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You’re on your way home. It’s dark. Out of the corner of your eye you see a figure lurking menacingly. As your eyes adjust to the gloom, the figure eases into focus – it’s a clown.

Clown sightings have become an increasingly common occurrence in the US, Australia and Canada. And, fuelled by social media, they are now on the rise in the UK too.

Professional Clowns Hit Out At Pranksters

Thames Valley Police responded to 14 separate clown-related incidents on Sunday, while in Norwich, a man was arrested after an incident in which someone dressed as a clown terrified a woman in a park.

In Durham, four children were followed to school by a clown armed with a knife. But what motivates someone to put on a clown mask and terrify strangers? Matteo Moroni, 29, from Perugia, Italy, is the owner and director of YouTube channel DM Pranks. He’s been terrifying unsuspecting passers-by for three years in a series of frightening videos that have racked up hundreds of millions of views on the video-sharing website.

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A former cabinet minister has likened Russian bombing in Syria to Nazi attacks in Spain in the 1930s ahead of an emergency Commons debate on the humanitarian situation in Aleppo.

Andrew Mitchell accused Russia of “shredding” international law and committing a war crime by attacking a UN relief convoy last month. He compared it to the destruction of the Basque city of Guernica by fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Russia says it is targeting terrorists.

The northern city of Aleppo has become a key battleground in Syria’s bloody five-year civil war.

The UK government has strongly criticised Russia’s bombing of Syria, while French President Francois Hollande has suggested Russia could face war crimes charges over its actions in Aleppo. Mr Hollande also said he might refuse to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is due to visit France next week. Russia has denied carrying out the attack on the aid convoy.

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Ethiopia has declared a state of emergency following months of anti-government protests by members of the country’s two largest ethnic groups.

The Oromo and the Amhara make up about 60% of the population. They complain power is held by a tiny Tigrean elite.

Violence has intensified since last Sunday when at least 55 people were killed in clashes between police and protesters at an Oromo festival. Hundreds have died in months of protests, human rights groups say. Tens of thousands have also been detained, they say.

Declaring the state of emergency, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said in a televised address: “We put our citizens’ safety first. Besides, we want to put an end to the damage that is being carried out against infrastructure projects, education institutions, health centres, administration and justice buildings.” The state of emergency will last for six months.

The protesters have been attacking foreign companies, she says, threatening Ethiopia’s reputation as a growing economy, ripe for international investment. The details of the state of emergency remain unclear, but she adds that protesters have already shown they will not back down when faced with force. Many roads into and out of the capital, Addis Ababa, are blocked by protesters.

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A car bomb attack by Kurdish militants on a checkpoint in south-east Turkey has killed 10 soldiers and eight civilians, Turkish officials say.

The attack in Durak came as soldiers had stopped a car for inspection. A statement said 26 people were wounded in the blast, 10 of them soldiers. No group has admitted the attack.

Turkey has been fighting a Kurdish insurgency for decades and fears Kurdish gains in neighbouring Syria will fuel Kurdish separatism at home.

A statement by the Turkish army said the attack occurred at 09:45 (06:45 GMT) outside a gendarmerie checkpoint some 20km (12 miles) from the town of Semdinli, Hakkari province. The governor of the province Cuneyit Orhan Toprak said the attackers had first opened fire on the soldiers at the checkpoint to distract them before driving a minivan and detonating it.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said it had been perpetrated by “a suicide bomber who detonated a van with five tons of explosives”.

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After a two-day manhunt, German police have captured a Syrian man believed to have been planning a jihadist bomb attack.

Jaber al-Bakr, who arrived in Germany as a refugee, was detained in a flat in the eastern city of Leipzig in the early hours of Monday. He had sought help from another Syrian, who had alerted police and tied him up, reports say.

The hunt began after police found explosives at Mr al-Bakr’s flat. In the initial raid in the eastern town of Chemnitz early on Saturday, Mr al-Bakr, 22, evaded capture as officers fired a warning shot in a botched attempt to stop him.

Police then found a detonator, explosives and a kilo of chemicals in his Chemnitz flat. Unconfirmed reports suggest the substance was TATP, a homemade explosive used jihadist attacks in Paris and Brussels over the past year.

Security sources referred to Mr al-Bakr’s apartment as a “a virtual bomb-making lab”, and carried out a controlled explosion. German authorities feared a possible plan to target an airport in Berlin.

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