BBC News with David Austin
Hours after the founder of the Wikileaks website, Julian Assange, surrendered to the authorities in Britain, a court in London ordered him to remain in custody while it decides on his possible extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual offences. Mr Assange denies the accusations. Jon Brain was in court.
He was asked if he understood that he could
consent to
being
extradite
d to Sweden. He said he did understand that, but he did not give his consent. He'll be fighting this extradition. There'll now be a full hearing in a week's time when the arguments will be
laid out
on both sides. His lawyer says he'll be robustly resisting any attempts to extradite him, and he says they will use the option, if necessary, of appealing to a higher court even if this court decides
in favour of
the Swedish authorities.
Meanwhile, another credit card company Visa has
suspend
ed dealings with Wikileaks. MasterCard and PayPal had already done the same. Wikileaks has
outrage
d Washington by releasing thousands of secret American documents.
The West African regional bloc Ecowas has suspended Ivory Coast because of the failure of the incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo to accept that he lost last month's election. At a special summit in Nigeria, Ecowas recognised Alassane Ouattara as the Ivory Coast's president-elect and called on Mr Gbagbo to