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BBC News with Sue Montgomery.
President Trump has said he will deploy up to 700 Marines to Los Angeles following a third day of clashes between protesters and security forces over immigration raids. The administration said the Marines would help protect federal agents and buildings until more National Guard troops can arrive. Here's our North America editor Sarah Smith. The Pentagon says that 700 Marines are being deployed to Los Angeles to help protect federal personnel and property, but the move is being viewed by state officials in California as an escalation in the battle between the Trump administration and the state over how to police the ongoing protests. The California governor, Democrat Gavin Newsom, has called the move "deranged" and "un-American." He told MSNBC last night that the presence of the National Guard had inflamed what had been small local protests. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip say they've been fired on once again while on their way to an aid distribution site run by the U.S.-Israeli-backed, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Witnesses said not only had the Israeli military fired on them, but for the first time they'd also been attacked by Palestinian gunmen apparently allied with the IDF. The Israeli army has called on residents of three Houthi-controlled ports in Yemen to leave immediately. A military spokesman urged people to evacuate Ras Isa, Hodeida and Salif for their own security. Police in Sri Lanka have arrested the prison's chief over the release of a convicted financial fraudster under the cover of an amnesty. The president's office ordered an investigation. Here's Anbarasan Ethirajan. The scandal over the release of a financial fraudster has dominated Sri Lanka's media for the past week. The convict was serving a six-month sentence for a financial scam. It's not immediately clear how his name found its way onto the list of nearly 400 prisoners given presidential amnesty to mark the Buddhist festival of Vesak. The commissioner-general of prisons, Thushara Upuldeniya, was first suspended, then arrested amid a probe on the illegal release of the convict. Another prison official is already in custody over the same incident. One of Britain's most successful thriller writers, Frederick Forsyth, has died aged 86. The author of The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File drew on his experiences as a journalist. Here's David Sillito. It was a sense that, is this real, is this not real? The kind of procedure that was in there. The Odessa File again, you go back to the history books going, did this really happen that way? And in many ways he changed thriller writing extraordinarily. All the novels he wrote turned into these amazing great films and a truly great writer. His novels sold more than 70 million copies. World news from the BBC. The head of NATO, Mark Rutte, has warned that Russia could be ready to use military force against a member of the alliance within five years. He called on NATO countries to significantly increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP to fund a "quantum leap" in their collective defense. The first hearing in the trial of Brazil's former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has heard testimony that he planned to stage a state of emergency to rerun the 2022 presidential election he lost. In court, his former aide, Mauro Cid, now a state witness, said Mr. Bolsonaro also planned to imprison officials to retain power. Mr. Bolsonaro, who faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted, said he would be happy to clarify what happened. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who's hosting a global summit on the oceans, says a treaty to protect international waters is on track for ratification in January. He said this would finally give the world an international framework to regulate and administer the high seas. Sub-Saharan Africa is now home to the world's largest population of Christians, surpassing Europe for the first time. The Pew Research Center said that as of 2020, 30 percent of Christians lived in Sub-Saharan Africa versus 22 percent in Europe. They explained that the shift was caused by a decline in religious support in Europe and a high birth rate in Africa. Here's Lebo Diseko. Christians are still the world's largest religious group but they are shrinking as a share of the global population. Sub-Saharan Africa is the one region of the world which showed the opposite, with an increase of 4.3 percent between 2010 and 2020. The center of Christianity has been moving southwards towards the continent for some time. Numbers of people leaving religion altogether tended to be higher in countries that were more developed. BBC News. |