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Egypt president dismisses cabinet

Mr Mubarak was speaking for the first time since the crisis began

President Hosni Mubarak has defended the role of Egypt’s security forces in suppressing anti-government protests which have rocked the country.

Mr Mubarak also dismissed his government and said a new cabinet would be announced on Saturday.

It was his first statement since the protests – in which at least 26 have died with hundreds injured – began.

Tens of thousands took part in protests in Cairo, Suez, Alexandria and other cities.

Protesters set fire to the headquarters of the governing NDP party and besieged state TV and the foreign ministry.

At least 13 people were killed in Suez on Friday, while in Cairo, five people died, according to medical sources.

“I have asked the government to present its resignation today,” Mr Mubarak said, adding that he would appoint a new government on Saturday.

He also said he understood the protesters’ grievances but a thin line divided liberty from chaos and he would not allow Egypt to be destabilised.

The BBC’s Jon Leyne in Cairo says there had clearly been a lot of discussion behind the scenes before Mr Mubarak spoke to the country.

But his comments will probably just provoke further unrest, says our correspondent – the people on the streets will be both infuriated by his accusations that they are seeking to destabilise the country and inspired that, having wrung some concessions from him, they could yet manage to oust him.

Tens of thousands took part in the protests in Cairo and other cities

After Mr Mubarak spoke, a sustained volley was heard from central Cairo, which our correspondent said could have been either tear gas or live fire.

The Reuters news agency later quoted witnesses as saying more than 20 military vehicles rolled in to central Tahrir Square shortly after midnight, scattering protesters into the sidestreets.

The authorities had earlier announced a curfew from 1800 to 0700 local time (1600-0500 GMT), but it was immediately and widely flouted.

The headquarters of the governing NDP party was set ablaze, while protesters also besieged the state broadcaster and the foreign ministry.

Internet and phone services – both mobile and landline – have been severely disrupted, although protesters are using proxies to work around the restrictions.

Correspondents in Cairo say military helicopters have been circling overhead.

The US, which counts Egypt as a key ally, has appealed for calm from both sides, saying it has urged President Mubarak to enact reforms.

However, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Washington would review its aid to Egypt based on events in the coming days.

Britain, the US and France are advising against non-essential travel to Egypt.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Mandela at home after treatment

Former South African President Nelson Mandela is wheeled out on a stretcher, as he leaves the Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, 28 January 2011

Mr Mandela, on the stretcher, was taken home by ambulance

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Former South African President Nelson Mandela is recovering at home after spending two nights in hospital with a respiratory infection.

Doctors say he responded well to treatment and his condition is stable.

The 92-year-old is still being monitored by medical staff at his home in Johannesburg.

Mr Mandela was a political prisoner for 27 years but emerged to become the country’s first black president and lead a process of reconciliation.

He contracted tuberculosis in 1988 while in jail on Robben Island and also had a respiratory infection eight years ago.

Officials say despite Mr Mandela’s condition in hospital, he joked with staff and visitors.

“His amazing positive attitude allows him to cope with the difficulties of old age with the greatest of grace,” said Dr Vejaynand Ramlakan, who leads the team of military doctors assigned to care for him.

South Africa’s liberation hero flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg on Wednesday for a check-up.

But concerns mounted and media speculation grew as he remained in hospital, and was visited by a string of high-profile figures, while little information was made available.

South Africa’s Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe admitted that communications over the health of the man affectionately known by his clan name “Madiba” could have been better.

“Madiba has received similar checkups in the past and it’s never raised the same public panic it has now”, Mr Motlanthe said, explaining why officials had not been prepared for the level of interest.

South Africa's former president Nelson Mandela waving after casting his vote in South Africa's general elections in Johannesburg, 22 April 2009

The BBC’s Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg says the news that Mr Mandela had been discharged came as a relief to many.

Lerato Ledwaba, a 20-year-old university student, told the BBC: “As a young person in South Africa, Madiba means the world to me – he is my inspiration to strive for a better life for myself.”

