Tymoshenko in 'disobedience campaign'

JAILED Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko has launched a "campaign of civil disobedience" and spent the night in a shower of her hospital, a prison official says.

On Tuesday, Tymoshenko who has been sentenced to seven years in jail for abuse of power while in office and is in hospital for treatment for back pain, said she no longer recognised the country's judicial authorities.

The move takes the confrontation of the fiery former prime minister with her arch-foe President Viktor Yanukovych to a new level. In the past she had repeatedly refused medical treatment and announced several hunger strikes to protest her treatment in jail.

As part of what she called her "personal campaign of civil disobedience," the co-leader of Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution said she would no longer appear in court or cooperate with investigators and prosecutors.

"The time for my patience and tolerance is over," she said in a statement.

After making her announcement she moved out of her hospital room into the hospital corridor where she sat perched on a walking frame, prison officials said.

"She then moved into a shower room and spent the night there," said Andrei Lapinsky, a top prison official in the Kharkiv region where Tymoshenko is serving out her sentence.

Tymoshenko, 52, has been in hospital for back pain she developed after being sentenced in 2011 to a seven-year jail term for abuse of power while prime minister.

The charges were brought shortly after she lost a bitter election contest against Yanukovych in 2010.

Tymoshenko's conviction, which she calls a vendetta by Yanukovych for her political ambitions, caused a dramatic deterioration of Ukraine's ties with the West.

She is also being tried in a separate tax evasion case and has been linked by prosecutors to the 1996 murder of a deputy.

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Berlin museum spotlights Scorsese

A BERLIN museum is to open what it calls the first exhibition worldwide dedicated to the work of veteran US filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who has opened his vast archive for the show.

Featuring relics such as Robert De Niro's shirt drenched in fake blood from Cape Fear and his battered boxing gloves from Raging Bull, the show at the Museum for Film and Television offers an in-depth look at Scorsese's half-century of cinema.

The 70-year-old Oscar winner was unable to attend Wednesday's gala opening because he is editing The Wolf of Wall Street, his fifth picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio, whose filming was delayed by Hurricane Sandy in October.

But he said in a video message shown to reporters that he was honoured to be the subject of a show at a museum whose permanent collection is devoted to the work of icons such as Marlene Dietrich, Fritz Lang and FW Murnau.

"Some of the objects you will see have literally been taken off the walls of my house and my office," said Scorsese, who also narrates the show's audio guide.

"I hope these objects and the exhibition... help give you an idea or convey my lifelong passion for film."

Scorsese made available his personal collection of scripts covered in handwritten notes, vintage posters and photographs for what the museum called the first exhibition devoted exclusively to Scorsese's monumental output.

The exhibition, which will run until May 12 then continue on to Turin and Geneva, is opening just weeks before next month's 63rd Berlin film festival.

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ArcelorMittal wants to raise $3.5 bn

TOP global steel producer ArcelorMittal says it plans an offer of stock and subordinated notes to raise $US3.5 billion ($A3.35 billion) to reduce its massive debt that has worried investors.

"ArcelorMittal intends to use the net proceeds from the combined offering to reduce existing indebtedness," the company said in a statement.

The announcement sent ArcelorMittal shares down more than five per cent in afternoon trading on the Paris stock exchange.

At 1252 GMT (0152 AEST) the company's shares had fallen 5.4 per cent to $12.70 while the overall market was stable.

The offering of common stock and mandatorily convertible subordinated notes would be made in the United States, said ArcelorMittal, and reserved the right to adjust the proportions.

"Deleveraging remains a priority for ArcelorMittal to retain strategic flexibility," said the company.

It said the offering plus other measures should enable the company to reduce its net debt to approximately $17 billion by the end of June, from approximately $22 billion at the end of 2012.

The three top ratings agency's stripped ArcelorMittal of an investor-grade rating at the end of last year citing the company's massive debt amid sluggish global steel sales.

"We have consistently said that reducing net debt is a priority for the company," chief executive Lakshmi Mittal was quoted as saying.

"This transaction, supplemented by proceeds from ongoing asset disposals, the announced reduction in dividends and continued cost saving initiatives, will significantly lower our net debt and accelerate the achievement of a medium term net debt target of $15 billion."

