Europe

    A hijacker strapped with fake explosives has been arrested in Cyprus after several of his hostages fled the plane. Egyptian national Seif Eldin Mustafa emerged from the aircraft with his hands aloft after a stand-off lasting eight hours. The Cypriot foreign minister tweeted: "It's over. The #hijacker arrested." A hijacker with a fake suicide belt emerges from the EgyptAir plane with his hands aloft - but his motive remains unclear. His surrender came minutes after a man in uniform was filmed escaping from the cockpit window. The remaining seven hostages were then seen leaving the plane in two separate groups - the latter running. All are safe. Within an hour it was established that the suicide belt the hijacker was wearing was fake. "This is not about terrorism," said the ...

    A man shot by police in Brussels has been charged with membership of a terror group following a raid in France last week. Belgian prosecutors named him as A. Abderrahmane who was detained on Saturday for a further 24 hours after being shot during a raid in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek. Meanwhile, police in Brussels said they carried out 13 new raids on Sunday, taking nine people into custody for questioning and releasing a further five. The man who has now been charged was wearing a backpack at a tram stop in Brussels when he failed to respond to police demands to raise his arms and was shot in the leg as he stood with a young girl. Belgian media initially suggested the man may have been shot in error. It comes as German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag newspaper repor...

    Riot police have been deployed amid angry scenes at the Brussels square where tributes have been left to Tuesday's terror victims. Water cannon have been used to disperse hundreds of suspected far-right protesters gathered at the Place De La Bourse. A March Against Fear had been due to take place at the square, which has become a shrine to the 28 victims of the city's twin attacks. It was called off by the event organisers after Belgium's interior minister urged protesters not to attend, saying police were too stretched. Hundreds of people were nevertheless gathered in the square to pay their final respects when they were joined by dozens of men, some in balaklavas, who made their way onto the steps of the Brussels Stock Exchange. Members of the crowd unfurled a large bann...

    The Council of European human rights commissioner has told British ministers to stop referring to illegal immigrants, claiming they should use the term irregular migrants for foreigners who enter this country without permission. Nils Muižnieks, the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, described Britain's immigration laws as draconian and insisted key policies introduced by the Government should be scrapped. Mr Muižnieks singled out David Cameron, the Prime Minister, for criticism, suggesting he had scaled up the alarmist rhetoric targeting migrants in official speeches. In an official memorandum to James Brokenshire, the immigration minister, Mr Muižnieks said: "The commissioner is worried by the dominant political discourse in the UK which is tainted by alarmism...

    New Zealand has voted to keep its current flag by 57 percent to 43 percent in a nationwide poll. More than 2 million people voted in the ballot to decide whether to keep the British Union Jack on their flag or replace it with a silver fern. The results were announced Thursday. The current flag has been the national symbol since 1902. It was up against a new design that was winnowed from more than 10,000 entries submitted by the public. Those advocating change argued the flag was a relic of the nation's colonial past and too similar to Australia's flag. Those favoring the status quo said the new design was uninspiring or an attempt by Prime Minister John Key to create a legacy.

    Victims of the terror attacks in Brussels that left 31 people dead are starting to be identified. The death of student Leopold Hecht in the bombing at Maalbeek metro station was confirmed with immense sadness" by the rector of Saint-Louis University in the Belgian capital. Branding Tuesday's atrocities "barbaric acts", Pierre Jadoul said: There is no word to describe our dismay in the face of this news. All our thoughts go out to his family and loved ones. Olivier Delespesse also died at the station. His death was confirmed by the French Community of Belgium, of which he was a member. Earlier came confirmation that a Peruvian mother of three-year-old twins was one of those killed in the double suicide bomb attack at Brussels airport. The girls are said to have gone off to ...

    Brussels bomb suspect in CCTV shot Brussels bomb suspect Najim Laachraoui is still on the run after the blasts which killed at least 34 people and left around 200 injured, including four Britons. An arrest in connection with the terror attack has reportedly been made in the Anderlecht suburb of Brussels, but local media reports that Laachraoui had been detained were later withdrawn. The 24-year-old, who has been linked to the atrocities in Paris five months ago, is believed to have accompanied brothers Brahim and Khalid El Bakraoui to Zaventem Airport on Tuesday, where they blew themselves up, killing 14 people. An explosion an hour later on a train at Maelbeek Metro station killed a further 20 people and sent Brussels into lockdown. Multiple explosions jolted Brussels, Be...

    At least 34 people have been killed and nearly 200 injured as terrorists inflicted a new outrage on a European capital. Coordinated bomb attacks on the main airport and Metro system in Brussels left a major city in lockdown once again less than five months after Paris was hit by a wave of deadly strikes. The atrocities on Tuesday, condemned as blind, violent and cowardly by Belgian prime minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's massacre in the French capital. The terror group Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Security was being stepped up at major transport hubs around the continent, with British police forces boosting numbers at "key locations" including ports, airport...

    With the Budget out of the way the focus switches to something vastly more important: Brexit. Ten years from now no one will care about what was in the Budget, but we will all remember what happened on 23 June 2016. There are two insuperable problems about this debate. One is that many people have such strong views they are not going to be swayed by mere economic arguments. So we will have more scare stories of millions of jobs being at risk were we to come out, and more visions of sunlit uplands of economic freedom if we did. But if the decision is emotional, rather than economic, there is not much that economists can contribute. The other problem is that the economic uncertainties are so huge, that more or less any set of calculations is open to challenge. We have form o...

    The arrest of Salah Abdeslam in a Brussels neighborhood on Friday marks the end of the pursuit of Europe's most wanted man. Abdeslam was cornered by Belgian police and wounded in a firefight before being taken by authorities. Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national, is the only one left alive of the 10 assailants who carried out last November's shocking Paris terror attacks, which killed 130 people and wounded dozens more. The terrorists, all European nationals, were proxies of the Islamic State, and it's hoped that investigators can piece together more about the plot now that Abdeslam is in custody. The political tremors that followed the massacres in the French capital reached myriad countries in the West. In the U.S., the attacks immediately fed into the talking points ...