BBC 2007-04-12 加文本

BBC 2007-04-12



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BBC World News with Joe Mackintosh.

The authorities in the Algerian capital Algiers say at least 23 people have been killed and many injured in two large explosions. Reports say a car bomb exploded outside the offices of the prime minister in the centre of the city. Another explosion was reported near a police station in an eastern suburb. The prime minister called the attacks criminal and cowardly. Our defence and security correspondent Rob Watson reports.

As yet, no one has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Algiers, but the finger is likely to point at the recently renamed Al-Qaeda organization in the Islamic Maghreb. Formally known as the group for Salafi Preaching and Combat, it announced that it was joining forces with Al-Qaeda last September. Certainly this latest bombings would fit with previous attacks by the group. In February, it targeted a number of police stations on the outskirts of Algiers, and last month it bombed a bus carrying Russian workers.

Police in Bangladesh have charged the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and 46 others belonging to her party with the murder of 4 people during political violence in the capital Dhaka last year. Sanja Daskept reports.

The judge sheet filed by police in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka mentioned the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by name, holding her responsibility for the deaths of 4 people, who were killed during political violence which wrecked Dhaka last October. The judge sheet also mentioned 46 others belonging to her party, the Awani League, which was an opposition at the time and was agitating for a postponement of the general elections originally scheduled for last January.

Thousands of supporters of the opposition in the central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan have gathered in the capital Bishkek to demand the resignation of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. The protestors rallied in the main square where they had set up encampment of tents and huts. The opposition said its protest would continue until the president stepped down. Natalia Antelarva reports from Bishkek.

The protestors, many of whom planned to stay overnight, say they are tired of the corruption and poverty that President Bakiyev had promised but failed to end. Behind this protest is Felix Kulov, the former prime minister and until recently President Bakiyev's close ally. Mr. Kulov says he is determined to push for the president's resignation. Yet Mr. Bakiyev is not without his supporters, and many residents of the capital feel that their battle for power may lead to confrontation.

China and Japan have moved closer to overcoming years of mutual distrust by agreeing to look frankly at their history and to build forward-looking relations. On the first day of a visit to Tokyo, the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao also signed accords with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe on energy cooperation and environmental protection.

BBC News.

The new Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad says the national unity government needs at least 1.3 billion dollars in aid this year to avert what he said would be a devastating humanitarian crisis. Mr. Fayyad was speaking in Brussels after talks with senior European Union officials. The EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said possible reengagement would be a gradual process.

"I have made (it) very clear that possible reengagement would not mean resuming direct financial assistance overnight, and Minister Fayyad himself has said that he is making progress to having a clear picture of the Palestinian finances and the conditions to then receive donor funds."

The environmental group Green Peace says international logging firms are causing social chaos and environmental havoc in the world's second largest rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A study carried out by the group reports that despite a moratorium on new logging work agreed in 2002, an area of rainforest, bigger than Switzerland has since been destroyed. Mike Lancheon has more details.

Green Peace says that more than a hundred new contracts have been issued over the past five years for extensive logging in an area covering 15 million hectares of forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Copies of the contracts obtained by the campaigning group show that an exchange for the agreement of local communities to grant 25-year concessions to the forest areas, some logging companies have offered them gifts worth less than 100 US dollars, others have made promises that they've never been kept.

The biggest financial institution in the United States Citigroup is to cut 17,000 jobs, about 5% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan.

And that's the latest BBC World News