BBC news 2008-10-19 加文本

President Bush says he is looking forward to hosting a summit of leaders from developed and developing countries to address the global financial crisis. He was speaking at Camp David where he is meeting the French leader Nicolas Sarkozy and the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso. Adam Brookes reports from Washington.

Against the beautiful autumnal backdrop of Camp David, President Bush uttered words of cold comfort to Nicolas Sarkozy.

“We are all in this crisis together”, he said.

Mr. Bush went on to say that he would as Mr. Sarkozy had hoped, invite world leaders to a summit in America soon to talk about the global response to the financial crisis and how to avoid others in the future. It’s not clear yet when or where a summit will be held, who will be invited or what the agenda will be. But the Bush administration seems to be very unsure about European suggestions of a radical rethink of the way global finance works.

The International Monetary Fund has confirmed that it’s investigating whether its Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was involved in improper behavior in connection with an affair with a former employee. Reporting from Washington, Sarah Morris.

The IMF has engaged a law firm to investigate whether Mr. Strauss-Kahn behaved improperly on a personal matter. In a statement he confirmed he was cooperating with the investigation, he said that at no time had he abused his position as the Fund’s managing director. The inquiry is over an alleged relationship with Piroska Nagy, until recently a senior IMF official. It’s looking at whether she got a larger severance package than would otherwise have been expected when she left the organization in August. The investigation is also looking at whether she was pressured to leave her job.

A lawyer for Piroska Nagy said she had left the IMF voluntarily on August and had received no special treatment of any kind.

Police in Belgium say they’ve arrested 15 suspected people traffickers in raids in and around the Belgian capital, Brussels on Saturday. Louis Webster reports.

Police say they discovered around 200 Indian nationals believed to have been on the last leg of a journey to Britain for which they’d paid between $2,000 and $5,000. The Belgian authorities said the raids followed a year-long investigation and they believe they have arrested the brains behind a network of small groups, which together smuggle thousands of Indian nationals into Europe each year. It’s thought the immigrants, mostly men between the ages of 15 and 35, had mainly traveled from the Punjab region of India, via Moscow. Their living conditions were poor, with more than 20 people crammed into one small, windowless room.

Here in Britain there's been a mixed reaction to comments by the new Immigration Minister Phil Woolas, that the government may restrict non-European Union migrants because of the economic downturn. The main opposition Conservatives said the government had now to explain how it intended to change its policies.

BBC News.

There has been an attack on a Russian military convoy in the volatile north Caucasus region of Ingushetia. Official Russian reports of the ambush which has been blamed on local Muslim separatists, said two soldiers were killed, but Ingushetian opposition reports suggest that as many as 40 Russian soldiers may have died.

The opposition leader in Zimbabwe Morgan Tsvangirai has defended the principles of a power-sharing deal with President Mugabe amid speculation that talks between the two sides are close to collapse. The mediator, former South African President Thabo Mbeki said negotiations would resume in Swaziland on Monday, and he remained hopeful of a successful outcome. More details from Jonah Fisher.

It is difficult to know what caused the breakdown of the talks this week whether it was that Thabo Mbeki wasn’t willing to put any clout behind his negotiating position, after all he is no longer the president of South Africa, or whether it was simply a case that Robert Mugabe had decided this was the line he was going to draw in the sand that he simply couldn’t countenance giving over control of both Home Affairs and the Defense Ministry to the MDC. And he wouldn’t budge on that issue, and whatever Thabo Mbeki had said, that he simply wasn’t going to agree to it.

The Social Democrats in Germany have chosen the Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier as their candidate for chancellor in next year’s election. Mr. Steinmeier will take on the current Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democrats at the moment the two parties share power in a coalition government.(Www.hxen.net)

The British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has accepted the challenge of writing the British entry for next year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Lloyd Webber who is best known for his musicals, Cats and Evita, and it’s hoped his contribution will improve Britain's chances of winning which it hasn't done since 1998. This year’s Eurovision Song Contest was won by the Russian singer Dima Bilan.