BBC在线收听下载:法国一名男子迎娶了前继母

BBC news 2014-10-05

BBC News with Natalia Royston.

The once feared former leader of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier, nicknamed Baby Doc, has died of a heart attack at his home in the capital Port-au-Prince. He was 63. Michael Wooldridge looks back at his life.

Jean-Claude Duvalier succeeded his father Francois who was known as Papa Doc as president for life of Haiti in 1971. At the time of his swearing in he was at 19, the youngest president in the world. Initially it seemed there could be a significant move away from his father's harsh regime underpinned as it was by Haiti's notorious secret police the Tontons Macoutes. He moved closer to the Americans from whom his father had been estranged. US businesses moved in and he allowed limited press freedom. But Jean-Claude Duvalier lived lavishly. His state-sponsored wedding cost three million dollars while most of the people in his ravaged nation endured the worst poverty in the western hemisphere. Repression continued too; and amid massive unrest in 1986, he fled to France. He returned to Haiti in 2011.

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Parents of Peter Kassig, the latest American hostage threatened to his death by Islamic State kidnappers have appealed to his release after a captive British aid worker was beheaded. In a video statement they said their son was a Muslim convert, known as Abdul Rahman, who was entering a humanitarian corps. His father Ed appealed for mercy.

There's so much that is beyond our control. We've asked our government to change its actions. But like our son, we have no more control of the US government than you have over the breaking of dawn. We implored his captors to show mercy and use their power to let our son go.

The Pakistani Taliban have expressed their support for Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq. In an annual statement marking the Muslim festival of Eid the group appealed to Islamists there to unite against what they called the enemy - the US-led alliance. The BBC's Pakistan correspondent says there's been little evidence so far of cooperation between the two groups, apart from IS supporters handing out leaflets in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.

World News from the BBC.

Insurgents from Islamic State have intensified their siege of Kobani on Syria's border with Turkey again shelling Kurdish forces defending the town. Paul Adams is in Turkey across the border from Kobani.

For almost three weeks Kobani has been under siege. All day the sound of explosions echoed around the hills and puffs of smoke rose as mortar rounds hit the city. There were occasional bursts of small arms fire. The Pentagon said it conducted four airstrikes in the area last night, but the ISIS attack goes on. For once again tempers flare on the Turkish side of the border. Soldiers fired teargas and water cannon to break up demonstration by refugees from Kobani and local Kurds. The real fighting was forgotten for a moment as soldiers chased demonstrators off the rocky hill where they and the media had been watching the siege unfold. There was calm for a while, but towards the end of the day, angry Kurds vented their anger again, this time, on the press. Stones were thrown, vehicles damaged and more teargas fired. And all the while the siege of Kobani continued across the valley.

Health authorities in the American state of Texas say the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States is now in a critical condition. Thomas Eric Duncan who was flown in from Liberia is being treated at a hospital in Dallas. Health officials have said they were observing about 50 people who might have come into contact with him. More than 3,400 people in West Africa have died from the disease.

The wedding has taken place in the French village of Dabo between a man and his former stepmother. After winning a long legal battle, Eric Holder, who is 45, tied the knot with 48-year-old Elizabeth Lawrence, his father's ex-wife. Among the guests at the wedding was the former husband of the bride, who's also the father of the groom.

World News from the BBC.