28/09/2012 BBC World News

Kenyan and Somali troops have entered the Somali port of Kismayo,

the last major stronghold of Al- Shabab Islamists. The disgraced

Chinese politician is expelled from the Communist Party, and will face

prosecution. 19 die as a plane crashes minutes after take off in

Nepal. Britons and Chinese are among the dead. Welcome to BBC

World News. Also in this programme. Pebbles smoothed by the flow of

water on Mars. NASA says new pictures show that rivers once

flowed on the Red Planet. And who controls the purse strings? Why

women are in charge of the finances in Japan. Kenya's military says its

forces working alongside Somali troops have par hall his captured

the port city of Kismayo from Al- Shabab. A spokesperson has told the

BBC Government forces expect to take the city and Twitter messages

have advised residents in Kismayo to stay indoors ch Al-Shabab

fighters are reported to have been spotted north of the city, fighting

is continuing and Al-Shabab says it has not lost control. Let us speak

to our Africa editor. Just first of all, this is a very significant

city, isn't it for Al-Shabab to loose? It is their last major

stronghold. It is way they got weapons and ammunition into the

country and it the source of their finances, because they taxed the

trade in the city, and made a lot of money so they could pay for what

ever what they wanted to do it is very important for them to control

Kismayo and they look as if they are prepared to fight to the last.

And they have said, I think there has been one report they are

denying they have lost control of the city, we also saw reports that

among the outside troops, there could be European forces, have you

managed to confirm that or not? well on who controls Kismayo, it

seems clear according to residents my colleagues in the Somali service

have spoken to, they say large areas of the city are still in the

hands of shall be sha, but probably not the port and the -- Al-Shabab

and the beach area. It is possible that the airport has fall into the

landing forces. But, as for the white troops, there were two

residents we spoke to and both said they had been stopped by Kenyan

troops, there are some Somali troops and some whites. I have

checked with the British forces, and with the Americans, who operate

and both say they had no involvement in it whatsoever. It is

possible that South African were involved. But they also deny

involvement. That leaves us only with Kenyan, it is possible the

Kenyans had some white troops with them, but it is a bit of a mystery.

Many thanks. Gunmen have attacked a prison overnight in the Iraqi city

of Tikrit killing several guard and freeing dozens of inmates. A senior

official told the BBC that 12 guards were killed about 200

inmates freed. The attack began with a car bomb but this hasn't

been confirmed. Another report says the prisoners were hard-core Al-

Qaeda militants. Again, still to be confirmed. The Chinese news agency

has just reported that the former prominent politician at the heart

of a political scandal has been expelled from the ruling Communist

Party and is to face justice, one report on the potential charges

said he will face charges of corruption, abuse of power, bribe

taking and improper relations with a number of women, so those are

some of the charges he could face. Of course his wife was convicted of

murdering a British businessman and this has dominated much of Chinese

politics in the last few weeks. Our correspondent is in Beijing for us.

What more do we know about what has happened to him? Well, this

announcement ends months of speculation over his fate. He was

last seen in public in March. He was last herd about in April. That

is when the party announced he was being investigated for violations

of party discipline. As you were pointing out there, this whole

scandal was triggered back in February, that was when his police

chief tried to defect to the American Consulate. He has been

tried for that, found guilty. But it was the revelation that his wife

had murdered a British businessman, which really blew this scandal up.

She has been convicted of that murder of the British businessman,

so now we have the politician and now he is being expelled from the

party. He faces a whole host of charges against him what is clear

is there has been all sorts of negotiations and political

wranglingings behind the scene. That is why we haven't heard

anything about this case for several months. Why is that the

case? Well, he was no ordinary politician. He was one of China's

most powerful and influential politicians and he had been tipped

for the very top, in Chinese politic ticks during the once in a

decade leadership change. I think it is significant when the party

has announced that he will face charges, they have announced when

that party Congress will take place and they say the date is November,

ending again weeks of speculation. Can you also briefly tell us how

this affects the top of Chinese politics, the shape of it, the

future direction of it? What it has done, it has thrown a window into

the upper reaches of power in China. Normally that is secret, we rarely

get a glimpse into the workings of the party. But what it has exposed

is murder, corruption, and cover up, at the very heart of power in China.

