the summit since the earthquake, which killed nearly 8,900 people.

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NOW WATCH: Time-lapse video shows the beauty of the most dangerous mountain trail in the world

Bill Clinton has accused Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, of running a "fact free" campaign and trying to "insult his way to the White House."

The former US president also defended his wife Hillary Clinton against accusations from Mr Trump that she was "perhaps the worst Secretary of State in history."

Mr Clinton has called Mr Trump a "master brander" and told CNN: "Well the thing about branding is, you don't have to be...you can be fact-free."

He cited his wife's success in securing sanctions against Iran, in turn leading to a nuclear deal, as an achievement of her time as Secretary of State.

Mr Clinton said: "That was a major achievement to get Russia and China to agree to sign off on these sanctions and enforce them. She did that. That's what made the talks possible, so even the people who don't like the Iran deal, like the sanctions."

The former president said he believed Mr Trump could become the Republican nominee and face Mrs Clinton in a race for the White House.

But he said Mr Trump would suffer from fact checking later in the process.

Mr Clinton said: "If he becomes the nominee he'll have to sort of hone his criticisms a little more finely because the facts will be easy to marshal.

"At some point you also have to say what are you going to do. You can't just spend all your time saying everything everybody else did was wrong and they were all doofuses."

Mr Clinton said he intended to take a more high profile role campaigning on behalf of his wife.

He said: "I'll go talk to her supporters and tell them what I think they should know, and answer their questions, and free her up to campaign more."

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Glencore would listen to offers for a takeover of the entire company but its management does not believe there are any buyers willing to pay a fair value for the business in the current market, The Telegraph has learnt.

The revelation comes after a week in which billions of dollars were wiped off the company’s shares following a series of damning analyst notes warning that its equity value could collapse should commodities prices fall further.

Senior management from the company are due to meet this week as its chief executive, Ivan Glasenberg, leads a fight back to persuade investors that the company is financially secure. Mr Glasenberg is understood to have been surprised by the downturn in China’s economy, which is blamed for the current slump in commodities.

He is also thought to be dismissive of the suggestion from Glencore’s house broker Citigroup that taking the troubled mining and commodities trader private could be a viable option.

Glencore’s market value has fallen by 83pc since it floated at 530p per share in May 2011, with most of the declines coming in recent weeks following the unveiling of a plan to slash its $29.5bn net debt by a third. The company is also understood to be in talks with sovereign wealth funds from Asia and the Middle East including Singapore’s GIC about the sale of a stake in its agricultural commodities business.

Disposals of a minority stake could raise about $2bn. Last month, Glencore generated around $2.5bn in an equity raising as part of a plan to cuts its debt by around $10.2bn. Other measure include cutting 400,000 tonnes of production from its African copper mines and suspending the firm’s dividend.

A key challenge for Mr Glasenberg will be to maintain the support of major shareholders such as Qatar Holdings, which is understood to be “raw” over the paper losses it faces on its near 9pc stake in Glencore. A spokesman for the Qatari fund declined to comment.

Key for Glencore and other mining companies will be the direction of commodities prices over the next quarter. Investors are concerned about Glencore’s ability to absorb copper prices falling below $4,000 per tonne.

Glencore will hope to restore a measure of trust at the presentation of its upcoming production report.

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Liam Casey is a man in demand. He has three iPhones set to three different time zones – Shenzhen, San Francisco, Cork – and they ceaselessly ring in rotation. “You will usually find me on a plane,” 49-year-old Irishman, and chief executive of PCH International told the Telegraph, during a flying visit to London. Mr. Casey isn't a tech rockstar in the public eye, but in elite technology circles, his name is renowned. Chances are, if you don't live under a rock, you’ve used one of his products.

Need a high-spec gadget manufactured, packed and delivered out of China? Mr Casey can fix that for you. His drily-named PCH International is the engine that brings many well-loved products – Apple’s iPhones for instance – to life in the world's manufacturing plant, Shenzhen.

For almost two decades, Mr Casey has built a network of 100 trusted factories in the heart of China's Silicon Valley, where it moves up to 10m electronic and hardware components a day, and ships merchandise worth $10 billion a year – while owning no assets itself. Over the last five years, PCH grew more than sixfold and last year its revenue crossed $1.1 billion.

Last week, the company’s startup accelerator, Highway 1, became the subject of a new reality-TV series called Bazillion Dollar Club, which follows hardware entrepreneurs as they try to turn ideas into real products. Its aim is to expose the challenges involved in creating the complex gadgets we routinely keep in our pockets – without any cheesy television rivalries.

