BBC news 2007-11-08 加文本

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BBC　News with Mike Cooper.

President Bush says he has had a frank conversation with the Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf and urged him to give up his army post and hold election soon. Speaking at a news conference in Washington, Mr. Bush said it wasn’t right to continue as president and head of the military at the same time. Jonathan Bill reports:
The White House has been careful in its criticism of President Musharraf, who’s seen as a key ally in America’s war on terror. Evidence of that caution is that it’s taken President Bush a number of days to call Pakistan’s leader to protest the imposition of a state of emergency, a step that Washington had always opposed. In a joint news conference with France’s president, Mr. Bush told the reporters that he never told general Mushsarraf that he ought to have election soon and that he should discard his military uniform.

The Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has extended the state of emergency to cover the whole country. It will last fifteen days and follows the earlier announcement of an emergency covering just the capital Tbilisi. There have been six days of opposition protests and the government says the measures have been introduced following what they call an attempted coup. From Tbilisi Matthew Collin reports:
A close ally of president Saakashvili said the state of emergency would remain in force until the situation returned to normal. He said the media would be given guidelines about what to report and transport routes would be changed to prevent people gathering in large numbers. His statement came after riot police crushed the largest anti-government demonstration in Georgia since the Rose Revolution, which brought President Saakashvili to power 4 years ago.


The Commander of American-led forces in Baghdad Major General Joseph Fil has said that Al-Qaeda no longer has any strongholds in the city. He said all the Sunni areas, where Al-Qaeda had been entrenched, were now under control and that the security improvements were sustainable. However, General Fil cautioned that Al-Qaeda was not finished in Baghdad and could stage a comeback.

The International Police Agency, Interpol, has placed on an international wanted list: five prominent Iranians and a Lebanese national sought by Argentina in connection with the bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires in 1994. Eighty five people were killed in the attack. The move came despite strong objections from Iran. As Emilio San Pedro reports:
In March, Iran won a victory in the case after Interpol’s executive committee removed the most controversial name from the list of suspects named by Argentina, that of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. This latest vote, however, by Interpol’s general assembly, means that several high-profile Iranian figures, including the country's former Intelligence Chief and the former leader of the Elite Revolutionary Guards have been placed on organization’s most wanted list. However, it appears highly unlikely that Iran will be any more prepared to cooperate with Interpol on this case now that the arrest warrants have been formalized by the organization’s general assembly.

World News from the BBC.

The authorities in the south of the Sudanese region of Darfur have expelled the head of the United Nations humanitarian operations there Wael al-Haj Ibrahim. They accused him of rule violations, but were not specific. The UN has condemned the expulsion. Our African editor Martin Plaut has the details:
Late last month, the UN witnessed troops and police running up refugees from a camp on the outskirts of Nyala. Around a thousand refugees were forced onto trucks at gunpoint and driven into the night. According to a human rights organization, the Aegis Trust, they were dumped on the outskirts of the city and ended up living with friends and relatives while al-Haj Ibrahim, as the head of the UN humanitarian operation in Nyala, objected to the forced relocation.

A student in Finland has opened fire at a school, killing seven pupils and the school’s head mistress before turning his gun on himself. He died in hospital several hours after the shooting at the Yokela high school in Tuusula, north of the capital Helsinki. The Finnish president Tarja Halonen expressed a shock at the shootings. The government has declared a day of national mourning for Thursday.

Shares on the New York stock exchange have fallen sharply amid continuing concerns over the American housing market. The Don Jones index closed more than 2.5% down just under 361 points as investors became nervous over a weak dollar and high oil prices. The fall came as the attorney general of New York Andrew Cuomo announced that he was widening investigation into the recent mortgage loan crisis.

A laptop, designed to bring affordable computing to developing world, has gone into production. Priced at around the $190 each, the XO laptop has no hard drive, and it’s built around on much less power and memory than conventional computers.

Glossary
entrench: vt.
1)掘壕沟 The troops were entrenched near the mountains. 部队在群山边筑起壕沟以防卫自己。
2)保护 He entrenched himself behind his newspaper. 他躲在报纸后面。

elite: n. [集合名词]精华, 精锐, 中坚分子
A group or class of persons or a member of such a group or class, enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status:精英，杰出人物：具有超人的智力、社会、或经济地位的一群或一类人或这群或这类人中的一员：
“In addition to notions of social equality, there was much emphasis on the role of elites and of heroes within them”
“除了社会平等概念之外还强调其中精英们和英雄们所起的作用”


mistress: n. 1)女主人；女教师 2) 情妇
a new English mistress/一位新来的英语女教师
All the girls like their new English mistress. 所有的女孩子都喜欢她们新来的英语女教师。