“He is old but we are not ready to lose him. I don’t know if we’ll ever have another leader like him,” said another Johannesburg resident Karen van Rensburg, 50.

Mr Mandela retired from public life in 2004 and has made very few public appearances in recent years.

On Friday only a brief view of his head covered by a surgical cap was visible as he was wheeled into an ambulance.

The former president is also a hugely iconic figure beyond South Africa and officials said that his office had received more than 10,000 messages of support, including from US President Barack Obama.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Jail birds

Wood pigeons are common in woodland areas surrounding Kirklevington. (Credit: Chris Gomersall, RSPB Images)

This weekend over half a million people in the UK will take part in the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ big garden birdwatch, the largest survey of its kind in the world. Among them are inmates at 61 of the nation’s prisons.

The high perimeter fences, stone walls and heavy iron gates of rurally located Kirklevington Grange prison in Cleveland could make you think this is an unlikely place for birdwatching.

As you enter, it has all the sights and sounds you would expect of a prison – gates clanging, the low hum of chatting prisoners, brightly lit corridors and the loud shouts for roll call in the distance.

Aside from the physical and logistical barriers that come with prison life, many of the inmates here are from inner-city areas where birdwatching is not the most common of pastime.

Now, however, the rural setting of Kirklevington and the woodland area surrounding the prison are providing inmates with an opportunity to explore nature, an opportunity which many of them have never had before.

Adrian and Danny point out the best birdwatching spots

Two inmates who have become budding bird watchers while at Kirklevington are Danny and Adrian.

“Being able to work with nature and watching birds is a form of escapism from the prison walls,” says Danny.

“It’s a way to appreciate a form of life that we’ve not had a chance to before or never took the opportunity to get involved with.”

With their birdwatching charts in hand, Danny and Adrian give me an impromptu tutorial on the birds that can be found in the surrounding area.

“We walk around the entire estate of the prison trying to identify these birds,” explains Danny. “The built-up area of woodland over there might be good for spotting wood pigeons and the odd blue tit.”

Adrian points across the prison’s tidy allotments towards the towering metal fence surrounding the gardens.

“It’s therapeutic for us – it serves as an alternative to crime and that sort of lifestyle and gives us a new way of looking at life”

Danny Kirklevington Prison inmate

“You get a lot of the little birds that tend to nest in all the little hedgerows by the side of the prison,” he says.

Birdwatching is not confined to rural-based prisons, however. As Gemma Butlin of the RSPB notes: “There’s a whole range of prisons taking part, including those in urban areas.”

Given the inherent freedom of birds and the distinct lack of freedom that prisoners face, this may not seem a likely partnership.

But Adrian and Danny join a list of prisoners throughout history and popular culture that have developed an affinity with bird life.

The Birdman of Alcatraz, loosely based on the story of a real prisoner who adopted injured birds and kept them in his cell, is just one prison-based film in which birds are featured.

Another is the popular Shawshank Redemption, where the elderly inmate Brooks keeps a crow for a companion and the character Red uses the image of an uncaged bird to describe the innocent Andy Dufresne’s escape from prison.

And it is not just in Hollywood where this link has been made. References to the feathered creatures have also permeated into the language of everyday prison life – “jailbirds” used as a term for inmates and “doing bird” as slang for time spent inside.

Back in Kirklevington, Adrian recognises that there is a strong link between birds and prison.

Danny describes the most common birds

“They show you that life goes on outside of prison,” he says. “And that you can escape from your thoughts on the inside.”

Danny agrees. “From the confines of your cell, the only wildlife you can really see are birds. It’s something that prisoners throughout history have taken an interest in.”

As well as birdwatching, Kirklevington also runs a number of conservation schemes such as beekeeping and tree planting.

Some members of the public might think that such programmes are privileges that prisoners shouldn’t enjoy.

