BBC news 2008-10-31 加文本

BBC News with Fiona McDonald.

As the European Union considers sending troops to Congo where a rebel offensive has displaced tens of thousands of civilians, Britain has warned that any deployment could take weeks. The French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said any long-term solution to the conflict lay in dialogue between the leaders of Congo and neighboring Rwanda which the Congolese government accuses of supporting the rebels.

"We must find a political solution, not a humanitarian insulation. Part of the solution is certainly to press Mr. President Kagame and President Kabila to talk to each other and hopefully some representative of the Congo were sent to Kigali and today (and) I talked to Minister of Foreign Affairs and that I'm going to talk to Mr. President Kagame. So it's the beginning."

Here in Britain a senior BBC executive has resigned following a national outcry over the broadcasting of lewd telephone calls by two of its highest-paid entertainers. The executive Lesley Douglas leaves her post as head of the BBC's domestic station Radio 2. Here is our British affairs correspondent Janet Barry.

 Lesley Douglas said she took full responsibility for the row over the prank phone calls where two presenters on the domestic BBC station Radio 2 left messages on the answer phone of a well-known British actor Andrew Sachs. The presenters Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand made sexual comments about Mr. Sachs' granddaughter.  Russell Brand resigned from the BBC yesterday and the BBC decided today to suspend Jonathan Ross without pay for three months. The prank phone calls have so far prompted over 35,000 complaints from the Prime Minister downwards.

The Roman Catholic Church has issued new guidance, saying candidates for the priesthood should undergo psychological tests to screen out those unable to control their sexual urges. The document approved by Pope Benedict follows a series of sexual-abuse scandals that have rocked the church in recent years. From Rome, here is Duncan Kennedy.

Under the new guidelines, trainee Catholic priests must, in future, consent to inquiries by mental health professionals. The guidelines state that, what they call, too many mental shortcomings come to the surface only after ordination, and recognizing this in time will, they say, prevent so many tragedies. One cardinal said that the celibate candidate with what he called, rooted homosexual tendencies, must be excluded from the priesthood, not because he commits a sin but because homosexuality is a deviation that prevents him from doing his job.

Figures just out from the United States government show the country's economy contracted in the third quarter of this year by one third of one percent, its sharpest fall in seven years. Consumer spending fell for the first time since 1991. The figures make a recession in America seem more likely.

World News from the BBC.

Health officials in South Africa say a new strain of virus was responsible for four deaths from haemorrhagic fever in Johannesburg last month. The National Institute for Communicable Diseases said tests have confirmed that the virus was new in terms of its genetic make-up. It was highly lethal and there was no vaccine.

A court in the American city of Miami has found the son of the former Liberian president Charles Taylor guilty of torture and involvement in summary executions in the West African nation. Prosecutors have told the court that Charles Taylor junior had been involved in an elite paramilitary unit in his father's government between 1999 and 2002. Our West Africa correspondent Will Ross reports.

Both father and son have fallen from positions of great power and now face the possibility of lengthy spells behind bars. Charles McArthur Emmanuel, better known as "Chuckie" Tailor, was born in the U.S. but moved to Liberia when his father seized power there in 1997. In his early 20s, Chuckie Tailor was made the head of the notorious Anti-Terrorist Unit, or ATU. This elite pro-government military division was widely feared in Liberia and there is no doubt that it was responsible for the torture of many people. (WWw.hxen.net)

The Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip have released 17 jailed members of the rival Palestinian faction Fatah and what they say is a good-will gesture before reconciliation talks. Announcing the releases, the senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh described the detainees for the first time as political prisoners. He called for the Fatah-controlled authorities in the West Bank to reciprocate.

Scientists say they've been able for the first time to prove that human activity is contributing to the warming of both the Arctic and Antarctic. British researchers say their analysis shows that increasing temperatures at the Polar Regions cannot be explained by nature causes alone, but by the additional impact of greenhouse emissions.

BBC News.