BBC news 2010-05-29 加文本

2010-05-29 BBC

BBC News with David Austin

In a bid to answer recent criticism, President Obama is paying a second visit to Louisiana to supervise the clean-up of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. He is expected to spend two hours in the area. The spill now ranks as the worst in American history. Here is the BBC's America's editor Mark Mardell.

President Obama has flown over the maze of waterways and green marshlands before his tour of the stricken beaches. He's earlier said that anyone who thinks the federal government hasn't done enough doesn't know the facts, but he admitted they had made three errors - not anticipating a disaster like this could happen, underestimating the size of the leak and not dealing fast enough with what he called the corrupt relationship between government and the oil industry. The criticism began in Washington, but the mood here in Louisiana is changing. There's a sense of hopelessness and anger towards the president now as well as BP.

Gunmen have attacked two mosques belonging to a minority sect in the Pakistani city of Lahore. At least 70 people have been killed and more than 80 injured. Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad has this report.

Police say that both mosques have now been secured but it took hours. In that time, gunmen and suicide bombers killed and injured scores of worshippers who'd been packed in the buildings for Friday prayers. They all belong to a minority sect of Islam, the Ahmadis, and the hardline Muslims here consider Ahmadis to be non-Muslims. They had been targeted by militants in the past, but this is the biggest attack on the community in years. And Lahore, which has seen suicide bombings at security and civilian targets alike in the last year, now has major sectarian tension to contend with as well.

A spokesman for Indian Railways says at least 100 people are now believed to have been killed in a train crash in eastern India. A passenger train derailed, and carriages were thrown onto an adjacent track into the path of a goods train. Police have said Maoist rebels sabotaged the railway line, but a Maoist leader has contacted the BBC to deny it.

The United Nations Security Council has authorized pulling out 2,000 peacekeepers from the Democratic Republic of Congo. That's just 10% of peacekeeping force there and far less than the Congolese government had demanded. Here is our UN correspondent Barbara Plett.

The Security Council voted unanimously to withdraw 2,000 UN troops by the end of June from areas where the security situation permits. The rest of the force will remain deployed for another year, tasked with protecting civilians and building Congo's security sector. The Congolese government had demanded that the force pull out by December 2011 because it sees the UN military presence as a violation of its sovereignty, but the Security Council agreed that any further draw-down would be determined by certain benchmarks. These include the end of military operations against rebel groups in the east of the country, the extension of government authority in these areas and a stronger and more professional Congolese army able to take over from the UN.

Barbara Plett

World News from the BBC

The Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao who's visiting South Korea is reported to have said that China will not protect any side over the sinking of a South Korean warship. Officials in Seoul say he told South Korea's president that China was still reviewing the evidence and would make an objective judgment. An international investigation has accused North Korea of torpedoing the ship in March.

Police in the South African city of Johannesburg have been called in to control angry crowds tried to buy tickets for the football World Cup after the computerized ticketing system crashed for several hours. The system also collapsed last month when over-the-counter sales first began in South Africa. From Johannesburg, here is Jonah Fisher.

FIFA has been releasing unsold tickets slowly but this Friday it said the last 90,000 seats including the final itself would go on sale. Large queues gathered outside the sale centres, and as the doors opened the system crashed. With many people having waited all night, the police had to be brought in to control the queues. This was supposed to be the start of FIFA's final push to sell the remaining 5% of tickets that it still holds. Not for the first time in this process, it's ended in embarrassment.

France has been chosen to host the European International Football Championship in 2016. The French bid was chosen by European football's governing body UEFA over rival bids from Turkey and Italy. The European Championship is the continent's main international tournament and is considered the world's third biggest sporting event in terms of television audiences and commercial value.

A court in Switzerland has upheld the appeal of a man who'd been fined for hiking in the nude. The case in the conservative and devout region of Appenzell was the first since a local law was introduced which prohibits naked rambling. The man had argued that this regional law was unfair as under Swiss federal law public nudity isn't a crime.

That's the latest BBC News.