Mr Casey grew up on a farm in County Cork, Ireland where he spent 10 years working in the fashion trade. During a year off in California, he realized all the electronic parts for the booming computer hardware business in the US were originating out of Asia. So he moved first to Taiwan, then to Shenzhen, to see if he could pinpoint and source parts. “In 1996, if you could find the factory, you were in business. Nobody else could find it, the backstreets of China were our knowledge base,” he said.

Now, the company indirectly employs 30,000 industrial workers in China – as well as 5000 staff in Shenzhen – to make top-quality consumer electronics, medical, telecom and other technology products for tech giants such as Apple, Beats by Dre, Nook, Xiaomi, FoxConn and allegedly a “well-known payments company.”

Mr Casey’s pitch: his company doesn’t just do manufacturing or logistics, it’s the full deal. It delivers an end-to-end service on any hardware product, starting with product design to manufacture, packaging, fulfillment and retail distribution. “In China we have 200 engineers just working on product design alone,” he said. “There is nobody in China who does what we do.”

The idea of hiring an experienced fixer like PCH with insider-knowledge of Shenzhen’s shortcuts makes sense for large companies and startups alike, who think of the Chinese supply chain industry as an opaque and rarefied fortress.

But it’s surprising that Mr Casey was able to crack the black box himself: he had never worked in China before, has no permanent home in the country and still doesn’t speak Chinese. Yet, by 1999 he had agreed his first deal with the world’s most successful company, Apple. “I didn’t have any Chinese but I went with a very open mind, without the scares most people seem to approach China with,” he said. His weakness became an advantage: at factories with an international outlook, there was always somebody who spoke English and usually it was at a senior level. So Mr Casey found he was bypassing middle management, and meeting directly with senior executives. “You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable in China.”

For PCH, geography doesn't matter. Most of its clients are Western, all its suppliers are Chinese and the customers they ship products to are all over the world. The key lies in timing: the network of factories and PCH’s own packaging facilities are a maximum of three hours away from each other, so source and fulfilment remain close. The big challenge is distribution. Once packaged, every product reaches 90 pc of buyers within three days. Even small delays in ship schedule for some of their biggest clients (read: Apple) “could take five per cent off their share price, and that's billions of dollars for a big product,” he said.

Yet, PCH keeps no stock or inventory. “If you can send a package to the International Space Station in six hours, then nobody needs warehouses or inventory,” he quips.

This trick is borrowed from hugely successful Chinese technology companies like smartphone makers Xiaomi, OnePlus and drone-maker DJI. Mr. Casey speaks admiringly of their ability to keep inventory to zero. “When Amazon launched the FirePhone last year, first they developed the product, then they put it in 55 warehouses across the US, it was a crazy number,” he said. “Within two weeks the product wasn't selling and they had to write it all off, so they wrote off $380m. There’s no way a startup can do that.” Instead, Xiaomi puts a product on its site, and when it sells out, it comes off the production lines and ships to consumers that have already paid for it. There is basically no wastage. “Our whole goal is to make less product, not more - we don’t want to overproduce but we will deliver anywhere in the world,” Mr. Casey said.

But Casey has bigger ambitions than making and shipping well-known products. He wants to help hardware entrepreneurs originate new products – and then help develop, finance, make, promote and sell them. His latest project, known as Highway 1, is an accelerator in San Francisco for entrepreneurs with an idea for a great product. “We are looking for inexperience,” he said.

The four-month program offers access to a prototyping lab, consultation with product and business experts, and a visit to Shenzhen, in return for 4-7 pc equity in the business.

Two of the startups stand out to Mr Casey, who sees speed as the greatest virtue in a product company. One is Drop, a connected kitchen scale . “They came out of our demo day to having their product in the Apple store in 10 months.” The other was smart jewelry maker Ringly, which was shipping to consumers in 11 months from sketching designs on a paper napkin.

Others include British smart bike light company Blaze, and drone robotics maker 3D Robotics.

With these startups, his ambition is to create a “Netflix for hardware, creating unique things that are exclusive, not available on Amazon or anywhere else,” he said. “The story around a product is really exciting for people.”

Does he think about moving operations out of China, where he remains an outsider? No chance, he says. “We’ve really spent time on the ground there.” He didn’t come to China as part of the gold rush – he was there before it was big. As a result, he has said in the past, “We are almost a protected species there.” Besides, China still has the raw skills and experience that is unmatched globally. “They have a very skilled workforce. It takes time to learn and be taught, and they have a 30 year advantage,” he said.

