23/05/2016 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today with me, Karin Giannone.

Defeated by the narrowest of margins - Austria's new president won't be

With less than a percentage point in it, Alexander Van der Bellen sees

off Norbert Hofer to become Austria's head of state.

The Islamic State group says it's behind bombings in two cities

on Syria's Mediterranean coast - Government strongholds that

had previously escaped the worst of the conflict.

Also coming up - serious allegations are made about the death of Turkish

civilians at the hands of security forces.

And just not special enough - Louis Van Gaal gets the sack

from Manchester United, but guess who's

In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party candidate,

Norbert Hofer, has been narrowly defeated in the presidential

election by this man, the independent candidate Alexander

van der Bellen, the former Green Party leader.

The contest between Hofer and van der Bellen in Sunday's election had

been too close to call, and depended on postal ballots

A key campaign issue was Europe's migration crisis,

which has seen asylum-seeker numbers soar in Austria,

as our correspondent Jenny Hill reports from Vienna.

It's a decision which has divided Austria.

Alexander Van der Bellen won the presidential election - just.

He is liberal, pro-EU and wants to welcome refugees.

TRANSLATION: I will represent Austria to the outside,

I will represent us as best as I can.

And again, I will try to stress the cooperative, what connects us.

And of course I want to be an opener of doors for the economy of Austria.

Mr Van der Bellen may struggle to unite his country.

Earlier today, we found his nationalist opponent at home

Regardless of the outcome, Norbert Hofer told us,

What does it say for Austria if you do win?

If I win, I have to try to keep Austria together.

If Van der Bellen wins, he has to try to keep

They may have lost the election, but his Freedom Party has

It is anti-EU, anti-migrant and it gained momentum

No wonder the eyes of Europe are on Austria.

Right-wing parties are gaining ground elsewhere as well -

France, Germany, Denmark, and so is disillusionment

at the established political mainstream.

TRANSLATION: There is a sea change in Europe, many people can't cope

The FPO is the only party that addresses this problem.

He tells us lies and it's not true what he says and it's not good.

The presidency of Austria is a largely ceremonial role -

nevertheless these elections may yet have wide reaching consequences.

This vote has split Austria right down the middle.

It's also exposed again the divisions at the heart

Norbert Hofer came within a hair's breath of winning the presidency

and for many that raises questions not just about the future

direction of this country, but of Europe itself.

Our correspondent, Bethany Bell, is in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

In so the freedom party defeated on this occasion, but this really was

extraordinarily close, within the? Extremely close. I mean, he came as

was set there within a hair's breath of winning this election and there

are some Austrians I've been speaking to this evening here in

Vienna that said, they may have lost this presidential election, but they

are doing very well in the polls at the moment, regularly scoring over

30% and when it comes to a general election in just under two years'

time, they could even come out as a first party. In a sense, it's now up

to the Coalition Government to see whether it can address the many

concerns of the Austrians who voted for Norbert Hofer. If it can, that

is one thing, but if he cannot, we could be seeing the Freedom Party

rising to you even more power in that general election. What is being

said there about what's behind this rise of the Freedom Party? It's a

complicated picture. There are a number of things behind this. One is

the extreme weakness of the established political parties here

in Austria, the centerleft and centre-right parties which have

dominated politics here for decades. They are widely being seen as sort

of having come to a stalemate, not moving forward on key performs, not

addressing people's concerns on migrants or the economy. That is a

very key part of this. This widespread disillusionment. You out

on top of that to enormous numbers of migrants who passed through

Austria on their way to Germany this last year, the 90,000 applied for

asylum here, over the last few months. People sense of really being

overwhelmed by the migrant crisis, these things together have combined

to really come in and played into the hands of the Freedom Party. A

word about the winner, Alexander Van der Bellen, former leader of the

Green Party. Tell us a little bit about him. Alexander Van der Bellen

is a long-term player in Austrian politics, a member of the Green

Party, an economics professor, who for many on the left was seen as a

very good candidate, but for people in the centre he wasn't the obvious

choice for president either and yet another sign of the weakness of the

centrist parties. It was interesting to see the presidency, largely a

ceremonial figure, it does have the power to swear in the new

Government. Mr Van der Bellen has expressed great concern about the

prospect of swearing in any Chancellor from the far right

freedom party. So that as well is something that could come into play

in the next year or two if the freedom party does very well at the

ballot box. Thank you very much, Bethany was live in Vienna.

