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BBC news 2012-01-20

BBC News with Zoe Diamond

The governor of Texas Rick Perry has ruled himself out of the race to become the Republican Party's candidate in the US presidential election. At a news conference, Mr Perry said there was no viable path forward for him and he was abandoning his campaign. Here's our Washington correspondent Jonny Dymond.

"As a Texan, I've never shied away from a fight," said Governor Perry, "but I know when it's time to make a strategic retreat." The governor of a big booming state was expected to do well in the race for the Republican nomination, but on the national stage, he failed to shine with weak organisation and poor public performances. One moment in a televised debate will go down in campaign history.

"It's three agencies of government when I get there that are gone: Commerce, Education and the...what's the third one there? Let's see."

Governor Perry endorsed Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, a boost for the leading conservative in the Republican race.

Officials of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas say the president of the Palestinian parliament, Aziz Duwaik, has been detained at an Israeli checkpoint. Mr Duwaik, a member of Hamas, was travelling between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem when he was held. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. On Wednesday, Israeli aircraft attacked targets in Gaza, and troops hit targets near the border fence between Gaza and Israel.

Tens of thousands of people have marched through the Turkish city of Istanbul on the fifth anniversary of the murder of the ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. The demonstrators expressed anger at a court verdict this week which jailed three people in connection with the murder but said that there was no evidence of a wider plot. This report from Jonathan Head in Istanbul.

There haven't been these sorts of numbers on the streets of central Istanbul since Hrant Dink's funeral five years ago. Police estimates put the crowd at 40,000, brought out in a wave of indignation over Tuesday's court verdict. Hrant Dink's murder shocked the country because when it happened many Turks believed the era of political killings was behind them. During the investigation, plenty of evidence was unearthed that pointed to police involvement in the killing, and yet these leads were not followed up by prosecutors despite pleas to do so from Hrant Dink's family.

Syria's state news agency has confirmed that an army general has been shot dead in the town of Hama. Opposition activists said that the security forces killed at least nine people across Syria on Thursday. The military has pulled back troops from a town on the border with Lebanon after several days of clashes. The month-long mandate for an Arab League observer mission is due to expire today. Anti-government demonstrators in the Syrian town of Deraa told the BBC correspondent that they expected to be attacked.

This is the latest World News from the BBC here in London.

Officials in the United States have shut down one of the largest file-sharing sites on the Internet Megaupload.com. Federal prosecutors have charged several people at the company including the founder with breaking anti-piracy laws. Megaupload is accused of infringement of copyright allegedly costing rights holders more than $0.5bn in lost revenue from pirated films and other content.

The media group News International has agreed to pay compensation to 37 people, including celebrities, sportsmen and politicians whose phones were hacked by its journalists in Britain. Among those affected are the actor Jude Law and the former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. Here's our media correspondent Torin Douglas.

Today's High Court statement brought home the mounting financial consequences of the phone-hacking scandal. This was just what the publishers News International hoped to avoid when they settled the first case for a much higher sum three years ago in the hope of keeping a lid on the scandal. There are more civil cases to come. Meanwhile, the police investigation goes on with criminal charges expected sometime this year. MPs are about to publish their report on the scandal, and Lord Leveson is drawing up plans for a new system of press regulation. Today's settlements are far from an end to the matter.

Police in Uganda have prevented a planned anti-government protest in the capital Kampala. The main opposition leader Kizza Besigye and several other senior politicians were heading to the city centre to take part in a rally against corruption and economic hardship. They were intercepted by police who fired tear gas before bundling them into vans.

A strike by thousands of farmers, truck drivers and fishermen has brought the Italian island of Sicily to a virtual standstill. The strike is in protest at high fuel prices and government austerity measures. Ports, roads, and motorways across Sicily have been blockaded, preventing produce from reaching the mainland.

BBC World News