Donald Trump on Tuesday urged tough action against the "animals" behind the suspected terror attack in Westminster.

The US president said on Tuesday morning in a tweet: "Another terrorist attack in London…These animals are crazy and must be dealt with through toughness and strength!"

A driver was arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences after a car crashed into security barriers outside the Houses of Parliament at high speed on Tuesday morning.

At least three people were injured when the silver Ford Fiesta hit a group of cyclists and pedestrians waiting for traffic lights to change. Witnesses said the car mounted the pavement on the wrong side of the road at up to 50mph and travelled around 40 metres (130ft) before hitting a bollard.

Armed officers swooped in to arrest the driver, removing him from the vehicle at gunpoint.

Later images showed police holding the man, dressed in jeans and a black puffer jacket, in handcuffs as roads and Underground stations around parliament were sealed off.

"The driver of the car, a man in his late 20s… was arrested on suspicion of terrorist offences," said police.

"There was nobody else in the vehicle, which remains at the scene and is being searched. No weapons have been recovered at this stage."

Police have yet to identify the suspect, who was not cooperating with detectives, said Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu.

Mr Trump’s comments follow controversial remarks in the past surrounding terrorism and crime in London.

In July Mr Trump used a newspaper interview ahead of his visit to the UK to blame Sidiq Khan, the mayor of London, for terror attacks in the capital.

"Take a look at the terrorism that is taking place. Look at what is going on in London. I think he has done a very bad job on terrorism," he said.

Following the release of official figures in October last year, showing an increase in recorded crime, Mr Trump controversially linked the rise with the "spread of radical Islamic terror".

His interpretation of the statistics, which included offences ranging from burglary to fraud, prompted politicians to describe his comments as "inflammatory" and "ignorant".

French fisherman threatened to reignite a simmering “scallop war” after surrounding rival British boats and pelting them with stones in a row exacerbated by Brexit negotiations.

British fishermen have called on the Government to intervene, with some asking for Navy protection after UK boats were trapped by an armada of French fisherman furious at them stripping scallop beds before they are authorised to do so.

Rocks, smoke bombs and other projectiles were hurled at English and Scottish vessels during the confrontation in the early hours of Tuesday.

Dramatic footage showed boats colliding as an object was thrown toward them.

Some of the British vessels are said to have later returned to UK harbours…

An anaesthetist gassed his wife and daughter to death using a yoga ball filled with carbon monoxide, a Hong Kong court has heard.

Prosecutors told the High Court that Khaw Kim-sun left the inflatable ball in the boot of a car where the gas leaked out and killed them, according to reports from court Wednesday.

His wife and 16-year-old daughter were found on a roadside in a locked yellow Mini Cooper in 2015, in a case which initially baffled police.

The pair were certified dead at the same hospital where Khaw worked and a post-mortem concluded they had died from inhaling carbon monoxide.

Police found a deflated yoga ball in the back of the car.

Khaw cried Thursday as the pathologist who examined the bodies was called to testify and began to give details about the autopsy he carried out on his daughter, according to an AFP reporter in court.

Khaw has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder.

Prosecutors had said Wednesday that Khaw, a 53-year-old Malaysian national, was having an affair with a student and his wife would not grant him a divorce.

They accused him of hatching a deliberate plot to murder his wife, the South China Morning Post reported.

Prosecutors said it was likely that Khaw had not intended to kill his daughter.

The court heard that in a police interview, Khaw had said he had urged his younger daughter to stay at home and finish her homework on the day of the deaths, according to Apple Daily.

Khaw had been seen filling two balls with carbon monoxide at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was an associate professor, reports said.

He told colleagues he planned to use the gas on rabbits but later told police that he had taken it to get rid of rats at home.

The family’s domestic helper Siti Maesaroh told the court Thursday that the couple’s three other children had gone to school on the day of the deaths, but Lily was having a holiday.

She said the children had a good relationship with their parents.

Siti added that Khaw and his wife had separate bedrooms and cooked their meals separately, but said she did not know anything about their relationship.

The couple’s eldest daughter is due to testify Friday.

India’s big gamble to ban its largest denomination notes failed to flush out stockpiled cash and hurt the economy, according to data from the country’s central bank.

The widely used Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were withdrawn from circulation in a shock announcement in August 2016, leaving the public only a couple of months to bank their cash before it became obsolete – resulting in riots as queues snaked around bank branches, leaving nearly 100 people dead.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) yesterday said that 99.3 per cent of the discontinued notes had returned to the banking system, rather than being spent in the wider economy as hoped by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, who has repeatedly defended the scheme.

The thinking behind the hugely controversial policy was to counter the culture of hoarding cash – especially in the locked, steel almaris (wardrobes) that are ubiquitous in Indian households – by forcing people to either spend it or put it into banks, where it could be taxed.

The plan was also intended to flush out “black money”, cash earned illegally, by making its owners either bank it or destroy it, claimed the Finance Ministry.

The replacement notes – a new Rs 500 and a Rs 2,000 note – were also aimed at battling forgery and reducing bribery, as well as promoting a digital economy, Mr Modi claimed.

