BBC news with Marion Marshall.
Police in India have charged five men with the rape and murder of a woman on a bus in Delhi last month in an attack that sparked a national outcry. They could face the death penalty if convicted. From Delhi, here's our correspondent Sanjoy Majumder.
Formal charges against the five suspects including murder, rape, assault, kidnapping and destruction of evidence have been placed before a magistrate in a court in Delhi in a document running to 1000 pages. It contains testimony taken from the victim before she died. The legal papers will now be transferred to a special fast-track court just launched with a trial expected to begin at the weekend. Hearings will take place every day until the conclusion of the trial, which may only take a few weeks.
The company that owned the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig, Transocean, has agreed to pay 1.4 billion dollars in fines for its part in the United States worst-ever oil spill. An explosion on a rig killed 11 workers and oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from the seabed for three months following the blast. Steve Kingstone reports from Washington.
The Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was owned by the British company BP, but it was Transocean that owned and operated the drilling rig which exploded in April 2010. In its settlement with the US Justice Department, the company admits its crew were negligent because they failed to follow up on clear signs that gas was flowing into the supposedly secure well. Transocean has consistently blamed BP, whose technicians were in overall control. But the company has now pleaded guilty to breaching US environmental law and will pay a total of 1.4 billion dollars in criminal and civil penalties.
A car bomb in Iraq targeting Shiite Muslims has killed at least 20 people and wounded dozens more. The blast took place at a bus station in the town of Mussayab, south of Baghdad, as Shiite pilgrims returned home from the holy city of Karbala. Correspondents say that since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Sunni militants have frequently attacked Shiite Muslims during festivals in an apparent attempt to reignite sectarian violence.
The Italian football team AC Milan have walked off the pitch during a friendly match because of racist abuse from the crowd. The Ghanaian international Kevin-Prince Boateng led the walk-off after insults were directed at him 25 minutes into the game against a lower league team Pro Patria. AC Milan's coach said he hoped a signal had been sent that racism would not be tolerated. AC Milan player Rodney Strasser was on the bench watching from the sidelines.
"Boateng called one the outside coach, so dislike, you know, like hoo-hoo, like monkey. They spoke with the referee. Their director say Ok. They are going to talk to him, you know. After few minutes later, they did the same thing with Prince. Prince was angry and we went out, to stop the game and go into our dress room."
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Peru has extended the state of emergency it has declared to find the remnants of the Shining Path Rebel Movement. The government said the measure would remain in force for another two months in the regions of Huanuco, San Martin, Ucayal. The Shining Path was largely defeated in the 1990s, but remnants continue to be active and have now allied themselves with drugs traffickers. The state of emergency was first declared in 2011 to allow the army to support the police in its battle against the rebels.
The French actor Gdrard Depardieu has been granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin. Last month, Mr. Depardieu announced his intention to renounce his French citizenship over the government's decision to raise the top rate of tax to 75%. Hugh Schofield reports.
In a letter read out on Russian television, Gdrard Depardieu said that yes he had made a formal application for Russian citizenship and yes he was delighted that he'd now been granted thanks to the intervention of President Putin. "I adore your country, your history, your writers", the actor said in the letter. It would all be amusingly eccentric, were it not also extremely serious in its implications for France's international image which may explain why President Hollande held a telephone conversation with the actor on New Year's Day. According to a friend of Mr. Depardieu, the president wanted to know more about the actor's motives. Mr. Depardieu told him that it wasn't the money that was the main issue but he was disgusted by the way France, in his words, spat on initiative and success.
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The US State Department has criticized plans by the chairman of the internet giant Google to visit North Korea. A spokeswoman said the timing of the visit by Eric Schmidt was unhelpful, following North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket in December. Mr. Schmidt is planning to make the trip with the former governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson. The State Department spokeswoman said the two men will be travelling as private citizens and will be carrying no messages from Washington.
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