So what’s next for the 20-year-old company?

“The next five years will be all about traceability – what is the source of a product and where it came from,” he said. His big bet is that customers are going to become more environmentally conscious and will want to use technology to track the life cycle of a product from birth – what factory it was made, packaged and shipped out from. PCH already uses cheap sensors in many of its products, so tagging it with a GPS tracker is an easy next step.

The company has already developed an enhanced receipt for PCH products that will show customers exactly where their product was made, with a photo of the factory team, how many miles it travelled, and how long it took.

Allegedly, a Pono music player ( developed by Neil Young ) takes four days and five hours to be customized and shipped from Shenzhen to San Francisco.

“The warehouses of the future will be the white-bodied bellies of planes – there’s no way you’ll ever have a product sitting in a warehouse for weeks, expecting it to sell,” he said. “That’s not going to happen in five years.”

This article was written by Madhumita Murgia from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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More than half of those who responded to a poll said that a turbulent summer, which included the shooting in Sousse, Tunisia, and also the migrant crisis that affected holiday destinations in the Mediterranean, had directly influenced their choice of holiday abroad.

The survey, carried out for Travelzoo, revealed a trend in holidaymakers claiming to be avoiding traditional winter-sun destinations in favor of what they deemed to be "safer" destinations that they "would not otherwise have chosen to visit."

The shooting on a Tunisian beach that left 30 British tourists dead is the main cause for concern if the survey is to be believed, with more than half of those questioned claiming that the incident had put them off planning or booking a holiday anywhere abroad.

Three-quarters said that they were now avoiding booking trips to Islamic countries.

"Usually when Britain has a cool and wet summer, we are keen to take a holiday somewhere warm," said Yeganeh Morakabati, an academic in risk and tourism at Bournemouth University. "The events of this summer, however, have impacted the choices British consumers are making about where to go."

Morakabati added: "What is clear from the research is that the relative levels of risk perception have increased uncertainty and this has left the door open to fear. As a result, British travelers are finding it increasingly difficult to decide on the safest destination for a holiday abroad."

The Foreign Office continues to advise against all but essential travel to Tunisia, but the poll suggests that many holiday-makers remain confused about which destinations are considered safe.

Nearly a third admitted that they are unaware of current government-travel warnings.

Louise Hodges, Travelzoo's spokeswoman, said, "It's clear that after a turbulent year with many high-profile incidents in tourist destinations, safety and security is paramount for British people making choices about where to travel to for the rest of 2015 and into 2016.

"The Canaries are looking popular again this year — however, we know people are actively avoiding North Africa, opting instead for destinations they believe are safer. Islamic countries in particular are causing potential British visitors concern."

Following the tragic terrorist attack in Sousse in June, less than 1% of the British tourists who were polled said that they would consider visiting Tunisia, even if the government's travel ban was to be lifted in the next few months.

The Travelzoo survey was conducted by Censuswide, an independent third party, which polled 2,000 adults in Britain in September.

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Russian warships in the Caspian Sea have launched dozens of missiles into Syria, sharply escalating a military campaign to shield the regime from rebel forces.

Travelling more than 900 miles, the missiles struck 11 targets inside the war-torn country, officials said.

In a video apparently showing their launch, bright white lights seared through the sky, trailed by thick plumes of smoke.

Moscow's missiles added additional force to airstrikes backing a Syrian regime ground offensive in four locations across the provinces of Hama and Idlib on Wednesday.

The deployment of cruise missiles and air strikes marked a significant escalation of the campaign to shield the regime from rebel forces which began in earnest last week. It was the first time operations had been openly coordinated with forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad, one of the Kremlin’s only remaining allies in the Middle East.

Vladmir Putin, the Russian president, said his military's efforts "will be synchronised with the actions of the Syrian army on the ground and the actions of our air force will effectively support the offensive operation of the Syrian army", at a televised meeting with Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister.

Mr Shoigu said Russia was using its warships in the Caspian Sea to target Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) in Syria.

 Video footage from Hama appeared to show the destruction of several regime tanks using American-made TOW missiles, achievements that analysts described as a rare success for Washington’s covert programme, which has trained several moderate rebel factions in the use of anti-tank missiles.

“In a way, it proves that when the US wants to support moderate rebels, it makes a difference,” said Thomas Pierret, a lecturer in contemporary Islam at the University of Edinburgh.

The Turkish prime minister claimed earlier on Wednesday that so far only two out of 57 Russian airstrikes over Syria have hit Isil positions.

Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkish intelligence assessments showed that the rest had hit rebel groups backed by Turkey and the United States.

Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights described Wednesday's fighting as "the most intense fighting in months", launched from the town of Morek on the highway that links the capital Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest city and former commercial center.

Rebels have controlled areas on the highway since 2012.

"There was also heavy use of surface-to-surface shelling by the regime in the province," he said.

Russia, a top ally of Assad, started carrying out air strikes in Syria last week saying they were targeting hardline Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) jihadists.

But fighters on the ground and Western countries have said the Russian campaign is mainly focusing on other rebel groups and is aimed at shoring up Assad rather than combating Islamic State.

Russia's Wednesday strikes targeted the towns of Kafr Zita, Kafr Nabudah, al-Sayyad and the village of al-Lataminah in Hama province and the towns of Khan Shaykhun and Alhbit in Idlib, the Observatory said.

Most of Idlib province is held by an insurgent alliance that includes al Qaeda's Syria wing Nusra Front and other Islamist factions and that has put pressure on the Syrian military.

Liwa Suqour al-Jabal, a US-trained group operating in western Aleppo province, also said that their main weapons depoy had been destroyed by Russian air strikes.

Russia’s intervention in Syria’s messy conflict has raised diplomatic tensions with Turkey, the US and the Gulf, all of which have backed groups fighting against Assad’s forces.

Moscow’s warplanes have violated Turkish airspace on at least two occasions in five days, provoking rebukes from Nato. On Wednesday, it emerged that Russian fighter jets also entered the flight path of US predator drones over Syria on at least three separate occasions last week.

Two informed US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the incidents took place over Isil-controlled Raqqa and over the contested town of Kobane, close to the Turkish border.

The MQ-1 Predator drone that the US military is using in Syria is easily visible on a radar, the officials told Fox News. The Russian planes "flew very close, but did not impede the drone flight", one said.

The Pentagon said on Wednesday that they were were waiting for a "formal Russian" response after Moscow's fighter jets intercepted the flightpath of US Predator drones in Syria.

"We are standing by for a formal Russian response to continue our discussions on flight safety in the region." said Lt Col Michelle L Baldanza, a Pentagon spokesman. "In the meantime, we expect Russian pilots to act in a responsible, professional manner if they encounter any coalition aircraft - manned or unmanned."

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Russia said it could implement US proposals aiming to coordinate Moscow's strikes in Syria with the Washington-led coalition.

"The Russian defence ministry has answered the demands of the Pentagon and is examining in depth American proposals on coordinating operations carried out ... against the terrorist group Islamic State on Syrian territory," Igor Konashenkov, Russian defence ministry spokesman, said.

"On the whole, these proposals could be put in place," he said, adding: "We will for our part only try to clarify certain technical details which will be discussed today between Russian military defence experts and those from the Pentagon."

There were indications on Wednesday that Russia’s air campaign may be extended to Iraq. Hakim al-Zamili, the pro-Iran head of Baghdad’s parliamentary defence committee, suggested that Moscow could eventually use a joint command centre it has established with Iraq and Iran there to lead airstrikes against Isil forces.

US and Russian officials held discussions last week – at Russia's request – on establishing measures to avoid accidents so warplanes flying over Syria would not be in the same place at the same time.

The so-called "deconfliction" talks came after Russia started bombing in support of Mr Assad, further complicating the four-and-a-half-year conflict.

Russian jets carried out air strikes on 12 Isil sites in Syria on Tuesday, as Moscow expanded its week-old bombing campaign in the war-torn country amid mounting tensions with Ankara over the violation of Turkey's airspace by Russian military planes.

The United Nations Security Council was due to discuss the situation in Syria later on Wednesday.

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Children dressing up for Halloween could be killed or scarred for life by flammable costumes, just like the one that left TV star Claudia Winkleman's daughter seriously burned, a report warns.

A year after the tragedy, the Strictly presenter's little girl, Matilda, is still recovering from severe burns, but shops have still not tightened up safety procedures.

Video bloggers, or Vloggers, working for Channel Mum on YouTube, tested fancy dress outfits from seven of the UK's most popular stores and found each one caught fire in just six seconds or less.

Alarmingly, within just 45 seconds, more than half the clothes had burned a third of the way up or higher.

Winkleman's eight year old daughter was in a witch's costume when it brushed against a candle almost 12 months ago.

She has had several operations and her surgeon has also called for tougher fire safety laws on fancy dress.

With more than half of children and 15 per cent of adults planning to don fancy dress this Halloween, the report raises serious safety questions.

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This post was originally published on July 17, 2015. The Dutch Safety Board released its final report on the MH17 crash on Tuesday. 

