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Thousands of people demonstrated in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires in protest at the murder of a left-wing activist during a labour dispute.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
US officials said Pakistan needed further, specific assistance for the fight against militants The US is set to announce a significant package of military and security aid to Pakistan on Friday, the final day of the latest US-Pakistan strategic talks.
The multi-year aid package will be “no-strings-attached”, officials say.
But the Obama administration will make clear it expects Islamabad to do more in the fight against Islamic militants.
Since 2005, Pakistan has received more than $1bn (£636.4m) of military aid a year from the US – and received close to $2bn for the last fiscal year.
US officials said Pakistan needed further, specific assistance for the fight against militants and needed to know it could rely on the US in the long term.
The aid, expected to be close to $2bn, will be contingent on approval by the US Congress and will pay for equipment needed in counter-insurgency and counter-terror operations, among other things.
‘Reducing threats to US’
Vali Nasr, a senior advisor on Pakistan and Afghanistan at the state department, told the BBC that the battle against Pakistani militants had expanded over the last year, but the summer’s monsoon floods had undone a lot of the Pakistani army’s efforts.
“We believe that we have made a great deal of progress and we believe that that progress has reduced the threat to our homeland, while not eliminating it,” Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, said this week.
But officials in Washington have also been frustrated at the limits of Pakistan’s desire and ability to help.
A White House report sent to congress earlier this month laments the Pakistani army’s inability to hold territory it has seized from insurgents, a failure that means gains are likely to be short-lived.
“The Pakistan military continued to avoid military engagements that would put it in direct conflict with Afghan Taliban or al-Qaeda’s forces in North Waziristan,” the report said, referring to the region in north-western Pakistan seen as a Taliban and al-Qaeda haven.
“This is as much a political choice as it is a reflection of an under-resourced military prioritising its targets.”
The report also says the civilian leadership does not have the trust of the people and faces “broad-based” challenges that have “the potential to impact the stability of the government”.
Cross-border attack
Mr Nasr said the solution was not to withdraw US investment from Pakistan but rather to help the Pakistani government and military strengthen the country’s institutions.
The Pakistani government is in fact crucial to that strategy, and this can make Washington vulnerable, and a crisis in ties between the two countries last month has highlighted the fine line the Obama administration must walk as it cajoles and pressures its ally.
After two Pakistani troops were killed in a Nato cross-border attack in October, Islamabad was furious and blocked the main transit route for military supplies to Afghanistan until it received a formal apology.
More than two dozen lorries laden with fuel and supplies were destroyed by militants while waiting to cross the frontier.
The US-Pakistan strategic dialogue, which started last year, is designed to build trust and keep the conversation going between the two countries, not just about security but about a wide range of issues from healthcare to education and water projects.
‘Not enough sticks’
The new five-year security assistance package, expected to be announced on Friday, is meant to compliment a $7.5bn package of civilian aid over five years that was approved by the US in 2009.
It is all meant to reduce Islamic militants’ allure and to win Pakistanis’ hearts.
“We want to expand the security relationship that Pakistan and the US had in the past under the Bush period to be much broader,” Mr Nasr said, “to involve things that also matter to Pakistanis and impacts their daily lives.
“A relationship means that we don’t focus only things that are important to us but also things that are important to Pakistanis. Average Pakistanis have to see value in their engagement with the US before they subscribe to that relationship.”
But some question the Obama administration’s approach, saying there are too many carrots and not enough sticks, and not enough conditions attached to the carrots.
In a piece published in the New York Times this week, the former ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, urged Washington to “offer Islamabad a stark choice between positive incentives and negative consequences”.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Facebook, Amazon and Zynga invest in a fund to help entrepreneurs develop applications and services for a new era of the social web.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Rubbish has been piling up on the streets of Marseille after nine days of strikes by collectors Workers protesting against pension reforms in France have partially blocked access to Marseille airport.
Only a trickle of travellers are through a blockade affecting all roads to the terminal, unions say. The city is already crippled by a port blockade and a strike by rubbish collectors.
There have been escalating protests across France against government plans to raise the pension age from 60 to 62.
Correspondents say Marseille is now the main focus of the protest.
There is no public transport, trains have been delayed or cancelled and the ports blockaded, and a nine-day strike by rubbish collectors means several thousand tonnes of refuse is piling up on the streets.
Central government official Michel Sappin, said: “There is a real danger to the safety and health of Marseille.”
