BBC News with Charles Carroll.
Jack Warner, the former Vice President of football's world governing body, FIFA, is spending the night in jail in Trinidad and Tobago, after being indicted by the United States for alleged corruption. U.S. prosecutors accused Mr. Warner of being involved in the alleged payment by South African football officials of more than ten million dollars in bribes in return for South Africa being chosen to host the 2010 World Cup. Mr. Warner said he was innocent.
“When I was at FIFA, I conducted myself consistent with all international sports practices. At no point in time I did any activity in FIFA that were contrary to the bill.” The South African Football Association has also denied any wrongdoing.
The FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, is due to make his first public appearance since Wednesday's indictments of fourteen current and former FIFA officials. Mr. Blatter had earlier issued a statement, promising to throw corrupt officials out of the game. U.S. prosecutors have accused them of racketeering, fraud and money laundering, involving tens of millions of dollars over twenty-four years. The prosecutors said that they would not be drawn on whether Mr. Blatter would be charged or arrested. The U.S. is also calling for the extradition of seven top FIFA officials arrested by Swiss police in Zurich.
Federal police in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro have raided the officers of a marketing company as part of the ongoing investigation into corruption in FIFA. From there, Wyre Davies reports.
Television pictures showed three carloads of federal police agents entering the Rio de Janeiro offices of Klefer Sports Marketing. The agents left several hours later with files, computers and even the personal phones of company executives. According to one of Klefer's directors, the raid was carried out after a direct request from the FBI in the United States. Klefer is believed to have links with the bigger marketing company, Traffic. It's suspected of widespread irregularities in the awarding of lucrative contracts for various FIFA-sanctioned football events in Brazil and the Americas.
Defence officials in the United States say that the military has mistakenly sent samples of live anthrax to research laboratories in America as well as the one in South Korea. Steve Evans has this story.
Anthrax is lethal when inhaled or ingested. It's a primary potential weapons in germ warfare. According to the Pentagon, a military laboratory in Utah sent batches to nine other labs in the U.S. and one in South Korea, under the false impression the bacteria were harmless and only for training. When the dangerous truth was realised, labs and bases were cordoned off. The military in Korea said twenty-two at the Osan Air Base may have been exposed to the anthrax, but none had shown symptoms of illness.
World news from the BBC.
Scientists have discovered that some breast cancers release chemicals that produce holes in the bones, making them vulnerable to secondary cancers. Once cancer has spread to the bone, it's difficult to treat. One of the study's authors, Dr. Janine Erler from the University of Copenhagen, said the research shed light on the way breast cancer cells prime the bones, so that it's ready for their arrival. Cancer charities say that if a way can be found to block this process, a whole new avenue for developing treatments would open up.
The U.S. state of Nebraska has become the first conservative state in more than forty years to abolish the death penalty. Senators in the state legislature voted to override their Republican Governor, Pete Ricketts, who, on Tuesday, had vetoed the bill. Our Americas Editor, Candace Piette, reports.
Nebraska has joined eighteen other American states and the District of Columbia in banning executions. But the state hasn't executed any prisoners since 1997. Difficulty in getting hold of the three lethal injection drugs needed under state law to conduct executions had formed a large part of the argument against the death penalty.
A Tibetan mother of two living in northwestern China is reported to have burnt herself alive in protest of Beijing's rule in Tibet. Rights groups say the woman set herself on fire outside the police station, close to a monastery, in the majority-Tibetan Gansu Province. Reports say police then took her body away and raided the homes of her relatives. Police have denied the incident took place. Nearly one hundred and fifty Tibetans have set themselves on fire in China in recent years.
And the fictional secret agent, James Bond, is to be reunited with one of the most famous Bond girls, Pussy Galore, in the latest novel based on Ian Fleming's creation. The book, Trigger Mortis, will begin in 1957, two weeks after the end of Fleming's novel, Goldfinger, in which Bond meets and finally seduces Pussy Galore, the head of an all-female criminal gang.