BBC news 2011-10-26 加文本

BBC news 2011-10-26

BBC News with Marion Marshall

The Islamist party in Tunisia, Ennahda, is having coalition talks with two left-wing secular parties as official results are declared in the country's first free elections. The electoral commission confirmed that Ennahda was well ahead in the vote, but it's not expected to have an overall majority. Here's Pascale Harter.

The victory party at Ennahda headquarters has begun, and the official results of the election aren't even announced yet. But so transparent was the voting and the counting that political parties already know where they stand. Their representatives, international and national observers and even the press were allowed to witness the count. So Ennahda knows that it is the kingmaker but won't have quite enough votes to write Tunisia's constitution or form an interim government alone.

Urgent talks are continuing in Italy between the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's party and his coalition partners to try to reach an agreement on financial reforms aimed at reducing the country's massive deficit. So far, Mr Berlusconi has been unable to convince his main partners, the Northern League, to accept measures demanded by the EU in time for the European summit scheduled for Wednesday. A spokesman at the European Commission, Amadeu Altafaj-Tardio, says Italy shouldn't feel insulted by the demands.

"It's not about challenging sovereignty; it's not about lecturing; it's not about humiliating. We have 27 democratically elected governments which have agreed on reinforcing surveillance, on having a higher degree of coordination of their economic policies. It makes sense. It's one of the main lessons of this crisis."

European political leaders are still seeking agreement on key issues at Wednesday's summit that's seen as critical to end the continent's debt crisis. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel is seeking parliamentary approval for plans to boost the power of the eurozone rescue fund without increasing the German taxpayers' contribution. There's still no deal on how much Greek debt held by private sector institutions should be written off.

Relief workers in Ethiopia say refugees who fled from famine and fighting in neighbouring Somalia now face deteriorating health conditions because of the start of the rainy season. Aid workers face a new challenge as they try to prevent children who've managed to gain some weight from succumbing to diarrhoea and other illnesses. Aria Daniakka is an emergency coordinator with Medecins Sans Frontieres.

"It's raining every day. The people in the camp, they live in precarious conditions, and we do see an increase in diarrhoeal diseases. So there is a concern that the children who did manage to gain some weight in the last few weeks might be pushed back."

Prisoners in the earthquake-hit city of Van, in eastern Turkey, have rioted. Eyewitnesses said flames and smoke billowed into the night sky and shots were heard. The trouble is reported to have begun when a strong aftershock caused panic among the inmates. Turkish state television reports more than 450 people are now known to have died.

World News from the BBC

A local official in Niger says the only son of Colonel Gaddafi who's still unaccounted for, Saif al-Islam, has been seen near the border with Libya and was being assisted by ethnic Tuaregs. Saif al-Islam is wanted by the International Criminal Court. It's understood that his brother al-Saadi Gaddafi sought refuge last month in Niger. Earlier, Libyan officials said the bodies of Colonel Gaddafi and his son Mutassim had been buried in a secret location in the Libyan desert.

Israel's security cabinet has approved a deal to swap 25 Egyptian prisoners for an American-Israeli student arrested in Cairo for spying. His supporters say he'd simply travelled to Egypt because he was fascinated with Arabic culture.

India's cabinet has approved a major new plan to create 100 million new jobs in manufacturing by the year 2022. The national manufacturing policy aims to increase manufacturing to 25% of the country's gross domestic product by then.

The last of the United States most powerful nuclear bombs has been dismantled in Texas. The B53 bomb was 600 times more powerful than that dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War. Jonny Dymond reports from Washington.

It took around an hour for the high explosive to be removed from around the nuclear material inside the B53, and then this relic of the Cold War, which remained part of the US arsenal until 1997, was no more. Three hundred and forty B53s were built in the early 1960s. They were bunker busters. With five parachutes, they were designed to land softly on their target, and then with a nine megaton explosion, simulate an earthquake and destroy underground bunkers in which military and civilian leaders might be sheltering.

Gold is to be mined in Scotland for the first time in more than 500 years. The project has become commercially viable due to the increasing international price of gold.

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