More than 40 people have been killed by a series of bomb attacks in Iraq targeting Shia Muslims before a religious festival. Most of the victims were killed in the southern city of Diwaniya.
World News from the BBC
Hundreds of Palestinians have attended a rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah to protest against the policies of the Palestinian authority. It was a third such rally in less than a week. Security forces were accused of beating protesters as our West Bank correspondent Jon Donnison reports.
Hundreds of people marched towards President Abbas's compound; some were calling for the Palestinian authority to be
disbanded
altogether. Separately, the authority announced it will be unable to pay salaries for public sector workers this month due to what it called the worst funding crisis in years. So far, Palestinians have been relatively untouched by the so-called Arab Spring, but some believe that economic hardship, coupled with frustration of the Palestinian leadership inability to end or ease Israel's ongoing occupation, could create an atmosphere where that might change.
France says it's determined to stop establishment of what it calls 'international terrorist bases' in Mali. The French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he wanted to prevent groups such as al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb threatening the peace and security of the whole region, as well as France.
Researchers in Germany have discovered a rare world map by the 16th century