Drugs cartel broadcasts war threat

Wednesday, 29 December 2010

A soldier stands guard at a checkpoint in Coban, Guatemala (AP)

Men claiming to belong to the Zetas drug gang forced radio stations to broadcast a threat of war in a northern Guatemalan province where the government declared a state of siege last week, authorities said.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nery Morales said the gunmen arrived at three radio stations in the northern city of Coban and threatened to burn the premises down and kill journalists and their families if the message was not broadcast.

The message threatened violence if Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom did not fulfil unspecified promises.

It said "war will start in this country, schools and police stations".

Mr Morales said that the message was delivered on Monday.

Water rationing as thousands left without in Northern Ireland

Wednesday, 29 December 2010

Thousands of homes and businesses in Northern Ireland have endured water rationing as engineers battle to fix leaks that have hit the system.

In the wake of the thaw that followed arctic weather conditions, burst pipes in the main water supply, plus many in private homes and businesses, have left thousands of people without water.

Northern Ireland Water, (NIW) the company that oversees the service, came under fire for failing to cope with the deluge of calls from the public, though it argued it was doing its best to meet needs.

But with water levels running low in reservoirs, officials said supplies would have to be alternated to different locations as work to repair the damage continued. NIW has warned the drought could last for several more days.

Belfast City Council has opened leisure centres to distribute drinking water, and free showers will be available today.

Sites opened to hand out free bottled water drew queues of people in need, but as many households endured days without water - and with many also having suffered heating failures - the political fallout over the issues grew.

Northern Ireland deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness promised a review of the response to the extreme weather and said the most vulnerable in society would be able to draw-down government funding to ease their plight.

"The recent long spell of sub zero temperatures and snow falls, followed by a quick and dramatic thaw, has resulted in frozen pipes followed by flooding which has affected many people adversely, with some having witnessed considerable damage to their homes," he said.

"I would like to thank public servants for their hard work over the this period of severe weather in seeking to help.

"I will be asking departments for their assessment of the situation and to bring forward proposals on how best to address, and deal with effectively, situations such as this.

"Further to this we will also be examining the Financial Assistance Act, which we have previously utilised, to see how we can address the financial hardship of those who are most in need over this period."

He visited the Shankill estate in Lurgan, Co Armagh, where overflowing sewers flooded houses. Mr McGuinness also travelled to Coalisland, Co Tyrone, where burst pipes had drained the local reservoir.

The deputy First Minister repeated calls for key holders to check unoccupied houses and businesses where leaks may have occurred.

NIW said the areas set to be hit by alternating water supply covered locations dotted across virtually the entire region.

A spokesman said: "NIW is dealing with interruptions to water supplies across a large number of areas in the province as a result of the severe weather and ongoing thaw.

"Our Major Incident Team has been in operation for the past number of days headed by our Senior Executives.

"As a result of the high water demand being experienced (primarily due to a number of bursts to private supplies), a number of our reservoirs are currently at low water levels and we are trying to rezone and recharge the water network.

"NIW have to alternate supplies from some of our reservoirs, therefore customers will experience a loss of water for a period of time.

"However, it is anticipated that this interruption will only last a number of hours and water will be restored to customers in a timely manner."

SDLP South Belfast MP Alasdair McDonnell was among the senior politicians who said government was failing to handle the problems caused by the severe weather.

"People in South Belfast are at their wit's end having been without water now for several days and many are currently having to cope with the nightmare of sewage in their homes with little help or reassurances from NI Water," he said.

"Businesses in our busy retail area have also been damaged by this water supply nightmare which is proving particularly detrimental at this crucial time of the year for retailers.

"Residents also have the added frustration of not being able to get through to speak to anyone in NI Water or get any information on whether or not their water is being fixed, as the agency's website is down."

NIW said it had been inundated by calls from the public and had dealt with 6,000 in the early part of yesterday alone.

The Housing Executive, which covers social housing and which also came in for criticism when homes were hit by heating problems over the cold snap, said it had received between 2,000-3,000 calls a day about frozen pipes.

Ulster Unionist Sir Reg Empey said: "I make no criticism of the individuals working for the water company and other emergency services, trying to cope with the problems that the public are facing.

"My criticism is for the authorities who fail year after year to produce an emergency plan that works. As a country we seem unable and unprepared to deal with emergencies.

"Recent flooding is the most obvious example."

He added: "But overall, those who are responsible for emergency planning - who have not seemed to have learned from previous emergencies - must up their game significantly, instigate an investigation and put in place planning and provision for the future."

