BBC News with Sue Montgomery
Parliament in Greece has approved a bill allowing the government to cut 15,000 jobs in the country’s civil service. The reforms, a condition for Greece receiving billions more dollars of international assistance, will mean an end to the guarantee of a job for life. From Athens, Mark Lowen reports.
As expected, the bill was passed with a comfortable majority—168 MPs voting in favour and 123 against. It means that for the first time under Greece’s constitution, the tradition of civil service jobs for life will end. Fifteen thousand who have broken rules at work will be laid off replaced by a younger workforce. It’s a reform of the public sector that the government says is long overdue and should now pave the way for almost 9bn euros of bailout money from Greece’s international creditors. But it’s likely to prompt more social unrest in a country where unemployment is already at a record high of over 27 per cent.
Rescue workers in Bangladesh have called off their manual search for people trapped in the wreckage of a collapsed garment factory and have started to use heavy equipment to clear the rubble. Earlier attempts to save a woman buried in the building failed when sparks from cutting equipment started a fire. Rescuers said later she died and the heavy lifting equipment was brought in around midnight local time. Anbarasan Ethirajan is in Dhaka.
Four firefighters were on the third floor of this collapsed building. They have been struggling for the last, the five, six hours to rescue one girl from a groove. And they were using a drilling machine and the sparks from the drilling machine triggered this fire because this is a clothing factory, there are lots of cottoned clothes all around the place. And in the fire, these four rescue members, rescue team members, were injured and the firefighters were rushed to the hospital immediately. The girl they were trying to rescue since morning has died.
Earlier, the owner of the factory building was arrested.
An American film maker accused of fermenting post-election violence in Venezuela has been formally charged by a court in Caracas. Timothy Tracy from California is accused of conspiracy, association for criminal purposes and use of a false document. Irene Caselli reports from Caracas.
Timothy Tracy is being held at the headquarters of Venezuela’s political police. He’s due to remain in custody for 45 days, while a judge rules on the charges against him. Mr Tracy was arrested at Caracas International Airport by the political police as he was about to leave the country. The government has said he had already been apprehended twice before—once while filming at a pro-government rally and another time outside the presidential palace. President Nicolas Maduro said earlier this week that he had personally asked for Mr Tracy’s arrest for his acts of conspiracy.
BBC News
The president of Bosnia’s autonomous Muslim-Croat federation, Zivko Budimir, has been ordered by a court to be detained for a month along with four other officials accused of taking bribes to arrange pardons for convicts. They were among up to 20 people arrested on Friday in a high-profile anti-corruption drive.
The Arab television channel Al-Jazeera has said it’s astonished by the Iraqi government’s decision to suspend its licences along with nine other satellite news channels. An Al-Jazeera spokesman told the BBC the action was an indiscriminate attack on the channels. The Iraqi government says the channels promoted violence and sectarianism.
In Libya, a group of armed men have surrounded the building of the foreign ministry in Tripoli, demanding the institution get rid of what they call supporters of the deposed Libyan leader Col Gaddafi. Access to the building and surrounding area has been blocked and the men have told the BBC they will stay there until the demands are met. The BBC’s Rana Jawad has been to the scene.
The armed protesters are calling for the long debated political isolation law to be passed. The law’s meant to prevent officials who worked in the late Col Gaddafi’s government from participating in politics. The road leading to the foreign ministry building is still blocked with several pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns. There’s a mix of men, young and old, some in civilian clothes, others wearing army fatigues. There’s no clear leader amongst them and many are from different parts of the capital and the country who say they are former fighters from the war that toppled Col Gaddafi.
The Scottish singer Emeli Sande has beaten a record set by the Beatles of the album with the most consecutive weeks in the British top 10. The album, “Our Version of Events”, has spent 63 weeks there. The Beatles’ record 62-week run with “Please Please Me” had stood for 50 years.