BBC news 2010-09-29 加文本

BBC news 2010-09-29

BBC News with Jonathan Wheatley

The youngest son of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has been appointed to two top jobs. Kim Jong-un was named as a member of the central committee of the ruling Workers' Party and also included in the National Defence Commission. He had already been made a four-star general, and the promotions are widely seen as the beginning of a gradual transfer of power from Kim Jong-il to his son. Andre Vornic reports.

At 27 or 28 - even his age is a mystery - Kim Jong-un may now be the most senior young man on the planet. Of the three posts, the Defence Commission one is key. It is the highest policy-making body in this most militarized of countries. Taken together, Mr Kim's three new jobs mark him out as the future leader of a state that is isolated as it's ever been. But unlike during the previous dynastic transition, it now also comes with nuclear weapons and a collapsed society.

A landslide triggered by heavy rain has engulfed a town in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, burying about 300 homes as residents slept. A municipal official, Cipriano Gomez, said more than 100 people were known to be missing, but many more were feared buried. Julian Miglierini reports from Mexico City.

Speaking on the only functioning phone line in the town, Mr Gomez described a disastrous scene in Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec. It's thought 300 homes have been buried by the collapsed hillside, and rescue teams sent by the federal government have yet to arrive in the isolated area. "We are doing what we can to advance the rescue operation," Mr Gomez said. But rain continues to fall, and there are fears that other landslides could occur. Therefore, Mr Gomez said that they were organizing a mass evacuation to higher ground.

The United Nations says only a third of the people in the world who need life-saving drugs to fight HIV are actually getting them. The World Health Organization and two other UN agencies said only eight developing countries, including Cambodia, Romania and Rwanda, had met the target of providing access to antiretroviral drugs by 2010. Jane Dreaper reports.

The WHO, Unicef and the UN's Aids programme estimate that 5.25 million people in developing countries now receive vital combination therapy to slow down HIV. That represents more than a million extra patients in the past year, but the agencies believe 14.5 million people in total need drug treatment, so the gap remains big despite some of the strides that have been made by getting more medicine to pregnant women to prevent them from passing HIV to their babies.

A court in Iran has sentenced an Iranian-Canadian blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, to more than 19 years in prison. The media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said it was the longest sentence ever handed to a blogger in Iran. Mr Derakhshan was arrested during a visit to the country in 2008. Local reports say he was accused of spying for Israel.

World News from the BBC

The former Prime Minister of Iceland Geir Haarde is to face a special court over his role in the country's financial crisis. The Icelandic parliament narrowly voted to send Mr Haarde before the court, which will decide whether he should be charged with alleged negligence. A report commissioned by the parliament earlier this year found that more should have been done to limit the damage from the collapse of Iceland's biggest banks in 2008.

In his first major speech since becoming leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, Ed Miliband has said the party must change, learn from its mistakes and win back the trust of voters. He was speaking at the party's annual conference five months after Labour lost the general election. Mr Miliband said Labour should have done far more to reduce the disparity in the incomes of rich and poor people in Britain.

"This is something we didn't confront in government. You see, the gap between rich and poor does matter, and it doesn't just harm the poor; it harms all of us. If you look at those societies that are healthiest, happiest, most secure, it is the more equal societies. And what does it say about the values of our society? What have we become that a banker can earn in a day what a care worker earns in a year. It's wrong conference."

About 100,000 people have marched in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi, demanding the release of a scientist imprisoned in the United States. The woman, Aafia Siddiqui who's a neuroscientist, was sentenced last week by a New York court to 86 years in prison. She has been convicted of the attempted murder of US government agents in Afghanistan.

Gunmen in southern Nigeria have abducted 15 school children and demanded a ransom of nearly $130,000 for their release. The children were seized when their bus was hijacked in the town of Aba in Abia state on the edge of the oil-rich Niger Delta. Nigerian police said they'd launched a big operation to rescue the children.

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