Kim Jong-il state funeral held in North Korea

North Korea has begun two days of funeral services for late leader Kim Jong-il with a huge procession in the capital, Pyongyang.

Footage showed tens of thousands of soldiers with their heads bowed as a giant portrait of Mr Kim was carried slowly through the streets.
His successor and third son, Kim Jong-un, walked beside the hearse, images from state television showed.
Kim Jong-il died of a heart attack on 17 December, aged 69, state media said.
He has been lying in state for the past 10 days.
New line-up No schedule was released ahead of the commemorations and no foreign delegations are attending.
But observers said the ceremonies echoed the displays of pomp and military might that marked the death of Mr Kim's father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994.

The young Kim Jong-un will have the backing and guidance of his uncle, Chang Song-taek, a senior figure in the leadership who is married to Kim Jong-il's sister, Kim Kyung-hee - a general in her own right.
Will the new team try to keep the lid on North Korea as firmly as his father did? It is much too early to tell, but it is a historical truism that a dictatorship is at its most vulnerable when it tries to ease up.
Yet if North Korea maintains its ferocious grip on the lives of its citizens, there is always the possibility that they will finally be pushed too far.
People who visited Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania as late as the summer of 1989 believed that the ferocity of his rule had wiped out the very instinct for personal freedom among ordinary people. But by late December that year they had risen up, and he and his equally tough wife had been executed.
It is a great deal easier to set up a dictatorship than to change the way it operates.

Kim Jong-un - who is thought to be in his late 20s and who has little political experience - was shown weeping beside the hearse as it drove through the snowy capital.

He was accompanied by his uncle, Chang Song-taek, who is expected to be a key player as the younger Kim consolidates power.
Ri Yong-ho, the army chief, also accompanied the hearse as it drove past ranks of troops.
The three-hour funeral procession was led by a limousine bearing a huge portrait of a smiling Kim Jong-il. The coffin was draped in a red flag and surrounded by white flowers.
As it passed by, crowds of mourners wailed and flailed their arms as soldiers struggled to keep them from spilling into the road.
One soldier interviewed by North Korean state television said: "The snow is endlessly falling like tears. How could the sky not cry when we've lost our general who was a great man from the sky? As we're separated from the general by death, people, mountains and sky are all shedding tears of blood. Dear Supreme Commander!"
The procession was broadcast live on state television. When it ended outside Pyongyang's Kumsusan Memorial Palace, state TV began broadcasting documentaries about Kim Jong-il's life.
Mr Kim's body had previously lain in state in a glass coffin at the palace.
Observers are keenly watching the line-up over the two-day funeral to see which officials are in prominent positions.
Jostling for influence? Kim Jong-il - known in North Korea as the "Dear Leader" - was in the process of formalising Kim Jong-un as his successor when he died. However, the transition was not complete, leaving regional neighbours fearful of a power struggle in the nuclear-armed pariah state.

• Kim Jong-un led the funeral cortege
• Close behind was his uncle, Chang Song-taek

Senior military and party officials may well now be jostling for influence in the new regime.

North Korea's reluctance to open up the funeral ceremony to foreign delegations may signal that those hierarchies have not yet been fully agreed, she adds.
In the week since Mr Kim died, state media has called Kim Jong-un the "Great Successor" and referred to him as the leader of the military and the party.
Commemorations are expected to continue on Thursday, with a three-minute silence at noon local time (03:00 GMT), followed by trains and ships sounding horns. The national memorial service will then begin.
The inter-Korean Kaesong industrial park has been closed for two days for the mourning following a North Korean request, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reports.

Syria unrest: Homs residents confront Arab League team

"The Arab observers were eagerly awaited especially in Homs"

Angry protesters have confronted visiting Arab League monitors in Syria's restive city of Homs, demanding international protection.