The upper house of the French legislature is due to vote on raising the retirement age later this week. The lower house has already approved it.
Marseille is becoming the waste-bin of France. At least that’s what some of the people mutter.
If the wind is blowing fiercely enough off the Mediterranean – as it does at this time of year – you can just about avoid the stench of rotting fruit and veg.
But if it isn’t, a walk along the main shopping thoroughfare can leave you with a lung full of bad air.
The rubbish hasn’t been cleared off the streets for over a week now. Great piles stand against shop windows.
A woman pushes her way past the black bags and cardboard boxes that have been thrown against the Rotary Club offices.
People talk of the rats running out from the piles of rubbish. One shopkeeper, standing outside his electrical shop, says he’s concerned about disease taking hold.
President Sarkozy has called for an end to the disruption.
“If it is not stopped quickly, this disorder which is aimed at paralysing the country could have consequences for jobs by damaging the normal running of economic activity,” he said on Wednesday.
He said he would press ahead with unpopular plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the full state pension age from 65 to 67.
The debate on the pension reform bill started in June. But there are still more than 200 amendments to be debated and as left-wing senators pick a fight on each and every one of them, they are likely still to be ploughing through this debate into the weekend.
Ahead of the vote, correspondents say unions are stepping up the pressure on a 10th day of refinery strikes, go-slows on motorways and work stoppages at regional airports, with union leaders scheduled to meet later in the day to decide on their next move.
The more militant unions see this as the moment to pile on the pressure and there is a precedent for such a move, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Paris.
In 2006, student protests forced the government of the day to retreat on the controversial labour reform bill, even after the then president Jacques Chirac had signed it into law.
Some unions want to continue the protests whatever happens in parliament but that will depend on public support and the resolve of their members, many of whom have gone without pay for days even weeks, our correspondent adds.
About a quarter of France’s service stations had no fuel on Wednesday, and strikes also stopped work at two of France’s three liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.
On Wednesday, the country began importing electricity as the wave of protest action took hold of energy supplies. At least 12 of France’s 58 reactors were shut for maintenance but the unions say production has been cut at four others.
Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux authorised use of the paramilitary police to break blockades at fuel depots. He said he respected the right to protest, but that did not include the right to block workers or to commit pillage or violence.
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At no time should you endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws. In most cases a selection of your comments will be published, displaying your name as you provide it and location unless you state otherwise. But your contact details will never be published.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Officials are investigating an outbreak of diarrhoea in earthquake-hit Haiti.
Reports say up to 50 people have died after suffering acute fever, vomiting and diarrhoea. Many more with similar symptoms have been admitted to hospitals north of the capital.
A senior UN health official told the BBC it was not clear what caused the outbreak. Test results are expected later on Thursday.
January’s quake killed some 250,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless.
Jessica Du Plessis, from the UN’s humanitarian affairs agency, said the outbreak was centralised on the northern half of Haiti. She told the BBC there were about 300 people showing symptoms in a few hospitals and clinics in that area.
A doctor with the Pan American Health Organization, a regional branch of the UN’s World Health Organization, said little was known of the outbreak beyond “a high incidence of diarrhoea”.
“Nothing can be verified at the moment. We have no numbers, no epidemiological data,” said Dr Michel Thieren.
He said the symptoms can be associated with a number of underlying diseases.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A 20-year-old female criminology student has been made police chief for a Mexican town in a region plagued by drug-related crime.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Emmanuel Adebayor scores a hat-trick as Manchester City beat Lech Poznan to go top of Europa League Group A.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Juan Williams has written several books on race and civil rights US radio network National Public Radio has fired news analyst Juan Williams for saying on Fox News that he gets nervous if he sees Muslims on an plane.
The journalist appeared on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss host Bill O’Reilly’s appearance on TV show The View last week, when he voiced controversial opinions on Muslims and 9/11.
NPR said in a statement that Williams’s contract had been ended on Wednesday.
The journalist has written several books on the US civil rights movement.
“The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet,” O’Reilly said during The O’Reilly Factor.
Credibility ‘undermined’
Williams said he concurred with O’Reilly.
“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous,” Williams said.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said before Mr Williams was sacked that such commentary from a journalist about other racial, ethnic or religious minority groups would not be tolerated.
In its statement, NPR said Mr Williams’s comments “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR”.
