Hello, I'm Kathy Clugston with the BBC news.
The British Prime Minister David Cameron is to brief Parliament on the details of his proposals to renegotiate Britain's membership of the European Union. The European Parliament in Strasburg is also debating the plan. Chris Mason reports.
"When the Prime Minister David Cameron stands up in Parliament, he will know many of his opponents to his EU renegotiation will be sitting behind him, some will even be sitting alongside him on the front bench. Cabinet ministers itching to make the case for leaving the EU, increasingly frustrated, are being gagged, bound by an agreement to stay quiet until a deal with Brussels is finally signed. David Cameron will be relieved that his Home Secretary Theresa May appears to be willing to support staying in the EU. But he still faces a big challenge -- winning the referendum and holding his party together."
Health officials in the United States say a patient in Texas has contracted the Zika virus probably through sexual contact rather than from a mosquito bite. The patient has become infected through sex with her partner who had returned from Venezuela. Professor Peter Hotez is a specialist in tropical medicine.
"I think sexual transmission does happen from time to time, but it's quite rare. This should not take away from the fact that the overwhelming problem with Zika is spread and transmissioned by mosquitoes. We are looking at widespread infection in the Caribbean and we are concerned about the Gulf Coast and the United States as mosquitoes become more and more active."
The BBC has uncovered evidence that Israel is sending some African migrants to third countries in a possible breach of an international law. About 45,000 Eritreans and Sudanese have arrived in Israel over the past ten years. Israel has introduced a policy that gives them the choice to leave for a third country or be jailed indefinitely. The Foreign Ministry spokesman is E N.
"I am confident that we act here in Israel according to the highest standards. It, now, whatever happens within the process is something that we deal with in our bilateral relations with other countries."
The high court in Australia has backed the government's tough stance on asylum-seekers by rejecting a challenge to its off-shore detention policy. Asylum-seekers who arrive in Australia by boats are detained in camps in the Pacific state of Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Wednesday's judgment means 37 infants born in Australia to parents held in Nauru will be deported to T. The human rights activist Daniel Web criticized the ruling.
"It is fundamentally wrong to condemn these people to a loft in limbo on a tiny island. The stroke of a pen is all that it would take our prime pinister or our immigration minister to do the decent thing and let these families stay."
The Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani has ordered military units to be ready to shoot down any North Korean rocket deemed to be a threat to Japan. Warships have been put on alert in the Sea of Japan. Pyongyang has said it intends to launch an observation satellite on a rocket later this month. South Korea and Japan say the satellite launch is really a test for a long-range missile. Seoul said Pyongyang would pay a heavy price if it went ahead with the launch which it called "a threat to international peace".
United Nations officials are continuing to try to initiate indirect negotiations between the warring parties in Syria though they have warned that peace talks in Geneva are close to collapse. On Tuesday, opposition delegates cancelled a meeting in protest at intended Russian airstrikes on villages close to Allepo in ways they have described as "a massacre". The UN's special envoy Staffan de Mistura has said that if this round of talks fails, there will be no more hope for the country.
A commercial passenger plane has been forced to make an emergency landing in Somalia after an explosion ripped a hole in its fuselage. Orlando Teal has the details.
"One of the passengers on board flight said he heard a loud bang shortly after take-off. As the thick smoke cleared, he saw a chunk of the plane was missing. The aircraft's Serbian pilot Vladimir V has been quoted by the Serbian media as saying he thinks the explosion was caused by a bomb. He said luckily the flight controls were not damaged so he could return and land on Mogadishu's international airport. " Orlando Teal reporting.
State-run media in China says Tibetan shop-keepers in the southwest Sihcuan Province have been ordered to take down pictures of the Buddha spiritual leader -- the Dalai Lama. The Global Times Newspaper says a law enforcement squad of cultural officials and police will enforce the directive. Sichuan has a large Tibetan population, but in recent years repression of Tibetan culture has been less harshly enforced there than Tibet itself.