Water collection centres

• NI Water depot, 1A Belt Road, Londonderry
• NI Water depot, Seagoe Industrial Estate, Craigavon,
• Old Westland Road, Belfast
• NI Water Depot, 69 Gortin Road, Omagh
• Castlederg Enterprise Centre
• NI Water Depot, Erne House, Killyhevlin
• Ballykeel depot, Ballymena
• Depot, Park Road, Strabane
• Derrygannon Community Hall, Eshnadarragh, Roslea
• The Civic Centre, Gortgonis
• NIW Depot, Huntley Rd, Banbridge
• Purdysburn Service Reservoir, Alderwood Hill
• The Town Square, Portaferry

Cold manatees swim to warm power plant waters

29 December 2010 Last updated at 00:01 GMT

Over 300 manatees have congregated in the warm discharge waters near a Florida power plant

Manatees - large aquatic mammals sometimes called sea-cows - are fleeing the unseasonable cold in Gulf of Mexico for the warm waters of power plant discharge canals.

More than 300 manatees swam into the outflow of Tampa Electric's Big Bend Power Station in Florida on Tuesday.

Manatees cope poorly with cold conditions, which can affect their immune systems and lead to death.

'Cold stress' killed large numbers of the gentle sea creatures in 2010.

The waters of the Tampa Electric plant are "like a warm bathtub for them," Wendy Anastasiou, an environmental specialist who has been watching the mammals loll about there, told the Associated Press agency.

"They're not blubbery mammals. They're very lean," Ms Anastasiou said. "They need a warm place to go."

Another 50 of the animals also gathered in the warm waters of a power station in Broward County, Florida.

Manatees will sometimes move to colder temperatures to find sea grass - a staple of their diet - but many will go without food for days in order to stay in the warm canal.

Unusual weather patterns are wreaking havoc on Florida's manatee population, with recorded deaths from cold stress increasing rapidly in recent years.

Buenos Aires is 'noisiest city' in region, study says

29 December 2010 Last updated at 00:00 GMT
By Daniel Schweimler BBC News, Buenos Aires

A thriving economy has lead to more cars on the roads and more construction work

The Argentine capital of Buenos Aires is the noisiest city in Latin America, a study conducted there has found.

The study, which reflects previous findings by the World Health Organisation, also claims the city is the fourth loudest in the world.

The other noisiest cities are, respectively, New York, Tokyo and Nagasaki, it found.

Despite stringent laws to combat noise pollution, the situation in Buenos Aires is not improving, the study says.

There are many reasons why Buenos Aires is so noisy.

Roughly one-third of Argentina's 40 million inhabitants live in or near the city, which is a lot of people in a relatively small space. They live largely in high-rise blocks of flats on long, straight streets which channel the sound.

Meanwhile, a thriving Argentine economy has resulted in more cars on the city's already crowded roads, and an increase in construction work.

'Beat of the tango'

The city boasts a comprehensive network of poorly regulated buses, which hurtle along narrow cobbled streets with noisy engines and screeching brakes.

Trains run through the heart of the city, and impatient motorists sit in traffic jams at level crossings hooting their horns.

Buenos Aires can also be be hot and humid, so windows are left open or air-conditioners whirr away day and night.

It is a city that works during the day but really comes alive at night, sometimes to the rhythmic beat of the tango - beguiling if you like that sort of thing, but not always welcome at 4am.

The World Health Organisation suggests that healthy noise levels should not surpass 55 decibels during the day and 45 at night, but measurements taken in Buenos Aires regularly hit 70 or even 80 decibels.

That is obviously bad for the ears, but can also cause stress.

With no immediate improvement in sight, the only solutions are to leave the city, wear ear muffs or talk a little louder.

Cuba commutes sentence of last death row inmate

29 December 2010 Last updated at 02:29 GMT

Cuba's Supreme Tribunal has commuted the sentence of the country's last death row inmate, a rights group has said.

Humberto Eladio Real, a 40-year-old Cuban American, was convicted of killing a man in 1994 during an attempted insurgency raid.

The Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation commuted his sentence to 30 years in prison.

Cuba has had an effective moratorium on carrying out death sentences for years.

Earlier this month, two other death row inmates also had their sentences commuted.

Ernesto Cruz Leon and Otto Rene Rodriguez Llerena, both from El Salvador, had been convicted over a bombing campaign of tourism sites in Cuba in the 1990s which killed one Italian and injured 11 other people.

They were sentenced to death by firing squad but their sentences were commuted to 30 years at a hearing on 7 December.

Cuba's last executions were in 2003, when three people convicted of attempting to hijack a boat to escape to the United States were killed by firing squad.

Two years ago, within a month of taking over the presidency from his brother Fidel, Raul Castro issued a decree lifting the death sentence for 30 prisoners.

