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Japan says it scrambled fighter jets on Sunday after eight Chinese military aircraft flew between Japanese islands.

The planes, thought to be bombers, surveillance planes and one fighter jet, flew along the Miyako Straits, between Okinawa and Miyakojima.

China said about 40 of its aircraft had been involved in what it said was a routine drill. The planes did not cross into Japanese airspace, but the move is being seen as a show of force by China. It comes one week after Japan said it would take part in joint training exercises with the US navy in the South China Sea.

Japan’s top government spokesman said Japan would be watching China’s military movements closely. Tokyo will «continue to devote every effort to vigilance and surveillance and rigorously enforce steps against intrusions into our airspace based on international law and the self-defence forces law», said Yoshihide Suga.

The Miyako Strait is a strategically important 250km (155 miles) wide stretch of water south of Okinawa and close to Taiwan. It is also close to a group of islands in the East China Sea which are claimed by both Japan and China.

Japan, which controls the islands, calls them Senkaku, while China calls them the Diaoyu Islands.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed the country’s former parliament speaker as head of its foreign intelligence service.

Sergei Naryshkin is a longstanding Putin ally and reportedly served alongside the president at the KGB, Russia’s Soviet-era security service. Mr Naryshkin previously served as the president’s chief of staff. His appointment comes amid reports that Mr Putin intends to combine Russia’s intelligence services.

According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Mr Putin wants to combine the domestic espionage service, the FSB, and the foreign service, the SVR, to create a new Ministry of State Security (MGB), reminiscent in scope and power of the KGB (Committee of State Security). Approached by the paper, Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman, did not confirm or deny the reports.

Mr Naryshkin’s appointment comes at a time of heightened tensions between Russia and the West, following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

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India has signed a formal agreement with France to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets for $8.7bn (7.8bn euros; £6.7bn), in a major defence deal.

Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian signed the agreement in Delhi on Friday. PM Narendra Modi had announced the purchase in January.

India is looking to modernise its Soviet-era military and the deal is the result of years of negotiation. «You can only ever be completely sure once [the deal] has been signed and that’s what happened today,» Mr Le Drian told AFP news agency after Friday’s signing ceremony.

The first Rafales are expected to be delivered by 2019 and India is set to have all 36 jets within six years. Friday’s deal is a substantial reduction from the 126 planes that India originally planned to buy, but is still the biggest-ever foreign order of Rafale fighters, AFP says.

French President Francois Hollande has hailed it as «a mark of the recognition by a major military power of the operational performance, the technical quality and the competitiveness of the French aviation industry».

The deal was first mooted in 2012 but faced major delays and obstacles over terms and conditions.

Yahoo says «state-sponsored» hackers stole information from about 500 million users in what appears to be the largest publicly disclosed cyber-breach in history.

The breach included swathes of personal information, including names and emails, as well as “unencrypted security questions and answers”. The hack took place in 2014 but has only now been made public. The FBI has confirmed it is investigating the claims.

Stolen data includes names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords, but not credit card data, Yahoo said. It said the information was «stolen by what we believe is a state-sponsored actor» but did not say which country it held responsible.

News of a possible major attack on the technology firm emerged in August when a hacker known as «Peace» was apparently attempting to sell information on 200 million Yahoo accounts.

On Thursday, Yahoo confirmed the breach was far bigger than first thought. Yahoo is recommending all users should change their passwords if they have not done so since 2014.

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Islamic State militants may have fired a chemical rocket at American troops based in Iraq, the US military says.

A rocket that landed within several hundred yards of US troops at Qayyarah air base near Mosul may have contained mustard agent, it said. No-one was hurt in Tuesday’s attack on the base, which is home to several hundred US soldiers. If confirmed, it would be the first chemical weapons attack on coalition forces in Iraq.

Troops stationed at the base are equipped to deal with chemical attacks. «On September 20, mid-afternoon Iraq time, the Iraqi air base at [Qayyarah] West came under attack by indirect fire,» the Pentagon said in a statement. «An initial test of the remnants of the weapon used returned a positive test for a mustard agent. The device, likely a rocket or mortar, was imprecise and crude.» Following decontamination, no service personnel showed signs or symptoms of mustard exposure, the Pentagon said. «This attack has not impacted our mission in any way, nor have we changed our security posture in the area around [the base],» the statement added. «We train and equip ourselves and our partners for just this type of eventuality.»

There was no immediate confirmation of the attack in Baghdad, Quentin Sommerville. However, there have been 20 documented cases of chemical weapons being used against Kurdish fighters in Iraq and a quarter of those cases involved mustard gas.

IS has long been suspected of making and using crude chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria, where it also controls territory. Mustard agent in sufficient quantities can maim or kill by damaging skin, eyes and airways.

Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, has been under IS control for the past two years and the battle to retake it is expected to begin in the coming weeks. US troops are providing assistance to local forces as they prepare for the offensive.