Insurers have drawn up plans for the world’s first private navy to try to turn the tide against Somali pirates who continue to plague the global shipping industry by hijacking vessels for ransoms of more than £100m a year, The Independent has learnt.
The new navy, which has the agreement in principle of several shipping groups [...]
Barack Obama made an angry personal attack on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday, saying claims by Iran's president that the United States carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks to prop up Israel were "hateful, offensive and inexcusable".
Obama also used an interview with BBC Persian TV to appeal directly to the people of Iran, defending UN sanctions and [...]
The world's most powerful woman will start coming into her own next weekend. Stocky and forceful at 63, this former leader of the resistance to a Western-backed military dictatorship (which tortured her) is preparing to take her place as President of Brazil.
As head of state, president Dilma Rousseff would outrank Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, and [...]
Two years ago, Philippe Croizon could barely swim at all. Now the 42-year-old French quadruple amputee has become the first limbless person to swim the English Channel. "I did it. I'm so happy. I can't believe it. It's crazy," he said after swimming the 21 miles from Folkestone to the French coast.
Mr Croizon's legs and [...]
My father, Professor Syed Mohammed Naseer, who has died aged 81, was a teacher and leftwing thinker of unwavering commitment. Though he spent most of his life in Pakistan, he was born in Rai Bareli, Uttar Pradesh, south of India's border with Nepal. When independence and partition came in 1947, he was a student in [...]
Russia has confirmed that it will not deliver advanced air-defence missiles to Iran in the face of strong opposition from the US and Israel – demonstrating that Moscow is willing fully to support international pressure on the Islamic regime.
General Nikolai Makarov, the armed forces chief of staff, told Russian media today that delivery of the [...]
The Berlin artist and former East German dissident Bärbel Bohley, who has died aged 65 of lung cancer, briefly became a world figure in the tumultuous and dangerous political events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the collapse of the communist regime in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) [...]
The drums roll. With a publicity machine that becomes a story in itself, Tony Blair has his say about the New Labour era. Peter Mandelson has his, too. They speak loudly and selectively as they leap back on to the stage. They are not alone.
There is a mountain of diaries, books and autobiographies that seek [...]
The day starts early, at a petrol station alongside a roaring Jerusalem road. The mood among the 15 Israeli women is a little tense, but it's hardly surprising – they're about to break the law and with it one of the country's taboos. They plan to drive into the occupied West Bank, pick up Palestinian [...]
Allies of Nicolas Sarkozy came under mounting pressure today to explain how and why the French counter-intelligence services were used in an allegedly illegal investigation into damaging leaks to one of the country's most respected newspapers.
Paris prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin said today he had written to the DCRI, France's equivalent of MI5, asking it to explain [...]
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