Jonathan Head reporting
World News from the BBC
French police say the older brother of the Islamist gunman Mohammed Merah - who killed Jewish children, a
rabbi
and soldiers in separate attacks in southwestern France - has expressed pride at his actions. Abdelkader Merah is being questioned by anti-terrorist police in Paris, but they say he's claimed not to have known in advance that Mohammed Merah would carry out the killings. The man's mother was also questioned by police and released without charge. Her lawyer Jean-Yves Gougnaud said she was
devastated
by what happened.
"Her world has tumbled down. Everything has crashed. Like I said, at no point did she think that her son was the killer. She wanted to talk to her neighbours, to tell them to protect their children, to be careful, to take care of them."
The authorities in Beijing say it'll be at least two decades before they get the Chinese capital's air pollution under control. Beijing came close to the bottom of a recent list of the world's most polluted cities. Charles Scanlon reports.
The city authorities in Beijing have been
stunned
by a wave of criticism of the accuracy of their pollution figures. They are now trying to convince the sceptical public that they have a credible plan to tackle the problem. The vice-mayor Hong Feng said the best the city could hope for was to have air pollution under control within the next 20 years. He said that would include one of the biggest threats to health - the tiny