BBC news 2010-02-05 加文本

2010-02-05 BBC

BBC News with Marian Marshall.

Ten American missionaries have been charged with kidnapping in Haiti after they tried to take a group of Haitian children out of the country. The Baptist missionaries were arrested last week at the border with the Dominican Republic. Nick Davis reports from Port-au-Prince.

The five men and five women have been detained since Friday, when they were stopped at the border with the neighbouring Dominican Republic. Today a judge decided there was enough evidence for a criminal case against them. They've each been charged with child kidnapping and criminal association. The maximum sentence could be nine years in jail. One of them, Laura Silsby, spoke to the BBC as she was about to be driven away from the court and said "I feel good. I'm trusting God". Under Haitian law, the case will be decided in closed court, and the decision could take up to three months.

The top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has said the security situation there is no longer deteriorating. Speaking at a NATO meeting in Turkey, he said the next 18 months offered a unique opportunity for international troops to bring stability to Afghanistan. From Istanbul, Jonathan Head reports.

General McChrystal has chosen his words for maximum effect. He said that while the situation remained serious and that Afghanistan had not yet turned a corner, he felt more optimistic than he did last summer. A planned joint offensive in Helmand province this month would show the Taliban that cooperation between the international and Afghan forces was improving. However, NATO defence ministers attending this meeting will be told that they need to send many more military and police training teams if they are to achieve their aim of progressively handing responsibility for security over to Afghan forces.

The Electoral Commission in Iraq has delayed the start of campaigning for next month's parliamentary elections after a court decision to overturn a ban on hundreds of candidates with alleged links to Saddam Hussein's Baath party. Gabriel Gatehouse reports from Baghdad.

Campaigning was due to start on Sunday, but the Electoral Commission says that that has now been delayed until the 12th of February. This is to allow time for an emergency debate in parliament and a court ruling on the fate of around 500 candidates whose participation in the upcoming election is still uncertain. Until Tuesday, it looked like they'd be barred from standing due to alleged links to the Baath party, the instrument through which Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq for so many years. But on Wednesday, an appeal panel overturned the ruling, a decision that the government has called illegal and unconstitutional.

The White House says China and the United States will continue to work together on major issues on which they sometimes disagree amid increased tension between the two countries. Referring to China's reported reluctance to impose further sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, a White House spokesman said it wasn't in China's interests to have a nuclear Iran and that the United States expected China to work with Washington on the next steps forward.

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The authorities in New York have filed civil charges against Bank of America and its former top executives, accusing them of deceiving shareholders over the takeover of the investment bank, Merrill Lynch. The former chief executive of Bank of America and the former chief financial officer are alleged to have committed an enormous fraud by duping shareholders and taxpayers, who paid billions of dollars to bail out the bank.

There have been celebrations in the streets of Naples following a European Union decision to give protected status to the Italian city's most famous culinary creation, the pizza. The city is widely acknowledged as its original home. Duncan Kennedy reports.

For 25 years, pizza makers in Naples have been trying to get their product protected. And now it is. Being granted a TSG, or Traditional Speciality Guaranteed label by the EU, it means that all pizzerias aspiring to supply the real thing are in future supposed to be vetted by a special commission that will check standards. They include using only San Marzano tomatoes and fresh buffalo mozzarella cheese.

A lawyer representing Michael Jackson's doctor says his client is preparing to surrender to the authorities in Los Angeles in connection with the singer's death. A BBC correspondent in Los Angeles says it's being reported that Doctor Conrad Murray is likely to be charged with involuntary manslaughter. Doctor Murray was the last person to see Michael Jackson before he died of an overdose of anesthetic last June.

Indonesian police are to stop protesters bringing buffalo to demonstrations after the country's president said he was hurt by being compared to the animal. Political opponents attached a photo of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to one of the beasts at a gathering last week, saying they were both big, slow and stupid. However, the president, who won a second term in a landslide last July, denounced the stunt as unethical.

BBC News.