Edward Snowden, the former contractor at the US National Security Agency (NSA) who leaked the information, is wanted in the US for espionage and is now living in exile in Russia.

The leaked documents revealed that the US collects massive amounts of electronic data from communications of private individuals around the world, and that it has spied on foreign leader

The latest revelations claim that US agencies have collected and stored almost 200 million text messages every day across the globe.

'Rights are protected'

In his much-anticipated speech at the Department of Justice, Mr Obama said he would not apologise for the effectiveness of US intelligence operations, and insisted that nothing he had seen indicated they had sought to break the law.

It was necessary for the US to continue collecting large amounts of data, he said, but acknowledged that doing so allowed for "the potential of abuse".

"The reforms I'm proposing today should give the American people greater confidence that their rights are being protected, even as our intelligence and law enforcement agencies maintain the tools they need to keep us safe," he said.

He has asked the attorney general and the

intelligence community to draw up plans for such metadata to be held by a third party, with the NSA required to seek legal permission before it could access them.

A panel of independent privacy advocates would also sit on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) which has responsibility for giving permission for mass surveillance programmes.

"should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don't threaten our national security".

"This applies to foreign leaders as well," he said, promising that from now on the US "will not monitor the communications of heads of state and government of our close friends and allies".

But he was also critical of nations he said "feign surprise" over the leaks but "privately acknowledge that America has special responsibilities as the world's only superpower" and have used the information gathered for their own purposes.

Mr Obama said he would not "dwell on Mr Snowden's actions or his motivations", but warned that the "sensational way" the NSA details had come to light had potentially jeopardised US operations "for years to come".

Mr Obama's reforms were welcomed as progress in some quarters, but others argued they did not go far enough in protecting individuals.

"President Obama's surveillance adjustments will be remembered as music on the Titanic unless his administration adopts deeper reforms," said Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

calling him "cruel" and a "barbarian".

But he said those criticising him had failed to understand that the idea behind the hunt was to target an old, non-breeding male rhino that was endangering the rest of the herd.

"No, it is a scientific process and we're going to make sure we get the ones that are causing the most problem."

Namibia issues three hunting permits per year, and this is the first time an auction has been held outside the southern African nation. However, tens of thousands of people signed online petitions against the auction, and animal rights groups condemned as "perverse" claims that the hunt was really about conservation.

The money raised from the 11 January auction will go to the Namibian government and will be earmarked for conservation projects, according to the Dallas Safari Club.

"It takes money for these animals to exist. A lot of people don't recognise that," club executive Ben Carter told NPR radio.

Experts say that growing demand for rhino horn in Asia is driving up instances of poaching.

Horns can sell for around $65,000 a kilogram

, when it made $27.2bn.

"Our 2013 performance was not what I expect from Shell," Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said in a statement.

Mr van Beurden became chief executive at the beginning of this year, taking over from Peter Voser.

Shell said its profits in the fourth quarter were hurt by a range of factors, including higher exploration costs, security problems in oil-rich Nigeria, and maintenance work that hit oil and gas production.

It has seen a string of disappointing quarterly results over the past 12 months.

In December, the Anglo-Dutch company also cancelled a $20bn project to build a gas processing plant in Louisiana.

The study, published in the journal Nature, also showed that the birds timed their wing beats.

But as the air squeezes around the outside of the wings, it creates upwash at the wingtip

This was possible thanks to a unique conservation project by the Waldarappteam in Austria, which has raised flocks of northern bald ibises and trained them to migrate behind a microlight.

The aim of this unusual project is to bring the northern bald ibis back to Europe; the birds were wiped out by hunting, so the team is retraining the birds to navigate a migration route that has now been lost.

It revealed that birds' heart rates went down when they were flying together in V.

"This can give a bit of a free ride for the bird that's following," said Dr Portugal. "So the other bird wants to put its own wingtip in the upwash from the bird in front."

The other really surprising result, the researchers said, was that the birds also "timed their wing beats perfectly to match the good air off the bird in front".

"Each bird [kept] its wingtip in the upwash throughout the flap cycle," Dr Portugal explained.

Just as the birds save energy by gaining lift from other birds, many companies that are developing unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are looking to copy the energy-efficient V formation.

But for scientists, it is the insight into a remarkable natural phenomenon that is truly exciting.

Dr Portugal added: "What these birds are able to do is amazing.