I think that is one of the reasons, the main reason that the party have

moved against him, because all these damaging revelations are not

only damaging him but they are damaging the party as well. They

will want to try and draw a line under this affair, why they want do

that now, they have just announced when the party Congress, the once

in a decade leadership change will take place, and that will be in

about a month's, month-and-a-half's time. Thank you. It is all

happening in France today. With a new austerity budget just being

announced. Jamie has all the details. Yes, in France the new

Government has just unveiled the budget for 2013. It's a tough one.

Government wants to make 30 billion euros in new savings. That is about

$40 billion. It is hoping to achieve that by raising 20 billion

through extra taxes on households and bys, as well as cutting

Government spending by 10 billion euros. The Government says that

will help bring down the deficit to 3% of GDP. That would bring it back

in to line with European budget rules. Our correspondent has just

returned from France. He has been talking to small businesses about

their expectation, he is with me now. Do you think, the people you

were talking to, did they imagine this was a business friendly

Government, is that what they felt it was? A lot of the businesses I

talk to tend to be sanguine about their Government. It seems

surpriesing, they are fighting expensive labour laws. It is

difficult to take people on and keep them. The companies that are

successful, have been there a long time, a lot sell heavily to the

home market, they are part of a system. They are part of a Chamber

of Commerce. The French system has served them well. France is

reaching a tipping point. The likes of Germany and Netherlands have

spent the good times reducing labour costs and suddenly, France

sees itself saddled with expensive labour laws which are difficult to

undo, because the austerity problems go with that. What you are

seeing in many other countries, you see the Government cutting back,

getting smaller, reducing public service, and hoping that the

private sector was going to take up the slack. Can you see that being

repeated in France? France hasn't got very much smaller at the moment.

Indeed, the Finance Minister himself said earlier today that was

to be a serious liftist budget, so from is still this great belief in

the French system and it is probably going to take some more

shocks to unravel it. Of course one of those is the fact that the

French bounce are hev banks are exposed to Spain, Greece etly. If

the debts unravel they will be dumped on the Government that. I

will have serious problems. You can cut and cut and it will make no

difference if you don't have any growth. What businesses, what were

they saying? They were saying if they could be cut more slack, for

example one company made a lot of Olympic flags, they said we have a

subsidiary in America. If we want to take staff on we can do well, we

can't experiment and do new things in France. They feel if they were

cut a bit more slack they would be able to be successful. That is the

plea. I think Government is beginning to get the message but

the really of doing it is difficult because it is so entrenched. Now

the system is broken and needs compete overhaul. Those are the

words of the head of the UK's financial watchdog who has outlined

plans to set up LIBOR. The London Interbank Offered Rate measures how

much banks pay to lend to each other, is used to price literally

trillions of dollars of global transactions. UK regulators propose

stripping the bank's industry body, that is the British Bankers'

Association of that role, in setting the rate. Basing it on

actual market trades rather than just what the banks claim to be

paying. Anyone attempting to manipulate this rate would then

face criminal sanctions under the new rules. We need to press the

reset Button. We need to get back to what this reference rate is

supposed to be. We need to restore integrity to a globally important

beb -- benchmark and we need to get to a position where individuals act

with integrity. This is not a London issue. This is a global

issue. LIBOR is a global benchmark and that is why I have been working

in partnership with counterparts in the US, Japan, Switzerland, the

European Union and elsewhere. Caplan is the editor of a banking

magazine. There is a feature of financial markets they tend to grow

up from a very small base, in an informal way and they develop into

huge markets with huge implication as in the case of LIBOR and they

are unregulated or they are just run by in this case the British

Bankers' Association which is totally inappropriate. So reform is

long overdue, this is not throwing the whole thing out and starting

all over again, it is an overhaul of the existing system but it's a

comprehensive one, it will simplify things and make them more

transparent. It is the death knell of self regular -- regulation?

think it should be, but in order to achieve that, the regulators are

going to have to keep an eye on what is going none the markets,

because what happens, why things become self-regulated is because

you get an innovation in financial markets and it moves very fast, and

it becomes a big thing before the regulators have noticed it. They

don't have the process to regulate it. We have new regulators

structures in place, here in the UK, and the US and in Europe, so it is

going to be their job now to notice the things building up, because

obviously next time it won't be LIBOR, it will be something

different. A lot of banks and individuals making a lot of money

out of this one way or another, by rigging the system slightly, do you

think it will change their profitability? Nofrpblgts, I am not

sure the banks made too much money out of this. Individual traders may

have done. Let us not forget there were two phases, so one was to

improve their trading position, up to the crisis, after that, it was

much more reputational, because they were worried they couldn't

raise money at all. I don't think it is going to change it as such.

