BBC news 2011-04-19 加文本

BBC news 2011-04-19

BBC News with Jerry Smit

The incumbent Goodluck Jonathan has been officially declared the winner in Nigeria’s presidential election. However, Mr Jonathan has had to appeal for calm as violence erupted across parts of northern Nigeria in response to his victory. From Abuja, here’s Caroline Duffield.

Goodluck Jonathan received nearly 23 million votes in the presidential election, while his rival General Muhammadu Buhari got just over 12 million. But minutes before the declaration, Goodluck Jonathan was appealing for calm. Angry youths, supporters of the defeated Mr Buhari, have torched homes, churches and cars, and set up burning barricades in towns and cities across northern Nigeria. So far, General Buhari’s party, the Congress for Progressive Change, have steadily refused to condemn the violence or to call for calm.

A ship chartered by an aid agency has evacuated about 1,000 people from the Libyan city of Misurata, which is under constant siege by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces. The International Organisation for Migration said thousands more were waiting to be rescued in what it described as an increasingly perilous situation.

An international credit rating agency has downgraded its assessment of the long-term outlook for government finances in the United States from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’. The US Treasury responded by saying the agency had underestimated the ability of American leaders to come together and address the fiscal challenges facing the country. From Washington, Paul Adams sent this report.

In revising its outlook, Standard & Poor's has waded into a highly charged political debate about how to cut America’s vast and growing budget deficit. Despite the country’s economic strength, the agency says America’s fiscal profile has deteriorated steadily over the past decade. And in a statement of the obvious, it says that the gap between the Republican and Democratic parties over how to address the problem remains wide. There’s a significant risk, it says, that congressional negotiations will not result in agreement on a fiscal strategy until after the 2012 presidential elections.

Opposition activists in Syria say thousands of anti-government protesters have occupied the centre of the country’s third largest city Homs. There were funerals on Monday in Homs for some of the eight people killed in violence there on Sunday. Owen Bennett-Jones reports.

Video footage put on the Internet by opposition activists shows thousands of people sitting on the ground in the main square of Homs. The activists say that the people will stay there until their political demands are met, and they include the immediate lifting of Syria’s long-standing emergency laws and the release of political prisoners. Syria’s official news agency has also been reporting on events in Homs. It says three army officers, including a brigadier-general, were ambushed and killed on Sunday by armed criminal gangs who then mutilated the bodies with sharp tools.

World News from the BBC

Clashes have taken place in Yemen between security personnel and anti-government protesters in the city of Hudaydah. Dozens were wounded when police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse protesters, many of whom responded by throwing stones. More than 100 people have died in two months of protests calling for the president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.

Police in India have clashed with fishermen and villagers furious over plans to build the world’s biggest nuclear power plant on the coast of the western state of Maharashtra. One person was killed when several hundred people attacked a police station near the site. Marianne Landzettel reports.

The construction of the first of six reactors is to start later this year despite massive protests across India. The protesters have mostly been fishermen and villagers living nearby who are bitterly opposed to the project. Fishermen fear that water temperatures will rise and they will lose access to fertile fishing grounds. Environmental experts point out that Konkan is one of the most bio-diverse regions on earth, and they insist it will be destroyed. The latest protests started after the environment minister issued a statement ruling out cancelling the project.

The Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said that drug abuse has become such a big problem that is costing the Russian economy up to $37 billion each year. Mr Medvedev said Russia may have to resort to drugs testing in schools to tackle the problem. Russian officials estimate that there are about 2.5 million drug addicts in the country and there are about 30,000 drugs-related deaths each year.

One of Italy’s leading businessmen, Pietro Ferrero, has died after falling off his bicycle during a business trip to South Africa. Mr Ferrero, who was 47, ran a huge family firm that produces international brands such as Nutella and Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

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