Financial regulators in the United States and Britain have fined the American bank JP Morgan $920m over losses made by a trader known as the London Whale. The bank lost more than $6bn as a result of the trades. Emma Simpson reports. “The fines are huge and the findings damning for this Wall Street giant, the losses of those through what the financial conduct authority described as a high risk trading strategy. The bets were made by Bruno Iksil, a trader in the bank's chief investment office in London, so huge were these bets, he became known as the London Whale. JP Morgan said it had accepted responsibility for its mistakes and was working to ensure they would never happen again.”
A commission of inquiry into the police killing of 34 workers at a platinum mine in South Africa has accused the police of lying about the incident. The commission said police had hidden some documents, falsified others and given a false version of the events. It said it had thousands more documents to examine and will postpone the inquiry for several days. The BBC Africa correspondent says it's an extraordinary attack on the credibility of the South African police. The commission was set out following the killings of the striking miners in August last year.
World News from the BBC
The environmental group Greenpeace says 29 of its activists have been held at gun point by armed Russian men believed to be members of the Russian security service, the FSB who stormed their ship in international waters. The activists’ vessel has been taken part in a protest against drilling by Gasprom in the Arctic Ocean. Daniel Sandford reports. “The Greenpeace protest began when four people try to board Gasprom’s Prirazlomnaya drilling rig, the Russian coast guard immediately detained two activists who managed to get on to the side of the platform. All the other activists returned to their ship, the Arctic Sunrise. But helicopters flew to the Arctic Sunrise and around 15 armed men in balaclavas abseiled onto the deck. One of the activists on the ship told the BBC that the armed men were holding 29 of them in the galley while the captain was being detained on the bridge.”