BBC news 2010-12-22 加文本

BBC news 2010-12-22

BBC News with David Legge

An American report investigating the decision by the Scottish government to release the Libyan man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing says he was freed for political reasons and under what it calls the "threat of commercial warfare". Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was freed from prison in August last year after the Scottish government said his cancer meant he only had three months to live. One of the US senators who commissioned the report, Robert Menendez, flatly disputed that.

"The Lockerbie bomber was released without medical justification. Two, al-Megrahi was released because of a combination of commercial and political pressures exerted by the Libyans and private commercial interests on the Scottish and British governments. The United Kingdom responded to the threat of Libyan commercial warfare and lobbying by BP with pressure on Scotland. The Scottish government engaged Libya and the United Kingdom in the matter of releasing al-Megrahi."

The Scottish government has wholly rejected the US report.

The man who, most international observers said, lost the recent presidential election in Ivory Coast, the incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, has appeared on state television, saying that he is the country's legitimate president. It's the first time he's spoken on national TV, which he controls, since the political crisis erupted. Mr Gbagbo offered to let an international panel examine the crisis. He said his rival Alassane Ouattara should leave the hotel where he is based, protected by United Nations peacekeepers.

The authorities in El Salvador have asked the Mexican government to investigate the disappearance of scores of Salvadoran migrants. The Salvadoran foreign ministry said unidentified gunmen stopped a cargo train in the state of Oaxaca, in the south of Mexico, on Thursday. It said the men kidnapped around 50 migrants who'd stowed away on the train. This report from Vanessa Buschschluter.

Eyewitnesses say gunmen forced the train to stop in Chahuites by blocking the rails with logs and stones. They reportedly boarded the train, robbed and hit the stowaways with machetes, and took a group of them away at gunpoint. The Salvadoran consulate, which interviewed the migrants who escaped, believes 50 were kidnapped. Migrants are increasingly being targeted by drug gangs looking for new recruits.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron has said his Business Secretary Vince Cable will play no further part in deciding whether Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate, News Corporation, will be allowed to take over the satellite TV company BSkyB. Mr Cameron said remarks about Mr Murdoch by Mr Cable recorded by an undercover reporter were totally unacceptable and inappropriate. Mr Cable was recorded as saying he'd declared war on Mr Murdoch and was going to win. News Corporation said it was shocked and dismayed.

World News from the BBC

The European Union Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas has described as "unacceptable" the severe disruption experienced by thousands of people in northern Europe trying to travel in the current wintry conditions. Heavy snowfalls have forced several European airports to close, as Maddy Savage now reports.

Dublin airport in Ireland is the latest to shut down because of the weather. All flights are currently suspended. At Europe's busiest airport, London Heathrow, more than 700 flights have been cancelled. It's also been revealed that the British government offered to send in the army to help clear the snow, but that the company that operates the airport, BAA, said no. Travellers are being told not to turn up at Heathrow, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt or Amsterdam airports unless their flights have been confirmed.

The accounting firm Ernst & Young is being sued for $150m by New York state prosecutors for its role in the collapse of Lehman Brothers. From New York, here's Caroline Hepker.

New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has accused one of America's leading accounting firms of helping to hide massive accounting fraud at Lehman Brothers in the years before the bank collapsed in September 2008. Mr Cuomo says the accounting giant advised Lehman Brothers on obscuring $50bn. Ernst & Young has made no comment on the case, but the attorney general wants the firm to repay fees it received, totalling $150m plus damages to investors.

An online campaign to spread Christmas cheer has resulted in thousands of people being evacuated from a shopping centre in California. About 5,000 singers hoping to take part in an impromptu performance of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus filled a shopping mall in Sacramento. But there were so many of them the building started to shake. The singers performed outside without bringing the house down.

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