Footage from the MH17 disaster shows Russian-backed rebels handling bodies and rummaging through the bags of dead passengers while expressing shock that the aircraft they brought down was a commercial aircraft.

Describing the footage as "sickening to watch," Julie Bishop, Australia's foreign minister, said it was further evidence that the plane was deliberately targeted by a missile.

"It is certainly consistent with the intelligence advice that we received 12 months ago, that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile," she told Channel Nine.

"[The victims'] grief is inconsolable and the burden of grieving and then seeing this footage will be almost too much to bear."

The footage appears to be an extended clip from video filmed and released last summer.

The 17 minutes of footage, apparently smuggled out of a rebel base in Ukraine, was released by Sydney's Daily Telegraph on the anniversary of the attack, which left all 298 passengers and crew dead.

The footage shows the uniformed rebels examining the contents of backpacks and collecting phones and other items as they try to find the black box.

The rebels seem surprised that the aircraft was a commercial airliner, not a fighter jet, and can be heard saying "civilians, civilians," and "this is a passenger plane" in Russian.

Tony Abbott, Australia's prime minister, said the video further highlighted that "this was an atrocity; it was in no way an accident."

"They may not have known that they were shooting down a passenger plane, but they were deliberately shooting out of the sky what they knew was a large aircraft," he told ABC News.

"Rebels don't get hold of this kind of weaponry by accident. I mean, this was obviously very sophisticated weaponry. We are confident that it was weaponry that came across the border from Russia, fired, and then shortly thereafter, once it was realized what had happened, went back into Russia."

Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Malaysia, and Ukraine have been conducting a criminal investigation into the attack and have asked the United Nations Security Council to establish an international criminal tribunal to try those responsible. Twenty-eight Australian citizens and 10 residents were aboard the plane.

Abbott urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to cooperate with those investigating the attack.

"I am not suggesting that the Russian president knew anything about this in advance," he said. "I suspect, based on my own conversations with him last year, that he is horrified that all of this has happened."

This video fits with accounts of the crash but also sheds new light on the immediate aftermath of the crash.

One fighter I met on the scene the following night said his unit had arrived shortly after the crash expecting to find the wreckage of a Ukrainian military aircraft and described being shocked at what he found.

He also told me they had gone through belongings to look for documents — that appears to fit with this footage — but strongly denied looting.

That fighter, as most others, said he was convinced the Ukrainians had shot down the aircraft, insisting that the separatists had no technology capable of reaching that altitude.

The desperate search for the "black boxes" fits with an intercepted phone call earlier released by the Ukrainian Security Service, which it says is of a prominent separatist commander, Alexander Khodakovsky, instructing his men at the scene to find the flight recorders.

The separatists did recover the black boxes, and they handed them over to a Malaysian delegation in Donetsk on July 21, four days after the crash.

There is also a lot of confusion. The talk about five parachutists, about the pilot "crawling" in Rosipnoye is typical of the chaos and muddled information you get in a war zone, especially in the aftermath of a big event like this.

Often, it turns out to be half-true — the cockpit did come down in Rosipnoye, but the pilots would have been killed instantly. No one would have parachuted out of a civilian aircraft, but the search party was expecting to find military wreckage, and Ukrainian pilots and crew had survived shoot-downs and been captured in the past — so as confused reports come in, they set off to find the "parachutists."

Then there is talk about a second aircraft — a Sukhoi jet that supposedly shot down MH17 and was in turn shot down by the separatists:

As far as we know, there was no second shot-down plane — if a Sukhoi had been hit, the wreckage would have been found if not by the fighters, then by the army of journalists who shortly afterward descended on the area.

Three things seem to be going on here:

It could simply be a matter of confusion.

It could be a quickly thought-up excuse, a cover story to tell civilians and journalists to excuse what had happened: the fighters getting their story straight.

But it could also be the quick work of a subconscious mind in denial.

One of the features of the war in Ukraine is the ability of soldiers on either side to perform seemingly impossible feats of double-think in order to convince themselves of their virtue and their opponent's guilt.

To take a depressingly mundane example: Ask a Ukrainian about the shelling of civilians in rebel-held areas, or a rebel about rocket attacks on Ukrainian-held towns, and they'll often tell you — with a straight face — that the enemy attacked themselves as a "provocation."

Often, these are straight out, cynical lies by people who know are guilty. But equally often they appear to be the incredible yet genuinely believed excuses people tell themselves to avoid facing up to uncomfortable truths.

