One Of Downed Russian Jet's Pilots 'Rescued'

Sergei Shoigu said the flight engineer was extracted after a 12 hour mission by special forces on the ground in Syria.

He said: "The operation was successful. The engineer was delivered to our airbase, he is alive and well. I wanted to thank all our boys, who were working all night with great risk. At 03.40 am they completed their work."

British-based Syria watchdog Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said it believes the Russian information to be true and that the airman is back at Russia's Hemeimeem air base, near the city of Latakia. 

The Russian ambassador to France claimed the other airman - presumed to be the pilot - was wounded as he parachuted down and killed on the ground by "jihadists in the area".

According to a US official, the jet was hit inside Syrian airspace after briefly entering Turkish airspace.

The unnamed official told the Reuters news agency that the assessment was based on detection of the heat signature of the jet.

But Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeated Turkey's claim that the jet was in Turkish airspace at the time it was hit in direct contradiction of the US analysis.

He said part of the damaged plane landed inside Turkey, injuring two civilians on the ground.

President Erdogan said on Wednesday that he has no "intention" of escalating the incident, which has triggered a major diplomatic confrontation.

"We are just defending our security and the rights of our brothers," he said, adding that no one should expect Turkey "to remain silent" when its border security was violated.

Turkish officials said two Russian planes approached the Turkish border and were warned before one of them was shot down, adding their information shows Turkish airspace was repeatedly violated.

NATO said the incursion into Turkish airspace lasted 17 seconds, but Moscow denies the plane ever entered Turkey, providing data of its own as proof.

Russia's president Vladimir Putin on Wednesday accused Turkey's leadership of deliberately supporting Islamification in its country and said Russia was sending its S-400 missile system to Syria to defend its airbase. 

But, while speaking to reporters, the Russian ambassador to France added that Russia would be prepared to "create a joint staff" to fight the Islamic State in which Moscow would work with France, the United States and even Turkey.

The downing of the jet is the first time a NATO member's armed forces have shot down a Russian or Soviet military aircraft since the 1950s.

'Jolie Effect' Sees Rise In Pre-Cancer Breast Ops

The star had been told that a faulty hereditary gene left her with an 87% risk of developing breast cancer and a 50% risk of developing ovarian cancer. 

Women most at risk are those who carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genetic faults.

After opting to have a preventive double mastectomy, Jolie wrote in the New York Times: "I decided to be proactive and to minimise the risk as much as I could."

An NHS clinic in Manchester has since attributed a sharp rise in preventive double mastectomies to women being inspired by Jolie's announcement. 

Between January 2011 and June 2014 there were 29 procedures carried out at the Genesis Prevention Centre. That rose to 83 between January 2014 and June 2015.

This increase has been dubbed the "Angelina Effect" by researchers. 

Professor of clinical genetics at Genesis Breast Cancer Prevention, Gareth Evans, said the rise in mastectomies started around nine months after Angelina spoke publicly. 

He said: "While we haven't analysed women's motivations for undergoing this type of surgery, the correlation suggests that if the increased uptake of double mastectomies can be attributed to 'the Angelina effect', the effect has been prolonged and has resulted in both increased referrals to our clinic, and increased rates of preventative surgery."

Chairman of Genesis Breast Cancer Prevention, Lester Barr, said: "We're now confident that Aneglina's story will continue to raise awareness of the BRCA gene mutations and that this increased knowledge particularly among medium and high-risk women, will be passed onto the next generation."

Samia al Qadhi, chief executive of Breast Cancer Care, said: "Angelina's courage in sharing her experiences has highlighted this incredibly important issue.

"The percentage of women ringing our help line to ask questions about family history and breast cancer increased five-fold after she made her announcement."

The Spending Review Explained In Five Charts

Here's what the Chancellor is faced with:

:: Austerity Mark I

Source: IMF/Sky News

It's worth remembering that contrary to what you might have thought, the UK's austerity over the first term of George Osborne's Chancellorship was actually about par for the course for the rich world.

As you can see from this chart, the UK's reduction in its cyclically adjusted budget (in other words, borrowing, adjusted for the ups and downs of the wider economy) was about as fast as New Zealand's, and was far less severe than that imposed in, for instance, Spain, the US, Portugal or Greece.

