BBC News with David Legge

The American government commission looking into the causes of April's huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico says the three main companies involved all made serious mistakes in the run-up to the disaster. The commission's co-chairman William Reilly said the three firms - BP, Transocean and Halliburton - shared a culture of complacency rather than safety. It was the final day of hearings before the panel reports back in January. Paul Adams is in Washington.

William Reilly didn't mince his words; the three companies were, he said, in need of top-to-bottom reform. The accident in April had been caused by what he described as a "sweep of bad decisions", with the companies apparently rushing to complete the well. Meanwhile, the former BP chief executive Tony Hayward has told the BBC that his company was "unprepared" for the oil spill and had made up its response day by day. Mr Hayward, who stepped down as CEO in October, said he resented his treatment at the hands of a hostile US media and said he might have done a better public relations job if he'd studied acting, not geology.

The cholera epidemic in Haiti has been declared a matter of national security after it spread to the capital Port-au-Prince. The health ministry gave details of the first case in the city. Greg Morsbach reports.A three-year-old boy from a poor shantytown is the first cholera patient in the capital. Apparently he'd not had any contact with people living in the countryside where the disease was first reported. That suggests that a new cluster of cases may now emerge in the capital. The authorities are taking no risks and are testing more than 100 people in Port-au-Prince who'd shown some symptoms of the disease. The health ministry fears that if cholera gets a foothold in the capital, the urban slums are likely to be hardest hit.