BBC news 2009-08-20 加文本

BBC 2009-08-20


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BBC News with Mike Cooper.

The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered a review of security after 95 people were killed in a series of bomb attacks in Baghdad, the deadliest attack in the city for over a year. At least five bombs exploded near government buildings as James Robbins reports.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's political survival depends on delivering greater safety for his people, the promise he made when American troops withdrew from frontline combat. Those behind today's attacks are determined he should fail. The shocking casualty figures do threaten to throw into reverse a long-term decline in violence since the worst days of 2006.But the Iraqi government's grand strategy, trying to squeeze extremists to the margins, has not yet failed. And a senior advisor to the government insists Iraq's own forces are better equipped for success than the Americans.

Anti-corruption investigators in Nigeria have given some of the country's leading business people five days to repay billions of dollars to failing banks or face arrest. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission says it’s working with other law enforcement agencies to stop them from fleeing the country. From Lagos, here is Caroline Duffield.

Nigeria's new central bank governor has made good on his threat. Last week, he said that he’d name people defaulting on massive bank loans. He has now done so, publishing names on the central bank's website. The top people of Nigeria's corporate and financial establishment are there, and some politicians, even a government ministry. The amounts of money owed run to hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases. Nigerians will not be surprised at the names, but the public shaming of people in the elite is unheard of. There has always been a culture of impunity for the powerful here.

A young South African runner who's undergone tests to determine her sex has won the women's 800 meters final at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin. Caster Semenya led from the start and won the race by a large margin. The athletics ruling body, the IAAF ordered the tests after a much improved performance by the 18-year-old runner in the African Youth Championships last month. The results of the tests won’t be available for several weeks.

On the eve of the presidential election in Afghanistan, the security forces say they've killed three insurgents who'd occupied a bank building in the capital Kabul. A gun battle took place as the security forces stormed the building. The attack happened despite heightened security ahead of the vote which the Taliban have vowed to disrupt. The government has come under severe criticism for ordering a ban on media reporting violence on election day.

Manager of a nightclub in Argentina has been given a 20-year prison sentence for a fire which killed 194 people at his club in 2005. It was started when someone let off a firework, but hundreds of people were trapped inside the building because the fire doors had been locked.

World News from the BBC.

The Swiss bank UBS has agreed to hand over to the US tax authorities the account details of 4500 American clients suspected of breaking US tax laws. It ends a long-running dispute between the US and Switzerland who had argued that handing over the information would violate banking secrecy laws. The US Justice Department had sought the details of more than 50,000 American-held accounts in UBS.

The Scottish parliament will announce on Thursday whether it will release the Libyan man jailed for life for the bombing of a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie in 1988. The man, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is suffering from prostate cancer. And a specialist who visited him in prison last month says he only has a short time to live. Peter Hunt reports.

After days of deliberations, the Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has reached a decision. The Minister has been grappling with whether or not Megrahi, a convicted mass murderer, should return to Tripoli either on compassionate grounds or to complete his sentence in a Libyan jail. The American government believes he should die behind bars in Scotland. However, it’s expected that Megrahi will be allowed home to die with his family.

Brazil has criticized rich countries for their policies on climate change, saying there is no alternative to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim was particularly critical of carbon trading schemes whereby countries offset their carbon dioxide emissions by paying for environmental schemes elsewhere. He said that rich countries could not keep their CO2 emissions as they are and compensate the rest of the world with money.

The International Cricket Council is investigating suspicious betting patterns linked to the current Ashes Series in England. An Australian player told his team managers he was approached by a man suspected of having links with illegal bookmakers shortly after the second test match last month. The last deciding test begins at Kennington Oval in south London tomorrow morning.

BBC News.