2010-01-19 BBC
BBC News with Neil Nunes
The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called on the UN Security Council to authorize the deployment of another 3,500 police and soldiers for Haiti. Mr Ban said the key priorities were unclogging the logistical bottlenecks, hindering the delivery of aid and coordinating the massive international response as patience runs out among desperate survivors, many still lacking food, water and shelter. Reports from the ground in Haiti have spoken of rising tensions and instances of looting and disorder. David Loyn is in Port-au-Prince.
UN police alongside US troops bid their riot shields and fired baton rounds to force a crowd back from the airport gates this morning. In the air was anger filled by hunger as almost a week on there is little sign of significant aid reaching the streets of Port-au-Prince. The deputy head of the World Food Program here Ben Yatiri said that within only a few days many more people will receive food than the 100,000 now being fed. But the worsening security means that every truck that goes out needs very careful planning and the military escort, otherwise it would be attacked.
Thousands of Haitians desperate to leave the country all together are queuing outside the American embassy. A BBC correspondent in Haiti says there is evidence of destitution and despair everywhere he visited. A spokesman for a British aid group told the BBC that one of its teams had been able to bring supplies by sea to the southern coastal town of Jacmel. There, they've found up to 80% of the local infrastructure destroyed.
The Spanish High Court has ordered the extradition to Argentina of a pilot alleged to have taken part in throwing political prisoners out of aircraft into the sea at the time of Argentina's military dictatorship 30 years ago. The final decision on the extradition of Julio Alberto Poch rests with the Spanish government which is expected to rule on the case within weeks. Here is Sarah Rainsford.
Julio Alberto Poch is accused of torture and murder during Argentina's dirty war of the 1970s and 80s. Documents sent to Spain by Argentine prosecutors accused him of direct involvements in what have become known as the death flights. When opponents of the then military dictatorship were drugged and thrown into the sea from airplanes. Mr Poch was arrested here in Spain in September during a stopover as he flew a commercial airline to the Netherlands where he lives. He denies all the charges against him.
A court in Canada has sentenced the ringleader of a group of 18 alleged Islamist \ extremists to life imprisonment for plotting to bomb the Toronto stock exchange and other targets in Canada. Zacharia Amara, who pleaded guilty, was arrested along with 17 others in 2006.
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The Iraqi authorities have begun collecting signatures for a class action lawsuit on behalf of people who were wounded or lost relatives in incidents involving the American security firm Blackwater. Some 50 family members visited the prime minister's office, and most signed powers of attorney, authorizing government lawyers to take action against Blackwater.
The Somali government has made an official protest after Kenyan police rounded up hundreds of Somalis including 11 members of the Somali parliament in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. It follows violent clashes between police and Muslims which the Kenyan government blamed on supporters of the Somali militant group al-Shabab. / is a Somali community leader in Kenya.
"There is quite a lot of anxiety and resentment after what they say you know / the harassment. That's the feeling that Somalis are just being targeted, and then over the last few months, you know, the media has been relentless and trying to show that Somalis are engaged in the illegal businesses, and so forth. And then the government announced that they are going to provide Somalia so order their properties. So, there is generally a feeling of anxiety really."
The President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has ordered the removal from the center of the capital Ashgabat of a statue of his predecessor. It’s seen as the latest move by Mr Berdymukhamedov to dismantle the personality cult built up by the late President Niyazov. Martin Vennard has the details.
The 12-meter tall gold-plated statue of the late President Saparmyrat Niyazov rotates so that it is always facing towards the sun during daylight hours. It sits at top of 75-meter high tripod-like construction, called the Neutrality Arch, completed in 1998. The arch features on 8 inscriptions and a glass lift, and was one of the many monuments that Mr Niyazov had built to himself.
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