Around the World: United Kingdom

BBC to take on Al-Jazeera

The British Broadcasting Corp will launch an Arabic-language television news channel next week in a bid to challenge Al-Jazeera and other popular Middle East TV news outlets.

The move into television news for viewers in North Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf is part of a major restructuring for the British broadcaster, which closed some radio stations in eastern Europe to divert resources to the Arabic-speaking world.