Islamic State terror plots revealed in seized 10,000 documents

A large trove of documents seized in Syria from the Islamic State reveals thousands of plots to attack Europe and other parts of the world, Britain's top commander in the region has said.

More than 10,000 documents and a huge amount of digital data were seized after the group was driven out of Manbij in northern Syria in August, according to Major General Rupert Jones.

"If we want to keep Britain safe, we need to deal with Daesh," he said, using another name for the extremist group.

The news comes as anti-terror police have started deploying on London's streets.

General Jones said: "External operations have been getting orchestrated to a very significant degree from within the caliphate, critically from within Raqqa and from within Manbij.

"They were key external operations hubs. There is a huge amount of intelligence, documentation, electronic material that has been exploited there that points very directly against all sorts of nations around the world."

:: 'Disneyland targeted' by terror suspects arrested in France

He declined to discuss details of the suspected plots as he spoke to reporters at the Al-Assad air base in Iraq.

British security services are analysing the material.

General Jones said they will be expecting fresh intelligence if the coalition retakes the Iraqi city of Mosul, where US-backed Iraqi and Peshmerga forces have launched an offensive.

"It will be a labyrinth of intelligence and we need to get that into the hands of the intelligence agencies," he said.

Attacks either perpetrated or inspired by Islamic State have struck cities across Europe, including Paris, where 130 people were killed in November last year, and Brussels, where 32 people died in March.

Last week, French anti-terror police foiled a terror ring plotting attacks in France.

Seven people were arrested of French, Moroccan and Afghan origin in Marseille and Strasbourg.

French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve did not reveal the intended target of the plot, but did say "the foiled attack was a co-ordinated attack aiming to target several sites simultaneously".

The US State Department urged Americans in Europe to be vigilant against a "heightened risk" of terrorism during the Christmas period.

Fidel Castro: How Cuban leader changed Southern Africa

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who died on Friday, played a crucial role in shaping southern Africa's history, writes Richard Dowden, from the UK's Royal Africa Society.

In Cuba it seems there will forever be two histories of Fidel Castro. 

One is the revolutionary who succeeded and became the guiding star for all who saw the world through the lens of Marxist Leninism. 

The other is the brutal dictator who suppressed democracy and kept his country poor. 

There is one place where Castro undoubtedly made a difference: Angola.

In 1975 a military coup in Portugal overthrew the dictatorship of Antonio d'Oliveira Salazar. 

The country was tired of fighting wars in its colonies in Africa, long after the UK and France had pulled out of their African empires. 

Angola's three liberation movements had been fighting the Portuguese but they were at odds with each other and soon civil war broke out. 

The People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), backed by the Soviet Union, was largely coastal and urban. 

Of the other two, Jonas Savimbi's Unita was supported by apartheid South Africa and Western countries, and the FNLA, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola, was backed by Angola's northern neighbour Congo.

The Vietnam war was just drawing to an end but here, on the West Coast of Africa, a new war began which threatened to become a proxy war for the communist and capitalist superpowers. 

The Americans, whose long and bloody war in Vietnam had scarred the country's conscience, were not ready for another intervention. 

From a distance they backed the FNLA and then worked with the South Africans to support Unita. 

The Russians and Fidel Castro in Cuba supported the MPLA. But while the big players sought a power-sharing agreement, Castro decided to act. 

The Russians sent about 1,000 advisers, money and prayers but no combat troops. East Germany also sent military assistance. 

But for Castro this was not just an adventure or purely ideological. Many Cubans are of African origin and come from the Angolan coast. 

Castro saw an opportunity to exert his brand of international solidarity and make a difference on a global scale. 

He sent 3,000 combat troops and 300 military advisers, as well as tanks and fighter aircraft. 

The battleground was Cuito Cuanavale, a small town in the south on the river Lomba and the gateway to south-eastern Angola where South Africa was training, supplying and directing Unita forces.

The world had changed

The first attacks were in 1983 and a full-scale battle took place in 1986 - the biggest battle in Africa since El Alamein in Libya in 1942.

The largely white South African army took heavy casualties but held the town and stopped the Angolan offensive, preventing it from advancing south and capturing Savimbi's headquarters at Jamba.

There was a stalemate but it was not a situation that South Africa could maintain for long, even though it also controlled neighbouring Namibia at the time. 

Shortly afterwards Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union and began to make overtures to the US. 

I was in Washington at that time and managed to get a briefing on Angola at the Pentagon. I was shown a satellite photograph that showed Cuban and East German airforce bases in southern Angola, some south of Cuito Cuanavale. 

I asked if the South Africans had seen them yet. 

"They will find out soon enough," came the reply.

At that extraordinary moment I realised that the world had changed. 

The Americans had decided that since the Soviet Union was no longer the big threat in the region, the real enemy of peace in southern Africa was the racism of South Africa.

The man whose decision to go to war in Angola had triggered this moment was Fidel Castro.

At least 62 dead as Uganda moves against tribal king

The death toll from a weekend of fighting in western Uganda has risen to 62 after clashes between police and a militia loyal to a tribal king, according to regional police.

An initial 55 deaths had been reported on Sunday.

"So far we managed to kill 46 of the royal guards and we also arrested 139 [guards]," regional police spokesman Mansur Suwed told the Reuters news agency.

He said the number of police killed had risen to 16 from 14 after two officers died from their wounds.

Police arrested King Charles Wesley Mumbere on Sunday and accused his supporters of trying to create a new state in the area near the border with Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mumbere has distanced himself from the cause. However, the authorities accuse his royal guards of training in the mountains beside separatist militia forces to attack government installations.

