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A senior North Korean military officer who oversaw spying operations has defected, say South Korean officials.

The officer has not been named, but the defence ministry in Seoul said he was a senior colonel in the Reconnaissance General Bureau and left last year.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted a source as saying the colonel was seen as elite by other defectors. More than 28,000 people have fled North Korea since the end of the Korean War, but high level defections are rare.

Last week, 13 North Koreans who had been working in one of the North’s restaurants abroad defected as a group. Yonhap said a number of senior political figures had defected while working overseas recently.

It quoted government officials as saying this was a sign the leadership of Kim Jong-un was cracking.

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Islamic State (IS) militants have retaken a strategically important town in northern Syria from rebel forces, activists and the jihadist group say.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that al-Rai was overrun early on Monday after intense fighting.

Al-Rai is close to the border with Turkey and is a key supply route into IS-held territory in Aleppo province. IS had lost the town last week in an assault by rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The jihadist group controls a large swathe of territory across northern Syria, but has been pushed back in a number of areas in recent months by rebels, Kurdish fighters and Syrian government forces.

Since the end of March, rebel factions backed by Turkey have seized more than a dozen IS-held villages along the Syrian-Turkish border.

On Thursday, they captured al-Rai after a two-day battle with militants in the town, and threatened to push on towards the nearby IS strongholds of Dabiq and al-Bab. But four days later, IS was able to regain control of al-Rai and six villages to the west, according to the Syrian Observatory (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, and the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), an opposition activist network.

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Syrian rebels have seized control of the strategically important northern town of al-Rai from so-called Islamic State (IS).

The fall of the town is a boost for the rebels as they battle to capture the divided city of Aleppo.

Al-Rai’s capture after several days of heavy fighting secures an important supply line from Turkey for the rebels.

Separately, at least 200 people are missing after an IS attack on a factory near Damascus, the government says. Workers were reportedly taken from a dormitory where they were staying on the outskirts of the town of Dumeir, about 40km (25 miles) east of the capital. Activists from the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights say about 140 workers managed to escape. Initially there was confusion over who attacked the factory, with some sources suggesting the abductions were carried out by a rebel group called Jaysh Tahrir al-Sham.

A factory administrator said no-one had been able to contact the workers since the assault on Monday. The area around Dumeir has seen fierce fighting between government forces and IS militants in recent days.

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There has been outrage after Italian state television aired an interview with the son of one of the country’s most infamous Mafia bosses.

Giuseppe Salvatore Riina appeared on RAI to promote a book dedicated to his father, Toto Riina. He did not condemn his father, thought to have ordered more than 150 murders while boss of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra.

Executives at RAI have been summoned to Italy’s anti-Mafia parliamentary committee.

During the interview the younger Riina, himself a convicted mobster, said he had a happy childhood, calling his father “an upstanding man who respects family and traditional values”. Riina refused to acknowledge the Mafia’s existence, describing it as “everything and nothing at all”.

Italian politicians and victims of Mafia crimes condemned the interview, conducted by veteran talk-show host Bruno Vespa.

Salvatore Borsellino, whose brother Paolo was assassinated on the elder Riina’s orders, said he was nauseated by the interview, calling it a “reopening of wounds” in a Facebook post (in Italian). “I don’t care if Riina’s hands caressed his children. They are the same hands covered in the blood of innocents,” Italy’s former chief anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso wrote.

Mr Vespa defended the interview as a valuable insight into the life of a Mafia family. Toto Riina was arrested in 1993, and is currently in jail after being convicted of several murders.

The target of a plot to murder students in a Columbine-style massacre in Loughborough can now be revealed.

Michael Piggin was detained indefinitely in 2014 after he was found with a weapons stash and detailed plans to attack Burleigh College. A judge banned the media from naming the college or identifying his friends Jacob Crouch and Ryan Towell, both now 20, who admitted possessing explosives.

The Court of Appeal has now overturned the order. Crouch and Towell were fighting to have the original court order which granted them anonymity, extended for life and not just until they were 18. But the deadline to lodge a further appeal against the ruling lapsed at midnight on Wednesday and without further challenge the BBC is now allowed to publish further details about Michael Piggin’s plot. Piggin had faced two trials for terrorism-related offences but in both cases the jury failed to reach a verdict. However, he admitted possessing explosives and a knife and was subsequently detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act.

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