The observers are verifying compliance with an Arab League plan to end the government's violent crackdown.
Tens of thousands protested in Homs as the monitors arrived. The Arab League said the first day was "very good".
Tanks reportedly withdrew before the monitors arrived but activists say some were simply deployed out of sight.
The UN says more than 5,000 people have been killed in protests against President Bashar al-Assad's rule since March.
'Where is the world?' The BBC's Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon says it was a baptism of fire for the monitors who, after visiting the governor of Homs, travelled to the flashpoint district of Baba Amr.
There, our correspondent says, the monitors were besieged by angry residents eager to show the damage to the city and the pools of blood, as gunfire rang out in the background.

Syrian armed forces have made a show of withdrawing from protest flashpoints in the past, only to return when protests resume.
When a UN fact mission came a couple of months ago, they also had trouble in Homs because they attracted a big crowd. As soon as they disappeared, there was shooting and people killed as the security forces dispersed the crowd.
This illustrates just how difficult this mission will be.
This is a big country and it is going to be very hard for the monitors to be sure they have got tabs on things happening everywhere at all times. It will be virtually impossible with a handful of observers.

Video footage showed residents arguing with the monitors, trying to get them to go further inside Baba Amr to see the victims.

The residents in the video shout: "We want international protection" and "Where is the world?"
One of the monitors says that he is not authorised to speak.
There were reports of continued violence in Homs while the monitors were there. The Local Coordination Committees in Syria said 13 people were killed.
The head of the monitors was upbeat about the visit.
Sudan's Gen Mustafa Dabi told Reuters news agency: "Today was very good and all sides were responsive."
He added: "I am returning to Damascus for meetings and I will return tomorrow to Homs. The team is staying in Homs."
However, our correspondent says the results were mixed at best, and the visit brought home how complex the situation is.
Abdul Omar, a spokesman for the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told the BBC he had hoped for better results from the mission and that 10 observers for Homs was never going to be enough.
He said tens of thousands of people had come out onto the streets to demonstrate in one district of Homs but that the monitors did not go there.

Last US troops withdraw from Iraq

Next

 

The exit of US troops leaves behind a fragile democracy in Iraq

The last convoy of US troops to leave Iraq has entered Kuwait, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The final column of about 100 armoured vehicles carrying 500 soldiers crossed the southern Iraqi desert overnight.
At the peak of the operation there were 170,000 US troops and more than 500 bases in Iraq.
Nearly 4,500 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died since the US-led campaign began in 2003.
The operation has cost Washington nearly $1 trillion (£643bn).

US troops have trained up Iraqi security forces which, if they stick together, can arguably contain the internal security situation, still stubbornly jammed at a level of violence which kills on average around 350 people every month.
But security has to be rooted in political stability, and that's only one of many challenges immediately facing Iraq.
Even as the final US troops were heading for the border, a political crisis was erupting in Baghdad, with deputies from Ayyad Allawi's Iraqiyya block pulling out of parliament.
There is turmoil in two mainly Sunni provinces, which want to declare themselves autonomous regions like the Kurds in the north. There's also a widespread conviction that with the Americans gone, Iranian influence will spread.
While most Iraqis believe it was high time for the Americans to go, many are deeply worried about the challenges that lie ahead.

US forces ended combat missions in Iraq in 2010 and had already handed over much of their security role.

"(It's) a good feeling... knowing this is going to be the last mission out of here," said Private First Class Martin Lamb, part of the final "tactical road march" out of Iraq.
"Part of history, you know - we're the last ones out."
As the last of the armoured vehicles crossed the border, a gate was closed behind them and US and Kuwaiti soldiers gathered there to shake hands and pose for pictures.
The only US military presence left in Iraq now is 157 soldiers responsible for training at the US embassy, as well as a small contingent of marines protecting the diplomatic mission.
The low-key US exit was in stark contact to the blaze of aerial bombardment Washington unleashed against Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Tribute US President Barack Obama marked the end of the war earlier in the week, meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
He announced in October that all US troops would leave Iraq by the end of 2011, a date previously agreed by former President George W Bush in 2008.

