BBC news 2011-12-16 加文本

BBC news 2011-12-16

BBC News with Gaenor Howells

Russia has surprised Western nations at the United Nations in New York by circulating its own draft UN resolution aimed at resolving the crisis in Syria. Western countries have spent months trying to get their own resolution. From the UN, here's Barbara Plett.

Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said there was strong concern in the council about the deepening crisis in Syria, and the draft Russian resolution was aimed at trying to end the conflict. His intervention took Western nations by surprise. They've been trying to get the Security Council to act for months, but their attempts faced a Russian veto. European diplomats said they would negotiate on this text, but the current draft did not reflect the gravity of the human rights situation in Syria. They also said it suggested an equivalence between the regime and the opposition, and insisted the Syrian government must bear primary responsibility for the violence.

The head of the Bank of France, Christian Noyer, has hit out at international financial ratings companies, saying the arguments they use are often more political than economic. One of the agencies has threatened to downgrade France's rating, which Mr Noyer said was completely unjustified. He said if they were considering economic fundamentals, Britain should be downgraded first as it had a bigger deficit, more inflation, as much debt as France and lower growth.

The former French President Jacques Chirac has been found guilty of corruption after a long-running trial. He was convicted of embezzlement and breach of trust by creating fictitious jobs for members of his party when he was mayor of Paris. Mr Chirac was given a suspended two-year sentence. He is the first former head of state in France to be convicted since the wartime collaborationist leader Marshal Petain. Hugh Schofield reports.

Mr Chirac's lawyer said that the former president categorically contested the guilty verdict. However, he did not have it in him to continue the combat, so he decided not to appeal. The lawyer said that Mr Chirac was at least happy that the court had recognised he did not personally enrich himself from the embezzlement. The charges go back more than 20 years to when Mr Chirac was the powerful mayor of Paris and controlled the system in which municipal funds were used to pay his political party staff.

Reports from Bahrain say that a blogger and human rights activist, Zainab al-Khawaja, has been arrested during a protest on a main road leading to the capital Manama. Activists have called for her release. Eyewitnesses say security forces used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse protesters. Sebastian Usher reports.

Zainab al-Khawaja is the daughter of a well-known dissident who was sentenced to life in prison after the mass protests in February and March on charges of plotting a coup. Zainab herself has been briefly arrested before and staged a hunger strike to try to get her father and other members of her family released. Her blog has been one of the most prolific in detailing the continuing protests and the response of the security forces.

World News from the BBC

The President of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, has apologised to the relatives of the victims of a massacre committed 30 years ago during the civil war. He said the massacre, in which Guatemalan soldiers killed hundreds of people in the village of Dos Erres, was a stain on Guatemala's history. It wasn't until earlier this year that four former soldiers were sentenced to life in prison for the crime.

Police in Mexico say they've found three bodies at the offices of a student association in the western city of Guadalajara. Prosecutors say they are trying to establish if the three victims were among a group of five people who went missing on Wednesday after a dispute with officials from the student association.

The British Ministry of Defence has announced that 13,500 military personnel will contribute to security during next year's Olympic Games in London. The deployment will be larger than Britain's military force currently based in Afghanistan. Our security correspondent Gordon Corera reports.

HMS Ocean, the largest ship in the Royal Navy fleet, will be berthed on the Thames in Greenwich; RAF Typhoon jets will be stationed at Northolt; and specialist bomb disposal teams will be deployed next summer - all as part of the Olympic security operation the Ministry of Defence announced today. The largest single role will be for up to 7,500 personnel who will help provide security at venues as part of a total guard force of around 23,000. The extra costs will come out of the Olympics budget, not that of the Ministry of Defence.

The South African police say they've opened a case against two international media companies - Reuters and the Associated Press - for allegedly filming Nelson Mandela's residence. Colonel Vishnu Naidoo told the BBC that it was illegal to film or photograph presidential homes. He said the cameras had now been removed from their location in the village in Eastern Cape where Mr Mandela lives. A spokesman for Associated Press denied spying on the former president.

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