BBC News with Nick Kelly.
The United Nations Weather Agency has warned that the world is on course for the warmest year since records began, which it says confirms a rising trend consistent with climate change. The Head of the UN Climate Change Secretary Christiana Figueres said that high temperatures of vast areas of the ocean surface were particularly worrying.
“The heat is being absorbed by the oceans. There is no doubt that the ocean continues to warm and that on a very very consistent basis, and what it is doing, frankly, is doing us a little favor. They are absorbing the heat that could have gone to the land and paying the price.”
The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, has said that all members of the international coalition against the militant group Islamic State have agreed that military action alone cannot defeat the group. It's necessary to destroy its ideology, funding and recruitment. He was speaking at a meeting in Brussels. Now our correspondent Johnathan Marcus was there.
“What was interesting in what Mr. Kerry said is that this really is a job for the governments and peoples in the region itself. It's not simply a military struggle, and Mr. Kerry noted that the military side was only a small part; it's about tackling the ideology, the outlook, the whole approach of all Islamic State. And of course, one has to say that in a region which is afflicted more and more by catastrophic tensions and pressures, many of the governments are ailing, we've seen all of the upheavals in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring. It's hard to be optimistic about the immediate future of the region.”
Mr. Kerry has said that any Iranian military action against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq would be positive. But he reiterated that the US was not working with the Iranians.
A grand jury in New York has declined to press criminal charges against a white police officer in connection with the death of an unarmed black man in July. Eric Garner was killed by the policeman's stranglehold, a practice banned by the New York police department. Nick Bryant reports from New York.
“Eric Garner's death sparked widespread outrage after a video of the incident was posted online. Filmed in broad daylight, it clearly shows a white police officer holding the unarmed black man in a headlock. Eric Garner, who suffered from asthma, can be heard gasping, “I can't breathe! I can't breathe!” A second video showed him lying motionless on the ground, with police and paramedics making no apparent effort to revive him. He later died in hospital. The grand jury in Staten Island had been asked to consider whether to indict the police officer who held him in a headlock, Daniel Pantaleo. But it has decided against bringing any criminal charges. The Garner family's lawyer said he was astonished.”
World news from the BBC
The Colombian government and the Farc rebels have agreed to resume peace talks that were suspended in mid-November after the kidnapping of an army general. Officials from Cuba and Norway, the two countries that have been brokering the peace process over the past two years said the next round of talks will take place in Cuba this month. Barbara Plett Usher reports.
“In a joint statement, the rebels and the government said they considered the crisis to be over, and had agreed to begin another round of talks next week. The Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos suspended negotiations last month when rebels seized an army general who entered their territory without a security detail. Farc leaders in Havana moved swiftly to arrange his release and that of four other prisoners, but they renewed calls for a ceasefire to protect the talks from similar disruptions, that something Mr. Santos rejects, saying it would allow the rebels to regroup.”
Veneuela's chief prosecutor has opened a formal investigation into allegations that a leading opposition figure Maria Corina Machado conspired to assassinate the president Nicolas Maduro. Ms. Machado, a former congresswoman, led a major street protest against president Maduro's government at the beginning the year. She has dismissed the accusations as a shroud designed to silence her.
Human rights advocates in Pakistan said the bodies of six separatist campaigners have been found over the past week in the province of Sindh. They all showed signs of torture. Civil society activists have recently held demonstrations, alleging that Sindh nationalists have been killed with impunity.
And the head of Sweden's left-of-center governing coalition has called a snap election for March after parliament rejected his minority government's budget. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven took office less than three months ago. He failed to reach a deal with the far rights Sweden Democrats who demanded a reversal in Sweden's liberal immigration laws in return for their support for the budget.