2010-05-10 BBC
BBC News with Gaenor Howells
The United States Attorney General Eric Holder has said the Pakistani Taliban were behind the attempted car bombing in Times Square in New York last week. He said the US had evidence that the militant group had recruited a Pakistani-born American citizen Faisal Shahzad. Aleem Maqbool has more.
Now the American Attorney General says there’s proof of Pakistani Taliban involvement, it will ratchet up the pressure on Islamabad. US officials want the Pakistani army to decisively deal with the tribal region of North Waziristan which borders Afghanistan. It is a stronghold of the Taliban, a place where they've also given a safe haven to Al-Qaeda and the area where Faisal Shahzad is reported to have trained. There're small-scaled / Pakistani military operations there and frequent US air strikes have killed scores of Taliban operatives in the region, a reason given for the Taliban who’d want to attack America.
Security officials in Pakistan say a man has been arrested at Karachi airport after batteries and an electric/ circuit were found in his shoes. The suspect who said to be a Pakistani citizen was detained as he tried to board a fight to Oman. Airport security official said he had been checked manually after setting off an alarm.
European Union finance ministers have been meeting in Brussels to discuss measures to prevent the Greek debt crisis from spreading to other countries using the euro currency. They are expected to allow eurozone countries to access an eighty-billion-dollar emergency fund, but a loan guarantee scheme has been opposed by Britain. As our economics editor Stephanie Flanders reports, the financial markets in Asia and in Europe will be paying close attention to the Brussels Talks.
Eurozone governments have often seen several steps behind the markets in responding to the situation in Greece. The amounts of delay have raised the cost, not just for Greece, but for other countries like Portugal and Spain and the banks that have lent them money. Now the states have been raised once again and officials today have just a few hours to rewrite the rules of the eurozone and show investors they have both the cash and the will to stand by their members.
Coalition partners of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel have failed to retain their majority in regional elections in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. During the campaign, Mrs Merkel faced widespread criticism for agreeing to support the EU rescue package for Greece. Steve Rosenberg reports from Berlin.
Only a few months ago, Angela Merkel seemed at the pinnacle of power, reelected Chancellor and with the centre-right coalition she’d been campaigning for. But now, the leader who has been nicknamed "Iron Angie" is suddenly looking much weaker. It's only one regional election, but it matters, because defeat here deprived the Chancellor of a majority in the Upper House of the German Parliament. And without that, she’ll find it much harder to push through the national legislation she's planned by / tax cuts and health service reform.
World News from the BBC
The biggest party in the new British Parliament, the Conservatives, say they have heard good discussions with the Liberal Democratic Party about forming a governing coalition, following Thursday's inconclusive election. A senior conservative figure said ensuring economic stability and reducing the budget deficit would be a central part of any agreement. The Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said his Labour Party is also open to a coalition deal.
The United States has warned Israel and the Palestinians not to do anything to undermine the newly resumed Middle East peace talks which were suspended in December 2008. A State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said that if either party seriously undermined the trust, they'd be held accountable. The indirect talks have been mediated by President Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell.
Football and Chelsea are English Champions for the first time since 2006. In the final round of matches in the Premier League, Chelsea thrashed Wigan eight-nil to finish one point ahead of their nearest rivals Manchester United. Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti could now beat his predecessor José Mourinho's achievements and win both a league and FA Cup trophies. Chelsea's Didier Drogba who scored a hat-trick said it felt good to be back on top.
“There’s many ways to win, and we've chosed it as one way and we are winning and now we can lose at different way and still wining, so it's good, it's good because after a few years of frustration I think now we got what we want and what we deserve.”
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