BBC news 2011-02-05 加文本

BBC news 2011-02-05

BBC News with Michael Powles

Hundreds of thousands of people are continuing to demonstrate in central Cairo to demand the resignation of the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. As darkness fell, the protesters in Tahrir Square waved flags and sang patriotic songs. Earlier, the army appeared to be cooperating with protesters. Kevin Connolly watched the day's events.

However familiar it's becoming these are still memorable scenes, and it's the call to prayer being delivered through an upturned traffic cone. The huge numbers of people here on the bridge praying as they wait to go into the square say their presence is a referendum on the Mubarak years.

"That's our elections here. That's the practical election. We do not want this guy. We do not want this regime."

As the "day of departure" drew to a close in a country where normal life remains paralysed by demonstration and dissent, Mr Mubarak showed no sign of departing.

Tens of thousands of people also turned out in Egypt's second city Alexandria. Despite the persistence of the demonstrators, the Egyptian government remains steadfast that it's impractical for President Mubarak to step down immediately. The Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq told the BBC that Mr Mubarak was needed in the run-up to elections in September.

"To demand that the president step down directly and immediately, that's alien to Egyptian culture. In effect, the president has already stepped down. He'll go in September. His announcement that he won't run again is tantamount to stepping down. We need him in these coming months."

Speaking in Washington, President Obama reiterated that an orderly inclusive transition of power in Egypt should start immediately.

The Global Fund against Aids, tuberculosis and malaria has announced new financial safeguards following allegations of corruption. Germany, the fund's third largest contributor, announced last week that it was suspending its financial support for the United Nations-backed fund after an internal report left large amounts of money unaccounted for. Mark Lobel reports.

Millions of dollars will be spent on a fraud-busting panel of experts for the fund and for tighter scrutiny of spending at training events. The initiatives, expected to be in place by June, are to stop the misappropriation of resources from a $21bn global fund to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. The fund's investigators found high-levels of fraud at training events and are looking into allegations of the organised theft of anti-malarial drugs. Thirty-four million dollars of grant money remains unaccounted for in several countries.

The international refugee agency, the UNHCR, is calling on the authorities in Pakistan to let civilians leave areas affected by a recent surge in fighting. In recent days, 25,000 people have fled a government air and ground offensive against militants in Mohmand, part of the tribal areas which border Afghanistan.

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The husband of the wounded US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords says he's decided to resume astronaut training in preparation to command the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour in April. Mark Kelly has been on leave since a gunman attacked his wife in a shooting that killed six other people. From Washington, Tom Burridge.

It's less than a month since his wife was shot through the head in Tucson, Arizona. But Nasa has now confirmed that astronaut Mark Kelly will lead a crew of the space shuttle Endeavour on a mission to the International Space Station in April. As commander, he'd been training with his team for nearly 18 months and said he appreciated the confidence that managers at Nasa had in him. On 8 January, Gabrielle Giffords was shot through the head as she held an open meeting with voters outside a supermarket in Tucson, Arizona.

Armed robbers have carried out a raid inside the European Parliament building in Brussels. It's the third such security breach in two years. Here's Matt Cole.

Parliamentary officials have confirmed at least one of the two robbers was carrying a gun. What's particularly angered MEPs and other staff in the building is that the pair appeared to have passed through security checks with their weapon evidently undetected. To make matters worse, it's not the first time this has happened. Whilst this raid was on the parliament's post office, two years ago a bank in the building was targeted, and more recently one of the canteens. It's understood the men escaped with a small amount of money, though it's not known if they then left the building.

A court in Rwanda has sentenced two journalists to long prison sentences after finding them guilty of disrupting state security and propagating ethnic divisions. Newspaper editor Agnes Uwimana was sentenced to 17 years in jail. Her colleague Saidath Mukakibibi was ordered to serve seven years. The judge said the two women wrote an article last year which claimed that Rwandans were unhappy with the government of Paul Kagame for president.

And that's the BBC News from London.