World News from the BBC
An inquiry has heavily criticised one of Britain's leading universities for accepting a donation from a charity run by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the former Libyan leader. A report by a senior former judge, Lord Woolf, said the London School of Economics had made mistakes that had damaged its reputation. The $2.3m donation was made six weeks after Saif al-Islam was awarded a doctorate. The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall has been examining the report.
It talks about a chapter of failures, about the LSE being unfortunate and naive in (both) the timing of when it accepted the initial donation - just weeks after it had given Saif Gaddafi a PhD - and also saying that links with the Gaddafi regime were allowed to grow
unchecked
.
Questions have been raised about whether the thesis that he submitted for his PhD was really his own work - there's indication in this report that he did get quite a lot of work from outside - and whether there was
plagiarism
and indeed ghost-writing.
Five Somali men have been jailed for taking a French couple hostage on board their yacht three years ago. A court in Paris sentenced the men to between four and eight years in prison, but dropped charges against a sixth defendant. It's the first case of Somali piracy to be heard in the French courts.
The Syrian authorities say they've freed more than 900 prisoners involved in recent anti-government protests. State media said the amnesty followed the release of more than 1,500 prisoners earlier this month. Pressure is continuing to mount on the Syrian government to end its violent suppression of the protests.