BBC news 2008-10-18 加文本

Foreign journalists in China will continue to enjoy the extra reporting rights that were introduced for the Olympic Games. At a late night news conference minutes before the freedoms were due to expire, a foreign ministry spokesman said China believed it was important to open up to the outside world and to achieve better mutual understanding. Jill McGivering reports:

The announcement came at the very last minute, just as the rules for foreign journalists were expiring. It's likely to be applauded by journalists and media watchdogs. The decision means foreign journalists who are based in China can continue to carry out interviews without first applying for official permission. In practice, the new rules are far from perfect. In the last 18 months, there have been hundreds of examples of foreign journalists being followed by the police, harassed and intimidated, either because officials in the provinces didn't know about the new rules or chose to ignore them.

Four days of negotiations in Zimbabwe have failed to produce an agreement on the composition of a power-sharing cabinet. The main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said he and President Robert Mugabe were far apart on the principle of the equitable sharing of power. Mr. Tsvangirai said he was worried that his own party, the Movement for Democratic Change, was being sidelined.

"We believe that for an inclusive government to work, the principle of equitable sharing of power consistent with the spirit of the global political agreement signed on the 15th of September should be embraced. It appears we're far apart on this principle. We're concerned that there is an attempt to reduce the MDC to a meaningless position in the Coalition government. "

Mr. Mugabe said the negotiations had gone, in his words, in the wrong direction. But the mediator, the former South African President Thabo Mbeki, said the discussions would continue.

Aid workers in the Sudanese region of Darfur say more than 20, 000 people who were displaced by fighting 6 weeks ago are still living in the desert in desperate conditions. They fled their villages in North Darfur when Sudanese government forces attacked rebels in the region. The United Nations is trying to find a way to fly basic supplies into the area. A UN official in north Darfur Gregory Alex said people were living in terrible conditions.

"Some of them are just living, you know, in the hills, the rocks, the valleys, fairly uNPRotected, with whatever they took with them, that's what they have. So I would guess that their access to the basic necessities [is] extremely limited. "

The United States says North Korea has kept its promise and reversed steps to restart its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. A State Department spokesman in Washington, Sean McCormack said the North Koreans had replaced seals on the reactor and reinstalled surveillance equipment. Pyongyang agreed to resume its stalled nuclear disarmament program after the US removed the communist state from its terrorism blacklist. North Korea tested a nuclear device in 2006.

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A top political committee in Iraq has adjourned its debates on a draft agreement with the United States that could see the withdrawal of American troops in three years' time. There is no indication when the Political Council for National Security will resume discussing the deal or if it will finally approve it, despite months of negotiations by senior Iraqi officials.

The United States has imposed a travel ban on some members of the military government in Mauritania.The U.S. Embassy in Nouakchott said the officials would not be allowed to visit America because they were blocking the return of constitutional order in Mauritania. The military overthrew Mauritania's first democratically elected President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi in August.

Five new countries, Japan, Turkey, Austria, Mexico and Uganda have been elected to serve as non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council for the next 2 years. The unsuccessful candidates were Iceland and Iran. Laura Trevelyan reports:(Www.hxen.net)

Japan's election to the UN Security Council and its defeat of Iran was expected. Japan is an established major power and the second biggest contributor of funds to the United Nations after the US. Iran, which is actually under UN Security Council sanctions over its nuclear program, only got 32 votes, a performance Britain's ambassador was quick to describe as a thrashing. Austria and Turkey won the two European seats defeating Iceland. Turkey's pitch for election was its role as a bridge between East and West with an understanding of the problems in the Middle East. Austria emphasized its historic support of the UN. Mexico and Uganda were elected unopposed.

Levi Stubbs, the lead singer of the Four Tops, one of the most successful American groups of the 1960s, has died at his home in Detroit, aged 72. Stubbs was the robust-voiced front man for a string of big hits for the Motown group, including "Reach out I'll Be There", "Simple Game” and "Bernadette".

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