BBC News with Sue Montgomery
The head of the railway company, whose run-away train devastated part of a town in the East Canada’s largest province Quebec, has blamed the accident on an employee, who he said had failed to properly set the brakes. At least 15 people were killed and 45 others are still missing in the town of Lac-Megantic where the crash sparked a massive blaze. From Lac-Megantic, David Willis.
Ed Burkhardt was heckled by angry residents and faced some pointed questions from local reporters after being whisked into town with a police escort. Having initially refuted suggestions that his company should be held to blame for a disaster, which wiped out virtually this entire town, he conceded that the train’s engineer had failed to fully secure the brakes. Mr Burkhardt said the engineer in question initially insisted he’d applied the hand brakes, but inquiries had revealed that that wasn’t the case. He said the man had now been suspended without pay.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man accused of carrying out the Boston marathon bombings with his brother, has pleaded not guilty to all charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction. Mr Tsarnaev spoke in a Boston court in his first public appearance since the attack which killed three people and injured 260 others in April. Jonny Dymond reports from Boston.
Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was led into the court, handcuffed and shackled. Victims and relatives filled the courtroom and two overflow rooms, wanting to see the man who was alleged to have planted two bombs at the finish line of the Boston marathon in April. “Not guilty”, he said repeatedly as 30 charges were read out. Seventeen of the charges could lead to the death penalty. After the short hearing, Mr Tsarnaev blew a kiss to his family, was handcuffed again and was led out of the courtroom.
Egypt’s state prosecutor has issued an arrest warrant for the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Badie and a number of other senior figures in the movement. They are accused of inciting violence near a military barracks in Cairo Monday that left more than 50 people dead-- the majority of them supporters of the ousted President Mohammed Morsi, who’s from the Brotherhood. The Islamists have rejected the accusation. Here’s Lyse Doucet.
For decades there has been a basically struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military. They really do not trust each other and when you talk to people now about what happened when Mohammed Morsi was in power, it was clear that that kind of antagonism continued. But the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood top people are now being taken in for planning criminal acts on that day when it was the security forces that opened fire, it really gives a sense that this is a crackdown against the Muslim Brother even though the military and civilian authorities are denying that.
World News from the BBC
A group of leading American retail chains have announced a programme to introduce stricter safety standards for garment workers in Bangladesh. The initiative follows the collapse of a clothing factory near Dhaka in April, which killed more than 1,000 people. From Washington, Rajini Vaidyanathan has more.
A group of 17 leading stores, including Macy’s, Nordstrom, Gap and Wal-Mart, have drawn up plans for strict standards factories need to adhere to. In the next 12 months, all their plants will be inspected and workers will also be given better training-- all this to be implemented in partnership with an NGO. In a joint statement, the group said the existing safety record was unacceptable.
The prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, has announced that he will resign on Thursday over a scandal involving the intelligence services. The government’s junior coalition partner had called for him to take political responsibility for failing to stop the secret service abusing its powers. According to a parliamentary commission, the abuses included the illegal bugging of politicians, the purchase of cars for private use as well as allegations of accepting money for access to local officials.
The head of the UN refugee agency, António Guterres, says plans by Kenya to return the more than 1 million Somali refugees in its soil should follow international standards. He held talks with Kenyan officials on Wednesday and is reported to have proposed a phased repatriation plan starting with support to an estimated 60,000 refugees who’ve returned to Somalia voluntarily.
A judge in Chile has ordered that bone samples from the remains of the Nobel prize winning poet Pablo Neruda should be sent to Spain to determine whether he was poisoned as his driver has maintained for years. Mr Neruda died in 1973 days after a military coup.