Jerusalem authorities restricted access to one of Judaism’s holiest sites on Monday after a massive stone block from the Western Wall fell to the ground below, narrowly missing a worshipper.

Mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement "the stone, weighing 100 kilograms (220 pounds), fell close to a woman who was praying… without hitting her".

He described the fact that nobody was harmed in the incident as "a great miracle".

The statement said that Barkat visited the scene with the city engineer and safety officials, who declared the spot dangerous and closed it to the public pending further inspection.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of Jewish worshippers thronged the main, gender-segregated Western Wall esplanade for annual prayers mourning the razing of the biblical-era temples.

Monday’s incident occurred at a less-visited part of the wall, where men and women are permitted to pray together contrary to Orthodox Jewish practice.

The Western Wall, in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, is the holiest place at which Jews are allowed to pray.

They believe it is what remains of a supporting wall of their biblical second temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

Immediately above it is the flashpoint shrine known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the holiest in Judaism, revered as the spot where the two biblical Jewish temples once stood.

To Muslims it is the Haram al-Sharif compound, the third-holiest in Islam after Mecca and Medina, and home to the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock

It was late afternoon on a humid Saturday in June and Prayuth Jetiyanukorn, the abbot at a temple in Mae Sai, northern Thailand, was angry. 

His concierge, Ekapol Chanthawong, had not returned to finish his shift after his regular coaching session with the ‘Wild Boars’ children’s football team.

But as night fell, the abbot’s anger shifted to worry. Mr Chanthawong, 25, a conscientious and reserved young man, normally left work at this time to take care of his elderly grandmother.

He had still not appeared.

By 8pm, the frantic parents of the team’s players, aged 11-16, began to arrive at the gates of the Phrathat Doi Wao temple. 

“Where are our sons?” they pleaded desperately.

But it would be ten…

White Helmets rescuers who were unable to escape Syria have told of their fear of reprisals from the regime after their colleagues were evacuated by its bitter enemy Israel.

Some 100 civil defence workers and 300 members of their families were evacuated out of southern Syria over the weekend, in a complex international mission that saw hundreds of others left behind.

Rescuers who remain trapped say they are worried they will now be seen as collaborators and could face arrest, or worse, by government forces.

“We are in great danger,” said Abu Muhannad, a civil defense administrator in the Deraa countryside who was involved in coordinating the operation.

“After our colleagues’ departure, the danger is even greater,” he told Syria Direct website, using a pseudonym. “The accusations against us have grown and there is a new one – that we are working with Israel.”

Another said he was trying to avoid pro-government checkpoints which were springing up around Deraa, as he was afraid his name would appear on a blacklist.

"We haven’t left the house in days as we don’t know what will happen to us,” Abu Omar told the Telegraph via WhatsApp. “I feel they are moving in.”

The White Helmets, which receives funding from the UK and other western countries, is considered a terrorist organisation by the Bashar al-Assad government because of their work in areas controlled by the armed opposition.

The Syrian foreign ministry condemned what it called a “criminal operation” by Israel to evacuate the volunteers. 

Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, Syria’s Grand Mufti, meanwhile, said that the White Helmets are “war criminals” and urged the Syrian and Russian governmesst to prosecute them.

"These people are not refugees. They are war criminals. I would like to ask the governments of our countries to follow the members of the White Helmets group and find them wherever they are," said the country’s spiritual leader.

Civil defence workers and their headquarters have regularly been targeted by Syrian and Russian jets, in attacks which have left more than 250 dead.

They were excluded from the evacuation deals struck between Russia and the rebels in Deraa earlier this month, which saw more than 9,000 fighters, their relatives, activists and journalists, bussed to Idlib province in the north.

The plan to evacuate the rescuers was formulated two weeks ago by Canada and European allies who were growing increasingly concerned about their fate.

Those who wanted to leave were asked to submit their names for vetting by international actors involved in the negotiations.

Then, two days before the evacuation, they received a text message that read just: “Head to the border with Israel”.

The nearby frontier with Jordan had just come under hostile Syrian and Russian control and so the only way out was through the Israel-occupied Golan Heights.  

Some rescuers did not agree to go through Israel – either because of their objection to dealing with the Israel Defence Forces or because there was no guarantee of where they would end up.

