BBC news 2009-12-29 加文本

2009-12-29 BBC

BBC News with Imp Parton.

President Obama has announced heightened security in the wake of the failed attack three days ago on a US airliner approaching Detroit. In a televised address, Mr Obama said he’d ordered extra air marshals to travel on planes and improve screening at airports. He announced an inquiry into how a Nigerian man who was charged with trying to blow up the plane had been able to board it. From Washington, here is Imtiaz Tyab.

In his first public address since the attempted attack, president Obama promised his administration would not rest until those involved were captured and trialed. On December 25th, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab allegedly tried to set off an explosive strap to his leg as the Detroit bound flight he was traveling on was about to land. The 23-year-old Nigerian has since been charged. Meanwhile, shortly before the president statement, a regional wing of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the failed attack saying it was in retaliation for a US operation against the group in Yemen.

At least 20 people are thought to have died in clashes between an Islamist sect and security forces of the northern Nigerian city of Bauchi. Caroline Duffield reports from Lagos.

The violence began at around 10 am according to people in Zango, about a kilometer south of the state capital. The authorities were called by local residents who said that they were alarmed by open air preaching by religious group known as Kala Kato. The special media assistant, the Bauchi state governor Alhaji Mohammed, told the BBC that local military had been deployed other accounts spoke of a feared police unit, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. Shots were fired; the authorities retreated and then returned in greater numbers. Women and children were cleared from the area when shooting began.

Police in Pakistan say at least 25 people were killed in Karachi in a suicide bomb attack on a procession of Shiite Muslims marking the holy day of Ashura. Eyewitnesses say some people in the procession reacted violently attacking security officers, journalists and ambulance workers.

Three custom officials working in an airport in Northern Spain have been arrested as part of an international drugs smuggling ring. Detectives seized two tons of cocaine on board a plane from Colombia, reportedly the biggest drugs shipment by air in Spain’s history. Sara Rainsford reports from Madrid.

The plane was loaded with a consignment of cut flowers, but beneath 47,000 roses and carnations laying illegal cargo of cocaine. Spain’s interior ministry has released pictures showing how the drugs were packed into the base of wooden pallets. Police found more than 2000 kilograms of what they described as extremely pure cocaine. It’d been flown into northern Spain from Colombia. It’s the first time a plane used exclusively to smuggle drugs has been seized here. It follows a police investigation launched last year and code-named "flower power" according to Spanish media.
World News from the BBC.

President Obama has expressed his solidarity with those arrested in Iran’s anti-government protests and demanded their immediate release. He said the United States strongly condemned what he called the violent and unjust suppression of innocent Iranian citizens. Earlier Iran’s authorities detained several leading opposition figures.

The authorities in Afghanistan say a military operation by international forces on Saturday left 10 civilians dead, most of them school children. President Hamid Karzai condemned the operation which he said took place in the eastern province of Kunar and appointed a team to investigate. But the spokesman for the NATO-led forces denied any knowledge of the death and said he had no record of any military operations in that area.

Hundreds of foreign activists have been protesting in Cairo against Egypt’s refusal to let them travel to Gaza. The activists were planning to take aid convoys there to express their solidarity with the Palestinians and to mark the anniversary of the start of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza last year. Yolanda Nell reports from Cairo.

Some 1300 protestors from over 40 countries came to Egypt to take part in the Gaza freedom march. After the Egyptian authorities told the convoy it could not pass through its Rafa crossing because of escalating tensions on the border, participants began their demonstrations in Cairo. Several are now on hunger strike outside a UN building on the Nile and about 200 remain camped outside the French embassy surrounded by Egyptian riot police.
 
New Yorkers and visitors to the city have been invited to say goodbye to bad memories from 2009 by shredding documents, letters and photos in a public ceremony. They’d been asked to come to Times Square to put unpleasant pieces of paper into shredders. And for items that can’t be shredded, the organizers of what’s called Good Riddance Day have provided a sledge hammer and a large waste container.

BBC News.