"The situation is volatile. Several of our guards have been killed after 

Sports Direct faces probe over deal with Mike Ashley's brother's firm

Mike Ashley's Sports Direct faces a probe by the accounting watchdog over an arrangement between the company and a delivery firm owned by Mr Ashley's brother.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) said it had begun investigations into the "preparation, approval and audit" of the sportswear giant's financial statements for the year to 24 April.

It said the probe followed "reports of an arrangement between Sports Direct and Barlin Delivery Limited which was not disclosed as a related party in the company's financial statements".

Sports Direct pays Barlin Delivery, run by the founder's elder brother John, a share of revenues from overseas orders.

It emerged in August that the firm's accounts did not disclose the relationship.

Mr Ashley, majority owner of Sports Direct, has come under intense pressure over the way he runs the firm from both shareholders and politicians.

It follows allegations that workers at its Shirebrook warehouse in Derbyshire faced Victorian conditions.

Mr Ashley, who also owns Newcastle United, has pledged to make changes and invited MPs to come and see the site.

But a visit by members of a Commons committee earlier this month was overshadowed by claims that a recording device was hidden in a tray of sandwiches in a room where they were meeting.

Sports Direct denied knowledge of any device.

Anti-terror police units deployed on London's streets

Anti-terrorism police patrol units are hitting the streets of London in an attempt to spot people carrying out "hostile reconnaissance" and other criminal activity.

Lambeth and Wandsworth will be the first areas to see the new patrol units of uniformed and undercover officers from today, and are due to be extended to other boroughs in the coming months.

Scotland Yard stressed the move was "not in response to a specific threat".

 Operation Servator, as it is known, is a tactic of policing already used by other forces including City of London and British Transport Police.

It "is based on extensive research into the psychology of criminals and what undermines their activities", the Metropolitan Police said.

Other units will also be available, including the dogs and boat units and the territorial support unit riot police.

Image Caption:Metropolitan Police boats with anti-terrorism officers will also be available. File pic

Sophie Linden, London's deputy mayor for policing and crime, said keeping Londoners safe was London Mayor Sadiq Khan's "top priority".

She said: "We know our emergency services do a great job every single day protecting our city. However we cannot be complacent, which is why it is good to see the Met rolling out Project Servator to help deter and detect crime in our city's busiest areas.

"This tactic was endorsed by Lord Harris in his review of London's preparedness for a terror attack, commissioned by the mayor.

"I urge Londoners to remain alert and report anything suspicious to the police as they work to keep us all safe."

City of London Police introduced Servator tactics in February 2014, using undercover teams, CCTV and number plate recognition technology to add to the 1990s "ring of steel" in place around the Square Mile.

Fidel Castro's legacy in Africa

"Many of Africa's leaders today started out as activists, many of our ruling parties started out as liberation movements. And when they were liberation movements, when they were activists, Castro quite literally came to their help" - South African journalist Lynsey Chutel

Francois Fillon defeats Alain Juppe in French presidential primary

Francois Fillon has won France's Republican presidential primary, after his opponent Alain Juppe conceded defeat.

Mr Fillon had won 67% of votes and Mr Juppe was on 33%, according to results from about 90% of polling stations.

The pair, both former prime ministers, were vying to become the centre-right Les Republicains party candidate in the election.

Speaking after his victory, Mr Fillon, 62, said: "I must now convince the whole country our project is the only one that can lift us up.

"My approach has been understood: France can't bear its decline.

"It wants truth and it wants action.

"I will take up an unusual challenge for France - tell the truth and completely change its software."

In Paris, 71-year-old Mr Juppe congratulated Mr Fillon on the "large victory", adding: "I finish this campaign as I began it - as a free man who did not compromise what he is or what he thinks".

He called for unity and calm after a campaign during which he had accused Mr Fillon of pandering to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim feeling.

Mr Fillon is now likely to face a spring showdown with far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who will be seeking to build on that same anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-establishment feeling.

Ms Le Pen has also promised to lower the retirement age and guarantee France's welfare safety net.

A Harris Interactive poll published on Sunday night showed Mr Fillon would beat Ms Le Pen by 67% to 33%.

The victory for Mr Fillon, who is married to a Welsh woman, comes against a national unemployment rate of 10%, weak economic growth, worries about immigration and globalisation and concern about the future of a costly but valued welfare state.

In response, Mr Fillon has proposed spending cuts, increasing sales tax, scrapping a tax on the wealthy, fewer restrictions on the working week and raising the retirement age to 65.

He also wants to limit the adoption rights of gay couples, push for closer ties with Russia and focus on tackling Islamic extremism and reducing immigration to France "to a minimum".

Mr Juppe had promoted a more liberal stance with respect for religious freedom and ethnic diversity, attacking the "brutality" of his rival's manifesto.

Mr Fillon, whose wife Penelope Clarke is British, was the prime minister from 2007 to 2012 under President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was eliminated in the primary's first round a week ago and now is supporting him.

Mr Juppe was prime minister from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac.

In the first round of primary voting on 20 November, Mr Fillon won 44.1% of the votes, Mr Juppe 28.6% and Mr Sarkozy 20.7%.

A second round was held because no candidate secured a majority.

All French citizens over 18 - whether they are members of the Republicans party or not - can vote in the primary if they pay €2 (£1.70) in fees and sign a pledge stating they "share the republican values of the right and the centre".

Socialist Party candidates now have to announce their intention to run before 15 December and their first primary is held on 22 January.

If no candidate gains more than 50%, there is a second round a week later.

The general election is set for 23 April, with a possible second round of voting on 7 May.

The current Socialist President Francois Hollande is expected to announce in the coming weeks whether he will stand for re-election.

His deep unpopularity has undermined the position of the country's Left and there have been calls for his prime minister Manuel Valls to contest the party's primary.