Others, however, did not hear of the plan in time and were unable to reach the assembly points.

Those that did, travelled on foot in the dark on the night of July 21.

It was a journey fraught with danger, and one woman had to undergo an emergency C-section before continuing on with her newborn son.

Once they reached the Israeli border, their names were checked and they were given ID bracelets before being boarded onto waiting buses which would take them to neighbouring Jordan.

Abu Muhannad and his family attempted the journey several hours after the group but instead stumbled across a government checkpoint, where they were stopped and told they could not pass as there was fighting ahead between the army and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil)-affiliated Jaish Khaled bin al-Waleed militia.

“I fear the government will soon take revenge against us,” he said.

In the end, 98 White Helmet volunteers and 324 family members made it out, only half of those who signed up for evacuation.

A spokesman for the White Helmets told the Telegraph that they were working to get the rest of the volunteers out safely, however, another mission was too dangerous to attempt for now.

“As Syrians we love our country,” a statement from the organisation read. “It breaks our hearts to be forced to leave it, but it was the only alternative for our trapped volunteers who would otherwise have face death or detention at the hands of the Syrian government and its Russian allies.”

The evacuation took an unprecedented level of agreement and coordination between international players – something they have rarely demonstrated during eight years of war in Syria that have pitted world powers against one another.

The UK, Germany, France and Canada have agreed to resettle the 422 now waiting in Jordan within the next three months. The US, which took part in the negotiations, was reportedly unwilling to accept any itself.

Canada has said it will take up to 250 people, while the UK has not yet declared how many it is willing to take in.

Bob Seely MP, a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told the Telegraph: “The White Helmets have been singled out by the Syrian regime – and their Russian backers – and deliberately targeted. They have been smeared as terrorists in a mendacious and squalid social media campaign supported by the Assad regime (and Moscow).

“One of the few decent things that we can do in regards to the Syrian war is to give asylum to a decent share of the very small number of individuals and families that have come out of Syria.  They are seen as heroes by many, and rightly so.”

The UK has provided nearly £40million to the White Helmets, which at its peak had some 3,000 rescuers workers operating in rebel-held areas of the country.

A newly opened shopping mall on Mexico City’s south side partly collapsed Thursday after structural problems led the mall’s operators to quickly evacuate the area.

Miraculously, no injuries were reported.

Officials said a support beam failed in a cantilevered office area on the top floors that stuck out from the main mall building.

Restaurant worker Juan Ramon Hernandez said people in the mall were evacuated only about five minutes before the offices sheared off.

"We heard a big noise and they began to evacuate us from the plaza," said Hernandez. "About five minutes later was when the collapse happened."

Witnesses described how the multi-story section collapsed in a cloud of dust and twisted metal, some of which fell into lanes of a major freeway, which had been closed shortly before the collapse.

The Artz Pedregal mall opened in March, though parts remain under construction. It had drawn the ire of neighbors worried about the loss of open space, congestion and other issues.

Built on the edge of the city’s main expressway, the mall had suffered previous subsoil slides.

Mexico City Mayor Jose Ramon Amieva said the collapse occurred in an area of offices, and experts were investigating whether the collapse of the cantilevered area was due to structural defects or soil settling.

"They noticed that a separation was occurring" between the overhang and the rest of the building hours before the failure, Amieva said.

Calling it a "case of negligence," the mayor said the mall’s construction permits and other authorizations should be reviewed as investigators try to find out what happened.

In a statement, the mall’s operator said it notified city authorities when it noticed signs the area was collapsing. It said it regretted the impact the accident was having on traffic on the notoriously crowded Periferico expressway. At least two lanes were closed.

The mall was controversial in part because it threatened to clog traffic, and because it was built near a rain catchment basin that serves to regulate the city’s seasonally heavy rainfall.

The risk posed by substandard building has been a longstanding issue in Mexico City, where many poorly built or designed buildings collapsed in the city’s 1985 and 2017 earthquakes.

The city also has notoriously bad subsoil conditions, and developers often build on unstable land.

In 2016, while foundation work was still being done on the mall, a retaining wall next to the expressway partly collapsed. 

North Korea has started to dismantle a key missile test site, in a sign that the country is prepared to obey a commitment it made to the US.

