BBC news 2008-04-20 加文本

BBC News with Blerry Gogan.

The former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged African governments to do more to resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe, following last month's disputed elections. On the day, Zimbabwean officials began a partial recount of votes. Mr. Annan described the situation as dangerous and asked what African leaders were doing to tackle it. He was speaking in Kenya where he helped to defuse an electoral crisis there. The Zimbabwean opposition has accused President Robert Mugabe of using the recount to steal the election. A spokesman in Harare for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change Nelson Chamisa said his party totally rejected the recount.

"The MDC roundly and absolutely rejects the process and also the outcome of the so-called 'recount', because we believe that this is a way to try and discount the will and vote of the people. The people voted for MDC, they voted for change, they voted for their dignity, and they rejected Zanu-PF."

At least twenty people have been killed in the Somali capital Mogadishu in fighting between insurgents and Ethiopian soldiers working with Somali government forces. Five Ethiopians and three government soldiers were among the dead. Mary Harper reports.(Www.hxen.net)

The fighting started when Ethiopian troops entered a residential area in Northern Mogadishu believed to be a stronghold of the insurgents. Both sides used heavy weapons, the Ethiopians rolling in with tanks, and the insurgents firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. As usual, civilians bore the brunt of the fighting with five people killed when an artillery shell hit a restaurant. This is the first time in the weeks that the Ethiopians have gone into a residential area.

Pope Benedict has spoken of the need for purification in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, after sexual abuse scandals which have involved members of the clergy. It's the fourth time he’s mentioned the scandals during his trip. The Pope was addressing an audience of clerics at a cathedral in New York on the penultimate day of his visit to the US. He said the abuse had diminished the reputation of the Catholic Church and he prayed for healing.

"As you strive to respond with Christian hope, to the continuing challenges that this situation presents, I join you in praying that this will be a time of purification for each in a particular church and religious community, and a time for healing."

The authorities in Argentina have arrested two farmers accused of starting fires which have raged near Buenos Aires for several days, cloaking the capital in dense smoke. The Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo said they were also seeking a third farmer. He said investigators had seized the boat containing combustible material believed to have been used to start the fires. The government says the fires were started deliberately by farmers who were clearing land for grazing.

World News from the BBC.

At least ten Palestinian Hamas militants have been killed in a series of Israeli attacks on Saturday in the Gaza Strip. In one of the latest incidents, Palestinian officials said four Hamas militants were killed in an Israeli air raid near Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip. Officials from Hamas which controls Gaza said the militants were on patrol near the Israeli border.

President Bush has dismissed reports that Washington is scaling back its demands on North Korea, more than four months after Pyongyang missed the deadline to declare all its nuclear weapons program. At a news conference with the new South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Mr. Bush said he would not accept a deal that did not advance the interests of the region.

"The whole object of this exercise is to convince the leader of North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions. That's the whole object. And so we have yet to come to the stage where he has made a full declaration, and so we will see what he says and then we will make a decision about our obligations, depending upon whether or not we are convinced that there is a solid and full declaration, and whether or not there is a way to verify, whether or not he's gonna do what he says he's gonna do."

A Russian space capsule carrying three crew members has landed in Kazakhstan some 400 kilometers off course. The capsule which was returning from a mission to the International Space Station made what officials called the ballistic landing, which is far steeper than usual. The crew which included South Korea's first astronaut was subjected to gravitational forces up to ten times those experienced on the ground. (www.hxen.net)

One of France's most decorated women, the anthropologist and Nazi concentration camp survivor Germaine Tillion has died at the age of 100. President Nicolas Sarkozy described her as an exceptional woman. Germaine Tillion fought for the French resistance during the Second World War before being sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. She attributed her survival there to luck and anger.

1 penultimate: next to the last

2 brunt: major force or blow

3 ballistic:relating to or characteristic of the motion of objects moving under their own momentum and the force of gravity

4 combustible: capable of igniting and burning

5 decorated: decorate(v.usually passive)to give sb a medal as a sign of respect for sth   they have done. 

decorated(adj.)respected