BBC news. Hello, I'm John Shea.

Efforts to stem the flow of migrants to Europe are gathering momentum. NATO is expanding its mission in the Aegean Sea to try to help stop the smuggling of people from Turkey to Greece. The alliance's secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said more ships would now operate in Greek and Turkish territorial waters. Resta Pouco reports. NATO already has ships in the Aegean, but so far they have been only collecting information. Now the alliance will take a more active role helping Greece and Turkey in their efforts to tackle human traffickers. Mr. Stoltenberg said the alliance would be operating in both countries' territorial waters. Earlier, Athens and Ankara had been at loggerheads over the issue. NATO is also increasing its cooperation with the EU's boarder force. The alliance said the exchange of liaison officers and real-time information would allow action to be taken faster in a situation where time was of the essence.

The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres says it's opening a refugee camp in northern France to rehouse people living in a makeshift camp outside Dunkirk. The camp,the second largest in the region, was badly damaged in storms last month. MSF says the new one will house 1500 people.

North Korea has threatened to launch indiscriminate nuclear strikes against South Korea and the mainland United States if they carry out a planned military exercise this week. The North said it considered the drills to be an undisguised attempt to infringe its sovereignty. Steven Evans reports. The huge military maneuver involving about 300,000 troops, 15,000 of them American, is an annual exercise and always generates tension. This year North Korea's nuclear test and the resulting sanctions have heightened that tension. The North Korean military threatened what the state news agency called 'an indiscriminate nuclear strike to punish those keen on aggression and war.' This kind of blood curdling rhetoric is not uncommon. Last year, North Korea threatened to turn Washington into a sea of fire.

The former first lady of the United States Nancy Reagan has died at the age of 94 after suffering heart failure. She was known for her close relationship with her husband president Ronald Reagan. Mrs. Reagan will also be remembered for the anti-drugs program called Just Say No. Arnold Schwarzenegger, like Ronald Reagan, was an actor in Hollywood before he became governor of California. Mr.Schwarzenegger paid tribute to Mrs. Reagan. She was one of the greatest first ladies, extraordinary human being and such a wonderful partner to her husband, to President Reagan. And I know she will join him now in heaven and this love affair between the two of them will start all over again. Arnold Schwarzenegger. You're listening to the latest world news from the BBC in London.

The Islamic State group says it carried out a bomb attack in the Iraqi city of Hilla that killed at least 47 people. Explosives were detonated at a checkpoint where dozens of cars were waiting to be inspected by the security forces. Our correspondent in Baghdad Jonathan Bill has been monitoring the situation. From what we can see, it looks like it was a suicide truck bomb. Some reports say it was a fuel tanker with explosives laden set off at about lunch time locally as you can see it caused huge devastation, it completely destroyed that checkpoint, obviously killing a number of the Iraqi security forces. They're doing the checks, but also civilians including as we understand a baby.

Votes are being counted in Benin after an election to choose a new president. The leading candidate, the serving Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou has praised the conduct for the poll saying the campaign has been without violence.

The man credited with the invention of email the American Ray Tomlinson has died at the age of 74. In 1971, he came up with the idea of sending electronic messages from one person to another and he wrote the first modern email while working in Boston as a computer engineer. He also pioneered the use of the @symbol that is the key feature of all email addresses today. Mr. Tomlinson was asked in 2009 what was in the first email. Everybody asked that and of course I don't remember every single word of it. The main thing is there were a lot of test messages. You know these things don't work out of the box because there was no box. Every time you test, you have to generate some kind of a message and you might drag your fingers across the keyboard or just type the opening phrases from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address or something else. So technically, the first email is completely forgettable and therefore I've forgotten. Voice of the late Ray Tomlinson. And that's the latest BBC news.