"They're able to sense what's going on from the bird in front, where this good air is coming from and how to position themselves perfectly in it. "So from a sensory point of view, it's really incredible."

“They beat me. They did terrifying things,” he said quietly in a recent interview. “I don’t want to remember that day.”

Martini is, in some ways, typical: mostly apolitical but firmly opposed to Assad’s regime and to the Islamist groups that are vying with other armed opposition groups for control of rebel-held areas.

Now, he lives alone in makeshift quarters in the offices of the aid organization he helped found in this Turkish border town. He heads the group’s relief operations in northern Syria and the Turkish border regions, overseeing the delivery of medical care to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.

Martini is deeply skeptical of peace talks scheduled for this month in Geneva, which are supposed to facilitate negotiations between Assad’s government and rebel groups.

“We must keep working. Whether the time is long or short, this regime will fall,” Martini said. “Then we must rebuild our country.”

. Then he crossed the border into Jordan, which aid agencies say shelters more than 563,000 refugees.

When he left Syria, Martini said, he lost everything. The government seized all nine of his houses, along with his bank accounts, a clinical laboratory and 2,000 olive trees. The loss of the olive grove seems to have stung particularly; Idlib is known for its production of the bitter fruit.

In Jordan, the doctor briefly treated patients in the Zaatari refugee camp. Then he fled the difficult conditions to join his wife and youngest child in the United Arab Emirates. His older children escaped Syria, too, and are studying medicine in the United States.

At first, the effort paid for treatment for Syrians in Turkish hospitals. Operations were soon expanded to include the building of a 144-bed medical unit in the city of Antakya, near the Syrian border. Then hostility from Antakya’s Alawites — many of whom support Assad, who is also Alawite — prompted Orient to move the facility to Reyhanli. Alawites are members of a Shiite-affiliated sect.

Orient’s medical ventures expanded into rebel-held areas of Syria, where it now runs 12 hospitals and several rehabilitation centers and employs more than 400 doctors. Facilities in Turkey include a day clinic, a school for displaced Syrians and a sewing workshop that trains and provides work for many Syrian women.

It is an unusual arrangement for an organization of Orient Humanitarian Relief’s size — staff members said Orient programs and facilities helped nearly 400,000 people last year. But the setup offers a strategic advantage. A member of an aid organization working with Orient said it is able to move faster than any of its peers, making quick decisions unhampered by complicated bureaucracies and approval processes.

The many doctors and surgeons in the Martini clan are scattered across Europe and the United States. One uncle founded Martini Hospital in the Syrian city of Aleppo, where fighting between rebels and government forces has been sustained and brutal. Ammar Martini worked at that hospital, now heavily damaged, for 10 years.

When his father died recently in Syria, Martini was not able to return home to attend the funeral.

December 29 bombing at the city's main train station followed by a December 30 trolleybus blast—have claimed more than 30 additional lives and left many to wonder why Volgograd has become an unlikely insurgent target.

Winter Olympics less than six weeks away,

host city Sochi,

a Russian site dedicated to terrorism and intelligence, says the Volgograd attacks—which took place 400 miles northeast of Sochi—throw such planning into disarray.

"I think the goal was to distract security forces

they'll be forced to think not only about ensuring the safety of the major Russian cities as well as Sochi and the infrastructure around the Olympic facilities," Soldatov says. "On top of that, they'll also have to pay special attention to Volgograd. It's an effective tactic—diverting attention away from a place where the terrorists may be planning their next attack."

Russian authorities, citing similarities in the explosives and shrapnel used in the latest blasts, have acknowledged the two attacks may be linked.

slamic insurgents have frequently sought out high-profile Russian targets, most notably in Moscow.

Volgograd, an industrial city of 1 million, has no evident strategic value as a terrorist target, although its train station—the site of the December 29 blast—is a major transportation hub on the country's north-south rail links.

Volgograd Oblast, the site of a massive purge of 1980s-era communist authorities, is still viewed as one of Russia's most corrupt regions. It is unclear, however, what bearing that might have on its sudden terrorist appeal.

Writing on the website of the Carnegie Moscow Center, director Dmitry Trenin notes that the city, "a symbol of Russia's tragedy and triumph in World War II, h

"But the fact that there have been three attacks in a row in one region—excuse me, but it's a slap in the face of our authorities." 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded to the bombings by stepping up security measures across the country, with the Interior Ministry promising special scrutiny of transportation hubs. But inside Volgograd, where local streets were quickly choked with emergency vehicles, correspondents have reported a distinct shortage of police personnel.

