At the beginning, there were lots of people seeing this with positive eyes. There still are people who are very happy that Brazilians are going out to make demands and demonstrating, something that hadn’t been done in this scale for a very long time. But now there’s concern about this getting out of hand because of the conflicts that happened yesterday in cities like Brasilia, here in Rio, where I am, where the protest started at this square here in the centre of the city. It started very peacefully, but afterwards there was violence and there were clashes with the police and between police and demonstrators.
The smallest partner in Greece’s coalition, Democratic Left, has confirmed that it is pulling out of government, but its leader Fotis Kouvelis warned against snap elections. From the capital Athens, Mark Lowen reports.
Until last week Greece was earning plaudits across the eurozone. Its government was holding together and the financial crisis seemed to be easing. But then the prime minister closed the national broadcaster here to save money. That infuriated his coalition partners who said they had not been consulted. Now the third party, Democratic Left, has withdrawn from the coalition, plunging Greece back into political turmoil. The government says it will stay together, but its majority is now just three.
Mark Lowen reporting
This is the World News from the BBC.
Indonesia has said it’s unfair to blame the country for the smoke from forest fires that has caused smog levels to rise to dangerous levels in Singapore. A senior Indonesian official said fires had been spotted on land owned by 32 companies in the region-- some of them based in Malaysia and Singapore.