BBC在线收听下载:伊拉克发生系列炸弹袭击案

BBC news 2012-07-04

BBC News with Nick Kelly

Pakistan has confirmed that it intends to reopen transit routes to Nato forces in Afghanistan closed last November following an American airstrike. It agreed to reopen the supply lines after the American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apologized for the attack. Aleem Maqbool reports from Islamabad.

For months, the governments in both Pakistan and the US were looking for a formula to reopen Nato supply routes without either side looking like a loser. Pakistan had been under considerable pressure from Washington since it decided to shut the routes after the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a Nato raid. It has now got an apology for that incident, but opponents here will still talk of their government caving in , particularly after all the talk of how much Pakistan will charge for each Nato truck ultimately came to nothing . It's been announced there will be no transit fees.

Politicians in Britain have welcomed the resignation of Bob Diamond as chief executive of Barclays, one of the country's biggest banks. Mr Diamond's resignation comes as Barclays faces fierce criticism for manipulating interest rates, an offense for which it has been heavily fined. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said Mr Diamond's resignation was the first step towards a new age of responsibility. The chief finance spokesman for the opposition Labor Party, Ed Balls, called for a full judicial inquiry.

"I'll be asked questions, all past chancellors and ministers and shadow ministers will be asked questions. They will be tough, but we've got to do this for the public. Politicians have got responsibility and to sort this out , but I think a judicial inquiry is the only way."

French police have been searching the premises of the former President Nicolas Sarkozy two months after he was voted out of office. The investigation relates to claims of illegal financing of his 2007 presidential campaign. Christian Fraser reports.

Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential immunity ended on June 16. Today, officers from the financial crimes unit raided his home and the premises of the law firm to which he now belongs. An investigating magistrate is looking into claims that staff acting for the L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, gave 150,000 euros in cash to Mr Sarkozy's aides during his bid to become president in 2007. Individual campaign contributions in France are limited to just 4,600 euros. He has denied the allegations as lies and calumny .

The second place candidate in Mexico's presidential election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has asked for a recount of the votes cast in Sunday's election. Mr Lopez Obrador of the left-wing PRD party said there had been what he called 'inconsistencies' of more than three quarters of the polling booths, results for Mr Lopez Obrador six percentage points behind  of the PRI party.

More than 40 people have been killed by a series of bomb attacks in Iraq targeting Shia Muslims before a religious festival. Most of the victims were killed in the southern city of Diwaniya.

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Hundreds of Palestinians have attended a rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah to protest against the policies of the Palestinian authority. It was a third such rally in less than a week. Security forces were accused of beating protesters as our West Bank correspondent Jon Donnison reports.

Hundreds of people marched towards President Abbas's compound; some were calling for the Palestinian authority to be disbanded altogether. Separately, the authority announced it will be unable to pay salaries for public sector workers this month due to what it called the worst funding crisis in years. So far, Palestinians have been relatively untouched by the so-called Arab Spring, but some believe that economic hardship, coupled with frustration of the Palestinian leadership inability to end or ease Israel's ongoing occupation, could create an atmosphere where that might change.

France says it's determined to stop establishment of what it calls 'international terrorist bases' in Mali. The French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he wanted to prevent groups such as al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb threatening the peace and security of the whole region, as well as France.

Researchers in Germany have discovered a rare world map by the 16th century cartographer Martin Waldseemueller, the man credited with naming the Americas. The 500-year-old document was found inside an unrelated book in a university library in Munich. Beth McLeod reports.

The small map, printed in clear black ink on yellowing paper shows the world divided into 12 segments. The three segments to the right-hand side show a boomerang-shaped landmass called America – very different to the familiar outlands of northern South America that we know today. It's likely that Waldseemueller used information from accounts of early trans-Atlantic voyages. But intriguingly , he decided to name the new land after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci rather than Christopher Columbus.

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