Five killed in Pakistan's Lahore city blast

At least five people have been killed in a big explosion in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore, doctors say.

Reports said several others had been injured in the blast which occurred near a building of a federal investigative agency.

Pakistan TV pictures showed a damaged building. Reports said a car laden with explosives had rammed into it.

Close to the country's border with India, Lahore has been hit several times by militants over the past year.

A senior police official Mohammed Irfan told the AFP news agency that the blast had taken place near Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency building in the Model Town area in Lahore.

TV reports said some of the neighbouring buildings had also been damaged in the explosion.

There have been a number of explosions in Lahore over the past year.

Last December, two bomb blasts at a busy market killed at least 48 people and injured over 100 people

In May 2009, a bomb attack on a police building killed at least 23 people and injured 200. The nearby offices of the ISI intelligence service were also damaged in the blast.

US missionaries in Haiti charged with child abduction

US missionaries arrive at Haiti court

Haiti has charged 10 US missionaries with child abduction and criminal conspiracy for allegedly trying to smuggle 33 children out of the country.

Haitian officials said their cases would now be sent to an investigating judge who would decide how to proceed.

If convicted they face lengthy jail terms, says the BBC's Paul Adams, in Haiti's quake-hit capital city.

When stopped on the border last Friday, they said they were taking the children to a Dominican Republic orphanage.

But it has emerged some of the youngsters had parents who were alive.

'Kidnappers'

After the hearing the 10 missionaries were taken back to the jail where they have been kept since Friday.

Amid chaotic scenes, the group was bundled into a van outside the court.

"I feel good," the group's leader Laura Silsby told reporters. "I trust in God."

The five men and five women, most of them from Idaho, were due to have a hearing earlier in the week, but that was postponed because of a lack of interpreters.

Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has labelled the Americans "kidnappers".

Justice Minister Paul Denis said they should be tried in Haiti despite the damage done to the country's judicial infrastructure and casualties among judges and court staff.

There have been suggestions the 10 could be tried in the US.

"It is Haitian law that has been violated, it is up to the Haitian authorities to hear and judge the case," he told AFP news agency.

"I don't see any reason why they should be tried in the United States."

The US ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, met with the group at police headquarters after the hearing.

"We'd like to assure they get treated according to the law, the Haitian law, and that they get treated fairly," he said.

A state department spokesman in Washington said the US was watching the case closely and would continue to offer assistance, through its consulate, to the group.

'Single village'

The children, who are from aged from two to 12, are now in the care of the Austrian-run SOS Children's Village in Port-au-Prince.

The missionaries have said they were not trying to kidnap the children

Twenty-one of the children are from a single village outside the capital and were handed over willingly by their parents, says the BBC's Paul Adams, in Port-au-Prince.

Residents in the village of Callebas told an Associated Press news agency reporter they had handed their children over through a local orphanage worker who said he was acting on the Americans' behalf.

The worker is said to have promised the families that the missionaries would educate their children in neighbouring Dominican Republic.

A number of parents in the badly-damaged village said they would find it difficult to provide for their children if they came back.

Ms Silsby has said her group had met a Haitian pastor by chance when they arrived last week, and that he had helped them gather the children. She also admitted that they did not have the proper paperwork.

"Our intent was to help only those children that needed us most, that had lost either both their mother and father, or had lost one of their parents and the other had abandoned them," she said from her jail cell on Wednesday.

Birmingham ticket machine operates in German

If the machine shows German writing, the car park is full

Drivers using a Birmingham city centre car park have had their language skills tested by a ticket dispenser which operates in German.

The machine gives instructions in English until the multi-storey Brunel Street car park becomes full - then it switches to German.

The council blamed a change in software in December, when the city was hosting its Frankfurt Christmas Market.

"Maybe the machine got confused," a council spokesman said.

Brum Eye

The council hopes to have the problem rectified by next week.

