BBC news 2011-04-18 加文本

BBC news 2011-04-18

BBC News with Fiona MacDonald

Preliminary results from Nigeria’s presidential election show the incumbent Goodluck Jonathan appears to have won outright in the first round. Mr Jonathan, a Christian from the oil-producing Niger Delta, so far has almost twice the number of votes of his main rival, the former military leader, Muhammadu Buhari. General Buhari’s main support base is in the predominantly Muslim north. Here is Caroline Duffield in Abuja.

It looks very much as if Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan is set for victory in the country’s elections. Results are still slowly coming in and being formally declared by Nigeria’s election authorities. But official figures published regionally show President Jonathan has already secured the vital threshold he needs to win in the first round. According to regional results, he has at least 25% of the vote in at least 24 of Nigeria’s states. So far, he has 20.3 million votes to the 10.4 million of his nearest rival, General Buhari.

The former prime minister of Egypt Ahmed Nazif and two other former members of the government are to stand trial on charges of misusing public funds. Yolande Knell reports from Cairo.

The general prosecutor’s office says that the three former ministers will all face charges of squandering public funds. Investigators had been looking into a deal involving a contract to manufacture license plates for the interior ministry worth about 15 million dollars. The former prime minister Ahmed Nazif has already been detained. He is in Tora prison on the outskirts of Cairo with the former interior minister Habib al-Adly who is currently on trial on charges relating to the killing of protesters in Egypt’s uprising.

There have been further anti-government protests in Syria a day after President Bashar al-Assad said he would lift long-standing emergency laws. Witnesses said at least three people were shot dead by security forces in the central town of Talbiseh. In the nearby city of Homs, thousands attended the funeral of a protester killed in a previous demonstration. Large protests to demand more freedom also took place in other cities and towns across Syria.

Large crowds have been protesting in the Yemeni capital Sana’a to repeat their demand that President Ali Abdullah Saleh leave office immediately. According to reports, many were angry at comments by the president that such behaviour violated Islamic law. Witnesses said police units used tear gas against protesters and there were also reports of gunshots injuring a number of people. Further protests were also reported in Taiz and al-Hudaida.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron has said questions must be asked as to what more can be done to halt attacks on Libyan civilians. But Mr Cameron once again ruled out any deployment of British ground troops in Libya. Earlier reports from eastern Libya said government forces shelled the opposition held town of Ajdabiya. There were also reports they had renewed their bombardment of Misurata.

World News from the BBC

The French authorities blocked trains from crossing the border from Italy for several hours on Sunday in an attempt to stem the influx of North African migrants entering France. Hugh Schofield reports from Paris.

Tensions are rising between Paris and Rome over the issue of Tunisian immigrants. Some 20,000 of them came to the Italian island of Lampedusa after the uprising in Tunisia. And they have now been issued with temporary permits by the Italian authorities. But this has angered the French government because now the Tunisians are exercising what they see as their right to travel inside Europe, which for the vast majority means coming to France. France has stepped up patrols near the border with Italy and last month sent back nearly 3,000 Tunisians across the frontier. 

A nationalist party in Finland opposed to immigration has seen a dramatic surge in votes in the general election. With most of the votes counted, the True Finns Party appears to have quadrupled its share and looks set to win about a fifth of the seats in parliament. True Finns is also opposed to European Union bailout packages for cash-strapped European economies. And correspondents say their new influence could hold up any further such deals.

It is now known that a series of powerful storms in the central and southern United States in recent days has killed at least 40 people. Six states were affected. North Carolina, where 18 people were killed, experienced 62 separate tornadoes, prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency.

Just days before the 25th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, about 2000 people who took part in the cleanup operation have held a demonstration in the Ukrainian capital Kiev. They were protesting against sharp cuts to the benefits and pensions they and tens of thousands of others receive to compensate them for their exposure to radiation. Ukraine’s government says budget constraints mean it can’t maintain the same level of payment.

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