BBC news 2008-11-16 加文本

BBC 2008-11-16

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BBC News with Marian Marshall

The leaders from 20 of the world’s biggest economies have agreed a six-point action plan to stimulate worldwide economic growth at their summit in Washington. They also agreed to set a deadline of the 31st of March for proposals to improve how international markets are regulated and monitored. Greg Wood reports from Washington.

The G20 leaders know they have to deliver something to restore a little confidence. Some members within this new family of nations would like to see the summit agree a coordinated round of tax cuts and increases in government spending to kick start the world economy. It’s doubtful whether the G20 summit can agree on a global plan to revive economic growth. But it will set out new rules to monitor and control the world’s financial system to stop it malfunctioning in future. 

President Bush has said the G20 summit was very successful. He said the leaders had rejected protectionism and obstacles to free trade. He said much more work was needed to improve transparency and accountability in global financial markets.

The Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who was also in Washington said that even six months ago he would never have been able to imagine that emerging economic powers like Brazil would be given a role in restructuring the global economy which they had at the summit.

A new UN envoy to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has arrived in the east of the country on a mission to end the fighting there. He said the Congolese President Joseph Kabila hadn’t set conditions for talks with the rebels when he met him in Kinshasa on Friday. The BBC reporter Thomas Fessy is in Goma.

Olusegun Obasanjo came to talk to us as soon as he arrived and we asked him whether or not he would meet with the Tutsi rebels’ leader, the dissident General Laurent Nkunda. “Well, I will meet him before I leave.” Former Nigerian president is here to boost the peace process, everybody here is expecting a lot from his first visit. And his team, told us that, he was supposed to meet with United Nations officials from the peacekeeping mission for a quick brief before he would actually fly over the region on a UN helicopter to get a better picture of the crisis here.

More than 66 people have been killed in Burkina Faso when a bus and a truck collided and caught fire, at least thirty people were injured, many with serious burns, our West Africa correspondent Will Ross reports.

Eyewitnesses described the gruesome scene as charred bodies were still being pulled from the bus wreckage several hours after the accident, they said bodies littered the road whilst more passengers were trapped inside the bus, there were apparently seventy five passengers on board and they were headed to Ivory Coast. Close to the town of Boromo, a hundred and sixty kilometers west of the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou, the bus collided with a truck full of sugar and both vehicles burst into flames on impact.

World News from the BBC

The Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles and Santa Babara County where wildfires are blazing out of control, thousands of people have been ordered to leave their homes, police have closed the main road linking southern California to the north. Winds of over 120 kilometers of an hour have spread the fires and prevented some aircraft from dropping water on them.

The United Nations-led peacekeeping mission in Darfur is to investigate claims by rebel groups that the Sudanese government has bombed settlements in the north of the region. The Sudanese army has strongly denied this. Two days ago, President Omar al-Bashir announced an immediate cease-fire.

The President of Somalia Abdullahi Yusuf has said Islamist insurgents now control most of the country, and have advanced to the edge of the capital Mogadishu. President Yusuf was speaking to Somali parliamentarians in neighboring Kenya, a day after talks on forming a new transitional government failed.

“The government controls Mogadishu and Biadoa and people are killed there everyday, Islamist have taken over everywhere else, so I ask you parliamentarians, do you know the situation we face, who causes all these problems? We are to blame.”

President Yusuf and his Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein have been unable to agree on the make-up of a new cabinet missing a deadline issued by regional leaders last month. (WWw.hxen.net)

Thousands of people have gathered in Johannesburg, to remember one of South Africa’s best known singers and anti-apartheid campaigners Miriam Makeba who died last weekend. In an emotional memorial service fellow musicians performed her songs with the crowd joining in. Affectionately known as Mama Africa, Miriam Makeba died of a heart attack after performing in Italy, she was 76. The memorial service followed two days of national mourning.

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