"After the first attack, they were supposed to do a lot of work, do something to protect the population. That didn't happen. And the problem isn't where it took place—why it happened in Volgograd Oblast," he says. "The problem is where else other attacks might take place. If it happened in Volgograd, it means it could happen in any city in this part of Russia."

Instead, Ukraine struck a deal with Russia in December, which has seen big cuts in the price of gas imports from Russia. Moscow also supported Ukraine's finances with a $15bn purchase of government bonds.

Some 10,000 people are estimated to have gathered for this latest rally - considerably fewer than the peak of the campaign in December which saw crowds estimated at 200,000.

"The authorities are pretending they cannot hear us. I know it's hard for us, but we have enough strength to win," Mr Klitschko told the crowd.

The last major opposition protest at the end of December was given further impetus by an attack on activist and journalist Tetyana Chornovol, who was severely beaten up on Christmas Day.

She had accused Mr Yanukovych of corruption over his financing of his official residence outside Kiev.

Mr Yanukovych denied any allegation of corruption and called for an investigation into the attack on Ms Chornovol.

"You can't remain quiet when you know that political prisoners languish in jail," he said.

"I think campaigning for the release of those who have been jailed without justification is the job of every ordinary citizen. As far as I'm concerned, it

has nothing to do with politics," he added.

Khodorkovsky has not yet decided whether he wants to stay permanently in Switzerland, his spokesman said.

The businessman made his fortune from the controversial privatisation of Soviet state assets. In 1995, he acquired oil giant Yukos.

In 2005 he received an eight-year jail sentence for tax evasion, fraud and embezzlement. Two years before his release date he was convicted again on further charges of embezzlement and money laundering.

He had been due to be released next August, but requested a pardon because his mother is suffering from cancer.

The pardon came after Russian MPs backed a wide-ranging amnesty for at least 20,000 prisoners.

Now 125 years after his death, new techniques mean these bones may finally yield their secrets.

A month after France sent additional troops to the Central African Republic to join African peacekeepers trying to restore stability, the violence is getting worse, “making the delivery of humanitarian relief ever more difficult,” Mr. Baloch said.

“Targeted attacks against civilians, looting and the presence of armed elements at some displacement sites have severely limited humanitarian access to those in need of urgent assistance,” Mr. Baloch said. “We have heard about a lot of revenge attacks.” Some attacks have taken place inside health clinics.

, around 512,000 people — more than half the population — have fled their homes and more than 100,000 have sought shelter and protection around the airport, where aid agencies are delivering emergency supplies.

presence of a French Army contingent providing security at the Bangui airport has not helped relief agencies trying to distribute aid, a task that has become “more challenging,” Mr. Baloch said.

World Health Organization reported on Friday an outbreak of measles in Bangui as well as in the north of the country and said it was working with the medical charity Doctors Without Borders to start an emergency vaccination program.

Doctors Without Borders reported that fighting had forced it to curtail operations at the Bangui airport. Clashes on Tuesday and Wednesday killed two children and wounded 40 people, the organization said.

Doctors Without Borders had planned to open two new health posts to provide support for vaccination and nutritional programs but suspended those plans and will operate with only an emergency team, Mr. Bergstrand said.

The government has said it would follow that plan, citing it as evidence of its commitment to democracy.

Al Jazeera said the detained journalists included the bureau chief, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, who had worked for CNN and contributed to The New York Times, and Peter Greste, an Australian correspondent for Al Jazeera who won a Peabody Award last year while working for the BBC in Somalia. A cameraman, Mohamed Fawzy, and another producer, Baher Mohamed, were also detained, the network said.

Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation in New York, said the government “seized on the moment and the grotesque nature of the attack” to accomplish several goals. While hard-liners in the security services seek to eradicate the Brotherhood, the terrorist designation gives other officials a “rhetorical” tool to stir interest in the coming elections, Mr. Hanna said. It also gives them a firmer legal basis to detain protesters and further suppress dissent ahead of the vote, he said.

On Sunday, a car bomb explosion outside a military intelligence building north of Cairo wounded at least five people, the third such bombing in less than a week.

