BBC news 2011-09-30 加文本

BBC news 2011-09-30

BBC News with Jonathan Izard

American officials have announced new sanctions against what they are calling dangerous terrorist groups operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The financial sanctions against five named individuals come as the United States urges Pakistan to clamp down on a group accused of attacking Americans in the region. From Washington, Kim Ghattas.

The move by the US Treasury Department is part of growing American pressure on the Pakistani authorities to do more against the Haqqani network. The group, which has strong ties to Islamabad, is linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and is believed to be behind an attack against the US embassy in Kabul earlier this month. The outgoing US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said the Haqqani network was a veritable arm of the Pakistani intelligence.

The Afghan President Hamid Karzai says initial investigations into the assassination of the former President Burhanuddin Rabbani have implicated known individuals in the Pakistani city of Quetta. In a television interview, Mr Karzai said he would send a fact-finding mission to Pakistan in the next two days to investigate. He said if Pakistan did not cooperate, he would refer the matter to the United Nations. Mr Karzai added that he would suspend peace talks with the Taliban if they were found to be responsible.

The American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called on Syria to take every possible step to protect American diplomats in the country. Her comments came after the motorcade of the US ambassador to Damascus, Robert Ford, was pelted with stones, tomatoes and eggs on its way to the office of a leading opposition figure. An angry crowd chanting anti-American slogans then tried to storm the office. Mrs Clinton said it was an attempt to intimidate Mr Ford.

"We condemn this unwarranted attack in the strongest possible terms. Ambassador Ford and his aides were conducting normal embassy business, and this attempt to intimidate our diplomats through violence is wholly unjustified."

China has launched a space module in its first step towards creating an orbiting space station. The unmanned capsule called Tiangong-1, or Heavenly Palace, blasted off from a launch site in the Gobi desert in western China. The module will be used for docking practice so China can develop the techniques to build a space lab and later a full space station.

The Prime Minister of Niger, Brigi Rafini, says his country will not hand over Colonel Gaddafi's son Saadi to the new authorities in Libya. Earlier, the international police organisation Interpol issued an arrest warrant, or red notice, for Saadi Gaddafi for crimes allegedly committed while head of his country's football federation. Red notices, the equivalent of putting someone on Interpol's most-wanted list, have already been issued for Colonel Gaddafi, another son Saif and the former head of Libyan intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi.

World News from the BBC

There's reported to have been a low turnout in Saudi Arabia's second national election. Only Saudi men were allowed to stand and vote in Thursday's municipal elections. But in response to growing pressure, King Abdullah this week announced that women would be allowed to participate in the next elections. Only half the seats will be decided by voting; the rest are chosen by the king.

Members of parliament in Germany have voted by a large majority to support a more powerful fund to bail out troubled economies in the eurozone. The BBC Berlin correspondent says the German Chancellor Angela Merkel got the measure passed more easily than she might have expected. The enlarged fund, which still has to be approved by other national parliaments in the European Union, would provide more money to help members of the eurozone deal with government debts. Share prices in Europe and New York rose after the German vote.

The Kenyan Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta has appeared before the International Criminal Court in The Hague in connection with the killings that followed the 2007 presidential election. More than 1,000 people died during the violence. Our East Africa correspondent Will Ross reports.

In Kenya, there's huge interest in the events taking place at the International Criminal Court. People have crowded around televisions to see the Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta on the witness stand. He faces charges of crimes against humanity, including murder, rape and forced displacement. The prosecution alleges Mr Kenyatta helped a criminal gang known as the Mungiki carry out attacks against supporters of a rival political party. But he has told the court he had no connection with the group and, instead, played the role of a peacemaker at a time when violence was breaking out.

A biscuit taken by a British polar explorer to the Antarctic more than 100 years ago has fetched nearly $2,000 at auction. The biscuit was perfectly preserved, having been left in freezing temperatures at a hut where the team of explorers led by Ernest Shackleton was based. It's not a record price for a biscuit that was set 10 years ago by one from another Shackleton expedition.

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