BBC News with Marion Marshall
President Obama says the United States can and must be more transparent about government surveillance programmes and promised to work with Congress to put safeguards in place to protect civil liberties. But he made clear that he had no intention of stopping the daily collection of phone records from millions of Americans. Katy Watson reports from Washington.
Since Edward Snowden revealed the huge scope of the US surveillance programmes, the Obama administration has had to spend a great deal of time trying to justify its methods. But it’s not stopped a growing debate in Congress over whether Americans’ privacy is being compromised in the name of national security. With questions still not going away, the president announced several reforms to try bringing back the confidence of the American people. They include overhauling part of the Patriot Act that allows phone records to be collected as well as reforming the secretive court that considers requests to target an individual for intelligence gathering.
President Obama was speaking as the American and Russian foreign and defence ministers were holding talks in Washington. Ties have been strained since Russia granted temporary asylum to Edward Snowden. Mr Obama said he didn’t have a bad personal relationship with the Russian President Vladimir Putin. The ministers confirmed their determination to hold a peace conference on Syria. Kim Ghattas at the State Department says the Syrian issue remains a stumbling block.
Syria is very much one of the key issues that is dividing Russia and the United States at the moment. They are fighting an old-style Cold War proxy battle in Syria on the ground there with the US backing the rebels and Russia backing President Assad. So when President Obama criticises his Russian counterpart, Mr Putin, for slipping back into Cold War mentality sometimes, (are) frankly it’s both countries that are stuck in that dynamic at the moment.
A Mexican court has ordered the release of the infamous drug cartel leader Rafael Caro Quintero after serving 28 years in prison. The court overturned a 40-year sentence which Mr Quintero had received for the kidnap and murder in 1985 of a US drug enforcement agent. It ruled that Mr Quintero should have been tried in a regional rather than a federal court. From Mexico City, Will Grant reports.
In his day Rafael Caro Quintero was considered one of the biggest drug traffickers in the world, one of three founding members of the Guadalajara cartel. In the 1980s, the group was thought to be responsible for transporting the majority of the cocaine consumed in the United States. Caro Quintero’s organisation worked closely with Colombian drug traffickers, particularly the notorious leader of the Medellin cartel Pablo Escobar. But Rafael Caro Quintero was eventually apprehended not on drug smuggling charges, but for the torture and murder of a DEA agent in 1985.
World News from the BBC
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change party in Zimbabwe has lodged a legal challenge against the results of last week’s presidential election, which was overwhelmingly won by Robert Mugabe. The petition seeks a court order declaring the result null and void because of what it says were numerous irregularities.
Reports from Egypt say five militants have been killed in an air strike south of Rafah near the border with Israel. The Egyptian military said there had been two explosions and the army was combing the area. Yolande Knell has this report.
Local people in the north Sinai reported that an explosion took place near (to) the border with Israel, but much remains unclear about its source and few official details have been given. Some reports suggested that an Israeli air strike was responsible; however, Israel’s military spokesperson declined to comment and Egypt’s denied there had been any Israeli raid. An Egyptian army statement said that two blasts had taken place and soldiers were investigating. The state news agency said that a launching platform set up to fire rockets into Israel had been destroyed, killing five militants.
Thousands of supporters of the deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi have held rallies again in Cairo calling for his reinstatement on the second day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. Gatherings also took place in the cities of Alexandria and Al Arish. South of Cairo, police and Morsi supporters clashed in the town of Fayoum. Police used teargas to disperse the crowd.
A Bangladeshi man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempting to blow up the US Federal Reserve building in New York. Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, who had pleaded guilty, apologized to the people of New York and said he now rejected radical Islam. Mr Nafis was arrested in October 2012 after trying to blow up a van parked outside the Federal Reserve. It was full of fake explosives provided by the FBI.