01/12/2015 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today with me Karin Giannone.

The role of American Special Forces in Iraq is to be expanded to help

The US Defence Secretary says they'll work with Iraqi and Kurdish

These special operators will over time and be able to conduct raids,

free hostages, gather intelligence and capture Isil leaders.

This Pacific island is a world away from Paris but it's

Scientists debate the boundaries of manipulating our DNA

which could treat or even cure inherited genetic conditions.

And the rock pools that form a prehistoric path.

We report from the dinosaur trail on Scotland's Isle of Skye.

Each one of these circular indentations was

Those are those trunk-legged, longnecked giants and they used to

We start with the fight against so-called Islamic State and the US

Defence Secretary has announced that America's role in direct combat in

Special operations personnel will be sent to Syria to support local

forces on the ground, and in Iraq, a special task force will be

deployed to conduct raids and gather intelligence.

Here in the UK, MPs from all parties are being urged by the government to

back military action against Islamic State in Syria.

They'll vote on the issue on Wednesday.

More on that in a moment, but first, let's hear what US Defence Secretary

Ash Carter told a congressional committee in Washington earlier.

In full coordination with the government of Iraq we are deploying

a specialised expeditionary targeting force to assist Iraqi

and Kurdish Peshmerga forces to put even more pressure on Isil.

These special operators will, over time, be able to conduct raids,

free hostages, gather intelligence and capture Isil leaders.

This force will also be in a position to conduct unilateral

That creates a virtuous cycle of better intelligence

which generates more targets, more raids, more momentum.

I spoke to Gary O'Donoghue in Washington about how surprising

this announcement by the US Defence Secretary is.

I think it is part of what they will call the intensification of the war

against Islamic State. There has been pressure on the administration

to do more and say what it is going to do and this ratcheting up of the

involvement of special forces as part of that response. Ash Carter

said they would conduct raids, free hostages, gather intelligence and

kill off ice leaders. Earlier in the year, they killed an Isis leader who

ran oil operations for Isis in Syria. A few weeks ago they were

involved in the releasing of some prisoners in northern Iraq. They

were just meant to be advising in that one but they got involved in a

firefight and one US special forces member died. This is an escalation

of some things that are already doing and an acknowledgement that

air strikes are not enough and they need people on the ground to

organise and assist local forces and do some things of their own.

Some Americans are worried and this is mission creep.

There will be that concern. This is not a large deployment. The numbers

in northern Syria, 50 special Ops members. Not large numbers of boots

on the ground. They will be involved in some kind of combat role so some

will see that as mission creep and some will see that as far too little

as there are people who want much bigger numbers. The Obama

administration is treading this line that it has promised not to put

boots on the ground but it must respond to changing situation.

Here in Britain, MPs are preparing to debate and later vote on

UK air strikes against Islamic State group targets in Syria.

But could more air strikes make a difference in Syria?

Prime Minister David Cameron says military action is just one part of

Our Diplomatic Correspondent James Robbins looks at the nature

The RAF Tornados are poised. From Cyprus, they have been striking Isis

in Iraq and if the word comes from the Prime Minister, they are ready

to strike in Syria. The government says Britain can be made safer and

Isis weaker. It strikes alone cannot defeat Isil but they can degrade

them. They can prevent them spreading further in Syria and

relieve the pressure on opposition forces which are being attacked by

Isil. The government believes those anti-Assad moderate forces could be

boosted. They want to prove they are fully on board for a war with Isis

until it is finished and this is the first step in escalating the British

involvement in that war. What is not being voted on this week is what the

next steps will be. Who is currently bombing Isis targets? Leading the

coalition are the US and France with Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It

makes Russia's campaign a problem. They have a different agenda,

supporting President Assad. Moscow and Washington are still at long

raids and again today President Obama urged Moscow to follow in

line. I am confident we are on the winning side of this and ultimately

Russia will see the threat that Isil poses to its country is the most

significant and they must align themselves with those of us who are

fighting Isil. The coalition claims real damage to Isis headquarters and

killing many of their leaders although there are fears civilians

have been hit by air strikes. This will only be brought to a conclusion

by boots on the ground but the issue is whose feet are in them and what

is the degree of leadership? Can British tornadoes launch a far more

coherent strategy for Syria? It depends on settling political

divides, including the future for President Assad, if any.

Let's turn to the climate talks in Paris now and, after the upbeat

mood of yesterday, many world leaders are beginning to head home,

leaving the tough negotiations for a deal to reduce carbon emissions

Before he left the conference, President Obama met with leaders

from island nations hit hard by rising sea levels,

I think we are going to solve it. The issue is just going to be the

pace and how much damage is done before we are able to fully apply

the brakes. In some ways, it is a keen to the problem of terrorism and

Isil. In the media... Immediate aftermath of a terrible attack like

in Paris it is natural for people to despair but look at Paris, you

cannot tear down Paris cause of the demented actions a handful of

individuals. One of those places on the front

line of climate change is the tiny South Pacific island nation of

Vanuatu from where our correspondent Matthew Price has been

looking at how important setting carbon emission targets are to the

islanders. If you look at the seashore behind

me, I am at the heart of the capital city, the most vulnerable one in the

world to big events such as the huge cyclone which hit these islands in

March. It is hard to realise what a difference in targets, the sort of

targets they're talking about in Paris in terms of 1.5 degrees,

warming of 2 degrees, three degrees, it is hard to understand what those

means. But in these islands and other vulnerable low-lying areas,

they believe those numbers are crucial and they will make the

crucial difference between places like this surviving or having to

have huge funds injected in them in order to adapt.