It is that bizarre human ability that has made the lies and propaganda surrounding the war in Ukraine — and the MH17 tragedy — so effective, and deadly.

Here is the full video:

SEE ALSO: Investigators: MH17 was shot down by a Russian-made BUK missile fired from a rebel-held area

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Millions of pounds have been drained from British bank accounts after cyber criminals unleashed a "particularly virulent" virus, it was revealed today.

Officers from the National Crime Agency warned thousands of computers have been infected by the Dridex malware which harvests online banking details.

"Cyber criminals often reach across international borders, but this operation demonstrates our determination to shut them down no matter where they are." Robert Anderson, FBI

The virus, also known as Bugat and Cridex, is believed to have been developed by a technically-skilled gang in Eastern Europe to steal money from individuals and businesses around the world.

UK cyber crime experts are now working alongside the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Europol, GCHQ, Moldovan authorities and the BKA in Germany to track them down.

One "significant" arrest has been made and more are expected.

NCA officers said global financial institutions and a variety of different payment systems have been particularly targeted, with UK losses estimated at $30.8 million. Some members of the public may also have unwittingly become victims of the Dridex malware.

National Crime Agency is urging all internet users to ensure they have up to date operating systems and anti-virus software installed on their machines. Computers become infected with Dridex malware when users receive and open documents in seemingly legitimate emails.

The majority of PCs infected are Windows users, the NCA said.

Mike Hulett, head of operations at the National Crime Agency’s National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) said: "This is a particularly virulent form of malware and we have been working with our international law enforcement partners, as well as key partners from industry, to mitigate the damage it causes.

"Our investigation is ongoing and we expect further arrests to made." The FBI's executive assistant director Robert Anderson said: "Those who commit cyber crime are very often highly-skilled and can be operating from different countries and continents.

"They can and will deploy new malware and we, along with our partners, are alive to this threat and are constantly devising new approaches to tackle cyber crime.

"We urge all internet users to take action and update your operating system. Ensure you have up to date security software and think twice before clicking on links or attachments in unsolicited emails”.

"Cyber criminals often reach across international borders, but this operation demonstrates our determination to shut them down no matter where they are.

"The criminal charges announced today would not have been possible without the cooperation of our partners in international law enforcement and private sector.

"We continue to strengthen those relationships and find innovative ways to counter cyber criminals." 

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For millions of Americans, climate change has already passed the point of no return: no matter what action the world tries to take, their cities will be submerged by rising sea levels.

Scientists have identified 414 towns and cities in the United States that are guaranteed to eventually be underwater, regardless of how much humans decrease their carbon emissions.

"Historic carbon emissions have already locked in enough future sea level rise to submerge most of the homes in each of several hundred American towns and cities," said a statement on the website of Climate Central, the group who conducted the study.

Published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, the doomsday list has on it the names of major population centres, including Miami and New Orleans.

At least 40 per cent of the people said to be living on potentially affected land live in Florida, America's ‘Sunshine State’.

Low, flat, and a peninsula, much of the state, including the land that Miami is built on is formed of “porous limestone”, Benjamin Strauss, the lead author of the study told the Huffington post.

“The bedrock underneath Miami is a lot like Swiss cheese," he said. "Water can just go through it and so building levees is not going to be effective in South Florida," he said.

It’s not clear how much time these areas have left, but the study concludes their eventual fate is a certainty.

Scientists said they hoped the study would act as a rallying call to action for cities that can still be saved by a reduction of carbon emissions.

"The most interesting thing to me is there are a great deal of cities where our carbon choices make a huge difference," Mr Strauss said.

Unless they take drastic action soon New York will pass its ‘lock in date” – or the point from which there is no going back: “The very biggest difference of all is for New York City, where you can avoid submergence of land where one and a half million people live,” said Mr Strauss.

A graphic made by Carbon Central, the organisation where Mr Strauss works, shows clearly how vast swathes of the Big Apple will disappear under water if pollution is left unchecked.

Philadelphia, Virginia Beach, Sacramento, and Jacksonville are all also extremely at risk.

"To me this is really a question of our American legacy and American heritage,"Mr Strauss said. "Are we going to let the ocean take a state-sized bite out of America? If we make extreme efforts to cut carbon, we can avoid that."

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Apple's popularity within China shows no sign of slowing, after more than 7m new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus models were activated within days of going on sale, new data has found.

More than 5.5m iPhone 6s units and 1.63m iPhone 6s Plus phones were activated by October 11, after the new iPhones went on sale at the end of September, according to Chinese data monitoring firm TalkingData.

