BBC News with Julie Candler
The governor of the besieged Syrian city of Homs says around 200 people were evacuated during the day. Earlier, the Syrian Red Crescent managed to get trucks of food into the old city. Lyse Doucet is in Homs.
Three large buses pulled up, most of the passengers were young men. They were brought into the abandoned ballroom being used as a reception centre along with a small number of women and children. But the men will now be questioned separately about their involvement in the war. An operation the UN says, it's watching closely to ensure they are not mistreated. Some men told us, they were fearful of their future. But everyone we spoke to was relieved that at last, their long ordeal inside the besieged old city was now over.
At the peace talks taking place in Geneva, the opposition delegation laid out its transition plan, but the government representatives refused to discuss it.
The governor of Borno state in northeast Nigeria says 39 people, including women and children have been killed in an attack on the town of Konduga. The attack has been blamed on the Islamist militants. From Lagos Will Ross reports.
What’re we hearing is that a large number of very-well armed fighters went into this town of Konduga late on Tuesday. They were in pickup vehicles, a quite number of them dozens, a resident said. According to the people who survived the attack, they said that they saw the soldiers there simply flee. They were outnumbered and outgunned, and then the armed Islamist militants presumably from the group known as Boko Haram, they then shot dead many, many people, it's difficult to know the exact numbers. The governor of the state who's been into the area said he counted 39 bodies.
One stumbling block in the South Sudanese peace talks has been removed. Seven prominent politicians have been allowed to travel to the talks in Ethiopia. They were detained at the beginning of the crisis, but subsequently conditionally released. The rebels had insisted they must take part in the negotiations.
Much of Britain is continuing to experience some of its worst weather for years with gusts of wind reaching over 160km/hr. Thousands of homes are flooded. One of the most senior members of the military had described conditions as an almost unparalleled natural crisis. Angus Crawford has been watching developments on the River Thames.
A steady stream of sandbags has now been offloaded from lorries and been made ready for local distribution. There are still 14 severe flood warnings along the Thames, and with more bad weather forecast, the environment agency is warning the water levels could rise further later in the week, possibly equalling 1947 which were the worst British floods of the 20th century.
World News from the BBC
At least 15,000 protesters wearing the red shirts, the Brazil's landless movement, have gathered around the Congress in the country's capital Brasilia. The protesters say they intend to deliver a letter demanding land reform to President Dilma Rousseff. There have been some scuffles with reports of teargas being fired by the police. The movement is known for occupying farms it considers unproductive, and offering them to landless workers.
A judge in the American state of Kentucky has ruled that the state must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. This removes the clause in Kentucky's ban on same-sex marriages. The judge, John G. Heyburn II, said the existing law was demeaning to gay and lesbian people, he said the clause violated the US constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law.
The American scholar Wendy Doniger says she's very disappointed that all copies of her book on Hinduism will be pulped in India over a legal row. The Penguin publishing company withdrew The Hindus: An Alternative History after Hindu campaign group alleged that the book offended Hindu sentiments. Ms. Doniger said the Indian law which was used against the publisher must be changed.
“The law is very cruel and it criminalizes a publisher for publishing a book that offends Hindu. So, it is the law that must be changed. Publishers, all publishers in India are subjected to this law, and many of them simply dropped the books as mainly there is any trouble. It was wonderful for Penguin to fight as long as they did.”
State media in China say the country's first moon rover has died on the Lunar surface. The craft known as Jade Rabbit landed on December 15th, but began experiencing technical problems last month. The state-owned news agency Xinhua said the rover could not be restored to full function. Correspondents say this failure was likely to be seen as a major setback to China's ambitious space program.