BBC News with Neil Nunes
Officials in South Korea say the founder of the controversial Unification Church, Sun Myung Moon, has died at the age of 92. Rev Moon's church gained hundreds of thousands of followers known as 'Moonies'. Lucy Williamson reports from Seoul.
Rev Moon had been in a critical condition for two weeks since being hospitalized with pneumonia in his home in South Korea. His children who have been carrying out most of the church duties for a while now decided keeping visual at his bedside. Rev Moon was a controversial figure. Born in 1920 in what is now North Korea, he said Jesus Christ had appealed to him as a teenager, and asked him to continue his work. Famous for holding mass weddings involving thousands of people, he also created an international business empire.
Prosecutors in South Africa have provisionally dropped murder charges against 270 striking mine workers over the deaths of 34 of their colleagues shot dead by police during protest last month. The announcement was made by the acting director of public prosecutions Nomgcobo Jiba.
"The decision and pronouncement on final charges will only be made once all investigations have been completed. The murder charge(s) against the current 270 suspects will be formally withdrawn on their next court appearance."
The prosecutors say those whose name, whose home addresses have been verified by police will be released on Monday, the others later. There was public outrage over the original decision to use an apartheid -era provocation law to charge the miners with the murders.
The Egyptian government has lifted the long-standing ban on female news presenters wearing Islamic headscarves . The lunchtime news in state television today was read by a presenter wearing a cream-colored scarf covering her hair. John Leyne reports from Cairo.
Fatima Nabil appeared on Egyptian state TV to read the mid-day news bulletin wearing a black suit and a cream-colored Islamic headscarf. She's believed to be the first woman presenter to wear the headscarf on state television since it was founded in 1960. Under the old system, there was an unofficial ban on women presenters covering their hair – part of a wide opposition to the introduction of Islamic values. Fatima Nabil told the BBC 'at last, the revolution has reached the state television.'
Police prosecutors in Pakistan say a Muslim cleric involved in the case of a young Christian girl charged with blasphemy will himself face blasphemy charges. He has also been accused of tampering with evidence. Witnesses including his assistant told prosecutors they have seen the imam adding pages from the Koran to a bag of burnt papers taken from the 14-year-old girl. He will be charged with desecrating the holy book. The girl faces charges of burning the Koran.
World News from the BBC
Israeli settlers have begun leaving an outpost in the West Bank after being handed eviction notices by the Israeli police. The Supreme Court has ruled that the hill-top settlement of Migron, north of Jerusalem and home to about 50 families, must be evacuated by Tuesday because it's not authorized by the Israeli government. One of the settlers, *, berated police carrying out the evictions.
"You are participating regrettably in an immoral act – the exiling of Jews from their land in the land of Israel. A day will come, a day will come and those who take part in this crime and this wrongdoing will pay for this." Some of the settlers are reported to have barricaded themselves inside a building in the outpost.
American officials in Kabul say they're introducing more vigorous vetting for the Afghan police force and plan eventually to extend the measures to cover all 350,000 members of the Afghan army and national police. More than 40 foreign troops have been killed by Afghan security forces this year. A major spokesman Colonel Thomas Collins said the measures were in response to those attacks.
"As you know we had a problem here with some security challenges. Eventually there will be a tightening of the vetting procedures across the force. We've already begun working with the Afghan government on how we can make the vetting process better. So that's underway."
The Brazilian Alan Oliveira has won gold in the 200m sprint title for Paralympic Games in London, overtaking the favorite Oscar Pistorius of South Africa in the final stretch . Speaking afterwards, Pistorius complained that the race had not been fair and that his rival had an advantage because he had chosen to adjust the length of his running blades. He said the organizers of the Paralympics needed to take another look at the regulations.
BBC World News