The iPhone 6s sale marked the first time China acted as a launch country for the new generation of phones. Previously, customers in China had to wait several weeks or months before the new models were approved for sale .

The phones swiftly shifted more than 13m units within three days of availability, easily surpassing last year's 10m models within the same period. Of the 13m sales, China is estimated to have accounted for between 2 and 2.5 million unit sales, meaning non-China sales rose by between 5 per cent and 10 per cent, according to analysts FBR & Co.

The phenomenal popularity of the iPhone in China is particularly interesting when viewed against the cooling wider market - smartphone sales in the country fell for the first time in August by 4pc year-on-year.

TalkingData claims the number of activated iPhone 6s phones actually fell slightly compared to figures for the iPhone 6, witnessing a drop of 14.6pc.

Of all the iOS devices within China, the iPhone 6 is the most popular, it said, accounting for around 23.8pc of all devices, followed by the iPhone 5s at 18.8pc and the iPhone 6 Plus at 16.9pc. The iPhone 6s edged into the top 10 devices at number eight, equating to 1.8pc.

Native brands including Huawei and Xiaomi are also extremely popular across the country, and are proving stiff competition to more established brands including Samsung, Microsoft and BlackBerry.

Google's Android operating system was running on 78pc of smartphones in China during August, compared to Apple's iOS system's 19pc, according to Kantar.

This article was written by Rhiannon Williams from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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The new offensive by Russia and Iran against the Syrian city of Aleppo may create an opening for Isil terrorists to seize more territory, Western diplomatic sources have warned.

In the third week of their operation in Syria, the Kremlin's warplanes are now using their firepower to support a ground operation led by Iranian forces. The aim of this assault is to allow Bashar al-Assad's regime to retake Aleppo, once the country's most populous city.

Iran is believed to have deployed about 2,000 fighters to lead this effort, drawn from the Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hizbollah, the radical Shia movement. Most of the fighting is taking place south of the city as the pro-Assad coalition tries to secure the approach to Aleppo along the M5 highway, which runs south to Damascus.

Three villages fell into the hands of regime forces and their allies on Saturday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based group. A second prong of the offensive was also taking place east of Aleppo, apparently designed to relieve a military air base from a rebel siege.

But Western officials worry about the possible consequences. Most of the areas targeted by Russian bombs and Iranian ground forces - including much of Aleppo itself - are not held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). The whole thrust of the Russian and Iranian campaign is against other rebel movements, not Isil.

Yet the insurgents who are bearing the brunt of the offensive are also bitter enemies of Isil. If they suffer heavy blows at the hands of Russia and Iran, Isil may be given an opportunity to capture still more ground, particularly in the contested area north of Aleppo.

“We’re very concerned that Russian-supported offensives targeting the moderate opposition are weakening them across the board – and Isil will take advantage of that to seize more territory,” said a Western diplomatic source.

From the beginning of Russia's intervention in Syria on Sept 30, Western governments have noted how Isil appeared to be bottom of the Kremlin's target list. Although President Vladimir Putin claimed that destroying Isil was the sole aim of his intervention, about 85 per cent of the Kremlin’s air strikes have targeted other rebel movements, according to the Foreign Office.

For the first six days of the Russian air offensive, not a single Isil target was attacked. So far, no Russian air strikes are believed to have taken place inside Isil's de facto capital, Raqqa.

Instead, the offensive against non-Isil insurgents in and around Aleppo is now Russia's main effort. The Kremlin's contribution goes beyond the use of air power. Heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems have also been employed to pound the rebels. The campaign is being coordinated by a joint headquarters in Baghdad manned by officers from Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria’s regime.

Some Russian air raids have gone astray and inflicted civilian casualties. During the first 16 days of the intervention, Russian bombs killed 274 civilians and wounded more than 700, according to the White Helmets, a volunteer unit of Syrian search and rescue teams. Three of their own members have also been killed.

Meanwhile, Assad’s regime has taken the opportunity to escalate its own air campaign, which consists largely of dropping “barrel bombs” on civilian areas. These crude weapons - amounting to barrels packed with shrapnel, explosives and flammable liquid – are simply rolled out of the back of helicopters. Barrel bombs cannot be targeted and their use breaches international humanitarian law.

At least 356 barrel bombs have been dropped by the regime’s helicopters since the onset of Russia’s intervention.

Russia has also tried to demonstrate its military prowess by using warships in the Caspian Sea to fire 26 cruise missiles at Syria. These weapons must fly through Iranian and Iraqi airspace to reach their targets – but some have failed to complete their journeys. About four cruise missiles are believed to have crashed inside Iran.

Human Rights Watch has documented the use of Russian-made cluster bombs in Syria. These weapons, which scatter landmines and various delayed action devices across large areas, are banned by an international convention.

Yet cluster bombs were dropped near a village south-west of Aleppo on Oct 4, according to Human Rights Watch. This incident raised “grave concerns” that “Russia is either using cluster munitions in Syria or providing the Syrian air force with new types of cluster munitions,” said the campaign group.

“It’s disturbing that yet another type of cluster munition is being used in Syria given the harm they cause to civilians for years to come,” said Nadim Houry, the deputy Middle East director of Human Rights Watch. “Neither Russia nor Syria should use cluster munitions, and both should join the international ban without delay.”

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The government has blocked an Islamic group with alleged links to fundamentalism from building Britain’s biggest mosque, putting a final end to a 16-year battle.

The highly controversial plans by the Tablighi Jamaat sect – accused by some of being a gateway to terror - would have created a so-called “megamosque” with 190-foot minarets and three times the floorspace of St Paul’s Cathedral. The 290,000 square foot mosque, near the Olympic Park in east London, would have accommodated up to 9,300 worshippers in two main gender-segregated prayer halls and a further 2,000 in a separate hall.

The bitterly-fought struggle has seen street blockades, accusations of racism, High Court action and even a video “obituary,” linked to from the mosque website, making implicit death threats to the main protestor against the plans and his family.

The scheme, officially known as the Abbey Mills Markaz or the Riverine Centre, was rejected by the local council, Newham, as long ago as December 2012, with councillors saying the building was too large and would harm their plans for a mixed-use neighbourhood.

But Tablighi Jamaat appealed, taking the application to a three-week public inquiry in summer last year. The inquiry inspector's report was submitted to the Government in January, but ministers have been sitting on it since then because of its political sensitivity.

However, sources close to the process say that the Communities Secretary, Greg Clark, has now made the final decision to block the scheme. A public announcement is expected shortly. “This proposal has created a great deal of division in Newham,” said one person with knowledge of the decision. “That would get a lot worse if the thing was built.”

Alan Craig, a former Newham councillor who led the campaign against the mosque, said: “This is fantastic news. For a decade and a half, Tablighi Jamaat has pulled out every stop to get its way, but at last the spectre is over.” 

In 2007 Mr Craig was the subject of a video “obituary” entitled “In memory of Councillor Alan Craig” and featuring him, his wife and two daughters. The mosque website carried a link to the YouTube page where the video appeared.

During the Newham planning process, protestors from a body called the Newham People’s Alliance, set up to express “community support” for the mosque, blockaded the council offices where the planning committee was meeting.

The NPA included a number of extremists connected to Lutfur Rahman, the former mayor of neighbouring Tower Hamlets disqualified for corruption and vote-rigging. It ran a virulent campaign against Sir Robin Wales, the mayor of Newham, calling him “Dirty Robin,” a “Zionist” and a racist.

White extremist groups, including the BNP and EDL, campaigned online against the plans.

Tablighi Jamaat already has a temporary mosque for 2,500 worshippers on the site, a former chemical works, which it has owned since 1996. It originally produced plans for a new mosque with a capacity of 40,000, but scaled them back under a wave of protest. In 2013 the High Court ordered the sect to close the temporary mosque because it did not have planning permission. It has so far refused to do so.

Tablighi Jamaat is an ultra-conservative and separatist group which believes that Muslims should not integrate into non-Muslim society. Its current UK headquarters, in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, includes a school whose pupils are banned from watching televison, playing music or speaking to outsiders. The Newham mosque was to have been its new headquarters, with residential facilities, a library, visitor centre and sports centre as well as the mosque.

Tablighi Jamaat’s links with radicalism and terrorism are hotly disputed, with many experts saying it is peaceful and non-political. However, the French intelligence agency has described TJ as the “antechamber of fundamentalism,” claiming it acts as a stepping-stone to radicalisation. In 2003 Michael Heimbach, the then deputy chief of the FBI's international terrorism section, said: “We found that al-Qa'eda used them for recruiting, now and in the past.''

A number of terrorists have TJ connections. Abid Naseer, convicted this spring of plotting to attack the Arndale Centre in Manchester, was a member of the sect. Two of the 7/7 bombers, including their leader, Mohammed Siddique Khan, attended a TJmosque. John Walker Lindh — an American who is serving a prison sentence for aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan — traveled with Tablighi preachers to Pakistan in 1998 to further his Islamic studies before joining the Taliban.

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