“The main thing for us is that prison shouldn’t be a soft option,” argues Sheena Maberly, Head of Learning and Skills at Kirklevington Prison.

“What we are trying to do here is rehabilitate people and help people find a way that works for them. I think a setting like this does help with that, rather than hinder.”

Danny and Adrian are confident they have benefited from these schemes and that it will help them develop skills they can use when they eventually leave prison.

“It’s therapeutic for us,” says Danny. “It serves as an alternative to crime and that sort of lifestyle and gives us a new way of looking at life.”

“We often see crows, finches and a lot of the smaller birds around here,” says Adrian. (Credit: Andy Hay, RSPB Images)

Richard Bashford, project manager at the RSPB, also believes that activities such as birdwatching have a range of positive impacts.

“We want to help people connect with nature as there are clear benefits in terms of health and wellbeing,” he says. “From a prisoner’s point of view, any added stimulus that nature can provide is a good thing.”

According to Kevin Baker, deputy governor at Kirklevington, the returns from these programmes go beyond just the prisoners themselves.

“A lot of our prisoners have young families,” he says.

“There would be nothing nicer, on release, for them to be with the youngsters in the local park and to be able to answer the question, ‘Daddy, what type of bird is that?'”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Eight free schools near approval

The first free schools are expected to open in the autumn

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Eight groups are now at the final stages of approval to open free schools in England.

Four of the proposed schools are due to open in London and the others are planned for Suffolk, West Sussex, Norwich and Leicester.

Education Secretary Michael Gove is to make the announcement at a free schools conference in London.

He wants all new schools to be free schools or academies – state-funded but outside local council control.

There have been 249 proposals put forward by groups keen to set up a free school.

Most of those are in the early stages of approval.

Thirty-five have been given at least initial approval and have been developing their full business case and plan.

Until now, only one school was known to have reached what the government calls the “pre-opening stage” – meaning their business case has been approved.

That was the Stour Valley Community School in Suffolk, which was approved earlier this month. It grew out of a campaign by parents to save a school and the scheme is now being led by community leaders.

Now seven more plans have been added to the list. Some of these schools will be faith-based; some are proposed by existing academy sponsors and one is teacher-led.

They are:

ARK Conway, Hammersmith and FulhamDiscovery New School, West SussexEtz Chaim, BarnetThe Free School, NorwichI-Foundation, Leicester CitySt Luke’s Church of England Primary School, CamdenWoodpecker Hall, Enfield.

Many groups wanting to set up schools will be at the conference in London, meeting ministers as well as education experts from the United States who have been involved in setting up charter schools – which are similar to the new free schools.

They will get advice and take part in workshops on how to go about getting their plans off the ground.

Mike Feinberg, a co-founder of a chain of charter schools in the USA called Knowledge is Power (KIPP), is among the speakers.

A teacher, he set up a school in Houston’s inner city.

“We wanted to give students in under-served communities an opportunity for success in life. There are now 99 schools across America, that give children from low-income families a better education, proving that demographics do not define destiny,” he said.

“I am excited that free schools will be opening up in England and offering the same possibilities.”

Penny Roberts is a former teacher and a parent who is one of those behind the plans for St. Luke’s Primary School in Camden, London. The plan is also backed by church authorities.

She said: “I’ve been through the process of applying for primary school places for my own children and I know the anguish that parents go through when there just are not enough primary school places, so for us it’s just a wonderful way to meet a community need”.

The government has not yet said how many free schools will open in the autumn, but some have begun their admissions processes.

Twenty-four schools were in the first group to gain initial approval from the government for their plans and it has been reported that about half of those might open in September.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Aung San Suu Kyi addresses Davos

Aung San Suu Kyi said she had followed the global response to the economic downturn over the radio

Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called for investment in her country, which she says has been “left behind”.

In an audio address to the World Economic Forum, Ms Suu Kyi said the 55 million people in Burma yearned to be a part of the global community.

Burma had “already missed so many opportunities because of political conflicts”, she said.

