BBC news 2010-09-21 加文本

BBC news 2010-09-21

BBC News with Nick Kelly

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned world leaders not to use the economic downturn as an excuse for missing targets on reducing poverty. At a summit in New York to review the Millennium Development Goals, he said they could still be achieved by the target date of 2015, but the progress was fragile. Our diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall reports.

The mood here is both positive and anxious. The top goal to cut by half the number of people living in hunger and abject poverty by 2015 does look as though it will be met partly due to extraordinary growth rates in China, India and Brazil. There has been encouraging progress on getting all children access to primary schooling, and in tackling diseases like HIV, Aids infection and malaria, but other goals are way off track, especially reducing infant and maternal deaths, and progress has been uneven. In places, the very poorest have got poorer still, as aid has failed to reach them.

An influential separatist leader in Indian-administered Kashmir says protests against Indian rule, in which more than 100 people have died, will continue unless the government meets his core demands. Speaking to the BBC, the leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who's viewed as a hardliner, outlined the separatists' terms.

"India should accept the disputed nature of Jammu and Kashmir as it is internationally accepted as a dispute, and then to start the withdrawal of the occupying forces, and then the draconian laws which are still imposed in Jammu and Kashmir."

President Obama has acknowledged that times are still very hard for many Americans in the wake of the global financial crisis. He was speaking at a town hall-style meeting on American television.

"Even though economists may say that the recession officially ended last year, obviously for the millions of people who are still out of work, people who have seen their home values decline, people who are struggling to pay their home bills day to day, it's still very real for them."

Mr Obama's comments came as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast in a report that the US would experience high unemployment until at least 2013.

The Iraqi National Museum has found that more than 600 missing ancient artefacts in a storeroom in Baghdad. The pieces include clay tablets, spearheads, glass cups, beads and statues from different periods of Iraqi history. The items were originally found two years ago by US forces and handed over to the Iraqi government. They were then lost and resurfaced in the storeroom at the Iraqi prime minister's office.

Officials in Somalia say a suicide bomber has blown himself up at the gates of the presidential palace in the capital Mogadishu. They say the attack took place as a convoy of African Union peacekeepers was entering the compound. The officials suspect the bombing was carried out by al-Shabab insurgents.

This is the World News from the BBC.

President Raul Castro of Cuba has sacked the cabinet minister responsible for basic industry including oil and nickel production. A statement said the minister, Yadira Garcia, had been removed from her post because of shortcomings of the ministry and weak management of production and investment. It's the latest in a series of changes to Cuba's leadership since Raul Castro replaced his brother Fidel as president.

France has sent dozens of soldiers to the West African country of Niger to try to find seven hostages, five of them French. The soldiers are using reconnaissance planes to search the Sahara Desert for the captives, who were seized from their homes in northern Niger on Thursday. The French government believes they were probably abducted by gunmen from al-Qaeda's North Africa branch.

The former head coach of Togo's national football squad has been suspended for three years for allegedly taking a team of imposters to play in Bahrain two weeks ago. The Togolese football federation said the match had been organized without its knowledge. Roger Walker reports.

The crowd in Bahrain on 7 September was puzzled and disappointed that the team purporting to be Togo played so poorly, losing the match 3-0. When news reached Lome, the Togolese football federation was perplexed since at the time of the bogus international in the Middle East, the real Togo team was returning from a match in Botswana. In a statement on Monday, the federation put the blame for organizing the fake fixture squarely on the ex-national coach Tchanile Bana and banned him for three years.

And a controversial Republican candidate for the US Senate has caused a new stir with the surprise revelation that she once experimented with witchcraft. The candidate Christine O'Donnell is from the right-wing grassroots Tea Party and known for her staunchly conservative Christian views. She made the admission in a TV show 11 years ago, and the tape resurfaced over the weekend. Her views on sexuality have also come under heavy scrutiny.

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