BBC News with David Legge

The fragile coalition in Lebanon has collapsed after 12 ministers, mostly from Hezbollah and its allies, resigned. It follows rising (tension) after strong indications some members of Hezbollah could be indicted by a United-Nations-backed investigation into the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. He was the father of the current leader and an ally of the United States. James Muir says it’s all about a struggle over the regional (balance) of power.

Bringing down the government is one thing, replacing it with another is something else. At the moment, the forces allied to the outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri insisted that only he should had any new government. Getting them to agree to someone closer to Syria and the Lebanese (opposition) will be very hard. President Michel Suleiman will go through the motions of consulting parliamentary blocs to seek an agreement on an acceptable new figure, but those consultations are likely to go round in circles as long as there’s no (agreement) and certainly there’s none in sight.

Clashes between protesters and security forces continue throughout the day in many parts of Tunisia despite government measures to quell the month-long unrest. A night-time (curfew) has been imposed in the capital Tunis, from where Adam Mynott reports.

For the past 48 hours, in the district of  in the south of capital, gangs of protesters have been involved in skirmishes and street battles with the police. This is the first time in a month that angry protests across the legs and breast of Tunisia that violence has rocked the capital and the government is worried. In an attempt to respond to national concern about (poverty), hunger and what many what many see as the “brutal suppression of protest”, the president of Tunisia sacked the interior minister and announced that most protesters arrested during the past four weeks in demonstrations would be released.

More than 100 people have died in southeastern Brazil after days of (torrential) rain caused flooding and landslides. The town of Teresopolis, some 100km north of Rio de Janeiro, has been worst-hit with at least 71 people killed over the past two days.

Camps set up for victims of floods in eastern central Sri Lanka have themselves been flooded, forcing people to go (elsewhere) to escape the water. About a million people have been affected. Charles Haviland reports from Colombo.

A minister in the Sri Lankan government, Mohammed Hizbullah, told the BBC the situation in the east coast town of Batticaloa was getting worse as night fell. He said that 25 out 200 makeshift camps for displaced people had themselves come under water. And the armed forces were helping people get out to safer places. Numerous towns and villages were flooded with no road access. And Mr Hizbullah said the authorities were getting calls for help from villagers whom they were unable to reach. He said the government was (struggling) and needed more help from international agencies.

World News from the BBC

Curfews have been put in place in two districts of Abidjan in Ivory Coast where there’ve been heavy clashes. Five police officers have been killed during raids on the neighbourhood of Abobo, which is (loyal) to Alassane Ouattara, the man widely recognised as the country’s president-elect. Armed forces supporting Laurent Gbagbo moved into the suburb on Tuesday night.

The former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, has defended herself against criticism that she helped create an atmosphere of political hatred that led to last Saturday’s shooting in Arizona. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head and six people were killed when a gunman opened fire. In an eight-minute video, Mrs Palin said the attack was not the result of heated political (debate).

“There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged that apparently a (political) criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow got more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those calm days when political figures literally settled their differences with the doing pistols?”

A Mexican activist who led protests against the unsolved killings of scores of women in the town of Ciudad Juarez has herself been (murdered). The woman, Susana Chavez, was found strangled and with one hand cut off in the town last week but is only now being identified. Ms Chavez tried to draw attention to the killing of more than 100 women in the border town in the 1990s.

A Ukrainian court has revolt to the hero status of the World War II leader Stepan Bandera. Mr Bandera was (declared) a hero by former President Yushchenko before he left office a year ago. His successor, President Yanukovych, regarded as being more pro-Russian, said the court has found Bandera’s status invalid. Mr Bandera was assassinated by the Soviet KJB half a century ago. He has near the same status in western Ukraine, but in pro-Russian east, he is regarded by many as a fascist. 

BBC News