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Police may now have to shoot terrorists at the wheel of vehicles to stop them being used in attacks, the national lead for armed policing has said.

Officers were previously told not to shoot drivers of moving vehicles because of the additional dangers it posed, Simon Chesterman said. But he said the approach had changed in the wake of attacks such as those in Westminster, Nice and Berlin. He added officers now had ammunition to penetrate doors and windows.

Last month, Khalid Masood killed four people on London’s Westminster Bridge when he mounted the pavement in a car and drove into pedestrians.

One of the biggest challenges previously faced by police was the risk of bullets bouncing off the glass of vehicles in such attacks, said Mr Chesterman, of the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

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One policeman has been killed by gunmen who opened fire on a checkpoint near St Catherine’s monastery in Egypt’s south Sinai, officials say.

Another three police officers were injured in the attack several hundred metres from the church entrance. So-called Islamic State group said its fighters carried out the attack.

Located at the foot of Mount Sinai, St Catherine’s is one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world and a Unesco world heritage site. It is part of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Tuesday’s attack comes just days after bombings at two Coptic Christian churches left 45 people dead.

The attacks have raised security fears ahead of a visit to Cairo by Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Egypt’s Christian minority makes up about 10% of the pre-dominantly Muslim country of 92 million people.

A US aircraft carrier and other warships did not sail towards North Korea – but went in the opposite direction, it has emerged.

The US Navy said on 8 April that the Carl Vinson strike group was travelling to the Korean peninsula amid tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.

Last week President Trump said an “armada” was being sent. But the group was actually farther away over the weekend, moving through the Sunda Strait into the Indian Ocean.

The US military’s Pacific Command said on Tuesday that it had cancelled a port visit to Perth, but had completed previously scheduled training with Australia off its northwest coast after departing Singapore on 8 April.

The strike group was now “proceeding to the Western Pacific as ordered”. It is not clear whether the failure to arrive was a deliberate deception, perhaps designed to frighten North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, a change of plan or simple miscommunication.

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Visitors to the Russian defence ministry website can now take a “virtual tour” of a new military base in a remote region of the Arctic.

Such media openness contrasts markedly with Russia’s traditional military secrecy. However, the tour does not show any new military hardware.

The Arctic Trefoil permanent base is in Franz Josef Land, a huge ice-covered, desolate archipelago. The Russian military sees the resource-rich Arctic as a key strategic region.

President Vladimir Putin visited the new base, on Alexandra Land, last month. It is built on stilts – to help withstand the extreme cold – and will house 150 personnel on 18-month tours of duty. Winter temperatures typically plunge to minus 40C.

Covering 14,000sq m (151,000sq ft), it is the second Putin-era Arctic base to be built for air defence units. The first base to be completed was Northern Clover on Kotelny Island, further east. A military airstrip is also under construction in Franz Josef Land, called Nagurskoye.

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Five days before the first round of France’s presidential election, two men have been arrested on suspicion of planning an imminent attack.

The suspects, aged 23 and 29, were detained in Marseille by elite police and domestic intelligence agents after a search that had lasted several days. Both men were said to have been radicalised in prison.

France remains under a state of emergency after a series of attacks that have claimed some 230 lives.

A flat in the rue de Crimée in Marseille’s central third district was being searched amid reports that guns and material used for making explosives had been found. Neither man was from Marseille. They were named as Mahiedine M, 29, and from Croix near the Belgian border, and Clément B, aged 23 and from Ermont, north of Paris.

Interior Minister Matthias Fekl did not say what the suspects’ target was. He described the men as French. “They had the aim of committing in the very short term, in other words in the very next days, an attack on French soil,” he said.

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