The US troops left Iraq for the last time, crossing into Kuwait

In a recent speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, President Obama paid tribute to the soldiers who had served in Iraq.
He acknowledged that the war had been controversial, but told returning troops they were leaving behind "a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq".
However, correspondents say there are concerns in Washington that Iraq lacks robust political structures or an ability to defend its borders.
There are also fears that Iraq could be plunged back into sectarian bloodletting, or be unduly influenced by Iran.
Washington had wanted to keep a small training and counter-terrorism presence in Iraq, but US officials were unable to strike a deal with Baghdad on legal issues including immunity for troops.

Sarkozy: There are now clearly two Europes

 

Britain will not take part in the deal agreed at Friday's summit in Brussels

The French president has said that there are now clearly "two Europes", following last week's summit in which the UK vetoed EU treaty changes.

Nicolas Sarkozy said he and Chancellor Merkel of Germany did everything they could to persuade the UK to sign up to the EU deal to tackle the debt crisis.
He told Le Monde the agreement marked "the birth of a different Europe".
UK PM David Cameron defended his decision, telling MPs he acted to protect the UK's financial sector.
"We went seeking a deal at 27 [EU members] and I responded to the German and French proposal for treaty change in good faith, genuinely looking to reach an agreement at the level of the whole of the European Union with the necessary safeguards for Britain. Those safeguards on the single market and on financial services were modest, reasonable and relevant," he told the British parliament.
Mr Cameron said it was possible to be a full, committed and influential member of the EU, but to stay out of arrangements where they do not protect British interests.
In an interview with Le Monde newspaper, Mr Sarkozy said that there is one Europe "which wants more solidarity between its members and regulation, the other [is] attached solely to the logic of the single market".
European leaders agreed in Brussels to plans for deeper economic integration among the countries that use the euro, and in particular to impose sanctions on states that go over an agreed budget deficit limit.
Mr Sarkozy defended his strategy of co-operation and compromise with Mrs Merkel, praising the German Chancellor's "pragmatism and intelligence".
But he said that the importance of this agreement with Germany did not mean that France could not work with Britain. He said David Cameron had been "courageous" over Libya and that Britain and France shared a commitment to nuclear energy and to defence co-operation.
The EU Economics Commissioner, Olli Rehn, said Britain's stance would be bad for the whole of the European Union.
"I regret very much that the United Kingdom was not willing to join the new fiscal compact, as much for the sake of Europe and its crisis response as for the sake of British citizens and their perspectives."
"We want a strong and constructive Britain in Europe, and we want Britain to be at the centre of Europe, and not on the sidelines," he said.
'Renegotiate deal' Meanwhile, French presidential candidate Francois Hollande has said that he would seek to renegotiate the deal on the euro agreed last week.
Mr Hollande, who is the Socialist Party's challenger to President Nicolas Sarkozy at next year's elections, said the agreement was not the right solution for the European Union.

 

Francois Hollande is the Socialist Party's candidate for next year's elections

 

He said he wanted greater powers for the European Central Bank (ECB) and for member states to issue joint eurobonds.
Germany is opposed to such measures.
Speaking to RTL radio, Mr Hollande said: "This accord is not the right answer, nor does it have the urgency.
"If I am elected president, I will negotiate, renegotiate this deal to include what is missing today."
Members of Mr Hollande's party have accused President Sarkozy of bowing to German pressure on the issues of the ECB's power and eurobonds.
France is holding its presidential election in two rounds of voting on 22 April and 6 May. President Sarkozy has yet to declare his candidacy but is widely expected to stand.
Polling organisations currently predict that Mr Hollande would beat Mr Sarkozy in the second round of voting.

'18 killed' in fresh Syria clashes, say opposition

 

The uprising against Syria's regime shows no sign of abating

At least 18 people are reported to have died in clashes in Syria as opposition activists called a general strike.