In a groundbreaking deal brokered by the Roman Catholic church, Mr Castro has also agreed to free the 52 most prominent political prisoners on the island.

The majority are now with the families in Spain, but 11 are refusing to go into exile and have yet to be released, says the BBC's Michael Voss in Havana.

South Korea calls for new six-party talks with North

29 December 2010 Last updated at 05:00 GMT

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak now says talks are the only way ahead

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak has called for new six-party talks with North Korea.

Mr Lee said there was no choice but to try to dismantle North Korea's nuclear programme through diplomacy.

His comments follow a year of high tension, including exchanges of fire between North and South.

The talks format involves the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the US, and had offered rewards to the North for ending its nuclear programme.

South Korea, the United States and Japan had previously said six-party talks could not resume until the North showed serious intent to change.

"(We) have no choice but to resolve the problem of dismantling North Korea's nuclear programme diplomatically through the six-party talks," said Mr Lee.

He was speaking after receiving the annual report from his foreign ministry.

Mr Lee said time was short for the international community to make progress on ending the North's nuclear threat because North Korea has set 2012 as its deadline to become a "great, powerful and prosperous" nation.

Tense times

The comments appear to mark a shift away from the hard-line he had taken after North Korea was accused of torpedoing a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, on 26 March.

South Korea has carried out a number of military exercises recently

That incident left 46 South Korean sailors dead.

On 23 November, North Korea shelled the South Korean island of Yeonbyeong, killing four South Koreans, including civilians.

North Korea and its ally China, meanwhile, expressed anger at huge military drills mounted by the South with its main ally the United States.

South Korean reports say that North Korea has also dramatically stepped up its military drills in the past year.

Western allies of South Korea were angered by revelations this year about the existence of another nuclear enrichment plant in North Korea.

The North has again defended this, saying it was for the production of civilian power sources only and would not have been necessary if the US had kept to earlier promises to supply such facilities.

The six-party negotiations led to the closure of a plutonium-producing reactor in 2007, but collapsed in April 2009 amid mutual recriminations, after which the North set off further nuclear tests.

Mr Lee Myung-bak also told his nation earlier this week that it must unite in the face of military aggression from the North.

On Sunday, it was announced that South Korean and Chinese defence ministers would meet in Beijing in February for talks on the situation.

Flood chaos forces mass evacuations in Australia

29 December 2010 Last updated at 02:39 GMT

Aerial footage shows the extent of the flooding in Queensland

North-eastern Australia's worst flooding in decades is continuing to cause chaos across the region.

Around 1,000 people in Queensland have been evacuated, including the entire population of the town of Theodore.

The government has declared Theodore and two other towns in the region to be disaster zones, and forecasters say the floods have not yet peaked.

The cost of the damage is expected to top AU$1bn (£650m), including massive losses of sunflower and cotton crops.

Army Black Hawk helicopters are being despatched to help evacuate the 300 residents of Theodore, where every building in the town apart from the police station has been flooded, local media report.

The town's river has risen more than 50cm (20 in) above its previous recorded high, Emergency Management Queensland spokesman Bruce O'Grady told Australia's ABC News.

"We're in unchartered territory in that area," he said. "The [weather] bureau is indicating it could go higher."

'No easing'

Inland towns such as Chinchilla and Dalby are all under water; the nearby town of Warra, and the towns of Alpha and Jericho, west of Emerald, have also been declared disaster zones, with hundreds of homes flooded or at risk.

Media reports said Dalby was running low on drinking water supplies after its water treatment plant was damaged by the floods.

A further 200 homes were swamped in Bundaberg on the south-east coast and hundreds of roads in the region have been made impassable.

The state capital, Brisbane, has recorded its wettest December in more than 150 years. Cyclone Tasha, which hit Queensland on Saturday, also brought torrential rain to the state.

Long traffic queues have formed outside isolated towns and police are arresting people who need rescuing after driving into badly hit areas, says the BBC's Steve Marshall in Sydney.

Further south, in New South Wales, about 175 people who had spent the night in evacuation centres have returned home.

But 800 people in the towns of Urbenville and Bonalbo are expected to be cut off for another 24 hours.

While the rain is now easing, water is continuing to flow from sodden land across central and southern Queensland into already swollen rivers, adds our correspondent.

Australia's Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts told ABC the worst was yet to come.

"Over the next 48 hours rain will be easing but the real impact in some communities won't be felt for a couple of days when floodwaters begin to recede," he said.

"Once the rain finishes there will still be significant flooding impacts over the next few days."

Farming groups says the floods could cause up to $403m (£261m) in damage to crops, badly hitting an industry which was already suffering the effects of a lengthy drought.