Mr Williams has also served as a reporter and columnist for the Washington Post.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Rupert Murdoch was one of Lady Thatcher’s high profile supporters during her time in office Media boss Rupert Murdoch has urged the government to “stay the political course” on deficit reduction.
In a speech in honour of Lady Thatcher, he said “toughness is necessary” and said he was “encouraged” by Prime Minister David Cameron’s response.
He repeatedly praised Lady Thatcher, who is in hospital with an infection, saying she had “inspired the world”.
It was billed as the chairman and chief executive of News International’s first major UK speech since 1989.
In his speech to the right-of-centre Centre for Policy Studies think tank, he set the challenges in modern Britain alongside those faced by Lady Thatcher in the 1980s .
Mr Murdoch said: “The new prime minister has come to office inheriting a daunting deficit. I am encouraged by his response. Many rightly applaud the coalition government for maintaining a tough fiscal line.
“We must be clear why this toughness is necessary.
Rupert Murdoch is a libertarian – against too much state control, and in favour of individuals taking responsibility.
Hence the high praise for Margaret Thatcher. The media boss’s alliance with her stretches back to the 1980s.
Mr Murdoch may not have firm party political leanings (remember he backed Labour under Tony Blair) but, as we see in this speech, he does have some strong views on the economy.
No great shock then, that he is supporting the coalition’s efforts to tackle the deficit.
But, the debate over these cuts is hugely charged politically.
News Corporation – via the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun, the News of the World and Sky News – has a big stake in the UK’s media.
So the timing of this intervention is interesting.
“It is not a numbers game. It is about livelihoods, and eventually rebuilding opportunities and greatness.
“Strong medicine is bitter and difficult to swallow. But unless you stay the political course, you will be neither robust nor popular. So, like the lady, the coalition must not be for turning.
“The financial crisis was a shock to the system. While the effects linger, it must not be used as an excuse by governments to roll back economic freedom.”
Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg have been defending the spending review against accusations that its planned cuts were “unfair” after the respected IFS think-tank says poorer families with children would be the “biggest losers”.
Lady Thatcher, who turned 85 last week, is still in hospital where she has been treated for an infection.
Mr Murdoch was one of the former prime minister’s most high-profile supporters during her period in office, which lasted from 1979 to 1990.
Mr Murdoch praised the peer – and quoted her repeatedly in his speech saying: “We sometimes forget how pithy she is, how wise her thoughts, and how pertinent they remain even though she left office long ago.”
He closed the speech saying she was a “source of inspiration” adding: “Her philosophy is that of the ardent pragmatist – a pragmatist in the true sense, someone who believes in the basic decency and innate ability of people.
“She has a firm belief in freedom and of the responsibilities incumbent with that freedom.”
It is understood Lady Thatcher has not fully recovered from an illness which prevented her attending Downing St last week to mark her 85th birthday.
Her son Sir Mark Thatcher said she was “chirpy” and in “good order” and had been talking about the Spending Review, announced by the government on Wednesday.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Demonstrators gathered in Downing Street on Wednesday to voice their anger at the cuts Chancellor George Osborne will defend his £81bn UK spending cuts later amid Labour claims that they are reckless and will hit some of the poorest hard.
The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has also said the cuts may not be enough if the budget deficit turns out to be worse than feared.
The UK faces its biggest spending cuts for decades over the next four years.
The government says that changes to tax, benefits and public services will mean the richest contribute the most.
Mr Osborne told MPs on Wednesday that he had acted to restore “sanity to our public finances” and deal “decisively” with Britain’s record peacetime deficit.
The government says public debt interest repayments now total £120m a day, or £43bn a year.
Mr Osborne will face a round of interviews later to explain his decisions in the Spending Review, which, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank, represent the deepest six-year period of cuts since the 1970s – not since World War II as previous plans implied.
The chancellor said he had been able to restrict departmental spending cuts to an average of 19% over four years – not the 20% he said Labour had planned – because of “tough but fair decisions to reform welfare, and the savings we’ve made on debt interest”.
He unveiled plans to cut a further £7bn from the welfare budget – on top of £11bn of cuts already announced – which include putting a time limit on some incapacity benefits and changes to tax credits and housing benefit.
He also announced that the state pension would rise to 66 for both men and women in 2020 – six years earlier than planned – and there would be a £3.5bn increase in public sector employee pension contributions.
