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BBC news 2015-11-23

It's Charles Carroll with the BBCnews.

The French Prime Minister Manuel Vallssays that some of those linked to the attacks last week in Paris which killed 129 people used the migration crisis in Europe to enter France unnoticed. He was speaking on French state television. These individuals took advantage of the refugee crisis of the chaos, perhaps, for some of them to slip into France. Others were in Belgium already, and others I must remind you were in France. Mr. Valls warned that passport free travel in the EU was threatened unless external border controls were improved. The French government says only after the Paris attacks was it informed that the alleged ringleader Abdel Hamid Abaaoud had passed through Greece on his return from Syria.

The US house of representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill to toughen the screening of the Syria men and Iraqi refugees entering the United States. The proposed new restrictions would require the heads of three US agencies to approve every Iraqi and Syrian refugee entering the country. The White House says threaten to veto the new bill. The Secretary of State John Kerry said the plan changes were contrary to American values. Out of the entire total of refugees, who were let into our country since 2009, only 2% were male of a fighting age similar to those people who are picking up the battle in Syria. You know, it's inappropriate for American, of all countries in the world to panic and to somehow turn our backs on our fundamental values.

Research in the United States indicates that more Mexicans are now leaving the US than entering it reversing a trend spanning half of a century. A study by the Pew Research Center said that in the 5-year period up until 2014 about 1 million Mexicans and their families left the United States to return to Mexico. During the same period, 140,000 fewer Mexicans left their home country to settle in the US. The center said the main reason was a desire to reunite with families.

Burundi's governing party has warned all Belgians living in the country to get out. The statement was issued days after Belgium, the former colonial power advised its citizens to leave Burundi because of increasing political violence. More than 200 people have been killed since April when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced he was running for a third term. Here's the BBC's Robert Misigaro. Relations between Burundi and Belgium have never been so low. This statement is in response to what the Belgium Foreign Affairs minister Didier Reynders said on November 13. He basically said that it could be an escalation of violence so it was advisable for Belgians to leave Burundi. So CNDD-FDD says look we want you to go since you feel like you're not safe here. World news from the BBC.

Police in Colombia have arrested more than 20 members of a gang accused of smuggling cocaine and heroin inside consignments of flowers for export. The drugs were hidden in the flowers of warehouses at the international airport near the capital Bogota. Police said the gang had sent small quantities of the drugs regularly to the US, Europe and to Central America.

The United Nations has passed a resolution calling on countries including the US, Britain and South Africa to release records about a mysterious plane crash that killed the then UN Secretary of General Dag Hammarskjold in 1961. An independent inquiry earlier this year found new information suggesting that the plane might have been shotdown by another aircraft over what is now was Zambia. Mr. Hammarskjold and 15 others were killed while travelling to broker a ceasefire in the mining rich Katanga province in the newly independent Congo.

New Zealanders are voting in the first of two referendums on whether to adopt a new national flag. They've been asked to choose between five designs, most of which feature a silver fern, the country's unofficial emblem. The winner will then go through to another referendum next year when voters will decide if it should replace the existing flag.

And scientists have discovered the species of song bird performs a tap dance so fast that it can't be seen by the naked eye. Researchers from Japan and Germany slow down footages of the blue capped cordon-bleu songbirds during courtship. Here's our science reporter Jonathan Web. Now, they've discovered that tap dance is in the courtship repertoire of both male and female cordon-bleus. The next step for the researchers is to try and pick whether the birds mate is wooed by the sight, the sound or the vibrations of this fancy foot work. Such is the agility of the songbirds show stopping quick step that could only be fully appreciated in super slow motion. That's the latest BBC news.