BBC News, I’m Jon Shin
A police officer has told a court in South Africa that shots, a woman screams and then more shots were heard at the home of the Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius on the night that his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was killed. Andrew Harding was at the Pretoria court.
Questioned by the prosecution Hilton Bolt made it clear he believed the athlete was guilty of murder. He spoke of two neighbours who’d reported hearing loud arguments from the house before the shooting. The detective said he had evidence of offshore bank accounts and fears Mr. Pistorius might try to flee the country if granted bail.
In the dock, Oscar Pistorius cried occasionally then his lawyer cross-examine detective Bolt. It was a withering offensive. The detective admitted the gasps from the court that one neighbour who’d heard shouting lived 600 meters away and could not identify the voices. The detective was accused of twisting the evidence to suit the prosecution. The bail hearing was adjourned until Thursday.
A former United States congressman Jesse Jackson Jr has pleaded guilty in court to misusing about 750,000 dollars of campaign funds. A tearful Mr. Jackson, the son of the civil rights leader, told the judge that he had misled the American people. Prosecutors say he spent the money on expensive personal items and celebrity memorabilia.
The American Secretary of State John Kerry in his first major speech since taking up the post has argued strongly in favor of maintaining U.S. foreign policy spending. Mr. Kerry said deploying diplomats today was far cheaper than deploying troops tomorrow. Kim Ghattas reports from Washington.
In his speech in Virginia he said the U.S. did not have the luxury to look inward in the 21st century. He added that foreign assistance was not charity but an investment in a strong America and a free world and it encourages others to work with the U.S. on common goals. Mr. Kerry addressed a common misconception in the U.S. Polls have found that most Americans believe 25% of the national budget goes to foreign policy but in fact it’s just over 1%.
The outgoing American Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned that hundreds of thousands of civilian employees of the Pentagon will have to take unpaid leave if Congress fails to break the deadlock over deficit reduction by the end of the month. Automatic, government spending cuts will be implemented on March 1st if there is no agreement including a 50 billion dollars reduction in the Pentagon’s budget.
Kenya’s chief justice says he is been the victim of harassment and intimidation in the run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections next month. Willy Mutunga said he’d received a threatening letter from an outlawed group known as the Mungiki. The letter is believed to warn Kenya’s judges that they will be fed to wild animals if they barred one of the leading presidential candidates Uhuru Kenyatta from standing in the election.
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Police in Nigeria have arrested three people on suspicion of planning attacks against senior Nigerians as well as U.S. and Israeli targets in Lagos. A spokeswoman for the State Security Service said one of those detained was a Nigerian who’d received weapons’ training in Iran. It’s not clear how far advance that the alleged plans were.
A senior prosecutor in Ukraine says his office has evidence that the former President Leonid Kuchma was involved in the killing of a prominent investigative journalist. The prosecutor Reynard Kuzmin said an inquiry was continuing into who ordered the murder of Georgiy Gongadze 12 years ago. A former police general was sentenced to life imprisonment last month for the crime. Mr. Kuchma has denied any involvement.
The disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong has said he will not agree to being interviewed under oath by officials from the U.S. Anti-doping Agency which wants him to reveal all he knows about drug taking in the cycling world. Alastair Leithead reports from Los Angeles.
Lance Armstrong has spent two months deciding whether to take part in the U.S. Anti-doping Agency’s investigation into cheating in cycling. He was told that telling the agency everything he knew under oath would be the only way of reducing his lifetime ban from sport. But his lawyer said the disgraced would not cooperate with the U.S. agency saying its prosecutions will only demonize selected individuals. He is offered to answer every question at an international tribunal into pro-cycling if one is established.
The pressure group Human Rights Watch says Mexico has failed to investigate properly human rights abuses committed by the country’s security forces in the six years that the former President Felipe Calderon was in power. The group has documented hundreds of disappearances and accuses the security forces of participating either directly or indirectly in more than half of the cases during Mr. Calderon’s war on drugs.
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