18/01/2012 World News Today

This is BBC World News today. Agencies admit thousands of lives

could have been saved in the Horn of Africa last year it early famine

warnings had been heeded. As fears grow of another food

crisis, this time in the west of the Continent, we ask have lessons

been learned? There is a shortage of grain, we are waiting for the

consequences of the shortage. The rescue operation on the Costa

Concordia is suspended as the ship shapes down the rocks. The

government says there is a risky could sink completely.

Hungary's Prime Minister faces his accusers in the European Parliament.

He says he will change legislation it branded undemocratic, but will

it be enough? I appeal to him to accept the principles of democracy

and freedom and implement them. Also coming up. Blacked out in

protest. Wikipedia shuts down its English-language website for 24

hours in protest a new anti-piracy proposals in the US.

Lights are set to switch off in this Somerset town, so people can

see the stars clearly. Hello and welcome. Aid workers in

East Africa were so slow to sound a warning over last year's Fanon,

that thousands of people died unnecessarily. That is the

conclusion of a report by two of the aid agencies, Oxfam and Save

the Children. They say agencies took more than six months to act on

information from satellites and eyewitnesses of the developing

crisis. The report comes as fears grow that the Sahel region of West

Africa could be facing a further food crisis. Our correspondent now

reports. The mothers are waiting when this health clinic opens,

almost all their children were being treated for severe

malnutrition. It is this child's third visit and she is showing

progress. Many more children are at risk of severe malnutrition in the

share at this time.. Her mother returns to a village nearby. The

last rain stopped early in many places, pests did much damage to

crops as well in this region, supposed to be one of the bread

baskets of the country. The what are seen as more precious than

usual. The hardest game has only 10% of the Food We need she says.

My husband went to Nigeria to work, but the money went quickly and he

has gone back. I have to fetch wood and water to sell them for

something for us to live on. There is great on sale in the market in

this town. The poor can ill-afford the rising price. Here, a scheme to

help the poorer buying food when it is still available. This is visited

today by the EU humanitarian aid conditioner. This is a typically

hard-pressed village, people are given cash to help them feed their

families, increasingly seen as the quickest way to state of

malnutrition. The commissioner said it was a race against time. We see

the hunger season coming much earlier, February or March, rather

than May or June. We see already the scale of the problem been

substantial. If we act swiftly and early and we target the most

vulnerable, we can prevent a catastrophe and we will. That

places even more importance on centres like this one, run by Save

the Children, which shows mothers how they can reduce the chances

that the children will become acutely malnourished and sick.

The search for survivors from the Costa Concordia has been suspended

after the ship has shifted, making it too dangerous for divers. The

Italian government says there is a risk that the ship could sink

completely because of rough seas and salvage teams have just days to

siphon off the ship's fuel. Italy's Prime Minister who is in London for

talks with David Cameron says everything has been done to limit

the environmental impact of the disaster. It is slow going inside

the ship. They are moving through the floating debris of a once a

luxury liner, a long corridors turned on their side. Specialist

divers here are searching for survivors, but they know they are

likely to only find the dead. This is how they have been entering the

ship, through the top deck, now on the waterline. At one point, the

glass door of the shop was a of me, with the contents inside all

pressing down. It could have shattered at any moment.

rescued was put on hold today, as the ship began to move slightly,

making it too dangerous to look for the missing. Among them, Russell

Rebello, a waiter on board. Today, his brother Kevin came to the

island and sold the wreck of the Costa Concordia for the first time.

Does he think his brother can possibly be alive? It is the 5th

day. Five days, but there have been miracles and people have come home

after many days. On the mainland, the captain's wife was mocked by

journalists. He is enemy Number One, criticised for abandoning ship. He

is reported as saying he slipped by mistake into a departing lifeboat.

Few here believe that and his lawyer says the captain, he is

under house arrest, is deeply shaken by what happened, but the

sister of another missing crew member has no sympathy. It is

outrageous they have come under house arrest. He is like a free man.

The search is taking too long. salvage operation is ready to go

just as soon as they get permission. Equipment and personnel have been

brought in. Everyone knows that removing the ship from its current

resting place is going to be a mammoth task. The long days are

taking their toll on rescuers. One collapsed exhausted today. A

satellite picked up his image of the ship, lying peacefully against

the island. Down on the shower, Kevin Rebello waits for his brother.

