BBC news 2010-01-08 加文本

2010-01-08 BBC

BBC News with Iain Purdon.

President Obama’s National Security Adviser General James Jones says Americans will be shocked by the findings of a White House inquiry into the intelligence failures leading up to the attempted Christmas Day airliner bombing. From Washington, here is Mark Mardell.

President Obama’s top security adviser, General James Jones, says that the president is very concerned that America’s intelligence agencies failed to make use the information they had to stop the Detroit bomb plotter boarding a plane bound for the States and failed to join the dots over Fort Hood. Major Nidal Hasan has been charged with shooting dead 13 fellow soldiers in that incident. The president’s national security adviser added, "It’s not theatre. He's alarmed". The president’s due to speak soon about this and make public the results of an investigation into what went wrong with the Detroit case. A report stripped to sensitive material will be published, and General Jones says people will be worried by what they read.

The United Nations’ investigator Philip Alston says video footage which appears to show Sri Lankan troops shooting captured Tamil Tiger rebels is authentic. In the video, naked rebels bound and blindfolded are seen being shot in the head. When the video was released last year, Sri Lanka dismissed it as a fake, but Mr. Alston said that experts concluded that the video was genuine and he called for an independent investigation into the killings.

“Each of these experts subjected the videotape to a very careful and thorough examination, and each of them concluded that there was nothing to indicate that the video was a fake. My own interpretation of their conclusions is that they point very clearly to the authenticity of the video.”

The American security firm, Blackwater, has reached a settlement in a series of lawsuits brought over the killing of Iraqi civilians. The amount of the settlement has not been disclosed. Blackwater, which has since changed its name to Xe, said it could now move on under new management. Jenner Bryon reports from Washington.

The lawsuits were seeking compensation for Iraqis killed in separate shootings between 2006 and 2007, allegedly involving Blackwater contractors. One of the lawsuits accused the company’s founder, Erik Prince, of allowing a culture in which a heavily armed private army was allowed to roam the streets of Baghdad, killing innocent civilians. Last week, criminal charges against the individuals allegedly involved were dropped when a judge said prosecutors had compromised the case and a fair trial was not possible.

The US Justice Department says the two former employees of Blackwater have been charged in connection with the murder of Afghan citizens in Kabul. The suspects allegedly fired on two Afghan men at the scene of a road accident. They have said they acted in self-defence.

World News from the BBC.

Medical staff in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, say at least 12 people have been killed in clashes between Islamist insurgents and government, pro-government forces. The report said that soldiers fired shells into the Yaqshid district, which is controlled by the insurgents, in response to a mortar attack on the presidential palace.

The BBC has learnt that two senior Burmese officials have been sentenced to death for leaking details of secret government visits to Russia and North Korea and of military tunnels that is being built in Burma by the North Koreans. It’s thought that the tunnels are long, and the construction are intended to house communication systems, weapons factories and troops in the events of invasion.

The European Union has announced that its satellite navigation system Galileo will start operating in 2014. Rescue workers will be the first to use it with other services rolled out over the following years. Mark Gregory reports.

The Galileo project is already way over budget in several years late. Two years ago, it was nearly scrapped, but now the first commercial contract has been announced, a clear signal that Europe's alternative to the American GPS satellite locating network will go ahead. A German company, OHB System, will supply 14 satellites. The French group, Arianespace, will launch them into orbit, starting in October 2012. It’s Europe’s largest ever venture in space.

Construction companies building the Dubai Metro say they are slowing down the pace of their work, but they haven’t confirmed reports that it is because of a delay in payments from the Dubai government. The authorities in Dubai said they were committed to meeting their financial obligations on the project and that work was on schedule. Last September, Dubai said the estimated cost of building the metro had almost doubled to 7.6 billion dollars.

BBC News.