BBC News with Jerry Smit.
The White House says it has evidence the chemical weapons may have been used by government forces in Syria. In a letter to members of Congress, the Obama administration said intelligence officials assessed with, what it called, varying degree of confidence that sarin gas had been used on a small scale, although it couldn't say for certain, the President al-Assad's administration was responsible. Our State Department correspondent Kim Ghattas is in Washington.
And the White House is making very clear that they want to investigate further and namely they would like to have the UN investigation go ahead, and they're being very careful about the whole intelligence issue making references to the Iraq war and 14 intelligences there, saying and I quote from the letter that they sent to senators: we have learned from our own recent experiences that intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient. But the White House is going to come under a lot of pressure from lawmakers. They say the red line has been crossed.
The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg says the Boston bombers were on their way to attack New York last week when the police caught up with them. Mr Bloomberg said the information had come from the surviving bomber himself Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Ben Wright reports.
According to officials in New York, the brothers spontaneously decided to drive to the city last Thursday after hijacking a car. They were carrying six explosive devices, five pipe bombs and one pressure cook device of the type used to kill three people and injured many more of the Boston Marathon. But the plan failed when they have to stop for petrol, the car's owner escaped and phoned the police. A manhunt followed that led to the death of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the capture of his brother.
Unemployment in Spain has hit a record high. More than 6 million people are now jobless. That's 27% of the workforce. Opponents of the government say the crisis has been made worse by tough austerity measures. A few hundred left-wing and anarch's protesters in Madrid threw stones and fire crackers at a large contingent of police protecting the parliament building. Tom Burridge reports from Madrid.
Hundreds of police have been deployed, and 18 people have been arrested throughout the day. Spanish police say four of those arrested were planning to set fire to a bank. Spain economy is expected to contract by 1.5% this year. And with so many people out of work, the government has been pushing the idea that too much austerity will only prolong the economy crisis here. Tom Burridge.
Iraqi officials say gunmen have seized the mainly Sunni Muslim town of Sulaiman Bek north of Baghdad after clashes with security forces. A senior army officer told the French News Agency that the military made a tactical withdrawal. But a BBC correspondent in Baghdad said an attempt by the government forces to retake the town had failed.
World News from the BBC
Rescue workers searching through the rubble of a collapsed building outside the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka have found dozens of people alive. The rescue was greeted by loud cheers from thousands of people mass at the scene. Officials say more than 200 people are now confirmed dead.
The British Horse Racing Authority has disqualified a trainer of the leading Godolphin's stable in Newmarket for eight years for doping horses. After Disciplinary Hearing, Mahmoud Al Zarooni admitted giving horses in his care, anabolic steroids to enhance their performance. Here's our Racing correspondent Cornelius Lysaght.
The British Horse Racing Authority says the eight-year-ban from sport reflects how seriously the drug abuses taken in British racing. The doping of 11 horses was detected during sport checks by the authority at the Godophin's stables at Newmarket. The trainer himself admitted doping four others. All 15 horses have been banned from racing for six months until October, a time period in which the effects of anabolic steroids should go through their systems. Repeating that he'd made a catastrophic error, Al Zarooni said in a statement that he apologizes to Sheikh Mohammed, to all of Godophin, and to fans of British Racing.
China has signed a series of trade agreements with France, including a deal to buy 60 Airbus planes and a nuclear waste processing plant. The agreements were finalized during talks in Beijing between the Chinese and French presidents Xi Jingping and Francois Hollande who is visiting China with eight French cabinet ministers and about 60 business executives.
Police in Chile have arrested four people accused of burning a new born baby alive in a ritual. The 3-day-old baby was thrown into a bonfire last November in a town near the Chilean port of Valparaiso. The detained, the mother of the child and other two women and one man are said to be members of a sect who reportedly believed the end of the world is near and that the baby was an antichrist.