Hungary's Prime Minister says issues raised by the European

Commission cannot easily be resolved. A day after the European

Commission announced they are taking legal proceedings against

hungry for infringing the rights of data protection, the judiciary and

the central bank, he defended his country's position. In the debate

in the European Parliament the EU president appealed to the Prime

Minister to respect the principles of democracy. The on the legal

aspects, some concerns have been expressed regarding the quality of

democracy in Hungary, its political culture and the relations between

government and the position between the state and the civil society. I

strongly appeal to the Prime Minister up to respect the

principles of democracy and freedom and to implement them. He needs to

implement them in the practice and social life of his country. We are

talking about a restructuring of enormous scope, enormous importance

and we understand that there are debates in relation to that. Today,

I address the letter to the president of the commission and I

expressed an opinion in this letter and I said that the problems that

had been raised by the commission it could easily be resolved. They

could swiftly be resolved and remedy to. It looks on the face of

it as though he has backed down quite considerably, is that the

case? He has backed down, but he is putting a brave face on it and is

trying to maintain what he would call his own dignity. It is

interesting listening to the president of the commission talking

about not only the letter of the law and the European treaties, but

also about the spirit. The Prime Minister was quieter on the spirit,

and he is keen to point out that only the letter of three laws at

the 365 that he passed last year have actually been challenged.

it realistic to imagine that he could stage an enormous political

U-turn? No, be it is difficult to imagine that. He did not have to go

to Strasbourg, he invited himself and offered to go and face this

criticism that hungry has been under. It will be interesting to

see in the coming days or what happens next. We will see if they

have the man is to persuade the IMF, they have been looking for a lead

it into the EU and we will know that on Friday when the Minister in

charge of Hungary's undergoes Houston's with the IMF talks to the

European Commission. Then we will have a clearer idea of how credible

the commission finds the responses which the Prime Minister has given.

He suggested that he did not think that Hungary actually needed money

from the IMF, but that it was willing to talk to the IMF and that

it could do with some sort of security, what do you make of that?

Is it is the line and a consistent line from the government that it

prefers to borrow on the markets from the financial world, rather

than turning to the IMF, even though the IMF would offer that

money, the loner that Hungary wants a better interest rates than that

available on the market. The government is keen to show that it

can finance its debts from the market, but it does that not want

to face the difficulties of that. He wants to have this alone as the

safety net, not as some think the Government wants. Thank you.

And a jury in a police commissioner has been suspended for alleged

negligence after a suspected member of the Islamist sect Boko Haram

escaped in a shoot-out. Kabiru Sokoto was thought to have

masterminded the bombing of a Roman Catholic church on Christmas Day.

He was arrested on Saturday, but was freed a day later in an attack

by a Boko Haram gang. The Iranian Foreign Minister at the -- Ali

Akbar Salehi is in Turkey for talks on his country's nuclear programme

and has suggested a new round of international talks on the subject

could take place soon. He said the talks, which collapsed a year ago,

would probably be held in Istanbul. The British Prime Minister David

Cameron has accused Iran and its allies in the Lebanese Hezbollah

movement of helping Syria's government to suppress the uprising

there. Mr Cameron said evidence had emerged that Iran was supplying

arms to the Syrian security forces. He said Hezbollah was also

supporting the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

The online Encyclopaedia Wikipedia has shut down its English-language

website in the 24 hour blackout. The action is a protest against a

proposed law in the United States aimed at stopping online piracy.

Other websites have also joined the temporary shutdown clot, including

word press. We have taken it for granted for so long now that any

end to the free flow of information on phones, tablets and PCS, seems

impossible. It has happened. One of the world's was popular websites

and cribs sheet for students everywhere has gone dark. Wikipedia

has blacked out it site in protest at the threat of legislation from

the US Congress. Two bills, one in the House of Representatives and

one in the Senate, would force search engines to delist websites

but hose a pirated material. Advertisers would be forced to cut

links with the pirates to. It isn't just Wikipedia, a clutch of

websites are making a stand a what they say is heavy-handed

legislation that will not work, but could damage the World Wide Web.

useful analogy might be that if you hear it there is this great

invention called the of Mobile, then two years later you find it is

being used by bank robbers, the answer isn't to band all to Mobiles,

the answer is to deal with that problem directly. So on people see

this as a clash between New Media and old, others as a battle between

the creators of content, the people to make films or write songs, and

those who aggregated, the big search engines like the local. The

defenders of the bill say it is simpler than that. They say that

piracy is threatening their intellectual property and with it

This bill has focused on websites that there up stealing from

American property and profiting from it.

