GERMANY: Engineering giant Siemens and its Japanese partner Mitsubishi Heavy Industries responded today to a tweaked bid by US firm General Electric for France’s Alstom company by boosting their own combined offer by €1.2 billion (£960m) to €8.2bn (£6.6bn).

They have increased their valuation of Alstom’s energy business by €400m (£320m) to €14.6 (£11.7bn).

Siemens hopes to acquire Alstom’s gas business entirely, while Mitsubishi would take a 10 per cent stake in Alstom under their proposal.

DENMARK: Foreign Ministry spokesman Ole Egberg Mikkelsen announced the release today of freelance photographer Daniel Rye Ottosen, who had been held captive for 13 months in Syria.

Mr Rye Ottosen was captured while on assignment to photograph the conflict and the living conditions of the civilian population.

Mr Egberg Mikkelsen declined to comment on press reports that the photographer had been detained by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and that a ransom had been paid.

IRAN: Two men convicted of spying for Britain and Israel were sentenced today to 10 and five years in prison.

Prosecutor Yadollah Movahhed said that the man sentenced to 10 years had “exchanged information with four British intelligence operatives.”

He said that the other man, who was arrested last August, had passed on intelligence to a security officer at the Israeli embassy in Thailand.

BULGARIA: Police officials in the Black Sea resort town of Varna confirmed today that 10 bodies have been recovered from floodwaters in the area.

It remains unclear how many more people are still missing after torrential rain flooded large parts of the coastal town, where temporary shelters have been set up.

Two more bodies were pulled from muddy waters in the northern city of Dobrich.

SENEGAL: Medecins sans Frontieres director of operations Bart Janssens warned today the current outbreak of Ebola ravaging West Africa was “totally out of control.”

Mr Janssens said that the disease was already linked to over 330 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and was likely to prove the most deadly ever on record.

He urged international bodies and the governments involved to send in more health experts and increase public education messages about how to stop the spread of the disease.

ITALY: Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s legal challenge to a conviction of paying for sex with an under-age prostitute opened today as he spent his seventh morning doing community service with Alzheimer’s patients.

His appeal against conviction, a seven-year prison sentence and lifetime ban from politics, is expected to last several months.

The right-wing billionaire media magnate is performing four hours community service a week as part of his sentence for tax fraud.

GREECE: Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang visited Greece’s largest port of Piraeus today as part of a three-day trip focusing on business deals.

China’s Cosco corporation has a concession to operate two of three container terminals in Piraeus, one of the largest foreign investments in the country and one which Greece hopes will transform the country into a regional transportation hub.

“The port of Piraeus can become China’s entry gate into Europe. The port of Piraeus is like the pearl in the Mediterranean,” said Mr Li.

AFGHANISTAN: Four bodyguards of provincial governor Juma Khan Hamdard were shot dead today when a gun battle broke out between his convoy and police at a checkpoint outside Mazar-i-Sharif.

Mr Hamdard, who is from Mazar-i-Sharif but is the governor of the southern Paktia province, had been visiting his family and was returning to Paktia.

Local officials suggested that the convoy had refused to stop at the checkpoint, sparking the battle in which four police officers were wounded.