Hello I am Jim Lee with the BBC news.
China has announced that its economy grew by 6.9% last year. The figure was in line with expectations, but it's the slowest rate of growth for the world's second
largest economy in 25 years. Karishma Vaswani reports.
How China performs economically is crucial for the rest of the world. Its economic boom over the last three decades created massive demand for commodities like coal
and copper. An entirely new middle class was created too, helping to push up demand for foreign goods and services. But in recent years, slowing growth in China has
dampened hope that it could continue to drive the global economy. The real concern, though, is just how badly China's economy is likely to do in the future. Critics
say China's data is unreliable, and that real growth figures may be much weaker than what officials say it is.
A new medical research says there are more than 2.6 million still birth across the world every year, and two thirds of them are in Africa. Writing in the journal The
Lancet, a team from the London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine says there has been little progress in reducing still birth which are mostly preventable. Here
is our Africa editor Richard Hamilton.
Among the most staggering findings, it is said on current trends it will take more than 160 years before the average pregnant woman in Sahara Africa has the same
chance of her baby being born alive as does a woman today in a high income country. The authors of the report say improvements have been made in maternal health and in child death but not in reducing still birth, what they call the silent killer.
The Columbian president Juan Manuel Santos has signed a law that imposes tougher sentences on the perpetrators of the acid attacks. Anyone convicted of such crimes will now serve between 12 and 50 years in jail. More details from our Americas editor Leonardo Russia.
The ceremony of the presidential palace in Bogota was attended by several victims of acid attacks. Among them was Natalia, after whom the new law was named. She became a high-profile campaigner after having her face disfigured by a neighbourhood who became obsessed with her in 2014. About 100 people, most of them women, are estimated to be targeted every year.
The guitarist and song writer Glen Frey, a founding member of the American band the Eagles, has died in New York. He was 67 and has been suffering from several
illnesses. Co-founder Don Henley called him the spark plug, the man with the plan. The group took elements of pop, rock and country to create a late back Californian
song that made them hugely popular in 1970s. Frey wrote and sang some of their best known hits, including this one.
World news from the BBC.?
The son of the Shiah Muslim cleric Nimr Al-Nimr who was executed by Saudi Arabia has critisized the west for failing to put more pressure on the Saudi government. In a
BBC interview, Mohamoud Al-Nimr said the US and British alliances with the kingdom were not in the long term interests of their peoples. He argued that the
conservative Wahabi form of Islam, practised in Saudi, with the same ideology that the Islamic state group uses to legitimize its actions.?
The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has accused certain states and governments in Europe of actively obstructing efforts to improve conditions for migrants
and refugees. It said, MSF psychologists had noticed a significant increase in the number of panic attacks and self-harm attempts by migrants trapped at Greek border
crossing after Macedonia closed its borders. Matt S reports.
MSF says the Greek island, of course, where there is still no reception facility, it said condition had become so inhuman in reception centers in Italy that the
charity had to leave.Some European country's policy of closing the borders served not as the deterrant, but merely to increase the suffering of people stranded in
Norman's land.'
Here in the UK inequality campaign group Stonewall has named Britain's domestic spy agency MI5 as the country's best employer for gay and lesbian staff. Ben A has been findout out why.
Stonewall asked more than 60,000 workers about the training and support offered to lesbian, gay, bi-sextual, and transgender colleagues. It says that as well as
improving the lives of such staff, MI5 and the other organizations on the list benefit from greater privativity and more creative workplace environment, reaching the
No.1 spot marks a turnaround for the security service. Up to the 1990s homosextual man and woman were barred from spying jobs with MI5 for fears that they might be
vulnerable to blackmail, and therefore pose a security risk.?