Hello, I'm Ally McHugh with the BBC News. The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, has decided to ban the country's major opposition parties from taking part in next year's presidential election. Mr.Maduro made the announcement after voting ended in polls to choose mayors in more than 300 towns and cities. A local election was boycotted by the three principal parties in Venezuela's opposition. They calls the polls as the next exercise designed to boast his dictatorship. Mr.Maduro said the opposition parties have made themselves irrelevant by boycotting the vote. The other political parties from Voluntad Popular, Primero Justicia have disappeared from the political map, but today they have disappeared completely. Because a party that has not taken part today and has called for the boycott of the elections cannot participate any more. That's the criteria that the National Constituent Assembly has constitutionally, legally ruled. They will not able to take part.

France's conservative party the Republicans had overwhelmingly elected a new leader who's expected to move them further right. Three quarters of the party members voted for Laurent Wauquiez. Roger Walker reports. At 42, Laurent Wauquiez is just 3 years older than Emmanuel Macron, but apart from their youth, they have little in common. A storm trimming Catholic who sees himself as a champion of the traditional values of rural France, Laurent Wauquiez accuses Macro of being weak on security and too fond of close European integration. Like the French Socialist, the conservatives were left demoralized by Mr.Macro sweeping victory in the presidential election in the spring. Now, Mr.Wauquiez said to move the Republicans to the right, to counter the appeal of the National Front.

The United Nation's children's agency is calling for global technology companies to take further measures to protect young Internet users. UNICEF says every day, more than 170,000 children go online for the first time. It says that the numbers of child Internet users increase, efforts to protect their data and online identities need to be stepped up. Laurence Christine Chandy is director of Data, Research, and Policy at the agency. The Internet was not developed with children in mind, yet its reality that the children are a large and growing share of users. And we need to increasingly think about online protection to the eyes of children. It's important to recognize that there are significant inconsistences between countries and how children are protected. And that for UNICEF reveals not just a lack of consciences, but a failure by many countries to think through these risks. UNICEF warns that what it calls the commercialization of childhood. It suggests social media company should automatically give children the maximum privacy settings when they sign up as users.

World news from BBC.