BBC news 2009-08-26 加文本

BBC 2009-08-26


Download Audio

BBC News with Victoria Meakin.

At least 40 people have been killed and more than 60 injured in a huge bomb explosion in the center of southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Rescue workers have been searching through the rubble for survivors. Chris Morris reports from Kabul.

The attack took place in the early evening when Afghans were breaking their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Officials in Kandahar say that they believed a huge bomb was hidden in a petrol tanker or a truck. Windows across the city were shattered by the force of the blast. The offices of a Japanese-owned construction company were destroyed. And a number of nearby buildings including a wedding hall were badly damaged. Local officials have blamed Taliban for the attack in a region where the insurgency is strong.

Hours earlier, preliminary results from last week’s presidential election in Afghanistan showed President Karzai with a narrow lead over his nearest rival Abdullah Abdullah. With 10% of all the ballots counted, the election commission said Mr. Karzai have 41% of the votes to 39% for Mr. Abdullah.

Iraq and Syria have recalled their ambassadors from each other’s capitals in a row over last week’s suicide bombings in Baghdad which killed more than 100 people. Iraqi state television has broadcasted the alleged confession of an organizer of the bombings who said he’d received his orders from 2 Syrian-based members of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist party. Our Arab affairs analyst Midi Abudhadi reports.

Last week, the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki traveled to Damascus for talks on security cooperation and the visit ended with the host reiterating their commitment to help Iraq become stable and prosperous. But the decision by the two governments to recall the ambassadors underlines that behind the diplomatic niceties serious tensions between the two countries remain. Ever since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, both Baghdad and Washington have pointed the finger at Syria for harboring Iraqis and other Arab militants banned on overthrowing the Iraqi government.

Special fraud police in Nigeria say they are preparing to make further arrests of prominent businessmen and other debtors who owe billions of dollars to the country’s troubled banks. The move comes with the imminent expiry of a deadline for those owing money to return it. From Lagos, Caroline Duffield reports.

The chief of Nigeria special fraud police Farida Waziri says that her officers are preparing to question Nigeria’s elite debtors. They include some of the wealthiest and most powerful tycoons in Africa. They are being blamed for bringing five major banks close to collapse while failing to pay their debts. Many of the individual and businesses publicly named by the Nigerian authorities are protesting. They say that they are disputing bank charges, or that they have serviced their loans or the authorities have got the numbers wrong.

This is the World News from the BBC in London.

Leading French bankers have agreed to curb excessive bonuses after being summoned to a meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy. Bank leaders said the bonuses would now only be based on long-term profits rather than short-term speculation. And there would be penalties for traders who subsequently lose money.

President Obama has nominated Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairmen of the Federal Reserve, the United States central bank. The president said Mr. Bernanke had shown calmness and creativity in facing the financial crisis. Here is our economics correspondent Andrew Walker.

He has faced the biggest challenge of any Federal Reserve boss since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Indeed Mr. Bernanke’s aim over the last year has been to prevent a repeat of that episode. Under his leadership, the Fed has taken a wide range of measures, some of them innovative, intended to contain the financial crisis and stimulate a wider economic recovery. The US economy has contracted sharply in the last year and unemployment has climbed.  But without the Fed’s response it would almost certainly had been worse, perhaps very much worse.

A mass burial has been held in Tanzania for 12 school girls aged between 13 and 16 who died in a fire in their dormitory on Saturday. The bodies were burned beyond recognition. They have to be placed in unnamed graves until they can be identified individually by DNA testing. Tanzanian police say the fire was probably caused by a candle used by one of the girls to study at night.

A group of engineers from Hampshire in the south of England have broken the world's longest standing land speed record, the fastest speed for a steam driven car. The record breaking car, nicknamed “the world’s fastest kettle” reached an average speed of 225 kilometers per hour over 2 runs at the Edward’s Air Force Base in California. The previous record was set by an American, 103 years ago.

BBC News.