BBC News with Jerry Smit

Thousands of civilians have been fleeing of the sea suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus after a relaxation of a barricade by government forces. Food, water and other supplies have been running desperately short. Lyse Doucet who is in Damascus described desperate people fleeing the rebel held suburb of Moadamiya which’s been under siege since March.

A tide of people fled Moadamiya today some on stretchers, some crying, all showing severe strain of a life under siege. “We didn’t seen a piece of bread for nine months.” one woman told me, “We were eating leaves and grass.” A little girl in a pink dress showed me her trembling hands. “We are all sick.” She said as she and her little sister clutched pieces of bread distributed by the Syrian-Arab Red Crescent Society.

The Syrian army had previously said rebel held areas of Damascus could surrender or starve.

The Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has dismissed his deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil after he met an American diplomat in Geneva. Syrian state media said the talks were unauthorized. The American he met, the former ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford told the BBC Mr. Jamil had requested the meeting in a personal capacity.

“To be very frank, from although I was willing to meet with Qadri Jamil he made clear that he was meeting me in a personal capacity not as a deputy prime minister of the Syrian government. And we had a long and very thorough discussion but I cannot say that we agreed on many issues they clipped. For one agreement we had that Syria does need to revolve its conflict through political means.”

America’s top intelligence chiefs have defended the activities of the national security agency in the wake of allegations that it’s been spying on European allies and unlawfully monitoring American citizens. Johnny Diamond reports.

If anyone was expecting apologies or embarrassment from the leaders of America’s intelligence community, they were in for disappointment. Mistakes had been made said James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, but they were human or technical. There is, he said, no other country on this planet that has the magnitude of oversight that the US does. He said that what he described as the torrent of disclosures about American surveillance had been extremely damaging and he anticipated even more. And asked whether America’s allies spied on the US, he replied with just one word, ‘Absolutely’.

The head of the NSA said reports about mass phone surveillance in France, Italy and Spain were false.

President Putin’s most high-profile political opponent in Russia is facing new criminal charges. Alexei Navalny who’s stood for election as mayor of Moscow has already been giving a five-year suspended sentence for embezzlement. Now he’s been charged with money laundry along with his brother. Alexei Navalny has always insisted accusations against him are politically motivated.

World News from the BBC

The Supreme Court in Argentina has ruled that a controversial media bill passed four years ago is constitutional, clearing the way for the breakup of large media groups. Argentina’s biggest broadcasting and newspaper company Clarin had appealed against the law starting a bitter dispute with the government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Following the ruling, Clarin’s share prices fell sharply.

The president of France, Francois Hollande says four French hostages seized by Islamist militants in Niger more than three years ago has been released. They were kidnapped by al-Qaeda in Islamist Maghreb from the uranium mining town of Arlit. The foreign minister Laurent Fabius said no ransom had been paid. Now our West Africa correspondent Tomas Fessy reports.

The details of how the hostages were released have yet to emerge but the French President Francois Hollande has thanked his Nigerian counterpart for securing their freedom. The four men working for the French mining company Areva were captured more than 1,000 days ago in September 2010 by al-Qaeda militants. Both French ministers of foreign affairs and defense are on their way to the western African countries to bring the four free men back home.

The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelming to condemn the US embargo against Cuba. Only two out of 200 countries, the US and Israel voted against the resolution. The American sanctions against Communist Cuba have been in place for more than five decades.

A Brazilian surfer is thought to have broken the record for the largest wave ever surfed during the storm that battered Western Europe on Monday. Carlos Burle was filmed riding a wall of water around 13 meters high off the coast of Portugal. He also said the life of a fellow Brazilian surfer who nearly drowned in the huge swill.

BBC News