BBC News with Jim Lee
The US Secretary of State John Kerry’s preparing to ask China, North Korea’s only ally, to step up its efforts to dissuade Pyongyang from its nuclear ambitions. Speaking in the South Korean capital Seoul, Mr Kerry said policies to hold the North’s nuclear programme should have teeth and that China could play a vital role in ending the crisis.
"China has an enormous ability to help make a difference here. And I hope that in our conversations when I get there tomorrow we’ll be able to lay out a path ahead that can defuse this tension, that can allow the people of the North and the South and other people in the world to recognise that people are moving this in the right direction, which is towards negotiations and towards a reduction in the current level of tension.”
President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has said he wants peace and normal relations with South Sudan. He was speaking during his first visit to the South since it became independent in 2011. Its South Sudanese counterpart Salva Kiir said they had agreed to the free movement of people and goods across their border. Mr Bashir invited the South Sudanese president to visit Khartoum so they could continue to talk about issues between the two countries. After South Sudan’s secession, the two sides came to the brink of war. But Mr Kiir said war would not solve their problems.
The International Criminal Court has launched an investigation into allegations that a former member of its own staff sexually abused people he was employed to protect. The attacks are alleged to have taken place in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Anna Holligan is in The Hague.
This is the first time that someone who was working for the ICC has been accused of committing sexual attacks. The allegations came from four people who were being looked after by the ICC’s protection programme. The ICC won’t reveal the nationality of the alleged attacker or where he is now. The ICC spokesman Fadi el-Abdullah says they are taking the allegations seriously, but that there must be a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
The United States has published a list of 18 alleged human rights abusers from Russia and neighbouring states who now face sanctions agreed by Congress in December. It holds 16 of them responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a human rights lawyer who died in Russian custody in 2009. From Washington, here’s our correspondent Ben Wright.
The list of names targets people Washington believes are tied to the Magnitsky case as well as other abuses. A Russian investigation concluded that no crime had been committed, but the White House spokesman Jay Carney described the death as a tragedy and said that US and Russia did have differences on the issue of human rights. Moscow has strongly objected to the action and threatened to hit back with its own sanctions.
World News from the BBC
The Brazilian federal police have launched an investigation into corruption allegations against the former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. It’s the first time he has come under official scrutiny for possible links with an illegal scheme known as the “mensalao” or big monthly, in which public funds were paid to coalition parties for political support. Mr Lula denies any knowledge of the scheme.
The family of the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda has agreed that his remains should undergo toxicology tests in the United States. His body was exhumed earlier this week by the authorities in Chile in an effort to determine whether his death 40 years ago was caused by poisoning.
The BBC says that it will play only an excerpt from a song seen as celebrating the death of Margaret Thatcher in its weekly top 40 music show and then only in a news context. The decision follows an outcry by supporters of the late prime minister that her critics had been downloading the song “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead" in a coordinated campaign to ensure it top this week’s chart. A former Conservative member of parliament, Louise Mensch, said the BBC should be playing the whole thing.
"It is precisely because it is offensive and precisely because it is revolting and disrespectful and unkind. But freedom of expression matters. And if we were only, you know, talking about freedom of expression when people were nice and polite and sweet, then the questions would never arise. They only arise at times like this. And the BBC has failed on every level. It hasn’t had the guts to ban it completely. It hasn’t had the guts to play it fully as it absolutely should do and this comes from a diehard Thatcherite and lover of the great lady.”
A collection of 70 masks sacred to the Hopi tribe of Native Americans has been sold at auction in Paris after a French judge dismissed an attempt to halt the sale. Lawyers for the Hopi tribe contended that the masks had been stolen, but the auctioneers argued that they were bought legitimately by a collector.