BBC News, with Jonathan Izard.
A relative of one of the people killed by a suicide bomber at a school in northeastern Nigeria has criticized the government’s response to the security problems in the area. The Islamist militants Boko Haram have been blamed for the attack. Police said at least 47 people had been killed and 79 injured. As Will Ross reports from Lagos.
“As hundreds of students came together for the morning assembly, some of them noticed a man wearing a brand new uniform, carrying a backpack. This was the suicide bomber who tried to blend in with the students. It was too late to stop him. As he was questioned, the bomb was detonated. There was a deafening explosion which killed many students on the spot. Dozens of the teenage boys were so badly injured, they couldn’t be saved. One man who lost his brother in the attack said the authorities needed to do more to protect Nigerian citizens.”
An Israeli soldier and a young woman have been killed in two separate knife attacks in Tel Aviv and the occupied West Bank. Police say the suspects in both cases were Palestinians. Kevin Connolly reports from Jerusalem.
“In recent weeks, there have been a number of attacks on men, women and children in busy public spaces in Israel and the West Bank. The latest attacks, both involved the use of knives. In Tel Aviv, a young soldier in uniform was stabbed at a busy railway station. He died later in hospital. It’s reported that the attacker who is now in custody was a Palestinian man from the West Bank city of Nablus. In the second incident, a young woman was stabbed to death at a hitch-hike station in the Israeli occupied West Bank. The attacker was shot by a security guard from a nearby settlement.”
The head of United Nations Ban Ki-moon has appointed a committee to investigate Israeli attacks on UN shelters for Palestinian refugees during the recent war in Gaza, as well as allegations that the sites were used by Hamas to store weapons. The man has been put in charge of the inquiry is Patrick Camold, a retired Dutch general who commanded the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nalter Toffy reports from New York.
“The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described the attacks on UN shelters as a moral outrage during his visit to the war ravaged Gaza Strip last month. The independent inquiry will aim to develop a clear record of the facts surrounding the most serious incidents where civilians were killed and also instances where Hamas stored weaponry in vacant UN premises. That includes a case where more than a dozen of Palestinians were killed during Israeli shelling of the UN school being used for shelter.”
An appeal court in Italy has quashed the sentences imposed on seven experts who had failed to give adequate warning of a powerful earthquake which struck central Italy five years ago. Six prominent scientists and one government official were convicted of men slaughtering in 2012 for failing to alert residents of L’Aquila. One of the criticized seismologists, Juliet Savanch welcomed the ruling, saying there were many uncertainties in earthquake prediction.
BBC News.
The main aid agency fighting Ebola in west Africa has said the reduction in cases in Liberia is due more to local communities’ change in their behaviour than the international aid response. However, the disease is continuing to spread rapidly in Sirra Leona and Guinea. This report by Mark Doyle.
“It’s been known for some time that there has been a significant fall in cases in Liberia. Now a senior MSF official in that country, Doctor Nickle Higenburg has said the drop is almost entirely due to people adopting new habits, such as isolating patients and not touching dead bodies. Doctor Higenburg said aid workers in Liberia should now be forming small rapid response teams, working with local communities to attack new outbreaks of Ebola as they occur.”
Prime Minister David Cameron has said Britain is ready to impose further sanctions on Russia if Moscow does not stop acting illegally in eastern Ukraine. Mr. Cameron accused Russia of reaping up the international rule book by destabilizing a sovereign state, but said Britain was not seeking another cold war. He said he would be speaking to president Putin at a G20 summit in Australia this weekend.
“Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that we are on the brink of a new cold war. That is not an outcome we believe to be inevitable and neither it is one that we seek. And I will make that clear to president Putin in Brisbane this weekend. But I will also be clear that if Russia continues on its current path, then we will keep upping the pressure and Russia’s relationship with the rest of the world will be radically different in the future."
Scientists in Australia have identified a gene which appears to protect people from typhoid. The findings by researchers at Melbourne University could lead to more effective vaccines to fight typhoid and other bacteria diseases. The scientists say the gene is able to identify proteins on the typhoid bacteria which stimulate the body’s immune system. Typhoid infects more than 20 million people a year.