Military commanders in Honduras have been cleared of abusing their power by expelling the then President Manuel Zelaya from the country last year. The Supreme Court dismissed the charges brought by state prosecutors against the six commanders. Charles Scanlon reports.

Manuel Zelaya was ordered from his bed by armed soldiers last June and put on a plane to Costa Rica while still in his pajamas. The attorney general brought charges against the military commanders earlier this month not for staging a coup, which the current government says was legal, but for expelling the head of state rather than putting him on trial. The Supreme Court has now cleared them of any criminal responsibility. The decision comes just a day before a conservative businessman, Porfirio Lobo, is due to be sworn in as the new president following elections in November. He says he'll support the Supreme Court's decision.

The authorities in Guatemala have captured a former president who's wanted in Guatemala and the United States on money laundering charges. US prosecutors accused Alfonso Portillo of using state funds as a personal cash machine and laundering money taken from a charity that supplies school books. Mr. Portillo's lawyer said earlier that he would not surrender because the charges against him were political.

World News from the BBC.

The parliamentary commission in France has called for a ban on the wearing of face-covering veils by Muslim women using public hospitals, schools, government offices and public transport. It described the full veil as an unacceptable challenge to French principles of secularism and equality. But the opposition Socialists have rejected a legal ban, warning that it risked stigmatizing the Muslim community.