BBC news 2011-05-30 加文本

BBC news 2011-05-30

BBC News with Jonathan Wheatley

The governing body of world football, Fifa, has suspended two executive committee members over allegations of bribery. Fifa's ethics committee meeting in Zurich said the head of Asian football, Mohamed Bin Hammam, and Fifa vice president Jack Warner had a case to answer. Sepp Blatter was cleared of any wrongdoing. Our sports correspondent Alex Capstick reports from Zurich.

A dramatic day which ended with Sepp Blatter almost certain to be re-elected as president of football's world governing body - he's survived a hearing of the ethics commission, but two of the organisation's most senior members have been provisionally suspended. Jack Warner has served on Fifa's executive committee for 28 years. Mohamed Bin Hammam, who had earlier pulled out of the presidential race, is the head of the Asian confederation. It's alleged they tried to buy votes. Both men deny the charges, but this corruption crisis has been the most damaging in Fifa's history.

Serb nationalists have demonstrated in Belgrade in protest at the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic. General Mladic is expected to be transferred to the international tribunal in The Hague this week to be tried for genocide over the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in Bosnia in 1995. Mark Lowen is in Belgrade.

The protest officially organised by the far-right Serbian Radical Party has officially finished, but the protesters have actually moved away to another part of the city, and they are setting off flares. An armoured police vehicle has just driven past me. I can see groups of protesters running through one part of the city towards the town hall. Earlier in the evening, we had speeches from the far-right Radical Party talking about the "shameful arrest of the Serbian hero". They talked about betrayal and humiliation of the Serb people and sick fancy of this government here in Serbia towards Brussels.

A French junior minister, Georges Tron, has resigned amid accusations that he sexually harassed female colleagues. Mr Tron denies any wrongdoing and says he is the victim of a witch-hunt. Mike Sanders reports.

Georges Tron was civil service minister and mayor of Draveil near Paris. It was in the town hall there two former colleagues alleged that he gave them foot massages to brush up on his reflexology, an alternative therapy. They say his hands strayed from their feet. Nonsense, he says, but he appears to have lost the confidence of President Sarkozy and the Prime Minister Francois Fillon. His lawyer had said he wouldn't resign unless they asked him to.

President Obama has been visiting the area worst affected by a violent tornado, which killed more than 130 people in the American state of Missouri. Mr Obama met survivors and was attending a memorial service in the small town of Joplin, where the tornado struck a week ago. He called the devastation "a national disaster". Local officials say 40 people are still missing. Emergency services and volunteers are still searching for survivors.

World News from the BBC

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has strongly condemned the killing of 14 people in a suspected Nato air strike in the south of the country. Mr Karzai said his government had repeatedly asked the United States not to carry out air raids that risk killing Afghan civilians. A White House spokesman said the US was taking President Karzai's concerns very seriously.

Reports from Syria say government forces have stifled protests against President Assad in the centre of the country. Protesters in the towns of Talbisa and Rastan, near Syria's third largest city Homs, said at least eight people were killed and many more wounded. Jim Muir now reports.

Residents said the attacks began in the early hours of the morning with electricity and communications cut as troops and tanks moved in to surround and isolate the towns of Rastan and Talbisa, on the main road north of Homs. Nearby villages were also affected. Witnesses said shooting and explosions were heard as houses were stormed and people detained. Some reports said security forces were firing on any vehicles that moved. Two children were reported among those killed.

Riot police are reported to have sealed off the central square in the provincial capital of Inner Mongolia, Huhehaote, following a week of regional unrest and attempts to organise further protests via social networking services. Tight security is reported in all cities in the northern Chinese province. A United States-based Mongol human rights organisation said martial law had been declared.

Here, an English council is taking legal action against the social networking website Twitter. South Tyneside Council says it went to court in California in an attempt to discover the identity of a blogger behind allegedly libellous statements. It believes one of its own councillors is responsible. Three councillors and an official complained they were libelled in a blog called Mr Monkey. Twitter has refused to comment.

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