Iran has handed over its long-awaited response to the West's offer of incentives to halt its suspected nuclear weapons programme, after a warning by one of its top military leaders that any strike against it would trigger war.

Wang Kanghua ran down the street to Juyuan Middle School as soon as her house stopped shaking from the earthquake, and dug with her fingers to find her daughter, Zhou Yating.

The former US Senator Jesse Helms, a legendary isolationist and defender of “Southern values” who spent much of his life goading liberals, died yesterday.