BBC News with Sue Montgomery.
President Obama has told a meeting of senior International military commanders that he's deeply concerned about the continuing Islamic State offensive against the Syrian town of Kobani. He told the gathering near Washington that the campaign against IS would be long term. Senior military figures from more than 20 countries attend the talks. Here's our Washington correspondent John S.
When Barack Obama announced in the White House a month ago that the US was forming a coalition to attack Islamic State, all the talk was a degrading and destroying and making sure there was no safe heavens. Today a more somber assessment of how that campaign is going. Yes, there had been victories, stopping IS in Irbil, retaking a Mosul dam, the rescue of the Yazidis in Mount Sinjar. But the president singled out Anbar Province in Iraq and Kobani on the Turk-Syria border as a source of deep concern. He said there'll be days of progress and periods of setback.
The head of United Nations mission for Ebola has urged the world to act swiftly. Anthony Banbury has warned that the biggest enemy in tackling the disease is time.
I'm deeply, deeply worried Ebola got a head start on us. It is far ahead of us, it is running faster than us and it is winning the race. We can not let Ebola win, for if Ebola wins, we the people of United Nations lose so very much.
Mr. Banbury called for more money, protective suits, diagnostic laboratories and beds. Earlier the World Health Organization warned that the number of people becoming infected with Ebola in West Africa could reach between five and ten thousand a week by the end of the year. Four and a half thousand people have already died. In another development, the UN has warned that the Ebola outbreak is having a devastating impact on the economies of the worst-affected countries. Mark Doyle reports from Akra.
Fear is the main factor driving down the economies of the Ebola-hit nations. The UN says that more than half of the typically bustling markets in Liberia have closed or got smaller. Foreign technicians and engineers are scared, too. Many of them have left the region. Nine out of a dozen large mining companies in Liberia have shut down or reduced operations. A senior UN economist K. N. said farms in the worst-hit Ebola zones of Sierra Leone were also affected.
The US Secretary of State John Kerry has said Washington will cooperate more closely with Russia on globe security despite did divide over the conflict in Ukraine. Speaking after a meeting with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Paris, Mr. Kerry said they had agreed to intensify intelligence cooperation over the Islamic State group.
World News from the BBC.
Hundreds of police in Hong Kong have moved again to try to clear pro-democracy protesters out of an underpass near the city government headquarters. Officers armed with shields fired pepper spray and scuffled with protesters. Local television showed live pictures of the operation. Dozens of the demonstrators were detained. The protesters had been occupying parts of Hong Kong for more than two weeks, demanding forthcoming elections be held democratically.
Police in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro say they have broken up a large net work of illegal abortion clinics. Nearly 50 people have been arrested including doctors, police and lawyers. The raids followed the recent high profile deaths of two women who'd undergone illegal terminations. Abortions are not allowed in Brazil except in strictly defined circumstances.
Britain's most prestigious literary award, the Man Booker Prize has been won by the Australian writer Richard Flanagan. Vincent Doll has more details.
This was the year American authors became eligible for the Man Booker. In the event, however, Richard Flanagan has become the third Australian to take the prize. The Narrow Road to the Deep North has been much praised by critics. It's about a surgeon who, in World War II, is held in awful conditions in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the building of the Burma railway. The author's own father was one of those who survived that experience. And Richard Flanagan finished writing the book just before his father died last year.
A European Championship football match between Serbia and Albania has been abandoned following a brawl involving players and fans. The referees stopped the match in the 41st minute after an Albanian flag was thrown around the stadium by a remote-controlled mini helicopter prompting a fight between the players. Riot police moved in for up to a dozen of Serbian fans then invaded the pitch.