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BBC news 2012-03-17

BBC News with Marion Marshall

The Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused the United States of not cooperating over the investigation into the killing of 16 Afghan villagers by an American soldier last Sunday. President Karzai was speaking after meeting surviving relatives who'd cast doubt over the US version of what took place.

"The story of the village elders is entirely different. They believe it is not possible for one person to do that. In four rooms, people were killed, and then they were all brought together in one room, and then put on fire. That one man cannot do."

The soldier suspected of carrying out the attacks is being flown back to America despite calls for him to face justice in Afghanistan.

The UN and Arab League envoy on Syria, Kofi Annan, says he's sending a delegation to Damascus next week to discuss setting up a new monitoring mission there. After briefing the UN Security Council on his recent talks with President Assad, Mr Annan warned that the situation in Syria needed to be handled delicately.

"It is a conflict in a region of the world that has seen many, many traumatic events. I think we need to handle the situation very, very carefully. Any miscalculation that leads to major escalation will have impact in the region which will be extremely difficult to manage."

The United States has cast doubt on its plans to supply food aid to North Korea following the North's announcement of a new rocket launch next month. Victoria Nuland is a spokesperson for the State Department.

"If we have a satellite launch which would call into question their good faith and whether they keep any of the commitments that they make, it's very hard to imagine how we will be able to move forward if this launch goes on."

North Korea says the launch will put a satellite in space and is designed to mark the hundredth anniversary of the birth of its founding leader Kim Il-sung. The Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier described the move as provocative. And South Korea, Russia and Japan have also expressed concern.

Human rights activists have called on the Iraqi government to investigate what have been dubbed the "emo" killings of young people. Local officials say that more than 50 young Iraqis have been killed in recent months because they've adopted the style of the emo subculture in the west, having long hair and wearing black clothes. Several leading Islamic clerics have also condemned the killings as terrorism.

Belgium has held a day of national mourning for the 22 children and six adults killed in a bus crash in Switzerland on Tuesday. Flags were flown at half-mast and church bells rang as the country observed a minute's silence. During the day, the bodies of the victims were flown back to Belgium. It's still not clear what caused the crash. An autopsy on the driver has shown he wasn't ill and had no traces of alcohol in his blood.

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An American court has convicted a former student for using a webcam to spy on his gay roommate's love life and sharing the images with fellow students. Days later in September 2010, the roommate Tyler Clementi killed himself. Twenty-year-old Dharun Ravi will be sentenced in May and could face up to 10 years in prison. From New York, Laura Trevelyan reports.

Tyler Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge just days after his roommate at Rutgers University, Dharun Ravi, set up a webcam and watched him kissing another man. Ravi tweeted about what he'd seen and encouraged others to watch. Ravi has now been found guilty of invasion of privacy, bias intimidation and tampering with evidence and a witness. The verdict was mixed. The jury found that Ravi did not intend to intimidate Mr Clementi the first night he turned on the webcam, but the jury concluded Mr Clementi had reason to believe he was targeted because he was gay.

An inquest in Zimbabwe into the death of the former head of the army, General Solomon Mujuru, has found that he died from inhaling smoke and that there's no evidence to show how the fire was started. A lawyer for the Mujuru family told the BBC that doubts remained. General Mujuru died in a house fire last year in circumstances correspondents describe as suspicious.

East Timor will vote shortly for a new president a decade after the southeast Asian nation celebrated its independence from Indonesian rule. Despite having secured substantial oil wealth at independence, East Timor is still one of the poorest and least developed nations in Asia.

The American actor George Clooney has been released on bail after being arrested outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington. He was taking part in a protest against the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Mr Clooney and other demonstrators were arrested after they defied a police order to leave the grounds of the embassy.

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