BBC news 2009-08-28 加文本

BBC 2009-08-28


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BBC News with Cathy Cluston.

Officials in the Afghan capital Kabul said / the special US envoy Richard Holbrooke has been involved in a serious row with President Hamid Karzai. The BBC has learned that Mr. Holbrooke raised concern about irregularities in the recent presidential election and said that a second round run-off could make the process more credible. From Kabul, Ian Pannell reports.

A number of senior sources have confirmed the details of a meeting between Richard Holbrooke and President Karzai the day after the election. It was described as "explosive" and "a dramatic bust up". Richard Holbrooke is said to have twice raised the idea of a second round run-off because of concerns about the voting process. He is believed to have complained about the use of fraud and ballot-stuffing by some members of the president's campaign team as well as other candidates. The sources say that president Karzai reacted very angrily and that the meeting ended shortly afterwards. Afghan officials denied the reports of the meeting, while the US Embassy in Kabul said only that Mr. Holbrooke had not stormed out.

A suicide bomber has attacked a Pakistani checkpoint in the Khyber Pass on the border with Afghanistan, killing at least 22 people. The Pass has been a frequent target for Taliban militants. More from Orla Guerin, in Islamabad.

 The Bomber struck at sunset as border guards gathered for Iftar, the traditional meal which breaks the Ramadan fast. There are unconfirmed reports that a teenage boy, carrying a soft drink walked towards them and blew himself up. Witnesses say there was a massive blast which destroyed the check point. Hundreds of NATO vehicles pass through the area every day, carrying essential supplies to troops in Afghanistan.

The outgoing commander of the Darfur peace keeping force in Sudan says that after six years of conflict, the war is probably over. But General Martin Agwai said low-level skirmishes and banditry would continue, and it was vital to get a proper diplomatic settlement in Darfur.

An independent scientific review says the projected costs of coping with the impact of climate change are likely to be two or three times greater than the current United Nation's estimate. The researchers put the probable annual bill of dealing with worsening floods, droughts and storms at two or three hundred billion dollars. Richard Black reports.

There is a large amount of what you might call “guestimation” involved in all these assessments. We don't know for sure the scale of climate threats, how much sea level will rise, how much were the changes will affect crop fields and so on. And we don't know for sure how much combating these impacts would cost. The UN admits its estimates were cautious. The numbers are very important politically. Developing countries say Western economies have caused climate change and Western economies must pay for these protection measures. Without the money, there won't be a deal at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen later this year.

World News from the BBC.

The anti-corruption commission in Nigeria says it has so far recovered 170 million dollars in bad debts from five major banks which were bailed out by the Central Bank earlier this month. Billions of dollars remain outstanding. The bad loans have brought Nigeria's banking system to the brink of collapse and 68 top business executives are in custody.

Eighteen years after an 11-year-old girl was abducted in California, a woman has walked into a police station near San Francisco, saying that she is the missing person. Police say they are almost certain that the woman is Jaycee Lee Dugard. From California, Rajesh Mirchandani.

The last time Jaycee Lee Dugard was seen in public was in 1991. The 11-year-old was walking to school near her home in the east of California. Her stepfather watched helplessly as two people drove up to the girl and forced her into their car. Now 18 years later a woman has walked into a police station near San Francisco, claiming she is the missing person. A spokesman from the local sheriff department said DNA tests were being conducted, but they were 99% sure the woman is Jaycee Dugard.

A motorcade carrying the body of Senator Edward Kennedy has arrived in Boston, where dignitaries led by President Obama will attend funeral services on Saturday. Hundreds of people lined the road as the coffin, wrapped in the American flag, left the family compound at Cape Cod. Senator Kennedy will be buried near his assassinated brothers at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who's held talks in Germany with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has received a rare original set of plants for the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. More than a million people, mostly Jews were gassed to death or died from hunger or disease there. Mr. Netanyahu said that those who doubt the holocaust should come to Jerusalem to see the drawings.

BBC News.