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BBC news 2013-11-22

BBC News with David Austin

The senior Democratic Senator in the United States Harry Reid has said the Senate will move to impose new sanctions on Iran as early as next month if the Geneve nuclear negotiations do not succeed. Six world powers, including the US, are seeking an interim deal under which Tehran would curb uranium enrichment in return for the lifting of some international sanctions. From Washington, Katy Watson reports. “For several months now, a sanctions bill has been held up in the Senate banking committee. Opinion is divided over what the best course of action should be. But President Obama has urged a delay in introducing broader sanctions to allow time for a diplomatic solution to Iran' nuclear program. Harry Reid said on Thursday that it was a tough sanction that brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. Now, by voicing his support for a bill to broaden sanctions when the Senate returns from holiday recess in December, he is piling on the pressure even more.”

The roof of a large supermarket in the Latvian capital Riga has collapsed, at least six people are confirmed dead. They include two rescue workers who were killed during a second collapse. Emergency teams are looking for dozens more people who are thought to still be buried under the rubble. Damien McGuinness reports. “The supermarket roof collapsed just before 6pm when the shop was full of customers. Around 20 minutes later, another part of the roof caved in. Eyewitnesses say the customers try to run out after the first part of the roof collapsed, but that the supermarket's electronic doors closed automatically trapping people inside. So far, Latvian authorities are not confirmed to a cause of the collapse. The most likely explanation is the weight of soil which has been used to plant a winter garden on the roof.”

Campaign groups have walked out of United Nations conference on global warming saying governments at the talks in Poland had made a mockery of them. From Warsaw Matt McGrath. To the songs of the old spiritual tune, the Green campaigners walked out into the cold Polish air, angry at what they see as a lack of ambition among the rich to deliver a strong global deal on climate. Celine Charveriat, from Oxfam International, said the campaigners could no longer sit in silence in the phase of government’s inaction. "What we were working out of the Warsaw talks because governments are not doing enough." Negotiators acknowledged that there were major problems, but they also said that modest progress was possible. The most contentious issue is loss and damage by which developing countries are seeking legally binding compensation from richer nations for extreme weather events.”

Police in Britain have released on bail a man and a woman in their sixtieth arrested as a part of an investigation into slavery. It follows the rescue of three women from a house in south London where they appear to have been held against their will in horrific conditions for three decades. The women are from Britain, Ireland and Malaysia.

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Several thousand off-duty Portuguese police officers protesting against public sector cuts have broken through a line of riot police protecting the country's parliament. They reached the main door of the building, sang the national anthem and chanted against the governments before dispersing. Police associations called the demonstration to protest against cutbacks.

Three black teenagers, wrongly accused of raping two white women in America's deep south more than 80 years ago, have been given posthumous pardons. They were the last of a group of nine young men, known as the Scottsboro Boys, to be exonerated. From Washington, Jane O'Brien reports. “In 1931, nine black teenagers were accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama. They were found guilty by jury of white men and only the youngest defendant escaped being sentenced to death. Six years later, five of the men's convictions were overturned after one of the women recounted her story. The case of the so-called Scottsboro Boys became an infamous part of the American history of racial discrimination and subject of books and films. The last three Scottsboro Boys have now had their names cleared and campaigners hope to locate their graves and direct historical markers.”

The court in the United States has added $290m to the damages of the electronic giant Samsung owes Apple for copying features found on Apple's iPhone and iPad devices. This brings the total that the Samsung, from Korea, must pay the American company to $930m.

Scientists, analyzing a cosmic explosion that lit up the entire universe, say that it was the brightest burst of radiation ever recorded. The report in the journal Science says the blast, known as a Gama ray burst, was spotted earlier this year by telescopes in space. A dying star collapsed on itself creating a black hole and emitting a spectacular pulse of light. It's taken about four billion years for the light to reach us.

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