BBC news 2008-03-26 加文本

BBC 2008-03-26

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BBC News with John Jason.

At least 30 people have been killed in heavy fighting between Iraqi security forces and the powerful Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, in the southern city of Basra. The military operation is being led by the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who says it's aimed at cleaning up Basra of criminals, terrorist forces and outlaws. Crispin Thorold reports from Baghdad.

The fighting in Basra has been fierce. The Iraqi army fired heavy artillery. The operation's commander said that they were targeting outlaws, in reality that seems to mean the Mahdi Army, the powerful Shiite militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr. British ground troops based in Basra airport were not involved, but the coalition provided air cover. As night fell, the violence abated. There was also fighting in other parts of Iraq. In the capital, members of the Mahdi Army clashed with another Shiite militia. The group also took control of several areas in the city of Kout between Baghdad and Basra. (www.hXen.com)

The US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has been explaining how she came to misrepresent a visit she made to Bosnia during the 1990s. Last week Mrs. Clinton said she had to run to avoid sniper fire when she arrived at Tuzla airport in the aftermath of the Bosnia war. But TV footage has emerged showing a different version of events, as Kevin Connolly reports from Washington.

Hillary Clinton's original description of her arrival at Tuzla airport in Bosnia was vivid and thrilling, and entirely at variance with what really happened. She spoke, for example, of how a welcoming ceremony had to be abandoned, a sniper fire forced members of her official party to run for their lives. Unfortunately for Senator Clinton, plenty of television footage has survived showing the actual circumstances of her arrival which were very different. She smiled and waved as she left her aircraft and then strolled across the airport tarmac to greet a little girl who read her a poem.

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A regular monthly survey of American consumer shows confidence in the US economy has slumped to its lowest point since March 2003. The poll of 5000 households is one of the most carefully watched measures of confidence in the US. Our economics correspondent Andrew Walker reports.

A senior executive of the agency which runs the survey, The Conference Board, said that consumers' confidence in the state of economy continues to fade. She said that they were quite pessimistic about the outlook for the jobs market and for their own incomes. One particular measure of expectations is at its lowest since 1973. Confidence is seen as giving important clues about consumers' willingness to spend in the coming month that in turn is vital for the economic outlook, because consumer spending accounts for about 70% of the US economy.

Riot police have clashed with several thousand opposition activists in the Belarus capital Minsk as they broke up a demonstration held in defiance of a government ban. Reports say the police waded into the crowd beating protestors with truncheons and violently dragging them onto waiting buses. Human rights activists say more than 100 people have been detained.(wWw.hxen.net)

The government in Nigeria says the Health Minister has resigned after being charged with corruption. A presidential spokesman said the minister Adenike Grange and her deputy had been accused by Nigeria's anti-corruption agency of stealing more than 3 million dollars in unspent funds from last year's budget. Fourteen other senior officials in the Health Ministry have been suspended.

The Lebanese government has announced that it will boycott the Arab Summit due to be held this weekend in the Syrian capital Damascus. The Information Minister Ghazi al-Iridi said parliament's repeated failure to elect a president had made it impossible for Lebanon to attend the meeting. The western-backed Lebanese government accuses Syria of meddling in its affairs and blocking the election of a new president, a charge Syria denies.

BBC News.