They were unveiled alongside other changes, including a permanent bank levy, tax changes and cuts to child benefit for higher earners.
Mr Osborne said “those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden. Those with the most should pay the most, including our banks”.
Banks will find out later how a new levy on their finances will operate.
However, Labour said the Treasury’s own figures showed that the poorest 10% of people would pay more to reduce the deficit than everyone other than the richest 10%.
Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Angela Eagle told BBC Two’s Newsnight: “What we have got here is not actually a blueprint for recovery, it is not actually a plan for a big society.
“When you look at it, it is the state retreating. It is a blueprint for a smaller, meaner and nastier society and we think the government has got it wrong.”
Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson, who labelled the cuts a “reckless gamble with people’s livelihoods”, said there were “serious unanswered questions on how many jobs will be lost and how much the redundancies will cost the taxpayer”.
IFS acting director Carl Emmerson told Channel 4 News: “The benefit cuts we heard about today – an extra £7bn – on average will impact those in the bottom half of the income distribution more than the top half of the income distribution. Therefore, they are regressive.”
A special BBC News season examining the approaching cuts to public sector spending
He added that the best estimate suggested that the poorest 50% would also be hit harder by public service cuts.
The IFS also suggested it was still “quite possible” that the chancellor would have to make further spending cuts or put up tax in order to meet his target for tackling the deficit – if it turns out to be larger than the official estimate.
However, the Fitch ratings agency said Mr Osborne’s measures should help the UK retain its prized triple A credit rating.
Mr Osborne said the cuts were guided by fairness, reform and growth: “There have been some difficult decisions on welfare but I have sought to protect the most vulnerable and I think our overall welfare reforms will help give incentives to many in our country who currently don’t have them to seek employment.”
The main new welfare savings come from abolishing Employment and Support Allowance, which replaces incapacity benefit, for some categories of claimant after one year, raising £2bn.
Universal benefits for pensioners will be retained as budgeted for by the previous government and the temporary increase in the cold weather payment will be made permanent.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Rubbish has been piling up on the streets of Marseille after nine days of strikes by collectors Workers protesting against pension reforms in France have partially blocked access to Marseille airport.
Only a trickle of travellers are through a blockade affecting all roads to the terminal, unions say. The city is already crippled by a port blockade and a strike by rubbish collectors.
There have been escalating protests across France against government plans to raise the pension age from 60 to 62.
Correspondents say Marseille is now the main focus of the protest.
There is no public transport, trains have been delayed or cancelled and the ports blockaded, and a nine-day strike by rubbish collectors means several thousand tonnes of refuse is piling up on the streets.
Central government official Michel Sappin, said: “There is a real danger to the safety and health of Marseille.”
The upper house of the French legislature is due to vote on raising the retirement age later this week. The lower house has already approved it.
Marseille is becoming the waste-bin of France. At least that’s what some of the people mutter.
If the wind is blowing fiercely enough off the Mediterranean – as it does at this time of year – you can just about avoid the stench of rotting fruit and veg.
But if it isn’t, a walk along the main shopping thoroughfare can leave you with a lung full of bad air.
The rubbish hasn’t been cleared off the streets for over a week now. Great piles stand against shop windows.
A woman pushes her way past the black bags and cardboard boxes that have been thrown against the Rotary Club offices.
People talk of the rats running out from the piles of rubbish. One shopkeeper, standing outside his electrical shop, says he’s concerned about disease taking hold.
President Sarkozy has called for an end to the disruption.
“If it is not stopped quickly, this disorder which is aimed at paralysing the country could have consequences for jobs by damaging the normal running of economic activity,” he said on Wednesday.
He said he would press ahead with unpopular plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the full state pension age from 65 to 67.
The debate on the pension reform bill started in June. But there are still more than 200 amendments to be debated and as left-wing senators pick a fight on each and every one of them, they are likely still to be ploughing through this debate into the weekend.
Ahead of the vote, correspondents say unions are stepping up the pressure on a 10th day of refinery strikes, go-slows on motorways and work stoppages at regional airports, with union leaders scheduled to meet later in the day to decide on their next move.
The more militant unions see this as the moment to pile on the pressure and there is a precedent for such a move, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Paris.
In 2006, student protests forced the government of the day to retreat on the controversial labour reform bill, even after the then president Jacques Chirac had signed it into law.
