BBC news 2011-12-04 加文本

BBC news 2011-12-04

BBC News with David Austin

The United States presidential hopeful Herman Cain has in effect withdrawn from the race for the Republican Party nomination for next year's election. The Georgia businessman was a surprise front-runner in the Republican field in October. Marcus George reports from Washington.

Herman Cain made the announcement at what was supposed to be his new campaign headquarters in Atlanta. He thanked his supporters for what they'd achieved, but said he was suspending the campaign because of the continued distraction of false accusations. Without mentioning them, he said his family had paid a tremendous price. The lethal blow came earlier this week when allegations emerged of a 13-year affair. Before that, there were a string of accusations of sexual harassment. But even before those damning revelations, there were unanswered questions about his catchy 9-9-9 tax reform plan and his understanding of foreign policy.

Independent election monitors in Russia have said they are coming under increasing pressure from the authorities as the Russian people head to the polls for Sunday's parliamentary election. The complaint came after the director of the monitoring group Golos, Liliya Shibanova, was detained for 12 hours at a Moscow airport. Daniel Sandford reports.

One of the biggest issues in these elections to Russia's Duma will be whether or not the poll was fair. Golos is a non-party political election watchdog largely funded by the European Union and the United States. It has recorded more than 5,000 complaints that the rules have been broken. Most of the allegations have been against government officials. Perhaps because of that, it has received attention this week from the courts, from state-financed television and even from the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who complained about foreign-funded organisations meddling in the elections.

Daniel Sandford reporting

Several people have been injured in the Indian city of Bhopal as police fought with thousands of protesters demanding more compensation for a toxic gas leak on the anniversary of the accident. At least 15,000 people were killed and tens of thousands injured at a Bhopal chemical plant in 1984 - the world's worst industrial disaster. Pratiksha Ghildial reports from Delhi.

Angry protesters clashed with the police after the security forces tried to prevent them from blocking trains passing through Bhopal. They threw stones at the police and set several government vehicles on fire. The police responded with force. The train blockade was called by activists representing the victims of the Bhopal gas incident. On Friday, they had protested against India's decision to compete in the London Olympics despite sponsorship of the games by Dow Chemicals, which has links to the company behind the leak.

Pratiksha Ghildial reporting. Dow Chemicals bought the firm that owned the Bhopal gas plant, Union Carbide. It says previous compensation deals have settled the matter.

World News from the BBC

The Arab League has given Syria until Sunday to accept its proposal to allow foreign observers into the country. An Arab League committee meeting in Qatar also confirmed the imposition of economic sanctions in response to the Syrian government's violent suppression of unrest. The committee said it would freeze the assets of 19 Syrian officials.

The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said a small bomb blast in the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad several days ago may have been an attempt to assassinate him. He said that preliminary information indicated he was the target. The BBC's Karin Tobbe in Baghdad says the foiled attack has come at an awkward time for the authorities.

Prime Minister Maliki tried very hard to downplay the significance of this attack, and he assured many times that shouldn't be considered as a sign of weakness of the security forces, but it's definitely embarrassing for Prime Minister Maliki and for the Iraqi authorities who have been saying that the country is under full control of the security forces.

The Ministry of Defence in Britain has confirmed that a British soldier has been dismissed and jailed for stabbing a 10-year-old Afghan boy. In a previously unpublicised conviction, the soldier, Daniel Crook, was court-martialled and jailed for 18 months. The court-martial, which sat last June, heard that Crook had drunk a considerable amount of vodka the night before the uNPRovoked attack in Helmand province.

Officials in Germany are preparing to evacuate more than 45,000 people from the city of Koblenz as experts defuse a massive Second World War bomb discovered in the River Rhine. Nearly half the city's population will be forced to move to a safe distance before the delicate operation begins.

A collision between a truck and a bus in Brazil has killed at least 33 people and left 13 injured. The crash happened at night as the bus was carrying farm workers through the state of Bahia.

That's the BBC News.