Vote counting in Myanmar is well underway after the first freely contested elections in 25 years. Supporters of the opposition National League for Democracy were in celebratory mood as they anticipated winning most votes. However, a quarter of the seats in parliament are reserved for the military. Jonathan Head is in the commercial capital Yangon. We can take the military statement in terms of respecting this process at face value. This is their process moving away from absolute repression to the sort of semi-democratic government head for last four years. The question is how much further would they be willing to give. If the NLD does win by a landslide, how sensitively will Aung San Suu Kyi handle her negotiations with the military? They had very weak fraught relations in the past. They got passage in the reform period. But she did give the statement beforehand that she would not accept being buzzed in the presidency. If she cannot be president she will still leave the government.
The World Bank has warned that 100 million more people will be pushed into poverty by 2030 unless action is taken to prevent global warming. It says global warming will ravage crops and fuel the spread of malaria and other diseases. Laura Becca reports from Washington. The World Bank says that climate change is already having an effect on the poorest people who are struggling to raise crops in extreme weather and low rainfall. They say the world's poorer receive fewer resources and are woefully unprepared to deal with further climate shocks suck as rising seas or severe drought. They're calling for more to be done to help those in need and they want world leaders to act to reduce carbon emissions. That report had been released just a few weeks before a UN climate summit in Paris.
There're reports of rioting at an Australian immigration detention center on Christmas Island following the death of a refugee. Australian media say the riots started after an argument between a detainee and a guard about the death.Jon Donnison reports from Sydney. The Australian Immigration Ministry has confirmed there have been what it calls disturbances at the Christmas Island detention center. There are reports some security guards abandoned their positions with fences torn down and fires lit. Fazel Chegeni was found dead at the bottom of a cliff after he apparently managed to escape from the centre on Friday. Around 200 asylum-seekers are held on Christmas Island which is one of several offshore detention centers operated by Australia. The country has been widely criticized by human rights groups for its treatment to the asylum-seekers but the government here says its tough polices have worked and stopped people trying to reach Australia shores by boat.
There has been more violence in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian man drove a car into a bus stop wounding four Israelis. The driver was shot dead by a security forces. Elsewhere, a Palestinian woman tried to stab a security guard who then shot her. World news from the BBC.
The authorities in Egypt have arrested a prominent investigative journalist in human rights advocate over an article he published online about the trial of army offices convicted of plotting a coup. Hossam Bahgat told his lawyer he may be charged with publishing inaccurate and false information that harms national interests.
Partial results in Croatia's general elections give the conservative Croatian Democratic Union a slim lead against the governing Social Democratic Party. Neither bloc will have enough votes to go in a parliamentary majority. Giada Lorryis in Zagreb. It has been very close indeed. At least the exit poll suggested the dead heat between the conservative opposition coalition and the outgoing center-left governing coalition. Now we're getting partial official results coming through. Things are moving around all the time. It looks as if the conservative patriotic coalition will end up with the most seats in parliament when everything has been counted. But it's still going to be very tight and neither large coalition looks like it's going to have enough seats to form a government by themselves.
Hopes are fading in Brazil with any more survivors will be found three days after two dams burst destroying a village in the state of Minas Gerais. 26 people are missing.
Researchers in Scotland say thousands of lives in Africa have been saved by a project to help wipe out sleeping sickness. Without treatment, the disease carried by the tsetse fly is fatal. To stop its spread to humans, half a million cows in rural Uganda were injected with a drug that kills the parasite. Acute cases fell by 90%.
Scientists in Britain say they come up with a mathematical model that could lead to new strategies in dealing with locust swarms that devastated crops in Africa and Middle East. They say they've identified patterns showing how locust within large groups tends to interrupt more closely with their neighbors making the swarm more stable unlike smaller swarms. BBC news.