The Islamic State group says ITS militants carried out

the deadly attacks on two Syrian cities in President Assad's

Syrian state media says 78 people were killed -

independent monitors placed the toll higher, and around 150.

Near simultaneous explosions in the cities of Tartous -

where Russia has an airbase - and Jableh, came as a shock

to residents, in an area that has seen less of the violence

This was about as close to a safe haven as can

The city of Tartous on the Mediterranean came under

a devastating attack this morning for the first time.

TRANSLATION: People were running away.

This was at 10am and the time students were leaving for school.

The fourth explosion took place near the supermarket.

Many people were killed and many were injured.

Further up the coast in Jableh, a similar horrific scene unfolded.

In both cities the targets couldn't have been softer.

The city, like Tartous, may be seen as a stronghold

of President Assad, but it was civilians who were killed.

The relative safety of both cities has long drawn internal

They are by no means simply the Alawite minority

But they are also near military targets.

Belonging to the President's key backer Russia.

One is the Russian naval base in tatters and another,

So, those who carried out these attacks were likely sending

a message to Moscow as well as to the Syrian government.

IS was quick to say that it was responsible.

After a series of battlefield defeats in Syria, the group clearly

wants to show how hard and how deep it can still strike

It may also be hoping to shake the bedrock of support

for President Assad which has already been stretched thin

by the huge losses the community has suffered in sending its sons

As the people of Tartousand and Jableh clear away the wreckage,

Some directed at the displaced Sunnis who have taken refuge there.

But many are also calling for unity and solidarity with the victims,

whether they are Alawite, Christian or Sunni.

The Iraqi army has launched what it is calling a major assault to retake

the city from Islamic State. The militants seized

the Sunni-dominated city - 65 kilometres west of

Baghdad, two years ago. Hours after launching the offensive,

Iraq's Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, says the operation

was making better progress than expected.

President Obama has announced a total end to the US embargo

During a three-day visit to the country, he said it

would remove a lingering vestige of the cold war.

A court in the United States has found a white police officer not

guilty of the assault of Freddie Gray -

a black man from Baltimore, whose death provoked

Edward Nero has also been cleared of reckless endangerment and two

Freddie Gray died in April last year, a week after he suffered

a severe spinal cord injury while riding in a police van.

Pope Francis has held talks at the Vatican with Sunni Islam's

highest religious authority at a meeting designed to build

The Pope met Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayyib, the grand Imam of Al-Azhar

As Turkey hosts a World Humanitarian Summit,

serious allegations have been made about the death of civilians at the

The United Nations Human Rights Chief has expressed his concern

Local people have told the BBC and human rights groups that

earlier this year, Turkish security forces killed up to 160 civilians

in the mainly Kurdish town of Cizre in south-eastern Turkey.

The Government dismisses the allegations.

Our Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen reports from Cizre.

In a beautiful place, these are dark times.

War has come back to the mountains of southeastern Turkey.

The long fight between Turkey and the PKK, the armed

The 78 days from December to March, the focus was Cizre,

When the Turks lifted the curfew and pulled back,

local people went into three basements, looking for traces

of at least 100 men, women and children who sheltered there.

Only a few charred bone fragments were left -

local people believe Turkish security forces massacred them.

On the 30th of January, Kurdish MPs were on the phone,

promising ambulances and evacuation, when Turkish forces stormed

Before the troops left, they bulldozed flat the ruins

of the areas wrecked in the fighting.

No crime scene investigators were able to get to the basements

Human Rights Watch suspects a cover up.

