BBC News with Maria Marshall.

In his first comments after the Democratic Party's heavy defeat in Tuesday's midterm elections, President Obama has said the American people have sent a message that they wanted their politicians to work as hard as they did. Speaking at the White House Mr. Obama said he was eager to work with the new Congress to make the next two years as productive as possible.

I am committed to making sure that I measure ideas not by whether they are from Democrat or Republican but by whether they work for the American people. And that's not to say that we won't disagree over some issues that we're passionate about, we will. Congress will pass some bills I cannot sign. I'm pretty sure I'll take some actions that some in Congress will not like. That's natural. That's how our democracy works. But we can surely find ways to work together on issues where there's broad agreement among the American people.

He also said he congratulated Mitch McConnell on becoming Senate Leader. For his part Mr. McConnell said that two sides could move forwards on trade agreements and tax reform.

The World Health Organization has slightly lowered its figures of the number of death from Ebola in West Africa, saying better laboratory testing is producing more reliable statistics. This may be the first indication that the huge effort to contain the virus is starting to have a moderate effect as I. F. reports from Geneva.

The WHO believes that in Guinea the number of new cases is beginning to stabilize. In Liberia they may actually be declining. But in Sierra Leone they continue to rise. But the WHO believes that despite this small size of hope, this is no time to relax. Transmission of Ebola remains widespread and it has now reached every district of Liberia and Sierra Leone. What's more the WHO is sure that overall both deaths and new cases of Ebola are still being underreported.

Myanmar's most prominent pro-democracy activist the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has said the country's reform process has stalled over the last two years. Speaking at a news conference, she warned world leaders not to be too optimistic about the country's transition from military to civilian rule.

The family of a British-Iranian woman on hunger strike in prison in the Iranian capital Tehran say they fear her condition is deteriorating rapidly. Ghoncheh Ghavami had been refusing solids and liquids since Saturday when she was sentenced to one year in prison for spreading anti-government propaganda. She was arrested in June when she tried to watch a men's volleyball match. Her brother Iman Ghavami said it was his sister's second protest while in custody.

She hasn't recovered from that first hunger strike because first one lasted for two weeks. Then now she is on a dry hunger strike - no liquid and no solid food. So we fear that it might have a pretty serious, I mean fatal consequences.

World News from the BBC.

Jordan has recalled its ambassador to Israel in protest at what it calls increasing and unprecedented Israeli escalation at Jerusalem's Holy sites. It follows clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police at al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount. Jordan, which acts as custodian of the mosque, said it would lodge a complaint to the UN Security Council.

Boko Haram militants in northeastern Nigeria have renamed a recently captured town of Mubi, calling it Madinatu Islam - City of Islam. They seized Mubi, the second largest town in Adamawa State, at the end of last month. Residents told the BBC the militants had imposed Sharia - Islamic Law and it carried out executions and amputations.

The authorities in Brazil(s) are investigating reports that nine people were killed in the northern city of Belem in revenge attacks carried out overnight by off duty police officers. The attacks came hours after a policeman was shot dead by a unknown gunman outside his home on Tuesday night; nine people were killed in several areas of the city by men on motorbikes. Brazilian police said at least six of them were execution style killings.

Scientists are giving details of a 66-millions-year-old fossil resembling a modern-day groundhog which they say rewrites our understanding of early mammals. N. D. has more.

The fossilized skull of this strange creature was discovered by chance in a block of sandstone taken from Madagascar to a New York lab. The scientists who discovered it have called it Vintana Sertici. They say it was about twice the size of a modern groundhog, have large eyes to see in low light and a downturned snout like a walrus. Its existence means that mammals must have evolved millions of years earlier than previously thought. It's already been heralded as the discovery of a decade in the field of early mammal history.

BBC News.