BBC News with Nick Kelly
Officials in the United States say a special interrogation team is waiting to question the only surviving suspect in the bombing of the Boston Marathon. Nineteen-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who is of Chechen origin was captured on Friday night after a shootout. He said to be in a serious but stable condition however he is not yet able to communicate. American civil liberty’s activists have expressed concern at plans invoke a rare public safety clause to allow interrogators to question him without first advising him of his rights to remain silent or to hire a lawyer. The governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick says it's vital suspect lives.
“I think all of the law enforcement professionals are hoping for a host of reasons that suspect survives because we have a million questions and those questions need to be answered. There are parts of investigation, in terms of information and evidence, still need to be ran to ground. And so in that sense, investigation will continue.”
The Italian parliament has reelected the 87-year-old President Giorgio Napolitano for unprecedented second term after failing to agree a replacement. Speaking after his election, Mr. Napolitano said Italy faced difficult situation and he called on all political parties to act responsibly. His first job will be to try to break two months of deadlock over creating a new government following elections in February. Alan Johnston reports from Rome.
Parliament began trying to elect a new president back on Thursday but five ballots failed to produce a clear winner. And in growing desperation, faction leaders turned to the man who was supposed to retire. Major parities on both the left and the right appeal to the widely respected President Napolitano to stand again to renew his mandate and at the age of 87 he agreed to put himself forward. He faced intense opposition from a citizens’ protest movement in parliament.
Rescuers in Southwestern China have been pulling bodies and survivors from the rubble of devastated villages after a powerful earthquake struck rural hill country west of Chengdu. State media said that more than 150 people were confirmed dead. Some 6,000 troops and police were sent to the region in Sichuan province to help the rescue operation. From Chengdu, John Sudwards sent this report.
The earthquake struck at 8 o’clock in the morning when many people would have been indoors. In villages close to the epicenter, footage broadcast on state television shows almost all of the low-rise houses collapsed and people in bloody bandages being treated outside the hospital in the nearby city of Ya'an. Government sources say that more than 1.5 million people have been adversely affected in some way. Sichuan is one of China’s most earthquake-prone province and one of its poorest.
World News from the BBC
Votes have been counted in Iraq after today’s provincial election. It was the first vote since the departure of US troops more than a year ago. Election officials say turnout has been around 50%. The run-up to the vote was marred by violence but the posts themselves went off relatively calmly.
A meeting of group of 11 countries known as the friends of Syria has begun in the Turkish city of Istanbul. The foreign ministers of the countries opposing the government of the President Bashar al-Assad are trying to find ways of supporting the Syrian opposition. James Reynolds reports.
The host, Turkey's foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu has called for greater support for Syrian rebels. He's asked the friends of Syria group to agree upon what he calls most effective method of ending the oppression in Syria. To some, this means arming the rebels; to others, it means giving them supplies and urging them to unify. During the meeting, the US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to announce a further donation of defensive military supplies to Syrian rebels including communications equipment, body armour and armoured vehicles.
A former executive of the central bank in Chile has been sentenced to 60 years in jail for sexually abusing his three daughters during family holidays in 2010. The court in Santiago also barred the economist from contacting his victims who were under 14 years old at the time and from holding public office for life.
Human rights campaigners in the Democratic Republic of Congo say a group of activists sentenced to 20 years in jail for planning a demonstration which never took place have had their punishments sharply reduced. The 12 activists now face a maximum of one year in prison. The original court decision last week in the province of Bandundu provoked shock among rights groups, the men were arrested the day before the planned protest against price rises and regional mismanagement.