Profits in banking are going to fall, because of the poor economic

climate and the massive regulation that is coming along, but I don't

19 people have been killed in a plane crash on the outskirts of the

Nepalese capital, Kathmandu. A police spokesman said the small

Dornier aircraft owned by Sita Air caught fire within two minutes of

take-off from Kathmandu airport. The plane was flying to Lukla, near

Mount Everest. British and Chinese passengers are amongst those who

have been killed. Chris Yates is an aviation expert and gave me his

thoughts on what might have happened. There is a question

hanging over the actual cause of this crash today. A bird strike has

been talked about. We've heard that vultures to congregate in the area

of the airport. That will be a Ida -- a direction for the

investigators, as they look at the prime cause for this aircraft to

come down. But I have to say it is quite rare for a turbo-prop

aircraft of this type to be brought down by a bird strike, although we

can't rule that possibility out. this a very difficult area to fly,

because we hear that there are so many accidents in this part of the

world? If we look back through the air accident records for the poor,

they have been something like 74 incidents since the 1950s. Some 700

or so casualties or fatalities. We are talking about a small commuter

airline and aircraft, the Dornier 328. It in itself has been involved

in quite a number of accidents over the last two to three years. I am

sure that the Nepalese civil aviation authorities will be

looking very closely at how the airlines operate that aircraft type,

and trying to determine whether it is right for the sort of operations

that they do in that part of the world. Overall, looking at the

number of crashes that they are in that part of the world, is that

partly because of lack of a safety control system or because it is a

hazardous region? It is a hazardous region. Many of the airports across

Nepal, not specifically Kathmandu but across Nepal, have very short

runways, that's why they use this type of aircraft which has that

short take-off and landing capability. But I think there are

going to be a lot of questions asked as to where -- as to the

maintenance of the aircraft type, the regulation of the airlines that

operate within the poor and oversight of their safety

programmes. We are talking about three of this type of aircraft that

have fallen out of the sky with passengers on board over the past

two years. It seems to me that there's a theme that building

appear that needs to be investigated carefully. Still to

come, could these pebbles are found on the surface of Mars have been

smoothed by the flow of water? More than 170 Muslim women have returned

to Nigeria from Saudi Arabia, after their pilgrimage was stopped

because they were travelling without a male escort. Nigerian

officials said that hundreds of women are still stuck at the

airports in Medina and Jeter for a fifth date. More than 1000 women

have been detained by the authorities in Saudi Arabia. Some

said they'd been treated like criminals for travelling without a

male relative or husband. They'd been trying to make the Islamic

Hajj paint a -- pilgrimage to Mecca. Two of those women told us of their

experiences. What happened to us, there is no place to sleep. We used

one toilet, more than 2000 of us. They treat us as animals. We don't

have marriage. We tell them that our husband had the right in our

passport. They have already allowed them first to Medina. Let us find

my support a number and give them, they refuse. Even if you enter the

place that we are sleeping, the smell and everything, we lied on

the floor. As soon as we arrived in Saudi Arabia we are in pain.

Because we don't have... The way they are treating this is unfair.

They said that our men should go to Medina. They went for a screening

and they left us there. They said that we should go upstairs and eat.

Then they blocked us have for five days. They didn't even take as our

Do macro of the pilgrims have come back out of Nigeria. The Formula

One driver there was Hamilton has confirmed that his leading McLaren

and will drive for Mercedes next season. He will be paid a reported

$8 million a season for three years. The move means that the former

world champion, Michael Schumacher, will have to leave Mercedes. It is

not clear where he will be racing Kenyon and Somali troops had

entered the last major stronghold of the Al-Shabab Islamist group,

the southern Somali and port of Kismayo. And Chinese state media

says the former senior politician Bo Xilai is to be expelled from the

Communist Party and will face prosecution. He will face charges

including corruption and abuse of power. NASA says its robotic Rover

has found clear evidence that water once flowed over the surface of

Mars. It may look like just another rock but the scientists say the

pebbles here were given their shape because of water erosion. The

development is a huge one and I asked Robert Massey, from the

British Royal astronomical Society, whether we could now be absolutely

sure that Rivers did once low on the surface of Mars. From the

reports it seems pretty conclusive. What you are seeing is

conglomerates, materials cemented together by the action of water.

