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BBC news 2013-06-22
BBC News with Nick Kelly
The Indian government says more than 550 people are known to have been killed in flooding and landslides caused by heavy monsoon rain in the far north of India. The worst affected area is around the holy town of Kedarnath in Uttarakhand state where thousands of Hindu pilgrims are visiting local shrines. The BBC’s Nitin Srivastava flew over some of the affected areas by helicopter.
The extent of damage is enormous looking at villages which have been wiped off the map and the road network which has been completely destroyed. We had the opportunity to visit two of these sites today in an air force chopper. And the damage is frightening, because areas which were swarming with people less than a week back are devoid of any inhabitation and it’s only the stranded survivors whom you get to meet who have not had food, water and the basic communities nor medical aid for the last more than four days.
The Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has held an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the worst unrest Brazil has seen in two decades. After the two-hour meeting, her secretary Bruno Vanhoni told the BBC she will probably address the nation in the coming days. On Thursday, more than a million people demonstrated nationwide over issues including corruption, poor public services and the huge cost of hosting sporting events such as next year’s World Cup. Our correspondent Julia Carneiro says some people are now worried that the protests are getting out of hand.
At the beginning, there were lots of people seeing this with positive eyes. There still are people who are very happy that Brazilians are going out to make demands and demonstrating, something that hadn’t been done in this scale for a very long time. But now there’s concern about this getting out of hand because of the conflicts that happened yesterday in cities like Brasilia, here in Rio, where I am, where the protest started at this square here in the centre of the city. It started very peacefully, but afterwards there was violence and there were clashes with the police and between police and demonstrators.
The smallest partner in Greece’s coalition, Democratic Left, has confirmed that it is pulling out of government, but its leader Fotis Kouvelis warned against snap elections. From the capital Athens, Mark Lowen reports.
Until last week Greece was earning plaudits across the eurozone. Its government was holding together and the financial crisis seemed to be easing. But then the prime minister closed the national broadcaster here to save money. That infuriated his coalition partners who said they had not been consulted. Now the third party, Democratic Left, has withdrawn from the coalition, plunging Greece back into political turmoil. The government says it will stay together, but its majority is now just three.
Mark Lowen reporting
This is the World News from the BBC.
Indonesia has said it’s unfair to blame the country for the smoke from forest fires that has caused smog levels to rise to dangerous levels in Singapore. A senior Indonesian official said fires had been spotted on land owned by 32 companies in the region-- some of them based in Malaysia and Singapore.
The North Korean envoy to the United Nations has blamed the United States for rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula. During a rare news conference, the North Korean UN ambassador Sin Son-ho said hostile relations with the United States could lead to a new war at any moment. He called for an end to economic sanctions and reiterated North Korea’s offer of wide-ranging senior-level talks with the US.
President Obama has formally nominated James Comey as the new director of the FBI. Mr Comey, a 52-year-old Republican, was deputy attorney general in President George W Bush’s administration. Katy Watson reports from Washington.
Mr Comey’s time working under the George W Bush administration is seen as a good thing, a bipartisan gesture by President Obama at a time when he is facing tough criticism by Republicans in Congress. Mr Comey’s shown himself to be tough on government surveillance and he’s perhaps best-known for successfully opposing a controversial programme allowing government wiretaps to be used without warrants. If the Senate accepts the nomination, James Comey will replace director Robert Mueller who’s been in charge of the FBI since the 9/11 attacks and is retiring this coming September.
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BBC News
