BC news with Jonathan Izard.
The male companion of a female student gang-raped and murdered on a bus in the Indian capital Delhi last month has given a detailed account of the attack that caused outrage across India and beyond. He’s also criticized the police’s response. Five men have been charged with rape and murder. Andrew North sent this report from Delhi.
In the interview, the man tells how they were first tricked into boarding what appeared to be a passenger bus, they even paid a fare. But then the doors were locked and the men on boards started teasing the woman, leading to a fight. She was dragged away and he says he was then knocked unconscious. And for at least an hour, the men then brutally raped and tortured his friend. He confirmed the report saying they tried to run the pair over after throwing them off the bus. When three police vans were called, the man says they wasted time arguing which unit was responsible. And even then they didn’t help the badly injured woman who was bleeding profusely from her injures. He says he had to help her into the police van himself.
The United States says it’s begun to deploy troops and patriot missile equipment to Turkey. The Turkish government requested the defense system from NATO last year to protect its border with Syria. In October, five Turkish citizens died when a mortar fired from Syria landed on their home. James Reynolds reports from Istanbul.
The US military’s European command(s) says its personnel and equipment have begun to arrive at the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey. That’s a facility run by both Turkey and the United States. Germany and the Netherlands have also agreed to send two batteries of their own. Nato says the patriot missiles will be deployed to protect Turkey’s airspace. The organization insists that the deployment is purely defensive and is not a prelude to creating a no-fly zone over Syria.
Supporters of the Palestinian group Fata have celebrated its 48th anniversary with a rally in the Gaza Strip, the first since the rival Islamist Movement Hamas took power there in 2007. President Mahmud Abbas addressed tens of thousands of followers via a video link from the Fata power base in the west bank town of Ramallah. He said reconciliation between the two factions was essential if a fully-independent Palestinian state was to be realized. 'We should work together in unity. There’s no better way to reach our national goals and achieve victory. Our regards to our brave prisoners, to our people inside the country and the diaspora.' The event was cut short amid jostling in the crowd. Organizers put it down to overcrowding, but some witnesses blamed supporters of rival Fata leaders.
Journalists who worked for a liberal newspaper in China have demanded the resignation of a propaganda chief in a rare confrontation with the ruling Communist Party. In open letters, former employees and interns of the paper the Southern Weekly accused the official of dictatorial actions in an era of growing openness.
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At least 2 people have been killed by a grenade attack at a refugee camp in Kenya housing hundreds of thousands of Somalis. A local official said several others were injured by the blast at a restaurant in the Dadab camp. The Kenyan government last month ordered Somali refugees living in urban areas to report to Dadab following a wave of grenade attacks in the capital Nairobi, blamed on the Somali militant group al-Shabab.
The BBC has learned that the Church of England is to end the moratorium on gay clergy becoming bishops. The move has been denounced by traditionalist evangelicals as divisive. Here’s Robert Piggott.
The bitter dispute about whether the gay-cleric Jeffrey John could take up an appointment as bishop of Reading in 2003 led to a steadily deepening rift in the Church of England. Given the tension surrounding the issue of sexuality, the church’s decision to allow men in civil partnerships to become bishops represents a major concession and one with considerable symbolic significance. The church has already agreed to allow people in civil partnerships to become priests provided they promised that they would remain celibate and repent for active homosexuality in the past. Those conditions are now to be extended to clergies becoming bishops.
The former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi who owns the football club AC Milan says his team will walk off the pitch at every match where black players are racially abused. He spoke a day after AC Milan abandoned a friendly game with a lower league team Pro Patria, following racist chants directed at the Ghanaian International Kevin-Prince Boateng.
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A 300-year–old scroll which lay forgotten in a store room in Scotland has been identified as a major work by a celebrated Japanese artist. The painting, more than thirty meters long, depicts street life, shops, theatres and washing hung out to dry in the early 1700s in what is now Tokyo. It was painted by Furuyama Moromasa and donated to Edinburgh Central library by a relative of a 19th century Scottish engineer.