africatodayonline.blogspot.com -
The Week’s super-quick catch-up on the main news talking points, available from 8am daily
KIEV: RIOT POLICE ATTACK AS TALKS FAIL
Riot police in Ukraine have launched a fresh attack on protesters in Kiev’s main square after talks between the opposition and government broke down last night. Ukraine’s health ministry says 25 people died in fighting yesterday with another 241 injured - the worst day of violence since protests began in November.
CAMERON: BENEFIT CUTS OFFER NEW HOPE
David Cameron has said the Coalition’s welfare reforms offer “new hope and new responsibility” to people and are part of his “moral mission” in an article for the Daily Telegraph in which he addressed remarks made by the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, who said benefit cuts are leaving people “destitute”.
BABY GIRL FOUND IN BRADFORD STREET DIES
A two-year-old girl found unconscious in the street in Bradford has died. The girl was taken with a 36-year-old woman, also unconscious, to hospital after they were found in the city’s Delamere Street on Tuesday morning. The woman is receiving treatment for serious injuries. Police say they are not looking for anybody else.
Europe ALPS FAMILY MURDER BROTHER ‘HAPPY’
Zaid al Hili, whose brother Saad was gunned down in the French alps in a brutal killing with his wife, his mother-in-law and a French cyclist, says he is “happy” to hear French police have arrested a suspect, former policeman Eric Devouoassoux. Al Hili was once a suspect himself after a family row made police suspicious.
Scots Independence SCOTS GOVERNMENT TO ISSUE OWN BONDS
George Osborne has confirmed the Scottish Government is to be given the power to issue its own bonds, calling it a “historic day” for Scotland. It will be an additional source of financing when its new borrowing powers are implemented in 2015. The SNP called the powers “nothing new” and called for independence.
US: NUN OF 84 JAILED FOR NUCLEAR PROTEST
Sister Megan Rice, an 84-year-old nun, has been jailed for three years in the USA for a 2012 protest when she and two others broke into a nuclear weapons facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to hang banners, paint slogans and spatter human blood on the building. She said her only regret was waiting so long to do it.
CASUALTY ACTOR TELLS OF BITTEN-OFF EAR
The actor Clive Mantle, well known as Dr Barrett in BBC drama Casualty, told a court yesterday how he was left permanently disfigured after an attack by two men in their thirties from Lanarkshire in which his left ear was bitten off. Mantle had repeatedly asked the men to be quiet in a Travelodge hotel in Newcastle.
World News ETHIOPIAN HIJACKER WAS ‘DISTRAUGHT’
A pilot who hijacked his own Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to Rome, flying instead to Geneva and requesting asylum there, was “distraught” over the death of his uncle, his family say. Hailemedhin Abera locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit and, on arrival in Switzerland, climbed down a rope to the tarmac.
DEVO GUITARIST BOB CASALE DIES AT 61
Bob Casale, guitarist for American new wave band Devo, has died of heart failure at the age of 61, his brother confirmed last night. Gerald Casale said the death was a “total shock” and said he would miss his “level-headed brother, a solid performer”. Drummer Alan Myers died of cancer at the age of 58 last year.
HOT TICKET: LETTS'S SUPERIOR DONUTS
The first UK production of Tracy Letts's play, Superior Donuts, has opened at the Southwark Playhouse, London. In this black comedy-drama, from the writer of August Osage County, an ambitious young employee tries to inspire his ageing boss to revive his run-down doughnut store. "Beautifully judged," says The Independent. Until 8 March.
