BBC News with Julie Candler
France’s national assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favor of legalizing same sex marriage. The new law will also allow gay couples to adopt children. President Francois Hollande’s proposal has led to huge pro and anti demonstrations across the country. From Paris here is Christian Fraser.
They decriminalized homosexuality in France in 1791, not long after the revolution. But the bill to give gay and lesbian couples equal rights in marriage and adoption has brought them back to the barricades in their thousands. The more contentious issues of surrogacy and assisted fertility will now be debated later in the year, which threatens to prolong what has been a poisonous few months. The mood was encapsulated by the chaos in parliament, at one point, the speaker called for demonstrators to be forcibly ejected from the chamber. Interior minister said the tenor of the debate has reflected some of the darkest times in the country’s history.
The two orthodox bishops kidnapped in Syria on Monday have been freed. Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yaziji were released on Tuesday and are back in the city of Aleppo. A French organization working with churches in the Middle East told the BBC the bishops had been kidnapped by an unknown rebel group, their driver was killed during the abduction.
A White House spokesman says the United States has not yet concluded that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons but backs an investigation into allegations that it may have. The comments follow claims from Israeli official that Syria used such weapons against rebels. Our Middle East correspondent Wyre Davies reports.
The CIA and the West agencies have repeatedly alleged that the Bashar al-Assad's regime possesses a substantial stockpile of chemical weapons. Speaking at an intelligence conference in Tel Aviv, Brigadier-General Itai Brun said Israel believed the Assad regime had probably used the nerve agent sarin a number of times. The senior intelligence official said among the evidence it had examined were images of victims with foam coming from their mouths and other signs consistent with the effects of sarin nerve gas.
The British government is to outlaw discrimination on the bases of caste, giving improved legal protection to an estimated 400,000 people whom the Hindu and Sikh communities have classed as Dailts or untouchables. Here is our religious affair correspondent Robert Piggott.
The caste system is parts of ancient culture of India, stratifying society rigidly into four tiers and leaving a fifth group as outcastes or untouchables. This group has historically been consigned to unclean and to menial jobs in India. A government report acknowledged that immigrants had brought elements of caste system with them to the UK and the Dailts has suffered discrimination here. Dailts have complained of bullying at work and school, discrimination in getting services and have been denied promotion by higher caste Hindu or Sikh managers.
World News from the BBC
A man charged with sending letters containing the deadly poison ricin to President Obama has been released on bail. Paul Kevin Curtis from Mississippi has denied charges that he sent letters laced with ricin to a US senator and a judge as well as to Mr. Obama. In a separate development, the US Defense Intelligence Agency says its staff detected a potentially harmful substance.
Two men accused of plotting to derail a passenger train in Canada have appeared in court. Raed Jaser and Chiheb Esseghaier who are not Canadian citizens are charged with conspiracy to murder and association with the terrorist group that Canadian police say is al-Qaeda in Iran. Both men were remained in custody.
The Associated Press news agency in the United States has confirmed that one of its messages on the social networking site Twitter reporting explosions at the White House was bogus. Adam Brookes reports from Washington.
Shortly after one o’clock local time, a message appeared on Twitter purportedly coming from Associated Press. It's said there had been explosions at the White House and President Obama was injured. The message was fake. Someone had hacked into the AP’s Twitter account to post it. Nonetheless within minutes, the Dow Jones Index stock prices dropped 150 points and the bond market erupted. A clearly and impressed Jay Carney spokesman for Mr Obama quickly assures everybody that the president was fine, the market’s rally is quickly and whole business was over. The Associated Press says its Twitter account has been suspended while it works to correct the issue.
The mobile phone and computer giant Apple has reported its first quarterly drop in profits for almost a decade. Apple made 9.5 billion dollars in profits in the first three months this year, 2.1 billion less than during the same period last year but there was an overall rise in revenue.