French police have launched an anti-terror operation in the northwest of Paris following the arrest of a man accused of planning an attack in France. Police have been searching a block of flats in the suburb of Argenteuil. Hugh Schofield repots from the city. The block of flats has been evacuated and police are searching if there are traces of weapons or explosives. There is a large security cordon around the area. The Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said it follows the arrest on Thursday morning of an important suspect. The man who's of French nationality is suspected of being involved at a high-level in a plan to carry out an attack. This plan, said Mr Cazeneuve , was at an advanced stage but had now been foiled. He said the arrest followed serval weeks of investigation but there was no evidence at this stage to link it with either the Brussels or the Paris attacks. Officials in Belgium say they have arrested 6 people in the capital Brussels two days after the Jihadist attacks on the airport and in metro which killed more than 30 people. They said 3 of the suspects were detained “outside federal prosecutor's office” in the city center.
The US secretary of state John Kerry says he's agreed with Russia to accelerate work towards a political transition in Syria. Mr Kerry made the comments after he met president Putin in Moscow. I believe Russia is fully engaged in this effort. And all of us are going to try to get president Assad to make the right decision in these next days to engage in a political process that results in a genuine transition and in peace for Syria. The Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said his country and the US would push for direct talks between the Syrian government and the opposition.
United Nations says the genocide conviction of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic sends a strong signal to everyone in positions of the responsibility that they would be held accountable for their actions. Mr Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was found guilty at the Hague of 10 charges including criminal responsibility for genocide and trampling Serb.
Police in Egypt say they've found the killers of an Italian student, Giulio Regeni, whose body was discovered in a ditch in Cairo last month. Mocuos Alber reports. Giulio Regeni went to Egypt to to research on the rise of independent labour movement since the end of the rule of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. He disappeared in January and was found at the side of a road 9 days later. Marks of torture on his body let human rights activists to accuse the security forces of his murder. The Egyptian government has always denied this and police now say they know who killed him. It was, they say, a gang of criminals that specialized in abducting foreigners who're posing as policemen. They said the members of the gang were killed in an exchange of fire with police officers earlier on Thursday. World news from the BBC.
Officials in Nigeria say Boko Haram militants have abducted 16 women in a remote northeastern area. The women were gathering firewood and fishing in Adamawa state. A local resident said two of the abducted women managed to escape by jumping into a river. The security forces say they have launched a rescue operation.
On the final say of his visit to Argentina, president Obama has visited a memorial to the victims of the military government that seized power exactly 40 years. Mr Obama acknowledged that the US government was too slow to stand up for human rights in Argentina at the time. He promised to release more secret files from the era, detailing US support for the installation of one of the region's most brutal regimes in 1976. Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Buenos Aires to mark the anniversary of the coup.
The organizers of the Rio Olympics have cancelled a test event for indoor cycling at this year's games because the velodrome would not be ready in time. The two-day event was scheduled to begin on April 30th. Laura Bicker reports. Organizers say they're 120 percent confident the venue will be ready by the end of May but there will be no test event. Serval Olympic venues have expediences issues. The installation of the mondo athletics tracks has been delayed by heavy rain and the bay which will host the sailing event is still heavily polluted. Brazil also remains deeply embroiled in one of the worst political scandals in its history which involves one of the game's main construction companies Odebrecht. The game is due to open on the August 5th.