BBC news 2008-05-26 加文本

BBC News with John Jason.

The head of the Lebanese army, General Michel Suleiman, has been sworn in as the country’s new president, ending months of political deadlock marked by violent clashes. In his first comments after being elected by parliament, General Suleiman called for reconciliation and said he would be committed to national interests rather than factional or sectarian goals. Jim Muir reports.

General Suleiman’s election was of course a foregone conclusion. All sides had agreed to vote for him. But in a country where things often go so spectacularly wrong, it was a huge relief for many Lebanese to find themselves with a new president at last. They’ve been without one for 6 months, because of a bitter political deadlock that's paralyzed normal life here for the past year and a half. General Suleiman’s election is part of a broader resolution which seal the formation of a new national unity government within the next few weeks.

The South African President Thabo Mbeki has condemned the wave of attacks on foreign migrant workers as shameful acts which he says have blemished the name of the country. In a national radio and television address to mark Africa Day, a day to celebrate African unity, Mr. Mbeki says South Africa risks being taken back to a past of violent conflict that no one can afford.

"Never since the birth of our democracy have we witnessed such callousness. As part of the reflection that Africa Day requires of all of us, we must acknowledge the events of the past two weeks as an absolute disgrace".

More than 50 people have been killed and 25,000 left homeless in two weeks of attacks across the country. The Mozambican government said thousands of its citizens had returned home to escape the violence.(www.hxen.net)

An unmanned probe is scheduled to land shortly near the North Pole of Mars. Scientists from the American Space Agency NASA say they won’t know if the landing has been successful until it starts receiving radio signals from the probe which take about 15 minutes to reach Earth. Christine McGourty reports.

After a nine-month journey through space, now the most hazardous part of the mission is approaching. A fiery descends through the Martian atmosphere that's known as the seven minutes of terror. More than half of all Mars missions have failed, but if all goes well, the robot will spend three months on the surface, digging beneath the soil to reach water that's thought to be frozen underground. Samples will be analyzed by experiments on board for any signs that if any higher life have existed there in the past and might even still be there now.

An international donor meeting held in the Burmese city of Rangoon has pledged nearly $50 million in aid to the thousands of victims of Cyclone Nargis, which struck Burma more than three weeks ago. But some western donors, including Britain, said the money was contingent on Burma’s Generals keeping their promise to give foreign aid workers greater access to people in the worst-affected area, the Irrawaddy Delta.

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Hundreds of thousands of people have turned out in Argentina for separate rallies by farmers in the government who're in the middle of a bitter dispute which has led to massive protests and disruption. The Argentine farmers who are profiting from high global commodity prices say a new regime of taxes, export limits and price caps on their produce is unfair. But President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner told the rally that policies were aimed at redistributing wealth to all Argentines.

The main opposition party in India, the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has emerged as a clear winner in elections for a new state assembly in Karnataka. Official result showed that the BJP is three seats short of an overall majority, but well ahead of congress which leads the national coalition government.

Polls have closed in Ukrainian capital, Kiev in an election seen as an important test ahead of a presidential vote due in less than two years. Exit polls suggest that the city’s independent Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky is likely to be reelected while candidates backed by the three presidential hopefuls seem to be heading for disappointing results. Gabriel Gatehouse reports from Kiev.

Two separate exit polls suggest that the incumbent Leonid Chernovetsky, who is not directly linked to any of the major national parties, has held on to his job and by quite a comfortable margin. That's disappointing news for the Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko who triggered this snap election to try (to) unseat the current mayor. But the same exit polls also suggest a tight race for second place between the Prime Minister’s candidate and former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko, also known as Dr Iron Fist.

For the first time in 21 years, a film made in France has won the top prize of the Cannes Film Festival, “La Palme d’Or”. Entre les Murs, known in English as ‘the class’, sees modern multi-cultural France through the lens of a single classroom at a tough Parisian high school.

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