BBC news 2010-12-21 加文本

BBC news 2010-12-21

BBC News with Nick Kelly

The UN Security Council has issued what's seen as a direct challenge to the incumbent President of Ivory Coast, Laurent Gbagbo, urging him to step down in favour of Alassane Ouattara, the man widely recognised as the rightful winner of last month's election. Laura Trevelyan reports from the UN.

The UN Security Council is very publicly challenging Laurent Gbagbo, who's refused to step down as president. Last week, Mr Gbagbo ordered the 10,000-strong UN force out of the country. The Security Council has not only ignored this, but also said it may be possible for more UN peacekeepers to be redeployed from Liberia to the Ivory Coast if needed. The pressure on Laurent Gbagbo is mounting. European Union leaders have agreed to impose a travel ban on him and his close aides.

The authorities in Iran have sentenced the internationally acclaimed film-maker Jafar Panahi to six years in jail after finding him guilty of crimes against national security. Most of Mr Panahi's films, which paint an unflattering picture of Iranian society, have been banned in the country. Here's our arts reporter Vincent Dowd.

After a period of house arrest in 2009, Jafar Panahi was arrested in March this year and imprisoned. After a huge protest among film-makers around the world, he was released in May with bail set at $200,000. However, the sentence Mr Panahi has now incurred will put him back in jail and in effect end his career as a director. At 51, Mr Panahi has been told he cannot make films or leave Iran for the next 20 years.

A Mexican politician has been freed after being held by kidnappers for more than seven months. He's Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, a former presidential candidate. Television images showed him arriving at his home in Mexico City, looking tired but telling reporters he was doing well and had forgiven his captors. It's not clear whether his family paid a ransom for his release. Mr Fernandez de Cevallos' car was found abandoned near his ranch in the central state of Queretaro in May.

Kenyan police say one person was killed and 26 injured in an explosion at a bus depot in central Nairobi. The blast hit a bus about to set off for the Ugandan capital Kampala. Last July, the Somali group al-Shabab said it was behind the blasts in the Ugandan capital which killed more than 70 people. Will Ross reports from the Kenyan capital.

The explosion happened beside a bus which was about to set off for an overnight journey from Nairobi to the Ugandan capital Kampala. Some eyewitnesses report that a bag was about to be loaded on board, but it exploded during a security check. Windows of the red bus were left smashed, and blood could be seen on the ground beside the vehicle. Just hours earlier, Uganda's police chief had warned of possible Christmas-time attacks by Somali insurgents.

World News from the BBC

The European security organisation, the OSCE, has said Sunday's presidential election in Belarus was seriously flawed. OSCE observers criticised both the counting of votes and the violent backlash against opposition candidates. President Alexander Lukashenko, who was declared the winner of Sunday's vote by a huge margin, has accused his opponents of criminal behaviour.

The international police agency Interpol says more than 140 victims of child trafficking have been rescued in the West African state of Gabon. Interpol said they were from 10 different countries but did not specify which ones. Richard Hamilton reports.

Interpol said teams of officials carried out checks at markets, stores in the capital Libreville where children were doing various jobs, such as carrying heavy goods and selling products. Forty-four people have been arrested in the operation, thought to be the first of its kind in Central Africa. Other anti-child trafficking raids have also taken place in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. Child labour, which is used in everything from domestic service to cotton picking, is not a new phenomenon in the region, and anti-slavery groups have long campaigned against it.

The President of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino, has defended the design of the country's new banknotes, which feature maps strewn with errors and a native parrot with a wrong-coloured beak. Here's Vivien Marsh.

President Aquino said some artistic licence had been taken with the design of the banknotes, and that if he wanted to find a place, he'd use GPS or a map. The important thing, he said, was that the bills were more difficult to fake. The stylised map on six different banknotes misplaces several tourist attractions and apparently excludes the Batanes Islands altogether.

And Spanish police have recovered all but one of 35 artworks stolen from a warehouse near Madrid last month. They include a sketch by Pablo Picasso and pieces by the sculptor Eduardo Chillida valued together at more than $6m.

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