Theresa May has distanced the UK from Washington over John Kerry's condemnation of Israel, in comments that appear to be designed to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration.

Kerry, the outgoing secretary of state, delivered a robust speech this week that criticised Benjamin Netanyahu's government as the "most rightwing coalition in Israeli history" and warned that the rapid expansion of settlements in the occupied territories meant that "the status quo is leading toward one state and perpetual occupation".

The prime minister's spokesman said May thought it was not appropriate to make such strongly worded attacks on the makeup of a government or to focus solely on the issue of Israeli settlements.

However the US state department last night reacted with some bluntness to May's statement.

A spokesperson said: "We are surprised by the UK Prime Minister's office statement given that Secretary Kerry's remarks--which covered the full range of threats to a two state solution, including terrorism, violence, incitement and settlements--were in-line with the UK's own longstanding policy and its vote at the United Nations last week."

German media and politicians have warned against an election-year spike in fake news after the rightwing website Breitbart claimed a mob chanting "Allahu Akbar" had set fire to a church in the city of Dortmund on New Year's Eve.

After the report by the US site was widely shared on social media, the city's police clarified that no "extraordinary or spectacular" incidents had marred the festivities.

The local newspaper, Ruhr Nachrichten, said elements of its online reporting on New Year's Eve had been distorted by Breitbart to produce "fake news, hate and propaganda".

Dortmund police on Thursday said its officers had handled 185 missions that night, sharply down from 421 the previous year. The force's leader judged the night as "rather average to quiet", in part thanks to a large police presence.

Bild, Germany's top-selling daily, also predicted trouble ahead - pointing to the fact that Breitbart's former editor Steve Bannon had been appointed as US president-elect Donald Trump's chief strategist.

It warned that Breitbart - which plans to launch German and French language sites - could seek to "aggravate the tense political climate in Germany".

The founder of Italy's populist Five Star Movement (M5S) has asked members to vote on splitting from a Eurosceptic bloc of MEPs co-chaired by Nigel Farage.

Beppe Grillo, a comedian turned politician, said in a post on his blog that since Farage had led Ukip to Britain voting to leave the EU, the two parties no longer shared common goals and he recommended leaving the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD).

In a move that would see his party mesh with European liberals, Grillo has called an online referendum, scheduled for Sunday and Monday, on breaking away and instead forming a new group with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), led by the former Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, who is also the EU's chief Brexit negotiator.

Grillo has long called for a referendum on Italy's membership of the euro currency, but not on Italy leaving the EU.

More than a dozen fellow Nobel laureates have criticised Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's de facto leader, for a bloody military crackdown on minority Rohingya people, warning of a tragedy "amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity".

The open letter to the UN security council from a group of 23 activists, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Malala Yousafzai, warned that the army offensive had killed of hundreds of people, including children, and left women raped, houses burned and many civilians arbitrarily arrested.

It was delivered as Bangladesh announced around 50,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled the violence across its border.

"Access for humanitarian aid organisations has been almost completely denied, creating an appalling humanitarian crisis in an area already extremely poor," reads the letter, whose signatories include current and former political and business leaders and campaigners such as Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel peace prize.

"Some international experts have warned of the potential for genocide. It has all the hallmarks of recent past tragedies - Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Kosovo," the letter reads.

A court in Istanbul has ordered the release of an award-winning Turkish novelist along with two others after more than four months in jail, while a prominent journalist has been arrested in a separate case.

Asli Erdogan, along with linguist Necmiye Alpay and Zana Kaya, editorial director of a pro-Kurdish newspaper, were ordered to be released on Thursday, the first day of their trial on terrorism-related charges.

The three are, however, barred from leaving the country, with the next hearing scheduled to be held on January 2. The detention of one of the defendants was extended.

Alpay and Erdogan both pleaded "not guilty".

Erdogan and eight others, some of whom face possible life sentences, have been charged with membership in the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Turkey and the US consider a terrorist organisation.

Alec Baldwin mocks Trump in Russian MAGA hathttps://t.co/4MPzXd7LAM pic.twitter.com/PGTlIf5NPX

— The Hill (@thehill) January 7, 2017

People across the world, particularly those in developing countries, face a decade at risk from pandemics spread by antibiotic-resistant bugs, the billionaire Bill Gates has warned.

Gates, who made his fortune with the Microsoft Windows operating system before becoming a philanthropist, said the success of antibiotics had created complacency that was now being exposed by the rise of microbial resistance to the drugs.

"I cross my fingers all the time that some epidemic like a big flu doesn't come along in the next 10 years," Gates told a special edition of Radio 4's Today programme guest-edited by Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England.