BBC news 2008-05-16 加文本

BBC News with Michael Poles.

China’s President Hu Jintao has flown to the earthquake-hit southwestern Sichuan Province when nearly 20,000 deaths have been confirmed. It’s feared that the number may more than double. Official said he would inspect the rescue and relief work and console victims. Charles Scanlon reports.

China’s state media says that 50,000 people are now feared dead. The Premier Wen Jiabao described it as the most widespread and destructive earthquake since the Communist took power in 1949. Troops have parachuted into the most remote and worst-hit counties near the quake’s epicenter. Officials say that their top priority is still to pull survivors from the rubble although they acknowledged that time is running out. Reports from the area say the rescue teams lack specialist equipment. Despite the impressive scale and speed of the relief operation, some residents still say they had little to eat and drink since the earthquake.

Allegations that Venezuela has been supporting left-wing Colombian rebels have been given credence by the international police agency Interpol. The agency has confirmed that computer files seized from one of the dead of left-wing FARC rebel group two months ago are genuine. The Colombian authorities said the document showed the rebels have been supported by Venezuela and Ecuador. The US State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said the new information was disturbing.

There are serious allegations about Venezuela supplying arms and support to a terrorist organization. And certainly that has deep implications for the people of the region, as well as states in the region , and involved, I, I, it was supposed to see more in the coming days and weeks, er, from the Colombian government.

The Republican candidate for the US presidency John McCain has predicted that by January 2013, the war in Iraq could be won, and Iraq would have a functioning democracy. Jack Izzard reports from Washington. (Www.hxen.net)

Senator McCain has long been a supporter of the Iraq War, and has repeatedly refused to say when the American troops might come home. It is a policy which risks alienating American voters, many of them are deeply unhappy with the war. But on Thursday, he allowed himself to do some crystal ball gazing. He said that by January 2013, Iraq would be a functioning democracy, and the war would be won. But he denied that he was putting a timetable on the American withdrawal. His rival, the Democratic Senate Hillary Clinton, accused him of offering compilation for President Bush’s policies.

Meanwhile, the Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama has reacted angrily after President Bush appeared to attack his Middle East policy during a speech in the Israeli Parliament. Mr. Bush said people willing to negotiate with terrorists and radicals was deluded as Nazi appeasers in the run-up to the World War II. Mr. Obama, the Democratic Party frontrunner, has advocated talking to the leaders of Syria and Iran.

BBC News.

Nearly two weeks after the Irrawaddy Delta of Burma was hit by a cyclone, the official number of dead now exceeds 43,000. A BBC correspondent who has reached the area has seen bodies and debris piled up by the floods but no sign of relief work. The senior UN official for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes who is preparing to go to Burma told the BBC of his frustration of a slow pace of progress. He said he would try to persuade the country’s military rulers to allow more foreign experts into the delta area. Alexander Richter, of the German's St. John Ambulance organization said his team had been able to get some supplies into the region.

The government told us: you can bring the aids into the country, but you have to give it to us. So we thought about it and we found a way to bring this aid, directly, directly to the people in this area. But we … transportation.

The United Nations Security Council has called on the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to continue making contingency plans for the possible deployment of the UN peacekeepers in Somalia. Most council members believe it is currently too dangerous in Somalia for UN troops to replace African Union peacekeepers who are there, now.

Kenya’s top Human Rights Body has called for the country’s Defense Minister and senior army commanders to be prosecuted for the alleged torture of civilians by soldiers fighting suspected rebels in western Kenya. The state-funded Kenyan National Commission for Human Rights said the Minister Yusuf Haji and military leaders were accountable for torture and other serious human rights violations.

A woman in the United States has been indicted over an Internet hoax that ended with a suicide of a 13-year-old girl. Prosecutors said 49-year-old Lori Drew was one of several adults who pretended to be a teenage boy on the Myspace social networking site. Megan hanged herself after receiving a message she believed came from the boy telling her the world would be better off without her.

BBC News.