BBC News with David Austin.

The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been given a hero's welcome on his return from the United Nations in New York. He was back in Ramallah after securing an enhanced recognition for Palestinians. Yolande Knell is in Ramallah.

Cheers as the Palestinian president took to the stage. He hailed the upgrade in status to observer state at the UN as a decisive landmark in the history of the Palestinian national struggle. The world is on our side, he said, but there will references too to the challenges ahead. In response to the UN vote, Israel has already said it will freeze the transfer of tax revenues it had collected on behalf of Mr. Abbas' Palestinian authority and announced the construction of 3,000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The organization representing Egyptian judges has announced that its members will not supervise a referendum on a draft constitution in two weeks time. The statement by the judge's club comes after a confrontation between Egypt's highest court and Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Mursi. The Constitutional Court announced it was suspending its work indefinitely after its members were prevented earlier today from ruling on the legitimacy of the Islamist-dominated body which drew up the new constitution. The opposition says the document undermines basic freedoms.

The emergency services in Japan say that a lorry driver who managed to telephone for help from inside a collapsed motorway tunnel has been found dead. Rescue workers also found the charred remains of several bodies inside another vehicle which caught fire when huge sections of the tunnel ceiling collapsed. Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Tokyo.