BBC news 2008-08-31 加文本

Torrential rain and large waves are battering Cuba as Hurricane Gustav moves across the western tip of the island. Michael Voss has just sent this report from Havana.

Hurricane Gustav is currently moving across the western tip of Cuba with winds of up to 240 kilometers an hour, the authorities rushed to evacuate, almost a quarter of a million people before the storm hit. There‘re already reports of widespread coastal flooding in the tobacco-growing province of Pinar del Rio, a neighboring Havana province. Gustav knocked power out in several parts of the capital Havana, winds blasted sheets of rains through exposed streets, while large waves poured over the famous seafront promenade, the Malecon .

Meanwhile, authorities in the American state of Louisiana, where Gustav could strike on Monday or Tuesday, have begun evacuating vulnerable groups of people. Correspondents say they are anxious to avoid a repeat of Hurricane Katrina, which smashed into the state three years ago, leaving hundreds dead. The Mayor of the city of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, strongly advised people to leave.

"Today is about, get out. We are strongly encouraging, tourists definitely get out. And then next time you will hear, it is gonna be, get the heck out, mandatorily, get the heck out. And we're gonna continue to do that as time goes on, but once this storm gets in the Gulf of Mexico, and people really see how big and dangerous it is, and that's gonna help our efforts to encourage people to leave."

Italy has agreed to invest about five billion dollars in Libya as compensation for its 30-year colonial rule of the country. The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said the investment was an acknowledgement of the deep wounds that Italy had inflicted on Libya during the last century. Michael Becannon reports from the Libyan capital Tripoli, where the agreement was signed.

The deal is Italy paid Libya five billion dollars, more than two and a half billion pounds over the next 25 years. The Italian Prime Minister called the agreement a concrete and model acknowledgement of the damage inflicted on Libya by Italy during the colonial era. Rome invaded Lybia in 1911, and turned the country into an Italian colony in the 1930s. During its rule, tens of thousands of people were killed, while others were forced to remove from their homes and sent into concentration camps. Colonel Gaddafi said the deal wiped the shame from Italy's forehead.

The German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned that the deterioration in ties between Russia and Georgia could spiral out of control because of the conflict in the Caucasus. In a newspaper interview, he said this had to be prevented, and that Europe needed to play a strong role. A special European Union summit on the Georgia crisis is due to begin on Monday. Earlier on Saturday, the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he will welcome European governments sending more observers to Georgia.

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The main militant group in Nigeria says it's carried out a series of attacks on the military in the oil-rich Niger Delta region, killing at least 29 soldiers. The military has denied the allegation. The group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, said fighters had used rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles to carry out three separate attacks in the oil-rich region.

Non-governmental organizations in Kenya have defended themselves against accusations that they were responsible for causing the violence that followed December's disputed presidential election. The accusations were made by a committee set up to investigate the violence.  V.N. Smith has more.

The seven-member independent review committee was sworn in in March following an explosion of violence that followed Kenya's presidential election. Its task [is] to look at how the votes were counted and to examine the independence of the Kenyan Election Commission. Now, the chair of the panel says while there were clearly flaws in the process, he doesn't believe it was fraudulent. Instead he accuses non-governmental organizations of fanning the flames of discontent by making statements about a stolen election. One lawyer said the panel was failing to comprehend that deliberate acts could have caused the violence.

Marches are being held throughout Mexico to protest against the wave of killings, kidnappings and shoot-outs, most of them drugs related, which have claimed lives of more than 2,700 people so far this year. Demonstrations are being held in each of Mexico's 32 states. And the organizers are hoping that more than half of a million people would take part. The Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 25,000 troops throughout the country to combat crime.

And 22 people have been killed and more than a hundred injured in an earthquake in southwestern China. The quake struck the southwestern provinces of SiChuan and Yunnan on Saturday afternoon. More than a thousand houses are said to have collapsed, burying some people in the ruins and rescue efforts have been hampered by heavy rain.

BBC News.