BBC news with Jerry Smit.
The former Florida governor Jeb Bush has formally announced that he will seek the Republican nomination for the US presidency. At a rally in Miami, Mr. Bush, whose
father and brother have both held the highest US office, vowed to fix the country, which he said was on a very bad course. Mr. Bush also criticized the Obama
administration’s foreign policy.
"From the beginning, our president and his foreign policy team have been so eager to be the history-makers that they failed to be the peace-makers. This supposedly
risked adverse administration is also running a straight in the direction of the greatest risk of all, military inferiority. It will go on automatically until a
president steps in to rebuild our arm forces and take care of our troops and our veterans."
Kurdish fighters in northern Syria say they’ve taken control of the strategic border town of Tal Abyad from Islamic State jihadists. A Kurdish militia commander Dr.
Huseyin Kocher said some IS fighters may soon be in the vicinity, but the fighting had now stopped.
“The city of Tal Abyad is in full control of Kurdish YPG forces, we took the city after fierce fighting, attacking it from all sides. The YPG has almost finished
their operation inside the city. ISIS had a lot of casualties and many of them fled before we captured the city.”
Fighters from the Free Syrian Army were also involved in the assault on the town which commands the road from the Turkish border to the Islamic State stronghold of
Raqqa.
A family from northern England has appealed for help after three sisters and their nine children fail to return to Britain after going on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
They fear they may have travelled to Syria where a close relative is believed to be fighting with extremists.
An Italian magazine has published a leaked draft of the pope’s encyclical on climate change. In it, Pope Francis put much of the blame for global warming on human
activity and calls on all humans, not just Roman Catholics, to prevent the destruction of the ecosystem before the end of the century. Pope Francis also calls for the
establishment of a new political authority to tackle pollution. Caroline Wyatt has more details.
"The draft letter of encyclical from the pope to Catholics around the world is entitled on the care of the common home. The Vatican will release the final document on
Thursday as planned while the pope’s spokesman called the leaking of the draft 'a heinous act'. The letter has been among the writing and the Pope is said to be keen
to set the tone for the debate of a UN summit on climate change later this year in Paris. In the draft, the pope speaks of the urgent challenge to protect our common
home and ensure that development is sustainable."
World news from the BBC
The Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir has flown home from South Africa defying an attempt to bring him before the international criminal court on charges of genocide.
Mr. Bashir, who has been attending an African Union Summit, ignored a legal order instructing him to remain in South Africa while a judge considered the case.
There has been a series of suicide attacks in countries fighting Boko Haram jihadists in western Africa. At least 23 people were killed when two bombers blew
themselves up in the Chadian capital N’Djamena. And at least eight people died in a double suicide bombing in a Nigerian town of Potiskum.
The head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi has warned that if Greece goes bankrupt, it will take the EU into uncharted waters. Mr Draghi urged all sides try to
negotiate to end the Greek debt crisis to go the extra mile and said the ongoing crisis exposed the weaknesses of the currency union.
"The situation in Greece reminds us that the economic monetary union is an unfinished construction as long as we don’t have all the tools in place to ensure that all
Euro members are economically, physically and financially sufficiently resilient. To complete the economic and monetary union, we need to quantum leap towards a
stronger, more efficient institutional architecture."
Russia has warned dangerous consequences if the United States increases its military presence in Eastern European NATO countries. The Foreign Ministry said the plans
to store heavy weapons in the region could lead to a new military confrontation.
A white American woman who presented herself as black has stepped down from her role in the leading civil rights organization. Our BBC correspondent says the
revelation of Rachel Dolezal had altered her apparence and identity sparked a huge debate about race in the United States.