BBC news 2011-01-29 加文本

BBC news 2011-01-29

BBC News with Marion Marshall

A curfew has been imposed in Egypt after a day of uNPRecedented anti-government demonstrations, involving tens of thousands of people. In Cairo, the headquarters of President Mubarak's National Democratic Party was set ablaze. Troops were sent onto the streets after police fought running battles with demonstrators. At least five people were reported to have been killed in Cairo and one in Suez. Wyre Davies followed the developments in Cairo.

Anti-government demonstrators fought pitched battles with riot police in streets and squares across the Egyptian capital. These people in the western suburbs fed up with what they see as a corrupt, authoritarian government.

"All the Egyptian people they adhere to participate with this protest against the non-freedom which we are living, but we need to need to change that regime itself."

"This regime has remained in power for 30 years, 30 goddamn years. And we had more than enough. My son is not going to suffer what I had to suffer."

With similar scenes in Alexandria, Suez and other cities, this is beginning to feel like a national movement.

The American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States was deeply concerned about the situation in Egypt. She urged the government to respect the rights of its citizens and see them as partners in a process of reform. The White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Obama had been briefed three times during the day about events in Egypt, but had not spoken to Mr Mubarak. Mr Gibbs said Egypt's authorities must listen to its people.

"This is not about picking a person or picking the people of a country. The legitimate grievances that have festered for quite some time in Egypt have to be addressed by the Egyptian government."

Police in the Tunisian capital Tunis have cleared a protest camp outside the prime minister's office. Demonstrators had been staging a round-the-clock sit-in for five days, demanding the resignation of the interim government.

A senior politician widely expected to be elected governor of Nigeria's northern Borno state has been shot dead. Witnesses said Modu Fannami Gubio was leaving a mosque when gunmen on motorcycles opened fire, killing him and four others.

Official figures from the United States suggest the economy is strengthening. It grew at an annual rate of 3.2% in the final quarter of last year, faster than the previous quarter. Our economics correspondent Andrew Walker reports.

The new data suggests the US economy is gathering a little more strength. Government spending actually fell, so the improvement was entirely down to the private sector. It is still, however, not all that strong for a recovery from a very nasty recession, and it'll take faster growth to make a substantial dent in the country's high rate of unemployment. At some stage, the recovery is likely to face headwinds as the government raises taxes and cuts spending to reduce the deficit in its finances.

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Nasa has marked the 25th anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle disaster, which killed seven astronauts as they ascended into orbit. Hundreds gathered at Cape Canaveral for a memorial service attended by former astronauts, Nasa staff and relatives and friends of the dead crew. One of the astronauts killed in the disaster was Christa McAuliffe, a school teacher who would have broadcast science lessons from space.

European Union prosecutors in Kosovo have opened a preliminary investigation into allegations linking senior government officials, including Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, with organised crime and organ trafficking. The prosecutors asked the Council of Europe to come forward with evidence after it produced a report alleging that guerrillas loyal to Mr Thaci killed Serbs and removed their organs after the war in Kosovo a decade ago. Mr Thaci has strongly denied the allegations.

Ancient sculptures blown to pieces by a British air raid on Berlin in 1943 have been reassembled and put on public display. Archaeologists spent nine years painstakingly piecing together nearly 30,000 shards of basalt to reconstruct the giant figures of sphinxes, gods and lions. Steve Evans reports from Berlin.

Max von Oppenheim, on whom Hollywood modelled Indiana Jones, discovered a trove of large sculptures of gods and animals in a remote part of what is now Syria. He took them back to Berlin and created his own private museum. Late in November, 1943, the Royal Air Force targeting a Nazi building nearby destroyed the museum, though the worst damage to the sculptures was caused when they shattered into 27,000 pieces because of the heat combined with water from fire hoses. Three archaeologists have now painstakingly reassembled them in a room the size of a football field. They've gone on show in Berlin and may tour to London.

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