Man Fleeing Robbery Jumps White House Fence

The White House was briefly placed on lockdown on Tuesday afternoon, after a man fleeing a robbery jumped a perimeter fence.

The unidentified man was arrested by Secret Service officers after he hopped over the fence alongside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is part of the White House complex.

Secret Service spokesman Robert Hoback said an initial investigation suggested the intruder was fleeing a robbery just across the street.

It is not clear if he was the robber, the victim or a simple bystander at the crime scene.

Secret Service personnel launched the lockdown at around 4pm

The man was taken to a local hospital by police to be treated for minor injuries to his hand inflicted when he climbed over the fence, said Mr Hoback.

President Barack Obama was at the White House during the incident after returning on Monday night from an international trip.

Service personnel launched the lockdown at around 4pm local time, but the all-clear was given less than half an hour later.

Reporters inside the White House were temporarily sequestered by automatically locking doors.

In 2014, a man who jumped a White House fence made it deep inside the presidential mansion before officers were able to seize him.

IS Terror Cells In England Claims US Spy Chief

The US is doing "all we can" to share intelligence on IS, says Mr Clapper

Islamic State militants are operating Brussels-style terror cells in England, according to the director of US National Intelligence James Clapper.

Speaking at a briefing with journalists in the US, Mr Clapper also said IS has taken advantage of Europe's migration crisis.

He said there was a "fundamental conflict" between national security and free movement throughout the European Union.

Asked if IS cells like those in Brussels exist in England, Germany and Italy, he replied: "Yes, they do. That is a concern of obviously ours and our European allies.

"We continue to see evidence of plotting on the part of ISIL in the countries you name.

"They (IS) have taken advantage to some extent of the migrant crisis in Europe, something which the nations have a growing awareness of."

Mr Clapper was speaking at a briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, and said the US is "doing all we can" to share information with foreign counterparts.

"The obstacles in Europe have somewhat to do with some of the fundamental conflicts between, on the one hand, European Union incentives and drives to promote openness and free movement of people and goods,  privacy, which is in some ways in conflict with the responsibility each country has as a nation state to protect the security of its borders and its people. Those are sort of countervailing processes."

Names Of Three Deadly Tropical Storms Dropped

used to designate tropical storms and hurricanes are being retired out of respect for 2015 storm victims.

Erika, Joaquin and Patricia will be replaced by Elsa, Julian and Pamela, the World Meteorological Organization announced.

The intergovernmental organisation reuses tropical storm names every six years.

Names are retired when a storm is so deadly or costly that its continued use would be insensitive to those impacted by the storms.

Tropical Storm Erika was responsible for 30 deaths on the Caribbean island of Dominica and one in Haiti after forming in the Atlantic Ocean last August.

Thirty-four people, including 33 crew members from the cargo ship El Faro, were killed by Hurricane Joaquin in October.

Later that same month, Hurricane Patricia became the strongest hurricane on record in the Western Hemisphere after reaching maximum sustained winds of 215mph (345kmh).

Patricia was linked to seven deaths and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

The massive storm led to catastrophic flooding in parts of Texas after making landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast.

There have been 80 tropical storm and hurricane names retired dating back to 1954, according to online weather service, Weather Underground.

Among them are 2005's Katrina and 2012's Sandy.

India Orders Panic Button For Mobile Phones

Mobile phones sold in India from next January will have to be equipped with panic buttons, the country's government has said.

And, from January 2018, phones will also have to have a built-in GPS tracking device so they can be tracked.

"Technology is solely meant to make human life better and what better (use) than ... for the security of women," a statement from the ministry of communications and technology explained as the plan was revealed.

An emergency call will be triggered when the user presses a finger continuously on number 5 or 9 on the new phones, the ministry said.

Some rural areas banned women and girls from using mobiles

On smartphones, pressing the power button three times in quick succession will trigger an emergency call.

The move follows concerns over women's safety after a number of violent crimes in recent years.

The fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old student on a bus in Delhi in 2012 sparked nationwide protests and resulted in stronger rape laws.

In another high-profile case, an Uber taxi driver was found guilty of raping a female passenger in Delhi.

India reported 337,922 crimes against women in 2014, including more than 36,000 rapes, a 9% increase from the previous year.

The country is the world's second-biggest market for mobile phones, with more than one billion users.

However, several villages in the western state of Gujarat recently banned girls and single women from owning mobile phones, saying the devices distracted them from their studies.

