BBC news 2014-02-05 加文本

BBC news 2014-02-05

BBC News with Fiona MacDonald

Libya's Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdelaziz has announced that the country has completed the destruction of its category one chemical weapons, the most lethal class. He described it as an important historical moment. Rana Jawad reports from Tripoli.

It's a process that began nine years ago under the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. And now with the help of the US, Germany and Canada, the last of Libya's mustard gas stockpiles and other toxic weapons have been destroyed. At a news conference in Tripoli, the director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Ahmet Uzumcu described the latest development as a significant milestone for Libya. He added that it was a good example of international cooperation now emulated in Syria on a larger scale.

The Tunisian government says a suspected assassin of a prominent opposition politician had been killed in an anti-terrorist operation. One policeman was also killed. The death of the politician Chokri Belaid last year triggered a major political crisis. Naveena Kottoor reports from Tunis.

Kamel Gadhgadhi and six other suspected militants were killed in a police raid that lasted almost 20 hours. Gadhgadhi was one of the most sought-after Islamist militants in the country. He was accused of having fired the shots that killed the prominent opposition politician Chokri Belaid in broad daylight last year. The Tunisian government and security services are now highlighting this operation as a major success.

The President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos has ordered an investigation to allegations that army agents have spied on government officials negotiating with Farc rebels. It's claimed that an elite military group was set up to intercept emails and mobile phone messages from negotiators in Cuba. Our Colombian correspondent Arturo Wallace has this.

Unacceptable, that's how president Juan Manuel Santos deemed alleged spy on government peace negotiators by Colombia's military intelligence. The allegations were made by a local magazine Semana after a year-long investigation. Mr. Santos said he had ordered the minister of defense and top police and army commanders to find out who was behind the alleged interference. And given that the talks with the leftist Farc rebels have many critics in Colombia, he'd even discount a possibility that rogue element was in the military or other enemies of the peace process had a hand in it.

Energy companies in Brazil say a power cut has affected at least a million people across the country. Two Brazil's biggest cities. San Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in the southeast have partially lost electricity. But there also are reports of blackout in southern, northern and central Brazil. The government says the cut was caused by an unspecified problem in a power line. The energy minister recently said there was no risk of blackouts or electricity rationing.

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A Pakistani government negotiator said he's hopeful the talks with the Taliban can go ahead within days despite a furious Taliban reaction to a perceived government snap on Tuesday. While it'd sought clarification, the government team failed to turn up to a preliminary meeting. The government negotiator Rahimullah Yusufzai told the BBC that his side was now satisfied with the Taliban team that it was fully authorized to talk on their behalf.

"We have been in touch after that, and we have told them that now that one of the issues has been clarified, and you can represent the Taliban in formal negotiations, we don't have any objection in meeting you. So we can meet whenever they want and wherever they want. And I think eventually, we will meet maybe in a day or two."

Correspondents say there are successive mobile prospects for the talks as the Taliban is insisting on the imposition of Sharia Law and the release of Taliban prisoners.

At least nine people have been killed in Pakistan in two different explosions in civilian areas. In the first incident, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the city of Peshawar killing 8 people. The attack took place near a minority Shiah mosque. Pakistani Taliban have denied any involvement. Hours later, a blast from a railway track derailed an express train near the city of Karachi killing one person and injuring more than 30.

Charlie Chaplin's only known novella has been published for the first time, after being reassembled by the film star's biography from multiple draft found in his archive. The novella Footlights was written in the late 1940s and details are relationship between a drunken clown and a suicidal ballerina. It was eventually used as the basis of Chaplin's screen play for Limelight, the last film he made in the United States. Extracts will be read on an event unveiling the book in London on Tuesday evening.

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