appealed to
all Egyptians to go back to work and warned that strikes and industrial disputes would damage the country. But across Egypt, thousands of largely working class state employees have been demonstrating for more pay.
A court in Ecuador has fined the American oil giant Chevron a reported $8bn for polluting a large part of the country's Amazon region. A lawyer for the plaintiffs said they'd been awarded the sum after accusing the Texaco oil company, which was bought by Chevron in 2001, of damaging swathes of the northern jungle. Chevron said it
intended to
appeal. Vanessa Buschschluter reports.
In 1993, lawyers representing 30,000 residents of the Amazon region argued that the Texaco oil company was responsible for dumping chemical-laden oil drilling waste in hundreds of small ponds in the Amazon river basin. The plaintiffs say the resulting pollution caused $27bn in damages from illness, deaths and economic loss. Now a judge has ruled in their favour, reportedly awarding them $8bn.
An assistant to the Russian judge who handled the recent trial of the dissident tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has said the verdict and sentence were not his own, but were
dictate
d to him. Natalya Vasilyeva, a spokeswoman for the court, made the claim in media interviews. The judge denied the allegation.
World News from the BBC
President Obama has
laid out
his annual budget, saying he's making tough choices to tackle the country's spiralling budget deficit, but there's already been a