Britain's Defense Ministry has confirmed that British fighter jets have carried out their first air strikes in Syria following Parliament's approval of attacks against Islamic State militants there. Four Tornado fighter jets loaded with bombs took off from an air base in Cyprus not long after the vote in London. Jonathan Bill was at the air base. The first pair of Tornados took off from RAF Akrotiri just over an hour after MPs authorized military action against Islamic State targets in Syria. We watched the orange-blue glow from their engine after both disappeared into the night sky. Each aircraft was carrying three 500-pound paveway bombs. Less than an hour later, they were followed by a second pair loaded with the same weapons. The BBC understands they hit six targets in an oil field in eastern Syria under IS control.
Police in California say at least 14 people have been killed and 17 injured in a mass shooting. The attackers wearing military staff clothing and armed with assault rifles opened fire at a social service center in San Bernardino. A short time afterwards, police say they exchanged fire with suspects inside a vehicle nearby killing a man and a woman. Officials have identified one of the suspects as Syed Farook, an employee of the county health department. His brother-in-law Farhan Khan offered his condolences to the victims. I just cannot express that how sad I am following what happened. Today, I mean, I offer condolences to you know the people lost their life. I am very sad that you know people lost their life under victims out there. I wish speed recovery to them. And again I am in shock.
The Australian government says it's refining the under watersearch area for the missing Malaysian airliner MH370 which disappeared last year with 239 people on board. From Sydney we get more details in this report from Jon Donnison. Twenty one months of hunting and still no certainty about where MH370 downed. But in its latest report, the Australian governmentsays it still believes it's looking in the right place, an area of the Southern Indian Ocean around 2000 kilometers off the coast of Perth. The underwater search zone has been narrowed down to an area just short of 100,000 square kilometers. That's around 60 times the size of London.
The people of Denmark are voting today in a referendum to decide whether the country should adopt some European rules from which it won exemptions in the 1990s. The Yes campaign says that's necessary to keep Denmark in the cross-border policing agency EuroPol. The No campaign argues that no more of the country sovereignty should be handed over to Brussels. This is the latest world news from the BBC.
The South African Supreme Court of Appeal is due to announce today whether it will replace Oscar Pistorius's conviction of culpable homicide with murder. Pistorius is currently serving the remainder of his five-year sentence under house arrest. He killed his girlfriend River Steenkamp in 2013. From Johannesburg here's Milton Nkosi. The appeal which was heard at a one day hearing by five judges last month will determine whether the double amputee athlete continues to serve his sentence on probation under house arrest or he returns to jail to serve a longer sentence. If the appeal court finds that Pistorius is guilty of murder, the case will be referred back to the trial judge for sentencing.
The president of Brazil Dilma Rousseff has expressed her outrage at moves by her political rival the speaker of the lower house of Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against her. She said she was innocent and the attempt would fail. Eduardo Cunha said he was opening the process based on allegations that Ms. Rousseff broke the law in the management of last year's budget.
The European Space Agency has launched a probe that will test the technology designed to prove that gravitational waves exists. The Lisa Path-finder will travel up to 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. More details now from Pallab Ghosh. Once in space, the Lisa Path-finder spacecraft will push away from orbit, clear of the planet's pull. Inside, lasers will measure the slightest movements of two cubes to see if they can be made to stay sufficiently still in space to be jogged by waves of gravity. The next stage is to send three of these probes into space, each millions of miles apart to begin searching for the gravitational waves that Albert Einstein predicted 100 years ago. Pallab Ghosh with that report, that's the latest BBC news.