Air France tail section recovered

Search teams recover debris from Air France plane

A Brazilian search team has recovered a large tail section of the Air France jet that crashed a week ago over the Atlantic with 228 people on board.

 

The Brazilian military released photos of divers securing the tail fin, which was painted with Air France colours.

Meanwhile the US is sending two sophisticated listening devices to help search for black boxes from the plane.

Brazilian officials said 24 bodies had now been recovered, an increase from the previous total of 16.

Bodies and debris from the plane have been found some 1,000km (600 miles) north-east of Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha islands, where the Airbus disappeared.

Sourced from The BBC

Shell settles Nigeria deaths case

Ken Saro-Wiwa, whose execution sparked a global outcry

Royal Dutch Shell has agreed a $15.5m (£9.7m) out-of-court settlement in a case accusing it of complicity in human rights abuses in Nigeria.

 

It was brought by relatives of nine anti-oil campaigners, including author Ken Saro-Wiwa, who were hanged in 1995 by Nigeria’s then military rulers.

The oil giant strongly denies any wrongdoing and says the payment is part of a “process of reconciliation”.

The case, initiated 13 years ago, had been due for trial in the US next week.

It was brought under a 1789 federal law which allows US courts to hear human rights cases brought by foreign nationals over actions that take place abroad.

The case alleged that Shell was complicit in murder, torture and other abuses by Nigeria’s former military government against campaigners in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight others were members of the Ogoni ethnic group from the Niger Delta. They had been campaigning for the rights of the local people and protesting at pollution caused by the oil industry.

They were executed after being convicted by a military tribunal over the 1994 murder of four local leaders.

The activists’ deaths had sparked a storm of international protest.