BBC News with Maria Marshall.

President Obama has issued a fresh appeal for calm in Ferguson after more than week of unrest sparked by the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager. Mr. Obama was speaking at a White House news conference.

Well, I understand the passions and the anger of that, arise over the death of Michael Brown. Giving in to that anger by looting or carrying guns and even attacking the police only deserves to raise tensions and stir chaos. Let me also be clear that our constitutional rights to speak freely, to assemble and to report in the press must be vigilantly safeguarded. There is no excuse for excessive force by police or in the action that denies people the right to protest peacefully.

Mr. Obama announced that the Attorney General Eric Holder will visit Ferguson on Wednesday. Troops from the US National Guard had been deployed in the suburb of St. Louis to help restore order. The state governor has lifted an overnight curfew.

A 24-hour extension to the current truce in Gaza has been agreed between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group which governs the territory. The announcement came less than an hour before a temporary five-day ceasefire was set to expire. Egyptian mediators in Cairo said the talks on a long-term arrangement would continue.

The World Health Organization has urged countries affected by the Ebola outbreak to screen all departing travelers for signs of the disease. It says anyone showing signs of the illness at international airports, seaports and major land crossings must be stopped from travelling. The International Air Transport Association's vice president for Africa Raphael Kuuchi said some airlines had halted operations to affected countries.

Most passengers would not want to travel to infected countries and therefore traffic volumes would be low. Some of the airlines that have stopped operations are for commercial reasons but there are also others who are actually just taking caution, probably advised by their own ministries of health.

Cameroon has now closed its land, sea and air borders with Nigeria in an effort to help prevent the spread of Ebola.

Pope Francis has said the international community would be justified in taking action against the Islamist militants in Iraq. He was speaking on a flight back from an overseas trip. Alan Johnston is in Rome.

In recent weeks the Pope has expressed his anguish at the plights of Christians and other religious groups in Iraq who have been persecuted by the Islamic State fighters. And at this in-flight press conference, he was asked what he thought of the American military action against the militants. He replied that it is legitimate to stop an unjustified aggressor but he added that he was stressing the verb 'to stop' and that he wasn't saying bomb or make war. He said that the way to hold the aggression must be evaluated.

World News from the BBC.

President Obama says Iraqi and Kurdish forces have made a major step forward by recapturing the strategic Mosul Dam from the Jihadist group Islamic State in northern Iraq. Mr. Obama said that demonstrated that they were capable of working together and will continue to receive strong support from American forces who will conduct more airstrikes on militant positions. Reports say fighting in the area is continuing. Islamic State denies that its fighters have lost control of the dam.

A study suggests that Africa's elephants have declined to a critical point where more are being killed each year than have been born. An international team of researchers from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Animals or CITES says nearly 35,000 elephants have been killed for their ivory each year. And that if the rate of poaching doesn't slow down, the species could be wiped out in the foreseeable future. John Scanlon is the Secretary General of CITES.

The primary risk really is in the central African states. They have seen a significant decline over the past ten years, extremely high levels of poaching for the illegal ivory trade and this is a region that is under severe threat and we could see extinctions there within the matter of decades.

The largest Russian oil company Rosneft had said it's begun a joint exploration project with the Norwegian company Statoil. Rosneft are officially under European Union and US sanctions over Russia's involvement in eastern Ukraine. Norway has joined in the sanctions, but this exploratory project in the Norwegian off-shore zone of the Arctic had been agreed last year well before the sanctions were introduced.

The man whose voice was formally familiar to world service listeners for his unique delivery of the football results James Alexander Gordon has died. He was 78. James Alexander Gordon was one of the most recognizable voices on radio for four decades until his retirement last year.

BBC News.