A growing number of residents in West Virginia are being instructed to avoid using water following a chemical spill into the Elk River in Charleston that has prompted a state of emergency in nine counties.

A French comic who is considered anti-Semitic was banned from performing last night just hours after a court in Nantes said he could go ahead with his show.

An Indian envoy at the centre of a bitter, simmering diplomatic row is on the way back to Delhi after she was ordered to leave the US as part of a deal brokered by the two countries.

The New York Times, then less than two years into its distinguished existence, was among the first with the news. ?We have obtained from Washington,? proclaimed its front page on January 20, 1853, ?the subjoined statement of the circumstances attending the seizure and recovery of the negro man SOLOMON NORTHROP [sic], whose case has excited so high a degree of interest.?

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro has made his first public appearance in nine months.

?Ndrangheta, the Italian crime syndicate that has overtaken Cosa Nostra as Italy?s most powerful mafia organisation, moves in mysterious ways.

Amiri Baraka, the tireless activist and writer, has died aged 79 in hospital in New Jersey.

The leader of the France's Front National believes the far-right party and Ukip share a common set of values and should join forces to bring down the ?European Soviet Union?.

Just one week into Colorado?s landmark experiment in legalisation, the state?s regulated recreational marijuana stores are believed to have sold more than $5m worth of cannabis products to about 100,000 buyers.

At least 50 people in the US attempting a trick to turn boiling water into ice have been scalded.