Asda Bows To CMA Pressure On Price Tactics

Asda will be publicly criticised by competition watchdogs on Wednesday when they publish the latest phase of their response to a 'super-complaint' about predatory pricing tactics by major grocers.

Sky News has learnt that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will disclose that it has forced Asda to provide a written commitment to pricing practices designed to clamp down on promotions such as multi-buys.

The public statement will be the latest piece of bad news to hit Asda, which has struggled with plunging sales amid intensifying competition from emerging rivals at the discount end of the grocery market which has historically been its stronghold.

It will also come despite Asda's traditional reputation as the cheapest of the major grocers, having been rated the lowest-priced by the influential Grocer magazine for 18 years in a row across a basket of 33 products.

Owned by Walmart, the world's largest retailer, speculation has been rife about a prospective change of leadership at Asda for months, although Andy Clarke, its chief executive and a member of David Cameron's Business Advisory Group, is understood to have its support.

A supermarket industry source said that Asda was likely to be the only major chain singled out by the CMA in its latest update on industry promotional tactics since it responded to the Which? super-complaint last July.

The regulator is expected to say that all major grocers have been asked to modify their pricing but that Asda is the only one to have been asked for a written commitment to industry guidelines.

It is thought that the CMA may also indicate that Asda refused to co-operate with some aspects of its super-complaint inquiry, which was lodged a year ago.

In its initial report nine months ago, the CMA said it had discovered "examples of pricing and promotional practices that have the potential to confuse or mislead consumers and which could be in breach of consumer law".

Particularly contentious areas for the watchdog during its discussions with Asda were said to have been the issue of 'one-for-one pricing, which obliges retailers to keep items on promotion for the same duration as their standard price; and 'link-save' promotions, which include multi-buy offers.

Asda is said to have argued that the first of these areas serves consumers poorly because it enables retailers to change prices much more frequently.

Nisha Arora, a CMA enforcement director, said last July: "We have found that, whilst supermarkets want to comply with the law and shoppers enjoy a wide range of choices, with an estimated 40% of grocery spending being on items on promotion, there are still areas of poor practice that could confuse or mislead shoppers."

The regulator's overall verdict last year was criticised by some consumer groups as being too weak given the extent to which shoppers were potentially being misled, but it was simultaneously hailed by the big food retailers as vindicating many of their promotional activities.

Since then, a number of the big grocers, including J Sainsbury and Wm Morrison, have altered or scrapped 'brand-match' elements of their marketing campaigns as the industry price war continues to hurt margins.

A CMA spokesman confirmed that an announcement would be made in relation to its "follow-up work to the Which? super-complaint about misleading and opaque pricing practices in the grocery market", but declined to comment on the content of Wednesday's statement.

Asda and Which? declined to comment.

UN rejects Israel's claim over Syria's Golan Heights

The UN Security Council has rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that the annexed Golan Heights in Syria would "forever" remain under Israeli control.

The 15-member council agreed on Tuesday that the status of the Golan, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967, "remains unchanged," Chinese Ambassador Liu Jieyi, who holds this month's council presidency said.

Liu recalled a 1981 resolution which states that Israel's "decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights was nul and void and without any international legal effect."

Liu said that the Council members "expressed deep concern" over Netanyahu's remarks from earlier this month that "the Golan Heights will remain in the hands of Israel forever."

Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon issued a statement rejecting the council complaint.

"Holding a meeting on this topic completely ignores the reality in the Middle East," he said. "While thousands of people are being massacred in Syria, and millions of citizens have become refugees, the Security Council has chosen to focus on Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East."

"It's unfortunate that interested parties are attempting to use the council for unfair criticism of Israel," he added.

Netanyahu's April 17 declaration came on the occasion of the first Israeli cabinet session on the Golan since the area was seized from Syria in a 1967 war and annexed in 1981.

Israel's annexation of the Golan has never been recognised by the international community.

Past US-backed Israeli-Syrian peace efforts were predicated on a return of the Golan, where some 23,000 Israelis now live alongside roughly the same number of Druse Arabs loyal to Damascus. Liu said the council supported a negotiated arrangement to settle the issue of the Golan.

S Sudan's Riek Machar sworn in as first Vice President

South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar has been sworn in as first vice president after arriving in the capital Juba in a long awaited UN brokered peace deal.

Machar resumes a post he held before the conflict erupted in December 2013. 

Earlier on Tuesday, Machar touched down at Juba airport on a UN plane after repeated delays to implement a peace agreement due to end his 28-month military conflict with President Salva Kiir, which has killed tens of thousands of people.