11 of the deaths were in the cities of Homs and Hama, the opposition Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC) said.
Two people also died in clashes between troops and deserters in the northern Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
Authorities in Idlib confronted members of "an armed terrorist group", said Syrian state news agency SANA.
The UN estimates more than 4,000 people have died in the nine-month uprising, including 307 children.
Syria severely restricts access to foreign media so reports of unrest cannot be verified.
The LCC said the casualties it had recorded on Sunday included two children.
There were also reports of clashes between defectors and troops in the south, near the border with Jordan.
In Jordan itself, protests at the Syrian embassy in the capital Amman turned violent for the first time.
The embassy said protesters stormed the building and attacked staff, but the brother of one of the protesters told the BBC that they were assaulted when they went into the embassy wearing opposition flags.
'Burned shops' Heavy machine-gun fire was heard and two armoured carriers were burned in pre-dawn clashes in Kfar Takharim town in Idlib province, the British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said.
Reuters news agency quoted residents and activists as saying army defectors had also clashed with loyalist forces backed by tanks in the town of Busra al-Harir, not far from the border with Jordan.
The Observatory said that a general strike called by opposition activists was being "very widely observed" in southern Syria's Daraa province on Sunday, the start of the working week.
And schoolchildren and civil servants stayed at home in some parts of Damascus, although central districts opened as normal, the activist group said.
Fear of pro-government militias prevented some shopkeepers from joining the strike, one Damascus resident told the BBC.
Shopkeepers who kept the shutters down in Idlib province had their property burned by troops who issued a warning via loudspeakers from a nearby mosque, the LCC said.
The LCC also said the strike was being well observed by students at Aleppo University and by residents of the town of Douma near Damascus, where it said casualties had been reported.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is under international pressure to end the continuing crackdown on anti-government protesters.
The Arab League is reported to be holding two emergency meetings in the coming days, to discuss Damascus's response to the League's plan to send in monitors.
Last month the League suspended Syria's membership in protest at the continuing crackdown and also imposed economic sanctions.

89 killed in India hospital fire

Firefighters try to enter a hospital after it caught fire in Kolkata, India

A fire has killed 89 people in a hospital in India, officials said.
Police arrested six hospital officials on charges of culpable homicide in Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta.
Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of the state of West Bengal, ordered the hospital's licence withdrawn. The hospital denied any violations of safety measures.
"It was horrifying that the hospital authorities did not make any effort to rescue trapped patients," said Subrata Mukherjee, West Bengal state minister for public health engineering. "Senior hospital authorities ran away after the fire broke out."
As the fire spread from the seven-storey hospital's basement, rescue workers on long ladders smashed windows in the upper floors of the AMRI Hospital to pull surviving patients out before they suffocated from smoke inhalation, while sobbing relatives waited on the street below.
Rescue workers took patients on stretchers and in wheelchairs to a nearby hospital. Moon Moon Chakraborty, who was in the hospital with a broken ankle, called her husband S. Chakraborty at home to tell him a fire had broken out.
"She had died by the time I reached the hospital," her husband said.
One survivor told Indian television she was sitting by the bedside of her mother, who was on a ventilator, when smoke came into the room.
"My mother was continuously telling me that she was feeling suffocated and uneasy," she said. "I kept ringing the bell for the nurse, but no-one came."
Rescue workers managed to evacuate her mother more than two hours after the fire started, she said. Emergency workers pulled 73 bodies from the building, and another 16 succumbed to their injuries later, said police.

Russia PM Vladimir Putin accuses US over poll protests

Mr Putin used very strong anti-Western language

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of being behind protests over the results of Russia's parliamentary elections.

Mr Putin said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "set the tone for some opposition activists".
She "gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work", he said.
International monitors have expressed concerns over the elections.
Mr Putin accused the protesters of acting "in accordance with a well-known scenario and in their own mercenary political interests".
He warned that those working for foreign governments to influence Russian politics would be held to account, according to the Associated Press.
"It is unacceptable when foreign money is pumped into election processes", Mr Putin said in comments shown on state-run TV.

