A British parliamentary committee has issued a

scathing

verdict on the role of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch in a phone-hacking scandal at one of his biggest newspapers. It found that News Corporation had shown "

wilful

blindness" over the extent of phone hacking by journalists. But the committee's strongest criticism that Rupert Murdoch was unfit to run an international company split (it) along political party lines. Ben Geoghegan reports.

The conclusion about Rupert Murdoch's fitness to run a major company is damning. Four Conservative MPs were against including it in a final report. However, there was unanimous agreement on the issue at the heart of their nine-month inquiry - whether they were misled about the extent of phone hacking at the News of the World. News Corp has rejected the committee's conclusions about Rupert Murdoch, saying they were unjustified and highly

partisan

.

The United Nations says that it expects to deploy the full contingent of 300 unarmed ceasefire monitors to Syria by the end of this month. The head of UN peacekeeping, Herve Ladsous, told journalists that member states had so far promised only half this number of monitors, but he was confident the force would reach full strength.

Colombia's largest rebel group, the Farc, says it is holding a French journalist who had been missing since a deadly guerrilla ambush on Saturday. In a telephone call to journalists, a woman claiming to be a Farc member said the rebels were holding Romeo Langlois as a prisoner of war.