BBC News with Jerry Smit.
A military court in the United States has found the American soldier Bradley Manning guilty of 20 charges related to espionage but not guilty of the most serious charge of aiding the enemy. He’d been accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of secret documents to the website WikiLeaks. Jonny Dymond reports.
On the most serious charge: aiding the enemy, Bradley Manning is not guilty. It was always going to be a horrid hurdle for the prosecution. The judge made it clear in April that they would have to show that Bradley Manning had reason to believe that the files he leaked could harm the US or aid its enemies. But Judge Denise Lind has found Bradley Manning guilty on all the other charges including espionage. The maximum sentence for these charges would see Private Manning spend decades in prison.
The US Secretary of State John Kerry says Israeli and Palestinian negotiators meeting in Washington have agreed to work towards a final Middle East peace agreement over the next nine months. Mr. Kerry said there would be substantive talks in the next two weeks.
“The parties have agreed here today that all of the final status issues, all of the quarrel issues and all other issues are all on the table for negotiation and they are on the table with one simple goal: a view to ending the conflict, ending the claims.”
The chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said he was delighted. His Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni said that after years of stalemate, she was hopeful but not na?ve.
Experts investigating the Spanish train crash which killed 79 people last week have told a court that black box data recorders show the driver was talking on the phone when the accident happened outside Santiago de Compostela. James Robins reports.
A Spanish court says that data recorders fitted to the high-speed train show that it was traveling at 153 km/h almost twice the speed limit for that section of track when the train derailed. But the court also says the driver Francisco Jose Garzon was talking on the phone to an official of the state railway company Renfe when his train jumped the rails and he was apparently consulting a piece of paper at the time. The court inquiry is still in its early stages but these suggestions will add to a sense of outrage which is mingled with grief across Spain.
A mass funeral has taken place in southern Italy for 38 people killed in a coach crash on Sunday. The Italian prime minister was among thousands of mourners at the service in a sports hall in the southern town of Pozzuoli. Friends and relatives of the victims place flowers on coffins lined up in front of the altar. The coach plunged 25 meters off a motorway in the worst accident of its kind in Western Europe for a decade.
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President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe says he will step down if he loses the elections on Wednesday. Mr. Mugabe who’s been in power for 33 years is hoping to defeat his main rival, the Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC. Mr. Mugabe’s party Zanu-PF has been accused of doctoring the voters’ roll. An independent organization says the list of registered voters features the names of thousands of dead people. Zanu-PF denies vote rigging.
The United Nations has given rebels from the M23 group in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo 48 hours to disarm in the area around Goma warning that force will be used against them if they don’t. Here is our UN correspondent Nick Bryant.
The UN says it wants to establish a security zone in Goma and its northern suburbs. And its 3,000 strong intervention brigade has been mandated to use lethal force to achieve its mission. Since launching an offensive two weeks ago, the UN says the M23 has used indiscriminate fire including heavy weapons which has resulted in civilian casualties. It’s also targeted UN installations with its fire. The M23 managed to occupy Goma for ten days last November, an offensive that UN peacekeepers were unable to stop.
Partial results from Mali’s presidential election suggest that the former Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubakar Keita has won a countable lead. The minister of territory administration said that with a third of votes counted, Mr. Boubakar Keita could win an outright majority in the first round. Supporters of the candidate said to be in second place Soumaila Cisse are already disputing this.
Prosecutors in India say the cricketer Santakumaran Sreesanth and 38 other people have been charged with sport fixing in one of the world’s richest tournaments, the Indian Premier League. They’ve been accused of criminal conspiracy, cheating and dishonesty.