In other words, although George Osborne played up his austerity credentials in his first term, he actually delivered far less in the way of spending cuts than many other developed economies.

:: Austerity Mark II

Source: IMF/Sky News

However, in his second term, the Chancellor is planning far deeper cuts than in any other major economy. This is the big overarching thing to bear in mind about the 2015 Spending Review: it is the moment when Britain embarks on the real austerity.

Although a little more than half of the cuts are now done, Britain will, from hereon, be cutting further and faster than anyone else.

:: DEL vs AME

Source: HM Treasury

Government spending is, for accounting purposes, split into two parts: departmental spending and something called Annually Managed Expenditure (AME).

AME is the stuff the government tends to find it harder to control: welfare spending, debt interest payments - the things it is legally bound to pay.

Normally AME is not covered by these spending reviews, which tend to happen every three years or so. Instead the spending review focuses on departmental spending – Departmental Expenditure Limits (DEL) as they're known.

But here's the thing, in recent years, as welfare and pensions have become more and more expensive, AME (that "uncontrolled" part of government spending) has become bigger than departmental spending.

So the chunk that the Chancellor can actually control is getting smaller and smaller. This is a totally new development, and is another symptom of a bigger problem confronting the Chancellor - the ballooning cost of welfare and pensions.

:: Social Security Spending

Source: House of Commons Library

When people talk about welfare spending, they typically imagine it is largely unemployment benefits for those on the dole.

The reality is that the vast majority of social security spending is on the state pension and other pensioner benefits. And as this chart shows, spending on such things has increased rapidly in recent years.

However, the other fastest growing chunk of benefits spending has been on in-work benefits, especially on tax credits, as you can see from this chart.

The Chancellor's proposals to cut those benefits abruptly have been so unpopular, and have been so directly challenged by the House of Lords, that he is having to change his plans.

So while the spending review was supposed to be purely about departmental spending, it will also come alongside a beefed-up Autumn Statement which is expected to include measures to tone down the severity of those tax credits cuts.

:: Total government spending and receipts since 1948

Source: Office for Budget Responsibility

At the moment the Government spends an annual cash amount equivalent to about 40% of gross domestic product. That is about par for the course based on the past half century or so.

However, the amount the Government gets in tax receipts is considerably lower: about 36% of GDP. It is the gap between these two lines that most concerns Mr Osborne: as long as tax revenues are outpaced by spending, the Government needs to borrow and the national debt increases.

The spending cuts being imposed as part of the spending review are a key part of that story.

But it's worth noting that the fall in public spending as a % of GDP (the blue line) is still slightly more gradual than it was in the early 1980s under Thatcher, and the eventual resting position in 2020 (about 36% of GDP) is still a touch higher than it was during the last Labour government.

Putin's Emergency Politics

Much has changed for Vladimir Putin since the terror attacks in Paris. The trope that aggressions in Crimea and Ukraine show that he is more of a threat 

to the West than ISIS was useful to President Obama’s critics, but that’s now older than yesterday’s news. Given the joint French-Russian airstrikes against ISIS in Syria last week, Russia is now a de facto Western ally. Putin the pariah has a shot at redemption, or so it might seem.

Just weeks ago, François Hollande declared that the Russian leader was “not our ally in Syria,” and warned — albeit obliquely — that Mr. Putin should refrain from propping up President Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime. In August, France canceled the delivery of two Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia, selling them to Egypt instead. But the tables have turned. This week, the French president plans trips to Moscow and Washington to foster Russian-American cooperation in stamping out the Islamic State.

Mr. Putin is a proven master at manipulating emergencies — real or imagined — to get what he wants. Witness how he consolidated his hold on power by skillfully distorting the nature of his domestic critics and has used the threat of extremism to re-centralize Russia’s political system. In essence, he applies his own brand of emergency politics to keeping the country in a near-constant state of alarm; security takes precedence over political, legal and marketplace freedoms.

Until the Paris attacks, the prospects for Mr. Putin’s Middle East adventure were not looking good. Russia was bolstering the Assad regime’s air force, but neither the Syrian Army nor its Iranian allies were showing any real gains against rebels on the ground, and ISIS was not a primary target. Then, on Oct. 31, a Russian passenger jet carrying tourists home from Egypt went down in the Sinai Peninsula. It looked like Mr. Putin had led his nation into a deadly quagmire, and his innocent countrymen were paying the price.