Earlier this week Vladimir Putin's spokesman predicted the world would soon see a new Putin - a Putin 2.0. But these comments blaming the West for the street protests are very much old "software".
In recent years, revolutions on Russia's doorstep - in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan - have convinced Mr Putin that the West is funding and fanning regime change in former Soviet republics. He now appears to believe that the United States wants to push him from power.
The anti-Western rhetoric is designed mainly for local consumption. Mr Putin wants Russians to blame America, not him, for the country's problems.
Under their presidencies, Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev have "re-set" relations between the US and Russia. But the re-set has faltered. There have been fierce arguments over US plans for a missile defence system in Europe, which Russia sees as a threat to its security. Mr Putin's comments accusing Hillary Clinton of stirring up trouble in Russia are sure to make relations even cooler.

"We should think of forms of defence of our sovereignty, defence from interference from abroad," he added.

Most Russians did not want the kind of political upheavals that had been seen in recent years in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, he said.
Mr Putin's remarks came a day after he officially registered his candidacy for the presidential elections next March.
He stood down from the office in 2008 and has since held the post of prime minister.
'Serious concerns' Hundreds of protesters have been detained by authorities since the elections to the State Duma on Sunday. Fresh rallies are planned by opposition activists for the weekend.
While maintaining that protesters had the right to express their opinion, Mr Putin warned that "if somebody breaks the law, then the authorities... should demand that the law is adhered to".
Monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said on Monday that there had been "severe problems with the counting process" after the vote, citing apparent irregularities such as the stuffing of ballot boxes.
Earlier this week the US expressed "serious concerns" over the conduct of the vote.

 

The authorities have clamped down on protests in recent days

 

On Tuesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded angrily to comments Mrs Clinton made about the conduct of the elections during an OSCE meeting in Lithuania.
"This is not Hyde Park, this is not Triumfalnaya [Triumphal] Square in Moscow, where speakers arrive to pour out their soul and then turn around and leave, not listening to others," he said, according to Reuters.
Results published by Russia's Electoral Commission showed support for Mr Putin's United Russia party had dropped but that it would still retain a slim majority in the Duma.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev insisted that the vote had been free and fair.

Pearl Harbor's 70th anniversary remembered in US

On 7 December the United States commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor

The Pearl Harbor attacks' few remaining survivors have led US commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the event that changed World War II's course.

About 120 veterans joined military leaders at the Hawaii naval base as a moment of silence was observed at the time Japan sprung its offensive.
President Barack Obama called for US flags to be flown at half mast on federal buildings across the country.
Some 2,400 Americans died in the Japanese attacks of 7 December 1941.
President Obama, who was born in Hawaii, hailed veterans of the bombing in a statement marking National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
'Greatest Generation' "Their tenacity helped define the Greatest Generation and their valour fortified all who served during World War II," he said.

 

Barely 120 survivors of the Pearl Harbor attacks remain

 

"As a nation, we look to December 7 1941 to draw strength from the example set by these patriots and to honour all who have sacrificed for our freedoms."
At 7:55 am (17:55 GMT), the moment Japanese bombers swooped on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, a ceremony was held by the wreck of the USS Arizona, one of 12 vessels sunk that day seven decades ago.
Nearly half of those killed in the attack died almost instantly on the Arizona, when a bomb detonated the giant battleship's munitions.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and military leaders were also among the several thousand people at Wednesday's event.
A US Navy destroyer rendered honours to the Arizona to begin the moment of silence, before F-22 jets flew overhead in "missing man" formation.
Over in Washington DC, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta laid a wreath at the US Navy Memorial at midday.

 

Crippled by a bomb that detonated its munitions, the USS Arizona sinks to its watery grave

 

The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association said it would disband after this year's landmark commemoration because so few veterans remained.
Thousands of survivors were on hand for the 50th anniversary of the attacks in 1991.
As well as the dozen ships wrecked in the attack on Pearl Harbor, nine other vessels were damaged and the US lost 164 aeroplanes. Sixty-two Japanese died.
Denouncing "a date which will live in infamy", President Franklin Roosevelt went to Congress for a declaration of war, which was approved within hours.
Three days later, Germany declared war on the US. America's entry was to change the course of the conflict.