The 38 North website, which monitors the country, said recent satellite images indicate the rogue state began dismantling key facilities at its Sohae Satellite Launching Station in the past two weeks.

A rocket engine test stand used to develop liquid-fuel engines for ballistic missiles is among the facilities that are being taken apart, according to the report.

Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, pledged to destroy a missile engine test site during a historic Singapore summit with Donald Trump, the US president, in June.

“Since these facilities are believed to have played an important role in the development of technologies for the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile program, these efforts represent a significant confidence building measure on the part of North Korea,” Joseph Bermudez, an analyst and expert on North Korea’s weapons programs, wrote in the report.

After his June 12 meeting, Mr Trump said the North Korean leader had told him that the North was “already destroying a major missile engine testing site” without identifying which site. A US official subsequently told Reuters that it was Sohae.

The leaders concluded their summit by declaring an aspirational goal of moving towards a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

On Tuesday Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said the report was “consistent” with the commitments Kim made in Singapore but stressed that the rogue state must “completely, fully denuclearise”.

An official from South Korea’s presidential office confirmed Tuesday that Seoul has also been detecting dismantlement activities at the Sohae launch site in recent days.

Jenny Town, managing editor of 38 North, which is based at Washington’s Stimson Centre, said the work at Sohae could be an important move to keep negotiations going.

"This could (and that’s a big could) mean that North Korea is also willing to forgo satellite launches for the time being as well as nuclear and missile tests. This distinction has derailed diplomacy in the past," she said.

However analysts have expressed scepticism over whether the current steps reduce the North’s military capability or represent a material step toward denuclearisation.

Adam Mount, a senior defence analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, said it was troubling that the state has been unilaterally dismantling parts of its nuclear and missile facilities without the presence of international inspectors.

"Dismantling the engine test stand is a good move, but about the bare minimum that can be done at the site," said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California.  

"Unless they dismantle the whole site, it will remain it will remain North Korea’s premier location for space launches."

She added: "North Korea does not need the Sohae engine test stand anymore if it is confident in the engine design. As Kim Jong-un said himself, North Korea is moving from testing to mass production."

On Friday, senior US officials called on Kim to act on his promise to give up his nuclear weapons and said the world, including China and Russia, must continued to enforce sanctions on Pyongyang until he does so.

On Monday, the US State Department issued an advisory together with the departments of Treasury and Homeland Security alerting businesses to North Korea’s sanctions-evasion tactics.

It said they should "implement effective due diligence policies, procedures, and internal controls to ensure compliance with applicable legal requirements across their entire supply chains."

In a tweet early on Monday, Mr Trump rejected "Fake News" that he was angry because progress was not happening fast enough with North Korea.

"Wrong, very happy!" he said in the Tweet.

A report in The Washington Post at the weekend said that in spite of positive assessments Mr Trump has given on progress with North Korea, he has vented anger at aides over a lack of immediate progress.

Last week, Mr Trump said there was "no rush" and "no time limit" on denuclearization negotiations.

US Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said on Thursday it was technically possible for North Korea to eliminate its nuclear weapons program within a year, but added that it was not likely to happen. 

Italy’s treatment of a group of asylum seekers rescued in the Mediterranean exposed simmering tensions within the country’s populist government on Friday.

The 67 migrants were plucked from the sea earlier this week by an Italian-flagged merchant ship, then transferred to a coast guard patrol vessel and disembarked in the port of Trapani, Sicily, late on Thursday.

Matteo Salvini, deputy prime minister and head of the hard-Right League party, had delayed their disembarkation for hours, calling for police and prosecutors to question two African migrants alleged to have made death threats against the crew of the merchant ship, the Vos Thalassa, because they feared being sent back to Libya.

But in a rare intervention, Sergio Mattarella, Italy’s president, demanded that the migrants be allowed off the ship for humanitarian reasons.

The request was acted on by the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, a former law professor who was picked as a neutral intermediary between The League and their coalition partners the Five Star Movement.

Mr Salvini expressed “regret and amazement” at the intervention by the president.

But Luigi Di Maio, the head of Five Star and also a deputy prime minister, said the head of state’s decision should be respected.

Mr Salvini’s strident anti-migrant rhetoric and his decision to ban NGO rescue ships from Italian ports has led to a dramatic rise in support for The League.

