BBC News with Marion Marshall
There’s been fierce fighting in Mali between the army and the rebel Islamist coalition for control of the central town of Konna. A rebel spokesman said his forces are taking control of the town. Peter Biles reports.
The Malian army hasn’t commented officially on the reported loss of Konna, but eyewitnesses have said that government troops are streaming back down the main road to a military base at Sevare. That would appear to be the last line of defense before the town of Mopti. Earlier a spokesman Ansar Dine, one of the rebel groups in the north said the insurgents had taken control of Konna. If confirmed, it represents a significant push by the militants. The UN has approved plans to send 3,000 African troops to Mali to recapture the north, but they are not expected to arrive for some months.
Representatives of the Central African Republic and the rebel coalition are reported to have agreed to a temporary ceasefire to last one week. The rebels who have captured large swath of territory in the past month have been demanding that Francois Bozize step down.
Police in Pakistan say nearly 70 people have been killed in a double bombing at a crowded snooker club in the southwestern city of Quetta. The attack follows several blasts earlier on Thursday as Aleem Maqbool reports.
First bomb in the centre of Quetta that appeared to have targeted soldiers, a dozen people died. Then an attack at a religious gathering in the swarmed Swat valley more than 20 killed this time. And then in the evening there was a bombing at a snooker club in an area of Quetta where it’s mainly members of Pakistan Shiite Muslim minority that live. A short while later when journalists, emergency workers and onlookers had gathered at the site, another bomb exploded and the club building collapsed. Scores of people, mainly Shiite, according to the police, had been killed.
A senior British police officer has been convicted of misconduct in public office after trying to sell information about an investigation into phone hacking to the newspaper at the center of scandal. Detective chief inspector April Casburn contacted the News of the World paper just days after police reopened an investigation into phone hacking by tabloid journalists. Rob Broomby reports.
The court heard that the former counter-terrorism officer committed a gross breach of public trust. Prosecutors said she’d tried to undermine a highly sensitive investigation into phone hacking by contacting a newspaper. She was said to be concerned at counter-terrorism resources were being diverted to the phone hacking inquiry, but the detective overseeing the investigation said it was totally unacceptable for an officer to leak confidential information for private gain.
President Obama has formally nominated his Chief of Staff Jack Liu as America’s new treasury secretary. At a news conference at the White House Mr. Obama said he wanted Mr. Liu to replace Timothy Geithner who doesn’t wish to serve a second term in the post.
BBC News
Police in central California say one person has been seriously injured in a shooting incident at a high school near Bakersfield. A spokesman from the sheriff’s department of the town of Taft told the BBC that the gunman was a student at a school had used a shotgun and was in custody. Shaun Collins is from Kern County fire department.
At approximately nine o’clock this morning there was an active shooter that was Taft Union High School which is about 20 miles west of Bakersfield which is a bigger city here in California. Two people were shot. I don’t know exactly who they were or what age they were. One has been transported by an air ambulance to a local hospital and the other person refused any further treatment at the scene.
A senior official in Moscow has raised the possibility that Americans could be allowed to continue adopting Russian children until the end of this year in spite of a controversial new law banning such adoptions. A spokesman for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Russia had to give the US one year’s notice before it terminated the bilateral agreement regulating adoptions. His words contradicted a statement by Russia’s foreign ministry which on Wednesday said the agreement had been terminated.
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Ten killer whales that have been trapped under sea ice in Hudson Bay off Canada’s Arctic coast have been freed. Shifting ice appears to have let the whales reach open seas. Here is David Bamford.
The whales that were trapped under the ice were spotted last Tuesday by hunters from the nearby settlement of Innuksuac. The local authorities called for help from the Canadian government to free them, but it seems the whales have now escaped without their help. Hunters said they were no longer there and there were now lots of open water in the area. While they were trapped, the whales had apparently been taken turns to breathe through a hole in the ice the size of a small truck. David Bamford reporting