2010-05-20 BBC
BBC News with Jonathan Izard.
A curfew is in place across nearly a third of Thailand's provinces after an army push that cleared thousands of anti-government protesters from central Bangkok prompted unrest elsewhere. Demonstrators reportedly attacked government buildings in the northeast of the country, and the northern city of Chiang Mai was also tense. The protest leaders in Bangkok gave themselves up to police after urging their supporters to disperse as our correspondent Rachel Harvey reports.
The announcement was made by one of the leaders Jatuporn Prompan. "We are going to surrender," he tells the crowd, "We don't want any more lives lost." The Thai capital is in lockdown. The protest is over, but at a terrible cost. The bloodshed will not be forgotten. The bitterness and anger linger on. Thailand's deep divisions have been brutally exposed.
President Obama says the US immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed after the talks in Washington with the Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Mr. Obama criticized the law in Arizona which puts the onus on state police to stop suspected illegal immigrants. Mr Calderon said people shouldn't come under suspicion simply for looking Hispanic. The law comes into force in July, and President Obama said it could be discriminatory.
"I think the Arizona law has the potential of being applied in a discriminatory fashion. I think a fair reading of the language of the statute indicates that it gives the possibility of individuals who are deemed suspicious of being illegal immigrants from being harassed or arrested. The judgments that are gonna be made in applying this law are troublesome."
The US State Department says it's held talks with Cuban officials on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists say satellite images show that the oil has now been caught up in a current that could take it to Florida in a few days and then to Cuba. Cuban government officials are reported to have asked American experts for help last week.
Nigeria's new Vice President Namadi Sambo has pledged to improve the economy and tackle corruption. At a ceremony in the capital Abuja, Mr. Sambo outlined his priorities including a resolution to the long-standing conflict over oil in the Niger Delta.
"We shall forge a common front to see to the realization of a credible electoral reform, a sustained fight against corruption and the rejuvenation of the power sector; the peaceful and steady implementation of the blueprint for the resolution of the Niger Delta question and the need to enhance effective security in our dear country."
The French cabinet has approved a draft law which would make it illegal to wear in public clothes designed to hide the face, in effect a ban on the full-face Muslim veil. The proposed law would mean that women wearing the veil in public could be fined. Parliament still needs to approve the bill for it to become law.
World News from the BBC.
The world's leading skeptic on climate change has told a conference in the United States that carbon emissions are nothing to worry about. Addressing a meeting in Chicago organized by the right-wing Heartland think-tank, Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said CO2 emissions would not increase global temperatures by more than one degree Celsius, far less than has been predicted.
Stock markets in Europe and America have fallen amid continuing worries about the debts of some European countries and new rules in Germany intended to limit financial speculating. Share indexes in London, Paris and Frankfurt lost nearly 3%. In New York, the Dow Jones fell by 1.5% in early trading, but later recovered.
Prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague say they have received the wartime diaries of the Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, one of only two indicted men still on the run. Analysts say the 18 diaries which consist of 3,500 pages and were seized from his wife's apartment in Belgrade in February could provide important evidence in several ongoing trials.
A novel written 40 years ago has just won Britain's most prestigious award for new fiction. Troubles by J. G. Farrell was first published in 1970, but was not entered for the Man Booker Prize that year due to a change in the eligibility rules. Torin Douglas reports.
Like most novels published in 1970, Troubles was never considered for the Booker Prize because of a change in the competition's rules in timing. To mark the 40th anniversary and honor the books which missed out, a one-off prize was conceived to be chosen by an online public vote. The shortlist included novels by Muriel Spark, Nina Bawden, Mary Renault and Patrick White. But the prize has gone to Troubles, the first book in J. G. Farrell's Empire Trilogy, set in a hotel in Ireland in 1919. It took 38% of the votes, more than twice as many as any of the others.
BBC News.