Israel has fired tank shells at the Syrian army artillery unit after mortar shells fell near an Israeli army post in the occupied Golan Heights. An Israeli TV channel says that several Syrian soldiers were wounded. Israel has again warned Syrian that it will make tougher response to any more shelling.

Members of parliament in Britain have been calling on the BBC to reconsider the $750,000 pay-off promised to its former director general. George Entwistle resigned on Saturday following a television report wrongly accusing a former British Conservative politician of Child sexual abuse. Here is Rob Warson.

The pay-off to the former director General George Entwistle is proving to be another political and public relations disaster for the BBC. In parliament MPs of all parties called on Entwistle, the BBC to reconsider the size of the payment. But the BBC was also described as a globally and nationally valued institution, whose independence should not for victims of the current crisis. In a clear signal, the government doesn't want to interfere, the Culture Minister Maria Miller said what the BBC needed now was a period of stability to put its house in order, stressing it was a job only the BBC itself could do.

World News from the BBC

The European Union is suspending a controversial environmental tax on airlines from outside the EU. Since January none European airlines using airports in the EU have been told to pay fees linked to the amount of carbon dioxide they produced, but the tax was opposed by countries including China, Russia and United States.