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BBC news 2012-01-25

BBC News with Sue Montgomery

The head of Egypt's ruling military council says the state of emergency that's been in place for most of the past 45 years will be partially lifted from Wednesday. Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi was speaking in an address to mark the first anniversary of the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. He said the state of emergency would still apply to what he called "thugs" without elaborating. From Cairo, our Middle East correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports.

The vast majority of Egyptians have lived all their lives under a state of emergency. It was first imposed in 1967 following the Six-day War against Israel and then again in 1981 after President Sadat's assassination. Following President Mubarak's overthrow last year, the military junta at first promised to lift it, but then did the opposite, widening its scope, banning strikes, traffic disruption and even the spreading of false information. Now finally it will be lifted. Just as the Islamists - the law was brought into crush - take control of Egypt's parliament.

Syria has agreed to extend the Arab League monitoring mission to Syria by another month. Jim Muir reports from neighboring Beirut.

According to a brief announcement by the official state news agency, Syria's agreement to extend the monitors' mission for a second month was signalled in a letter from Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem to the secretary general of the Arab League. It wasn't a surprise. In a news conference just a few hours earlier, the minister had drawn a distinction between the observer mission and the new Arab League peace plan announced on Sunday, which Damascus had rejected out of hand as blatant interference in its affairs. So the observer mission will go ahead but without nearly a third of its 160 or so members following the decision by Saudi Arabia and its Arab Gulf partners to pull their monitors out of the team.

The International Monetary Fund has given a stark assessment of the prospects for the world's economy. The IMF's chief economist Olivier Blanchard said there was a strong risk that the crisis would spread.

"The world recovery, which was weak in the first place, is in danger of stalling. The epicentre of the danger is Europe, but the rest of the world is increasingly affected. There's an even greater danger, namely that the European crisis intensifies. In this case, the world could be plunged into another recession."

He said government cuts coupled with a squeeze on bank credit had suppressed growth.

The office of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he will sign a controversial bill on genocide denial into law within two weeks despite warnings that it will badly damage relations with Turkey. The bill makes it a crime to deny that Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenians during the First World War. Turkey denies a deliberate genocide took place.

World News from the BBC

The Nigerian military has arrested a large number of suspected members of the Islamist group Boko Haram in the city of Kano. Mark Lobel reports.

The Nigerian military and police task force set up to battle Boko Haram have arrested at least 158 suspected sect members in a dawn raid in Kano. Residents said a man and his pregnant wife were killed in the operation. It followed a deadly assault on Friday by Boko Haram members - some dressed in police uniform - on police stations, immigration offices and the local headquarters of the secret police. At least 185 people were killed in the attacks after the authorities had refused to release suspected sect members from prison.

A bronze cast made from the death mask of the Russian dictator Joseph Stalin has been sold to an anonymous bidder at an auction in western England. It was put up for sale along with bronze copies of Stalin's hands. Yuri Zhuravel has the details.

"...were sold to a telephone bidder at £3,600."

As the hammer fell, the bronze cast of Joseph Stalin's dead face and hands were sold to an anonymous bidder on the phone for $5,600. Only about a dozen copies of Stalin's death mask were ever made. Most are still in Russia and the former USSR, including in the Stalin Museum in his hometown in Georgia. This mask on sale in Shropshire was one of only two that ended up in the west in the early 1990s taken out of Russia by a British art dealer.

Four police officers in the US state of Connecticut have been arrested and charged with offences arising from their alleged mistreatment of Hispanic people. They are accused of assaulting illegal immigrants and filing false reports in an attempt to cover up abuse. The officers are said to have searched Latino businesses without a warrant. Two are accused of slapping and kicking handcuffed men.

BBC News