Hello I'm Russell Padmore.

Oil and gold prices rise after the US missile strike on Syria.

Protests in South Africa against the president's management of the economy.

And East Africa set to gain foreign investment as funds shy away from South Africa following the downgrade to junk.

Early this morning this deadly sound was heard on board US Navy warships in the Mediterranean.

One of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired at an airbase in Syria which Washington believes was the launch pad for a chemical attack which killed about 70 people this week.

Speculation of America stepping up involvement in the Syrian war caused a spike in the price of oil and gold to rise in value.

Gold is a traditional safe haven for investors in times of crisis.

Here's President Donald Trump explaining why he ordered the missile strike.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of several cities in South Africa today.

They've been marching to protest against President Jacob Zuma to demand his resignation.

South Africa is mired in an economic crisis, highlighted by Mister Zuma firing the Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan last week, which dismayed foreign investors and prompted the credit ratings agency Standard and Poors to downgrade the nation's debt to junk status.

Mike Brown the chief executive of Nedbank, told the BBC it will not damage the financial sector, but growth will be more challenging.

Economies in East Africa are set to benefit from South Africa's credit rating suffering a downgrade to junk.

It will prevent foreign funds putting money into Johannesburg which means investors seeking a good return from Africa will look elsewhere in the continent.

Christie Viljoen, an economist at KPMG in Capetown, told the BBC South Africa's problems will not damage neighbouring nations and investors will find the East African Community more attractive.

Over the past few weeks the relationship between food and religion has rarely been out of the news in India. The Hindu religious faithful want to protect animals, such as cows and ban slaughterhouses, but if meat is restricted millions of jobs will be at risk and it would become more difficult to feed India's growing population. The state of Gujarat has made the sentence for killing a cow life imprisonment and in the country's largest state, Uttar Pradesh, meat traders went on strike after the government ordered a clamp down on slaughterhouses . The BBC's Rahul Tandon starts his report in the North Indian city of Lucknow.