Thousands of Filipinos shovelled muck and debris from flood-ravaged homes, shops and roads under a shining sun today after nearly two weeks of non-stop rain shut down the capital and forced hundreds of thousands to flee from the deluge.

THE head of Russia’s deep cover US spying operations has betrayed the network and defected, a Russian paper said, potentially giving the West one of its biggest intelligence coups since the end of the Cold War.