BBC News with David Austin
The World Health Organization says it may take up to four months to subdue the current outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa which it’s described as one of the most challenging it’s ever faced. More than 100 people have died in the outbreak, the first in the region. The WHO assistant director general Keiji Fukuda said the disease had spread over a wide area he also said clear communication about the outbreak was vital.
“It’s absolutely critical to get out as much accurate information as possible to the communities, to the countries that are affected, really again to address the anxiety and reduce the rumours as much as possible, so people have facts to work with, not just rumours.”
The US Secretary of State John Kerry has said there was clear, unmistakable and deeply disturbing evidence that Russian special forces and agents are responsible for the unrest in eastern Ukraine. Mr Kerry added that Moscow could be planning a military intervention and warned that Washington was prepared to hit key sectors of the Russian economy with tough new sanctions. Barbara Plett Usher reports from Washington.
Mr Kerry told a Senate panel that four-way talks will take place next week in Europe with Russia and Ukraine. He said the preference was still de-escalation. But he clearly blamed Russian agents for recent separatist unrest in eastern Ukraine, calling it a potentially contrived pretext for military intervention, like that in Crimea. And he warned that the US and its partners were willing to impose sanctions key economic sectors such as banking, energy and mining if Moscow doesn’t back down.
Meanwhile, pro-Russian protesters continue to occupy the regional government headquarters in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk and demonstrators have declared their independence from Kiev. A BBC correspondent inside the building says masked men have barricaded themselves in and are promising to resist any attempt to remove them. Ukraine’s acting foreign minister Andrii Deshchytsia told the BBC that most of them are not local people.
“There are still some smaller groups of people that are trying to destabilise this nation. According to our information, the most active radicals, the most active participants of these meetings are not local citizens. So most likely they here come from Russian Federation.”
Earlier Moscow said any use of force to end pro-Russian protests in eastern Ukraine may lead to a civil war.
The trial of Oscar Pistorius has been adjourned for the day after the South African athlete broke down while describing what happened on the night he shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Mr Pistorius said he picked up his gun because he thought there was an intruder in the house, and after hearing a noise from the bathroom fired four shots through the door. Mr Pistorius denies murder.
World News from the BBC
The White House says officials have told Iran that its choice of candidate for the post of ambassador to the United Nations is not viable. The US had already voiced concern that Hamid Aboutalebi had been a member of a Muslim student organisation which was behind the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. Mr Aboutalebi insisted he was merely a translator for the group.
A banquet is being held at Windsor Castle in honour of the president of the Irish Republic, Michael D Higgins, who’s on a state visit to the United Kingdom, the first by an Irish head of state. The deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and the former IRA commander Martin McGuinness is among the guests. As Andy Martin reports:
Although Martin McGuinness is Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, it is still extraordinary to see a socialist republican and former IRA commander who dedicated so much of his life to fighting the Crown in a white tie and tails at the invitation of a British monarch. Outside Windsor Castle, relatives of those who died in IRA bombings protest at their attendance. The pain of the victims was a theme of both the Queen and the president’s speeches.
A court in Argentina has sentenced ten people to up to 22 years in jail for the kidnapping and sexual exploitation of a young woman in a case that shed a light on sex trafficking in South America. The defendants were all cleared of abducting Marita Veron in 2012. But her mother, Susana Trimarco, appealed. Ms Trimarco has rescued hundreds of women from sex slavery in Argentina in the search for her daughter, who has never been found. Marita disappeared in 2002 when she was 23 years old.
Israel’s high court has rejected an appeal asking for a Palestinian athlete based in Gaza to be allowed to travel to the West Bank to take part in a marathon. It’s the second year in a roll that Nader al-Masri, an Olympic athlete, has been refused permission to travel to Bethlehem to compete in the race.