Four district officials have been sacked over a stampede on New Year's Eve in the Chinese city of Shanghai that left 36 people dead. 

The first two refugees have been moved from detention on Manus Island

After the Charlie Hebdo attack, a Paris imam went to the scene and condemned the murders. "These victims are martyrs, and I shall pray for them with all my heart," said Hassen Chalghoumi (above). He was also quoted as saying that 95% of victims of terrorism are Muslim. How accurate is this statistic?

The claim is similar to one in a 2011 report by the US government's National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), which said: "In cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be determined, Muslims suffered between 82 and 97% of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years."

However, the report did not say in what proportion of cases it had been possible to determine the victims' religious affiliation - or whether these cases were representative of the others. The answers are not easy to obtain, because the report is no longer produced.

Another US-based team, the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) at the University of Maryland, does still compile terrorism statistics - but it doesn't attempt to determine the religion of people killed or injured. To do so would be "very difficult" says the GTD's Erin Miller.
The reason is that most of the raw data comes from news reports, and these often don't mention the religion of the victims. In about 50% of cases the GTD doesn't even know who carried out the attack.

Miller does point out, though, that between 2004 and 2013 about half of all terrorist attacks, and 60% of fatalities due to terrorist attacks, took place in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - all of which have a mostly Muslim population.

Graphic showing countries where most terrorist attacks take place 2004 -13

So while she doubts that 95% of terrorism victims are Muslim, she thinks the truth might not be far off.

"It's not out of the realm of possibility, given the extreme concentration of attacks in majority-Muslim countries," Miller says.

AirAsia flight QZ8501 climbed too fast before stalling and crashing into the Java Sea

President Barack Obama’s chief of staff on Tuesday took responsibility for not sending a top US official to a Paris unity march after

Six members of a family were unaccounted for after a fierce fire reduced a multimillion-dollar waterfront mansion near Maryland’s capital to a scorched stone framework.

A man jumped to his death from the Manhattan Bridge Monday night, police said.

WASHINGTON — With the American job market surging to life, President Obama plans to use his State of the Union address on Tuesday

The US knew North Korea was behind the Sony Pictures hack because it had secretly infiltrated the country's computer networks in 2010,

Four men are to appear before a judge in Paris on suspicion of supporting one of the gunmen behind the Islamist attacks in France that killed 17.The men, aged 22 to 28, are expected to be placed under formal investigation.

BRUSSELS — European foreign ministers, meeting here in a city patrolled since Saturday by Belgian paratroopers as part of stepped-up precautions against terrorism, called on Monday

MOSCOW — In as clear a sign as any of the unraveling peace process in eastern Ukraine, the authorities in Kiev accused Russia on Monday of again sending regular army soldiers into Ukraine to prop up pro-Russian separatists who were losing a battle.

BERLIN — As Europe braces against potential terrorist attacks after violence in France and Belgium, the German police on Friday arrested two Turkish men suspected of having links to an organization supporting the militant Islamic State and other radical groups fighting in Syria.

PARIS — As France continued to reel from one of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in recent memory, the authorities were grappling with the question of what to do with the bodies of the three gunmen.

PARIS — The French authorities are moving aggressively to rein in speech supporting terrorism, employing a new law to mete out tough prison sentences in a crackdown that is

A recent applicant for a job as a correction officer at New York City jails had several friends who were gang members. Another had been arrested four times and had been fired from a job as a security guard for stealing from the business he was supposedly guarding.

Department of Investigation finds that 10 of 150 guards had more than one arrest. Nearly half of the hires indicated problems during psych exams. One officer admitted having close ties with gang member.

A city probe questioned whether more than 50 recently hired correction officers at Rikers Island are suitable for the job.