In the meantime a notice has been put up and staff are on hand to translate.

One motorist, looking at the notice on the machine, said: "It is quite funny, but I don't understand how that can happen."

A few years earlier, visitors to the city's big wheel, dubbed the Brum Eye, were confused to find themselves listening to French commentary describing Paris.

The risks of women drug mules in Brazil

British women warn against being drug mules

In a small room in Sao Paulo's main international airport, police officers rip open four books found in the suitcase of a Dutch passenger arrested while trying to board a flight to Europe.

Carefully concealed inside what appear to be academic texts, and wrapped in a variety of coverings, is 4kg of cocaine.

Brazil sits between other South American nations where the drug is widely produced, such as Colombia and Bolivia, and profitable markets for the drug dealers in Europe and South Africa.

Not surprisingly the country's airports receive a lot of unwelcome passengers.

Police at Guarulhos airport in Sao Paulo say several months ago they successfully disrupted a gang that was using cargo planes to smuggle drugs out the country.

There were more than 60 arrests, and the authorities say it seems to have forced drug traffickers to focus on alternatives such as using drug couriers.

In the past three years, the number of foreign women detained for drug trafficking has risen 253%.

This is starkly evident in Sao Paulo's Carandiru jail where, as well as the Brazilian inmates, there are more than 400 women from more than 60 countries.

Many risked their freedom for sums of money ranging from $3,000 to $13,000 (£2,000 to £8,000) - certainly less than what the drug traffickers controlling them can make.

'Just a nightmare'

Among the newest prisoners are Sasha Brooks and Kimberley Anderson, both 20 and from Nottingham in England. They have been friends for 15 years.

They were caught this year at Guarulhos airport with 5kg of cocaine. Sasha says they were foolish to get involved.

"I was in debt, I needed money," she told BBC News, although for her own safety she is vague about how exactly she got involved.

"I just come across some guys that happened to do this kind of thing, and was kind of persuaded and told everything would be alright, and you just agree to do it."

Instead of solving her financial problems, she now faces the challenge of everyday life in a prison in the heart of Sao Paulo.

"People can take advantage because I don't know how to speak Portuguese fluently," she says.

"So that is very harsh - when you have problems in a prison - you can't back yourself up. Having four people in a cell, two of which sleep on a floor - it's just a nightmare."

Kimberley says they want others who may be thinking of doing the same thing to know what the consequences can be.

"No amount of money in the world can replace, give you back your freedom, your family, love. Because here, you don't have love - you understand?" Kimberley says.

"You don't have freedom, you don't have anything. To do this is not easy. Any amount of money, no matter what money you get told you'd be given to do this - don't! It is not worth it - no amount of money can give you back what you lose."

Sasha quietly agrees: "There is no such thing as easy money, no such thing."

Lethal consequences

Mario Menin, the police chief at the airport where the two were arrested, says most of those who are caught are simply being exploited.

"Usually the people carrying the drugs are less well off," he says.

The search for drugs continues as traffickers seek new routes

The police insist they work mainly with intelligence and detection, but roughly the same version of events was repeated to me by different sources. One young woman from Russia, who asked not to be identified, believes the police knew she was travelling with drugs.

"They knew my description and they were watching me as soon as I entered to the airport. I saw them looking at me and laughing. I saw them all the time looking," she says.

"They were dressed in normal clothes; they were not dressed in police clothes. And then they said, they said also they got a call from somebody."

The woman claimed that she was initially told that she would be carrying valuable stones, and when she realised it would be drugs, she was threatened until she agreed to continue.

After speaking to me, Sasha Brooks and Kimberley Anderson return to the routine of prison work - an area, along with their cells, I was not allowed to see.

These are anxious days for the two English women as they await sentence, as under Brazilian law they could receive between five and 15 years.

If they are lucky, because it is a first offence here and because of their age, it could be less.

Whatever their sentence, it seems unlikely they will be the last to take such a risk.