But she said potential investors should “put a premium on respect for the law”.

Ms Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest for seven years until November, said that despite her isolation, she had followed the global response to the economic crisis by listening to radio broadcasts.

She said the response had been “strong and swift” but that “much still remains to be done”.

“Economic policies linked to human development and capacity building are the best path to the achievement of stability in a democratic transition,” the Nobel laureate said.

“We need to pay close attention to the costs and collateral damage of our development”

Aung San Suu KyiAung San Suu Kyi speech in full Burma rejects NLD party’s appeal

“I would like to appeal to all those present… to promote national reconciliation, genuine democratisation, human development and economic growth in Burma.”

Earlier on Friday, Burma’s highest court rejected a move by My Suu Kyi, whose 1990 election victory was ignored by the military junta, to have her NLD party reinstated after it was dissolved for boycotting last year’s election.

The Supreme Court ruled that the NLD’s case had no legal basis.

Ms Suu Kyi’s lawyer, Nyan Win, told the BBC that only the chief justice could now change the ruling and that there was nothing else the NLD could do.

But he said: “Our existence and our legality does not change because of this court decision. Our party still exists. As Aung San Suu Kyi said, what really matters is the support of the people.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

‘Bomb’ alert on UK-Egypt flight

The British passengers are staying in Athens overnight

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A plane travelling from the UK to Egypt was diverted to Greece after a note containing the word “bomb” was apparently found on board.

The EgyptAir jet, which had departed from London’s Heathrow Airport, was carrying 251 passengers when it landed at Athens International Airport.

The UK Foreign Office said 50 Britons were on the Cairo flight and they were staying in hotels in Athens overnight.

Britons have been warned to avoid Cairo during the current civil strife.

The EgyptAir pilot made a request to land and the plane touched down in Athens at 2039 local time (1839 GMT) on Friday.

An Athens International Airport spokeswoman said: “Everybody is safe and the aircraft landed safely.”

She said she understood a piece of paper containing the word “bomb” had been found on the plane, causing the unscheduled landing.

Police were checking the plane for explosives but it is not known if anything was found.

The Foreign Office said consular staff in Athens had made the British passengers aware of the latest advice.

On Friday, the Foreign Office upgraded its advice to caution against “all but essential” travel to Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Luxor and Suez.

It followed the biggest demonstration since protests began on Tuesday, with tens of thousands of Egyptians taking to the streets across the country.

President Hosni Mubarak ordered a night-time curfew in the main cities, and later addressed the nation saying he had dismissed the government and will appoint a new cabinet on Saturday.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Obama responds to Egypt’s unrest

Barack Obama has urged President Mubarak to deliver on his promise of reforms after the Egyptian leader defended the role of the security forces in suppressing protests which have left dozens dead.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Scots back pain patients go south

Figures showed 21 Scots patients were referred for treatment in Bath

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The NHS in Scotland spent more than £200,000 sending patients with chronic back pain for treatment in England, it has emerged.

Figures obtained by Labour MSP Jackie Baillie revealed 21 Scots were treated at a centre in Bath, near Bristol, in the first six months of 2010-11.

She said it was concerning patients could not be treated closer to home.

The Scottish government said the numbers being sent south were less now than under previous administrations.

The figures were obtained by Labour’s health spokeswoman in response to a written question at the Scottish Parliament.

They showed that eight of Scotland’s 14 health boards sent patients suffering with chronic pain for treatment at the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases in Bath at a cost of £206,685.

They also showed that 23 patients were sent to Bath in 2008-09 and 18 in 2009-10, bringing the total cost to more than £620,000.

Ms Bailie said: “Forcing patients who are already suffering from painful conditions to endure long journeys away from friends and family to receive treatment should be avoided if at all possible.

“These figures show that it is also very expensive.

“If the appropriate treatment is not available closer to home via our NHS then we have to look at working in tandem with independent providers to utilise these services”

Murdo Fraser Conservatives

“As a matter of urgency, the health secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, must look at what can be done to provide patients with appropriate care closer to home.”

