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BBC news 2012-10-25

BBC News with Marion Marshall.

Sudan says a huge fire that engulfed in arms factory in the capital Khartoum on Tuesday night was caused by an air attack and it accused Israel of being responsible. The Sudanese information minister said four aircrafts flown in to attack the Yarmouk plant. Our defense correspondent Jonathan Marcus reports.

The aircrafts approached the factory from the east, the Sudanese information minister Ahmed Belal Osman told the reporters in Khartoum, blaming the attack on Israeli air force. Israeli officials have refused any comment. Israel is widely believed to be responsible for similarly mysteriously air attacks against two arms convoys in northeastern Sudan back in early 2009. The argument then boasted by leaked U.S. diplomatic cables was that these were secret weapon shipments from Iran destine for Hamas in the Gaza strip.

The international envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi says the Syrian government and some rebel groups have agreed to a truce to cover the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. The surprised announcement raises hopes of breakthrough in the 19 months old conflict. Barbara Plett reports from New York.

Diplomats who attended a closed Security Council briefing said Mr. Brahimi acknowledged there was not trust between the government and opposition so no guarantee that the short cease fire would be effective. But he said he hoped a small step could improve humanitarian access and create political space for dialogue. Mr. Brahimi told the council that the government had accepted the truce although a final announcement would be made on Thursday. But the Syrian authorities say they are still studying the proposal. Key rebel brigades say they will only observe it if the army does. And Islamist militants have rejected it.

Scientists in the United States have successfully created human embryos containing genetic information from two women and a man. They said the technique could help women with serious genetic disorders to have healthy children. The technique involves transferring energy produce in cell parts from a healthy female donor during in vitro fertilization of the egg. Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, the national institute for medical research in London, said the results were encouraging.

It was done with a reasonable efficiency and they caught the embryos they have obtained. At the end of it, and it seems to be good, then more tests need to be done, and ideally the whole process needs to be repeated preferably by a different lab but it is looking good.

The researchers say the procedure raises its ethical and scientific concerns and it will take several years before it is proved for general use.

The financial trader who cost the French Bank Societe Generale 6 billion dollars in unauthorized deals has lost in an appeal against prison sentence. A court in Paris ordered Jerome Kerviel spend three years behind bars and pay back the full amount he lost. It upheld the original sentence handleddone two years ago when the trader was convicted of forgery, breach of trust and unauthorized computing use.

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 The authorities in Egypt say they have killed a man suspected of involvement in the attack that resulted in the death of the American ambassador to Libya in Benghazi last month. The interior ministry said the suspect was killed by security forces in Cairo in a gun fight that lasted several hours. At one stage, he threw a bomb which bounced back to his flat setting fire to the building. His body was found in the burnt up wreckage along with arms and ammunition .

The Africa Union has lifted Mali's suspension for the organization imposed following a coup in March. A senior A.U. official Ramtane Lamamra said the decision was part of a plan aimed at restoring political stability. He said elections would be held in April next year, 12 months after the country return to constitutional order. Islamist militants have occupied northern Mali since the coup.

Heavy rains and strong winds are battering parts of Jamaica as Hurricane Sandy approaches. Schools and airports have been closed, and a curfew is in place in cities to keep people off the streets. Meteorologists have expected between 25 and 50 centimeters of rain to fall. They predicted hurricane Sandy will reach Haiti, Dominican Republic and Cuba. Yvonne Nelson is a shelter manager in Kingston Jamaica, she described the preparations underway.

We have blankets, we have cots, to accommodate people when they come and make them in comfortable and sometimes we give them clothes, because sometimes they come in under wet and they do not have anything to put on so we provide clothes for them.

Pakistan said it would buy bullet-proof buses for visiting foreign cricket teams in an attempt to revive international matches at home. The Pakistan cricket board said the authorities would also build a new high security stadium in the capital Islamabad to provide secure accommodation for visiting players. International teams have stayed away from the Pakistan since 2009 when gunmen attacked the Sri Lanka team convoy in the city of Lahore.

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