2010-07-09 BBC
BBC News with David Austin.
Ten suspected Russian spies currently appearing in a New York court have entered guilty pleas. The ten men and women were arrested in the United States last week on suspicion of running a long-term spy ring. From outside the court in New York, Madeleine Morris has just sent this report.
To a courtroom packed with supporters, family members, lawyers and media, the five men and five women pleaded guilty to acting as agents for Russia. It emerged they had reached a plea agreement, but their admission of guilt, a more serious charge of money laundering, was dropped. There was a glimpse of the life that now awaits the ten when they are immediately returned to the country they tried to provide information to. The lawyer for one defendant, Vicky Pelaez, said Russian officials had promised her a lifetime monthly payment of 2,000 dollars, free housing, and all-expenses-paid visits from her children. It’s unclear if the other nine people were given a similar deal.
And within the past few minutes, the judge in the case of the ten Russian agents has ordered all of them to be deported and, in an apparent swap, a US prosecutor told the New York judge that the Russian government had agreed to release prisoners held in Russia.
The authorities in Iran have announced that a woman convicted of adultery will not be stoned to death, but it's not clear whether they have lifted the death sentence against her. Jon Leyne reports.
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman in her forties, was convicted of adultery and, according to her lawyer, sentenced to death by stoning. The lawyer, who has a long record of fighting against the practice, said he feared that she could be executed at anytime. The news prompted a growing international campaign, with British ministers describing the punishment as “medieval”. The Iranian embassy in London has not exactly denied any of that, but it has now said that she’s not going to be stoned to death and warned of false news.
The BBC has learnt that football’s governing body FIFA will make changes to its refereeing system for the next World Cup. The organisation has long resisted such changes, but several bad decisions in this World Cup, in particular a disallowed goal for England against Germany, have increased the pressure for reform. FIFA's Secretary General Jerome Valcke told the BBC it was considering adding two extra assistants to help referees.
“If for the referee at the end to have an additional four eyes, with these two additional assistant referees plus the goal-line technology gives him the feeling of the comfort that eases life and work, and duty will be easier to perform, why not /?”
A prominent Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas has ended a long hunger strike after the government said it would release 52 political prisoners. Mr Farinas began refusing food four months ago to demand the release of jailed dissidents who were ill. Last week, doctors who’d been feeding him intravenously said that he was close to death.
World News from the BBC.
Thousands of Israelis have been holding a rally in Jerusalem at the end of a 12-day march for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who’s been held captive in the Gaza Strip for four years. His family and their supporters want their government to agree a prisoner swap with Hamas which controls Gaza. Israel says it's agreed in principle to release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
The Palestinian Authority has called on President Obama to end tax breaks for American donations to illegal Israeli settlements built on the occupied West Bank. An official statement said stopping such exemptions would be more in line with the declared American policy of considering the settlements an obstacle to peace. Magdi Abdelhadi reports.
he Palestinian demand came shortly after the American newspaper, the New York Times, revealed that 40 local organisations have channelled millions of dollars to Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank over the past decade. Some of the money, the paper said, went to settlements regarded as illegal even under Israeli law. According to the paper, the money goes mostly to schools and synagogues, which is legal according to the American tax legislation. But some of it, according to the New York Times, has also paid for what it described as "legally questionable commodities", such as bullet-proof vests and other military gear.
The US government has told BP to provide detailed plans for its latest efforts to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The official heading the US response to the crisis, Thad Allen, wrote to BP asking to be given the information after they meet for talks on Friday.
The aid agency Medicins Sans Frontieres says there's growing anger and frustration in Haiti at the slow pace of reconstruction, 6 months after the devastating earthquake there. MSF said there was a staggering gap between the promises of help in the first weeks after the disaster and the dire reality on the ground half a year later.
That’s the latest BBC News.