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The Netherlands is sending more forces to contain “serious” post-storm looting on the island of St Martin as Hurricane Irma leaves a trail of destruction.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte said more soldiers and police would be deployed amid reports of people with guns and machetes roaming the streets.

A French minister said she witnessed looting close up. The island is shared between France and the Netherlands.

At least 17 people across the Caribbean have been killed by Hurricane Harvey.

The hurricane has been downgraded to a category four, but US officials have warned that it remains “extremely dangerous”.

The storm has recently pummelled the Turks and Caicos Islands – a British overseas territory which has experienced a top-rated category five hurricane for the first time.

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Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has given a “green light” to security forces to routinely torture political detainees, Human Rights Watch says.

Its new report alleges the interior ministry has developed an “assembly line” of abuse to collect information and prepare often fabricated cases. Officers beat suspects and use electrical shocks and stress positions with “almost total impunity”, it says.

The government has denied allegations of widespread and systematic torture. It has blamed abuses on individuals and said they are held accountable.

The 63-page report released by Human Rights Watch on Wednesday says Mr Sisi, who led the military’s overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi in 2013 following protests against his rule, is pursuing political stability “at any cost”.

The alleged abuses, it concludes, probably amount to a crime against humanity.

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A court in the Indian city of Mumbai has sentenced two men to death for their role in bomb attacks in 1993.

The blasts, allegedly to avenge the killing of Muslims in riots, targeted a dozen sites and killed 257 people.

Firoz Khan and Tahir Merchant were convicted of criminal conspiracy and murder.  Abu Salem, who fled India after the bombings and was extradited from Portugal in 2005, received a life sentence, along with Karimulla Khan. Another man, Riyaz Siddiqui, was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

The room where the sentences were read out looked like any other tired court chamber in India – small with peeling paint and wooden furniture. More than 100 people were packed into the court, mostly police, lawyers and journalists. Some other people had attended out of curiosity.

As soon as the five convicts were brought in, they had their handcuffs taken off and sat with their lawyers. The judge made them wait an hour and a half before arriving at his judgement. Firoz Khan and Tahir Merchant seemed shocked as they were sentenced to death.

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An industrial estate has been evacuated after a blast involving suspected hand grenades.

Excavation work was taking place at Rotherwas Industrial Estate in Hereford before the blast on Wednesday.

West Mercia Police said “suspected phosphorus grenades” were discovered at the site. They were found close to a former World War Two munitions factory.

A 200m cordon was put in place and several homes and businesses evacuated, although no injuries were reported.

People have been told to avoid the area while police and a bomb disposal team remove any further grenades.
Police said the incident is not being treated as suspicious and the cordon is “a matter of precaution”.

Roads are closed from Fir Tree Lane at the junction of The Straight Mile, Skylon View Road at the junction of Beech Lane, and a public footpath running from the north of the city to the estate.

The Syrian army says Israeli jets have attacked a military base in the west of the country, amid reports of a strike on a suspected chemical weapons site.

A statement said rockets fired from Lebanese airspace hit the site near Masyaf, killing two soldiers. Arab media and a monitoring group reported that a chemical weapons production facility was targeted.

Israel, which has carried out clandestine attacks on weapons sites in Syria before, has not commented.
An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to discuss the reports, saying it does not comment on operational matters.

The attack comes a day after UN human rights investigators said they had concluded a Syrian Air Force jet had dropped a bomb containing the nerve agent Sarin on a rebel-held town in April, killing at least 83 people.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said the incident in Khan Sheikhoun – which prompted the US to launch a missile strike on an airbase – was a “fabrication”. He has also insisted his forces destroyed their entire chemical arsenal under a deal brokered by the US and Russia after a Sarin attack outside Damascus in 2013.

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