BBC news 2011-05-16 加文本

BBC news 2011-05-16

BBC News with Jonathan Izard

Israeli troops have fired at protesters on the Lebanese and Syrian borders. Tens of thousands of Palestinians and their supporters had marched to the borders to mark the 63rd anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel. The Lebanese army says 10 people have been killed and more than 120 injured. This demonstrator in Lebanon described the confrontation as he saw it.

"We were throwing rocks to the other side. Some of us were breaking stones and passing on for people to throw rocks. And first the Israeli soldiers were firing in the air, and then several of them were pointing their guns through the fence and shooting straight at the crowd. And it wasn't just single-shot fire; it was successive fire."

At the Syrian border, two men were killed and around 20 wounded as protesters breached a fence and crossed into the occupied Golan Heights. An Israeli army spokeswoman, Colonel Avital Leibovich, accused Syria of organising the unrest.

"The Syrian regime is intentionally attempting to divert the world's attention away from their brutal crackdown on their own civilians to the incitement on Israel's northern border."

Israeli troops have also clashed with Palestinian protesters in Gaza and the West Bank.

Anti-government protesters in Syria say that at least seven people have been killed by the Syrian army in the border town of Talkalakh, where a number of deaths were reported on Saturday. Activists say the military shelled several districts of the town in the latest effort to quell anti-government protests.

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is expected to appear in court in New York shortly over allegations that he sexually assaulted a hotel maid. With more, here's Laura Trevelyan.

A maid at a midtown hotel filed a complaint of sexual assault against Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Saturday. She told detectives that she was about to clean his hotel suite when he began assaulting her. Strauss-Kahn was arrested by police on board an Air France plane at John F Kennedy Airport. He's hired a prominent New York lawyer to represent him, who says his client will plead not guilty to the charges against him. The manager of the hotel where the maid worked said she'd been there for three years and described her work and behaviour as completely satisfactory.

The government in his native France said it considered Mr Strauss-Kahn innocent until proven guilty.

Voters in Zurich have overwhelmingly rejected proposals to ban assisted suicide or to limit the practice to residents of the Swiss city. Many people from around the world travel to Zurich each year to end their lives because assisted suicide is illegal in their own countries. The head of the justice department for Zurich, Martin Graf, said the liberal voices had won.

"The proposition would have been discriminatory. It would have treated people in the canton of Zurich differently to people outside. As for the content, I can tell you that on average people in Zurich have a liberal attitude to this reform."

World News from the BBC

Thousands of people in the American state of Louisiana are being evacuated after floodgates were opened on Saturday to relieve pressure from the swollen Mississippi River. More floodgates are to be opened in the coming days for the first time in several decades. The man-made floods will damage thousands of homes and hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland. Officials say this is the only way to save more populated areas along the river - cities, oil refineries, power stations and the Port of New Orleans.

Police in Colombia say they've captured a man accused of involvement in at least 50 murders. The man, Jesus David Hernandez Grisales, also known as Shorty, is accused of being a professional killer. Vanessa Buschschluter reports.

Jesus David Hernandez Grisales was captured after a four-month investigation. Officers of Colombia's anti-narcotics squad said Mr Hernandez had gone to great lengths to avoid being identified. Not only did he carry a fake ID, he also had plastic surgery on his nose and ears; and his fingertips had been altered, so his prints didn't match those police had on record. But they said there was no doubt the man in their custody was Shorty, whom they accuse of being the hitman for a criminal gang, which extorted money from local businessmen and ran much of the city's drug market.

The Libyan government has condemned British calls for Nato to bomb a wider range of infrastructure targets to put pressure on Colonel Gaddafi's government. A Libyan spokesman said the comments by the head of the British army, General David Richards, showed Britain and its allies were not interested in peace or protecting civilians.

Australian police say a man who plunged to his death from a seventh-floor balcony was taking part in the Internet craze of planking. Planking involves someone lying flat on their stomach in unusual or sometimes dangerous situations and having their photograph posted on social networking websites. Police said the dead man, who was in his 20s, fell from a balcony railing in Brisbane while a friend photographed him.

BBC World Service News