How were were people of the talks going on in Paris and how much faith

do they have that something will emerge to benefit them in future?

One thing somebody close to the talks from the UN perspective said

to me in recent days was that the proceeds there to have been a real

change in mood. These sort of low-lying countries, in which around

the world hundreds of millions of people could be affected by climate

change, they are no longer saying they're going to be victims of

climate change and what are the rest of the world going to do about it?

They are active now in a bottom-up approach. The people in these places

feel that they are at the moral heart of these negotiations. We saw

that in the way that the Association of Ireland states went to Paris at

the beginning of the week and said 2 degrees warming of the world's

atmosphere is no good, we need it to be 1.5. They went in with their

fists swinging at the beginning of negotiations to try to influence

them. For more on this our Science

Correspondent, Rebecca Morelle is at What happens next?

It will be a tough two weeks of negotiations. Yesterday, we had all

the world leaders here laying out broad ambitions. This is what we

want to do to save the planet. Obama said this could be a turning point.

The leaders are gone now and the hard work begins. Each country is

setting out its stall. They hope to produce a document by the end of the

week and this will form the basis of a legal agreement. Countries are

saying, OK, we won't have this kind of thing to be in the -- we would

like this kind of thing to be in the document and not this kind of thing.

There will be some trade to get what they want, and some sticking points.

This push for a more ambitious target of 1.5 degrees being the

threshold of the planet can take, to be honest, having spoken to most

people here, they think 2 degrees Celsius is gone to be hard enough to

achieve already so whether the smaller island states, and I was

talking to a representative from our least developed country, I'm not

sure they will get that. But they are trying to as possible. Quite a

lot of debate over the next two weeks and lots to thrash out before

we see if there is a deal at the end of it.

Now a look at some of the day's other news.

A bomb has exploded near a metro station in the Turkish

A local mayor said five people were injured.

The explosion happened on a highway overpass at the height

A jury has been shown CCTV images of a gang who stole

around ?14 million worth of jewellery from a safety deposit

vault in London's Hatton Garden over the Easter weekend.

They were caught on one of the few working cameras covering

the building, carrying the stolen jewellery away in wheelie bins.

Cuba has reinstated restrictions on doctors leaving the island to work

in the USA and other countries. It is said the health services have

been severely affected by the great number of people moving abroad since

travel restrictions eased two years ago.

Hundreds of Moroccans, Algerians and Pakistanis continue to

protest at the border between Greece and Macedonia.

They're demanding to be allowed to carry on into northern Europe

after Macedonian authorities began to filter migrants based

Our Europe Correspondent Chris Morris has this update

This is the Greek Macedonian border and the people you can see here are

from Syria and they have just been allowed to cross the board. At the

moment, only people from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are being allowed

through by the Macedonian authorities. You can see this fence,

built in the last few days, one of numerous fences which are starting

to be built across the Balkans to try to stem this flow of migrants.

On this side of the fence, still in, all these people are from other

countries, Iran, Pakistan, Morocco, Somalia. They are not being allowed

across the border at the moment. It stretches right back along the

railway here, two or 3000 people who have been stuck here for days. There

was mounting frustration and anger, storms have been thrown at police, a

big security presence on the Macedonian side, and aid agencies

are worried that thousands more people are thought to be travelling

up through Greece from the Greek islands to the border will soon be

stranded here as winter begins to set in.

The US President has called on Turkey and Russia to move

beyond their diplomatic spat and focus on the threat

On Monday, President Putin said Turkey had shot down a Russian

warplane on the Syrian border to protect oil supplies from the IS.

Barack Obama met the Turkish President on the sidelines of the

He said an international coalition can defeat IS, but added that Russia

should rethink its support for Syria's president Bashar al-Assad.

I spoke to Dr Igor Sutyagin and asked him

if he thought Vladimir Putin genuinely believes his accusation

that Turkey shot down the Russian warplane near the border with Syria

in order to protect its oil trade with the Islamic State group.

No-mac, I don't think that the Russian president thinks so.

Especially keeping in mind that his own military perfectly now that the

main flow of oil from the Islamic State controlled part of Syria goes

to Iraq, which was supported by Russian General staff repeatedly

between the 15th and 19th of November. Two weeks ago, Russian

leadership knew that oil flows to Iraq, not to Turkey. Why do you

believe President Putin is coming out with this? It is a string of

angry allegations at Turkey and its alleged collusion with Isis.

