BBC news 2007-07-23 加文本

BBC 2007-07-23


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The parliamentary election in Turkey has been won by the governing Moderate Islamic party Justice and Development, also known as AK. It took almost half the vote and would again have an absolute majority. Ecstatic supporters have surrounded AK's headquarters in Ankara. The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the election four months early after the parliament refused to install his devout Muslim Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as president. Turkey's Secularist Establishment led by the army had warned that another Islamist's victory would threaten the secular system. But in a victory rally, Mr. Erdogan promised to protect its republican traditions. This is what he told to supporters. "Our democracy has passed a very important test in a way which should be a model for the whole world. This vote has shown the level of maturity that our democracy has reached."

Pakistan has responded angrily to suggestions from the United States that it might send its armed forces into Pakistan to strike at Osama bin Laden. The US director of National Intelligence said he believed the architect of the 2001 suicide attacks on New York and Washington was in Northern Pakistan near the Afghan border. President Bush's homeland security advisers said that in the pursuit of Mr. Bin Laden no options were off the table. The Pakistani Foreign Minister said he did not believe that Mr. Bin Laden was in Pakistan and in any case if the US shared its intelligence Pakistan's army could do a better job.

Taliban militants in Afghanistan who are holding 23 South Korean hostages have extended a deadline until Monday evening for the release of a similar number of Taliban prisoners. Negotiations have been going on between the kidnappers and Afghan officials, members of parliament and local elders. A South Korean delegation is also in Afghanistan. The Koreans were reported to be in good health. A spokesman for the Afghan Foreign Ministry Sultan Ahmad Baheen said there was no justification for holding them. "The Afghan government and people want those responsible for kidnapping the Koreans to observe Islamic law and Afghan customs and not to kidnap or hold anyone. We hope that they will release them very soon. The Koreans are doctors, nurses; they are here to help the sick people in Afghanistan."

A notorious bandit has been shot dead by police in India after evading them for more than 30 years. The bandit, Shiv Kumar Patel, who was also known as Dadua, was killed along with several members of his gang. Dadua was wanted in connection with more than 200 criminal cases including murder, extortion and kidnapping. He and his gang operated for decades in ravines and forests on the borders between the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

World News from the BBC.

The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has held an emergency meeting with some of his cabinet ministers as severe floods continued to affect large areas of central England and Wales. The army has been sent to help people in one of the worst affected towns while another town nearby is cut off by flood water. More rain is forecast and there are warnings that river systems could be overwhelmed. Heather Adams reports.

The deluge of rain this week has left many here dumbstruck. The flooding has caused chaos across central and western England and severely stretched the emergency services. Images of roads that have become rivers and helicopter rescues are dominating the nation's televisions. Thousands of people have been stranded in their homes by the floods. Others are currently homeless, staying at makeshift emergency centers. The British Environment Minister has said that the rains were uNPRecedented and impossible to prepare for.

The Irish golfer Padraig Harington has won the British Open Tournament at Carnoustie in Scotland. He defeated Sergio Garcia of Spain in the playoff. Harington is the first European since 1999 to win one of golf's four major tournaments even though Europe has won the last three Ryder Cup team contests against the United States. After Harington's victory, the strain of the contest was clear. "There is a lot of history here and now, you know, I thought they really played the golf today. I hope that I hit it great there. You know, I think, as I said, if I didn't win it, it would have been some disappointment, but the fact went down, I won, I'm just, you know, I'm just so proud the way I played and the score in there."

A senior European official and the wife of the French president have arrived in the Libyan capital Tripoli to seek the release of six medics found guilty of infecting Libyan children with HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDS. Last week, Libya's highest judicial body commuted death sentences on the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to life imprisonment.

BBC World News.