BBC News with David Austin.
The president of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades says the country must accept a ten-billion-dollar bailout or face going bankrupt. There’s been widespread fury over the plan which would involve a tax of up to 10% on people’s savings. It’s led to a run on bank cash machines. In an address to the nation, the president said the bailout led by the European Union would be painful but the lesser of two evils. He hinted that he might reduce the level of tax for smaller depositors. There’ve been frantic negotiations between political parties in Cyprus ahead of a debate and vote in parliament on Monday. Mark Lowen is in Nicosia.
It’s now clear that negotiators of the bailout in Brussels drastically underestimated the reaction there would be here in Cyprus. Across the islands, there is sheer horror at the prospect of a major loss to savings. If the deal is defeated in parliament, state media say banks could be closed on Tuesday so as to avoid mass withdrawals. This is now a major political and social crisis here with protest already called for Monday. A tiny euro zone economy feels it has been blackmailed by the most powerful and the growing resentment will do nothing to foster the much-wanted European solidarity.
Two high school football players in Ohio have been found guilty of raping a paralytically drunk 16-year-old girl in a case that’s led to nationwide outrage and accusations of a cover-up. The two teenage players, Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmond were sentenced to at least a year in juvenile jail. The story came to light through social media where photos and videos of the abuse were circulated. It’s an aspect of the case that the Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine condemned. “Any rape is a tragedy. Any rape is very difficult. I think it’s even more difficult when the victim is continually re-victimized in the social media.” The authorities say they will look into allegations that other players did nothing to protect the girl.
One of the best known criminal barristers in France Olivier Metzner has been found dead. His body was discovered floating off his private island in Brittany and reports say police are treating the case as possible suicide. Olivier Metzner, who was 63, made his name in a series of high-profile cases. His clients included the former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the rogue trader Jerome Kerviel and Dominique de Villepin, France’s former Prime Minister.
The Supreme Court in the Somali capital Mogadishu has freed a journalist who’d been imprisoned for interviewing an alleged rape victim. In a case that provoked widespread international criticism, the journalist Abdiaziz Abdinur was initially sentenced to one year in prison for interviewing a woman who said she’d been raped by government soldiers. She was also given a one year sentence, but was acquitted on an appeal earlier this month.
World News from the BBC
Rioters have set several vehicles alight in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka ahead of a two-day general strike called by the country’s main opposition alliance. The Bangladeshi Nationalist Party called the strike to protest against the arrest of several of its leaders and activists last week. From Dhaka here is Anbarasan Ethirajan.
Protesters in Dhaka vandalized more than a dozen minibuses and set some of them on fire in the run-up to the two-day country wide strike called by the opposition. The main opposition Bangladeshi Nationalist Party is urging the government to restore a neutral caretaker administration which used to oversee parliamentary polls. The party fears elections held under the incumbent government would not be free or fair. The protesters are also demanding for the immediate release of their leaders arrested during an earlier demonstration.
A former captain of a Greek Under-19 Football Team has been banned for life from any Greek national team after making a Nazi salute. He is Giorgios Katidis,a 20-year-old midfielder for AEK Athens. Chloe Hadjimatheou reports.
Giorgios Katidis says he was actually pointing to a teammate sitting in the stands. But his expression of triumph for having scored a winning goal, his right arm raised with the flat palm pointing upwards look too much like a Nazi salute for the Hellenic football federation to ignore. The incident has added significance because the remarkable rise of the neo-fascist party Golden Dawn which won 18 seats in Greece’s parliament less than a year ago.
The American actor David Hasselhoff, who has a wide fan base in Germany, has joined a campaign to stop bulldozers breaching the longest surviving remnant to the Berlin Wall. Developers want to build apartments there. From a van at the site he sang, Looking for Freedom, the song he performed at the Brandenburg Gate on New Year’s Eve in 1989 shortly after the wall dividing the former East and West German had come down.