BBC news 2010-08-22 加文本

2010-08-22 BBC

...to shape their next government after Saturday’s closely-fought general election left no party with an outright majority. With most votes counted, neither the Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard nor her conservative Liberal National Coalition opponent, Tony Abbott, is expected to be able to declare an outright victory. Nick Bryant in Sydney.

An election that’s being compared to a national soap opera has not yet produced its concluding installment because the likelihood there was a hung parliament with a handful of independents of one Green MP holding the balance of power. Election night itself was full of twists. Exit polls suggested the Labor government might scrape home. The opposition started winning marginal seats after marginal seats.

As floodwaters continue to inundate much of Pakistan, tens of thousands more people are being moved to safety. The southern province of Sindh is now described as the worst-affected area with up to four million displaced people. Jill McGivering is there in the town of Sukkur.

Families are visible everywhere—on riverbanks, open ground and along the roadside. About a tenth of the homeless have been placed in relief camps; the rest are trying to survive alone without shelter or any assurance of food. Aid is being provided, but it’s limited, and there’s enormous demand. Inside some camps, the distribution of aid is tightly controlled, supervised by armed police. Organizers are wary because fighting has broken out in recent days when desperate people mobbed aid trucks.The International Monetary Fund says the floods will present a massive economic challenge to the government and people of Pakistan. It’s announced that talks with Pakistani officials will start on Monday.

A Van Gogh painting valued at $50 million that was stolen from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo earlier on Saturday has now been recovered. The Egyptian cultural minister said two Italians were arrested at Cairo Airport, trying to smuggle the painting out of the country. Yolande Knell reports from Cairo.

Airports and ports in Egypt had been told to look out for this painting of a Vase of Poppies to make sure it wasn’t smuggled abroad. In the end, the picture estimated to be worth $50 million was discovered at Cairo Airport just hours after it was snatched. According to Egyptian officials, the painting had been cut out of its frame shortly after the Mahmoud Khalil Museum opened early in the day. The museum has one of the most impressive collections of 19th and 20th century paintings in the region.

The South African government has been granted an injunction prohibiting workers in essential services from continuing their national strike. The ruling also prevents nurses and teachers from intimidating workers who refuse to participate.

BBC News.

There’s been a mixed international reaction to Iran’s start of an operation to load fuel into its first nuclear power station at Bushehr. An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman called the move “totally unacceptable” and urged world powers to increase pressure on Iran to comply with international decisions and stop its uranium enrichment and heavy water reactor programs.

The authorities in the Somali capital Mogadishu say that a powerful explosion, which was heard across the city earlier on Saturday, killed at least ten people, most of them Islamist fighters attempting to overthrow the government. They say the blast may have been caused when preparations for a car bomb went wrong and the bomb went off prematurely. The authorities say that three Pakistanis, two Indians, two Somalis and an Afghan and an Algerian were among the dead.

Police in Sweden have withdrawn an arrest warrant for the founder of the Wikileaks whistleblowing website, Julian Assange. Mr Assange had been briefly wanted for questioning by Swedish police over allegations of rape and molestation. Stuart Hughes reports.

Swedish prosecutors confirmed on Saturday that they charged Julian Assange in his absence over allegations of rape and molestation. But just hours later, Sweden’s chief prosecutor issued a brief statement, saying that Mr Assange was not suspected of rape and was no longer wanted by police. Last month, Wikileaks was responsible for one of the biggest security breaches in US military history, when it published tens of thousands of documents about American operations in Afghanistan. Mr Assange’s supporters claim the allegations are proof of a smear campaign to try to undermine his credibility.

The Colombian intelligence service says it has captured five people it believes are part of the inner circle of a top Marxist rebel. The five are accused of providing security, logistics and medical care to the top military commander of the FARC guerrilla group.

BBC News.