BBC News with Gaenor Howells.

The French air force has bombed the key town in the north of Mali on the third day of operations against the Islamists groups that control the north of the country. The French defence ministry said fighter jets had hit training camp and infrastructure. French said neighboring Algeria had given French planes free access to its air space to reach Mali. Here's Andrew Harding.

The lasted air strikes targeted a place called Gao - one of the main towns in northern Mali and an important base for Islamists fighters. Eyewitnesses said the airport and several sites were hit and many rebels had now abandoned the town. Gao is about 400km behind the current frontlines in central Mali, where heavy fighting earlier this week prompted a dramatic intervention by French forces. It seems clear that French air power is not preparing the ground for a much bigger offensive, but most of the fighting is expected to be done by troops from Mali and from the neighboring West African countries.

Four hundred thousands of people have attended a rally in Paris to protest against plans by the French President to legalise same sex marriage and adoption. Parliament is due to consider the measures. President Hollande wants the law enacted by June. Hugh Schofield is in Paris.

The organisers who include a flamboyant actress going by the stage name Frigide Barjot are determined not let themselves be typecast as homophobic, so there has been strict vetting of slogans and banners. They say that instituting gay marriage as opposed other forms of legal union would be playing source as apprentice with society. They hate the idea of the French civil code has been changed to replace the words of mother and father with parent. The opponent wanted a referendum but despite this impressive turnout they are unlikely to get it.

Syrian opposition activists say at least nine people have been killed by government force bombarding rebel held areas near Damascus. An unverified video footage posted online showed the dismembered bodies of what appeared to be several children in the field in the suburb of Hazzeh.

The former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been granted retrial on charges of failing to prevent the death of hundreds of demonstrators during the revolt that forced him from power. He was sentenced to life imprisonment last June. The appeal court's decision prompted celebrations by Mr Mubarack's followers. From Cairo Here is Aleem Maqbool.

Hosni Mubarak's supporters outside the appeal court in Cairo do have something to cheer about. This is not just an appeal against his sentence but against the conviction on charges he failed to stop the killing of around 850 protesters during the uprising. When he faced trial at the first time, families of the victims were disappointed that he wasn't found guilty at more serious charge of ordering the killings and that he was sentenced to death. Now there is a possibility he could be acquitted entirely.

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The Finance Minister of Iraq has survived in an apparent assassination attempt. The minister, Rafa al-Essawi was travelling in a convoy in west Baghdad when a roadside bomb went off, no one was hurt. Mr al-Essawi is at the centre of a political crisis that seen mass protests by Iraq's Sunni minority against the Shia Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Venezuela's most senior political leaders are in Cuba to visit President Hugo Chavez who still in a serious condition after his forth cancer operation a month ago. The vice-president and a speaker of the National Assembly had met in Havana with the Cuban leader Raul Castro.

Scientists researching some of the earliest tetrapod creatures to walk the earth have made a startling discovery that our previous understanding of their anatomy was back-to-front. Here is our science reporter Rebecca Morelle.

These primitive four-legged animals were the first creatures to hold themselves out of the oceans, paving the way for all future life on land. Studying their anatomy is vital to understanding these, but it seems we've had it all wrong. Scientists created a detailed computer reconstruction and they discovered their backbones were back-to-front from what we understood, parts of the spine thought face the fronts of the animal in fact face the back and vice versa. The findings gave us more clues about how the breeds start base physically made the transition from water to land.

Stars of film and television will be walking the red carpet later at one of the Hollywood's biggest award ceremonies - the Golden Globes. Director Steven Spielberg's presidential biopic Lincoln has been nominated for seven prizes putting it ahead of Ben Affleck's hostage drama Argo and Quentin Tarantino's western Django Unchained, both of five nominations, while few films are contenders the best movie award along with Life of Pi, by Ang Lee and Kathryn Bigelow's film Zero Dark Thirty.

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