BBC news 2015-03-03 加文本

BBC news 2015-03-03

BBC News with Justine Greene

A bomb has exploded outside a stadium in northern Nigeria, killing three people, shortly after President Goodluck Jonathan addressed an election campaign rally there. Police said a female suicide bomber blew herself inside a car, killing herself and another female passenger. Eighteen people were injured. Will Ross reports from Lagos.

The bomb exploded outside the stadium in Gombe just minutes after President Goodluck Jonathan's convoy had left the area. It may not have been as large as other car bombings in Nigeria, but the timing of the attack will have shocked the security forces. The violence is escalating in the run-up to elections due in less than two weeks' time. The attacks are blamed on the jihadist group Boko Haram, which is against democracy and says it wants to set up a caliphate. Over the weekend there were two other explosions in Gombe and another in the city of Potiskum.

Military aircraft belonging to the Chadian armed forces have attacked Boko Haram positions in northeastern Nigeria for a third day. Eyewitnesses say Chadian jets and helicopters bombed and strafed targets in the town of Gamboru, just across the border from Cameroon.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, has gone on trial in France on charges of helping to procure women for sex parties. Mr Strauss-Kahn was forced to abandon his political career in France after being accused by a chambermaid of attempted rape four years ago. From Paris Lucy Williamson.

The man once tipped to be France's next president appeared at the Lille courthouse today, zipping past reporters gathered to capture his latest public scandal. Inside the courtroom Dominique Strauss-Kahn sat through the charges read against him of aiding and encouraging the prostitution of several people between 2008 and 2011 at a string of libertine parties in Paris and Washington. But a lawyer for the former IMF chief says that while he attended the parties he had no knowledge of the women's background nor any organisational role.

President Obama has presented a four-trillion-dollar budget for the coming year, setting out plans to help the middle class at the cost of higher taxes on companies and on the wealthiest Americans. Correspondents say the president is trying to set the political agenda for the rest of his term in office. But it's likely to be oppressed by the Republican-controlled Congress. From Washington here is our correspondent Gary O'Donoghue.

President Obama has thrown down the gauntlet to the new Republican Congress - his explicitly tight plans for extra defence spending, something his opponents want through raising taxes for roads, bridges and high-speed Internet, something they will take issue with. But it's the tax rises that will prove most controversial, in particular the plan to impose a one-off levy on the overseas profits of US corporations, which could raise almost a quarter of a trillion dollars.

Gary O'Donoghue reporting from Washington

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The widow of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has said he thought he would be killed or arrested after he spoke publicly about the corruption in the FSB, the successor to the KGB. Mr Litvinenko died after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium in a hotel in London in 2006. At a public inquiry in London Marina Litvinenko said Mr Litvinenko had also addressed his concerns on the then head of the FSB, Vladimir Putin, now the Russian president.

The leader of the Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine has announced plans to moblise men at fighting age to take on government forces. As fighting there intensifies the separatists are reported to have carried out attacks on the key transport junction, Debaltseve, from where hundreds of civilians have been evacuated. The journalist Noah Schnyder visited the town at the weekend and described the situation there.

"Debaltseve is in dire straits. It looks almost...you can imagine the end of the world would look: people living in decrepit basements, melting snow for water, cooking on makeshifts, so venturing out of their bomb shelters only for the most necessary ingredients to life."

The United States has imposed visa restrictions on unnamed Venezuelan officials that it accuses of human rights violations and corruption. The State Department said it was sending a clear message that human rights abuses, corrupt government officials and their families were not welcome in the United States. President Nicholas Maduro said his country wouldn't accept what he described as insolent imperialist sanctions.

Croatia's left-wing government has offered around 60,000 of its poorest citizens a chance to have their debts written off. The scheme dubbed "fresh start" is open to people owing up to 5,000 dollars, whose bank accounts have been frozen as a result of their debts. Private and public sector organisations will share the cost.

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