BBC news 2007-08-17 加文本

BBC 2007-08-17


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Come to be seen is a test of the Bush administration's handling of terrorism suspects. Janner Bryon reports from Washington.

Jose Padilla was arrested in 2002 for plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States. He was confined in a military jail as an enemy combatant for three and a half years while lawyers argued that the government had no right to detain a US citizen indefinitely. It was only when the Supreme Court seemed about to intervene that he was charged with two other men for conspiring to carry out attacks overseas as part of an al-Qaeda cell. No mention was made of the dirty bomb. The jury took just two days to find all three men guilty and they'll be sentenced in December.

Latest reports from Peru say the number of people killed by a powerful earthquake is now at least 430. More than a thousand others were injured. The worst hit areas included the coastal cities of Ica and Pisco. The quake brought down buildings and cut power supplies. Here is our America's editor, Emilio San Pedro.

The earthquake caused severe devastation especially in the coastal areas near its epicenter in the Pacific Ocean, 770 kilometers south of the capital Lima. Lima itself escaped the worst of the damage, but the nearby cities of Ica and Pisco, in particular, were badly hit. The mayor of Pisco said that more than 70% of the city had been destroyed and said the streets were lined with dead bodies.

The world's stock markets have continued to fall. In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average's now fallen 10% from its record high late last month. European shares suffered their largest one-day fall in over four years. The volatility has led to concerns about whether there would be wide economic fallout. Our economics correspondent Andrew Walker reports.

The volatility in the stock market and the home loan problems that lie behind it do have the potential to cause wider economic difficulty if they continue for some time. At the very least it seems likely that the market turbulence will cause the US economy to grow more slowly. Whatever happens in the US affects the rest of the world. America is a big market for overseas goods and many foreign firms have invested in the US. But these events have occurred at a time when world economic performance has been strong for several years. That should provide some shelter from the financial market storms.

Heavy fighting has continued in the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt between armed gangs and the military. Houses were set ablaze and the streets were left deserted except for men wielding rifles and machine guns. The fighting comes just hours after security forces conducted a raid against one of the most powerful gang leaders in the city, Soboma George. The military says some gang members were killed and others arrested.

World News from the BBC.

A man and a boy have died in Zimbabwe, after being crushed during a stampede of people trying to buy sugar. The incident took place at the entrance to a shopping complex in the city of Bulawayo. Sugar and other basic goods have been in short supply in Zimbabwe since President Robert Mugabe ordered shops to halve prices in an attempt to tackle hyperinflation.

Prosecutors in the Czech Republic have charged six people with selling human skin from the country's largest skin bank to a private facility in the Netherlands. The suspects included the director of the skin bank, which is based at a hospital in the Czech city of Bruno, and his predecessor. Prosecutors say the six made a quarter of a million dollars by unlawfully removing skin from corpses and selling it.

The Prime Minister of Greece, Costas Karamanlis, has called a snap election. It will be held six months ahead of schedule on September 16. The Greek leader's colleagues have been urging him to call an earlier election as opinion polls suggest that his governing conservative New Democracy Party is losing ground to the opposition Socialists. The BBC's Mark Braben has this report from Athens.

Mr. Karamanlis's conservative New Democracy Party romped to power in the spring of 2004, promising to reform Greece and make it a modern European nation, free of corruption and nepotism and to improve its economic performance. Weary of twenty years under the Socialist Party Pasok, Greece embraced New Democracy and voted for change. Three and a half years on, though, Mr. Karamanlis has managed to push through a number of reforms on education and tax, but he's not achieved all of his objectives.

The legendary drummer Max Roach who helped pioneer the B Box style of jazz has died at the age of 83. Max Roach was a self-taught percussionist who started drumming professionally while still at school. He played with many of the most significant figures in jazz including Due Kalington, Chalie Parker and Miles Davis.

And that's the latest BBC World News.

Glossary

dirty bomb
A dirty bomb is a nuclear bomb that uses explosives to release radioactive material over a wide area.
romp v. 在游戏或比赛中轻易获胜
Journalists use romp in expressions like romp home, romp in, or romp to victory, to say that a person or horse has won a race or competition very easily.