World News Update, what you need to know

Mourners have laid flowers and lit candles beside a memorial to David Bowie in the edgy Brixton district of south London where the visionary British rock star was born.

ELSEWHERE:

LONDON - Even before David Bowie's death from cancer was announced, the music legend had secured another No.1 chart hit in Britain with his new Blackstar album.

DAMASCUS - An aid convoy has entered a besieged Syrian town where thousands have been trapped without supplies for months and people are reported to have died of starvation.

BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing growing pressure to harden her line on refugees as the first extensive police report on New Year's Eve violence in Cologne documented rampant sexual assaults on women by gangs of young migrant men.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico has begun the process of extraditing drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to the United States after the famed fugitive was recaptured following a dramatic, months-long hunt featuring movie stars, sewer escapes and bloody shootouts.

JOHANNESBURG - The legal team of Oscar Pistorius says it has asked South Africa's Constitutional Court to let it appeal the double-amputee Olympian's murder conviction for the killing of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

AMMAN - Bombs dropped by suspected Russian warplanes have killed at least 12 Syrian school children in a rebel-held town in Aleppo province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports.