Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani has promised help for millions of flood victims, saying they can stay in government-run camps for as long as they need. Mr Gillani has been visiting the southern province of Sindh, where monsoon rains have

submerge

d hundreds of thousands of homes for the second year

in a row

and left hundreds of people dead. From Sindh, Aleem Maqbool.

Prime Minister Gillani has been fiercely criticised by opposition figures in Pakistan. The

perception

is that for the second year running his government has failed hundreds of thousands of flood victims. On a visit to the badly hit towns of Nawabshah and Sanghar, he announced that anyone affected by the floods could live in government relief camps as long as they wanted and that they would be provided food and shelter.

But they are hollow words for so many people living on the roads of rural Sindh, who say there are either no camps in their areas or that they have been turned away from places that are full.

Officials in Mexico say they are investigating more than 100 police officers in the northern city of Monterrey suspected of having links with organised crime. The regional government says it wants to

purge

the police which it says has been infiltrated.

A wildlife campaigner in Indonesia has accused the country's zoos of doing nothing to stop orangutangs from smoking cigarettes. Hardi Baktiantoro told the BBC's Indonesian service that there was no adequate system to protect the animals from visitors who he said saw smoking orangutangs as entertainment. Several days ago, officials in Malaysia put a chain-smoking orangutang into quarantine to force her to kick the habit.