BBC news 2011-06-19 加文本

BBC news 2011-06-19

BBC News with Marion Marshall

Suicide bombers in the Afghan capital Kabul have attacked a police station close to the presidential palace. Nine people were killed. An interior ministry spokesman, Mohammad Seddiq Seddiqi, said order had been restored.

"The national police managed to kill the terrorists very quickly and cleared the area, and have prevented them from inflicting further harm on civilians. We are pleased that they were killed."

The attack came soon after President Hamid Karzai gave the first high-level official confirmation that the United States is taking part in talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Libyan rebels have accused the West of failing to deliver urgent financial aid and say they've run out of cash. The complaint came from the rebel oil and finance minister Ali Tarhouni. Paddy Clark reports.

Mr Tarhouni was speaking in a rare interview in the rebel-held city of Benghazi. He said that after months of fighting the rebels were running out of everything. Western nations either didn't understand, he said, or didn't care. However, he insisted that the rebels will find a way out of their difficulties and said they were talking to major oil companies on future cooperation, including the German firm Wintershall and France's Total. Mr Tarhouni emphasised that the rebels have been dying for their cause, and he was adamant that whatever the setbacks, they would never give up.

Nato has admitted that its aircraft mistakenly attacked rebel forces in Libya during an air strike on Thursday. In a statement, Nato said it hit a column of military vehicles including tanks near the oil town of Brega, in eastern Libya. It said the rebel convoy was in an area where forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi had been operating. Nato said it regretted any loss of life.

A court in Somalia has jailed several foreigners for up to 15 years for carrying more than $3.5m to pay ransoms to pirates. The six are from Britain, the United States and Kenya, and were arrested last month shortly after landing in Mogadishu. Here's Grant Ferrett.

The men were put on trial behind closed doors at the same airport at which they landed last month, carrying millions of dollars in ransom. The cash has been confiscated, as have the two aircraft on which they arrived. The Somali government officially opposes the payment of ransoms, but the practice has become routine. The UN estimates more than $110m were paid to Somali pirates last year. It's not clear why this group of men fell foul of the authorities.

The Venezuelan authorities say they are resuming a big operation to regain control of a prison near the capital Caracas, where more than 20 people have been killed in rioting. An extra 400 soldiers have been drafted in. More than 3,500 troops failed to take control of the prison on Friday. The interior minister has been negotiating with a group of armed prisoners in an effort to persuade them to surrender. Two members of the security forces were killed, and another 20 injured on Friday.

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The Sri Lankan justice ministry has received a summons for President Rajapaksa issued by a United States federal court in connection with three cases filed under the Hague Convention. The civil actions are by relatives of Tamil victims of alleged extrajudicial killings during the Sri Lankan civil war. The petitioners are claiming financial damages under the United States Torture Victims Protection Act.

The lawyer representing a BBC journalist detained in Tajikistan says she's still been denied permission to speak to him five days after he was first held. The lawyer says, instead of giving her access to her client Urinboy Usmonov, the Tajik authorities have granted interviews with him to local journalists.

The Vatican is inviting 200 Roman Catholic bishops from around the world to a conference to draw up guidelines for tackling child sex abuse by priests. The gathering will be next February in Rome. David Willey reports.

Two months ago, the Vatican instructed bishops that they must make it a global priority to root out sexual abuse of children by priests. The Vatican official in charge of prosecuting priest abuses under church law, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, admitted however that some bishops' conferences have shown little interest in drafting new guidelines. There was no mention at the news conference held at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the Archbishop of Dublin, who's been outspoken in his criticism of the cover-up by Irish bishops of sexual abuse scandals in Ireland.

Efforts by President Obama and his Republican rivals in Congress to resolve the government's debt problems have been played out in an unusual venue, a golf course near Washington. Mr Obama played 18 holes with the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives. A White House spokesman dismissed suggestions that the golfers would reach a deal on lifting the government's debt ceiling, but said a relaxed setting could only improve working relations.

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