BBC News with Jerry Smit
Germany is sending its intelligence chief to Washington next week to address allegations that the United States has been spying on its allies. The government said it wanted to make sure an investigation into the monitoring the Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone was going forward. EU leaders said growing distrust to the US could harm the fight against terrorism. From Berlin Stephen Evans.
There is no doubt the angrying Germany over the spying allegations, the country's head of the state President Gauck said President Obama should now explain clearly what happened and also how lost trust can be regained. To that end, senior officials in the German security services will travel to Washington next week for talks to their American counterparts. What may be sought are assurances that new tight rules in place to govern who's seen as a legitimate target for surveillance and who is not.
A military curfew remains in force in the northeastern Nigerian city of Damaturu after an attack by suspected militants from the Islamist group known as Boko Haram. Here's Will Ross.
The city of Damaturu was rocketed by gunfire for about seven hours by the time at ended, it's around midnight, police, CID and army buildings have been burnt down. It's not clear how many people were killed but the police ambulance took the dead bodies to the mortuary. The streets of the main city in Yobe state are now deserted after the military imposed a 24-hour curfew, one resident of the city said he saw 19 gunmen, some in military uniform raid the hospital. Meanwhile, the Nigerian army says it killed 74 suspected Boko Harm militants during ground and air strikes on the camps in Borno state.
Syrian state television is claiming that Mohammed al-Jolani, a leader in the Islamist rebel group, the Nusra Front, has been killed. There has been no independent verification of the report and an official Syrian news agency later withdrew a similar claim. The radical Islamist organization has been seen as one of most powerful rebel groups in Syria.
The medical charity MSF says more than 130,000 Syrians have fled the heavy bombing in the northern Al Safira district in the past two weeks. They have been forced to flee to areas that already struggling to cope with a huge influx of displaced people. MSF says humanitarian aid isn't sufficient and medical establishments are often being targeted. In New York, the United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos told the Security Council that about 2.5 million Syrians were still trapped beyond the reach of aid workers and an action was urgently required.
It is a race against time, as we deliberate, people continue to die unnecessarily. I call upon all members of the council to exert influence and take the necessary action to stop these brutalities and violence.
World News from the BBC
Hundreds of Eritrean refugees have held a mock funeral outside the Italian parliament to remember the victim of a shipwreck earlier this month. More than 350 people most of them from Eritrea drowned when their boat sank near the Italian island of Lampedusa. Italy's Prime Minister Enrico Letta has pressed fellow European leaders to give more help to Mediterranean countries to address the issue of illegal migration. But the EU pushed further discussion of the problem back to following summits.
Roman leaders and right activists in Bulgaria have expressed concerns about media coverage of the case of a blonde girl removed from a Roman family in Greece. DNA tests have established that the Bulgarian-Roman couple are the parents of the girl named Maria. This report by Nick Thorpe.
As police in Greece and Bulgaria tried to investigate whether any money changed hands between her natural parents and those with whom she was found. The case also illustrates the depth of poverty in which the Roma still live throughout eastern Europe. The director of Bulgarian Helsinki Committee Krassimir Kanev told the BBC that the media attention surrounding Maria's case could undermine years of patient work integrating the Roma into mainstream society and overcoming negative stereotypes of the Roma as child traffickers or thieves.
Lawyers for the Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta have asked the international criminal court to postpone his trial for crimes against humanity, citing last month’s attack on the Westgate shopping center. They want the hearing due to begin next month to be delayed until February. Mr. Kenyatta's defense team argued that the trail will prevent him from exercising leadership doing what they described as an International crisis. Earlier, the court ruled that Kenya's deputy President William Ruto has to attend most of his trial for crimes against humanity.