BBC News with David Austin

BBC News with David Austin.
The United States Defensive Department review of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has recommended that detainees spend less time in isolation and been given more opportunities for social contact and recreation .The review says the camps complies with the Geneva Conventions but it did find evidence supporting 14 allegations of misconduct by Camp guards .James Coomarasamy has more.
The review suggests more recreational opportunity, more intellectuall stimulation and perhaps group prayer .Its contents made the public as US Attorney General Eric Holder visited the detention center. He is assessing the camp's facilities and the cases of its remaining 250 or so prisoners ,as he tackles the legal complicity of shutting the camp down within a year as President Obama has ordered .
The first man to be released from Guantanamo bay since President Obama took office has arrived back in Britain where he was a resident .The former detainee Binyam Mohamed was seen briefly by police and who said he faced no action from them .Mr. Mohamed who is of Ethiopian origin said he had to face torture and he accused Britain of complicity. President Obama has confirmed that he intends to cut the US budget deficit by half by the end of his first term in office .He was speaking during talks at the White House with senior American politicians about ways of bring the deficit under control .From Washington Here is Kevin Connolly.
Barack Obama's presidency has begun with a spectacular increase in spending and borrowing to fund what he calls a stimulus package which will cost more than 780 billion dollars .But his administration sees that bulging spending is an extraordinary measure to meet the demands of an extraordinary moment in the debts recession .And having won the first political battle of his presidency to get it signed into law ,he is now trying to signal that he is also at heart a fiscal conservative .He says that he wants to halve the budget deficit in the course of his four-year term ,from about 1.3 trillion dollars to 533 billion .
Share prices on the Newyork stock exchange have falled to their lowest level for almost twelve years .The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by 3.4 percent at the close of its trading .
The United Nations says it will strengthen its presence in the north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as part of military operations against rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army .Our Africa editor Martin Plaut reports .
The UN is to send a new company of troops to the town of Dungu which has been at the heart of an area attacked by the Lord's Resistance Army. And an attack helicopter and two transport helicopters will also help strenghten the UN presence in the area .UN operation in Congo Known as MONUC has been criticized for failing to protect civilians from the LRA which killed and mined more than a thousand villagers in a series of brute atrocities that begun on Christamas day .Our Africa editor Martin Plaut reporting .
World News from the BBC.
The Taliban in Pakistan have declared a unilateral ceasefire in their conflict with the security forces in the Bajaur tribal area close to the Afghan frontier .A deputy leader of the movement sid the decision had been taken in the best interests of the region and the nation .There has been no response yet from the Pakistani military which has been fighting the Taliban in Bajaur for several months .
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced that it's rescued 48 child prostitutes in a three-day operation involving state and local law enforecment agency .Over 570 people in 29 states were arrested .They have been charged with offenses including child trafficing , prostitution and solicitation. The operation was part of theInnocence Lost National Initiative which was launched in 2003 .
A French court has rejected an attempt to halt the sale of two antique Chinese bronze art works from the private collection of the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent who died last year .A Chinese association wanted the items which were taken by British and French forces during the 19th century to be returned to Beijing . Alasdair Sandford has more .
The court ruled there was nothing to justify withdrawing the two bronze relics from sales .The case was brought by a group called the association to protect Chinese art in Europe .It is said the Rat head and Rabbit head had been looted in 150 years ago and wanted the French government to intervene to return them to China .A lawyer for the auction, Christie’s says that the rare pieces will now go under the hammer on Wedensday .
The Indian government has set aside 2.5 billion dollars to fund the preparations for man space flights .The cabinet has yet to give final approval .A spokeman for India's space Programe said that the scientists hope to put two men into orbit in 2015.One Indian astronaut was sent to space 25 years ago but that was abroad a Russia craft .
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BBC News with David Legg.
An explosion in a busy tourist district in the Egyptian capital Cairo has killed at least one person a French national and wounded more than 20 others including many foreigners. Reports say a bomb was thrown from a balcony into a crowded open-air cafe. The area Khan el-Khalili is a major tourist attraction. From Cairo, Christian Fraser reports.
The target was a group of tourists who were sitting outside a hotel cafe close to the Ohasayid Mosque. The bombers are thought to have gone to an upper floor of the hotel, from where they dropped crude home-made explosives. There is no indication yet of who might have been behind this bombing. But this is a tense time in Egypt. The government has come under a lot of criticism for its reaction to the war in Gaza and it has plenty of enemies.
European leaders meeting in Berlin have agreed on the need for sweeping changes to the global financial system. They want tougher regulation of all financial markets and products including controversial hedge funds. The leaders were meeting to agree a common position ahead of a meeting of the world’s leading advanced and developing nations in London in March. The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said a global new deal was needed.
"We decided that the international institutions should have at least five hundred billion dollars to enable them not just to deal with crises but to enable them to be able to prevent crises. We’ve also decided that we want to see a greater role for the World Bank in helping the poorest countries of the world. We also want to see, as part of the stimulus to the world economy, a global green deal, in other words, that a lot of the resources that are invested, are invested in a low-carbon economy for the future".
Details are emerging from Washington of plans by President Obama to halve Americ a’s ballooning budget deficit by 2012. The president's officials say Mr. Obama will set the target when he announces his budget this week. They say he’ll fund the cut by raising some taxes and reducing troop numbers in Iraq as well as by making the administration more efficient. Barack Obama’s first move as president was to borrow another trillion dollars to fund his stimulus package.
The African Union says 11 of its peace-keepers all from Burundi have been killed in an attack in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. The AU said that the soldiers had been under intense mortar attack from insurgents for the
past five days, Caspar Leighton has more.
