BBC news 2010-02-19 加文本

2010-02-19 BBC

BBC News with Michael Powles.

A coup attempt appears to be underway in Niger. Soldiers have fought their way into the presidential palace and taken the head of state, Mamadou Tandja, to a military barracks. Jonny Hogg reports.

Latest information says that President Tandja has now been separated from his ministers and taken to an unknown military camp. French diplomats have confirmed that he is indeed in the hands of a mutinous faction of the army after soldiers stormed the presidential offices, where a cabinet meeting was underway. The heavy exchanges of fire, which broke out on Thursday afternoon, have left at least three people dead and ten injured. Exactly which part of the military carried out the operation remains unclear. Niger has been rocked by months of political crisis after the president changed the constitution to remain in power.

The West African regional grouping, ECOWAS, has told the BBC it's closely following developments in Niger. The organization's Political Director Abdel-Fatau Musah said that if needed, ECOWAS would be in the country as quickly as it could to ensure order was maintained.

.....DaLai一段省略........

The calculation from the United States is simply that they are doing all they can to make this visit as low-key as possible. There were no televised pictures of the two men meeting, for example, and there has been a very brief statement by the White House. But they are really trying to ensure that this does not have any of the trappings of a full-blown political visit. They know that the Chinese are blustering about this, but I think the calculation is this won't actually impact relations between the two countries severely.

The European Commission in Brussels has told the Internet companies Microsoft and Yahoo that they can go ahead with a 44-billion-dollar merger of their Internet search business. The tie-up was also being approved in the United States. Here is our Europe business reporter Nigel Cassidy.

The deal is significant because companies that control the search engines that computer users use to browse the web are in the best position to earn revenue as people click through to commercial sites. This arrangement, which will last for ten years, should help Microsoft in its aim of challenging the long preeminence of Google. Yahoo had originally planned to work with Google itself, but that idea was ruled out by the authorities. For Yahoo, the 10-year arrangement will save it the cost of running its own search engines.

The international police agency, Interpol, says it's put on its most wanted list - 11 people suspected of killing a senior member of the militant group Hamas in Dubai last month. The head of the Dubai police says he's 99% certain the Israeli secret service, Mossad, was behind the murder of the man, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Israel says there's no proof.

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The United Nations head of Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes, has criticized the performance of aid agencies following last month's earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people in Haiti. In a leaked email to agencies, Mr Holmes, who visited Haiti after the earthquake, said that much had been achieved, but that many of their efforts had been poorly coordinated and resourced.

The Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has sacked two deputy ministers and 16 senior police officers as part of a drive to reform law enforcement agencies. President Medvedev also called for tough punishment against officers who abused their position. From Moscow, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports.

This was a tough speech by President Medvedev. He lashed out at Russia's bloated police force for solving barely half the crimes it investigates. He said 2,000 murders and attempted murders go unsolved in Russia each year, and he called the figure "frightening". He also alluded to the extraordinary number of crimes committed by the police themselves. But analysts say chastising Russia's 1.4 million officers in public and firing a few top generals will do little to change the culture of abuse and corruption.

The Afghan Interior Ministry says a NATO air strike aimed at insurgents missed its target and instead hit a police vehicle, killing seven policemen. A spokesman for the ministry said the air strike followed an attack by insurgents on a joint NATO and Afghan military convoy in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. He said an investigation was taking place.

A small plane has crashed into a building in Austin in the US state of Texas, and officials are investigating whether it was deliberate. The plane hit the second floor of the building, which contained federal tax offices, and burst into flames. Officials were quoted as saying that the pilot has set his own house on fire before the crash, and they were investigating whether he had deliberately targeted the tax offices.

And that's the latest BBC News.