BBC News with Sue Montgomery.
The Syrian city of Palmyra appears to have fallen to Islamic State militants, leaving one of the greatest archaeological sites in the Middle East at great risk. Syrian
State Television says the government troops have withdrawn. Our Arab Affairs Editor Sebastian Usher has more.
An eyewitness in Palmyra told the BBC that Islamic State fighters have taken the city. He says that soldiers and pro-government militias are no longer to be seen on
the streets. The news raises fears for any remaining residents who may face brutal reprisals, but may also give IS the opportunity to wreak destruction on ancient
Palmyra. That’s what they’ve taken great public violation doing in Iraq, bringing in bulldozers, power drills and explosives to eradicate all trace of Nimrud and
Hatra.
Six of the world’s largest banks have been fined nearly 6 billion dollars by British and American regulators, for colluding to manipulate currency markets and
interest rates. They are Barclays, JP Morgan, CITI Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of America and UBS. Traders used internet chat rooms to fix rates, with one
writing, “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying”. Michelle Fleury reports.
They called themselves the “Cartel”. In a secret chat room, traders of CITI Group, JP Morgan, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland colluded to manipulate the price of
US dollars and euros between December 2007 and January 2013. The four banks pleaded guilty to conspiring to rig the world’s biggest financial market, the foreign
exchange market. Swiss bank UBS and Bank of America both avoided guilty pleas, but had to pay fines for their role in the scandal.
US intelligence officials have released new documents seized from the raid in Osama Bin Laden’s secret compound in Pakistan, in which he was killed four years ago.
They include details about what books and newspaper articles the Al-Qaeda leader was reading at the time. Here’s Barbara Plett Usher.
There are application forms for people who wanted to join Al-Qaeda, so you have the standard questions like name, age, marital status, but there are also questions
like “do you wish to execute a suicide operation” and “who should we contact if you’re martyred”. He was trying to keep members coming, and trying to keep them
organized, and trying to make sure they got the training that they needed and carry out operations he wanted them to carry out. But in this isolated place in Pakistan
there, with very poor communications, he had difficulty doing so.
Nearly 600 members of the Nigerian military have appeared before 2 courts martial, charged with disciplinary offenses related to the ongoing fight against the Islamist
group Boko Haram. Human rights lawyers say some of them are accused of mutiny. They say corrupt officers have often stolen funds meant for weapons and equipment.
World News from the BBC.
The British Finance Minister George Osborne has told the Confederation of British Industry that the European Union risks pressing itself out of the world economy
through costly regulation. But the Confederation’s President Sir Mike Rake said business leaders should make it crystal clear that EU membership was in the national
interest. Britain’s membership will be put to a referendum by 2017.
Scientists working in northern Kenya have unearthed the oldest stone tools ever found. More details from Rebecca Morelle.
About 150 tools were excavated in Kenya. They include sharp flakes of stone used for cutting, hammers and heavy rocks that most likely served as anvils. Tests show
they are 3.3 million years old, which means they predate the earliest humans. It was thought that homo habilis was the first of our ancestors to use tools, but this
one suggests even more primitive species despite being ape-like with small brains may have been advanced enough to produce this early technology.
Brazil has stopped busing Haitian immigrants from northern Brazil to Sao Paolo, the country’s largest city, after some 500 Haitians arrive in search for jobs,
overwhelming the city shelters. The government suspended the bus service for two months. More than 50 thousand Haitians have migrated to Brazil since 2012, when the
country started granting humanitarian visas after Haiti’s earthquake two years earlier.
The owner of an auction house in Florida has been sentenced to three years in jail for helping to smuggle rhino horns, elephant ivories and coral from the United
States to China. Christopher Hayes was caught in a sting operation when he bought endangered black rhino horns from an undercover agent. In a statement, the US Justice
Department said it was the first such conviction of an auction house and should serve as a warning.