2010-04-24 BBC
BBC News with Mike Cooper
The International Monetary Fund and the European Commission have promised to act swiftly after Greece said it needed to activate a 60-billion-dollar rescue package agreed in principle last week. Correspondents say the IMF is likely to demand tough austerity measures. The crisis sparked an angry skirmish in Athens this evening as Malcolm Brabant reports.
The authorities here are on alert for social unrest. Seasoned left-wing political activists acknowledge that 24-hour strikes and frequent demonstrations have failed to persuade the government to water down its austerity programme. "What we need," said one activist, "are open-ended strikes on occupations of factories and other places of employment." The Socialist government has made it clear that it won't tolerate repeat of the riots of 2008 when city centres across the country were vandalized and buildings burned. The police have been ordered to be more robust with troublemakers.
Governor of the American state of Arkansas Jan Brewer has signed into law a bill tightening immigration hours after President Obama criticized it. The unprecedented state law gives new powers to local police to question people about their immigration status. Governor Brewer said the law would strengthen border controls in the state which neighbors Mexico. President Obama called the measure misguided and said he had instructed the Justice Department to investigate whether it violated the civil rights of Latinos and other immigrants.
A judge in the American state of Utah has sanctioned the execution of a convicted murderer by firing squad. Ronnie Lee Gardner will be the first person in the US to face a firing squad in 14 years. Gardner was convicted in 1985 of killing an attorney in a botched escape attempt. Here is Madeleine Morris.
In signing the warrant for Ronnie Lee Gardner's execution, a judge in Salt Lake City gave the convicted murderer the choice of death by lethal injection or facing a firing squad. Gardner chose the latter. The case has already re-ignited the debate in Utah about the use of firing squads. Oklahoma is the only other state to sanction them since capital punishment was reinstated in the US in 1976. But it has never killed anyone this way.
A pilot wrongly accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks has won his legal battle for compensation. Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian-born British resident, was arrested in Britain shortly after the attacks. This report from our home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw.
Lotfi Raissi was held in a maximum security prison for nearly five months before a judge ordered his release, saying there was no evidence to link him to terrorism. Two years ago, the Court of Appeal said Mr Raissi had been the victim of the heightened emotional atmosphere at the end of 2001 and ordered ministers to consider paying damages. The Justice Secretary Jack Straw has now declared that Mr Raissi is eligible for compensation. The amount will be independently assessed but it's thought it could run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
World News from the BBC
Iraqi officials say at least 58 people have been killed in bomb attacks that targeted civilians in Shiite-dominated areas in and around the capital Baghdad as Friday prayers were ending. Most of the deaths were in Sadr City, located north of the capital and in southern Baghdad. No group has yet said it carried out the attacks but officials in Baghdad have blamed \ al-Qaeda, saying that the bombings were in revenge for the killing of two high profile al-Qaeda operatives on Sunday.
The Ethiopian government says it's halved the number of people dying of malaria by distributing nearly 20 million \ insecticide-treated bed nets. The government said it had achieved this by training \ 30,000 health workers and extending the country's system of roads to reach some of Ethiopia's more remote areas. Malaria is the leading cause of death in Africa.
A court in northern England has convicted an atheist of causing religiously aggravated harassment for distributing leaflets mocking Jesus Christ, Islam and the Pope. The man, Harry Taylor, said he was trying to convert religious believers to atheism by leaving home-made posters in the prayer room at John Lennon Airport in Liverpool. Nick Ravenscroft reports.
One poster depicted two Muslims holding a placard demanding equality with the caption not for women or gays obviously. Another featured a cartoon of the Pope with a condom on his finger. Harry Taylor told the court that he bore no grudge against people of faith and left the images in the prayer room in a tribute to John Lennon whose song "Imagine" referred to a world with no religion. But Mr Taylor was convicted and given a six-month jail sentence suspended for two years.
Turkmenistan has held its first circus shows since they were banned nine years ago. Fifteen hundred children in the capital Ashgabat watched a performance by clowns, elephants and camels. Circuses along with ballet, opera and the theatre were all prohibited by the former leader Saparmurat Niyazov who died in 2006.
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