BBC news 2011-11-26 加文本

BBC news 2011-11-26

BBC News with Fiona MacDonald

The man selected by Egypt's ruling military council to serve as a civilian prime minister, Kamal Ganzouri, has said that he'll form an all-inclusive cabinet to serve the Egyptian people. As Mr Ganzouri addressed the nation, huge crowds again occupied Cairo's Tahrir Square, calling for an end to military rule. Wyre Davies is in Tahrir Square.

The speech itself won't have much of an impact because people had made clear their opinions of him before. When we knew he's been appointed, those who support him say that he's a prominent politician, he was a relatively popular prime minister under Mubarak - although he's in his 70s now - and that he is just the kind of person that is needed to guide this country through a difficult electoral process. Others say of course that he is an acolyte of the old regime, he's exactly what is wrong with Egypt now. Even though Hosni Mubarak left the scene nine months ago, it is people like him, many of his old officials and acolytes who are still in power.

(Some) Elsewhere in Cairo, tens of thousands of people have been staging a counter-rally in support of the governing military council.

Syria has defied the threat by the Arab League of new economic sanctions by failing to meet a deadline to agree to the league's demand for observers to be allowed into the country. The Arab League is due to meet this weekend to decide on the sanctions. A BBC Middle East correspondent says all the signs from Syria indicate that the government is unlikely to back down.

Proposals put forward at the United Nations for a new international agreement regulating the use of cluster bombs have been rejected in a vote in Geneva, from where Imogen Foulkes reports.

Two long weeks of negotiations, but no deal. The United States had argued that its proposal to eliminate all cluster munitions produced before 1980 was the last chance to get the world's biggest producers and users - the US, China and Russia - to introduce at least some controls. But 111 UN member states have already signed up to the Oslo convention banning cluster bombs, and many of them regarded the US proposal as a step backwards.

Human rights activists in Mexico have asked the International Criminal Court to investigate President Felipe Calderon and other top officials over the alleged torture and killing of civilians during the fight against drugs gangs. James Read reports.

More than 18,000 people have signed the petition asking the ICC's chief prosecutor to investigate alleged crimes against humanity by both sides in Mexico's drugs war, but the Mexican government has categorically rejected the move. It says its security policy is subject to the rule of law and cannot constitute an international crime. An investigation by the ICC is theoretically possible, but prosecutors would have to decide that crimes against humanity had taken place and that there was no prospect of a proper investigation in Mexico. Those decisions could take months or even years.

World News from the BBC

Yahya Jammeh has been declared the winner of Gambia's presidential election. The president, who won 72% of the vote, now begins his fourth term in office. This report from Thomas Fessy.

Yahya Jammeh said after the election on Thursday he couldn't be defeated unless Gambians had gone mad. It's no surprise that he won a landslide victory after 17 years in power. In fact, in a rare decision, the main regional body Ecowas condemns what it described as an atmosphere of intimidation and repression against his opponents, prompting Ecowas to cancel its observation mission.

Polls have closed in Morocco's parliamentary election - the first vote since King Mohammed introduced constitutional reforms in response to pro-democracy uprisings throughout the Arab world. The new constitution gives more powers to the parliament and prime minister, who must now be appointed from the party with the most seats. Correspondents say attention will be focused on the turnout after some pro-reform campaigners urged a boycott.

Iceland has rejected a bid by one of China's wealthiest entrepreneurs, Huang Nubo, to buy a 300-sq km block of land on the northern shores of the island. Officials said there was no precedent for such a large land sale to a foreign buyer. Mr Huang wanted the land to create a tourist nature reserve, but some critics feared the purchase would have given China a strategic foothold in the Arctic, where there's a growing international interest in exploiting the region's natural resources.

Belgium faces having to pay more to service its debts after one of the leading rating agencies downgraded its credit score. Standard & Poor's said its move was prompted in part by the latest failure of Belgium's political parties to form a government. But the Finance Minister Didier Reynders responded by saying Belgium's credit rating remained one of the best in Europe.

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