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British flag raised in Belfast

THE British flag has been hoisted over Belfast's City Hall for the first time since the decision not to fly it permanently sparked riots in Northern Ireland.

On a sixth consecutive night of violence in the British province, protesters pelted police in the capital Belfast with petrol bombs, fireworks, bottles and stones.

Pro-British protesters have taken to the streets almost every night since December 3, when the city council announced it would no longer fly the Union Jack all year round at the City Hall.

It will now only be hoisted for a maximum of 18 days a year, including on the birthdays of British royals - the first of which fell on Wednesday as Prince William's wife Catherine turned 31.

The flag's reappearance above the elegant central Belfast building raised fears of more violence as protesters vowed to continue their campaign until it is replaced permanently.

The flag ruling sparked riots and arson attacks at the start of December which gave way to largely peaceful protests, but the violence has flared again since the start of the new year.

Tensions are running high in the province, which endured three decades of sectarian violence until peace accords in 1998 led to a power-sharing government between Protestants and Catholics.

The protesters, who are mainly Protestant, see the flag's removal as an attack on their British identity and a compromise too far with republicans, who are mostly Catholic and favour a united Ireland.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Wednesday that Northern Ireland needed to break down "barriers of segregation that have been in place for many, many years".

"We need to build a shared future in Northern Ireland," he said as he faced his weekly session of questions in parliament.

"I think that is part of the challenge to take away some of the tensions that we've seen in recent days."

John Kyle, a member of the pro-British Progressive Unionist Party on the city council, said the protests expressed the wider anger of Protestants who feel they have lost out in the peace process.

"There's a feeling of alienation - they feel disconnected from the political system," he told BBC radio.

"It has erupted in this anger and regrettably the anger has led to violence."

Some 3000 people were killed in the three decades of sectarian bombings and shootings from the late 1960s known as The Troubles.

Northern Ireland's top policeman Matt Baggott has accused the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, which murdered more than 500 people during the conflict, of orchestrating some of the recent violence.

The 1998 Good Friday peace agreement brought an end to most of the unrest in the province, but sporadic bomb threats and murders carried out by dissident republicans continue.

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US stocks open higher

STOCKS have opened higher, one day after aluminum producer Alcoa kicked off the quarterly earnings season with a report that met expectations.

Five minutes into trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 33.55 points (0.25 per cent) at 13,362.40.

The broad-based S&P 500 rose 4.26 (0.29 per cent) to 1461.41, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 7.62 (0.25 per cent) at 3099.43.

Alcoa, considered an economic bellwether because of its role in industrial production, posted an in-line profit of $0.06 per share after trade closed Tuesday.

Briefing analyst Patrick O'Hare said the market may take a "wait-and-see" approach on Wednesday as it awaits a Thursday meeting of the European Central Bank and public comments from Federal Reserve officials.

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French honour Malala, father urges peace

THE Taliban are fighting a lost cause and must accept peace talks, the father of Malala Yousafzai says, accepting a key French award for the Pakistani schoolgirl shot for campaigning for girls' education.

In an impassioned speech after accepting the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Womens' Freedom on behalf of the 15-year-old, Ziauddin Yousafzai said his daughter was supported by the world and by God.

"She fell but Pakistan stood up. And the whole world - north, south, east and west - supported her," he said. "God protected her and protected the cause of humanity and education."

In an attack that shocked the world, Malala was shot in the head by a Taliban hitman as her school bus made its way through the town of Mingora in Pakistan's northwestern Swat Valley in October.

The bullet grazed her brain, coming within centimetres of killing her, travelling through her head and neck before lodging in her left shoulder. She was then treated in a British hospital.

Yousafzai said the Taliban should now see the writing on the wall and "learn from this incident.

"They should come to talks and to peace and to humanity," he said, referring to Pakistan's population and saying that if they wanted to impose their will "they will have to kill 180 million people and that's impossible."

Despite coming from a male-dominated society, he quoted a woman Pakistani poet Rabia Basri who wrote: "There has been no lady prophet in history and no woman has been stupid enough to claim to be God."