The AU peace-keepers are meant to be helping to stabilize Somalia while a political solution is found to the country's eighteen-year-long civil war. Islamic insurgents have been gaining more and more ground and now control most of Somalia. The understrength AU force has become increasingly embattled. Some insurgents have voiced support for a newly installed government. But the hard-line Islamist al-Shabab group which claimed today's attack has vowed to fight on.
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The Anglican archbishop of Sudan has called on Britain and the United States to help track down the rebel leader of the Lord's Resistance Movement Joseph Kony and help bring him to justice. Archbishop Daniel Deng said the task appeared beyond the abilities of the governments of the region. Attacks by the rebels since the end of December have killed more than a thousand people and driven nearly two hundred thousand from their homes.
A senior Republican senator in the United States Richard Luger has called the American policies towards Cuba ineffective. Senator Luger, the leading Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Washington’s approach had failed to achieve its stated purpose of promoting democracy on the island. He said political changes in Cuba had created an opportunity for the US to reevaluate its relationship with Havana.
Hollywood is counting down to this year’s American Film Academy Awards, the Oscars. The British film Slumdog Millionaire, the story of a Mumbai orphan’s journey from rags to riches is the hot favorite to win best film. Final preparations are being made for the event of the Kodak Theater where last year the famous red carpet had to be shrouded in a plastic canopy because of heavy rain. The man responsible for the red carpet area Joe
Louis says he hopes this year’s event should run smoothly.
"The biggest challenge? I think, you know, I don’t know that there is[are] many challenges unless the weather changes. If the weather changes, then our challenge is just to stay ahead of it, to keep people safe and keep people dry. If the weather does not change, our challenge is really just flow and execution."
Two notorious Greek criminals have escaped from jail by helicopter for the second time in three years. The men, Vassilis Palaiokostas and Alket Rizai used a rope ladder thrown by a helicopter to break out of the Korydallos prison near Athens. They were due to go on trial shortly charged in connection with the first helicopter escape in 2006.
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BBC News with Fiona McDonald.
President Obama says American workers will see the benefit of his tax cuts as soon as April, given the typical families 65 dollars a month more in their pay packets. The president said it was the fastest working tax cut in American history. In his weekly address, Mr. Obama said he'd hold a fiscal summit on Monday and would release what he described as a sober and honest budget on Thursday. But he also had this warning.
"None of this will be easy. The road ahead will be long and full of hazards. But I am confident that we as a people had the strength and wisdom to carry out the strategy and overcome this crisis. And if we do, our economy and our country will be better and stronger forward."
It's been announced that the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will hold talks with President Obama in Washington on the third of March, making him the first European leader to have secured a meeting with the new president. The White House said the two men will discuss challenges, such as the global financial crisis, the economic summit in London in April and a comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan.
About 100,000 people in Ireland have taken to the streets of the capital
Dublin to protest against government plans to cut the pay of public sector workers. The government says the measures are needed to control Ireland's ballooning deficits. Mark Simpson reports from Dublin.
Irish workers are angry. They feel they are being punished for the mistakes of the Irish banks. That's why the center of Dublin came to a standstill this afternoon with tens of thousands of builders, nurses and teachers, demonstrating against proposed wage cuts. The Irish government fears that today's protests could eventually lead to strikes. That may or may not happen, but what's clear is that the days of Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" economy being the envy of Europe are long gone.
Taliban insurgents fighting the army in Pakistan's northwestern Swat Valley say they will announce in the next few days whether they will make their temporary ceasefire a permanent one. A Taliban spokesman told the BBC they would first review government progress on implementing Sharia law in the district. Earlier Pakistani officials said that a permanent truce with militants had been agreed. Shoaib Hasan reports from Islamabad.
Mr. Syed Javed, the head of the local administration in Swat, said that the army would scale back its operations in the valley. Mr. Javed also requested all locals who had migrated due to the fighting to return home. The Taliban's spokesman said their leader expressed satisfaction with the peace agreement, but the spokesman also said that the Taliban would not lay down their arms until the new Sharia regulations were enforced to their satisfaction.
Pakistan's ambassador to the US denied they were caving in to the Taliban, and told the BBC it was a local solution to a local problem.
World News from the BBC.
The director of the Colombian intelligence agency, the DAS, has ordered an investigation into reports that the agency has been infiltrated by criminal gangs. According to a news magazine, rogue agents have been intercepting phone calls to journalists, opposition politicians and magistrates to pass information to drugs gangs. The director, Felipe Munoz, said that a leading team would try to establish whether there was a criminal network working against Colombia's national interests.
Four people have been killed and many injured in fighting between Christians and Muslims in northern Nigeria. A number of churches and mosques were set on fire during the clashes in the northeastern city of Bauchi. The security forces have now restored order. Caroline Duffy
reports.
The violence erupted in the suburb of the city, an area known as the ... in the Dutsin-Tashin neighbourhood. It houses a mosque and a church extremely close together. Residents there say that these clashes were sparked by a running disagreement over where worshipers were parking. The state governor has appeared on television warning that perpetrators of mayhem would be swiftly dealt with.
Burma's military government says it has begun releasing up to 6,000 prisoners in what it described as a goodwill gesture to enable them to take part in general election scheduled for 2010. The opposition National League for Democracy welcomed the releases but said only about 15 of an estimated 2,000 political prisoners have been included.
The border between Morocco and Algeria has been opened temporarily for the first time since 1994 to allow in aid convoy for Gaza to travel through. The two North African countries shut their border crossings after Morocco accused Algeria of organizing an attack on a hotel in Marrakesh. A BBC correspondent says despite the Gaza aid convoy concession, there is little sign people would be able to travel overland between Morocco and Nigeria.。