The federal prosecutor’s office in Brazil has ordered police to investigate allegations of corruption against the former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. A businessman at the center of a long-running corruption
scandal
told prosecutors that the former president received money from
illegal
scheme that used public funds to pay coalition partners’ parties for political support. Mr. Lula has strongly denied any knowledge of the scheme. Several senior members of his Workers’ Party have been given long prison sentences for their involvement.
Five Americans and an Afghan doctor have been killed in a car bomb by a hospital in Zabul province in southern Afghanistan. Caroline Wyatt has the details.
The suicide bomber blew up his car full of explosives between a convoy carrying the Afghan governor of Zabul province and his officials and a US military convoy which were passing one another by chance. The governor believes that his vehicle was intended target although three American soldiers and two US civilians were killed in the attack while the governor survived. The killings came on the same day that US general Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff arrived in Afghanistan for a visit to see the level of training American troops will give to Afghan forces after Nato’s combat mission finishes by the end of 2014.
The latest talks on Iran’s nuclear program have concluded without agreement after a two-day meeting in Kazakhstan between Iran and six world powers. The EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said both sides’ positions remained far apart.