Yousafzai added: "In my part of the world, fathers are known by their sons. Daughters are very much neglected. I am one of the few fortunate fathers who is known by their daughter."

Excerpts from Malala's blog, which earned her the wrath of the Taliban and made her a global icon of courage and hope, were read out to sustained applause.

An entry said: "On my way from school to home I heard a man saying 'I will kill you'. I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back to see if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone."

Malala's father also evoked the plight of an Indian medical student who was brutally gang-raped in New Delhi and died in a Singapore hospital as well as "girls who are shot, who burn themselves because of child marriage and those who are raped."

Yousafzai's daughter first rose to prominence aged just 11 with a blog for the BBC's Urdu-language service charting her life in Swat under the Taliban, whose two-year reign of terror supposedly came to an end there with an army operation in 2009.

Her attempted murder has sparked calls for her to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yousafzai also called for a change in global politics, saying his country has suffered enormously in an era when "our children were orphaned, our women were widowed and our schools were lost."

"Let's have politics for the people. People should not be sacrificed at the altar of the state," he said, reminding the audience that were about 160 million children out of school worldwide.

Last month Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari announced a $US10 million ($A9.57 million) donation for a global war chest to educate all girls by 2015 set up in Malala's name.

The Malala Fund for Girls' Right to Education aims at raising billions of dollars to ensure that all girls go to school by 2015 in line with United Nations Millennium goals.

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30 to 50 reported hurt in NY ferry crash

POLICE and fire officials say 30 to 50 people have been injured when a ferry struck a dock during rush hour in New York City's financial district.

News reports say the Seastreak Wall Street ferry from New Jersey banged into the mooring as it arrived.

Officials say one person is in a critical condition with head injuries.

Some patients were carried out strapped to stretchers, their heads and necks immobilised. About a dozen passengers on stretchers were spread out on the dock, surrounded by emergency workers.

A corner of the ferry appeared to have been ripped open on Wednesday morning.

A receptionist at Seastreak says she doesn't have any information but says company officials are at the scene trying to gather information.

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Nine killed in Kenyan clash

NINE people have been killed in the latest unrest in southeast Kenya, officials said, raising concern over security less than two months before the first polls since deadly post-electoral violence five years ago.

Violence in the Tana River region first erupted in August, pitting the Pokomo farming community against their Orma pastoralist neighbours and leading to a series of vicious reprisal killings and attacks.

Regional police chief Aggrey Adoli said local politicians were being investigated for their role in the attack, after around a hundred raiders launched a pre-dawn attack on Wednesday on the Orma village of Nduru, carrying out killings and setting fire to homes.

"They will have to face prosecution...very soon we will catch up with them," he told reporters, without saying exactly who the suspects were.

Three of the nine killed were believed to be from the attackers, said Caleb Kilunde, a local Kenya Red Cross official said.

"The situation remains volatile ... with rumours of a revenge attack being planned," Kilunde said, adding that three of those wounded had deep cuts to the head.

Initially eight were reported dead, but the toll later rose to nine after one died in hospital, leaving four critically wounded, the Red Cross said.

Funerals for those villagers killed were held on Wednesday afternoon, as angry residents burned the corpses of two of the attackers.

"They prevented the police from carrying away the bodies...they burnt them to ashes," Kilunde said.

Those killed included members of both the Orma and Pokomo, taking the number of those killed since the clashes began last year to more than 140. In December, at least 45 people were killed in an attack.

The two communities have clashed in the past, violence that has often been attributed to disputes over water and grazing rights.

But the scale and intensity of recent killings - with women and children hacked to death or torched in their huts - has shocked many, with some locals accusing politicians of fuelling the spate of attacks.

Elections five years ago descended into deadly post-poll killings that shattered Kenya's image as a beacon of regional stability, with at least 1100 people killed and more than 600,000 displaced.

The upcoming March 4 elections are for the presidency and parliament, as well as for regional gubernatorial posts and local councils. The run-up to the vote has been marked by renewed tensions both at the national political and grassroots levels.

Kenya is battling a number of security threats, including a series of grenade attacks blamed on Islamist militants, supporters of Somalia's al-Qaeda linked Shebab.

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