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| Religious clashes flare in central Nigeria Posted: 26 Dec 2010 05:04 AM PST JOS, Nigeria (Reuters) - Clashes broke out between armed Christian and Muslim groups near the central Nigerian city of Jos on Sunday, a Reuters witness said, after Christmas Eve bombings in the region killed more than 30 people. Buildings were set ablaze and people were seen running for cover as the police and military arrived on the scene in an effort to disperse crowds. "Houses are on fire all over the place and I can see injured people covered in blood being dragged by friends and family towards the hospital," the Reuters witness said. The unrest was triggered by explosions on Christmas Eve in villages near Jos, capital of Plateau state, that killed at least 32 people and left 74 critically injured. Vice President Namadi Sambo will travel to Jos on Sunday. "The vice president is on his way to Jos to make an effort to quell this crisis," Sambo's spokesman said. Hundreds of people died in religious and ethnic clashes at the start of the year in Nigeria's "Middle Belt", where the mostly Muslim north meets the largely Christian south. The tensions are rooted in decades of resentment between indigenous groups, mostly Christian or animist, who are vying for control of fertile farmlands and for economic and political power with mostly Muslim migrants and settlers from the north. (Reporting by Afolabi Sotunde; additional reporting by Felix Onuah; writing by Joe Brock; editing by Mark Trevelyan) Copyright © 2010 Reuters | ||
| Wife sees Khodorkovsky in Russian jail until 2012 Posted: 26 Dec 2010 05:04 AM PST MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is likely to stay in jail until at least 2012, his wife said on Sunday, suggesting she expects him to be found guilty of more crimes. Once Russia's richest man and head of its former biggest oil producer, now defunct Yukos, Khodorkovsky is nearing the end of an eight-year sentence imposed in a fraud and tax evasion trial that shaped Vladimir Putin's 2000-2008 presidency.
According to the current sentence, he would be due to leave prison in 2011 but Russian authorities launched a fresh case against him and, on Monday, a judge in Moscow will start reading a new verdict. Prosecutors say he stole $27 billion in oil from Yukos subsidiaries through pricing schemes and want him sentenced to six more years in prison. His lawyers dismiss the charges as an absurd, politically motivated pretext to keep him behind bars. The verdict and the sentence, which many suspect will be decided in the Kremlin, will be widely seen a sign of whether President Dmitry Medvedev has the will -- and the clout -- to free a man whose imprisonment is a symbol of Putin's rule. Khodorkovsky's wife Inna told Russia's Snob magazine, owned by Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov, that she was sure her husband will remain in prison until at least 2012. "My husband will stay in prison till 2012, that's for sure. And who knows what will happen after that? No one," Inna Khodorkovsky said in the Internet version of the edition, which appeared online on Sunday. Both Prime Minister Putin and Medvedev say they will decide together who will run for president in 2012 as the Kremlin's shoo-in candidate, but many Russians suspect it will be Putin. Earlier this month Putin told Russians during a televised address that Khodorkovsky belonged in prison, prompting protests from his lawyers. But Medvedev seemed to take Putin to task for his tough treatment of the former tycoon, saying it was wrong for any official to express his stance on the case before the verdict is announced. Khodorkovsky has repeatedly stressed his innocence and says all the charges were cooked up by highly placed officials who wanted him in jail so they could carve up his multi-billion dollar business empire. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin) Copyright © 2010 Reuters |
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