Hello, I’m Justin Green with the BBC news.
After hours of heated discussion, European leaders have agreed to take in tens of thousands migrants who've arrived in the EU, but only on a voluntary basis. More than
150,000 migrants have attempted to enter the EU this year. Damian Grammaticas in Brussels has more.
"The leaders argued until well after two in the morning about how to deal with the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. France’s president said there'd been moments
of tension, but eventually Europe's nations all agreed that they will help on taking in 40,000 asylum-seekers from Italy and Greece, and with 20,000 outside the EU.
Hungary, which has seen thousands of migrants cross its border by land, and Bulgaria, one of the EU’s poorest countries have been both granted exemptions. The UK has
a opt-out which it's using, while nations in Eastern Europe refused to accept set quotas. So this game will only be voluntary.
Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi expressed disappointment at the small numbers involved, but said there was an agreement at all was a sign of progress.
"As you know, the agreement is not entirely defied at the end of the first day, an agreement that could be much more ambitious. It mentions 40,000 persons, but it is
the first step to say that finally there's an European policy rather than a policy of one single state."
The Greek debt crisis was also on the agenda in Brussels after Athens and its international creditors again failed to agree on measures to prevent a default. The
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a meeting of Euro Zone ministers on Saturday would be decisive in finding a solution. She said government leaders couldn’t
intervene in the negotiations with creditors and there was no new money available.
Reports are coming in over an attack on African Union base in Somalia. Military sources say a suicide car bomber drove at speed into the main gate of the base illegal
along the main road connecting the capital Mogadishu and B. They say dozens of al-Shabaab fighters were involved. The BBC's Mohammed B in Mogadishu has been speaking
to eye witnesses.
"So they say a suicide car first of all hit the gate of the army base and then heavy shooting has erupted. They say in a few moments the peaceful dawn turned into
violent attack thunderstorm, and now the situation is tensional still, and the shooting is going on there according to the resident."
The International Crisis Goup has warned that western counter-terrorism policies in Saharah region of North Africa are failing. The Brussels-based campaign group
condemned the tendency to label nonviolent Islamists as potential jihadists. It said youngsters in Niger, Chad and Libya with little access to education or jobs saw
migration or Islamism as their only future. It said doners should tie development aid to improve governments instead of counter-terrorism measures.
BBC news.
Nine people in Northern Nigeria have been sentenced to death for blasphemy. The verdict was handed down by an Islamic court in the state of Kano, which met in secret.
The defendants are thought to include one woman. The head of the religious police in Kano told the BBC that he had pleaded guilty.
Funerals have been held for two of the African Americans shot dead by a white gunman in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Police officers stood guard as mourners
remember Sharonda Singleton and Ethel Lance. Later today, President Obama will deliver an eulogy at the funeral of the church’s pastor, Clementa Pinckney, who was
also a state senator.
Queen Elizabeth will visit the site of the former concentration camp in Berlin, Bergen-Belsen on the final day of her state visit to Germany. The camp where the
teenage diarist Anne Frank died of typhus now serves as the memorial of those who died at the hand of the Nazis. Before visiting the camp, the queen will view the
Brandenberg Gate in Berlin. Peter Hunter reports.
"These are two potent reminders of Germany’s past. The Prussian-built Brandenberg Gate, which came to symbolize the country’s cold war division and Bergen-Belsen,
where tens of thousands of people were killed in the holocaust and tens of thousands more died from disease after they were liberated by Bristish soilders. During
what's being described as 'a personal and reflective visit', the queen will lay a wreath, visit Anne Frank's grave, and meet a small group of survivors and liberators.
”
US Spanish language television network, Univision, said it’s cutting ties with a billionaire businessman Donald Trump and dropping its coverage of the Miss USA beauty
pageant, a business that he part-owns. It's said the move follows the disparaging remarks made by Mr Trump about Mexican immigrants. In a speech announcing his
candidacy for the US Republican presidential nomination last week, Mr Trump said Mexicans brought drugs and crime into the US.