BBC在线收听下载:乌克兰数万人集会支持总统

BBC news 2013-12-15

BBC News with Julie Candler

Members of Nelson Mandela's family are holding an overnight vigil in the South African village of Qunu on the eve of his funeral. Mr. Mandela's coffin was handed to the family after being transported in a huge funeral cortege through crowds gathered at the roadside. Up to 5,000 guests are expected to attend the funeral but only 400 will be allowed to the graveside. Mike Wooldridge reports.

Nelson Mandela came home today after a final ceremonial sendoff from an air base near Pretoria where his body had been lying in state. The military plane that brought him here to the town of Mthatha was received with formal ceremony too. But as a hearse containing Nelson Mandela's coffin draped in the South African flag set off to Qunu where the funeral will take place, the people of the Eastern Cape took over to give him their sendoff. A farewell for the local herd’s boy who fought a party and became president and whom they saw as their own.

A spokesman for Archbishop Desmond Tutu has told the BBC that he will be attending Nelson Mandela's funeral after all. His representative said he would be traveling to Qunu early on Sunday in time for the event. Earlier Desmond Tutu said he had not been invited.

China has become only the third country to land a spacecraft on the moon. The Chang'e-3 module touchdown watched by millions of people on TV. It's the first moon landing in nearly 40 years. Damian Grammaticas reports.

Mission control has watched as a quarter of a million miles away, China's Luna land began its descent. Chinese state television broadcast live coverage using computer generated images they said tracks that Chang'e-3 exact movements. The animations at least showed the perfect soft landing. The lead two countries have achieved a similar Luna landing before, the United States and what was then the Soviet Union, both were super powers. On Sunday, a robotic rover begins to explore the moon and look for minerals China could one day exploit.

A construction worker in Brazil has died after falling from the roof of a stadium being built for next year's football World Cup. The man was working at the Manaus ground in the Amazon Jungle. Here's Leonardo Rocha.

Marcleudo de Melo Ferreira fell from a height to 35 meters and died of his injuries in hospital. The circumstances of the accident are not clear, he is the fifth construction worker to die at Manaus being built for next year's World Cup. Building sites in Brazil have a bad safety record and given the scale of the work being undertaken, the number of casualties is not unexpected. But this is the further setback for the Brazilian authorities, six of the 12 stadiums that will be used for the tournament are not ready yet.

World News from the BBC

Tens of thousands of people have gathered in the Ukrainian capital Kiev to show support for President Viktor Yanukovych who's been under pressure for refusing to sign a deal on a closer integration with the European Union. Riot police separated his supporters from crowds of anti-government protesters. Earlier Mr. Yanukovych suspended his deputy security chief and the Mayor of Kiev for their alleged involvement in police violence against pro-EU protesters.

Four people have been killed in a bomb blast on a bus in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, 36 people were injured. The roof of the vehicle was ripped off by the blast as it was heading to the city center from the suburb of Eastleigh, home to thousands of ethnic Somalis. Benson Kibui is the Nairobi county police commander.

“According to investigation, initial investigation is that somebody might have entered in this minibus with an explosive then that person blew himself or herself. All the other angle that we are looking to earth is that an idea was planned by those people we are looking for.”

Tunisian politicians have agreed on a new Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa after difficult negotiations between the ruling Islamist Ennahda party and the opposition. Mr. Mehdi will head a caretaker government until elections next year. The appointment is part of a deal that would see the moderate Islamists hand over power to end the political crisis caused by the assassination in July of a well-known opposition politician.

The President of the Central African Republic Michel Djotodia says he's prepared to talk to Christian militias involved in sectarian violence across the country. He said they were not enemies but brothers. The Central African Republic has fallen into chaos since rebels overthrew the previous President in March.

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