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The Sri Lankan justice ministry has received a summons for President Rajapaksa issued by a United States federal court in connection with three cases filed under the Hague Convention. The civil actions are by relatives of Tamil victims of alleged extrajudicial killings during the Sri Lankan civil war. The petitioners are claiming financial damages under the United States Torture Victims Protection Act.

The lawyer representing a BBC journalist detained in Tajikistan says she's still been denied permission to speak to him five days after he was first held. The lawyer says, instead of giving her access to her client Urinboy Usmonov, the Tajik authorities have granted interviews with him to local journalists.

The Vatican is inviting 200 Roman Catholic bishops from around the world to a conference to

draw up

guidelines for tackling child sex abuse by priests. The gathering will be next February in Rome. David Willey reports.

Two months ago, the Vatican instructed bishops that they must make it a global priority to

root out

sexual abuse of children by priests. The Vatican official in charge of prosecuting priest abuses under church law, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, admitted however that some bishops' conferences have shown little interest in drafting new guidelines. There was no mention at the news conference held at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the Archbishop of Dublin, who's been outspoken in his criticism of the cover-up by Irish bishops of sexual abuse scandals in Ireland.