Revenge? It is necessary to humiliate somebody who humiliated

the president. It seems to be the attempt to put lots of deaths on his

head and accuse him of something. Otherwise it is very difficult to

explain why that happened to a domestic audience. How risky is it

for Russia to keep up this kind of rhetoric, given the situation

regarding Islamic State? But also such close economic and business

ties with Turkey, with them importing oil and gas from Russia.

Russian sanctions against Turkey, which have been announced, are very

carefully tailored. It was specifically designed to hit Turkey

and not Russia. The surplus in trade with Turkey is approximately $25

billion, which Russia gets from Turkey. That is over the amount of

money being paid to Turkey. Overall, trade is approximately 44 billion

last year and just 7.5 billion were Russian imports from Turkey and the

rest was Russian exports. An investigation into the crash

of an Air Asia plane en route from Indonesia to Singapore,

a year ago, has found that it was caused by the pilots' inadequate

response to a technical fault. All 162 people

on board the Airbus A-320 were killed after the captain attempted

to resolve the fault Gene editing -

the ability to manipulate our DNA - is set to transform

our knowledge of human biology. It offers the hope that inherited

genetic conditions could be treated, Scientists from all over

the world have gathered in Washington to discuss the potential

of gene editing and whether limits From there,

our Medical Correspondent Fergus Just a day old with a lifetime

of opportunity ahead. This baby has been born

into a world set to be transformed The ability to precisely

manipulate our DNA. How we grow and develop is shaped

by DNA which sits in the nucleus It's an instruction manual

for how our bodies work. Written in a chemical code

of just four letters. Key sections are called genes,

a spelling mistake can trigger disease,

but now scientists have discovered a cheap and easy way to correct

such errors by editing the code. Think of gene editing

as a molecular sat-nav. It scans the DNA,

searching for the error. Then it uses molecular scissors to

snip through both strands which switches off the faulty gene, or it

can repair the code by inserting These techniques raise

the prospect of treating, even curing, some genetic diseases,

and it's not science fiction. Last month, we heard about

one-year-old Layla whose leukaemia was fixed by doctors in London who

gave her gene edited immune cells. The technology could eventually

be used to treat scores of A faulty gene means her

skin constantly blisters. It is incredibly painful

and can prove fatal. This technology holds

the unimaginable dream of a cure. We really do have a hope that we can

specifically correct Sahana's cells The breakthrough prize is awarded to

Emmanuelle Charpentier and The scientists who invented

a cheap and rapid new gene editing system, just three years ago,

have already been showered with awards and labs across the world are

using their technology. So what is the potential

of gene editing? In the future,

we hope that this will be a technology that can actually be

used not only to understand disease, So not only understand

the information in a cell, If we see a mutation that causes

disease, we have now That could help patients with a

whole range of genetic conditions. Their faulty cells could be removed,

treated in the lab, and then healthy If gene editing was done

in embryos then any DNA changes The hot issue

at this meeting is whether scientists should even be allowed to

do research to modify the genes of embryos or is it a step too far

that might lead to designer humans? They are giants that once roamed

the planet. Now more than 100 rare footprints

left by huge plant-eating dinosaurs Researchers at Edinburgh University

discovered the tracks, which were made by sauropods more

than 170 million years ago. Our science reporter Victoria Gill

has been to Skye. It's a landscape that legend

has it was shaped by giants. And

while there are many myths inspired by the drama of this island,

its coast has been hiding evidence A huge dinosaur

and I guess it would have compacted It was on this bay that

palaeontologist at the end of a day's fossil hunting noticed

an unusual pattern in the rocks. As the light hit it

at the right angle, it just kind of clicked that something was odd

about these things. And we'd seen things like this

before because we study dinosaurs. So we realised that these

were dinosaur footprints. What looks like four rock pools

in front of me are actually So each one

of these circular indentations was Those are those trunk legged,

longnecked giants and they used to What researchers stumbled

on here is the most extensive A trackway of more than 100

footprints left behind by some These are a record of real dinosaurs

living and moving around right here. And so we can tell a lot

about how big they were, about how they moved, about what

environments they lived in. At the museum in Staffin,

just a few miles from the site, Dougie Ross has curated a collection

of Skye's Jurassic treasures. He's been exploring and fossil

hunting here most of his life. But even he didn't expect

a discovery of this scale. At most I expected them to find

a few fragmentary bits So when they first announced that I

thought, oh, It's the pattern

of prints that allows experts to But

a few ancient feet have even formed The experts are now calling this

Scotland's Dinosaur Island and as they continue to race

the tides to work here, they expect its rocks to reveal more

of their prehistoric secrets. Victoria Gill,

BBC News, on the Isle of Skye. And you can find out more

about the Isle of Skye's Jurassic secrets in a special multimedia

feature on the BBC Earth website. In direct combat in Syria and Iraq

will be escalated. If you want to get in touch with me,

or some of my colleagues, you can