In response, Ms Sturgeon said: “The Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, in Bath, is a highly specialised residential pain management facility.

“Scottish patients are referred there if their clinician believes it would be beneficial for their condition.

“However, we have been looking at the issue of sending people to England for treatment as part of the integrated service model for chronic pain that we’ve been developing.

“We are exploring a range of issues, including whether appropriate management earlier in the treatment journey might remove the need for such referrals, and whether there is a role for a residential pain management facility as part of the overall service provision in Scotland.”

The Scottish government said the number of people sent for treatment at Bath had fallen since a high of 34 under the previous Labour-Liberal Democrat Scottish Executive.

Murdo Fraser, the Conservative’s spokesman for health and wellbeing, said: “If the appropriate treatment is not available closer to home via our NHS then we have to look at working in tandem with independent providers to utilise these services.

“Yet the SNP government refuses to embrace all the options, instead preferring outdated dogma.

“Until they change this approach, we will make no progress and continue to spend money that could go on providing more frontline NHS staff.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Frisky bacteria

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Ever since medicine declared war on bacteria with the discovery of penicillin, the two have been locked in an arms race.

Antibiotics are met by resistance from germs; so researchers develop new drugs and germs become resistant again.

Now some scientists believe genetics will be the new weapon in the fight, with doctors consulting bacterial genomes when treating disease.

This week a team at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute published a paper in the journal Science, which they say shows the first genetic picture of the evolutionary war between medicine and bacteria.

“Potentially every time someone is ill we could isolate the genome of a bacterial infection”

Bacterial genetics can be tricky. With humans, one person’s DNA is passed on to their children, then to their children, and so on down the family tree.

Bacteria are altogether more frisky.

They pass DNA onto their descendants when they divide in two, but they also swap DNA with other bacteria, changing their genetic code.

It is like popping to the shop and changing eye colour with someone at the checkout.

This study has managed to tease out the differences between the two ways of passing on DNA in Streptococcus pneumoniae and draw its family tree.

The researchers were able to show how the species responded to different antibiotics, how it became resistant, where it became resistant and how the resistance spread around the world.

It is the first time the whole of a genome has been studied to measure the genetic response to medicine.

Other studies have come to some of the same conclusions, but as a review in the same journal said: “Suggesting that we knew all this before however misses the importance of their study, in which a single experiment provided more information than has been achieved over 15 years of research.”

Studying the whole of a genome is getting cheaper and Dr Stephen Bentley, from the Sanger Institute, believes it could change the way we treat illnesses.

He told the BBC: “Potentially every time someone is ill we could isolate the genome of a bacterial infection, determine if it is resistant, how it will behave in humans and match it up to a database to monitor the spread of an outbreak.”

Writing in Science, Professors Mark Enright and Brian Spratt, reviewed the study: “The ease with which investigators can now obtain whole genomes of bacterial pathogens is opening up a number of questions that previously were impossible or difficult to address.

“One of these is how virulent or high drug resistant strains of bacterial pathogens spread within hospitals and nursing homes within a region.”

Dr Bentley thinks genetics could become part of normal hospital practice in five to 10 years’ time.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

27,000-piece puzzle

Max Oppenheim’s ‘beautiful Venus’ before destruction and after restoration (pictures: Pergamon Museum)

How do you do a jig-saw puzzle of 27,000 pieces? In three dimensions?

That’s the task a handful of archaeologists in Germany have just completed. It took them nine years, with all the pieces laid out in a room the size of a football field.

They claim to have enjoyed it.

The puzzle in progress, in June 2003

The pieces were the shards of 3,000-year-old sculptures, smashed to smithereens as a result of the British bombing of Berlin in November 1943.

The result – 60 fantastical figures of people, scorpions, lions and birds – now stands in a series of rooms in the city’s Pergamon Museum.

