BBC在线收听下载:特朗普称与土耳其并无秘密协议

BBC News with Sue Montgomery.

President Trump says there was no secret deal with Turkey to secure the release of the American evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson. Mr. Bronson is flying back to the United States via Germany following his release by Turkish court. Chris Buckler reports. Andrew bronson was arrested two years ago in Turkey and he's now been sentenced to more than three years in jail for aiding terrorist groups in the country. However, rather than being taken to prison, he was freed because of time served and what was described as his good conduct. He is now being flown back to America. The evangelical pastor's detention caused a huge diplomatic row between the US and Turkey. However, President Trump insists that there was no deal agreed in return for his release, including any easing of sanctions that have hurt Turkey's troubled economy.

President Trump says he will raise the disappearance of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi with King Salman, as the Saudi authorities face growing pressure over the alleged murder of Mr. Khashoggi at his country's consulate in Istanbul. Turkish sources say they have documentary evidence that a Saudi security team killed him. Here's our security correspondent Frank Gardner. Ten days have elapsed since then which caused bits of question: if that really exists, then why aren't we seeing it? And the answer that I am getting is that Turkey wants to give Saudi Arabia few more days of wiggle room to come up with a plausible explanation. None of that changes the fact that the onuses, but from the international community is on Saudi Arabia to explain what has happened to the citizen. Simply saying we didn't do it and we were as concerned as everybody else about him is not good enough. They didn't seem to have understood that they need to come up with an explanation.

Countries accused of severe rights abuses are among the eighteen newly elected members of the UN Human Rights Council. Among those they criticized, activists have accused the Philippines of extrajudicial killings and said Eritrea had held some critics of its president incommunicado for seventeen years. From New York, Nada Tawfik. This was an election without competition as each of the five voting regions had agreed on their candidates in advance. And predictably, all eighteen open seats were filled without any opposition, each receiving the needed majority vote from the hundred and ninety three nations that make up the UN General Assembly. Bahrain, Cameroon, Eritrea and the Philippines were among the more controversial members to be elected. Human Rights Watch said that such votes made a mockery of the word election and undermine the council's credibility and effectiveness.

World news from the BBC.