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BBC news 2012-07-18

BBC News with Iain Purdon

Top executives of the banking giant, HSBC, have appeared before a US Senate committee and apologized for the bank's failure to prevent money laundering through its accounts by organized criminals, drug gangs and terrorists. Their investigation found that HSBC had allowed its affiliates in other countries to move billions of dollars in suspect funds to the United States. Paul Adams reports.

The committee's report paints a picture of a bank unwilling or unable to oversee the operations of its subsidiaries. Its Mexican branch shipped $7bn to the United States over a two-year period, ignoring warnings that this almost certainly included drug money. The bank stripped information from documents to conceal prohibited dealings with Iran. Safeguards were ignored in cases involving Saudi and Bangladeshi banks with alleged connections to international terrorism. HSBC has said it will apologize, acknowledge its mistakes and fix what went wrong.

Syria has dismissed reports of a concerted opposition assault in the center of Damascus. The Syria information minister said security forces had engaged opposition infiltrators and denied reports by opposition activists that fighting was going on in one of the streets. Jim Muir has been monitoring developments.

Activist video showed government tanks and troops moving on the main highways into the center of Damascus. The regime is rallying to its own defense. Israeli intelligence says forces have even been stripped from the Golan front to help defend the capital. The rebel Free Syrian Army has declared it Operation Damascus Volcano; and the Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest and most organized opposition group, says the battle now being joined will be decisive.

Iraq has said it will pursue legal action against the Syrian ambassador to Baghdad, Nawaf Fares, who defected last week. He told a British newspaper that after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, he'd helped Syria send al-Qaeda jihadi units to Iraq. In response, the Iraqi government has said that Mr Fares' comments amounted to a confession of complicity for attacks inside Iraq.

Police in Chile have arrested two former military officials on charges of torturing to death the father of the former President Michelle Bachelet. Vanessa Buschschluter reports.

A judge charged Ramon Caceres and Edgar Ceballos were being responsible for the torture that caused the death of Gen Bachelet. The general was loyal to President Salvador Allende, who was deposed in a military coup in 1973. Soon after the coup, Gen Bachelet was taken to a military academy, where he was questioned and tortured by members of the armed force he had previously led. His daughter Michelle, who became Chile's first female president in 2006, was also detained and tortured. The two officers have not yet commented on the charges.

World News from the BBC

Some news just in. Now final results have been announced following elections for a parliamentary assembly in Libya. The National Forces Alliance, led by Mahmoud Jibril, who is the country's interim prime minister, has won the largest block in the 200-seat congress. The political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood came second. The assembly will have legislative powers. It'll have the task of appointing a new interim government and overseeing the drafting of a new constitution.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, has said the American economy has weakened significantly in recent months. Mr Bernanke told a congressional panel that growth had slowed to 1.9% in the first three months of the year and was likely to be even weaker in the second quarter. He said America's recovery could slow further if Europe's debt crisis worsened, and if Congress failed to address an impending budget crisis by the end of the year.

Indian officials are investigating allegations that private hospitals cashed in on a government scheme and talked hundreds of women in the central state of Chhattisgarh into having their wombs removed unnecessarily. The operations were carried out under a national health insurance scheme which allows private hospitals to claim money for treating patients who can't afford expensive procedures. Shahzeb Jillani reports.

Officials say a large number of women, mostly from remote areas, were given wrong medical advice and operated on. They say some procedures may have been necessary to save lives, but many could have been avoided. Activists say in some cases, women were told they could contract cancer if their uterus wasn't removed; in other cases, women who apparently went to see the doctor for back pain are said to have ended up getting their womb removed on doctors' advice.

Police in Italy have arrested the head of one of the country's biggest mozzarella producer on charges of links to the mafia. Italian investigators say Giuseppe Mandara was in partnership with the notorious Casalesi clan of the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra, since the 80s.

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