But it has been criticised by some MPs from the Five Star Movement, which has a strong centre-Left element, straining the cohesion of the coalition.

Roberto Fico, a high-profile Five Star figure and the speaker of the lower house of parliament, has spoken out against Mr Salvini’s decision to force NGO rescue ships to head to other countries such as Malta and Spain.

“I would not close the ports,” he said two weeks ago during a visit to a migrant reception centre in Pozzallo, Sicily.

Libya was dangerous for migrants, who routinely say they are beaten, tortured and raped by smugglers, and humanitarian groups had done “extraordinary work” in the Mediterranean, he said.

Mr Salvini has been so vocal and visible since the coalition was sworn in last month that it sometimes seems as if he is interior minister, foreign minister and prime minister all rolled into one.

His high profile has eclipsed that of Mr Di Maio and The League is now more popular than Five Star, according to some polls.

A recent survey found that support for The League had increased from 17 per cent in March’s general election to 31.2 per cent, outstripping Five Star’s 29.8 per cent.

Publicly the two parties insist there are no differences between them but the extraordinary rise of Mr Salvini and The League is a direct threat to Five Star, which was supposed to be the senior partner in the coalition, having won far more votes at the general election.

The migrants who disembarked in Sicily denied that they had made threats to the crew of the Italian merchant ship.

"We didn’t attack anyone, there were five or 10 minutes of great confusion and fear, but we didn’t want to hurt anyone," they said through a cultural mediation official.

"We were terrified, we didn’t want to go back to Libya. We were ready to dive into the sea and risk our lives rather than being sent back.”

Meanwhile, a fresh crisis loomed on Friday, with the arrival in the Mediterranean of a boat carrying 450 asylum seekers.

Mr Salvini insisted the boat was in Maltese waters and was the responsibility of the government in Valletta.

“Malta, the smugglers and the do-gooders of Italy should know that this boat CANNOT and MUST NOT arrive in an Italian port,” he wrote on Twitter. "We’ve already done our bit, understood?"

Turkey’s two-year state of emergency imposed after a failed coup is due to expire on Wednesday night, but critics of the government say new powers obtained by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan make the move "cosmetic".

The state of emergency, which allowed the president to rule by decree, was called on July 20, 2016 after a deadly coup attempt and was extended seven times.

Mr Erdogan promised to lift the state of emergency if re-elected. However, under a new presidential system Mr Erdogan has increased powers to appoint judges and prosecutors, call a state of emergency and issue decrees.

Harun Armagan, vice chairman of the human rights committee for Erdogan’s AKP party, defended the emergency measures as necessary for public safety. “The [state of emergency] measures that were taken actually were very effective," he said.

"It made Turkish borders, Turkish citizens, Nato borders much more safer and this year we haven’t seen any major attacks in this country.”

In the post-coup purge, 160,000 people were detained and a similar number dismissed from state jobs, according to the UN human rights office. Soldiers, police officers, academics and journalists are among those behind bars.

A UN report accused Ankara of using the state of emergency to justify torture of detainees and influence the judicial system.

A new bill proposed on Monday by the Turkish government would continue some measures in the state of emergency for three years, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

The legislation would allow for the dismissal of state workers and the detention of suspects of certain crimes for up to 12 days. Demonstrations could also be limited and government-appointed governors could restrict people’s entry into some regions.

Gamze Tascier, an opposition CHP politician, said the new bill means the state of emergency will, in effect, continue for three more years. “We don’t accept this. We are against state of emergencies both [in] name and spirit,” she said.

Nicholas Danforth, a senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said that the mix of the proposed bill and the new presidential system allows Mr Erdogan to have the same level of authority he had under the state of emergency. “The change is cosmetic at best,” he said.

Mr Danforth said the move to end the state of emergency was likely an attempt to assure Western governments and foreign investors that Turkey was moving to a more stable and functional state, amid serious economic concerns over rising inflation and a plummeting currency.

“Turkey would very much like to present this to the West as a sign of things returning to normal but this alone is unlikely to convince the United States government or relevant financial actors that there’s been a dramatic change," he said.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that talks on Sunday between US and North Korean officials to discuss the return of remains of US service members killed in the 1950-53 Korean War "resulted in firm commitments."

