unravelling
fast. This evening, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Sarkozy will confront George Papandreou with a blunt message: Greece has to stick to its commitment.
A court in New York has found the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout guilty of conspiracy to sell weapons to what he believed were Colombian rebels prepared to kill Americans. Laura Trevelyan reports.
Viktor Bout, the former Soviet military officer-turned-arms dealer nicknamed the Merchant of Death, showed no emotion as the jury delivered a unanimous verdict. Bout has been found guilty of trying to sell a massive weapons haul to people he thought were members of the Colombian rebel group Farc, who wanted the arsenal to kill Americans helping the Colombian government trying to stop Farc's cocaine trade.
In fact, the so-called Farc rebels were
informant
s working for the US drug enforcement agency. Bout had pleaded not guilty, saying he was merely a legitimate businessman who wanted to sell cargo planes.
The French government has condemned the arson attack on the Paris offices of the
satirical
magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammed on its front cover. The Prime Minister Francois Fillon said that freedom of expression was an
inalienable
right in French democracy and that such an act of violence couldn't be justified.
World News from the BBC
There's been widespread condemnation of Israel's decision to speed up the construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank. The White House said it made peace efforts more difficult. The EU called the decision illegal, a view echoed by France and Britain. Israel announced the building programme on Monday after the UN cultural organisation Unesco admitted Palestine as a full member, but it says that acceleration isn't linked to that.