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Syria's military has said its joint airstrikes with Russia have killed at least 400 insurgents over the past 24 hours - as Vladimir Putin reaffirmed his support for Syrian President Bashar al Assad.The strikes are being carried out after insurgents led by jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al Sham and including Turkey-backed fighters launched a two-pronged attack on Aleppo, Syria's second largest city, on Saturday. The rebels then moved into the countryside around the provinces of Idlib and neighbouring Hama.Syrian and Russian airstrikes have mainly been carried out on rebel positions in those two provinces, Syria's military said.Syria's opposition-run White Helmets rescue service said on Monday that at least 25 people, including 10 children, have been killed in airstrikes carried out by the Syrian...

President Biden had seemed so adamant. He would leave the Justice Department to make its own decisions.Hunter Biden would not be granted clemency for gun and tax convictions just because he was the president's son. But that was before he dropped out of the presidential race. A lot has changed since then. A lifetime in politics has just weeks left to run.Joe Biden's presidential legacy will be marked more by his failure to keep the country from swinging to the Republicans under Donald Trump than it will be for a last-minute pardon of his son. A reversal, yes - but hardly surprising he is choosing family first.The decision was announced after a weekend in Nantucket, which has long been the Biden family's traditional Thanksgiving getaway spot. ...

The French government is heading towards collapse after far-right and left-wing parties said they would vote for a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Michel Barnier.It follows Mr Barnier's decision to use special powers to force the social security budget through the lower house of parliament without a final vote after a last-minute concession was not enough to win support from the far-right National Rally (RN). RN leader Marine Le Pen said her party would table its own no-confidence motion but would also vote for any similar bill from other parties."The French have had enough," she said."Maybe they thought with Michel Barnier things would get better, but they were even worse." Mathilde Panot, from the hard-left France Unbowed party, said: "Faced with this umpteenth denial of demo...

Members of an organised crime gang which smuggled up to £7bn worth of drugs into the UK from the continent have been jailed.The gang was behind what is believed to be the biggest drug smuggling operation ever detected in the UK. Judge Paul Lawton described the gang's drug smuggling operation as being "on an industrial and hitherto unprecedented scale".The defendants were separated into two trials at Manchester Crown Court with reporting restrictions lifted following the conclusion of the second trial which lasted nine months.The first trial was 23 months, the longest ever in England and Wales. The lifting of the reporting restrictions means the details of the investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA) can now be revealed.The gang's ringleader Paul Green, 59, known as The Big Fella, w...