But the result was chaos. For several months in 2017 there were cash shortages, with daily withdrawal amounts being reduced and tales of senior business executives having to borrow cash from their domestic staff as they had no access to any themselves.

Not as much cash was hoarded as believed, and what was kept at home was largely put back into savings accounts, according to RBI figures.

And while Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claimed that the policy had overall been a success, economists said the programme had cost the country 1 per cent of GDP and around 1.5 million jobs.  Today the rupee sits at an all-time low against the dollar.

Professor Mohan Guruswamy, of the Administrative Staff College of India, said: “The amount of black money is very little as cash; most of it is held abroad in the form of gold, property and other instruments. Even today, we’re still a cash economy so you need cash to pay daily.”

As Iranians brace themselves for the effect of the latest US sanctions, a new social media campaign has been launched asking officials to disclose their wealth and how their relatives might have benefitted from their support for the regime.

The hashtag #where_is_your_kid? began trending on Twitter last week following news reports that some politicians’ children were apparently being promoted to top state jobs despite a lack of experience and enjoying luxury lifestyles with their inflated wages.

The campaign gathered steam after the circulation of photos of the extravagant wedding of Mohsen Muradian, the son of Iran’s ambassador to Denmark, to Iranian model and designer Anashid Hosseini, which…

A teenage Youtube star has been killed in a car crash after driving 100mph down the wrong side of a motorway in California.

Trevor Heitmann, an online star who called himself McSkillet, was reportedly driving faster than 100mph when his £200,000 McLaren sports car crashed head-on into an SUV, killing its driver and passenger.

A 43-year-old San Diego woman and her 12-year-old daughter, who were travelling in the Hyundai SUV, died in the incident, the Medical Examiner’s Office said on Friday.

The California Highway Patrol and San Diego Police Department identified the sports car driver as 18-year-old Heitmann.

Pictures of the aftermath of the crash show pieces of burned and twisted metal.

Under his online alias, Heitmann had made a fortune selling digital "skins" used to customise guns and knives in the first-person shooter video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO).

But he was banned from an online marketplace for allegedly being involved in a skin gambling website called CS:GO Magic and had allegedly been suffering from mental health issues.

Heitmann, who had almost a million followers on YouTube,  is thought to have lost access to hundreds of thousands of dollars after being banned.

One eyewitness who saw the crash, Hector Puga told NBC News: "That car in front of me swerved, slammed and exploded within a fraction of second all I could do was hold on to my steering wheel and run over everything that exploded."

A woman who witnessed the crash told 10 News: "It was like a scene from a movie. All the cars were stopping. There was smoke. Fire. Loud noise.

"As soon as I look up in front of me, that car other there was flying and tumbling down the freeway."

Anthony Brennan, who identified himself as Heitmann’s friend and business partner, said on Twitter: "The fact is that three people lost their life and my heart is broken for all of them.

"I pray that they are all in a better place and for their family and friends and loved ones. You never know what’s happening in someone’s life and it will take time to understand this whole thing."

Donald Trump has signed an executive order allowing for sanctions over election meddling amid fears Russia, China, Iran and North Korea could target the November midterms. 

Any individual, entity or country which authorises, directs, sponsors or supports interference could be hit with economic penalties under the US president’s new order. 

The punishments could include blocking assets, restricting export licenses, limiting access to US banks or even deporting those who are found to have been involved. 

It is an attempt to guarantee the legitimacy of the congressional and state-wide elections on November 6 as well as future votes after Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential race. 

The move will ease pressure on Mr Trump to act. He was heavily criticised in July for not blaming Russia for the 2016 interference during a press conference with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in Helsinki. 

John Bolton, the White House national security adviser, said the action showed that Mr Trump has “taken command of the issue” of election meddling, adding: “It is something he cares deeply about”. 

Dan Coats, the US director of national intelligence, said that the intelligence community had not yet spotted activity on a scale of that seen before the 2016 election, but warned that escalation was only a “keyboard click” away. 

He named Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as countries who could have the capability to interfere in the November midterms and were being monitored by US intelligence. 

Both men gave a briefing on Wednesday outlining details of the executive order, which creates a framework to act should election meddling be identified. 

First the intelligence services will have 45 days to assess whether there has been an attempt to manipulate or influence a US election. 

Then the US attorney general and Department of Homeland Security will have a further 45 days to decide whether to go forward with sanctions. 

Mr Coats said that in such circumstances “automatic sanctions” will come into effect. The State Department and Treasury can then decide whether to impose more hard-hitting sanctions. 

The move appears designed to be a shot across the bows of hostile countries, warning them off attempting to influence the midterm elections which are now just eight weeks away. 

Local teams running the elections have been trained on how to protect their systems from cyber-attack. Intelligence officials believe the US electoral system is better protected now than it was before the 2016 vote. 

Mr Coats said of the executive order: “This clearly is a process put in place to try to assure that we are doing every possible thing we can, first of all, to prevent any interference with our elections, to report on anything we see between now and the election, but then to do a full assessment after the election to assure the American people just exactly what may have happened or may not have happened."