BBC news 2010-10-17 加文本

BBC news 2010-10-17

BBC News with Nick Kelly

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel says her country's attempts to build a multicultural society have, in her words, "utterly failed". Addressing a meeting of her conservative CDU party, Mrs Merkel said the practice of people from different cultural backgrounds living peacefully side by side was not working in Germany. More from Steve Evans in Berlin.

Mrs Merkel told the conference that immigrants must learn to speak German, so they could compete in the job market. Anyone who does not immediately speak German, she said, is not welcome. Mrs Merkel has now joined an increasingly hot debate. The president of Germany said two weeks ago that Islam was part of the country. Other political leaders have disagreed. The opinion polls indicate that there is much support for those who are uneasy about immigration. Mrs Merkel has put her weight behind that view.

There have been more large demonstrations across France against pension reforms. Protesters also stopped work at most of France's oil refineries. The government wants to raise the retirement age to 62. Hugh Schofield reports from Paris.

A group of what the police describe as anarchists operated on the fringes of the main demonstration, and as it drew to a close, they began ransacking cafe terraces, breaking windows and setting fire to bins. Some of them briefly occupied the Opera House at Bastille. The clashes did not last long, but they are a reminder to both the government and unions of how quickly things can get out of hand. Across the country, there were some 250 marches, once again drawing large crowds. Unions speak of three million participants, but the government says the figure was less than one million.

The African Union has announced that four countries are setting up a joint military brigade to pursue the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group, which has mounted repeated attacks on their territory. Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Uganda have all been targeted by the LRA in the last two years. The town of Birao in the Central African Republic was attacked last Sunday, with girls abducted and shops looted. Here is our Africa editor Martin Plaut.

The brigade will be backed by an operation centre exchanging information and intelligence and coordinating operations. The plan envisages joint border patrols of the countries affected by LRA attacks. All this would be coordinated by an African Union special representative. Africa's international partners have called on to support this offensive against the LRA and not towards the United States, which is already backing Ugandan forces fighting the rebels.

The Sudanese government says the United Nations cannot move its peacekeeping forces to tense areas of the North-South border. A senior government politician told the BBC the UN should have sought the agreement of the government in Khartoum before announcing the redeployment. The President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, called for the UN deployment to border hotspots.

World News from the BBC

Police in Zambia are questioning two managers at a Chinese-run coal mine after at least 11 miners were shot and wounded as they protested about their working conditions. A police spokeswoman said they were looking into reports that managers had fired shotgun pellets on Friday because they felt threatened by the protest at the Collum mine in southern Zambia.

Diplomats from Japan and China have said they are concerned after public protests in both countries about their territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea. In three Chinese cities, several thousand people unfurled banners and shouted anti-Japanese slogans. In the Japanese capital Tokyo, more than 1,000 nationalists attended the second anti-China rally to be held there since the dispute worsened last month.

Members of an entire Anglican church in southern England are taking up an offer by the Pope to convert to Roman Catholicism. The parishioners of St Peter's in Folkestone in southeast England voted to defect because they oppose the ordination of women bishops. Here is our religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott.

The church council of St Peter's in Folkestone decided in a vote to begin the process of converting to Catholicism. It comes a year after Pope Benedict made his controversial offer of a place in the Roman Catholic Church in which Anglicans could retain some of their practices and traditions. It's most unlikely that the congregation of St Peter's which lies in the diocese of the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will be allowed to take their church with them.

And the death has been announced of Benoit Mandelbrot, a maverick mathematician famous for his groundbreaking study of shapes known as fractals. He was 85 and died in the United States. Benoit Mandelbrot used fractal geometry to measure outlines, such as clouds and coastline, which were once considered unmeasurable. For example, an island on a map may appear smooth, but zooming in closer and closer reveals jagged edges that reproduce themselves to infinity.

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