That might have happened many millions of years ago but none the

less, it's quite convincing. Given that the Rover was deliberately

designed to land in an area where water has flowed in the distant

past, it is fantastic to see evidence of this in situ on the

ground as well. What indication as to how much water flowed, what type

and what age, what period? I'm not entirely sure of the geological

period. It sounds like a vague answer but there's a lot of debate

about when water last load in quantity on Mars, ranging from

anything perhaps quite recently, even perhaps to this day in

occasional outbursts, write back to perhaps 2000 or 3 billion years ago.

It's a very intriguing world in that way. The death of it, the

estimate was rather vague, anything from ankle height to hip height, I

guess depending on how poor you are you can make your own judgment.

are looking at some of the pictures that have been sent back from

Curiosity. Explain to us why finding water is such a crucial

thing. We keep hearing it is the key to like. Could there be light

at any point sustainable on another planet outside our own? It is a

very helpful ingredient. It may be that it's possible to have life

that doesn't depend on the presence of water whatsoever, but it would

be rather helpful to have something like that on the surface of the

planet, flowing along to allow life to develop. It may just be that

there was life on Mars in the distant past and it has died out

because the world tried out and became a much harsher environment.

It may also be that it's nestling deep underground, protected from

the radiation of the Sun. On Mars there isn't a thick atmosphere like

we have on earth, so it's a very harsh environment for life on the

surface. None the less, the presence of water for all of that

is a significant thing. If there was water flying around today it

would be incredibly interesting to look for life in those places. But

if it's there, there isn't that much, it is a very harsh

environment with a poisonous atmosphere, at least to us.

might still be the main breadwinners but in Japan, around

three-quarters of household budgets are controlled by women. We report

on why men handover their entire salary to their wives. It is a pay-

day for this man. As well as a home-made lunch box, his wife gives

him a monthly pocket money of 30,000 yen, or just over $350.

Despite being the breadwinner, that is all the money his wife will let

him spend on himself over the next 30 days.

TRANSLATION: I started controlling the household budget when I became

a housewife, after having children. Their education and private lessons

cost a lot, so we have decided that it's easier for him to be on a

fixed allowance. I try to ease is burdened by making him a lunch box.

Lunchtime is usually a solitary affair. And even know it's a sunny

summer day, he says his life can get a bit dull. His only luxury our

cigarettes after lunch, which he spends one-third of his pocket

money on. He may be eating his lunch alone but he is not unique.

Three-quarters of Japanese household budgets are controlled by

women, and making matters worse for the men is the fact that the

average amount of their pocket money has halved since the early

1990s. Just as Japan's economic conditions have tightened, so have

the country's purse strings. All the couples are also feeling the

pinch. -- older couples. This man has been getting just over $600 a

month from his wife for the past 15 years. And just like in the rest of

the business world, he has to try and negotiate a pay rise each year.

But despite his best efforts, his wife makes a counter presentation

explaining why it can't be done. The realities of the bottom line

laid out a long way from the office. TRANSLATION: When she is drawing a

pie chart of our household budget, there is no way I can win the

argument. I've given up my car, motorbike and many expensive

hobbies. There is one thing he has managed to keep hold of, and that

his drinking budget. But even that has shrunk. On average, Japanese

businessmen now spend less than $40 and night to lift their spirits,

which is almost half of what they used to spend just three years ago.

Luckily, though, they still seem to have enough cash in their pockets

to put a smile on their faces. It sounds like a marvellous idea to me.

That is almost it from us for now. Let's leave you with a dance

sensation coming into was from Thailand. This is the gang and

style, originally from South Korea, it's now demonstrated by members of

the Royal Thai Navy, based in Bouckaert. They've taken three days