The third blast took place about an hour later when a bomb went off inside a car that was being searched by the military.At least one of the first two bombs appeared to be a suicide bomber, police said.

Donors pump in hundreds of millions of dollars into the Horn of Africa country every year to provide basic services.

An attack on Kenyan shopping mall in September that killed dozens of people highlighted the militants' ability to strike beyond Somalia's borders.

The deadline is the first milestone of a deal to rid Syria of its chemical weapons arsenal by the middle of 2014.

Western powers said only Syrian government forces could have carried out the attack, but President Bashar al-Assad blamed rebel fighters.

Under the international disarmament plan, US satellites and Chinese surveillance cameras are to track the progress of Russian armoured lorries as they carry the chemical weapons from 12 storage sites in Syria to Latakia, on Syria's Mediterranean coast.

Danish and Norwegian cargo ships will then transport the chemicals to a port in Italy, where they will be loaded on to the US Maritime Administration vessel MV Cape Ray and taken out into international waters before being destroyed by hydrolysis.

reports that the European ships are docked in Limassol, Cyprus on the day they are supposed to be escorting Syria's most dangerous chemicals out of the country.

The vessels left Limassol on Saturday but turned back on Tuesday after the hazardous containers failed to arrive for collection in Latakia. Now the plan is to refuel in Limassol before returning to sea in the coming days.

Co-operation on the chemical weapons removal programme was seen by many of those involved as a potential catalyst for broader peace negotiations in Syria.

Failing to meet this ambitious target, our correspondent adds, will demonstrate the difficulties involved in operating in a country with constantly changing frontlines - even with an international mandate and co-operation from President Assad.

"A number of external factors have impacted upon timelines, not least the continuing volatility in overall security conditions, which have constrained planned movements," a statement said.

The joint mission also noted that the Syrian government had met the 1 November deadline to destroy critical chemical weapons production equipment, which meant it could no longer weaponise the chemical agents at its storage facilities.

But deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf also acknowledged that it was a "complicated process", adding: "As long as we see forward progress, that what's most important here."

activists said a missile fired by government forces hit a bus in Aleppo, killing at least 10 people.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the dead included two children and that the missile was fired from a plane.

In Israel, though, the release was met with anger. Relatives of Israelis killed in attacks had attempted to prevent the release by petitioning Israel's Supreme Court

The 26 inmates were jailed before the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords, which formally launched the Middle East peace process.

They include 18 men from the West Bank, three Gazans, and in a concession by Israel, five men from East Jerusalem.

The US welcomed the release, with Kerry expressing "his appreciation for Prime Minister Netanyahu's decision to release the third tranche of prisoners," State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

The Israeli government's commitment to release Palestinian prisoners helped enable the start ... and the continuation of the final status negotiations, and we believe this is a positive step forward in the overall process," she added.

"As part of this release he has announced 140,000 additional new settlements in the West Bank," he said

"The Palestinians ask, how can you talk to us about being legitimate partners, if you're going to build inside the West Bank?"

President Daniel Ortega had said Nicaragua planned to begin construction in May 2014.

He told La Prensa newspaper in Nicaragua that only when the feasibility studies were concluded would it be possible to choose a "definite route".

Several routes were proposed, all of them about three times longer than the Panama Canal, which took 10 years to build and was finished in 1914.

The waterway connects the Caribbean with the Pacific via Lake Nicaragua or Cocibolca, Central America's largest freshwater lake. Its length is estimated at just under 300km (190 miles).

The Nicaraguan government will get a minority share of the profits generated by the canal.

But HKND's owner, Wang Jing, said he had attracted global investors and it was ready to build the canal in less than six years.

Nicaraguan leaders have dreamt of building the canal for over a century.

Nicaragua's announcement comes after a European-led consortium expanding the Panama Canal threatened to halt work unless the Panama Canal Authority met more than $1.6bn (£1bn) in cost overruns.

The Environment Agency said parts of England's north-east coast could see flooding while parts of the south coast - including Portsmouth and Newhaven - were also at risk over the weekend.

Spokesman Jonathan Day added: "The risk of flooding to the coast will continue over the next few days, especially on the south and west coast and along the Severn estuary."

