BBC news 2011-12-21 加文本

BBC news 2011-12-21

BBC News with Iain Purdon

Iraq's Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq has told the BBC that the country risks descending into renewed sectarian conflict because of actions taken by the Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Mr Mutlaq said that he and other Sunni leaders feared the same treatment as the Vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi, who's been issued with an arrest warrant over alleged links to terrorism. Here's Caroline Hawley.

Tariq al-Hashimi is not only the vice-president of Iraq; he's also the country's highest-ranking Sunni Muslim official and a vocal critic of the Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. An arrest warrant for such a senior politician would have been dramatic enough without the potential implications in a country still riven by sectarianism. The interior ministry says that it's obtained confessions from Mr al-Hashimi's bodyguards. But speaking from the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, where he's beyond the reach of Mr Maliki's security forces, Mr al-Hashimi said the charges against him were fabricated.

Syrian activists say it's been another day of heavy bloodshed in Syria. Video footage posted online is reported to show the body of a young child torn in half in the ruins of two houses hit by army shelling in Homs. Many defecting soldiers and civilians are also said to have died in northwestern Syria, as Jim Muir reports.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 100 defecting soldiers were either killed or wounded while activist groups said dozens of civilians were killed and dozens more injured by shooting and shelling. All this comes just 48 hours before the expected arrival on Thursday of an advance team of 30 Arab observers under a peace agreement signed by the Syrian government with the Arab League. They are to monitor a halt to the violence and the release of prisoners.

China has consulted the US and South Korea on how to deal with the consequences of the death of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Beijing says all three countries agree on the need for peace and stability in Korea. There's serious concern in the region about an unstable transition.

In what's being described as a highly unusual move, all the regional and political groupings represented on the UN Security Council have come together to criticise Israeli settlement activity in occupied Palestinian territory. Barbara Plett reports from the UN.

After a briefing by the UN's Mideast envoy, different groups of ambassadors came together outside the Security Council to condemn continued Israeli settlement construction. They represented the European Union, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab Group and a loose coalition of emerging states known as Ibsa. Russia also spoke. Frustrated by the impasse in the peace process, they declared that Israeli settlement activity damaged not only the chance of returning to negotiations but the very prospect of a Palestinian state. And they expressed dismay at the growing number of settler attacks against Palestinians.

World News from the BBC

The United States says it's deeply disappointed by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Democratic Republic of Congo to uphold the results of last month's disputed presidential election. President Joseph Kabila was sworn in earlier today after claiming victory. But Washington said the poll was seriously flawed.

The US government has asked two scientific journals not to reveal details of how to make a deadly version of a bird flu virus. The journals, Science and Nature, are due to publish details of the research in a Dutch laboratory where a highly contagious version of the H5N1 virus was created. A government committee said it was concerned the details of the virus, which appears to spread more easily among mammals, could be used for a biological weapon.

Scientists have for the first time discovered planets the size of Earth orbiting a sun like ours. Both also appear to be rocky, but it's unlikely that there's any life on either of them. However, one planet may have had conditions so similar to Earth that it once supported life, as our science correspondent Pallab Ghosh reports.

The night sky is strewn with stars, each one of them a sun, many of them with planets orbiting them. The big question is could one of those planets be like our own. Scientists believe they found one that in the distant past may well have been like the Earth. It's also the first planet that's about the same size as the Earth. It's too close to its sun, and so too hot to support life today. But according to the man who found the planet, Doctor Francois Fressin from Harvard University, it was once further away, and so the same temperature as the Earth.

The English Football Association has banned the Liverpool striker Luis Suarez for eight matches for racially abusing Patrice Evra of Manchester United. He was also fined over $60,000 and given a warning over using what the FA called insulting words towards Evra.

BBC News