The Obama administration has cut back on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military aid to Egypt, in what the US is describing as a “recalibration” of aid.

According to State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, Washington has suspended the delivery of jets, tanks, missiles and helicopters to Egypt,

“pending credible progress toward an inclusive, democratically elected civilian government through free and fair elections”.

In a program that has lasted over 30 years, $1.3 billion of military aid has been annually sent to Egypt from the United States.

US Secretary of State John Kerry had said,

"by no means is this a withdrawal from our relationship or a severing of our serious commitment to helping the government".

A senior U.S. official had been quoted by Voice of America as saying,

"the United States will not support actions that run contrary to our interests and our principles."

Burmese authorities announced  today that they had signed a preliminary peace agreement with ethnic Kachin rebels in the north of Burma.

The US government has decided to suspend some parts of the aid it supplies to the Egyptian military.

Aid for counter-terrorism operations and border security will remain unaffected, but deliveries of tanks and aircraft will be stopped, due to the crackdown on supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood after President Mohammed Morsi was overthrown in a coup.

The US refused to label the ouster as a coup, as that would have required a full suspension of aid, but a review of the aid worth $1.3bn was launched in August.

UN weapons inspectors in Syria have called for a truce, in order for the Syrian government's chemical weapons arsenal to be destroyed by the deadline.

Speaking to reporters at The Hague, Ahmet Uzumcu, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said the deadline for destroying the weaponry was "extremely tight", but was possible if truces were agreed.

In a rare television interview, the leader of the Pakistani Tehreek-e-Taliban Paksitan (TTP), Hakimullah Mehsud, offered an invite to representatives of the government to meet in Taliban territory, to hold talks about bringing peace into the country.

The Libyan government has summoned the US envoy to the country after a raid saw an alleged al-Qaeda operative abducted by US special forces.

Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said ties between the two countries would remain unaffected but said that Libyan nationals must be tried in Libyan courts.

The US embassy in Tripoli told the BBC that Ambassador Deborah Jones was "in regular contact with the Libyan government, including the Libyan ministry of foreign affairs".

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US Secretary of State John Kerry has praised Syria’s President Basahr Al-Assad for co-operating with international monitors in destroying the government’s stockpile of chemical weapons.

Speaking after international monitors had begun work on destroying the stockpile, Kerry stated,

Malaysian Foreign Direct Investment in Africa has surpassed that of China, making the country the top foreign investor from Asia on the continent, according to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the UN’s economic think tank.

Malaysia is now the third largest investor overall, after France and the US and ahead of China and India.