2010-07-06 BBC
BBC News with Jonathan Izard.
The Middle East envoy Tony Blair has told the BBC that he believes the International outcry which followed Israel's raid on aid flotilla at the end of May persuaded it to accelerate the substantial easing of the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israel has dropped restrictions on all consumer goods. Mr Blair said it was a big shift in policy and should improve the life of Gazans.
"Obviously, it's a big change to move from a list in which only some things permitted can come into Gaza to a prohibited list of the things coming as a matter of course unless prohibited. That should change the numbers of items coming into Gaza from around about just over a hundred to thousands of items being able to come in. So, obviously, that makes a big difference and should’ve been implemented to make a big difference to lives of Gazans."
However, construction materials are still only allowed for projects controlled by the UN. Hamas, which controls the territory, says it's nowhere near enough as the ban on exports from Gaza remains.
The European Union says it's withdrawing trade concessions from Sri Lanka, after the government failed to guarantee that it will implement charters on civil, political and children's rights as well as outlawing torture. Sri Lanka will lose preferential access to European markets next month. Sri Lankan exports to the EU were worth $1.5 billion last year. The EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said she hoped talks would resume.
East African leaders have renewed their calls to the United Nations to turn the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia into a UN mission. The president of Somalia Sheikh Shariff Sheikh Ahmed warned the hastily convened meeting of the regional group Igad that Somalia was in the hands of al-Qaeda and extremist groups and that a radical strategy to end almost two decades of crisis was urgently needed. Igad has agreed to deploy 2,000 more AU peacekeepers to Somalia. Kipruto arap Kirwa is the Igad Facilitator for Somalia.
"We expect that peace troops will come from Africa, but we do expect the international partners to be able to give the necessary support for the troops to have comparable terms as troops elsewhere under the UN handle of a system."
Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has reversed a controversial ban on the national football team playing internationally. The decision came before a deadline set by world football's governing body, FIFA, which threatened to suspend Nigeria from international tournaments because of its rules against political interference in sport. Caroline Duffield reports from Lagos.
The country's Football Federation has published a statement. It says that the president has graciously rescinded the decision to withdraw from international competition. It says that he harkened to the passionate appeals of top officials and well-meaning Nigerians, and that he changed his mind for the sake of millions of youths involved in football. Many people, whether football fans or not, were thrilled at his decision to withdraw from football and attack corruption amongst football bosses.
World News from the BBC.
The review of a report from the United Nations Climate Panel has found that claims of errors in its 2007 report were largely unfounded. Dutch parliamentarians were angered by claims that a rising sea level would flood more than half their country. However, their own environment agency found that the country was threatened, but by flooding rivers rather than the sea. The BBC's environment correspondent says this is the latest in a series of inquiries which have concluded that the mainstream view of man-made climate change is basically correct.
Iran has accused some European and Gulf states of refusing to supply fuel for its airliners on flights overseas. An Iranian aviation official said the action had greatly increased the cost of such flights. The BBC correspondent says Iran believes this is a result of new sanctions imposed by the United States last week.
The presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador have taken part in a ceremony in Caracas to reunite two 19th century independence heroes. The symbolic remains of Manuela Saenz, who was buried in Peru in 1856, were laid to rest alongside those of her lover, the Liberator, Simon Bolivar. From Venezuela, here's Will Grand.
When Manuela Saenz was last by Simon Bolivar's side, it was almost 180 years ago. Now, under the direction of the government of Hugo Chavez, she is at least in some form alongside him once more. Critics say the entire event is a farce. They say the symbolic remains of Manuelita Saenz, a little more than a box of Peruvian earth, intended to whip up nationalist sentiment in an election year.
A new campaign is under way to save the legacy of one of Britain's greatest filmmakers. Alfred Hitchcock, the director of Hollywood classics, such as Psycho and Vertigo, made a number of silent films early in his career, which Britain's National Films Institute is now trying to restore with funding from the public. The Institute hopes to return nine of Hitchcock's early masterpieces to their original 1920s' condition.
BBC News.