Before the war they were the private collection of Max Freiherr von Oppenheim, a member of the banking dynasty, and so rich beyond imagination.

He worked as a diplomat in Cairo, wandering the Middle East to keep his eye on the British who were also keen on a bit of empire-building in the region.

But he was also an archaeologist – a romantic figure comparable to Hollywood’s Indiana Jones – and in 1899, near where the Berlin to Baghdad railway was being constructed, he came across the palace of an Aramaean king in what would now be north-east Syria, near the Turkish border.

He sought permission to excavate the site, known as Tell Halaf, between 1911 and 1913. Work started and then stopped because of World War I, but was completed in 1927.

What emerged were the stunning statues of gods and animals, sculpted in basalt.

The finds were divided between the national museum in Aleppo and Oppenheim himself, who took his share home to Berlin, where he created a private museum in an old iron-foundry.

The great British crime writer, Agatha Christie, was one of those who flocked to visit.

She later remembered being shown around by Oppenheim during which he stopped and suddenly stroked the huge statue of a woman on a throne. Oppenheim purred: “Ah, my beautiful Venus”.

Max Oppenheim at Tell Halaf, in 1929

The peace and love ended in those raids in 1943. The wood of the ancient works of art was destroyed in the intense heat of the blaze and the stone cracked and shattered when fire hoses doused the flames.

Oppenheim was heart-broken and had the rubble collected in the hope of re-assembly.

He said: “It would be truly wonderful if the smashed fragments from the stone images could somehow be gathered together, brought to the National Museums and reassembled at a later date.

“In the case of this collection, it would, however, be a tremendous task, since the sculptures have been shattered into countless, often minute fragments”.

He died three years later, without that dream being realised.

Nothing then happened for the duration of the Cold War. The rubble was in the East, in the Pergamon Museum, and the people trying to fulfil Oppenheim’s wishes were in the West.

Restorer using glue to stick the statue together

It took a year to glue the statues together

Only a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall was the project started. A team of four people laid out an estimated 27,000 bits on 300 wooden palettes.

There was no easy way. No magical computer programme to do it. Rather, they had to get down on their knees and examine each piece (just like you would a jigsaw puzzle).

They worked from Oppenheim’s own photographs “with our eyes and brain”, as one of the archaeologists, Dr Lutz Martin, explained to the BBC. “And for such a mass of fragments, it was the best solution”.

But wasn’t it boring? “No, no! It was so satisfying. Every day you have a result. If you sit in the office you write a paper and it’s no good, but with this you would get a result every day.”

First, they would look for recognisable bits from the surface of sculptures. The interiors were much harder. After the laborious fitting together, they were finished in 2008. Then the restorer took a year to stick the bits together.

In the exhibition in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, you can see the joins, but there is still a great awe and majesty to the works.

For the archaeologists, the task is over. They wander the exhibition, basking in the satisfaction of their work.

Dr Nadja Cholidis told the BBC that her great pleasure was to have fulfilled the wish of a man you sense she would have loved to have met: “I always think about what Max von Oppenheim would say now that his dream has come true.

“When the last piece was done, I was overwhelmed that it is now 2011, and we were able to fulfil his wishes and his dream”.

This bas-relief had been smashed into 900 fragments

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Sustainable mackerel bid blocked

Quotas set by the Faroes and Iceland have angered other fishing nations

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An objection to the Faroes bid to have its mackerel fishery certified as sustainable has been upheld by the Marine Stewardship Council.

Scottish fishing leaders said the move sent a strong message to the Faroese.

The Scottish government objected to the move after the Faroes unilaterally increased its catch quota last year.

The MSC said the fishery was managed well, but Faroese inability to agree quota sharing with Norway and the EU stopped certification being granted.

‘Responsible fishing’

Chief executive of the Scottish Pelagic Fishermen’s Association Ian Gatt said: “This will send a strong message to the Faroese that their irresponsible actions will not be tolerated because it threatens the sustainability of an important fishery that has been carefully nurtured by Scotland.

