BBC news 2009-01-20 加文本

BBC News with Marian Marshall.

The full scale of the destruction in Gaza from Israel's three-week offensive is becoming clear as Israeli troops withdraw following a ceasefire. Aid agencies have described the worst-hit areas as looking as if they’ve been hit by a strong earthquake. With tens of thousands of Palestinians made homeless, the UN has urged construction materials to be allowed in without delay. Christian Fraser has been in Gaza City.

The Palestinians are counting the true cost of this war, and in Jabaliya on the northern edge of Gaza City, they've paid the heaviest price. This was where the Israeli tanks first crossed the border. Entire neighborhoods have disappeared. 67-year-old Fatma Umanim sat beside the remains of her collapsed house., once again she is destitute. Her neighbors are building a makeshift shelter next to the rubble, there is a body still buried somewhere beneath it. Fatma refuses to leave. “I am not moving another inch for the Israelis,” she shouts defiantly.

On the eve of his inauguration, Barack Obama has evoked the spirit of Martin Luther King, the assassinated civil rights leader, who is being honored in a national public holiday. The president-elect spent part of the day visiting an emergency shelter for the homeless. He appealed to Americans to pull together to deal with the serious challenges the nation faces.

But don't underestimate the power for people who join together to accomplish amazing things. And given the crisis that we’re in we can't allow any idle hands, everybody's got to be involved, everybody is gonna have to pitch in.

In the final hours of his presidency, George Bush has commuted the prison sentences of two United States Border Patrol agents jailed for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler. Their convictions and sentences of more than ten years angered supporters who said that they’ve simply been doing their job. Mr. Bush stopped short of issuing pardons. It’s expected the men will be released in March.

A prominent Russian lawyer has been shot dead by a unknown gunman on a Moscow street. The lawyer was Stanislav Markelov, who'd fought unsuccessfully to prevent the early release from jail of a Russian army officer convicted of strangling a young Chechen woman. A woman journalist, Anastasia Baburova, who was with him and tried to intervene, was seriously injured and died later in hospital. James Rodgers reports.

Russian news agencies quote law enforcement sources as saying that Stanislav Markelov was shot in the head with a pistol with a silencer. Mr. Markelov was a lawyer. He was a well-known figure and famously represented the family of Kheda Kungayeva, a young Chechen woman who was killed in the year 2000 by a Russian army officer. The officer, Colonel Yuri Budanov, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the killing. Mr. Markelov had opposed Colonel Budanov's early release.  At the time of his death, Mr. Markelov was also involved in a case of a newspaper editor who was severely beaten by unknown assailants.

World News from the BBC.

The Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says he's ordered the state gas company to resume supplies to the rest of Europe through Ukraine. He was speaking in Moscow immediately after officials from Gazprom and its Ukrainian equivalent Naftogaz signed an agreement to end a pricing dispute which has caused serious gas shortages in Central and Eastern Europe.

A public inquiry has begun in Canada to the case of a man who died on an airport floor after police officers used a Taser electric stun gun on him. Robert Gcamsy, a 40-year-old Polish immigrant, had been lost in Vancouver airport for 10 hours when he was confronted by four police officers in 2007.

The party of the former left-wing guerillas in El salvador appears to be heading to victory in Sunday’s congressional election for the first time since the end of the country’s bloody civil war in 1992. With almost 70% of votes counted, the FMLN has a nine-point lead over the governing conservative Arena party. However, correspondents say that neither party will gain enough seats to secure an outright majority in the national assembly. Greg Morsbach reports.

Despite this mixed bag of results, the leftist politicians are now confident they can sweep to victory in presidential poll scheduled for the 15th of March. The leader of the FMLN, charismatic former cnn journalist Mauricio Funes, seems to have strengthened his party ahead of this crucial polls. He’s persuaded many voters that he is in charge of the center-left party willing to work with Washington despite allegations he’ll turn the country into a satellite of socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

A court in the Rwandan capital Kigali has sentenced the former Justice Minister Agnes Ntamabyariro to life imprisonment for her part in the genocide in 1994. The court convicted her of conspiracy to plan the genocide and delivering speeches that incited people to take part in it.(www.hXen.com)

BBC News.

pull together: If people pull together, they help each other or work together in order to deal with a difficult situation.

pitch in: If you pitch in, you join with an activity.

stop short of doing sth. : to almost do something but then decide not to do it.

mixed bag: If you describe a situation or a group of things or people as a mixed bag, you mean that it contains some good items, features, or people and some bad ones.