BBC news with Julie Candler.

The Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon has expressed regret for the death of the Palestinian government minister Ziad Abu Ein following a confrontation with Israeli forces. Mr. Yaalon said the incident in the West Bank was being investigated. Pictures show an Israeli border policeman holding the minister by the throat. Mr. Abu Ein spoke to reporters moments before he collapsed.

“They are assaulting us. This is the terrorism of the occupation. This is the terrorist army. It practices terrorism against the Palestinian people. We came to our Palestinian land to plant olive trees, and they began attacking us from the first moment. Nobody threw a stone, and nobody attacked back.”

The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of barbaric act. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was deeply saddened by what he described as a brutal death.

Scientists have cast doubt on a theory that water on earth came from comets after analyzing data from the Rosetta space mission. The European Space Agency made history by landing a probe on a comet called 67P in November. Rebecca Morelle reports.

“The Rosetta probe is allowing scientists to look at a comet in unprecedented detail. And this is helping them to answer the fundamental scientific question of whether a collision with these icy space rocks brought water to earth billions of years ago. The latest data suggest this probably wasn’t the case. Water on our planet has a unique chemical signature, but the water found on Comet 67P doesn’t match. The scientists conclude that something else must have given rise to the earth oceans. They believe the most likely candidates are now asteroids that formed closer to the Sun.”

A truth commission report in Brazil says execution and torture were official policies during military rule which ended nearly 30 years ago. The report calls for the lifting of an amnesty law in order to prosecute officials who carried out abuses. Supporters of the military government say the report is biased.

The campaign group Greenpeace has apologized for any moral offense caused by a publicity stunt close to a world heritage site in Peru. The activists entered a highly restricted area known as the Nazca lines. Matt McGrath reports.

“The ancient depictions of animals including a monkey and a hummingbird that are etched into the arid plain of the southern Peru are a vital part of the country’s heritage. Visits to the site are closely supervised. Ministers and presidents have to seek special permission and special footwear to travel on the fragile ground where the 1,500-year-old lines are cut. Earlier this week, Greenpeace unfurled a protest banner, very close to the location of the lines to increase pressure on UN climate negotiators meeting in Lima. But the Peruvian government is insensate to the stunt, saying the activists entered a strictly prohibited area and left footprints on the site.”

World news from the BBC.

The Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has condemned the CIA’s use of brutal interrogation techniques, saying they violated all accepted principles of human rights. He was reacting to a US Senate report which detailed how the CIA used harsh methods on suspects. He demanded to know how many Afghans had been interrogated at a secret site in Afghanistan.

The International Criminal Court has referred Libya to the UN Security Council for failing to handover the son of the former leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has been held by rebels in the eastern Zitan region. He’s charged by the ICC with crimes against humanity relating to the bloody repression of the uprising in 2011 in which his father was ousted and killed. Anna Hooligan reports.

“The Libyan government has said it can’t hand him over because he’s been detained by the influential rebel group, the Zitan Brigade. The ICC has also asked for document seized from Saif Gaddafi’s defense team when they visited him in captivity to be returned and any copies destroyed. The UN Security Council could in theory impose sanctions or even authorize this in force. It also could put a block on the unfreezing of assets until the surrender has occurred.”

The Kenyan bus crew accused of stripping a woman has been charged with sexual assault and robbery with violence. The crew, who denied the charges, faced a possible death penalty if convicted. A video of the incident which showed the women pleading with the man not to rape her led to a social media campaign and demonstrations.

A group of Gambian diplomats in London who have imported and sold on 29 tons of tax-free tobacco have been jailed for between three to seven years. A court in London said four diplomats and three staff members of the Gambian embassy had cheated British taxpayers out of 7.5 million dollars. The defendants used their diplomatic status to import commercial amounts of tax-free tobacco.

BBC news.