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BBC news 2008-12-07 加文本

2008-12-07来源:和谐英语
BBC 2008-12-07


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BBC News with Nick Kelly.

One of Pakistan's most senior diplomats says his government believed India was very close to launching a military attack on Pakistan at the height of the tension of the bloodshed in Mumbai last week. Pakistan's High Commissioner to London, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, said high level  American and British officials had to intervene to calm the situation. Mr. Hassan told the BBC he’d been tipped off by friends in the British government that India was likely to make a quick strike as he put it to teach Pakistan a lesson. Mr. Hassan said the president of Pakistan confirmed that there'd been a threat of an Indian attack.

I got a call from some friend here in the government, and he said the situation is pretty serious. Indians are threatening to go to war. I said how come the Indians just jump to the guns on this sort of situation. I again talked to the president, and the president also confirmed that he had received a call, threatening call from India.

The Indians denied making any such call to Islamabad.

United Nations officials in Zimbabwe say they are making preparations to cope with the possible 60, 000 cases of cholera over the next few weeks, four times the present official figure. Our Africa editor Martin Plaut reports.

Aid agencies are struggling to deal with a deepening crisis in Zimbabwe. Mr. Monasch told the BBC they were doing all they could to bring down mortality rates. But he warned that if as many as 60, 000 people became infected, then the cholera epidemic could kill another 2, 700 people. Officially nearly 600 people have already died of the disease, but the UN says the actual figure is probably far higher.

The government of the Republic of Ireland has recalled from sale all pork produced in the past three months after a toxic chemical was found in slaughtered pigs. The substance PCB was banned in 1979. It's not yet clear how it got into the production chain. Alan Reilly from the Food Safety Authority of Ireland announced the test results.

The levels in the feed were very high, they were, you know, extremely high. The levels in the pork itself were in the region of about 80 to 200 times above the safe limits.

The recall affects all pork products put on sale since September the 1st. And people in the Irish Republic have been advised to destroy any remaining stocks they hold.

The World Bank has called on Israel to allow the transfer of bank notes into the Gaza Strip. Banks across the Hamas-run territory shut down on Thursday because of what they said was a shortage of cash caused by the Israeli-led blockade. The World Bank said the crisis could bring down the banking system in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of people there depend on the salaries of public employees. And the Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has said there is a need for some 60 million dollars.

World News from the BBC.

Thailand's main opposition Democrat Party says it has the support of enough MPs to form a new government, freezing out allies of the ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. If confirmed, it would almost certainly end the protest by anti-government campaigners who have occupied the prime minister's office since August and closed down Bangkok's two main airports last week.

Opposition parties in Venezuela have issued a formal rejection of the plan by President Hugo Chavez to stay in office as long as he keeps winning elections. Mr. Chavez, who is celebrating the tenth anniversary of his first presidential election victory, has urged Congress to consider a constitutional amendment which would allow him to stand for re-election when his current seven-year-term ends in 2012.

More than two million people from more than 100 countries are taking part in the annual Muslim pilgrimage the Hajj. The worshipers spent the first day in Mecca itself, circling the sacred Kaaba Stone inside the Grand Mosque. On Sunday, they will gather at Mount Arafat, east of Mecca.  Imtiaz Tyab reports from Mecca.

Without standing in the hot and dusty plain known as Arafat, a Muslim pilgrim's Hajj will not be complete. The ritual is to remind devotees that one day this world will end and that all of humanity will be called before God and have their souls reckoned. Standing in the baking hot Arabian sun for hours on end is meant to give pilgrims a small taste of what the fires of hell may be like. After sunset, they will move to an area known as Muzdalifah where they’ll spend the night sleeping rough under the stars, a lesson in extreme poverty.(Www.hxen.net)

And finally, more than 200 American workers are continuing to occupy a factory in Chicago after it abruptly shut down on Friday, the day the United States announced its worst rise in unemployment for more than 30 years. Union officials said the company which makes plastic windows has failed to give the workers their legal entitlement of severance and holiday pay.
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