BBC news 2008-08-02 加文本

BBC News with John Jason.

The Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has launched an international fund to protect the Amazon Rainforest and help combat climate change. Officials will seek donations from other countries and hope to raise 21 billion dollars by 2021. The aim of the fund is to promote alternatives to forest clearing for people living in the Amazon and to support sustainable development. From Sao Paulo, here is Gary Duffy.

Speaking at the launch of the fund, President Luiz acknowledged Brazil’s responsibility to preserve the Amazon, and that protecting the rainforest helps to combat global warming. It is better to do things right,  He said, So we can walk in international forums with our heads held high. It is hoped that the project will eventually raise billions of dollars in the next few years. Brazil's national development bank will administer the fund and it is expected that Norway will make the first donation of 100 million dollars in September.

A United States medical examiner has confirmed that a military scientist, who was about to be indicted in connection with anthrax attacks in America seven years ago, committed suicide. The lawyer for Bruce Ivins confirmed that the microbiologist had been under investigation and denied he'd been involved in the attacks which killed five people. James Coomarasamy reports from Washington.

It seems the net was closing in on Bruce Ivins, an army microbiologist who was developing a vaccine against anthrax and who had been involved in the investigation into the 2001 attacks. Officials say he was about to be indicted with a possible death penalty request for his alleged role in the anthrax plot which led to five deaths and caused widespread chaos soon after the events of September the 11th. The 62-year-old died on Tuesday after apparently taking an overdose of prescription drugs.

The prosecution in a case of three British Muslims charged with aiding the bombing of London's public transport system says he will take a little time to consider whether to seek a retrial. The judge said he assumed there might be a retrial next year. They were speaking after the jury failed to reach a verdict regarding the three men. They were accused of conspiring with four others who carried out coordinated attacks on July the 7th, 2005. John Andrews reports.

52 people died and hundreds were wounded when four suicide bombers struck on the London Underground and a bus. The prosecution said that though the men in this trial had no direct involvement in those attacks, they'd gone on a hostile reconnaissance of potential targets seven months before. Targets are supposed to match those later attacks. They knew three of the bombers well. Two have been to training camps in Pakistan with the lead suicide bomber. But the men insisted their trip was an innocent outing to see sights such as the London Aquarium and the Natural History Museum, and to visit their relative. They said what their friends did shocked them, and they were against suicide bombing.

World News from the BBC.

In the latest, in a series of detentions made by rival Palestinian groups, the Islamic Hamas movement has taken into custody several senior officials of the Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas. The tit-for-tat detentions was triggered by a bombing of Gaza beach which killed a four-year-old girl and five Hamas members.

German doctors have been giving details of what's believed to be the world’s first double arm transplant. A farmer who lost his own limbs in an accident had two arms from a dead man grafted onto his body last week in a 15-hour procedure. One of the doctors who led the operation, Edgar Biemer, described how they prepared the patient psychologically for the operation.

“It's very softly, we have to describe, ur to him, to the patient that he will have to deal with the fact that he has hands from somebody else. And we found out that he is really stable, he knows the problem, and from the psychological point of view, we also got the knowledge that he might not have any difficulty in accepting these foreign hands, and we really saw it when he awaked[awoke] after the operation, he looked at the hand, oh, very good."

The board of directors at Yahoo have received resounding support from the company’s shareholders at their annual meeting. The chief executive, Jerry Yang, won 85% of the vote. They also backed yahoo’s eight other directors. Correspondents say the result has been expected, but shareholders criticized the board over its handling of merger talks with the software giant Microsoft. (Www.hxen.net)

The British sports car, MG, has once again been made at the Longbridge car plant in the English Midlands. The Chinese owners of the factory say full-scale production is now underway. The factory closed two years ago when Britain’s last volume car maker MG Rover went bankrupt. The Chinese owner, Shanghai Automotive, said nearly half of the 700 MG sports cars it hopes to produce by the end of the year had already been sold.

BBC News.