BBC News with Lopaco Tary

The Colombian government has been giving more details about the way it says it tricked the FARC rebels into releasing 15 of their hostages including the politician Ingrid Betancourt. Video footage of the rescue has been released shot by Colombian soldiers who the government says tricked the guerillas into believing they were journalists. It showed that the guerillas being overpowered during a helicopter flight and the hostages cried with joy when told they were freed.

The Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said no ransom was paid and the Colombian military received no help from any foreign country. "This operation was 100% Colombian. It was planned by our military personnel and executed by Colombians. There was no foreign individual involved in either the planning or the execution of the operation."

Earlier, Ms. Betancourt received a hero's welcome in France, the country where she grew up.

The Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe has said he will only negotiate with the opposition, if it accepts his controversial reelection as president. Mr. Mugabe was speaking to thousands of supporters on his return from the African Union summit in Egypt. He warned the neighboring countries, who’ve been critical of his leadership, not to interfere in Zimbabwe. Botswana has said it doesn’t recognize Mr. Mugabe's reelection, and urged other southern African countries to do the same.

The head of world's leading scientific power on climate change has warned that emissions of carbon dioxide need to peak by 2015, if global temperature rises are to be kept to 2 degree Celsius. Doctor Rajendra Pachauri who is the chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change was speaking to EU environment ministers in Paris. Our environmental reporter Matt Mcgrath has more.

Doctor Pachauri urged the European Union, which has backed the 2 degree target, to take the lead in negotiations which he argued most progress rapidly. If the EU did not lead, there was a real danger that serious attempts to control the problem of rising temperatures would collapse. He also sounded a cautious note about the rate of climate change, saying that the impacts of rising temperatures are turning out to be more serious than scientists had early estimated.

One of the United States best-known right-wing politicians, the former Republican Senator Jesse Helms, has died. He was 86. Mr. Helms spent 30 years in the ... blocking policies contrary to his conservative views gained him the nickname "Senator No". Mr. Helms retired from the Senate in 2002 because of reoccurring health problems.

The French Defense Minister Alliot-Marie has suspended 5 officers in 2 teams of paratroops of a shooting incident at a military show in which live bullets instead of blanks were fired into the crowd. 17 spectators were injured in the incident at Carcassonne on Sunday.

BBC News.

The disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has said his country's military must have known that the equipment used in processing nuclear materials was sent to North Korea in the year 2000. The statement contradicts his confession four years ago that he was solely responsible for spreading nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran. Barbara Plett reports from Islamabad.

Pakistan's newly-elected government has relaxed restrictions on Mr. Khan who was put under house arrest in 2004 by the then military leader President Pervez Musharraf. He's still detained, but has begun speaking to the media by telephone. Now, he has told a local television station that he was aware centrifuges were being shipped to North Korea in the year 2000, but he said the army must also have been aware since it supervised all defense consignments and special flights, and he said the president must also have known about the shipment, because he had written about it in his memoirs.

The Deputy Mayor of London, Ray Lewis, has resigned following a series of allegations against him including financial misconduct. Mr. Lewis, who is in charge of leading the city's policy on youth crime, has denied any wrongdoing. The BBC political correspondent says his departure is a major embarrassment to the newly-elected London Mayor Boris Johnson. Mr. Lewis said he didn't want the allegation to hinder the work of the Mayor.

"Boris Johnson is a remarkable man and London is very fortunate, even blessed to have him. But I cannot allow things I have been into, up to and around me to obscure the important business of this mayoralty, and for that reason I must step down as Deputy Mayor for young people with immediate effect."

Italy has declared a state of emergency at the Pompeii archeological site after decades of neglect at what is one of the world's leading cultural treasures. It means there will be extra funds to protect the site.

BBC News.