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BBC news 2012-04-08

BBC News with John Jason

Activists in Syria say government forces have killed as many as 130 civilians across the country in an escalation of violence ahead of a ceasefire deadline. Troops were reported to have shelled, then attempted to storm the town of Latamna in Hama province. Jim Muir reports from neighbouring Lebanon.

This was at Latamna, a town in Hama province where torn and blood-stained bodies were being piled into pick-up trucks and driven off as distraught town's people looked on. They called it a massacre with several children among the 50 or so dead. Later there was a massive turnout and a lot of anger at the funeral, where one dead toddler was held aloft by the crowd. There was more carnage a little further south at Homs, where several embattled quarters where opposition fighters are entrenched, came under unrelenting bombardment. The victims weren't all killed by shelling. Activists put video on the Internet which appeared to show a pile of about a dozen bodies at the foot of a blood-stained wall, saying they were summarily executed there.

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The army in Pakistan is continuing its efforts to find more than 135 people, most of them soldiers, buried under an avalanche in the Himalayas. Major General Athar Abbas said hundreds of troops were trying to dig down through the snow, but it was so deep and covered such a wide area that so far they'd found no survivors. The avalanche engulfed an army base near the Siachen Glacier early on Saturday.

The Vice-President of Malawi, Joyce Banda, has been sworn in as the country's first female head of state following the death from a heart attack of her predecessor Bingu wa Mutharika.

"I, Joyce Hilda Mtila Banda..."

"...do solemnly swear that..."

"...do solemnly swear that..."

"...I will well and truly perform..."

"...I will well and truly perform..."

"...the functions of the high office of the president of the Republic of Malawi."

Mrs Banda took the oath of office at a ceremony in parliament in Lilongwe and was greeted with cheers, applause and ululation. She urged Malawians to remain united.

Police in Tunisia have fired tear gas to disperse a protest by thousands of unemployed university graduates in the capital Tunis. The interior ministry said the police had been forced to act when protesters tried to march into the city's main thoroughfare in defiance of a ban on demonstrations there.

Hundreds of people have attended the funeral of a Greek pensioner who shot himself outside parliament earlier this week in protest at the government's austerity measures.

You're listening to the BBC World Service.

A member of the Iranian parliament says Iran is now capable of producing nuclear weapons but will never do so. Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam made the comments in a brief post on Iran's parliamentary website. Western experts say that even if Iran does have the right knowledge and raw materials, it will still take years to make a nuclear bomb.

One of the leaders of Colombia's biggest rebel movement, the Farc, says it remains ready for battle. The leader, known as Ivan Marquez, denied claims by the Colombian military that the guerrillas had been weakened.

Karen rebels in Burma have met the President Thein Sein for the first time in what's seen as a big step towards resolving one of the world's longest conflicts. The head of the Karen delegation, Si Pho Ra Sein, told the BBC that the meeting was constructive with both sides exchanging views on how to achieve peace. On Friday, the Karen and the government agreed on measures aimed at turning their current ceasefire into a permanent truce.

There have been chaotic scenes during one of the traditional showpieces of the British sporting calendar, the annual boat race on the River Thames between Oxford and Cambridge universities. The teams were more than halfway along the course when the contest had to be stopped because a man swam into the path of the boats. Maddy Savage reports.

Oxford were the favourites and were nudging ahead just past the halfway point when everything changed.

"What's happened? Cambridge stopped. Cambridge has stopped. Wayne Pommen, what can you tell us?"

"We've stopped rowing. There's a man swimming across between the boats. Both crews have to stop; all the following boats have stopped."

There are unconfirmed reports that the swimmer is Trenton Oldfield, who runs a website called Elitism Leads to Tyranny. Police say they've arrested a man on suspicion of a public order offence. For the crews, there was a 31-minute delay before the race was restarted. Oxford pulled ahead, but then one of their oars was snapped when the two sides blades got entangled, and Cambridge led to the end.

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