It was the first time in nine years that US and North Korean generals held talks. The two sides met on the inter-Korean border on Sunday and agreed to resume joint field activities to search for the remains of Americans missing from the war, Pompeo said in a statement.

"Today’s talks were productive and cooperative and resulted in firm commitments," he said.

The repatriation of US remains was one of the agreements reached during an unprecedented summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in June in Singapore.

Working level meetings will begin on Monday to coordinate the next steps for the repatriation of remains, including the transfer of those already collected in North Korea, Pompeo said.

The Pentagon has said North Korean officials have indicated in the past they have the remains of as many as 200 US troops. But a U.S. military official familiar with the matter said last month it was not clear what North Korea might hand over.

US forces brought some 100 wooden coffins into the DMZ last month, which will be used to transport the remains, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

About 7,700 US military personnel still remain unaccounted for from the Korean War, US military data show. More than 36,500 U.S. troops died in the conflict.

The German interior minister is facing calls to resign following the suicide of a migrant he joked about.

Horst Seehofer threatened to bring down Angela Merkel’s government in a major rift over migrant policy earlier this month.

But now he is facing a crisis of his own after a remarkably ill-judged joke at the expense of migrants.

Mr Seehofer told a press conference earlier this week of his delight that Germany had deported 69 rejected asylum-seekers to Afghanistan on his 69th birthday. 

“And I didn’t even order it,” he told reporters with a grin. As interior minister, he has demanded a tougher migrant policy and more deportations

At the time Mr Seehofer was condemned by political opponents over the remarks, but widespread disapproval has turned to public anger after it emerged that one of the deported migrants he was referring to committed suicide on arrival in Kabul.

More than 60,000 people had signed a petition calling on Mr Seehofer to resign over the remarks by Thursday morning.

“Deportation is not a joking matter,” Thomas Oppermann, deputy speaker of the German parliament and a senior figure in Mrs Merkel’s main coalition partner, the Social Demorcats (SPD), said.

“Seehofer is a pathetic cynic and does not have the character to be fit for office,” Kevin Kühnert, the influential leader of the SPD youth wing tweeted. “His resignation is long overdue.”

“An interior minister who publicly relishes people being sent back to a war-torn country obviously has not only a blatant lack of humanity, but is also unqualified for his office," Ulla Jelpke of the opposition Left Party said. “In my view, Seehofer should be dismissed.”

“Obviously he is morally overtaxed in his office and simply unfit to perform his duties,” Anton Hofreiter of the opposition Green Party said. “Deportations to war zones are wrong.”

The unnamed 23-year-old migrant who took his own life had lived in Germany since he was 16 years old. His asylum claim was rejected, but he was allowed to remain in Germany because of the dangerous situation in Afghanistan. He had criminal convictions in Germany for theft and assault.

In a controversial decision, Mrs Merkel’s government has ruled that much of Afghanistan is safe and started returning rejected asylum-seekers to the country.

Mr Seehofer is expected to survive the controversy — not least because his resignation could plunge the government into renewed crisis.

But by taking on Mrs Merkel so directly he has made a powerful enemy. The chancellor is unlikely to help him if he makes any more gaffes.

A six-year-old girl who was recorded crying in a detention centre after being separated from her mother at the US-Mexico border has been reunited with her.

The mother, Cindy Madrid, who had fled from El Salvador, was reunited with her daughter Alisson at Houston airport after weeks apart.

Last month Alisson was heard on a tape published by ProPublica, reciting a phone number for her family as she was detained.

At a press conference in Houston,  Alisson, speaking though an interpreter, said: "I was away from her for a month and I was really happy when I saw her. I was happy because I was able to see her and hug her."

Her mother said: "It’s so hard for a parent to be away from their kids. I was so desperate."

The family’s lawyer said they would be living together in Houston before an asylum hearing at an as yet unknown date.

The mother had been held at a detention centre in Houston and her daughter had been taken to one in Arizona.

Under the "zero tolerance" policy employed by US President Donald Trump they were separated after crossing the border illegally. Mr Trump later reversed the policy.

It came as a judge in California ordered the Trump administration to pay the costs of reuniting illegal immigrant parents with children separated from them at the border, rather than forcing the parents to pay.

The US government is still working to reunite more than 2,500 children with their parents.