BBC News with Julie Candler

A former manager of the US energy services giant Halliburton has pleaded guilty to destroying evidence relating to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Anthony Badalamenti has admitted to having data deleted during a review of the spill. He faces a one-year prison sentence and a big fine. Katy Watson reports from Washington.

It was America's biggest ever environmental disaster, and while the past few years have been focused on the clean-up, it's also been a bit of a blame game searching for information on what went wrong and who was responsible. Halliburton was BP's cement contractor on the drilling rig that exploded and caused the spill, and Mr Badalamenti was the company's cementing technology director. He's been accused of instructing his programme manager to delete computer records.

Republicans in the US House of Representatives are trying to muster support for a new plan to avoid a debt default and reopen the government. They are hoping vote on their proposal in a few hours' time, but the Senate is discussing a rival plan, and it's unclear whether either has sufficient support to pass in both houses. Concerns over the deadlock sent shares on Wall Street falling. Both house and the Senate proposed to extend governing funding and raise borrowing limit until February, but the Republicans have added conditions which the White House says are unacceptable.A state of emergency has been declared by the government of Sicily due to the large number of migrants surviving by boat in the southern Italian region. Officials say the move is designed to allow stronger civil protection measures. David Willey is in Rome.

Rosario Crocetta, Sicily's governor, issued a local ordinance releasing funds for aid workers helping the now daily arrivals of hundreds of migrants from Africa and Syria. Italy has a nationwide civil protection service, and the state of emergency means that they will be able to carry out their work of looking after the new arrivals more efficiently. Within the past 24 hours alone, some 400 migrants have been rescued by the Italian navy in the stretch of the water between the shores of North Africa and the island of Sicily.

The Nigerian Interior Minister Abba Moro has said there will be a high-level investigation...