UN Chief Warns of Aleppo 'Atrocities'

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has voiced alarm "over reports of atrocities against a large number of civilians" in Aleppo. Mr Ban urged all the sides, particularly Syria's government and its allies, to protect civilians.

The verdict is due today in the trial of the Tunisian Mohammed Ali Malek, who's accused of being the skipper of a boat that sank off Libya in April last year, leaving an estimated 800 people dead.

The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has told the BBC that the dissolution of the Soviet Union 25 years ago was "a crime and a coup." He had stepped down as Soviet president, he said, to avoid a bloody civil war.