It is an unprecedented protest. American lawmakers will not be able

to ignore it. For more than this, we can cross

over to the activist director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

It is an international digital right support group which opposed

is the proposed laws. Is this not as simple as saying that some

people believe that the internet should abide by-laws, and some

people believe that the internet should have its own laws? Nobody

here is debating whether or not, it was should apply to content on the

internet. The issue at play is that a lot that Congress is debating

right now, SOPA, and the protect i p act in the Senate, are overly

broad laws. Instead of merely taking down infringing Materials,

they would give unprecedented Materials to the executive branch

to force search engines to dump search queries and other such

measures. These are tools that we really don't ever want to use to

fight piracy, especially when many of the tools already available are

successfully fighting the so-called piracy problem. Some might say that

the measures are not successful which is why you have to go this

far. What is interesting about that is that the proposed legislation is

working to try and improve rights holders abilities to withhold

access to certain content online, but it has this collateral effect

which is that the tech industry, the internet industry which has

been in America and has been so wonderful to our economy, would be

endangered by this. It could scare off investors. It could make it so

that people who want to create new technologies might be worried about

legal liabilities. I am very concerned about just what would

happen if this legislation were to pass.

Let's return now to Niger and the concerns there about food shortages.

Our correspondent is in the capital of Niger. Over to you.

Great concerns here, largely because of the drought and the crop

pests that have affected the recent harvest, but also the rising food

prices. So much so was their concern that today, the EU

humanitarian aid commissioner, who has been visiting Niger, announced

a more than doubling of humanitarian aid to over 100

million euros. On top but that, a further 150 million euros will now

be invested in long-term food security and other measures to

build up people's resilience. I have with me the Unicef

representative in Niger. Also, the UN that humanitarian co-ordinator

at the moment. This idea of trying to do much more to integrate

emergency aid, as we have just heard it is being more than doubled,

with what you might call longer term eight, did try to address the

routinely chronic poverty in the country. Why might that approach

make a difference now? This is a lesson we have learned from the

2010 crisis. Nearly two years later, we are back in a crisis and I think

what we have seen today is climate change in action in this a have a.

It is not enough to deliver humanitarian assistance. We need to

be able to break the cycle of the current crisis, and to do so, we

need to tackle and that the same time, the immediate needs of the

population and the structural factors. For a long time now,

people have been trying to break that cycle. Most particularly,

since the 2005 famine here which killed so many people. Might there

be any hope now that there will be more success in achieving this?

political environment has drastically changed with the new

government. It is willing to tackle the situation openly which was not

the case before. There is strong partnership between American

agencies, UN agencies and the government here, and an

understanding that we cannot just looked towards treating severely

malnourished children but respond to the underlying causes of

malnutrition and therefore act to solve that. The context is

different but do you as confident as the EU aid commissioner that you

should be able to contain this particular crisis? Yes. In contrast

to 2010, this time the warning was early enough to be able to respond

before facing humanitarian catastrophe. Thank you very much

indeed. Obviously, we all have to see whether that actually happens.

In Russia, a group of celebrities, writers, TV presenters and even a

rock star have launched a Voters League. They say it is to ensure

future elections are fair. It is part of a string of new initiatives

made since the controversial elections in December. The

Government has ignored plans for the vote to be held again but has

already made some concessions to the protesters.

As Moscow emerged from its long winter break, the Kremlin wall had

been hoping that the protest movement for fair elections had

lost its momentum. In secret meetings, in ever-changing venues,

activists have been working hard to keep the fledge and movement alive.

At a press conference today, a group of Russian writers and

celebrities formally launched one of the initiatives - and newly-

created Voters League. This is a non-political organisation to help

people take part in fair elections. We want people to know that when

their vote goes in the ballot box, it will be counted.