Though the Russians must have known that a bomb had destroyed the jetliner, the Kremlin stopped short of officially declaring a terrorist attack, thereby freeing Mr. Putin from a political obligation to retaliate. Instead, in a difficult logistical operation, some 70,000 Russian tourists were evacuated from Egypt, their luggage sent home separately by military transport. The details were broadcast in news reports that were surreal even by the state-run media’s standards; no political context or reasons for the evacuation were given. Since no one seemed to know the reasons for the crash, the reactions of the victims’ families were generally subdued.

Then, on Thursday, Nov. 12, ISIS suicide bombers struck a Beirut marketplace, killing 43 people. The next day, Paris was hit. Mr. Putin seized the initiative. On Sunday, Nov. 15, he used the G-20 summit meeting in Antalya, Turkey, to meet privately with Mr. Obama and apparently signaled his willingness to compromise on Mr. Assad’s place in the future of Syria. On Monday, Nov. 16, he and Mr. Hollande agreed to coordinated airstrikes against ISIS. On Tuesday, Nov. 17, he announced that the Russian airliner had in fact been downed by a terrorist’s bomb, and vowed vengeance.

Hatton Garden Gang 'Buried Loot In Cemetery'

Valuables worth £14m, including jewels and gold, were taken from Hatton Garden Safe Deposit boxes in London's jewellery quarter on 5 April, in what prosecutors described as the "largest burglary in English legal history".

The gang stashed the jewellery, money and gold behind skirting boards, at houses and in several bags hidden under memorial stones at Edmonton Cemetery in north London, Woolwich Crown Court heard.

Among the items were ruby and emerald rings worth £15,000 each, Breitling, Omega, Tag Heuer and Rolex watches and three holdalls stuffed with a "vast quantity" of jewels including sapphires and diamonds.

Carl Wood, 58, of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire; William Lincoln, 60, of Bethnal Green, east London; and Jon Harbinson, 42, of Benfleet, Essex, are charged with conspiracy to commit burglary between 17 May 2014 and 7.30am on 5 April this year.

Hugh Doyle, 48, of Riverside Gardens, Enfield, north London, is jointly charged with them on one count of conspiracy to conceal, convert or transfer criminal property between 1 January and 19 May this year.

He also faces an alternative charge of concealing, converting or transferring criminal property between 1 April and 19 May this year.

Four other men - John Collins, 75, of Islington; Daniel Jones, 58, of Enfield; Terry Perkins, 67, of Enfield; and Brian Reader, 76, of Dartford - are described as the ringleaders and have all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary.

The jury of six men and six women heard that the gang initially tried to commit the burglary on 2 April, arriving in a white van and unloading their equipment.

Prosecutors say they used walkie talkies to communicate and, once inside, reached the basement via the lift shaft, disabled the alarm and drilled into the vault wall using a drill they had brought.

They failed to get into the vault on the first night and Reader, dubbed the Master, bailed out after that, the court was told.

On the second attempt, Wood was said to have lost his nerve and walked away before the thieves ransacked 73 of the 999 safe deposit boxes in the early hours of 5 April.

They then allegedly used wheelie bins to carry away the proceeds, struggling to move them because of the weight.

Police surveillance is later said to have heard Jones boast that the theft was "the biggest cash robbery in history" and Perkins saying the gold would be his retirement fund.

On 19 May, Harbinson took the loot in his taxi to a car park next to a pub in Enfield but police swooped soon after the gang arrived, the jury was told.

Police later dug up two bags of jewellery under the memorial stone for the grandfather of Jones's children in Edmonton Cemetery.

Jones took police to the same cemetery later and showed them another plot where they uncovered a smaller bag of stolen gold and jewels.

But prosecutor Philip Evans told jurors that Jones had kept the existence of another stash secret from the police, hoping he could keep that for his own use later.

The trial continues.

Russia suspends military cooperation with Turkey

Russia's defence ministry has announced suspension of military cooperation with Turkey and Sergey Lavrov, foreign minister, has cancelled a planned trip to Turkey following the downing of a Russian warplane near the Turkey-Syria border on Tuesday.

The Russian Sukhoi Su-24 warplane was  shot down  for violating Turkish airspace, angering Russia's President Vladimir Putin, who compared the incident to being "stabbed in the back".