This man took me to the site of the basements.

He says Turkey's European allies are letting it get away with murder.

Turning a blind eye to get Turkish help with the wider

TRANSLATION: Europe blatantly watched all those atrocities

I'm not bothered about Europe anymore.

What they did or didn't do, the whole world is responsible

The UN wants to send human rights investigators to this wasteland.

There is no physical trace left of the lives,

the thousands of civilians, Kurdish civilians, who lived

But this is about much more than the personal tragedies.

It is deeply involved in the war in Syria

The EU hopes that Turkey will be a big part of the solution

So instability in Turkey is a problem for Europe and it's

Violence has spread to Ankara, the capital.

In March, a PKK suicide bomber killed 37.

The Turkish Government denies any wrongdoing in Cizre.

It says the PKK are the ones that kill civilians.

What they did was they held them as human shields and they did not

While we were there, not one person complained to me

Well, Turkey would not kill its own citizens.

Turkey has never done this before, it will never do it now.

Turkey's military operations have moved on.

This is near the borders with Syria and Iraq -

the Turks say they are going to finish the PKK once and for all.

Her 20-year-old son was killed in Cizre's basements.

Politics change - heartbreak stays the same.

The head of the World Health Organisation has blamed the spread

of the Zika virus on a massive policy failure in the

WHO leader, Margaret Chan, said scientists had -

as she put it - "dropped the ball" by failing to build on the success

of mosquito eradication programmes in the early '60s.

Speaking in Geneva, she highlighted the problems that lie ahead.

Changes in the way humanity inhabits the planet have given the volatile

microbial world multiple new opportunities to exploit.

The possibility that a mosquito bite during pregnancy could be linked

to severe brain abnormalities in newborns alarms the public

Confirmation of a causal link between infection and microcephaly

has transformed the profile of Zika from a mild disease to a devastating

diagnosis for pregnant women and a significant

Venezuela is in a state of emergency - as the country's economy

Queues for basic daily necessities are growing,

as it struggles to deal with the crash in world oil prices.

The Supreme Court in Venezuela ruled that President Maduro's use

of emergency powers was legal, despite being rejected

by the parliament - which is controlled

We've never been more prepared to defend our borders, said President

Maduro as Venezuelan troops and civilian militias this week in Tempe

did operation Independence, exercises to prepare the country for

eminent invasion. Where the threats come from isn't clear but blaming

foreign governments, the US in particular, for Venezuela's economic

and political crisis is very much part of the President's rhetoric.

But this is a crisis made in Venezuela and people are suffering.

In hospitals with power cuts and acute shortages, patients told me

they could only have operations if they provide their own supplies.

Parents having to buy an ill fitting mask to keep a sick child alive. But

need a makeshift accident and emergency room runs an open sewer.

