BBC News with John Jason
A deal has been reached in Italy to form a coalition government after a month of political uncertainty. It will be sworn in on Sunday. From Rome here's Bethany Bell.
It's been a long and painful process but Italy's about to get a new government, a grand coalition between the centre-left and their arch-rivals from the centre-right. Italy's next Prime Minister Enrico Letta expressed what he called sober satisfaction with his new team of ministers. Silvio Berlusconi himself won't be in the cabinet, but one of his closest political allies, Angelino Alfano will be interior minister. The cabinet includes what Mr. Letta called a record number of women including the former EU commissioner Emma Bonino who'll be Italy's foreign minister.
The Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird has said he's absolutely appalling that Sri Lanka should be allowed to host the Commonwealth summit later this year. He told the BBC that being no progress on concerns over human rights abuses in Sri Lanka and no meaningful attempt to reconciliation with the Tamil population. Lyse Doucet reports.
In recent months Sri Lanka has been under growing pressure on its human rights record including accusations of war crimes during the last month of its brutal civil war which ended in 2009. Now Canada has taken the issue to the commonwealth. Its Foreign Minister John Baird told me, Colombo should not be allowed to host this year's summit until, as he put it, Sri Lanka adheres to commonwealth values including accountability for war crimes. Sri Lanka's cabinet's spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella accused Canada of bending to pressure from its large Tamil Diaspora.
Federal agency in the United States said they've charged a man in connection with poison letters sent to President Obama and two other officials earlier this month. Everett Dutschke, a martial arts instructor was arrested at his home in Mississippi on Saturday. David Willey reports.
Officials initially arrested another Mississippi man, Paul Kevin Curtis who works as an Elvis impersonator, but then released him for lack of evidence. The discovery of the poisoned letters led to a brief shutdown of part of the US Capitol building and rattled nerves at the time when officials were also engaged in a hunt for the Boston bombers. The charges leveled against Everett Dutschke carry a possible penalty of life imprisonment. He is expected to appear in court in Mississippi on Monday.
Anti-war protesters have demonstrated outside a Royal Air Force based in eastern England which’s been used to control armed drone flights in Afghanistan. Until this week, Britain operated its unmanned aircraft from a base in Nevada in the United Sates. The campaigners say the change is a major expansion of Britain's use of drones which they’ve blamed for increased civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The government says drones are bound by the same rules of engagement as manned aircraft and have saved countless military and civilian lives.
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Iraqi security forces have imposed an overnight curfew in the Sunni Muslim majority province of Anbar after five soldiers were killed by militants. The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has reiterated his warning of what he called a plague of sectarianism after the worst week of violence since US troops withdrew in 2011. Mr. Maliki said the violence that's seen some 200 people killed since Tuesday had returned to Iraq from outside, an apparent reference to the Syrian conflict.
Meanwhile, Syria has dismissed as a barefaced lie, allegations from Britain and the US that it may have used chemical weapons in its fight against rebels. Our Arab affairs editor Sebastian Usher reports.
The Syrian government has already denied using chemical weapons, but the country's information minister has now launched its first big rhetorical salvo against the charges dismissing them as inconsistent with reality. He repeated the government's line that it would never use such weapons on moral and humanitarian grounds. He also expressed Damascus' distrust of US and British membership of a UN team waiting to enter Syria to gather evidence. On Friday President Obama said that if chemical weapons were proved to have been used, it would be a game changer.
The French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has asked Chad to keep its troops in Mali in order to avoid what he described as a security vacuum. Mr. Le Drian who is in Chad said he'd been speaking with the Chadian President Idriss Deby about how the troops could become part of the United Nations' force.
The famous Maracana football stadium in Rio de Janeiro reopened shortly after nearly three years of renovations to prepare for Brazil's hosting of the 2014 World Cup. The refurbishment cost nearly half a billion dollars and has faced criticism over delays, alleged overspending and government plans to privatize the stadium's management. A demonstration against privatization is scheduled outside the stadium during the opening event.