2010-07-22 BBC
BBC News with David Legge
The Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has travelled to Chad to attend a summit of regional leaders, defying two warrants for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court. A court spokesman told the BBC that Chad had a legal obligation to arrest Mr Bashir. But as James Copnall reports from Khartoum, that's unlikely to happen.
President Omar al-Bashir is taking a risk, but probably not nearly as big a gamble as the International Criminal Court would hope. This is the first time he's travelled to a state which is a full member of the ICC since a first international arrest warrant was issued last year. Last week, the ICC issued a second warrant on genocide charges. President Bashir was welcomed at the airport in N'Djamena by President Idriss Deby, his Chadian counterpart. International organizations like Human Rights Watch have called on Chad to hand President Bashir over to the ICC, but Sudanese officials say they are confident this will not happen.
Somalia's new national security minister says the war in his country is no longer a domestic conflict but an international one. The minister Ahmed Abdisalam told the BBC that his government was under attack by foreign radicals linked to al-Qaeda, and it would take international support to end the war.
The United States has enacted the most sweeping overhaul of its financial rules in generations in response to the global financial crisis. After signing into law the new regulations, President Obama said they would help protect consumers, empower investors and bring more transparency to financial markets.
"We'll all stand to gain from these reforms. We all win when investors around the world have confidence in our markets. We all win when shareholders have more power and more information. We all win when consumers are protected against abuse. And we all win when folks are rewarded based on how well they perform, not how well they evade accountability."
The former media tycoon Conrad Black has been released from prison in Florida after a US judge granted him bail. He was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison in 2007 for defrauding shareholders of millions of dollars. But last month, the US Supreme Court ruled that he'd been convicted using a vague law. More from Andy Gallacher in Florida.
Conrad Black left the minimum-security jail here in Florida without being seen by the waiting press. Under the conditions of his bail, he can't leave the United States, and it's not known where he's now gone, possibly his mansion in Palm Beach. On Friday, he'll appear before a judge in Chicago where the conditions of his bail will be set. Part of his original conviction could be quashed after a Supreme Court ruling that a law used to jail him was too vague. He still faces charges of obstructing justice, and there are several pending cases against Conrad Black that are making their way through the American court system. Lord Black has always maintained his innocence.
World News from the BBC
The social networking site Facebook says it now has more than half a billion users. Around 8% of the world's population are Facebook subscribers. If it was a country, it would be the third biggest after China and India.
A powerful car bomb in Iraq has killed at least 15 people and wounded more than 20 others. The attack took place in a busy market, near a Shia mosque in the village of Abu Sayda in Diyala province. Women and children were among the casualties. Gabriel Gatehouse has sent this report from Baghdad.
The car bomb exploded just as the afternoon heat was beginning to abate, and shoppers were going out to the local market. Officials in the village of Abu Sayda said the blast caused several buildings to collapse. This is just the latest in a string of bombings in the area. Overall levels of violence in Iraq are much lower than they were a few years ago. But Diyala province remains one of the country's most unstable regions. In parts, Sunni insurgents and Shia armed militias still compete for influence with Iraqi government forces.
The White House has apologized to a black government worker who was forced to resign after being wrongly accused of racist behaviour. An agricultural department employee, Shirley Sherrod, was asked to resign on Monday by government officials who said they were acting on behalf of the White House. Edited audio clips attributed to her were distributed by conservative bloggers. In those clips, she appeared to say she'd been reluctant to help a farmer's family because they were white. However, the extracts have been taken from a longer speech in which Ms Sherrod had said that in fact she'd helped the farmer.
The World Health Organization has said that HIV epidemics are raging out of control in Eastern Europe. About 100,000 new cases of HIV were reported in Europe in 2008. 80% of them were in the east. Much of the increase in HIV cases was due to infections among injecting drug users in Russia and Ukraine.
BBC News