Before the New Year, Moscow saw the three biggest protests of the

Vladimir Putin the ear. Tens of thousands took to the streets,

furious at what they believed where fixed parliamentary elections.

Protests inspired and gave hope to a new generation of activists.

Among them, this man, who is editorial director of one of

Russia's biggest media empires. It is the start of a huge social

discussion which was artificially frozen for many years. Now, it has

woken up and they think it will be hard to stop it. The internet is

still boiling with further evidence of alleged electoral fraud. This

was a raid on Monday by a parliamentary deputy and

journalists on what appears to be a room full of people falsifying a

list of supporters for a pro Kremlin candidate. The videos are

fuelling the anger of ordinary demonstrators like this internet

entrepreneur and part-time lecturer. She says her fury overcame her fear

of attending her first protest on the day after the elections. Now,

she has been to them all. I have never been to any protest meeting

before but I felt, and I called my parents, who said that I should not

call and they begged me not to go but I felt there was no way not to

stand up. In the weeks since the protests began, the Kremlin has

made several concessions, including the introduction of several

democratically elected governors and the regions. There is still a

huge gap between what the government is offering and the

truly fair elections the demonstrators want.

Millions of BBC viewers across the UK have been glued to it this

Stargazing Live programmes this week. One town has decided to get

involved in a very strong way. Tonight, Dulverton is switching off

all its lights to minimise light pollution and get a better view of

the sky. Good evening from Dulverton. About

2000 people live here and some of them have started coming down on to

the States this evening having switched off their lights at home.

They are massing on this date for this Stargazing Live event

organised by BBC. -- state. This is the high street here in Dulverton.

It is not a huge place but still certainly lots of light pollution.

In one hour, everyone was switched off their lights and the place will

be full of darkness and everyone can look to the skies and hopefully

see some stars. Dulverton at sunset. Tonight,

things in this part of Britain will look rather different. At a time

when light would normally be coming on, this evening, they will be

switched off. The aim is zero light pollution. This is so that the

skies are as clear as possible. will be really cool because we can

all look up into the sky and see things we have not seen before.

What will it be like? Ski area. you a bit nervous? -- scary. It

will certainly be a change because these pictures from Nasa show how

much like the is around the world at night, presenting us from

getting a clear view of the stars. -- preventing. This is Britain's

first darkness reserve. We take lighting for granted and turn

lights on and off without even thinking about it. We want to show

that even a small place like Dalton or Exmoor can make a big difference

to light pollution. It seems that everyone in is a rural community is

getting involved and later tonight, traffic will be banned and the

councils which of every state light. Despite appearances, the pub is

staying open. It will not be business as usual, however, with

serving in the dark presenting new challenges. There may be a bit of

spilt beer on the floor but hopefully not too much. It will be

worse than the kitchen, I think. After weeks of planning, tonight,

Dulverton get its moment in the spotlight. That is until the

spotlight is also switched off. There are some things you cannot

plan for and the British weather is certainly one of them. You can see

that it is there is Olli Rehn tonight and it is rather Rover cast,

so not the clear skies they were hoping for but they have the big

telescopes here and there are installing special BBC night-vision

cameras which good -- should give people the chance to see some stars.

Have you switch the lights off. Yes! We will be back in an hour.

reminder no other menus. Two major ad agencies have

criticised the delayed international response to the

drought in the Horn of Africa last year which led to thousands of

unnecessary deaths. The report by Oxfam and Save the children comes

as fear grows over another humanitarian food crisis in the

Sahel region in West Africa. That Hour week of temperature of ups and

downs continues today. Milder today but already called the there is

spreading south across the UK so tomorrow it will feel fresher than

it has done today. For the moment, the mild here or holds across other

areas. -- beer. A wet start in the south tomorrow with some sunshine

in northern areas. Rain, sleet and some health no coming tomorrow.

Across southern areas, after a wet start, change in the afternoon with

sunshine breaking through the cloud and a change of wind direction and

that cold area started to move in. Despite the sunshine, it will feel

fresher by the end of the afternoon as temperatures come back down

closer to average for this time of year. A few showers in the north

and those showers will move across Northern Ireland with rain, sleet

and perhaps some snow across higher ground. Showers continued to pack

into western Scotland. There will be some significant parts in high

areas of western Scotland. Some of those wintry showers continued on