BBC News with Jerry Smit.
The interim Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk has told the UN security council that his country is the victim of aggression from Russia. Mr. Yatsenyuk said it was unacceptable in the 21st century to resolve any situation with military force. And he urged Russia to pull back its troops from Crimea and start real negotiations. Addressing the Russian delegate directly, he asked him to clarify whether or not Moscow wanted war. Vitaly Churkin gave this reply.
“I'm going to respond directly to a direct question to me by Mr. Yatsenyuk. Russia does not want war and nor do the Russians, and I'm convinced that Ukrainians don't want this either.”
There have been violent clashes between rival groups of protesters in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. One person was killed and a number were wounded when hundreds of demonstrators chanting pro-Russian slogans are said to have confronted a rival rally by people opposed to the Russian military intervention in Crimea. It’s thought the protesters broke through a police cordon. Ukrainian television reported that some people were carrying knives and metal rods.
The White House says the search for a Malaysian airliner that disappeared on its way to Beijing on Saturday maybe moving to a new area in the Indian Ocean. The US navy is deploying a destroyer there in response to new information. Rajini Vaidyanathan reports.
“As a mystery around the disappearance of Flight 370 continues, the search for the aircraft has been expanded. The US naval ship, the USS Kidd, has been moved from its search position on the Gulf of Thailand to the west coast of Malaysia. And the Indian navy, air force and coast guard say they've been asked to assist. Officials say they received the request for help from the Malaysian government and that the focus of the search has now moved to west towards the Andaman Sea.”
At least 69 people have been killed in an attack in northwestern Nigeria. Witnesses said the attackers went into villages and started killing people indiscriminately. Will Ross reports.
“According to witnesses, the men targeted several villages in the Faskari area of Katsina state. They rode in on motorbikes and started shooting sporadically. They didn't go into people's homes, but anyone they came across was killed. The attackers are believed to be from the Fulani cattle herding community and they've been in dispute with farmers in the area over grazing rights. Security forces were not there to protect the civilians and appeared unable to stop the violence whenever it flares up.”
The American Secretary of State John Kerry has said the government of Venezuela must end, what he called, its terror campaign against its own citizens. Addressing the US Congress, Mr. Kerry said it was time the organization of American States, allies and neighbours of Venezuela demanded proper accountability over its response to opposition protests. Twenty-eight people have died since the unrest began a month ago.
World News from the BBC
The founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg has accused the United States government of damaging the future of the internet. Mr. Zuckerberg said the government should be a champion of the internet, not a threat. He said he had called President Obama to express his frustration and appeal for more transparency. Mr. Zuckerberg's remarks follow revelations of mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency. He said Facebook engineers working to improve security, imagine they were protecting people from criminals, not from their own government.
The human rights groups have welcomed the decision by the judicial authorities in Egypt to put a doctor on trial for allegedly performing a circumcision on a 13-year-old girl, she subsequently died. Sebastian Usher reports.
“There are differing accounts of how Suhair al Bata'a died. A forensic report blamed an allergy reaction to penicillin. The doctor who performed the operation said she was being treated for genital warts, but the activist group Equality Now believes the official version may have been hiding the fact which she was actually being circumcised. They launched a campaign for the case to be fully investigated which has now led the charges against the doctor and her father. Equality Now says that even though female genital mutilations has been a crime in Egypt for several years, it’s still prevalent and increasingly carried out at private clinics.”
One of the most powerful figures in football, the Bayern Munich President Uli Hoeness, has been sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in Germany for tax evasion. Mr Hoeness was a World Cup-winning player in his youth and turned Bayern Munich into European Football champions.
The former President of Sierra Leone Ahmad Tejan Kabbah has died at the age of 82. Mr. Kabbah was widely regarded as the man who led the nation to peace after a brutal civil war, in which thousands of people had their limbs hacked off and 120,000 died. The conflicts officially ended in 2002.