BBC news 2008-09-26 加文本

BBC News with Joe Macintosh

Talks in Washington have so far failed to clinch an agreement over President Bush's proposed multibillion-dollar rescue package for America's troubled financial institutions. After several hours of discussion with President Bush, political leaders said more work was needed. Both presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain were present at the talks. From Washington, Kevin Connolly reports.

For American voters the sight of President Bush flanked by the two men locked in a bitter battle to replace him, would have dramatically underlined the scale of the economic crisis into which the United States may be sliding. It also symbolized the bipartisan search to agree a bailout package which is dominating life on Capitol Hill, and overshadowing, at least for the moment, the race for the White House. Many members of Congress say they are under pressure from voters not to agree to approve the White House's appeal for emergency funds, and they want assurances that it won't be used to pay colossal salaries to the very bankers who helped create the crisis.

A United States military official says American troops have exchanged fire with Pakistani soldiers. NATO said the shooting took place after American military helicopters operating in Afghanistan were shot at by Pakistani forces. This report from our State Department correspondent Kim Ghattas.(Www.hXen.com)

An unfortunate incident along an unclear border, this is how Washington is describing the shooting in an attempt perhaps to avoid further tension with the country that is crucial to America's war against terror in many ways. Speaking in New York, the new Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said his country's soldiers had only fired flares meant to signal to the American helicopters that they’d crossed the border. He was with the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who seemed to agree with him that it was indeed a very unclear border and a very inhospitable terrain. 

World leaders and philanthropists gathered in New York have pledged nearly three billion dollars to fight malaria with the aim of eradicating it by 2015. The meeting at the United Nations is seeking ways of reaching the Millennium Development Goals—targets for reducing global poverty. The money includes 1.1 billion dollars from the World Bank and 1.6 billion from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The President of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete, told the meeting that malaria had almost been eliminated on the island of Zanzibar.

Of course, our preoccupation now is to, to create the mechanism, to sustain the success so that we don’t have a reemergence because we have succeeded, it is the third time we have succeeded in Zanzibar. Now we want this time to be the final time.

A man has been convicted in Canada of taking part in a conspiracy to behead the prime minister and bomb nuclear power stations. The verdict was the first against eleven people accused of attending a Jihadist-style training camp, north of Toronto.

World News from the BBC.

A Russian government official has said businessmen in his country are estimated to spend more than 33 billion dollars a year on bribing government officials. Speaking at a seminar in Moscow on organized crime, Anatoly Kulikov, an Interior Ministry advisor said that in many corruption cases the accused were legal professionals such as investigators, prosecutors and judges.

The Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says he is ready to consider helping Venezuela develop a nuclear power program. After talks with President Hugo Chavez in Moscow he said the nuclear technology would be used for peaceful purposes. Mr. Putin spoke optimistically over cooperation with Venezuela.

We are dynamically developing our relations in practically all fields. Agreements are starting to be implemented, and new opportunities are emerging in the economic sphere: the energy sector, hi-tech, machine building and the petrochemical industry. We are ready to examine opportunities for cooperation and the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes.

Zimbabwe has for the first time allowed some shops to sell goods in foreign currency in an effort to alleviate the country's economic crisis. The governor of the Central Bank granted 600 shops licenses to charge in foreign currency, saying he hoped this would reduce black market activity. Zimbabwe's currency has been undermined by the highest rate of inflation in the world. There were serious shortages of basic goods, including fuel, food and medicine. 

Researchers say that more than a half of Europe's amphibian species could be extinct by the middle of the century, because of the twin threat of rising temperatures and the spread of disease. Scientists say captive breeding programs may be a short term solution but they say there are no quick fixes to prevent the possibility of large numbers of amphibians from being wiped out.

And that's the latest BBC World News.