World News

Kenya has a new constitution. More than three weeks after it got an overwhelming approval in a national referendum, it is official.

Tens of thousands of people watched as President Mwai Kibaki signed the document into law at a huge ceremony in the capital of Nairobi.

The constitutional debate has been ongoing for 20 years.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was present at the event, despite being wanted for war crimes.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton urged Kenya to apprehend Bashir and hand him over to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICC is hoping to put Bashir on trial for alleged war crimes and genocide in the Darfur region. The ICC reported Bashir's visit to Kenya to the UN Security Council and asked council members “to take any measure they may deem appropriate.”

Kenya ratified the statute that required it to co-operate with the ICC. Last month, however, the African Union instructed its members, including Kenya, not to apprehend Bashir.

"The message we're giving to the world by having heads of state from the region… is that Kenya is at peace with its neighbours," Kenya's Foreign Minister Moses Wetengula told the BBC's Focus on Africa program.

He argued that arrested Bashir could jeopardize the struggle for peace in Darfur even further.

The new constitution will bring significant changes.

Since gaining its independence from Britain in 1963, this has been hailed as the most important political event in Kenya's history.

The large crowd came together in Nairobi's main Uhuru park to see their leader sign the new document, amid gun salutes and a parade.

After Kibaki signed the paper, he held the document up to huge cheers from the audience.

The new constitution introduces a more decentralized political system, which both limits the president's powers and replaces corrupt provincial governments with local counties.

This will also make a second chamber of parliament, the Senate, and set up a land commission to settle land disputes and look over past abuses.

The changes will hopefully help end the tribal differences that have brought violence to the African nation in the past.

"The historic journey that we began over 20 years ago is now coming to a happy end," Mr Kibaki said earlier this month after the results of the referendum were announced on 5 August.

"There will be challenges along the way. But it is important that we look forward with renewed optimism to better days ahead."

While many Kenyans say that this is just a start - and that things could still go very wrong - most believe it is a fundamentally better document than the last.

President Kibaki won a landslide victory in 2002 promising to change the constitution within 100 days of taking office. In 2005, he held a referendum but it failed to pass.

The previous constitution was negotiated with the British in the early 1960s.

The US combat troops in Iraq have left the country, seven years after invading.

The 4^th Stryker Brigade and 2^nd Infantry Division crossed by land into Kuwait in the early hours of Thursday, according to a military spokesman.

About 50,000 troops will be in the in the country until 2011 to help advise Iraqi forces and protect US interests.

Another 6,000 support troops will be in the country until the end of the month when US combat operations officially end.

Stryker Brigade's people drove out of Iraq in an armored vehicle convoy.

The journey, they took them along hostile desert roads, was planned out for weeks.

"The last one crossed [into Kuwait] at around 0600 (0300 GMT) this morning," Lieutenant Colonel Eric Bloom said.

The US military kept embedded journalists away from reporting on movements until the convoy was almost to the border.

After getting over the border, American troops told journalists about their relief of getting out of Iraq.

"It's just a whole bunch of stress just off my shoulders, but it feels good to be in Kuwait, about to head home," Troy Danahy said.

"Best part of getting back to Kuwait? One, I know no one else will get hurt, and two, I'm going home," Timothy Berrenar said.

The spokesman for the State Department, PJ Crowley, said that the American involvement in Iraq was far from over, but it would be less intrusive and focused more in civilians.

"We are ending the war ... but we are not ending our work in Iraq. We have a long-term commitment to Iraq," he told MSNBC.

According to Mr Crowley, the US had a trillion dollar investment to protect in the country and wanted the honor the memory of the 4,415 Americans who lost their lives in the conflict.

At the peak of occupancy, America had 150,000 troops in Iraq.

The monitoring group, Iraq Body Count, put the number of civilian deaths since the start of the conflict between 97,196 and 106,071.

The 50,000 remaining soldiers will be armed, but will only fire in the case of self defense or at the request of the Iraqi government.

COLUMBIA – A passenger plane from Columbia crashed and broke apart as it came in for a landing on an island in the Caribbean. The crash has injured 114 people, officials claim.

One passenger apparently died from cardiac arrest.

The Boeing 737 was carrying 131 people, passengers and crew, when it attempted to land in the Columbian island of San Andres.

The jet was operated by Aires, a local airline. It was supposedly struck by lightning just before it crashed.

It was flying from the Colombian capital, Bogota.

Col David Barrero of the Colombian Air Force said that reports said the plane crashed at 0149 and that "the skill of the pilot kept the plane from colliding with the airport".

A police statement said that the plane's fuselage had split into three pieces.

The pilot said that the plane was hit by a bolt of lightning, Donal Tascon, deputy director of Colombia's aeronautics authority, claimed.

"We are inspecting the remains of the plane to try to establish what the damages were and what caused the accident," he told Reuters news agency.

Of the 99 passengers taken to the Amor de Patria Hospital on San Andres, only four had suffered major injuries, according to Dr Robert Sanchez, the hospital's director.

The 68-year-old woman who died was thought to have been killed by a heart attack, Dr Sanchez told Reuters.

San Andres Governor Pedro Gallardo described it as a “miracle” that so many people survived the crash.

"We have to give thanks to God," he said.

San Andres is about 120 miles east of the Nicaraguan coast, and is a popular tourist locale.

Russia says is it going to take a step next week to start up a reactor in Iran's first nuclear power station.

Russia's state atomic corporation, which is constructing the plant, said engineers will start loading the Bushehr reactor with fuel.

It could still be another six months before the reactor will be operational.

Russia has been helping with the plant since the 1990s, all through the tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"The fuel will be charged in the reactor on 21 August. From this moment, Bushehr will be considered a nuclear installation," spokesman Sergei Novikov said.

Iranians are still skeptical until they see tha plant actually generating electricity, coming 35 years after the project started under the Shah.

Many Iranians think that the lenghty delays in the civilian project were made to extract more money from them, or is due to Western pressure.

If the plant starts operating, it will be a point of national pride, and an event Iran will celebrate to show that it can overcome international pressures and isolation.

Russia is going to run the plant, manage the fuel and dispose of the waste.

Because of this, nuclear experts think that there is little to worry over the reactor being used as a launching pad for the creation of nuclear weapons.

Though their relationship has calmed a bit in the last few months, Russia is the primary arms and technology supplier to Iran. Moscow backed tougher UN sanctions aimed at getting Iran to give up on enriching uranium.

Moscow's help with the sanctions is thought to help with their effectiveness.