BBC news 2011-08-10 加文本

BBC news 2011-08-10

BBC News with Sue Montgomery

There have been further disturbances in parts of Britain after the uNPRecedented wave of rioting and looting that brought chaos to several cities on Monday night. Several hundred youths are reported to have clashed with riot police in central Manchester, where a large store has been set on fire. A short while ago, the BBC correspondent there, Arif Ansari, gave us details about the clashes.

I'm currently at Piccadilly, which is the main street through Manchester city centre. There are running battles going on now between the police and around two dozen young men and women - youths, teenagers - under the age of 20. The police are running after them. I see one young man who is seriously injured on the floor. There's no ambulance here, but there are just police who are walking past, and he seems to be very hurt.

There have also been a number of incidents in the Birmingham area, where youths broke shop windows and set fire to cars. The police have greatly increased their presence on the streets following Monday night's trouble. The decision came after a high-level security meeting chaired by the Prime Minister David Cameron. Here's our political correspondent Norman Smith.

The option of adopting a more aggressive continental approach with the use of curfews, water cannon and even rubber bullets has for now been rejected. Instead, there will be a massive increase in police numbers with 16,000 officers on the capital's streets. There will also be a much more aggressive approach towards arresting troublemakers and a fast-track judicial process to ensure those arrested appear in court within hours.

[The official] police watchdog has said there's no evidence to suggest that Mark Duggan, the man whose death sparked the riots, fired at armed police before they shot him. It said it appeared a handgun found nearby had not been used. An inquest has opened into Mr Duggan's death. It heard that he'd been killed by a single gunshot to the chest. The BBC has been told that the police marksmen had perceived a threat to life when they tried to arrest Mr Duggan, who was a passenger in a minibus taxi. Police say the officers involved have been taken off firearms duties.

The United States Federal Reserve has announced that it will hold interest rates near their current level of nearly zero for at least two more years in another effort to help the domestic economy and to calm widespread fears on the markets. It's the first time the Fed has pledged to keep rates so low for a specific period. Here's Duncan Bartlett.

The falls in American share prices have been so sustained that the Fed felt it had to do something dramatic to change the pessimistic mood. The bank will be hoping it has more credibility with the market than government and politicians, whose messy compromise over raising America's debt ceiling was one of the main reasons behind the recent market rout. Many economists worry that America and Europe's debt problems combined could lead to another global recession.

World News from the BBC

The Libyan government has accused Nato forces of killing 85 civilians in an attack on a village in western Libya on Monday. Nato said its target was a military facility and could not confirm any civilian casualties at this stage. The BBC's Matthew Price was among the journalists who were taken to the scene by the Libyan government.

Our government minders first took us to a remote collection of buildings south of the town of Zlitan. There has clearly been a series of air strikes. The Libyan information minister told us 85 civilians were killed here, that everything about the place was civilian. Later, we were taken to a morgue, about 30 white body bags lay inside. Those that were opened for us contained mostly the bodies of men of fighting age. We were also shown two dead children. The bodies of two women were also displayed.

Scientists say some European species of mice have developed resistance to the strongest pest control by crossbreeding with an entirely different species. Such interbreeding is usually limited because the offspring are sterile. Here's our science reporter Matt McGrath.

Rodents have been slowly evolving resistance to pesticides since they were first used in the 1950s. But scientists now say that German and Spanish house mice have found a rapid method of overcoming the threat by crossbreeding with desert-dwelling Algerian mice, entirely distinct species. Normally this type of interbreeding produces sterile offspring, but this time some fertile female hybrids survived, and as a result the majority of mice in Spain and a growing number in Germany now have genetic protection against poison.

The United Nations children's organisation Unicef has warned that Pakistan could become one of the world's last outposts of polio with 63 new cases reported this year. It said almost one third of the cases were detected in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where the virus is spreading to areas previously not infected.

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