BBC news 2008-09-25 加文本

BBC News with Julie Candler.

With financial uncertainty dominating politics in the United States, President Bush is due to address the nation as opposition continues in Congress to his administration’s 700-billion-dollar rescue plan. The Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he is suspending his election campaign so that he can return to Washington to help.

It has become clear no consensus has developed to support the administration’s proposal. I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time.

Mr. McCain said he wanted his debate with his Democratic rival Barack Obama scheduled for Friday to be postponed so they could deal with the financial crisis. Mr. Obama rejected the idea.

In my mind actually, it is more important than ever that we present ourselves to the American people and try to describe where we want to take the country and where we want to take the economy.

Gunmen in Iraq are reported to have killed as many as 35 Iraqi police officers and an American-backed Sunni militiaman in an ambush northeast of Baghdad. The attack happened in a village in Diyala Province. Officials say the insurgents had apparently been tipped off in advance about an impending raid because the ambush was carefully planned. Sunni insurgents have regrouped in Diyala after being forced out of the western province of Anbar and elsewhere. But correspondents say that despite a major offensive by the security forces, rural areas around the provincial capital Baqouba have been hard to control.

The United Nations says millions of new jobs will be created worldwide over the next few decades as governments develop alternative energy technologies. The aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Louise Webster reports.

Worldwide more than two million people already work in green energy jobs, half of those in bio-fuels. And according to a report by the UN Environment Program, more than 12 million new jobs could be created in bio-fuels alone over the next 20 years. But the speedy creation of further posts depends on a shift of subsidies from oil and natural gas to wind, solar and geothermal power.

The son of the former Liberian President Charles Taylor has gone on trial in Miami accused of torture. It’s the first test of a 14-year-old American law which allows the prosecution of its citizens for acts of torture committed abroad. The law applies to Charles Taylor Jr., commonly known as Chuckie because he was born in the US. He is accused of taking part in summary executions and torture.

The Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has attended a ceremony to remember the victims of Soviet-era prison camps, laying flowers at a memorial. Campaigners said the gesture marked a new readiness by Russian leaders to confront their country’s past when millions of people died in the Gulag prison camp system set up by Josef Stalin.

World News from the BBC.

The President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez has signed a series of energy cooperation deals with China during a tour which will also include Russia. Speaking in Beijing, Mr. Chavez said oil exports from Venezuela to China could rise threefold by 2012 to one million barrels a day. Other plans include joint projects to build four oil tankers as well as three oil refineries in China.

Italy’s Interior Minister Roberto Maroni has accused one of the country’s most notorious crime syndicates of declaring war on the state. He made the statement in an address to parliament. Mr. Maroni was explaining why he was sending a reinforcement of 500 paratroopers to the southern city of Naples, home of the criminal-like organization known as the Camorra. Mr. Maroni said the killing last week of an Italian man and six African immigrants near the city was an act of terrorism designed to spread fear.(Www.hXen.com)

The American cyclist Lance Armstrong, who retired in 2005 after winning the Tour De France seven times, has announced he will begin his competitive comeback next year with the Kazakh team, Astana. He said he would start with Australia’s Tour Down Under and also compete in next year’s Tour de France. He said his main motivation was the desire to raise awareness of the global fight against cancer, a disease which he overcame a decade ago. "It’s not very often that somebody gets a chance to spend three or four years away from something step back, and then say to themselves. I sort of miss that. I’d like to go back and do that again. And with this campaign, we feel that by racing the bicycle, it is the best way to promote this initiative, it’s the best way to get the word out.

Scientists say the solar wind, a stream of particles that flows from the sun helps to protect the earth from cosmic radiation is at its lowest level for 50 years. They say there is nothing to fear because the earth is also protected by a magnetic field but they add the situation could make things more difficult for astronauts who go beyond Earth’s orbit.

BBC News.