BBC news 2008-09-13 加文本

BBC News with Jonathan Weekley;

The United States Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff has warned that Hurricane Ike currently bearing down on southern Texas could have catastrophic consequences. A huge storm surge is expected to flood many low-lying areas, in particular the low-lying coastal city of Galveston. Its residents have been warned to evacuate or face certain deaths. From Washington Jenner Bryon reports;

Hurricane Ike may only be a Category-two storm, but it's enormous, 600 miles across, giving it the power to push a 20-foot high wall of water inland. Most people appeared to have heeded the dire warnings of certain deaths and to have left low-lying areas such as Galveston which lies directly in Ike's path. But in Houston, residents have been told to stay put, and Mr. Chertoff is urging everyone to have food and water enough to last for several days.

A series of tit-for-tat expulsions has left the United States without ambassadors in three Latin American countries. Bolivia and Venezuela have expelled the US ambassadors to their capitals, accusing Washington of trying to overthrow Bolivia's left-wing government. The government of Honduras has refused to accept the credentials of a new American ambassador. President Manuel Zelaya said he was acting in solidarity with Bolivia.

The action that was taken to postpone the accreditation of United States ambassador while we set up talks to the embassy of the US State Department is to show our unease with what's happening in a sister country, the poorest country in the America's ,a country of indigenous people kept down for many years.

 Washington responded by throwing out the envoys from Bolivia and Venezuela.

In one of the biggest attacks in Iraq in recent months, a suicide bomber has killed at least 28 people in the central town of Dujail, north of Baghdad. More than 40 people were wounded. Mike Sargent reports from the Iraqi capital.

The bomber drove a vehicle loaded with explosives into a police station in the town of Dujail. Many of the casualties were in a busy market nearby. The explosion took place minutes before people were getting ready to break their fast during the month of Ramadan. On Friday, a bomb in Bagdad wounded 13 members of the same family. To the northwest of Mosul another explosion killed three people inside a Shiite mosque.

The most senior judge in Saudi Arabia has made an outspoken attack on the owners of Arabic satellite television channels, describing some of their entertainment programmes as immoral and a great evil. The judge Sheikh Salih Ibn al-Luhaydan made his comments on Saudi state radio, when asked by a listener to give his opinion about showing programmes featuring scantily-dressed women during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Sheikh says it was legitimate to kill those channel owners if they could not be deterred by other means.

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The leader [of] South Africa's governing ANC party, Jacob Zuma has held as a victory a judge's decision to reject charges of corruption, fraud and money-laundering he faced. The judge at Pietermaritzburg said the charges were politically motivated, addressing thousands of supporters outside the court, Mr. Zuma said the decision was a victory for democracy and the justice system.

The Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has described Georgia's attack against South Ossetia last month as Russia's equivalent of the attacks on the Untied States on September 11th seven years ago. Mr. Medvedev said Russia would from now on defend all its interests regardless of where they were. Bridget Kendall now reports from Moscow. (Www.hXen.com)

Dmitri Medvedev said that to compare last month's war in the Caucasus between Georgia and Russia to 9/11 was quite correct, the war had showed the balance of power in the world was inadequate and it changed Russian priorities forever. From now on, he said Russia would defend its interests wherever they were, and look beyond the west, to build economic and military ties across the world, including with former Soviet allies. The West had to recognize that Russia had zones of interests he said and for Russia Georgia joining NATO would be unjust, humiliating and intolerable.

A junior member of the British government has been sacked for suggesting publicly that there should be a challenge to the leadership of (the) Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Siobhain McDonagh said that everyone in the British government was talking about the leadership issue, and she thought it was important to clear the air.

The Spanish government has announced that it will plant 45 million trees over the next four years, roughly one for every resident of the country to counter desertification. The government says nearly a third of Spain is at risk of turning into desert. There’re also plans to set up a climate change research institute in the northeastern city of Zaragoza.

BBC News.