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BBC news 2013-08-31

BBC News with Nick Kelly

President Obama has said that he has not yet made a final decision on the response to last week’s suspected chemical attack in Syria, but he said it will be a limited action. He said the attack was a challenge to the world that threatens US national security interests and its allies like Israel and Jordan.

“We are not considering any open-ended commitment. We are not considering any boots-on-the-ground approach. What we will do is consider options that meet the narrow concern around chemical weapons, understanding that there is not going to be a solely military solution to the underlying conflict and tragedy that’s taking place in Syria.”

Mr Obama was speaking shortly after his Secretary of State John Kerry made the strongest case so far for limited military action against the Syrian government.

“We know where the rockets were launched from and at what time. We know where they landed and when. We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas and went only to opposition-controlled or contested neighbourhoods. And we know, as does the world, that just 90 minutes later all hell broke loose in the social media.”

Mr Kerry said at least 1,429 Syrians were killed in the attack, including 426 children. He called it a crime against humanity and explained why it mattered to the United States to take action.

“It matters because if we choose to live in a world where a thug and murderer like Bashar al-Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity even after the United States and our allies said no, and then the world does nothing about it, there will be no end to the test of our resolve and the dangers that will flow from those others who believe that they can do as they will.”

The poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney has died. He was 74 and he’d suffered from ill health recently. Seamus Heaney was born in Northern Ireland but later lived in the Republic of Ireland, who was a teacher and then had a distinguished career in poetry, winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995. A BBC correspondent says that it was the political troubles in Northern Ireland that helped make Heaney famous.

Supporters of Egypt’s ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi have protested across the country in their biggest demonstration for two weeks. Six people have been killed and dozens injured in clashes. In Cairo, the demonstrators opted for several scattered protests avoiding the capital’s bigger squares. On Thursday, another leader of Mr Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Beltagi, was arrested by the military-backed government.

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At least 12 people are reported to have been killed and ten injured in a bomb attack in northern Iraq. Reports from the town of Tuz Khurmato, north of the capital Baghdad, say that the bomb exploded in a largely Kurdish part of the ethnically mixed town. The police chief in the town said the explosion was preceded by a loud bang, which he believed was designed to attract a crowd.

A senior British intelligence advisor has said in a court statement that 58,000 secret documents seized under anti-terrorism laws from a Brazilian man at a London airport earlier this month would harm British national security if disclosed. The Brazilian, David Miranda, is the partner of the journalist who helped fugitive contractor Edward Snowden leak American and British intelligence documents. Jane Peel was in court.

A witness statement said Mr Miranda’s computer hard-drive contained 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents. The statement said the material included personal information that could identify intelligence officers overseas and it was possible it was already in the hands of foreign states. David Miranda’s solicitor described the government’s assessment as sweeping and vague and claimed the assertions were unfounded.

Demonstrations organised by national unions in Brazil have left millions of people without public transport in several cities across the country. The workers are demanding changes in labour legislation and improvements in public services. In Sao Paulo, school teachers, steel workers and students have been demanding better working conditions.

And the Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has ordered troops to patrol the capital Bogota after overnight protests in the city turned violent. On Thursday, tens of thousands of people took part in protests in Bogota in support of farmers who say the government’s agricultural policies are driving them to bankruptcy.

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