Australian pilot Paul Royle, who took part in a mass break out from a German prisoner of war camp during the Second World War, has died in his home town of Perth. He was 101.

A Chinese military plane scanning part of a search zone for signs of debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has spotted several objects floating in the sea, including two bearing colours of the missing jet.

US officials are looking into a reported explosion at an ammunition dump in Baghdad, a US military spokesman said today.

Automatic gunfire from a compound housing Afghan militiamen struck ‘‘very close’’ to patrolling German peacekeeping soldiers in the first such incident in more than a month, the UN peacekeeping force said today.