BBC news with Jerry Schmitt
One month after Kenya’s disputed elections, tribal violence has continued to spiral, with dozens of people clubbed and hacked to death in the Rift Valley running north from Nairobi. Reports say people have been locked in their homes and set alight by crowds of rampaging youths. Thousands more inhabitants have been forced to flee their homes. The director general of the Kenyan Red Cross Abbas Gullet told reporters that aid workers were frightened for their own safety.
This morning I travelled on the road to Naivasha, because we are setting up account in Naivasha, for the last two days for people coming into Naivasha. And my staff were, this morning, quite frightened to say they would go out because there were roadblocks, roadblocks everywhere in Naivasha town and all the highway.
The Israeli government says it will resume regular basic fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip, which was stopped ten days ago, causing the closure of Gaza’s only power station and widespread power cuts across the Palestinian territory. Israel had ordered the blockade of Gaza in what it said was a response to continued Palestinian rocket attacks across the border. Paul Wood reports.
The Israeli government’s announcement that it will resume fuel supplies to Gaza’s only power station was made to pre-empt a possible ruling on the issue by the country’s high court. Human rights group had brought a petition, arguing that cutting the fuel supply was collective punishment, illegal under international law.
At least seven people are reported to have been killed, when Lebanese troops clashed with Shiite demonstrators in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The violence began when the army intervened to remove barricades of burning tyres during a protest about power cuts. The tension spread rapidly to surrounding Shiite neighborhoods. Jim Muir reports.
It’s what everybody in Beirut feared the sound of gunfire echoing through the city’s streets. An outbreak of violence had been widely predicted in recent months as political tensions had been steadily climbing. The disturbances began after the army moved into clear streets in Shiite areas of Southern Beirut, blocked by burning tyres, laid by protesters objecting to frequent power cuts. Gunfire broke out. The tension spread rapidly to nearby areas, including the airport road, which was also closed for a while. As news spread to outlying Shiite areas in the south and east of the countries, roads there were cut too. Political leaders of the two main Shiite movements, Hizbullah and Amal called on their followers to stand down.
Preparations are well under way for a state funeral in a few hours time for the former Indonesian president, Suharto. He's being buried at a family plot near Solo in Central Java, on ground reserved for Javanese royalty. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono leads the list of official mourners, with many Asian leaders expected to attend. Seven days of national mourning have been observed throughout Indonesia.
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The French bank Societe Generale says it believes the trader Jerome Kerviel, who cost it some seven billion dollars by unauthorized dealing was acting alone, and had no motive of personal greed. Hugh Schofield reports.
The size of the losses allegedly incurred by Mr. Kerviel 4.9 billion Euros, or more than 7 billion dollars is startling enough, but now comes confirmation that the stakes he was actually playing with were much, much higher. Societe Generale said that when his alleged rogue trading was discovered, he’d taken positions, in other words, pledged the bank’s money on deals worth ten times that amount. To give some perspective, 50 billion Euros is more than France’s annual budget deficit and equivalent the gross domestic product of a country like Libya.
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Conservative Christian Democratic Union has suffered a big electoral setback in elections in the key state of Hesse. The CDU’s share of the vote plummeted to around 36 percent after a controversial campaign, which focused on the crime and immigration. If these provisional results are born out, it will mean an embarrassing defeat for the Hesse State leader Roland Koch, a close ally of Mrs. Merkel.
Soldiers and police in Guyana in South America have taken up positions around a coastal village, southeast to the capital George Town, after gunmen killed 11 people, including women and children. Residents stayed behind, locked doors as security forces checked the area, clearing roads of debris left by angry protestors after Saturday’s attack. Police say the killings, described as the worst in the country for 30 years, are the work of the country’s most wanted man.
Ceremonies have been taking place across Europe to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1945. Survivors of Auschwitz held their commemoration in the rubble of the gas chambers in Poland.
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