“It will also help consumers make informed choices so that they can ensure their mackerel purchases only come from sustainable fisheries, such as that responsibly harvested by Scotland.”

“This latest development once again illustrates that the Faroes should come back to the negotiating table”

Richard Lochhead Fisheries Secretary

Scottish Fisheries Secretary Richard Lochhead said: “We are pleased that our objection has been upheld, as it is clear that the Faroes is in breach of the criteria to be considered a sustainably sourced fishery.

“This sends a strong signal to the Faroes that pursuing irresponsible fishing practices and grabbing an inflated share of the mackerel stock is unsustainable and no way to manage international fish stocks.

“This latest development once again illustrates that the Faroes should come back to the negotiating table.”

Mackerel is the Scottish fleet’s most valuable stock.

The Faroes has tripled its usual entitlement to 85,000 tonnes, while Iceland, which landed very little mackerel before 2006, has allocated itself a 130,000-tonne quota for the year.

The countries argue that the mackerel stock has gravitated north in recent years but fishing leaders have condemned the move, warning it could could be “disastrous” for the Scottish fleet.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Torres hands in transfer request

Liverpool reject a written transfer request from Spain international striker Fernando Torres.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

AU to set up Ivory Coast panel

Ivory Coast's internationally recognised leader Alassane Ouattara (right), shakes hands with African Union chief and Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika (left) on 25 January 2011 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast

The AU has called for an end to the siege of the hotel where Alassane Ouattara is living

The African Union is setting up a panel of heads of state to find a solution to the political crisis in Ivory Coast.

The panel will come up with a legally binding settlement within a month, according to the Mauritanian president.

Alassane Ouattara is internationally recognised as the winner of Ivory Coast’s November presidential election.

But the incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, is refusing to step down after the Constitutional Council, headed by one of his allies, ruled in his favour.

The AU has previously backed Mr Ouattara, who is running a parallel government from a hotel in Abidjan which Mr Gbagbo’s forces have blockaded.

But Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni suggested earlier this week that the UN should not have recognised Mr Ouattara so quickly.

The African Union’s peace and security council met in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Friday.

Announcing the panel initiative afterwards, Mauritania’s President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz told reporters that faced with an African problem, they were trying to find an African solution.

The panel will be made up of five heads of state, one from each region of the continent, and a spokesman said its make-up would be announced within 48 hours.

A statement by the peace and security council included a demand for “the immediate removal of the siege of the Hotel du Golfe and an end to all acts of violence and abuses against the civilian population as well as calls having the effect of inciting hatred and violence”.

Earlier on Friday, the AU mediator to the crisis, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, called for direct talks between the presidential rivals.

He said a summit of the 53-nation bloc starting in Addis Ababa on Sunday should “send a strong and unequivocal message that the two parties must negotiate face to face.”

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga briefs the media in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, ahead of the AU summit on the situation in the Ivory Coast, 28 January 2011

The Kenyan prime minister wants the AU to make the two Ivory Coast rivals hold direct talks

“Every day lost in moving forward towards a peaceful resolution of the crisis makes more imminent the spectre of further threats to peace and security in Cote d’Ivoire and the region,” Mr Odinga told reporters.

The Kenyan leader was in Ivory Coast only last week in his latest attempt to break the political deadlock. But Mr Gbagbo’s camp accused him of bias.

This week’s visitor to Abidjan, Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika, struck quite a different tone.

After talks with both leaders, Mr Mutharika, current chairman of the African Union, promised to present the “proposals” of his “brother and friend” Laurent Gbagbo to the African Union summit.

In early January, Mr Mutharika had told Mr Gbagbo to step down “to avoid a bloodbath”.

But the AU appears more divided on the issue that it was even a few weeks ago.

Mr Gbagbo’s call for a vote recount has been taken up by some African leaders who appear increasingly reluctant to resort to the military option suggested by the West African bloc Ecowas.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.