A man was rescued by police in Newquay after going into the sea in the early hours of Saturday morning

Part of a cliff has collapsed into the sea on the East Sussex coast after being undermined by rough seas

In Scotland, flooding was less severe than expected after warnings of a tidal surge on the east coast

There are currently no severe flood warnings - indicating danger to life - in place across the UK.

However, more than 240 flood alerts - meaning flooding is possible, be prepared - are in place in England and Wales, in addition to more than 90 flood warnings.

Prime Minister David Cameron praised the agencies involved in dealing with the storm threat.

He tweeted: "Great work by emergency services & @EnvAgency helping people flooded. 200,000 properties have been protected by flood defences in last 36hrs."

Forecasters have warned of heavy rain in southern England, south-east Wales, Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland.

There is an increased risk of flooding risk to Weybridge and Guildford on Sunday and into Monday and people living along the non-tidal Thames, including Oxford and Osney, could be at risk from Sunday, the EA said.

At the height of the crisis, France had a force of about 4,500 in its former colony.

The 1,000 French soldiers left in Mali are intended to help fight the al-Qaeda-linked groups still targeting the vast desert northern region.

On Monday, UN peacekeepers found a large cache of explosives while on patrol near the northern town of Kidal.

Mr Mende said the attackers at the state TV and radio headquarters had been armed with weapons such as knives, and there was "no chance of them even to maintain their positions, even for a single hour".

"People were frightened when security personnel were firing against these attackers," the minister told the BBC's Focus on Africa radio programme after visiting the RTNC headquarters.

He said the attackers numbered fewer than 100 and that the security forces had killed about 46 of them and captured about 10.

In 1997, Rwandan-backed troops ousted DR Congo's long-serving ruler Mobutu Sese Seko and installed Laurent Kabila - the father of incumbent leader Joseph Kabila - as president.

In a separate incident, a taxi driver told AFP that he had heard about "six or seven shots" from heavy weapons fired at the Tshatshi military camp. The shots were heard between 09:00 and 09:30 local time.

The US embassy in Kinshasa has advised all US citizens not to travel around the city until further notice.

"The embassy has received multiple reports of armed engagements and fighting around Kinshasa… The embassy has also received reports that there are police and military checkpoints and barricades in many places," it said in a statement posted on its Facebook page at 10:00 local time.

Diabate said armed groups were accountable for taking specific measures to provide protection to children. These include: clear directives by those in positions of authority within armed forces and groups to halt violations against children, meaning that children must not be recruited into the fighting, nor targeted. Unicef also called for the immediate release of children associated with armed forces and groups, and their protection from reprisals. Transit centres set up for the release and reintegration of children must also be protected from attacks.

Unicef and its partners say they have verified the killings of at least 16 children, and injuries among 60, since the outbreak of communal violence in Bangui on 5 December. In November, the UN warned that the number of child soldiers in the former French colony had more than doubled to up to 6,000 as anti-balaka militias have sprung up to counterattacks by the Seleka.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the medical charity, said on Monday that fighting, lynchings and violent attacks remained a daily occurrence in Bangui, and the situation in the city appeared to be out of control, despite the presence of international armed forces in the capital.

MSF said health facilities had been affected by the violence, hindering the provision of medical aid. On Sunday, a ministry of health ambulance was stopped and the staff were threatened with violence, preventing them from collecting the wounded. On the same day, armed men entered the Hôpital Communautaire with the intention of lynching patients, while health staff were threatened.

The UN launched an appeal for $152m last week to rapidly scale-up humanitarian operations over the next 100 days. The country has been plunged into chaos as its Christian majority seeks revenge against the Muslim rebels who seized power in a coup in March. Many Christian and Muslim civilians are armed, and the foreign troops brought in to try to rein in the violence have been sucked into the conflict and accused of taking sides.

The Chadians, part of the African Union force, are Muslim and are seen by the population as backing the Seleka rebels who toppled the president. But 1,600 French troops who were deployed in the first week of December are accused of backing the Christian majority, and their patrols have come under fire in Muslim neighbourhoods. Many say the bloodshed has little to do with religion as Muslims and Christians had long lived in peace. Instead, they blame a political battle for control over resources in one of Africa's most weakly governed states.

The Lebanese officials say the military opened anti-aircraft fire at two Syrian warplanes on Monday after the aircraft bombed a border area close to the eastern Lebanese town of Arsal.

There was no immediate comment from the Lebanese military or from the Syrian government.