Russia also warned its citizens not to travel to Turkey, saying it was unsafe, and deployed a warship to the coastline near where the plane crashed.

The plane crashed in Syrian territory in Latakia's Yamadi village.

Russia has confirmed one of the pilots has died.

A Russian helicopter was also shot at as it took part in the search for the two pilots near the Turkish-Syrian border, opposition groups in Syria said.

Turkey, Russia and their respective allies have entered a war of words after the incident, raising tensions in a region struggling to cope with the ongoing Syrian conflict.

Putin sharply criticised Turkey for establishing contact with NATO to discuss the incident, prior to contacting Russia.

"Today's loss is linked to a stab in the back delivered to us by accomplices of terrorists. I cannot qualify what happened today as anything else," Putin said in televised comments.

"Our plane was shot down over the territory of Syria by an air-to-air missile from a Turkish F-16 jet. It fell in Syrian territory four kilometres from the border with Turkey. Our pilots and our plane did not in any way threaten Turkey.

"Instead of immediately establishing contacts with us, as far as we know Turkey turned to its NATO partners to discuss this incident - as if we had hit their plane and not the other way around," he said.

Russia has been carrying out air strikes in Syria since September, saying it is targeting ISIL and al-Nusra Front.

The Syrian opposition and Western powers, however, say the Russian strikes have mainly targeted rebel groups fighting the Syrian government - an ally of Russia.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's prime minister, said Turkey had a duty to act against anyone violating its borders.

"Everyone must know that it is our international right and national duty to take any measure against whoever violates our air or land borders," he said in Ankara.

"Turkey will not hesitate to take all steps to protect the country's security."

The US also backed Turkey's right to defend its territory.

President Barack Obama said while the US did not have enough information to form conclusions about the incident, similar confrontations could be avoided if Russia stopped attacking "moderate" Syrian rebels who are battling forces loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

"This points to an ongoing problem with the Russian operations in the sense that they are operating very close to a Turkish border and they are going after moderate opposition that are supported by not only Turkey but a wide range of countries," Obama said.

Meanwhile, the Syrian government backed its key ally Russia, with a military official telling the state SANA news agency that by shooting down the Russian plane, Turkey had committed "a gross violation of Syrian sovereignty".

"The desperate acts of aggression will only increase our determination to continue the war against the terrorist organisations with the support and help of Syria's friends, mainly Russia," the official said.

A major point of contention is whether the Russian jet crossed into Turkish airspace, with the two nations releasing their own satellite images showing conflicting views of the jet's final flight path.

A Turkish military statement said the plane violated Turkish airspace in Hatay province and was warned "10 times in five minutes" before being shot down at 9:24am local time.

A US official told Al Jazeera that the penetration of Turkish airspace by the Russian jet lasted "only a matter of seconds" as it crossed a roughly 3km wide section of Turkey that took only 20 seconds to traverse. 

Russia, however, vehemently denied that its plane ever crossed into Turkish airspace.

Cash For Homes Despite Osborne Planning Cuts

The Chancellor will announce plans to build 400,000 new homes in England, claiming it will be the "biggest affordable house building programme since the 1970s".

Spending Review: What You Need To Know

In his Autumn Statement in the Commons, he will say: "In the end, spending reviews like this come down to choices about what your priorities are. And I am clear: in this spending review, we choose housing. Above all, we choose homes that people can buy.

"For there is a crisis of home ownership in our country."

The housing blueprint was foreshadowed by the Prime Minister in his Tory conference speech when he spoke of turning "generation rent into generation buy".

Many of his announcements, which follow a slump in house building in the past five years, have been trailed by the Chancellor before.

Spending Review Explained In Five Charts

But the Autumn Statement and Spending Review will also detail some of the deepest cuts to public spending in years.

Some area are protected - these include health, schools, defence and international aid.

But the Chancellor has said he is looking to make £20bn cuts from spending and £12bn from welfare.

Police chiefs in England and Wales are bracing for cuts of up to 25% and have warned the attacks in Paris should force the Chancellor to think again.

Other areas where cuts are expected to hit include mental health and disability services, and programmes for people with drug and alcohol addiction as well as transport, environment and prisons.

It all comes as Mr Osborne aims to meet his commitment to balance the nation's books in five years.