BBC News with Jerry Smit
President Obama has asked the Pentagon to make plans to withdraw all the American troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, if no bilateral security deal is in place. The Afghan President Hamid Karzai has so far refused to sign an agreement to allow some US troops to stay on. From Washington Ian Pannell.
America has more than 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, other Nato countries have less than 20,000 combined. By the end of this year, most of them will have left. Plans have been drawn out for a relatively small force to remain behind to help with training and to carry out what it described as anti-terrorism operations. Though in a telephone call with his Afghan counterpart on Tuesday, President Obama told Hamid Karzai that because he'd refused to sign an agreement covering such a mission, he's asked the Pentagon to plan for a complete withdrawal by the end of this year.
The American Secretary of State John Kerry says the crisis in Ukraine should not be seen as a battle between East and West. He was speaking alongside his British counterpart at a news conference in Washington.
“This is not a zero-sum game, it is not a West versus East, it should not be. It is not the Russia or the United States or other choices, this is about the people of Ukraine, and Ukrainians making their choice about their future.”
Russian-speaking residents have protested against Ukraine's interim authorities in the Crimean Peninsula. Some replaced the Ukrainian flag on a local government building with a Russian flag.
Dozens of students have been killed in an attack on a school in northeastern Nigeria by suspected members of the Islamist group Boko Haram. The authorities say 29 people were killed, others put the figure at about 40. A local journalist told the BBC the gunmen entered the school at night, shooting, burning and slitting the throats of the students. The female students were spared. He said every building in the school had been burned down.
The governor of Yobe state where the attack occurred said that five hours after the raid, not a single member of the security forces had appeared.
Turkish riot police have fired teargas and water cannon at thousands of protesters in Istanbul who were calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. James Reynolds reports from Istanbul.
Several thousand protesters in Istanbul's Kadikoy district gathered and chanted Tayyip Erdogan 'the thief' . The police fired teargas and water cannon to disperse them. The protests followed the posting online of recordings which claimed to show several of the prime minister's private phone conversations. In one of the recordings, Mr. Erdogan is set to order his son to hide large sums of money. The prime minister insists that this particular recording was shamelessly fabricated.
World News from the BBC
Saudi Arabia is setting up a training centre for judges to try to improve their performance, which is regularly criticized both at home and abroad. The Saudi judicial system empowers judges to reach verdicts without reference to precedence. Human rights groups say this leads to inconsistencies and questionable decisions.
The United States has expelled three Venezuelan diplomats in response to the expulsion of three of its own consular officials from Caracas just over a week ago. The Venezuelan government had accused the expelled Americans of having links with violent groups, an allegation they deny. At least 13 people have been killed during weeks of anti-government protests in Venezuela.
A court in Britain has ruled that a man accused of killing four soldiers in an IRA bomb attack in London more than 30 years ago will not be prosecuted, because he was mistakenly given an official guarantee that he would not face trial. The man John Downey from the Irish Republic was accused of leaving a car bomb in Hyde Park in 1982. Matt Prodger reports.
In 2007, the Northern Ireland Office sent John Downey a letter, telling him there is no outstanding direction for prosecution in Northern Ireland. There were no warrants in existence , nor are you be wanted in Northern Ireland for arrest, questioning or charged by the police. Today's ruling says official's discovered the letter was mistaken. He was wanted in London. But he wasn't corrected. In the end the judge concluded that holding state officials to promises they've made was more important than putting the suspected bomber on trial. Matt Pridger.
The sportswear company Adidas says it's withdrawing from sales of some of its Football World Cup T-shirts, following complaints from the Brazilian authorities that the products sexualized the country's image. One garment carried the question ,“ looking to score” next to a scantily-dressed woman.