BBC News with Iain Purdon

President Obama has said he's horrified at what he called the Syrian government's brutality against its (own) people. His comments came at the end of one of the bloodiest day since the uprising began in mid-march. At least 100 people have been killed across Syria in government offensives against opposition protesters. Marcus Georg reports from Washington.

In a strongly worded statement, President Obama said he was appalled by the violence in Hama which he said demonstrated the true character of Syrian regime. He accused President Bashar al-Assad of using torture and terror against his own people and such actions would ensure he'd been left on the wrong side of history. But he had (praised) for the Syrian people, they were courageous and the United States, he said, would continue to stand with them. In recent weeks, Washington has hardened its tone against President al-Assad, but so far, it's avoided any explicit call for him to hand over power.

The leader of the republican in the United States Senate says an agreement is very close on a deal to raise the (limit) on US borrowing to avert an unprecedented default on America's debt. Mark Mardell reports from Washington.

The crisis has been caused because republicans who (control) the House of Representatives insist that the debt ceiling should not be raised without dealing with them national debt. Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, says they are close to get in what they want. Even if the president and the leaders of both parties can agree, it doesn't mean they can sell the deal to their troops. Many democrats will be unhappy that deep cuts on match with tax increases. Republican supportersof the conservative tea party movement will vary that the cuts can't be enforced but some don't think the debt limit should be (raised) at all.

Police in Mexico say a suspected cartel leader they arrested on Friday has confessed to ordering the murder of 1500 people in the northern city of Juarez. The man Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez is also suspected of masterminding the attack on the American consulate worker and her husband last year. F reports.

The security forces said the raid which Mr. Acosta Hernandez was captured had been long in the (planning). The suspect who's better known as El Diego is accused of being the leader of the La Linea gang whose members work as hired killers for the Juarez cartel. The cartel controls some of the main drug smuggling routes from Ciudad Juarez into the United States. Police believe El Diego is also behind the car bomb attack which killed four people in the border city. The first such attack in Mexico spiralling drug related violence.

Indonesian police say 17 people have died in (election) violence in the remote province of Papua in the east of the country. They were killed in clashes between supporters of two rival candidates for local elections later this year. Papua has been the scene of low level separated insurgency for decades and the area is heavily militarized.

World news from the BBC

The trail has ended in Tehran of two American men accused of spying. It's exactly two years since the men Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal were arrested. They said they'd crossed the Iranian (border) by mistake while hiking in neighboring Iraq. The Arabic language Al-Alam television is reporting that the verdicts on the two men will be announced in the coming days.

The second outbreak of violence in two weeks in the far western Chinese region of Xinjiang is reported to have killed at least 15 people. Eight of them died in the city of Kashgar when two men stabbed passes by. From Beijing, Martin Patience.

The series of attacks are the latest unrest to hit Xinjiang. Earlier this month, more than 20 people were killed in violent clashes with the police. The province is home to the Uighurs and (largely) muslim ethnic group native to the area, but many are unhappy about what they regard as the repressive rule of Beijing. They are also anger by the migration of the country's majority Han chinese to the region.

The African Union has announced it will hold a summit to pledge help for the victims of Somalia's famine which the United Nations says it's already claimed 10,000 lives. The statement comes after considerable criticism of the continent's leaders and the African media for (failing) to help. The UN says 12 million people urgently need help in the region.

The study published  in the Scientific Journal Nature Medicine says trails of a cheap credit card-size blood testing kit which can diagnose infections within minutes suggest it could transform medical care in remote parts of the world. Called the Mchip, the plastic device contains up to ten individual detection zones, requiring only a pinprick blood to be placed on them. Prototypes tested on hundreds of patients in Rwanda looking for infections like HIV and syphilis returned almost (100%) accuracy.

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