A Conservative Party treasurer was forced to resign last night after secretly recorded video footage caught him offering to sell access to the Prime Minister. Peter Cruddas, a senior party fundraiser, told undercover journalists from the Sunday Times that donations worth a couple of hundred thousand pounds would secure regular invitations to dinner with David Cameron and his Cabinet colleagues. Mr Cruddas explained to the prospective donors that annual sums of around £250,000 would guarantee “premier league” status within the party which would allow them to spend time with Mr Cameron and to raise policy concerns with Downing Street. “It will be awesome for your business,” he said. Last night, Mr Cruddas tendered his resignation and claimed that he had been exaggerating donors’ influence during the meeting. “I deeply regret any impression of impropriety arising from my bluster in that conversation,” he said. “Clearly there is no question of donors being able to influence policy or gain undue access to politicians.” His characterisation of the situation had been very different when he thought he was speaking privately. Mr Cruddas is seen boasting that he could help big donors get invited to No. 10 or Chequers and claimed they would be able to lobby Mr Cameron and George Osborne directly. The reporters were pretending to be foreign wealth fund executives based in Liechtenstein, making them ineligible to make donation

Adrift since a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan last March, a Japanese fishing boat has been spotted off the west coast of Canada - more than 3,500 miles (5,633km) from where it went missing. The 150-foot (46-metre) vessel was seen about 138 miles (222km) off British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands. The boat was spotted by a Canadian Forces aircraft on a routine surveillance patrol, said Transport Canada, and its Japanese owner has been notified. An aerial inspection suggested that there was no-one aboard. A military photograph showed the rusting ship floating 278 kilometres (150 nautical miles) off the southern coast of Haida Gwaii islands, some 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) north of Vancouver. “The vessel is considered an obstruction to navigation,” said Transport Canada in a statement, adding that it was being monitored for pollutio

Syrian armoured troops met heavy resistance from defected soldiers as they launched an offensive today to re-take a small town which has been held for months by rebels. Government forces moved into Saraqeb covered by heavy shelling, with 26 tanks rolling into the area around the central market. The soldiers were accompanied by shabiha, the militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, and plain-clothes security agents. They arrived by the bus load to arrest scores of people in raids, activists reported. Today’s march upon Saraqeb came 11 days after regime troops retook the nearby city of Idlib, the capital of the north-western province of the same name and a hotbed of resistance to Assad’s repressive rule. Communications to Saraqeb were cut today, but activists there told the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that in the market area, ar