BBC news 2008-04-15 加文本

BBC 2008-04-15


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BBC news with Jack Mackintosh.

Silvio Berlusconi who has won Italy's general election says he feels great responsibility but warns of difficulty months ahead. The Center Right leaders’ first public comments since his rival Walter Veltroni admitted defeat came in a telephone call to a talk show on RAI television. From Rome, David Willey reports.

He declared he was willing to push through reforms with the help of the opposition. Mr. Berlusconi plans a slimmed down a cabinet only twelve ministers including four women, thus will fulfilling one of his election promises. Despite having won the governing majority in both houses of parliament, analysts predict that his freedom party coalition will have to pay more than lip service this time to the demands of the northern league which made significant gains in the election results declared so far. In past power sharing arrangements, the northern league has often been an uncomfortable bedfellow.

The United States has been making two hundred million dollars available for emergency aid to alleviate food shortages in Africa and other parts of the world. The White House said the money would be used to meet unanticipated needs for food aid. Rising food prices have already led to violent demonstrations in Haiti and warnings of potential unrest elsewhere. David Bamford reports
 
President Bush has ordered this additional food aid a day after senior finance development officials from around the world called for urgent action to stem rising food prices, warning that social unrest would spread  unless the cost of basic staples was contained. The World Bank said on Sunday that a doubling of the food prices over the past three years could push a hundred million people in developing countries deeper into poverty. Two hundred million dollars has been made available to help alleviate food shortages in Africa but also other seriously affected areas.
 
The main opposition party in Zimbabwe, the Movement for Democratic change, has called for a general strike beginning on Tuesday in protest the decision of the high court to reject its request the long delayed results of last month presidential election be released. The judge in Harare said he accepted the argument by the electoral commission ZEC that it should first investigate anomalies in the vote. The MBC's vice president Thokhozani Khupe called on opposition supporters to stage a mass sit-in.
The national executives counsel does resolve to stage a mass sit-in. We are therefore calling upon the public to speak out against the arrogance of ZEC in its failure to release the presidential results.
 
The government of Ivory Coast has again delayed the long awaited presidential elections, a key part of last year’s peace deal aimed at reuniting the country. The first around of the presidential poll will be held in late November missing a previously agreed deadline by five months. The delay has been welcomed by all sides.
 
You are listening to the world news coming to you from the BBC here in London.
 
The Israeli president Shimon Peres is in Poland for ceremonies to mark the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazi occupation during the World War Two. Mr. Bearers will join his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski and holocaust survivors on Tuesday in a Jewish pray for the dead. The ceremony will take place at the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters Monument where in 1943 hundreds of young Jewish held up for two months against the German army. (Www.hxen.net)

Three inmates have been killed during riots in the prison in Jordan. Officials said prisoners that jailed near Amen set fire to their cells to protest against a move to segregate al-Qaeda-linked militants from other convicts. Jordanian police said the three died from smoke inhalation.
 
The author of the Harry Potter Books J.K.Rowling has appeared in court in New York to try to block plans to publish an unofficial encyclopedia on the fictional world for boy visit. The material in question has already appeared on the website called The Harry Potter lexicon, but Ms Rowling says publishing it in the form of a book would violate intellectual copyright. Rob Norris reports.
 
This case is all about for the material that is freely available on the internet compiled using material from the seven Harry Potter novels can be printed and sold commercially as a book. J.K.Rowling told the court in Manhattan that amounts to the wholesale theft. She plans to write her own encyclopedia which she says will raise money for charity. The man she is suing, Steve Van der Ark and his publisher say if she wins the future publication of any reference guides to works of fiction could be threatened. They say her injunction would dramatically extend the reach of copyright protection.
 
People in Cuba are buying their own mobile phones openly for the first time. State-owned telephone officials also began to sell them as part of a series of economic liberalization measures introduced by Raul Castrol who took over the presidency in February.(www.hXen.com)
 
And that’s the latest BBC News.

Vocabulary(special thanks to myconsent)

1. bedfellow: A person with whom you share a bed; an associate or collaborator, esp. one who forms a temporary alliance for reasons of expediency

2. stem: to stop, check, or restrain.

3. inhalation: an act or instance of inhaling

4. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising华沙犹太区革命/暴动The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany in Warsaw.

5. injunction: The act or an instance of enjoining