blatant
interference in its affairs. So the observer mission will go ahead but without nearly a third of its 160 or so members following the decision by Saudi Arabia and its Arab Gulf partners to
pull their monitors out of
the team.
The International Monetary Fund has given a
stark
assessment of the prospects for the world's economy. The IMF's chief economist Olivier Blanchard said there was a strong risk that the crisis would spread.
"The world recovery, which was weak in the first place, is in danger of
stalling
. The epicentre of the danger is Europe, but the rest of the world is increasingly affected. There's an even greater danger, namely that the European crisis intensifies. In this case, the world could be plunged into another recession."
He said government cuts coupled with a
squeeze
on bank credit had suppressed growth.
The office of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he will sign a controversial bill on genocide denial into law within two weeks despite warnings that it will badly damage relations with Turkey. The bill makes it a crime to deny that Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenians during the First World War. Turkey denies a deliberate genocide took place.
World News from the BBC
The Nigerian military has arrested a large number of suspected members of the Islamist group Boko Haram in the city of Kano. Mark Lobel reports.