There are patients who are dying. Doctor say the system is close to

collapse. We have power cuts everyday and we haven't had basic

supplies like saline solutions for months. I often buy medicines with

my own money to treat patients. And the shortages go much than

medicines. This has become a nation of cues. Household goods are scarce,

and a country that became so dependent on oil revenues, it

couldn't cope with the price crashed. This woman needed nappies

for her child, but didn't know if she would find them. IQ every sip of

day, she tells me. These days, there are almost nothing on the shelves,

she says. President Maduro blames the chronic shortages of food and

other basic groups on business elite and foreign governments trying to

deliberately destabilise his socialist Government. Either way,

these cues are getting longer, the shortages more acute and a force --

sense of foreboding even greater. The Government says it will use the

security forces to defend the revolution at all costs. Denouncing

opposition protesters as stooges for business interests at home and

abroad. That is where let's feels primed to explode, and international

mediators have urged both starts to talk before Latin America's most

unstable nation descends further into chaos. Let's go live and speak

to our reporter. The centre of how bad things are on a day-to-day

basis, how are people able to cope? They find it very difficult, as we

saw in my piece. People queue for hours every day. A lot of people

have had to give up their jobs. There was a lot of black market

trading going as well, people queuing for cheap subsidised goods

and then selling them on the black market, but that is a product of the

economic policies of the Government. The real danger for President

Maduro's Government is many of his traditional supporters, those who

supported the revolution, had benefited from the welfare

programmes, the investment in education and housing, are also now

abandoning the Government because of the crisis in the economy here. It

is very difficult for Venezuelans to make ends meet in a cannot even get

sugar, flour, nappies for the children. This country really is in

crisis. Remember this is a country with some of the world's biggest

proven oil reserves in the world and should be a lot wealthier, a lot

more settled than it is today. How did things get so bad? Why wasn't

Venezuela better prepared for this fall in the price of oil? It put all

its eggs in one basket. They got rid of a lot of its food production,

more than 95% of Venezuela's for in earnings come from oil. When time is

good, oil is $40 a barrel, they can afford to pay for whatever they

like. It is the price of oil fell, Venezuelans had nothing to fall back

on. Other countries that suffered through falling oil revenues, like

Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Norway, they had wealth funds and they had

other industries. Venezuela has had nothing to fall back on, so when the

bottom fell out of the oil market, the whole economy basically

collapsed as well. We saw the unrest on the streets. How frightened our

people in the further descent into chaos and is anyone proposing a real

way forward? That is very real possibility, with the weekly

protests in this country, it will end up in some kind of full civil

conflict. There are negotiators in town at the moment and they

occasionally get foreign presidents, especially from the region, try to

urge both sides to come together, the opposition controlled Congress

and President Maduro's socialist Government. They are very far apart

at the moment. There was those in the dialogue am a real sense of

trying to advert this critical situation. Thank you very much. Our

reporter there. It's been the worst kept secret

in football for a few days now - but finally Manchester United has

confirmed that manager Louis van Leading the club to FA Cup glory

over the weekend was Now all eyes are on the man who's

likely to replace him - former Here's our sports correspondent

Katie Gornall. He arrived with a big reputation

and a record that boasted success, but even adding the FA Cup to that

resume was not enough This morning he arrived alone

at the club's training ground, not to plan for the future

but to discuss his departure. How different his mood

was just 36 hours earlier. Manchester United have taken

the lead in extra time Here at Wembley he celebrated

as United won their first But his fate had already been

decided. For the majority of clubs,

winning the FA Cup would be All I want to do is for

Manchester United to act in the best Personally, you know,

treat van Gaal right. I am only sorry that it has

ended this way for him. It all started to seriously unravel

for van Gaal in December when the club endured their worst

run of form in 26 years. The team struggled to score

and managed only 49 It meant they failed to qualify

for the Champions League, Now they will turn to former Chelsea

manager Jose Mourinho. Today in London he gave no hint

he was about to step into one of the biggest

jobs in modern football. He is actually a very

intelligent manager. I think tactically he is

incredibly good as well. What he manages to do is get

the very best out of Mourinho can be controversial,

but his methods bring success. This time United hope

they have a manager Another thing that Chelsea is famous

for, the annual flower show. London has come into full bloom

this week for the annual Chelsea Flower Show,

which attracts thousands The most famous guest is likely

to be Queen Elizabeth, Many of the exhibits on show this

year pay tribute to her 90th birthday, including one

of interlocking portraits made using 10,000 flowers

in purples, pinks and oranges. There's also a field of knitted red

poppies designed as a tribute Just time to return to our main

story. In Austria, the presidential elections there. The independent

candidate has narrowly won Austria's presidential election, denying his

sole rival the chance of becoming the European Union's first far right

head of state. The candidate was declared the winner by less than a

single percentage point over his rival, of the anti-immigration

Freedom Party. There was more on the election results on what this means

for Austria's political future on the BBC website. You can get in

touch with me on twitter. But for now from me and the rest

of the team goodbye. Good evening. A day of sunshine and

showers. Sunglasses one minute, probably the next. More effective

come through tomorrow, although fewer showers. Or many of us, more

the way of sunshine, mainly dry,