American defense officials have insisted that a raid by US and Kurdish forces on a prison run by Islamic State militants in Northern Iraq is not a change of tactics. About 70 hostages were freed. From Washington, here's Gary O'Donoghue. The press secretary Peter Cook said information had suggested that the prisoners were facing imminent mass execution within hours. American helicopters transported troops to the town of Hawijah, 40 miles southwest of Kirkuk. Officials here say a number of IS militants were killed in the raid and five captured, along with what they described as important intelligence about the militant group. It's the first American combat casualty in the fight against Islamic State. Nevertheless, the head of Central Command said the operation had been highly successful.
Vladimir Putin has defended Russia's military intervention in Syria saying it could help create conditions for a political solution to the civil war. Bridget Kendall watched him speak in Sochi. President Putin's comments were woven through with mixed messages and contradictions. On the one hand, he accused the US and its allies of playing a double game in Syria attacking some terrorist groups while siding with others for their own ends. He said the West's attempt to divide terrorist groups into moderate and non-moderate was mistaken. On the other hand, he also seemed to concede that Russia would need to bring the US led-coalition and Syria's moderate opposition forces on board for any political settlement to work. He said he still hoped the US would agree to work with Russia and he even asked president Assad, who was in Moscow this week, if he could work with moderate opposition forces on the ground. Mr. Putin was clear he was ruling out partition for Syria.
The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination Hillary Clinton has accused her Republican rivals of exploiting the death of American diplomats in Libya in 2012 for political gain. She was testifying before a congressional committee investigating the attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi. Barbara Plett Usher is at Capitol Hill. The hearing had been widely anticipated as a showdown between Hillary Clinton and her Republican critics. They questioned how engaged she had been on the deteriorating situation in Libya before the Benghazi attacks. And they returned to the issue of why the state department had failed to respond to requests for increasing security by the ambassador Chris Stevens. Once again Mrs. Clinton said that security personnel normally doubted with such requests that never reached her desk, but she had amost emotional moment over accusations that she deliberately ignored the demands. The exchanges didn't appear to review significantly new information although perhaps new details.
Swedish police are investigating whether a masked man who killed a teacher and a pupil at a school near Gothenburg was motivated by extreme right wing views.The attacker critically injured another teacher and a child before he was shot dead. This is the world news from the BBC.
An American nurse is suing the governor of New Jersey for being put into quarantine after she returned from West Africa where she had been treating Ebola patients. Kaci Hickox alleges that Governor Chris Christie abused her civil liberties by imposing a mandatory quarantine on her in October last year without a valid reason.
Hundreds of indigenous people from around the world have taken part in a traditional fire lighting ceremony in Brazil on the eve of the first World Indigenous Games in the city of Palmas. Nicholas Rocha has the details. The athletes will be competing in traditional sports like football and athletics, but also indigenous games like archeries, spear-throwing, canoeing and race through forests. As well as peoples from all the Americas,there are delegations from Australia, Russia, the Philippines, Ethiopia and New Zealand. But the cost of staging the games has drawn some protestors. They say the money would have been better spent on improving the life of Brazil's indigenous people.
Researchers have found that male howler monkeys with the most powerful voices also have the smallest testicles, but still manage to attract the most females.The scientist concluded that having a deeper call is more important than mere sperm production when it comes to winning a mate. Here is our science reporter Victoria Gill. Across ten species of howler monkey, all the males try to impress females and intimidate rivals with a raucous vocal display. But as terrifying as that sounds, this research shows there is a reproductive cost to a booming voice. To study the animals' roars, the team measured the volume of a howler bone in their throats which act like a resonator, the larger that bone,the deeper that voice. Comparing anatomy cross the species, the researchers noticed that monkeys with the deepest voices also have the smallest reproductive organs. That report from Victoria Gill ends the BBC news.