BBC news 2010-10-08 加文本

BBC news 2010-10-08

BBC News with Jonathan Izard

The head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn has warned about the danger of what he called a currency war breaking out between China and Western nations. Mr Strauss-Kahn said he took the threat very seriously, and the IMF would put forward proposals to avoid such a conflict.

"Many are talking about a currency war. Myself I think I use this vocabulary, which may be a bit too military, but it's true to say that many do consider their currency as a weapon, and that's certainly not for the good of the global economy."

The United States has said the yuan is undervalued to the extent that amounts to a subsidy on Chinese exports.

The Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Morgan Tsvangirai has expressed his disgust with President Robert Mugabe for repeatedly violating the constitution and ignoring the power-sharing agreement with his former opponents. Mr Tsvangirai said his party, the Movement for Democratic Change, would not recognise any key appointments made by President Mugabe in the past 18 months, including governors, judges and ambassadors.

The Sudanese army has attacked rebel possessions in Darfur shortly before a visit by a senior United Nations delegation. The government forces said they had taken a key stretch of road from the rebel Sudan Liberation Army. The rebels said aircraft had bombed villages full of civilians, but the government, which has been accused in the past of committing genocide in Darfur, denies this. The UN diplomats are in the region mainly to meet members of the south and north Sudanese governments to ensure a referendum on a possible southern succession is held in January.

Meanwhile, UN officials in Sudan say a civilian member of the UN peacekeeping force in Darfur has been kidnapped. The officials said he had been abducted by gunmen from his residence in El Fasher as a top-level security council mission was visiting the town.

There have been two explosions at a prominent Sufi Muslim shrine in the Pakistani city of Karachi. At least seven people have been killed. The Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has condemned the twin attacks. From Islamabad, here is Orla Guerin.

The blasts were carefully timed. Thursday night is the busiest night of the week at the shrine. Many come to pray and food is distributed to the poor. Reports from the scene say security was lax even though shrines are a target for the militants. Local officials say it was a double suicide attack. Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari has a residence just minutes' drive away. He was in the city and responded quickly, condemning what he called the relentless attacks on ordinary Pakistanis.

The army in the Democratic Republic of Congo says it's launched a big offensive against ethnic Hutu rebels in the east of the country. An army spokesman told the BBC that six battalions had been sent to the province of North Kivu to, as he put it, finish off the rebels. A group allied to the rebels accused government troops of attacking civilians in the area.

World News from the BBC

Some of the thousands of tons of toxic red sludge which flooded out of an industrial plant in western Hungary on Monday has now reached the river Danube 70km away, the source of drinking water for millions of people. A spokesman for the Hungarian rescue agency, Tibor Dobson, said all fish had died in one Danube tributary; some dead fish had been spotted in the Danube itself.

The French constitutional court has approved a law which bans the wearing of the burka in public. However, the court ruled that the measure should not apply in public places of worship. The law imposes fines of $250 for wearing the burka, an Islamic veil covering the entire face and body. President Nicolas Sarkozy has said the burka oppresses women.

Engineers drilling to rescue 33 miners trapped underground in Chile for more than two months say they expect to break through to the men by Saturday. They say if the rock is solid enough to allow an immediate rescue, the miners could be out by early next week. Gideon Long has more.

Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said drill B, which looks almost certain to reach the miners first, has now carved its way through 535m of rock and has only 90 more to go. He said he expected it to break through into a tunnel close to the miners on Saturday, or possibly even on Friday night local time. What happens then depends on the engineers. They might decide that the rock is firm enough to allow a rescue to take place straight away, in which case, the miners could be up above ground by early next week. But if not, they will line the tunnel with metal, which would mean the rescue would be pushed back to some time around the middle of the month.

A lost flute concerto by the 18th century Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi has been discovered in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. The score was found by a researcher examining the estate of a Scottish nobleman who's thought to have acquired it on a tour of Europe 250 years ago. A flautist who's played part of it described it as "beautifully melodic".

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