BBC News with Marion Marshall
The first funerals have taken place in the small Connecticut community of New Town. The scene was one of the worst mass killings in recent US history. Those laid to rest were two six year old boys, Noah Pozner and Jack Pinto. They were among the 20 children and six adults killed by a lone gunman at their school on Friday. Laura Trevelyan is in New Town.
I went past the funeral home where relatives were gathering ahead of one of the funerals that it was just the scene of indescribable sorrow and anguish, parents burying a child in the period just before Christmas and a period just after Hannukah the Jewish festival, so really a very poignant, a heartbreaking moment for this town which is known so much anguish since Friday.
Earlier Connecticut state police said they'd began to analyze the evidence and would continue to interview the large number of witnesses.
Egypt's newly appointed public prosecutor Talaat Ibrahim Abdallah has resigned after serving for only a month. He was appointed by President Mohammed Mursi following Mr Mursi's decision to assume sweeping presidential powers. Mr Abdallah's resignation follows protests from members of the judiciary who said President Mursi's decision to sack the former public prosecutor was an assault on the independence of the judiciary.
An official inquiry in Bangladesh says sabotage caused a fire which killed more than 100 workers at a garment factory last month. Anbarasan Ethirajan reports from Dahka.
The investigative of committee set by the Bangladeshi government has concluded that the fire at the Tazreen fashions factory late last month was started deliberately. But the chief of the committee, Main Uddin Khandaker told the BBC that they couldn't yet say who did it. More than 110 people were killed when the fire spread through the nine-story building on the outskirts of Dahka. Mr Khandaker said they had recommended action against the factory owner. He said that investigation also found that nine mid-level officials of the Tazreen factory prevented workers from leaving the burning building.
The finance minister of Nigeria has blamed the kidnapping of her mother on people angered by recent events involving an oil subsidy scam. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala's mother was released on Friday after being held for five days. The minister said the kidnappers demanded her resignation after she suspended payments to fuel marketers following reports that billions of dollars were being lost in a scam. The BBC correspondent in Lagos says the case is unusual as kidnapping is normally for financial rather than political motives.
Israel has given the go-ahead for the construction of 1500 Jewish settlement homes in east Jerusalem. The controversial plan for settlement expansion was speeded up as part of Israel's response to the United Nations' decision to give the Palestinian authority nonmember observer status.
World News from the BBC
The largest supporters' club the Russian football champion, Zenit St Petersburg, have demanded that the team only signs up white, heterosexual players. It denied being racist but said the absence of black players was as they put it an important tradition of Zenit. It had none until the season. The team coach, Luciano Spaletti said the authors didn't represent the majority of Zenit fans and the team would support work against racism. But the BBC correspondent says the fan's statement has generated the kind of negative publicity that the Russia as the organizer of the 2016 World Cup could do without.
An eighteenth-century Chinese imperial seal has been sold at an auction in Paris for almost $1.5 million despite threats of legal action by a Chinese organization. The association for the protection of Chinese art in Europe had demanded that the seal be withdrawn from the auction because it said it was stolen in 1860 when British and French troops ransacked Beijing Summer Palace. But the auctioneers told the BBC the seal was used in a library in the Forbidden City some 20 kilometers from the palace.
The BBC's African footballer of the year award has just been announced. The award is gone to the Zambian international Christopher Katongo who plays for the Chinese side Henan Construction. He got just over 40% of the vote. The coach of the Zambian football team, Herve Renard, said Katongo was a deserve recipient to the award.
He is a hard worker from this commitment and we can resume a very good professional, and if we are not very good professional, you can't win anything in football. I just would like to congratulate him and to congratulate all this season mates because they have a small part, a part of this trophy, and we are very happy for him.
BBC World Service News