Reports also suggest Shakil Afridi was jailed for links to Islamists, not for helping America

Uefa have suspended Besiktas from European competitions for one year and fined them €200,000 due to financial problems at the Istanbul club, Turkish media reported today.

German football players and officials will travel to Poland Friday to visit the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, after a friendly against Israel ahead of the European Championship.

The exit of Sly Bailey as chief executive of Trinity Mirror looked yesterday as though it could happen sooner than expected, after the troubled newspaper group abruptly replaced its chairman.

The fight for Egypt's future looks likely to boil down to a showdown between the Muslim Brotherhood and a former fighter pilot with ties to the old regime, as the last votes were tallied in a presidential election that one leading activist said would lead to a “second revolution”.

African Union troops seized a rebel stronghold near Mogadishu from al-Qa'ida-linked insurgents today, marking a major blow against the al Shabaab rebels who have used the town to stage sporadic attacks on the capital.

A suicide bomber drove into a school in northern Yemen's al-Jawf province where members of a Shi'ite Muslim rebel group had gathered for Friday prayers and killed 12 people, the defence ministry said.

French President Francois Hollande made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan today to visit some of the French troops he wants to pull out later this year, defending his plan for their early exit after meeting his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai.

Commander Sarah West today becomes the first woman in history to command a Royal Navy warship when she takes up her post on the Type 23 frigate HMS Portland in Rosyth. Cmdr West is pictured here aboard HMS Shoreham in October last year.

A Shia Muslim man has pleaded not guilty to charges of insulting the Prophet Mohamed and the Sunni rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on Twitter.

Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi has died in Tripoli, his brother said today.

The launch of a privately owned Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was delayed today when a computer detected a possible problem with one of the rocket's engines.