BBC News with Gaenor Howells

European Union ministers meeting in Brussels have agreed a series of steps to deal with the growing scandal surrounding horsemeat being passed off as beef. Christian Fraser reports from Brussels.

This was an opportunity to share intelligence. The ministers of Britain, France, Ireland, Poland and Romania have identified a criminal conspiracy. Surely it’s safe to assume by now that more than one company, more than one country is involved. Is it a network? Is it linked “It’s too early to speculate,” said the Irish Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney. “But we are talking” he said, “of a systemic failure which we must put right.” From the 1st of March, there’ll be tests on two levels: first on processed beef products to acquire DNA, and second on horsemeat legitimately in the food chain for the banned chemical phenylbutazone or bute.

Pope Benedict has celebrated his first public mass before leaving office at the end of the month. He was given an ovation by a packed congregation in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome in a service to mark the start of Lent. During his homily, the pope said the faith of the church was marred by divisions and rivalry among the clergy—an implicit criticism of recent infighting within the Vatican. Earlier he was applauded by thousands of Roman Catholic pilgrims in his first appearance since the announcement of his resignation.

A passenger plane taking football fans to a Champions League game in Ukraine has crash-landed on an internal flight. Forty-five people were on board. At least four died when the aircraft overshot the runway in Donetsk and broke up. There was a minute’s silence before tonight’s match between Shakhtar Donetsk and Borussia Dortmund in honour of those who died.

The United States and the European Union say they plan to start talks by the end of June on agreeing the world’s largest-ever bilateral trade deal. The aim is to cut tariffs and regulations in a way that could set a standard for global trade. Here’s our economics correspondent Andrew Walker.

It is the world’s biggest economic relationship. Bilateral trade between the EU and the US is worth over $2bn a day. Now they plan to reduce or even remove many of the remaining barriers. None of these is likely to be easy. Europe, for example, has a more cautious approach to approving new products, such as genetically modified foods, and that has caused trade friction in the past. And as always with trade liberalisation, objections are likely from industries and farmers who would be exposed to more competition.

Fighting is taking place around the Syrian capital Damascus as government forces try to take control of areas held by rebel fighters. Government planes bombarded several suburbs of the capital in an attempt to dislodge opponents of President Assad. Elsewhere, there are reports of clashes on two main highways in the city of Homs. And in the north of the country, the Syrian opposition says it’s almost taken control of a military base near Aleppo airport.

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Australia’s Foreign Minister Bob Carr has ordered a review of how the government handled the case of an Australian man believed to have killed himself in an Israeli prison in 2010. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation identified the man previously known only as Prisoner X as Ben Zygier, who allegedly had ties to Israel’s spy agency Mossad. Chloe Hadjimatheou has more.

Israeli media reports in December 2010 revealed that Prisoner X had somehow succeeded in killing himself. When the story of his death broke, the state went to extraordinary lengths to hide the details of the case. But the international dimension to the case has made it hard to keep secret, and yesterday members of the Israeli parliament exercised their immunity to ask the justice minister difficult questions. Similar questions have been asked of Australian politicians and the country’s Foreign Minister Bob Carr has promised to investigate how his department handled the case.

Thousands of Bahraini Shia Muslims have been protesting across the country calling for democracy. The demonstrations were called by the opposition al-Wefaq party which is currently in talks with the kingdom’s Sunni Muslim rulers. The opposition has already voiced serious doubts about a positive outcome to negotiations.

Regulators in Brazil have ruled that the technology company Apple doesn’t have exclusive rights to use the iPhone trademark in the country. The regulators say a Brazilian company Gradiente Eletronica registered the name seven years before Apple. A spokesman for the patent office said Gradiente could sue Apple for exclusivity.

An unemployed Frenchman has died after setting himself alight outside an employment centre in the city of Nantes. The 43-year-old man had reportedly warned journalists that he’d self-immolate this week after being denied unemployment benefits. The number of jobless people in France now stands at more than three million.

BBC World Service News