Some unions want to continue the protests whatever happens in parliament but that will depend on public support and the resolve of their members, many of whom have gone without pay for days even weeks, our correspondent adds.
About a quarter of France’s service stations had no fuel on Wednesday, and strikes also stopped work at two of France’s three liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.
On Wednesday, the country began importing electricity as the wave of protest action took hold of energy supplies. At least 12 of France’s 58 reactors were shut for maintenance but the unions say production has been cut at four others.
Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux authorised use of the paramilitary police to break blockades at fuel depots. He said he respected the right to protest, but that did not include the right to block workers or to commit pillage or violence.
Send your pictures and videos to [email protected] or text them to 61124 (UK) or 0044 7725 100 100 (International). If you have a large file you can upload here.
At no time should you endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws. In most cases a selection of your comments will be published, displaying your name as you provide it and location unless you state otherwise. But your contact details will never be published.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
S4C said it would seek a judicial review of the transfer of responsibility for its funding to the BBC The chief executive of S4C says a decision to transfer responsibility for its funding to the BBC is the ‘wrong model’ for the Welsh language channel.
Arwel Elis Owen said there was a fear among some the channel would lose its identity and independence.
The decision to transfer funding was confirmed by Chancellor George Osborne as part of the Spending Review.
Mr Owen said: “Some people feel in three years time S4C will be called BBC Cymru.”
Speaking on the BBC’s Good Morning Wales programme Mr Owen defended S4C’s decision to launch a judicial review of the transfer.
The UK government has suggested the arrangement could work along similar lines to BBC Alba – the BBC’s Scottish Gaelic services.
Mr Owen said it was “a real threat” to present services as it was “a totally different model for providing a service in Welsh”.
Mr Osborne also confirmed the S4C budget would be cut by 25% by 2015.
Mr Owen said: “At least we have four years of a guaranteed income and that is a huge increase on what the minister talked about when we met him about a month ago when he was talking about a one year guarantee of income.
“We are fortunate that we have ended up at 24% because when I met the minister he was talking about 40% so that is a great success.”
The BBC, whose licence fee is to be frozen for six years, is also to fund the BBC World Service and BBC monitoring service as part of the new arrangements.
BBC Wales director Menna Richards said “the over-riding priority” was “to ensure that Welsh language audiences continue to enjoy a high quality and distinctive television service.”
She added: “The BBC is also well aware that the contribution of the independent sector has been central to S4C’s development as a channel.
“We have confirmed to UK Ministers our intention that the BBC’s increased investment in programming on S4C should be spent with these external suppliers.”
UK culture minister Ed Vaizey said when the dust had settled, people would understand the deal gave S4C “a fantastic future”.
He said the channel might be able to save on administration and also take advantage of the BBC’s “expertise”.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A man thought to be the first person to drive a car using a bionic arm is badly hurt in a crash in Austria, according to local media.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Officials are investigating an outbreak of diarrhoea in earthquake-hit Haiti.
Reports say up to 50 people have died after suffering acute fever, vomiting and diarrhoea. Many more with similar symptoms have been admitted to hospitals north of the capital.
A senior UN health official told the BBC it was not clear what caused the outbreak. Test results are expected later on Thursday.
January’s quake killed some 250,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless.
Jessica Du Plessis, from the UN’s humanitarian affairs agency, said the outbreak was centralised on the northern half of Haiti. She told the BBC there were about 300 people showing symptoms in a few hospitals and clinics in that area.
A doctor with the Pan American Health Organization, a regional branch of the UN’s World Health Organization, said little was known of the outbreak beyond “a high incidence of diarrhoea”.
“Nothing can be verified at the moment. We have no numbers, no epidemiological data,” said Dr Michel Thieren.
He said the symptoms can be associated with a number of underlying diseases.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A total of six Liverpool fans were injured on Wednesday night Two Liverpool fans have been stabbed in Naples ahead of the Europa League tie in the city.
Liverpool are due to play Napoli, at the team’s San Paolo stadium, on Thursday evening.
Merseyside Police said a total of six Liverpool fans were assaulted in the Italian city on Wednesday night.
Two men, aged 27 and 52, were taken to hospital with stab wounds. Their injuries are not thought to be life-threatening, a police spokesman said.
He said the force was working with its counterparts in Naples to help with the policing of the game.
A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said: “We can confirm the hospitalisation of two British nationals in Naples, Italy on 20 October.”
“We are providing consular assistance.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.