BBC news 2011-10-20 加文本

BBC news 2011-10-20

BBC News with Sue Montgomery

The Greek parliament has given its initial approval to a new austerity bill designed to tackle the country's deepening debt crisis. The vote on the bill, which will cut spending and increase taxes, came after violent demonstrations against the measures. From Athens, Chris Morris reports.

The votes were cast with little enthusiasm, but the government has passed another test in parliament. These deeply unpopular austerity measures are part of the price Greece is forced to pay for continuing financial support from abroad. Critics say the package of spending cuts, job losses, higher taxes and lower pensions is crushing the Greek economy, and failing to reduce its huge debts. The government admits that it's tough but insists that the alternative, which could include default and the collapse of the banking system, would be catastrophic.

Turkish troops and warplanes have crossed into northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels who attacked military installations in southeast Turkey overnight, killing at least 24 soldiers. Around 100 militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, attacked military posts. President Obama and the EU's foreign policy chief have both condemned the violence. From Istanbul, Jonathan Head.

The Kurdish PKK had shown before that the isolated army and police outposts along the Iraqi border are vulnerable to large-scale nighttime attacks. This time, the death toll was higher than in any incident since 1993. Around 100 insurgents are believed to have carried out the simultaneous assaults on eight targets just after midnight. It prompted an immediate response from the Turkish armed forces, which sent aircraft, helicopter gunships and ground troops to pursue the Kurdish militants.

Thousands of indigenous demonstrators in Bolivia protesting against a controversial road project in the Amazon have reached the seat of government in La Paz. They've been joined by many others from the city itself, who received the marchers with food, blankets and music. Mattia Cabitza is in La Paz.

There are marching bands. Children come from schools just to say hello to these protesters, who've endured fatigue, cold just to come here to tell the President Evo Morales that he needs to scrap altogether the construction project for the highway through the Amazon forest. The government insists it's needed to bring development and progress to these poor communities, but these indigenous protesters say they are going to stay here until the president changes his mind.

A BBC investigation has found that many child beggars active on the streets of London come from Romania's Gypsy community and each can earn hundreds of dollars a day for their minders. The Gypsies, also known as Roma, are Europe's largest ethnic minority and the poorest, but the BBC found many who manage the beggars to be owners of large houses and luxury cars.

World News from the BBC

The United Nations has warned it might have to shut down its aid operations in Ivory Coast because of a lack of funds just months after the end of a civil conflict that claimed thousands of lives. The UN says there are nearly 200,000 internally displaced people in Ivory Coast and the country's recovery is being hampered by lack of donations.

The British government says it's pulling out of plans to support an experimental power station that would trap the carbon dioxide being released by the power plant because of technical problems. The government had planned to invest more than $1bn into the carbon capture technology. Our science correspondent David Shukman has the details.

The idea is for power stations to burn coal or natural gas as usual but then to intercept the carbon dioxide that rises up the chimney, transport it by pipeline under the North Sea and store it in old oil fields. But one by one, different initiatives have collapsed. Another last and most advanced of these at Longannet in Fife has bitten the dust as well. The power companies involved and environmentalists describe this as a very heavy blow.

Malicious computer software similar to the Stuxnet worm that infected Iranian computers last year has been discovered on the systems of several European companies. An analyst from Symantec, the firm that decoded Stuxnet, said the new malware contained most of the code found in Stuxnet. He said the new malware, dubbed Duqu, was a Trojan Horse designed to collect and relay back information about the host system.

A day after around 50 wild animals escaped from a private zoo in Ohio, police say they have killed nearly all of them, including grizzly bears, lions and tigers. At least two are still on the loose, including a monkey and a wolf. The authorities believe the owner of the zoo set the animals free and then shot himself. He'd recently been released after being jailed for firearms offences.

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