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Acts of commemoration are taking place in Asia to mark the devastating tsunami that struck countries around the Indian Ocean one year ago. More than 200, 000 people were killed when an earthquake beneath the ocean's floor sent torrents of water sweeping ashore in places as far apart as Thailand, Sri Lanka and Somalia. The area worst affected was the Indonesian province of Aceh where entire communities along the coast were obliterated. In Thailand, meanwhile, where more than 5,000 people died, a ceremony is being held at Khao Lak, from where Christ Hawk sent this report.
The commemoration here is taking place in the shadow of a Thai marine police boat which was lifted up by the tsunami and dumped hundreds of metres inland. It's been preserved as a reminder of what happened, a garden has been planted around it. The ceremony will take place around the same time that the waves struck 12 months ago. Similar services will be held elsewhere along the coast in each place where people died. Mourning with the locals, will be some of the survivors and the relatives of those who lost their lives who've come here from abroad.
There has been a broad international welcome for the Libyan Supreme Court decision to order a retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who've been sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of children with HIV. They were convicted of deliberately giving the children contaminated blood, but they insisted the outbreak of HIV was due to poor hospital hygiene, here is our Central Europe correspondent Nick Thorpe.
Bulgarian officials reacted swiftly to the news from Tripoli. The Foreign Ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev said the ruling means that the defence arguments had been acknowledged, and he expressed the hope that it was also a recognition of what he called the serious procedural breaches in the original trial. The speaker of the Bulgarian parliament Georgi Pirinski called the court's decision an encouraging step towards a final recognition of the innocence of our compatriots. A group of relatives and supporters of the jailed Bulgarian nurses held a vigil outside the Libyan embassy in Sofia to express their solidarity.
A United Nations soldier was one of several people killed in an operation to drive out militiamen from a troubled area in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The soldier, an Indian, was in a UN contingent supporting Congolese forces when their camp was attacked by the militiamen who are from Uganda. A UN spokesman said 3 Congolese soldiers and 35 rebels were also killed. The official said the aim of the UN operation was to bring security to a population constantly harassed by militiamen from Uganda.
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In his first major act since returning to work after a stroke, the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has instructed his country's security forces to implement immediately a plan establishing a buffer zone in the northern Gaza Strip. Israeli officials said Palestinians will be excluded from the area to stop militants from firing rockets into Israel. The Palestinian authority has warned it would not cooperate with the plan and ordered its troops in Gaza to remain in position. Israel says more than 200 rockets have been fired from northern Gaza since its forces withdrew in September.
Pope Benedict in his first Christmas message has warned Roman Catholics of the danger of spiritual barrenness. Speaking from a balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square in Rome, he said people risked becoming victims of their own intellectual and technical achievements, ending up in an emptiness of heart. Pope Benedict also said threats of terrorism, poverty and environmental damage needed to be tackled in a new global order inspired by Jesus Christ. "May the birth of the Prince of Peace remind the world where its true happiness lies; and may your hearts be filled with hope and joy, for the Saviour has been born for us".
There have been demonstrations across Iraq about the recent parliamentary elections, some rejecting , some supporting the preliminary results. Marchers in the western city of Fallujah and Bakuba north of Baghdad chanted slogans alleging election fraud and backed calls by Sunni Arab groups for the poll to be rerun. But in the Sadr city area of the Iraqi capital, protestors voiced their support for the election results and for the governing alliance of Shiite religious parties. In the northern city of Mosul, reports said the bound and bullet-riddled body of a student leader was found several days after he organised demonstrations against the outcome of the election.
Shop owners in some of Brazil's main cities say they attracted about a million extra customers after they stayed open for 32 hours non-stop in the run-up to Christmas Day. The number of people using Sao Paulo shopping centres almost doubled compared with previous years, with drivers queuing up to half an hour around midnight just to get into a car park.
BBC News.
Words and Expressions:
obliterate
to remove all sign of something, either by destroying it or by covering it so that it cannot be seen
compatriot
a person who comes from the same country
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