Hello, I’m Jerry Smit with the BBC News.

The United States has confirmed that it’s holding talks with Turkey about stepping up their joint military campaign against Islamic State group in northern Syria. A State Department spokesman Mark Toner gave more details.

It’s an effort to defeat, destroy, degrade ISIL in northern Syria, create an area there that is ISIL-free, if I could put it that way. But it’ll also really bring the fight against ISIL forces that are still active in northern Syria, and to support the efforts of the anti-ISIL fighters who are very active in northern Syria, and frankly making gains against ISIL in northern Syria.

Earlier, the US rejected the suggestion that the US had sanctioned Turkey’s airstrikes on Kurdish forces in northern Iraq. The Kurdish separatist PKK has said that Turkey’s assault on IS is just a cover for its renewed fight against them. They believe the attacks are response to Kurdish political success in Turkey’s recent general election. The Deputy leader of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party x says the country needs to find a way to live with the Kurds.

Problems with Kurds cannot be resolved as they’re resolved with the IS. You just slam the door to IS but you cannot slam the door to your 25 million Kurdish society. And it’s problems and it demands for a south government.

Forensic experts in Colombia have begun a search for hundreds of bodies at a landfill site believed to be one of the largest urban mass graves in the world. Relatives of possible victims held a ceremony at the site on the outskirts of the city of Medellin before excavation work started. x reports from Bogota.

The operation is expected to last 5 months. Around a hundred thousand cubic meters of rubble will be removed to try to find the bodies of people killed in a joint operation between the army and paramilitary groups that took place in 2002. It is estimated at around 90 bodies were dumped in the landfill site at the time. But victims’ organizations suggest that could be up to 300.

The Nigerian government says it’s received an offer of peace talks from a group which claims to be a faction of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram. A spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari said efforts are now underway to verify whether the group is genuine and has a mandate to negotiate. Mr. Buhari has previously indicated that he is not opposed in principle to talking to Boko Haram.

A Somali MP has been telling the BBC about how he survived the bombing of a hotel in the capital Mogadishu on Sunday, 2 years after he escaped from the Westgate shopping center attack in Kenya. Ali Khalif Galaydh who is a former Prime Minister said he was about to leave his hotel bedroom when in his words all hell broke loose.

BBC News.

President Obama has strongly criticized attacks on him by Republican presidential candidates over the recent nuclear agreement with Iran. Speaking in Ethiopia, Mr. Obama condemned a remark by one Republican Mike Huckabee, who said the deal with Tehran was marching Israelis to the door of the oven, a reference to Nazi death camps. Mr. Obama said such language would be considered ridiculous, ridiculous if it was not so sad.

The US Geological Survey says a powerful earthquake has struck the Indonesian province of Papua. It said the quake took place inland about 250 kilometers from the provincial capital at a depth of about 52 kilometers. There’s no word yet on damage or casualties. Various scientific monitors said there was no threat of a tsunami.

An American billionaire philanthropist believes he’s found a solution to the international refugee crisis by creating a new country for them all to live in. Jason Buzi says there are large sparsely populated areas of land around the world which could be set aside. He believes refugees would happily volunteer to live there.

These people have miserable lives: a lot of times they can’t work, they don’t have citizenship rights, they can’t own land. So to have a new country of their own, I think most would prefer that. Now many of them do want to come to the west, but as you know, there’s a lot of anti-immigrant backlash so that’s not a politically feasible solution. The beauty of it is that when you create an infrastructure for a new country just like when you build a new city, you are actually creating thousands of thousands of jobs in the process.

The Russian President Vladmir Putin has said the head of FIFA Sepp Blatter deserves a Nobel Prize for his leadership of world football’s governing body. Several FIFA officials are under investigation in the United States accused of corruption. Mr. Putin who shared a stage with Mr. Blatter at the draw for the 2018 World Cup in Russia made his comments on Swiss TV.

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